Timeline Germany (D) 1939-1944
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1939 Jan 4, Hermann Goering appointed Reinhard Heydrich as head of Jewish Emigration.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1939 Jan 17, The Reich issued an order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and chemists.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1939 Jan 20, Hitler proclaimed to German parliament his intention to exterminate all European Jews.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1939 Jan 22, A Nazi order erased the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1939 Feb 14, The Reich launched the battleship Bismarck.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1939 Feb 24, Hungary signed an anti-Communist pact with Italy, Germany and Japan.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1939 Mar 15, Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became independent
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.2)(WSJ, 12/12/96, p.A13)(HN, 3/15/98)(MC, 3/15/02)
1939 Mar 16, Germany occupied the rest Czechoslovakia.
(HN, 3/16/99)
1939 Mar 18, The U.S. raised the duties on German imports by 25 percent.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1939 Mar 21, Nazi Germany demanded Gdansk (Danzig) from Poland.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1939 Mar 21, Ghandi called on the world to disarm, thinking that Hitler would follow.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1939 Mar 22, Germany marched into Klaipeda (Memel), Lithuania. The Lithuanian warship Prezidentas Smetona was left without a harbor. The ship soon settled at Latvia’s port of Liepaja. In December Ltn. P. Labanauskas was named captain. In 1940 Soviet occupiers called for the ship to raise the Soviet flag, but Captain Labanauskas sailed the ship out of Soviet territory. The ship was later handed over to the Soviet Baltic fleet. On Jan 11, 1945, it hit a mine and sank off the coast of Finland.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.2)(http://tinyurl.com/cs545k)
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven French islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1939 Mar, In Slovakia Germany set up a puppet regime. The Jewish community was estimated to number 70,000 at the start of the war. Fewer than 10,000 survived the war.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A11)
1939 Apr 5, Membership in Hitler Youth became obligatory.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1939 Apr 16, Stalin requested a British, French and Russian anti-Nazi pact.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1939 Apr 18, Franz von Papen became German ambassador in Turkey.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1939 Apr 20, The Kehlsteinhous, aka the Eagle’s Nest, a mountaintop teahouse located in the Kehlstein mountains near Berchtesgaden, was given to Adolf Hitler as a 50th birthday present.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.G4)
1939 Apr 28, Hitler claimed the German-Polish non-attack treaty to be still in effect.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1939 May 7, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1939 May 13, The SS St Louis departed Hamburg with some 937 passengers including over 900 Jewish refugees. They sought refuge in Cuba, but only 22 were allowed to disembark there. No country in the Americas would take them. It returned to Germany where a number of the Jews were later murdered. [see Jun 4]
(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.+Con.+Res.+185:)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)
1939 May 22, The foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance forming the Axis powers.
(HN, 5/22/99)(AP, 5/22/07)
1939 May 23, Hitler proclaimed he wants to move into Poland.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1939 May, The Ravensbruck concentration camp opened in northern Germany. It was primarily set up for women. Between 1939 and 1945, over 130,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system; only 40,000 survived.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensbr%C3%BCck)
1939 Jun 4, During what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned," the SS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. Also denied permission to dock in Canada and Cuba, the ship eventually returned to Europe. The passengers were divided among England, France, Belgium and Holland and a number of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps. By 2003 efforts to track their fates identified 935 out of the 937 passengers. Some 260 ended in Nazi killing centers.
(AP, 6/4/99)(SFC, 10/4/99, p.D3)(SSFC, 12/7/03, Par p.5)(Econ, 6/24/06, p.44)
1939 Jun 16-1939 Jun 20, Jewish refugees, whose quest for freedom in the Americas was denied, began to disembark the SS St. Louis back in Europe. Holland took 181, France received 224, 228 went to Great Britain, and 214 went to Belgium. [see May 13 and June 4]
(www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1999/ushmm-and-st-louis2.htm)
1939 Jun 28, Richard Meinertzhagen (1877-1967, a British army colonel, met with Adolf Hitler to plead on behalf of the Jews in Germany. He later claimed to have smuggled a pistol into the chancellery but lost his nerve and failed to shoot Hitler. In 2007 Brian Garfield authored “The Meinertzhagen Mystery."
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P9)
1939 Jul 3, Ernst Heinkel demonstrated an 800-kph rocket plane to Hitler.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1939 Jul 6, Nazis closed the last Jewish enterprises.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be within the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing, Germany invaded Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had claimed sections of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD, 8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1939 Aug 27, Nazi Germany demanded Danzig and Polish corridor.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Aug 27, The world's first jet-propelled plane, the Heinkel He-178, made its first flight at Marienehe, north Germany. Hans von Ohain’s aircraft became the first jet-powered airplane to fly. It remained airborne for 7 minutes. Erich Warsitz made the 1st jet-propelled flight.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)(Reuters, 8/28/01)(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Sep, 1, At 4:40 a.m., World War II began. The Germans attacked Poland with their strategy of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The war started at dawn with salvos from the cruiser Schleswig-Holstein at the Polish garrison in Gdansk. In 1989 Donald Cameron Watt authored “How War Came."
(WSJ, 4/26/95, p.A-16)(AP, 9/1/97)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1939 Sep 1, Hitler ordered the extermination of mentally ill.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1939 Sep 1, US Sen. William Borah of Idaho said 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." In 2008 Pres. Bush quoted these words in a speech to the Israeli Knesset.
(AP, 5/17/08)
1939 Sep 1, A transport train carrying 250 children from Czechoslovakia disappeared as Germany invaded Poland. It was the last transport organized by English stockbroker Nicholas Winton (1909-2015).
(Econ, 7/11/15, p.82)
1939 Sep 3, British envoy Sir Neville Henderson delivered Britain’s final ultimatum to the Reich’s Foreign Ministry.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1939 Sep 3, The British passenger ship Athenia was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30 Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1939 Sep 4, German troops stormed into Danzig (Gdansk).
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 4, The Nazis marched into Czestochowa, Poland, two days after they invaded Poland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1939 Sep 4, The Polish ghetto of Mir was exterminated.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 5, In Czestochowa, Poland, approximately 150 Jews were shot dead by the Germans. The day was remembered as “Bloody Monday."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1939 Sep 6, The 1st WW II German air attack on Great Britain took place.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1939 Sep 6, The Union of South Africa declared war on Germany.
(AP, 9/6/07)
1939 Sep 8, Gen. Von Reichenau's panzer division reached the suburbs of Warsaw.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1939 Sep 9, Nazi army reached Warsaw.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1939 Sep 10, Canada declared war on Nazi Germany.
