Wake Island, Western Pacific Ocean • December 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Wake Island defenders surrendered after 2 attack waves of 1,000 Japanese marines each stormed the beaches. Two days earlier, in their largest attack yet on Wake Island, the Japanese had sent 49 aircraft, dive bombers and fighters both, to knock out the last of…
Washington, D.C. and London, England • December 17, 1942 In remarks he made to 14 senior Nazis at a top-secret conference in the fashionable Berlin suburb of Wannsee on January 22, 1942, 38‑year-old SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Head [or Main] Office as also head of the German secret police apparatus, spoke of…
What do you do if you are a reluctant soldier, having been shot at, seen your friends killed, and can no longer even remember what your own mother looks like? As a combat soldier fighting your way across Europe, what is the plan when you come across a Holocaust train full of suffering humanity that shocks you to your core, even after you think you have seen it all? And what happens when you get to meet the survivors face to face, two generations later?
Prague, Czechoslovakia • August 3, 1945 Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, Czechoslovakia’s president Edvard Beneš pursued a policy of “no mercy” toward the roughly three million ethnic Germans and Hungarians living in his country. The 61‑year-old Beneš had held the same office of president in prewar Czechoslovakia when, abandoned by his French and British allies,…
Wake Island, North Pacific Ocean · December 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Wake Island defenders surrendered after two attack waves of 1,000 Japanese each stormed the beaches. Two days earlier, in their largest attack yet on Wake Island, the Japanese had sent 49 aircraft, dive bombers and fighters both, to knock out the last of…
Bucharest, Romania · December 21, 1937 On this date in 1937 Romania’s last free elections (until 1990) ended in the ouster of the middle-of-the road National Liberal government. The Liberals, who remained the largest party in parliament, were unable to form a coalition government with the next 2 runner-up parties. A week later King Carol II named the…
Washington, D.C. and London, England · December 17, 1942 In remarks he made to senior Nazis at a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on January 22, 1942, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Head Office and head of the German secret police apparatus, spoke of “practical experience” that was being collected “in…
Tokyo, Japan · December 5, 1937 On this date in 1937 Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army and uncle by marriage to Japanese Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), flew from Tokyo to his new assignment—temporary command of the Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, a unit of Gen. Iwane…
Berlin, Germany · December 1, 1939 From a small cadre of fanatical thugs assigned to protect Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at political meetings in the 1920s, the Schutzstaffel (“Protection Squad”), or SS, grew into one of the most notorious organizations in history, with many responsibilities. Under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, it ran the Reich Security…
Riga, Occupied Latvia · November 30, 1941 On November 25 and 29, 1941, Einsatzgruppe 3 (Special Task Group 3), one of many SS (short for Schutzstaffel) mobile death squads operating behind German front lines, murdered 5,000 “Reich Jews,” that is, German- and Austrian-born Jews. These men, women, and children had arrived in the Baltic ghetto…