Berlin, Germany • February 4, 1937 On this date in 1937, in a bold, sweeping decree, Adolf Hitler assumed command of the entire German armed forces, or Wehrmacht. He abolished the Reichskriegsministerium (Ministry of War), in the act liquidating the traditional power of the army general staff as the ultimate controller and director of Germany’s…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union • January 31, 1943 On this date in 1943 Red Army staff officers arrived at German Sixth Army headquarters in Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd) to discuss surrender terms for an invading enemy now bereft of ammunition, food, effective command, and 150,000 men who belonged to the dead or missing. Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’…
Near Bad Orb, Germany • December 26, 1944 On the first day in December 1939, 4 months since the outbreak of war in Europe, the German Wehrmacht (military) established a prisoner of war camp, Mannschafts-Stammlager IX B, outside Bad Orb, roughly 30 miles/48 km northeast of Frankfurt am Main in the state of Hessen. Over the course of the…
Moscow, Soviet Union • December 6, 1941 Three weeks after launching Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 with the express goal of “crush[ing] Soviet Russia in a quick campaign” (Fuehrer Directive 21, December 18, 1940), the Germans and their Axis partners had indeed reached close enough to Moscow to fly sorties and bomb the Soviet…
Huertgen, Germany • November 16, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑kilometer-wide, 20‑mile/16‑kilometer-long Huertgen Forest (Hürtgenwald) southeast of Aachen. The ancient capital of Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne and a northern node on Germany’s “dragons’ teeth” defensive Westwall (known to the Allies as the 390‑mile/628‑kilometer-long Siegfried…
Prague, Occupied Czechoslovakia • November 14, 1944 On this date in German-occupied Czechoslovakia Lt. Gen. Andrei (Andrey) Andreievich Vlasov read aloud the Prague Manifesto to members of the newly created Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Among its 14 principles, the Prague Manifesto guaranteed freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly, as well…
Schmidt, Huertgen Forest, Germany • November 2, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑km-wide, 20‑mile/32‑km-long Huertgen Forest (German, Hürtgenwald) southeast of the ancient city Aachen, the first major and westernmost city in Nazi Germany to have fallen to the Anglo-American-Canadian armies. Before the outbreak of World…
East Prussia, Germany • October 16, 1944 In the summer of 1944 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was knocked off balance by one-two punches delivered almost simultaneously by the Western Allies’ invasion of Northwestern France, codenamed Operation Overlord (June–August 1944), and the Soviet Union’s offensive, Operation Bagration (June–August 1944), which began with the reconquest of Belorussia…
Posen, Western Occupied Poland • October 6, 1943 Despite Adolf Hitler’s Germany being engaged in a European and, after December 11, 1941, a global war, the Nazi leader (Fuehrer) had not directed his country’s full industrial might toward total war as had the leaders of his enemy states—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union….
Warsaw, Poland • September 1, 1939 Eighty-six years ago World War II in Europe began on this date in 1939 in Danzig (now the present-day Polish city of Gdańsk) when the elderly German training ship Schleswig-Holstein, under the guise of a ceremonial visit to the city, bombarded Poland’s naval base in Danzig harbor. After a…