(AP, 9/10/97)
1939 Sep 14, British fleet sank the German U-39 U-boat.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 17, The German U-29 sank the British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 died.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 19, Lord Haw-Haw became the radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 19, Wehrmacht (German regular army) murdered 100 Jews in Lukov, Poland.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 20, After sinking trawlers off the northern Hebrides, German U-27 was located and sunk by destroyers "Fortune" and "Forester."
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 21, Reinhard Heydrich met in Berlin to discuss final solution of Jews.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1939 Sep 25, German Luftwaffe struck Warsaw with fire bombs.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1939 Sep 25, Andorra and Germany finally signed an official treaty ending WW I. The 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty failed to include Andorra.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1939 Sep 27, Germany occupied Warsaw. Poland surrendered after 19 days of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland had endured a brutal 3 day bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe.
(AP, 9/27/97)(HN, 9/27/98)
1939 Sep 28, The Boundary and Friendship Treaty between the USSR and Germany was supplemented by secret protocols to amend the secret protocols of Aug 23. Among other things Lithuania was reassigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland’s partition line was moved eastwards from the Vistula line to the line of the Bug. Germany kept a small part of south-west Lithuania, the Uznemune region. A separate Soviet mutual defense pact was signed with Estonia that allowed 25,000 Soviet troops to be stationed there.
(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.3)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 9/28/97)
1939 Sep 29, Germany and the Soviet Union reached an agreement on the division of Poland. [see Sep 28]
(HN, 9/29/98)
1939 Sep 30, The French Army was called back into France from its invasion of Germany. The attack, code named Operation Saar, only penetrated five miles.
(HN, 9/30/99)
1939 Sep 30, Germany and Russia agreed to partition Poland. [see Sep 28,29]
(MC, 9/30/01)
1939 Sep, 41 U-boats were sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1939 Oct 6, In an address to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler denied having any intention of war against France and Britain.
(AP, 10/6/97)
1939 Oct 6, Hitler announced plans to resolve "The Jewish problem."
(MC, 10/6/01)
1939 Oct 8, Germany annexed Western Poland.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1939 Oct 14, The German U-47, commanded by Kapitan Gunther Prien, sank the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, Scotland, and 833 people were killed. This prompted Churchill to order the creation of concrete barriers at the eastern entrance of Scapa Flow.
(SFEM, 10/10/99, p.49)(http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hoy/scapa/)
1939 Oct 19, Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering began plundering art treasures throughout Nazi occupied areas.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1939 Oct 24, Nazis required Jews to wear star of David.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1939 Oct 28, Anti-German demonstrations and strikes took place in Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1939 Oct 28, A Spitfire shot down a German Heinkel-111 over Scotland.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1939 Oct 30, German U boat failed in an attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill, Dudley Pound and Charles Forbes aboard.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Oct 30, USSR and Germany agreed on partitioning Poland. Hitler deported Jews.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Oct 31, 27 U boats were sunk this month (135,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1939 Nov 1, 1st jet plane, a Heinkel He 178, was demonstrated to German Air Ministry.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1939 Nov 8, There was a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in Burgerbraukeller, Munich.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1939 Nov 9, In the Venlo-incident, German Abwehr killed 2 English agents.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1939 Nov 15, Nazis began their mass murder of Warsaw Jews.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1939 Nov 16, German U-boat torpedoed the tanker Sliedrecht near Ireland.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1939 Nov 17, German U-boat torpedoed a passenger ship.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1939 Nov 24, In Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo executed 120 students who were accused of anti-Nazi plotting.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1939 Nov 25, Nazis reported four British ships sunk in the North Sea, but London denied the report.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1939 Dec 1, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of Polish Jews.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1939 Dec 13, In the Battle at La Plata 3 British cruisers fought the German "pocket battleship," Graf Spee, which took refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. The following day, the badly damaged ship left port, deliberately ran aground in the bay, where the officers led the crew in scuttling and exploding the Graf Spee. Two days later, the commander of the German warship committed suicide in his Buenos Aires hotel room. Today, at low tide, water commuters between Buenos Aires and Montevideo can see part of the superstructure breaking the surface. [see Dec 13]
(MC, 12/13/01)
1939 Dec 17, In the Battle of River Plate near Montevideo, Uruguay, the British trapped the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. German Captain Langsdorf sank his ship believing that resistance was hopeless. [see Dec 17]
(AP, 12/17/97)(HN, 12/17/98)
1939 Dec 19, The British destroyer HMS Hyperion sighted the German liner Columbus about 400 miles off the coast of Virginia. The still neutral American heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa was also in the area, and silently observed the two ships. Rather than surrender the ship, her crew scuttled her, and she burned and sank. Her passengers and crew, 567 men and nine women, were taken aboard Tuscaloosa as rescued seamen, not as prisoners of war as they would have been had the British picked them up. Tuscaloosa took all personnel to New York City. A year later 512 members of the crew were settled on Angel Island in SF Bay. After the end of war many returned to Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Columbus_%281924%29) (SSFC, 1/18/15, DB p.46)
1939 Dec 20, Hans Langsdorff, German captain of the Graf Spee, committed suicide.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1939 Dec 21, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich named Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B," the group in charge of transport of Jews for Final Solution.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1939 Dec 22, 99 died in 2nd train wreck at Friedrichshafen, Germany.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1939 Dec 22, 125 died in train wreck at Magdeburg, Germany.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1939 Berthold Brecht wrote his play "Mother Courage and Her Children." It was set during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between the German Catholics and Swedish Lutherans.
(WSJ, 1/24/97, p.A13)(WSJ, 10/23/01, p.A24)
1939 Christopher Isherwood wrote "Goodbye to Berlin." It included a story about a singer called Sally Bowles that became the basis for the 1951 play "I Am a Camera," the 1955 film "I Am a Camera," the 1966 musical play "Caberet" and the 1972 musical film "Cabaret." His Berlin books also included "The Last of Mr. Norris," and "I Am a Camera." In 1998 Norman Page published "Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years."
(WSJ, 3/23/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 9/27/98, BR p.8)
1939 Gen. Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord implored Hitler to visit the French front where he planned to kill Hitler and form a new government, but Hitler refused the offer.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A19)
1939 By this time Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, an organization dedicated to studying the Aryan roots for purposes of propaganda, included 137 scholars and scientists plus 82 members of support staff. In 2006 Heather Pringle authored “The Master Plan," an account of the Ahnenerbe.
(WSJ, 2/9/06, p.D8)
1939 Two Germany scholars unearthed a cache of mammoth ivory fragments in a cave. The pieces were fitted together after 3 decades and were found to form a 30 cm. high figure with human legs, an arm and the head of a lion. The Der Lowenmensch figure had been carved some 40 thousand years earlier.
(Econ, 2/2/13, p.71)
1939-1945 In 2015 Nicholas Stargardt authored “The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945."
