Paris, Occupied France • August 21, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Paris, well over a year after the hardstepping German Wehrmacht (armed forces) and Gestapo (Germany’s sinister secret police) had entered the French capital and settled in, a 22‑year-old Communist member of the French Resistance named Pierre Georges (noms de guerre, Frédo and Colonel…
On Germany’s Eastern Front • July 27, 1941 On this date in 1941, 5 weeks after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler left his East Prussian Fuehrer Headquarters, known as the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze) and which had been built specifically for the Russian campaign, to pay…
Kursk, Soviet Union • July 13, 1943 On this date in 1943 Operation Citadel (Unternehmen Zitadelle), Adolf Hitler’s delayed gambit to retake the important Soviet rail hub of Kursk, south of Moscow, and straighten the German line on the Eastern Front failed with devastating losses on both sides, but especially to German strategic armored reserves….
Near Kursk, Russia • July 5, 1943 The pivotal year of the war in Europe was 1943. Early February saw Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ German Sixth Army, the largest army the Wehrmacht (armed forces) fielded in the war, surrender at Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in Southern Russia. Some 850,000 service members from German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and…
Moscow, Soviet Union • June 23, 1944 On this date in 1944 along a 450-mile/724 kilometer front some 2.4 million Soviet frontline and support troops, 5,200 tanks, and 5,300 aircraft smashed through German lines in present-day Belarus (White Russia and Belorussia in some earlier sources), an area of operations roughly half the size of California. Sabotage of rail networks…
Sedan, France • May 12, 1940 Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, on account of Germany’s aggression against its eastern neighbor Poland 2 days earlier. Both nations honored their guarantee to protect Poland’s borders in the event of a German invasion. Ten days into May 1940 Germany attacked neutral Belgium…
Berlin-Karlshorst, Germany • May 8, 1945 Five days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in Berlin on April 30, 1945, Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, an emissary from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, arrived in the French cathedral town of Reims, headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. For the second time in less…
Lueneburg Heath, Northern Germany • May 4, 1945 Lueneburg (German, Lüneburg), a district in Lower Saxony, Northern Germany, had been captured by elements of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s 21st Army Group on April 18, 1945. Montgomery made his headquarters at Moellering Villa in the village of Haecklingen just south of Lueneburg. At midday, May 3,…
Berlin, Germany • April 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, with most land communications and electrical power lines down, Adolf Hitler broadcast on Greater German Radio the order to save his beleaguered capital. The order called for Wehrmacht forces opposing the Americans at the Elbe River to withdraw and move north to rescue Berlin,…
Ruhr Pocket, Northwestern Germany • April 14, 1945 In the spring of 1945 senior leaders of the Third Reich were on edge. On Germany’s Eastern Front, the tracks of Soviet mechanized armor and the boots of their infantry could be heard approaching the outskirts of the epicenter of Nazism, Berlin. On the Western Front, elements of…