(Econ, 9/26/15, p.86)
1939-1945 Heinrich Mohn and his associates used the war to transform Bertelsmann from a German provincial publisher of religious texts into the largest supplier of war literature to Hitler’s army.
(WSJ, 12/23/02, p.A6)
1939-1945 During WW II some 5-15,000 homosexual men were sent to prison camps and marked for special treatment with a pink triangle on their uniforms. The majority died in the camps.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A18)
1939-1945 During WW II the Germans and Ukrainians used Transdniestria as a killing field to purge Europe of some 150,000 Jews.
(SSFC, 2/12/06, p.E2)
1939-1945 Ball bearing, aircraft and oil production factories share top billing on the Allied bombing planners’ hit list. Ball bearings were vital to keep the German military machinery running, and Schweinfurt factories produced more than 40 percent of the country’s needs. The German aviation industry alone consumed an average of 2.4 million bearings per month.
(HNQ, 8/14/01)
1940 Jan 10, German planes attacked 12 ships off the British coast; three sank and 35 were dead.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1940 Jan 16, Hitler canceled an attack in the West due to bad weather and the capture of German attack plans in Belgium.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1940 Jan 25, Nazis established a Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1940 Jan 26, Nazis forbade Polish Jews to travel on trains.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1940 Feb 12, The USSR signed a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1940 Feb 15, Hitler ordered that all British merchant ships would be considered warships.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1940 Feb 20, Christoph Eschenbach, pianist, conductor, was born in Breslau, Germany.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1940 Feb 21, The Germans began construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz. Hans Munch was an SS doctor at the camp and later reported his experiences there in detail for the 1998 TV documentary "People’s Century."
(HN, 2/21/98)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)
1940 Feb 22, German air force sank 2 German destroyers killing 578.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1940 Mar 1, U.S. envoy, Sumner Welles met with Hitler in Berlin.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1940 Mar 3, A Nazi air raid killed 108 on a British liner in the English Channel.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1940 Mar 9, Britain freed captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop's visit to Rome.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1940 Mar 15, Reichsmarshal Herman Goering said 100-200 church bells are enough for Germany and smelted the rest.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1940 Mar 16, Germany launched an air raid on British fleet base at Scapa Flow.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1940 Mar 16, In San Francisco fourteen crewmen of the scuttled German liner Columbus, sailed for the Fatherland aboard the Italian motorship Rialto. A 2nd group soon followed. Both ships were boarded by the British in Gibraltar and the Germans were sent to a French prison camp. 451 others remained quartered on Angel Island.
(SSFC, 3/15/15, p.42)(SFC, 6/11/16, p.C2)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1940 Mar 20, The British RAF conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1940 Mar 27, Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Feb 21]
(MC, 3/27/02)
1940 Apr 8, German battle cruisers sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1940 Apr 9, The Nazi army invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway. German forces landed along the Norwegian coast and made a paratrooper assault on Oslo and Stavanger.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)(AP, 4/9/97)(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1940 Apr 10, The HMS Hunter, a British destroyer, went down with 110 men in the fist Battle of Narvik as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces from overrunning a strategic Norwegian port. Germany lost 4 destroyers in the battle. In 2008 a Norwegian minehunter found the wreck
(AP, 3/9/08)
1940 Apr 13, In the 2nd battle of Narvik, 8 German destroyers were destroyed.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1940 Apr 28, Rudolf Hoess became commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1940 Apr, The Germans sealed the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, with barbed wire. Lodz at this time had some 231,000 Jews, about one-third of the city’s population. Some 45,000 Jews from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were forced into the ghetto as well as some 5,000 Gypsies. Many died under forced labor and horrific conditions. Those remaining were killed in August, 1944.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A17)
1940 May 1, 140 Palestinian Jews died as German planes bombed their ship.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1940 May 8, German commandos in Dutch uniforms crossed the Dutch border to hold bridges for the advancing German army.
(HN, 5/8/99)
1940 May 10, German forces began a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line. Belgium was invaded by Germany and maintained resistance for 18 days.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(HN, 5/10/02)
1940 May 12, The Nazi blitz conquest of France began with the crossing at the Muese River.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1940 May 14, The Netherlands (Holland) surrendered to Nazi Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam that left 600-900 dead.
(HN, 5/14/98)(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 14, German breakthrough at Sedan, France.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 15, German troops occupied Amsterdam. Gen Winkelman surrendered.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 15, German armor division moved into Northern France.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 16, Jacques Goudstikker, Dutch art dealer, fell on a staircase of the SS Bodegraven as the ship was refused entry at Dover. He died from a broken neck. His inventory in Amsterdam totaled some 1,400 works, which Reichsmarschall Herman Goring, Hitler’s 2nd in command, soon snapped up.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.D7)
1940 May 17, The Nazis occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War II.
(AP, 5/17/97)
1940 May 18, German forces under Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler (1881-1968) occupied Antwerp, Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk. British and French forces staged a counterattack near Arras, but failed to clear a path to Le Havre.
(HN, 5/21/98)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 21, British tank forces attacked General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.
(HN, 5/21/99)
1940 May 24, Hitler ordered a halt to his forces converging on Dunkirk and the British, who were backed to the sea. This event and the next 4 days were described in the 1999 book: "Five Days in London, May 1940" by John Lukacs.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A48)
1940 May 24, Hitler affirmed Gen. von Rundstedt's "Stopbevel."
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 24, German tanks reached Atrecht, France.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 25, German troops conquered Boulogne and captured Calais.
(SC, 5/25/02)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 26, Operation Dynamo was launched for the evacuation of British, French and Belgian soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France. The German Luftwaffe launched a bombing campaign on the harbor of Dunkirk. The new British Spitfire fighters helped provide air cover. The operation continued to June 4.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)(AP, 5/26/97)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 28, During World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/98)
1940 May 28, During the evacuation at Dunkirk a Germany torpedo boat sank the HMS Wakeful sending over 700 men to their deaths. A Germany submarine hit the destroyer HMS Grafton killing 35 army officers. Other British destroyers mistook the British drifter Comfort for an enemy torpedo boat and killed all but 5 men aboard. The Queen of the Channel was hit by Germany bombs. Most of the 950 soldiers on board were transferred to a rescue ship before the ferry went down.
(ON, 8/12, p.3)
1940 May 29, Germans captured Ostend and Ypres in Belgium and Lille in France.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1940 May 29, The German air force launched massive attacks on the harbor at Dunkirk. A British destroyer and 6 of the biggest merchant ships in the harbor were sunk.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 May-1944 Dec, In Austria approximately 30,000 physically and mentally disabled were killed at Hartheim Castle by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, named after the infamous Berlin address "Tiergartenstrasse 4." The castle was regularly visited by the psychiatrists Karl Brandt, Professor of Psychiatry at Würzburg University, and Werner Heyde.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Hartheim)
1940 Jun 1, German air attacks at Dunkirk sank 31 vessels and damaged 11. The HMS Worcester limped back to Dover with 340 dead and 400 wounded. By midnight 64,429 men were landed safely in England.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 Jun 3, The German Luftwaffe hit Paris with 1,100 bombs.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1940 Jun 4, German forces entered Paris.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1940 Jun 4, The Allied military evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. Operation Dynamo counted 235 vessels lost as well as 177 aircraft in combat at Dunkirk and the English Channel. French defenders surrendered. Some 30-40,000 French troops became prisoners of war.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 Jun 5, The Battle of France began during World War II. Germany attacked French forces along the Somme line.
(HN, 6/5/99)(AP, 6/5/07)
1940 Jun 9, Norway surrendered to the Nazis during World War II, effective at midnight.
(AP, 6/9/07)
1940 Jun 11, The German invasion of France was under way and the British had been forced to abandon their defense of northwestern France and Belgium at Dunkirk.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)
1940 June 14. The Nazis opened their concentration camp at Auschwitz. In German-occupied Poland the first inmates arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were all Polish political prisoners.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 6/14/97)(AP, 6/14/98)
1940 Jun 15, The French fortress of Verdun was captured by Germans.
(HN, 6/15/98)
1940 Jun 17, France asked Germany for terms of surrender in World War II. Marshal Henri Petain replaced Paul Reynaud, who chose to resign over surrender, as prime minister and announced his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. In 2000 Ernest R. May authored "Strange Victory," an account of the French defeat.
(AP, 6/17/97)(WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)(MC, 6/17/02)
1940 Jun 19, German 7th Armour division under gen-maj Rommel occupied Cherbourg.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1940 Jun 21, German occupiers disbanded the Dutch States-General, Council of State.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1940 Jun 22, During World War II, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris. France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis. Alsace again became part of Germany.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/22/98)(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T4)
1940 Jun 25, Adolf Hitler viewed the Eiffel tower and tomb of Napoleon in Paris.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1940 Jun, Hitler confided to Mussolini his plan to ship Jews to Madagascar.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1940 Jun, The Germans began to loot the artwork of Paris and more than 70,000 residences were plundered. A lot of artwork was sold to the Emil Buhrle Foundation in Switzerland, the largest buyer of confiscated French art. The story is told by Hector Feliciano in his 1997 book: "The Lost Museum." The best book on the fate of European art in WW II was reported to be "The Rape of Europa" by Lynn Nicholas.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.7)
1940 Jul 9, German Evangelist Church protested against euthanasia programs.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1940 Jul 10, During World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By October 31, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses. Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937), the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book "The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(AP, 7/10/97)(ON, 3/07, p.2)(ExH, 3/23/98)
1940 Jul 10-1940 Oct 31, The Battle of Britain in July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly decisive campaign (not just a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe gathered over 2,500 combat planes for a bombing campaign that would be a prelude to "Operation Sea Lion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air Marshall Hugh C. Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could muster about 650 decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The Luftwaffe came perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at about that time, a German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London, Churchill bombed Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack from the R.A.F. to London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The Luftwaffe’s bombers carried too small a bomb load for a strategic bombing campaign and were inadequately armed to defend themselves against R.A.F. fighters. The Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the range to provide sufficient escort for the bombers, which were massacred by Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Germans knew that the British radar installations existed, and did launch some attacks upon them, but never realized how vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F. fighters to intercept raiding aircraft. In 1969 the film “Battle of Britain" starred Laurence Olivier as Hugh C. Dowding. In 2010 James Holland authored “The Battle of Britain: Five Months That Changed History."
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.93)
1940 Jul 14, A force of German Ju-88 bombers attacked Suez, Egypt, from bases in Crete.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1940 Jul 19, Hitler ordered Great Britain to surrender.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1940 Jul 23, German bombers began the "Blitz," the all-night air raids on London.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1940 Jul 31, Reich's Kommissar Seyss-Inquart banned homosexuals.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 11, 38 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1940 Aug 12, Luftwaffe bombed British radar stations and lost 31 aircraft.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1940 Aug 13, Der Adler Tag (Eagle Day) was the name given to the day the German Luftwaffe launched an all-out offensive against the Royal Air Force and the British aircraft industry in southern England. With this action, Adolf Hitler hoped to knock out any aerial resistance to his planned invasion of the British Isles. RAF fighter pilots successfully held off the numerically superior Luftwaffe, in spite of the loss of 415 pilots out of a force of 1,500.
(HNPD, 8/13/98)
1940 Aug 15, In the largest–scale raids in the history of aerial warfare, hundreds of Germany planes struck against London and its suburbs. Hitler’s planned Operation Sea Lion was to have commenced on this day. However it was cancelled on Aug 17 following heavy German air raid losses. In 2008 Michael Korda authored “With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain."
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Aug 16, 45 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1940 Aug 18, 71 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1940 Aug 23, German Luftwaffe began night bombing on London.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed London.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1940 Aug 25, The 1st (British) night bombing of Germany was over Berlin.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1940 Sep 3, In Germany the SS banned Free Masons, Rotary & Red Cross.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 7, Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights. Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler believed would soften Britain for an invasion. The invasion, "Operation Sea Lion," never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over England. The blitz only strengthened Britain's resistance. The defense of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called "their finest hour."
(AP, 9/7/97)(HN, 9/7/98)
1940 Sep 9, 28 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1940 Sep 13, Buckingham Palace was hit by German bombs causing superficial damage.
(http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september13.html)
1940 Sep 15, The tide turned in Battle of Britain in WW II. A reported 185 German planes were shot down by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to abandon his invasion plans.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)
1940 Sep 17, Nazis deprived Jews of possessions.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1940 Sep 19, A Nazi decree forbade gentile woman to work in Jewish homes.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1940 Sep 24, Luftwaffe bombed the Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 25]
(MC, 9/24/01)
1940 Sep 25, German High Commissioner in Norway set up the Vidikun Quisling government.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 25, Luftwaffe bombed the Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 24]
(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 27, 55 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 27, Nazi-Germany, Italy and Japan signed a formal alliance called Tripartite Pact, a 10 year military and economic alliance strengthening the Axis alliance.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep, 59 U-boats were sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 8, German troops occupied Romania.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1940 Oct 15-16, London's Waterloo Station was bombed by Germans. The bombing continued on London for 2 days and killed 400 people.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1940 Oct 16, The Warsaw Ghetto was formed by Nazi SS troops.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1940 Oct 20, German troops reached the approaches to Moscow.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1940 Oct 24, Hitler met Marshal Petain.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 24, Protestant churches [in Germany?] protested against the dismissal of Jewish civil servants.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 25, German troops captured Kharkov and launched a new drive toward Moscow.
(HN, 10/25/98)
1940 Oct 25, Hitler visited Mussolini in Florence.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 28, A meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place in Florence.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Oct 31, 63 U boats were sunk this month (325,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Oct 31, In the Battle of Britain, the German and British duel for control of English Channel, ended.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Nov 14, During World War II, German planes destroyed most of the English town of Coventry.
(AP, 11/14/97)
1940 Nov 19, A German air raid on Birmingham failed.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1940 Nov, The Nazi Bielfield memorandum argued for the seizure of Belgian and French Congo, Equatorial French Africa and a large portion of French West Africa; naval bases were earmarked for Dakar, Conakry and the Canary Islands, while Madagascar was reserved as a ‘dumping-ground’ for Jews. This vast area was to be exploited for its natural resources, upon which Germany’s European empire would be built.
(www.hodder.co.uk/lounge/blogpost.aspx?BlogPostID=68)
1940 Dec 6, The Gestapo arrested Helen Ernst, German resistance fighter and poster artist.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1940 Dec 13, Hitler issued preparations for Operation Martita, the German invasion of Greece.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1940 Dec 18, Hitler dictated Directive No. 21 to crush Russia in a quick campaign. Adolf Hitler signed a secret directive ordering preparations for a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation "Barbarossa" was launched in June 1941.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(AP, 12/18/97)
1940 Dec 29, During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1940 Richard Strauss composed the opera "Die Liebe der Danae." The libretto by Joseph Gregor was based on a scenario by Hugo von Hoffmanstahl and conflated two stories, the love affair of Jupiter and Danae and the story of King Midas.
(WSJ, 1/31/00, p.A42)
1940 Gen’l. Eduard Dietl led a surprise capture of Narvik, the Norwegian Atlantic ice-free port.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A12,14)
1940 After the Nazi invasion most of Denmark’s police were killed.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1940 From Greece the occupying Germans started transporting the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki to Auschwitz.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1940 In Poland "the Nazis packed 450,000 human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then walled it off and left them to starve."
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1940-1941 A secret Nazi program, code-named T4, killed an estimated 70,000 disabled or mentally ill adults in specially established death camps during this period.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A9)
1940-1941 German paratroopers were decimated in the battle for Crete.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1940-1944 Germany occupied France. In 1998 Ian Ousby published "Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944." In 2009 Frederic Spotts authored “The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation." In 2009 Charles glass authored “American in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944." In 2010 Alan Riding authored “And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied France."
(SFEC, 8/16/98, Par p.8)(WSJ, 1/3/09, p.W6)(Econ, 5/2/09, p.84)(Econ, 11/20/10, p.96)
1940-1945 In 2006 the 2002 German book “The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945" by Jorg Friedrich (b.1944), was made available in English.
(Econ, 12/2/06, p.85)
1940-1945 Turkey supplied Germany and the Allies with chromite ore, an essential metal for stainless steel.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A13)
1941 Jan 10, The Soviets and the Germans agreed on the East European borders and the exchange of industrial equipment.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1941 Jan 11, Adolf Hitler ordered forces to be prepared to enter North Africa to assist the Italian effort, marking the establishment of the Afrika Korps.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1941 Jan 11, Emanuel Lasker (b.1868), German mathematician and chess player, died. In 1927 he authored “Lasker’s Manual of Chess."
(WSJ, 3/22/08, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Lasker)
1941 Jan 20, Hitler met with Mussolini and offered aid in Albania and Greece.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1941 Feb 10, Iceland was attacked by German planes.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1941 Feb 11, Lt-Gen Erwin Rommel arrived in Tripoli.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1941 Feb 14, German Afrika Korps landed in Tripoli, Libya.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1941 Feb 17, The SS Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The British ship was carrying some 219 tons of silver when it sank in the North Atlantic some 300 miles (490 km) off the Irish coast. Of the 85 people on board, only one survived. In 2011 Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration confirmed the identity and location of the ship. In 2012 Odyssey Marine Exploration said it had succeeded in removing about 43% of the insured silver.
(AFP, 9/27/11)(www.shipwreck.net/ssgairsoppahistoricaloverview.php)(SFC, 7/18/12, p.A2)
1941 Feb 19, Nazi police were attacked and driven away from Koco, Amsterdam by young Jews. Nazis raided Amsterdam and rounded up 429 young Jews for deportation.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1941 Feb 20, The 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps left Plotsk, Poland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 20, Nazis ordered Polish Jews barred from using public transportation.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 22, IG Farben started building Buna-Werke in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1941 Feb 27, Jewish musicians came together in Berlin and performed Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony. In 2001 Martin Goldsmith authored "The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany."
(SSFC, 4/8/01, BR p.5)
1941 Mar 1, Bulgaria joined the Axis as the Nazis occupy Sofia.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(HN, 3/1/98)
1941 Mar 1, Himmler inspected the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1941 Mar 3, Netherlands NSB-leader Mussert visited Göring in Berlin.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1941 Mar 4, Serbian Prince Paul visited Hitler.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1941 Mar 7, Gunther Prien, German U-boat commander and war hero (U-47), died in battle.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1941 Mar 13, Hitler issued an edict calling for an invasion of the USSR
(HN, 3/13/98)
1941 Mar 20, Nazi German-Yugoslav pact was drawn.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1941 Mar 24, German troops occupied El Agheila, Libya.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1941 Mar 27, Hitler signed Directive 27 for an assault on Yugoslavia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1941 Mar 30, The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1941 Mar 30, The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel began its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
(HN, 3/30/99)
1941 Mar 31, Germany began a counter offensive in North Africa.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1941 Apr 1, Nazi's forbade Jews access to cafes in Paris.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1941 Apr 3, Churchill warned Stalin of German invasion.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1941 Apr 5, German commandos secured docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany's invasion of the Balkans.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1941 Apr 6, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop gave orders for the attack on Yugoslavia to roll forward. Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb Belgrade prior to the final drive into the capital. From August 6 to 10, more than 500 bombing sorties were flown against Belgrade, inflicting more than 17,500 fatalities. Most of the government officials fled, and the Yugoslav army began to collapse. German Luftwaffe Marshall Alexander Lohr commanded a surprise air attack on Belgrade and 17,000 died. Lohr was later tried and executed for the bombings.
(www.thehistorynet.com/wwii/blbelgradebybluff/)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A21)
1941 Apr 6, German troops invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia. Germany, with support of Italy and other allies defeated Greece and Yugoslavia.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(www, Albania, 1998)
1941 Apr 9, In Czestochowa, Poland, a ghetto for Jews was created. By the end of WW II some 45,000 of Czestochowa's Jews were murdered by the Germans, almost the entire Jewish community living there.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1941 Apr 11, Germany bombers blitzed Coventry, England.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1941 Apr 11, The Jewish Weekly newspaper was taken control by Nazis.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1941 Apr 12, Alain Le Ray (1910-2006), a leader in the French Resistance, become the first to escape from the infamous Colditz prison in Germany. Le Ray had been captured in June 1940. The Nazis had touted the jail as escape proof, and his exploits were recounted in the 1976 book "Premiere a Colditz" ("First in Colditz").
(AP, 6/8/07)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/naziprison/cold_01.html)
1941 Apr 12, Vichy-France's head of government Admiral Dalan consulted with Hitler.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1941 Apr 13, There was a heavy German assault on Tobruk.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1941 Apr 14, The 1st massive German raid in Paris rounded up 3,600 Jews.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1941 Apr 17, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany ending 11 days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(AP, 4/17/97)(MC, 4/17/02)
1941 Apr 19, B. Brecht's 1939 play "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children)," premiered in Zurich.
(www.theatre.ubc.ca/mother_courage/subject.shtml)
1941 Apr 20, 100 German bombers attacked Athens.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1941 Apr 21, Greece surrendered to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1941 Apr 27, The Greek army capitulated to the Germans. Greece and the Greek islands were secured by Hitler.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(HN, 4/27/98)
1941 May 1, A German assault took place on Tobruk.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1941 May 2, Martin Bormann succeeded Rudolf Hess as Hitler's deputy.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1941 May 3, There was a German air raid on Liverpool.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1941 May 3, Pierre Seel (17) was arrested in Alsace-Lorraine by the German Gestapo and tortured for 10 days for his homosexuality. In 1994 he authored the memoir “I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual."
(SFC, 12/2/05, p.B5)
1941 May 9, The German submarine U-110 was captured at sea by the Royal Navy, revealing considerable Enigma material. Enigma was the German machine used to encrypt messages during World War II.
(HN, 5/9/99)(HNQ, 8/30/00)
1941 May 10, Rudolf Hess (d.93), a deputy of Adolf Hitler, parachuted into Scotland to see the Duke of Hamilton on what he claimed was a peace mission. Hess ended up serving a life sentence at Spandau prison until 1987, when he apparently committed suicide.
(AP, 5/10/97)(ON, 4/02, p.7)
1941 May 11, The 1st Messerschmidt 109F was shot down above England.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1941 May 13, Martin Bormann was named head of Nazi Party Chancellery in Germany.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1941 May 15, All preparations for the German attack against Russia in Operation Barbarossa were to be finalized.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1941 May 15, Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbade Jewish music.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1941 May 16, The last great German air attack on Great Britain was at Birmingham.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1941 May 19, German occupiers in Holland forbade bicycle taxis.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1941 May 19, The new 823.5-foot Nazi battleship Bismarck left Gdynia, Poland, under the command of Commander Gunther Lutjens.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck)(ON, 10/09, p.1)
1941 May 20, Germany invaded Crete by air.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1941 May 24, The German battleship Bismarck sank the British dreadnought HMS Hood in the North Atlantic. 1416 died with only three survivors.
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/99)(ON, 10/09, p.2)
1941 May 26, Ark Royal airplane sighted the German battleship Bismarck.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1941 May 26, German occupiers began youth labor.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1941 May 27, The German battleship Bismarck was sunk off France by British naval and air forces with a loss of more than 2,100 lives. British ships rescued 4 officers and 106 of the crew. A German fishing vessel was reported to have rescued another 100 men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck)(AP, 5/27/07)(ON, 10/09, p.5)
1941 Jun 1, Germany banned all Catholic publications.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1941 Jun 1, The German Army completed the capture of Crete as the Allied evacuation ended.
(HN, 6/1/99)
1941 Jun 3, German occupiers stamped "J" on Jewish passports.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1941 Jun 4, Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern (b.1859), the last German emperor (1888-1918), died in the Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor)
1941 Jun 18, Turkey signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1941 Jun 22, German troops invaded Russia and thereby violated the 1939 Russo-German non-aggression pact. Under the codename Barbarossa, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the largest invasion of another country in history. In 2005 Constantine Pleshakov authored “Stalin’s Folly," and David E. Murphy authored "What Stalin Knew." Both provide accounts of the invasion and Stalin’s refusal to acknowledge warning signs.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/22/98)(WSJ, 6/22/05, p.D12)
1941 Jun 24, The entire Jewish male population of Gorzhdy, Lithuania, was exterminated.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1941 Jun 24, Germans advanced into Russia and took Vilnius, Brest-Litovsk and Kaunas.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1941 Jun 25, Germans invaded Dubno, Poland, and encouraged the Ukrainians to do whatever they want to 12,000 Jews living there.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1941 Jun 28, German and Romanian soldiers killed 11,000 Jews in Kishinev.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1941 Jun 28, German troops occupied Galicia, Poland.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1941 Jun 29, Nazi divisions in a surprise assault made sweeping advances toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. Joseph Stalin had ignored warnings that Hitler would betray the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. Over 500,000 square miles of Russian territory were taken in the first two months of the invasion.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1941 Jun, In the northeastern city of Iasi, Romania, up to 12,000 people are believed to have died as Romanian and German soldiers swept from house to house to killing Jews. Those who did not die were systematically beaten, put in cattle wagons in stifling heat and taken to a small town, where what happened to them would be concealed. Of the 120 people on the train, just 24 survived. In 2010 a mass grave was found containing the bodies of an estimated 100 Jews killed by Romanian troops in a forest near the town of Popricani, about 350 km northeast of Bucharest. It contained the bodies of men, women and children who were shot in 1941.
(AP, 6/14/03)(AP, 11/5/10)
1941 Jul 5, German troops reached the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1941 Jul 6, German planes attacked the SS Devon off the east coast of England. Reginald Earnshaw (14) died in the attack after serving for several months. In 2010 he was hailed as the youngest known British service casualty in World War II.
(AP, 2/5/10)
1941 Jul 7, Nazis executed 5,000 Jews in Kovno, Lithuania.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1941 Jul 8, Twenty B-17s flew in their first mission with the Royal Air Force over Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
(HN, 7/8/98)
1941 Jul 12, Moscow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe for the first time.
(HN, 7/12/98)
1941 Jul 18, SS troops drowned 40 Jews in Dvina River in Belorussia.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1941 Jul 21, Himmler ordered the building of the Majdanek concentration camp. The camp was built in eastern Poland as a principal site to exterminate Jews. It contained 7 gas chambers.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(MC, 7/21/02)
1941 Jul 24, Nazis massacred the entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1941 Jul 27, The German army entered Ukraine.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1941 Jul, The 16,000 sq. mile area of the Ukraine named Transnistria was granted by Hitler to the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu for Romania’s participation in the war against the soviet Union. Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and were Moldova were transferred here and many thousands were murdered from 1941-1944 by the Romanian Gendarmeric, the Einsatrzgruppe D, Ukrainian police and Sonderkommando R.
(WSJ, 7/30/97, p.A15)
1941 Aug 1, Luftwaffe bombed the German 23rd division.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1941 Aug 2, German 11th Army surrounded 20 Russian divisions at Uman.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1941 Aug 5, The German army completed taking 410,000 Russian prisoners in Uman and Smolensk pockets in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1941 Aug 11, Soviet bombers raided Berlin but caused little damage.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1941 Aug 12, French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain announced full French collaboration with Nazi Germany.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1941 Aug 13, A prototype of the GEE or AMES Type 7000 British radio navigation system was lost on a raid over Hanover, Germany. GEE was devised by Robert Dippy and developed at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage. Dippy later went to the United States where he worked on the development of the LORAN system. Loran, long-range navigation, later fell out of favor with the development of satellite-based navigation systems.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEE_%28navigation%29)(Econ, 3/12/11, TQ p.21)
1941 Aug 14, Josef Jakobs, German spy, was executed in Tower of London.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1941 Aug 19, The final German assault on Tallinn began.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_evacuation_of_Tallinn)
1941 Aug 20, Adolf Hitler authorized the development of the V-2 missile.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1941 Aug 21-Sep 26, The Soviet Union's greatest defeat in WWII occurred during the encirclement of the Ukrainian city of Kiev. The Germans took some 665,000 Soviet prisoners.
(HNQ, 8/12/98)
1941 Aug 22, Nazi troops reached Leningrad.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1941 Aug 25, German troops conquered Novgorod, Leningrad.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1941 Aug 27, The Soviet armada began to move out of Tallinn. By the next day 5 ships were sunk by German bombers and Soviet ships began to encounter minefields set by the Kriegsmarine and Finnish Navy. The Soviets succeeded in evacuating 165 ships, 28,000 passengers and 66,000 tons of equipment from Tallinn.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_evacuation_of_Tallinn)
1941 Aug 28, The German U-boat U-570 was captured by the British and renamed Graph.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1941 Aug 29, The German Einsatzkommando in Russia killed 1,469 Jewish children.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1941 Aug 30, The World War II siege of Leningrad began as Nazi forces took Mga.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1941 Aug, In Germany public protests curtailed the Nazi euthanasia program that had already gassed some 70,000 mentally handicapped German adults and children.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1941 Aug, 23 German U-boats were sunk this month (80,000 ton).
(MC, 8/31/01)
1941 Sep 1, Jews living in Germany were required to wear a yellow Star of David. [see Oct 24, 1939]
(MC, 9/1/02)
1941 Sep 3, Nazis made the 1st use of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz on Russian prisoners of war.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1941 Sep 4, German submarine U-652 fired at the U.S. destroyer Greer off Iceland, beginning an undeclared shooting war.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1941 Sep 6, Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.
(AP, 9/6/97)(HN, 9/6/98)
1941 Sep 8, The 900-day Siege of Leningrad by German forces began during World War II. The Siege of Leningrad, 400 miles northwest of Moscow, took place with Germany spread along a 2,000 mile front. It led to the death of at least one million Russians from starvation and disease. Leningrad was renamed back to St. Petersburg in 1991. In 2011 Anna Reid authored “Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II."
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(AP, 9/8/06)(Econ, 8/27/11, p.73)
1941 Sep 12, The US ship Busko captured the 1st German ship in WW II.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1941 Sep 15, Nazis killed 800 Jewish women at Shkudvil, Lithuania.
(MC, 9/15/01)
1941 Sep 19, German army conquered Kiev.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1941 Sep 19, The Nazi's forced all German Jews from the age of 6 to wear the Star of David.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1941 Sep 21, The German Army cut off the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1941 Sep 23, Germans staged an air raid on the Russian naval base at Kronstadt. The battleship Marat sank.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1941 Sep 24, There was a bomb explosion in German headquarters in Hotel Continental in Kiev.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1941 Sep 26, In Ukraine some 33,761 Jews of Kiev were killed over 3 days before Yom Kippur in the ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Over the next 2 years some 100-200 thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC, 6/26/01, p.A8)(MC, 9/26/01)
1941 Sep 29, In Ukraine some 33,711 Jews of Kiev were killed over 2 days before Yom Kippur in the ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Henrich Himmler had sent four strike squads to exterminate Soviet Jewish civilians and other "undesirables." Over the next 2 years some 100-200 thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(HN, 9/29/00)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC, 6/26/01, p.A8)(AP, 11/16/07)
1941 Sep 30, In Ukraine 33,771 Jews were killed in a two-day Nazi operation at Babi Yar ravine near Kiev [see Sep 29]. Einsatzgruppe C was responsible for the shooting of nearly 34,000 at Babi Yar.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar)(AP, 9/28/17)
1941 Sep, 53 U-boats sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1941 Oct 2, Operation Typhoon, a German all-out drive against Moscow, began in earnest. In 2006 Rodric Braithwaite authored “Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War."
(AP, 10/2/97)(http://www.bartcop.com/arc4110.htm)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.95)
1941 Oct 2, 6 Paris synagogues were bombed by Gestapo. [see Oct 3]
(MC, 10/2/01)
1941 Oct 3, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia is "broken" and would "never rise again."
(AP, 10/3/97)
1941 Oct 3, Nazi's blew up 6 synagogues in Paris. [see Oct 2]
(MC, 10/3/01)
1941 Oct 3, All elderly Jewish men of Kerenchug Ukraine, were killed by SS.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1941 Oct 6, German troops renewed their offensive against Moscow.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1941 Oct 8, Construction began on the Birkenau extermination camp.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1941 Oct 10, German U-boat torpedoes hit the US destroyer Kearney.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1941 Oct 10, Soviet troops halted the German advance on Moscow.
(HN, 10/10/98)
1941 Oct 12, Russian government moved from Moscow to Volga as Nazis closed in on Moscow.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1941 Oct 13, Nazis killed 11,000 Jewish children and old people.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1941 Oct 15, The 1st mass deportation of German Jews to Eastern Europe.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1941 Oct 16, Germany advanced within 60 miles of Moscow.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1941 Oct 17, The U.S. destroyer Kearney was damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 people were killed.
(AP, 10/17/08)
1941 Oct 20, Nazi occupiers murdered 500 inhabitants of Kragujevac, Serbia.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1941 Oct 21, The 19-day Battle of Bryansk ended. The city was subjected to heavy artillery and air bombardment and large parts of it was destroyed. After some fierce fighting the Soviet Third Army at Vyazma surrendered to German forces on Oct 14 and the Thirty-Second at Bryansk surrendered on Oct 20.
(www.warhistory.ie/world-war-2/battle-of-vyazma-bryansk.htm)
1941 Oct 24, Adolph Hitler met with Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Reinhard Heydrich, the man in charge of the forthcoming genocide program, and pronounced: "It’s not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews."
(WSJ, 4/12/00, p.A26)
1941 Oct 25, Germany attacked Moscow.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1941 Oct 31, The US Navy destroyer "Reuben James" was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland, killing 115, even though the United States had not yet entered World War II.
(www.archives.gov/exhibits/a_people_at_war/prelude_to_war/uss_reuben_james.html)
1941 Oct 31, 13 U boats were sunk this month (62,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1941 Oct, British, USSR and other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, left the country under disguise with the Italian delegation and relocated to Germany.
(SSFC, 1/8/06, p.D8)
1941 Oct-1941 Nov, Nazi doctor Aribert Heim, dubbed "Dr. Death," worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as camp doctor. Heim fled Germany in 1962.
(AP, 8/24/08)
1941 Nov 2, German troops occupied Rostov.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1941 Nov 6, Einsatz death groups killed some 18 thousand Jews of Rovno, Ukraine. “Einsatzgruppen" were special soldiers who followed the fighting forces and “cleaned up" the area.
(www.members.tripod.com/~ebionite/zikkar.htm#nov)
1941 Nov 7, British air attacks hit Berlin, Mannheim and Ruhrgebied.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1941 Nov 12, Germany's drive to take Moscow halted.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1941 Nov 13, A German U-boat, the U-81 torpedoed Great Britain's premier aircraft carrier, the HMS Ark Royal. The ship sank the next day.
(HN, 11/13/99)
1941 Nov 15, The German final attack on Moscow began. They advanced to within 25 miles of the center of Moscow.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1941 Nov 17, German Luftwaffe general and World War I fighter-ace Ernst Udet committed suicide. The Nazi government told the public that he died in a flying accident.
(HN, 11/17/00)
1941 Nov 19, The ship HMAS Sydney was sunk off the west coast of Australia in a battle with the German raider Kormoran, with the loss of all 645 on board. The Kormoran also sank, but 318 of the German vessel's crew of 397 were rescued. The 9,500 ton Kormoran had been disguised as a Dutch merchant ship when it opened fire on the Sydney. The government banned all media from reporting the news for 12 days as it scrambled to explain what happened. In March, 2008, the wrecks of the Kormoran and the Sydney were found. In 2009 a military inquiry said Navy Capt. Joseph Burnett made "errors of judgment" in the tragedy.
(AFP, 8/10/07)(AP, 3/16/08)(Reuters, 4/8/08)(AP, 11/19/08)(AP, 8/12/09)
1941 Nov 22, British cruiser Devonshire sank the German sub Atlantis.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1941 Nov 23, German troops conquered Klin, NW of Moscow.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1941 Nov 24, "Life Certificates" were issued to some Jews of Vilna. The rest were exterminated.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1941 Nov 24, Indian infantry attacked German tanks at Sidi Omar.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1941 Nov 27, USSR began a counter offensive, causing Germans to retreat.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1941 Nov 28, German troops vacated Rostov.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1941 Nov, Some 4,000 who remained in Gomel, Belarus, were shot by the Nazis. Most of the 40,000 who had lived there had managed to escape before the Nazis arrived.
(AP, 4/12/08)
1941 Nov, Nazis in the Ukraine set up a concentration camp near the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, and killed about 5,000 Jews. Their mass grave was found in 2007.
(AP, 6/5/07)
1941 Nov, In Germany Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, met with Adolf Hitler and reportedly urged Hitler to exterminate Jews.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A2)
1941 Dec 3, Hitler viewed Poltava, Ukraine.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1941 Dec 4, Nazi ordinances placed the Jews of Poland outside protection of courts.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1941 Dec 4, Operation Taifun (Typhoon), which was launched by the German armies on October 2, 1941 as a prelude to taking Moscow, was halted because of freezing temperatures and lack of serviceable aircraft. Temperatures near Moscow fell to 40 degrees below zero the breech-blocks of German rifles froze solid. The engines of their vehicles would not start. The Soviets began a counter-attack with 17 armies and their T-34 tanks that included 25 Siberian divisions and the Nazis were forced to retreat in panic.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(HN, 12/4/98)
1941 Dec 5, Russian offensive in Moscow drove out the Nazi army.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1941 Dec 7, The 8 month German siege of Tobruk ended.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1941 Dec 8, The Nazi Chelmno extermination camp opened in Poland.
(WUD, 1994 p.252)(MC, 12/8/01)
1941 Dec 8, Russians took Krijukovo back from Germany.
(d.com, 12/8/02)
1941 Dec 9, Hitler ordered US ships torpedoed.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 11, The US declared war on Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(TL, 1988, p.112)(AP, 12/11/97)
1941 Dec 12, German occupying army searched house to house in Paris looking for Jews.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1941 Dec 13, U-81 torpedoed the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1941 Dec 14, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered the construction of defensive positions along the European coastline.
(HN, 12/14/99)
1941 Dec 17, German troops led by Rommel began to retreat in North Africa.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1941 Dec 18, German submarine U-434 sank.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1941 Dec 19, Hitler took complete command of German Army.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1941 Sigmar Polke, artist, was born.
(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.A20)
1941 Luise Rinser (d.2002) authored "The Glass Rings." Nazis blocked a 2nd edition and arrested her in 1944 for high treason. In 1946 she published "A Woman’s Prison Journal."
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A20)
1941 Pelham Graham (PG) Wodehouse (1881-1975), English-US writer, made 5 radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany. This kept him out of England for the last 34 years of his life.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.87)
1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Ante Pavelic led a pro-Nazi dictatorship that controlled newly-independent Croatia. Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb, initially embraced the Pavelic government.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1941 The amber room in St. Petersburg was dismantled by German officers and shipped to Konigsburg for safekeeping. The Allied bombing in 1945 was thought to have destroyed the work.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A16)
1941 Nazi documents from this year showed that the Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi-run Serbian police unit, executed 11,164 people, mostly Serbian Jewish men, suspected communists and Gypsies [see 1942]. The unit was allegedly run by Peter Egner, who emigrated to the US in 1960, and received citizenship in 1966. In 2009 Serbian authorities sought his extradition. In 2010 Serbia issued an international warrant for the arrest of Egner (88), who has denied the accusations.
(AP, 4/14/09)(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 11/26/10)
1941-1945 In Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, the German SS ran Jewish ghetto as a holding station for Jews on their way to death camps.
(SFC, 10/24/97, p.A11)
1941-1945 Some 1600-2000 German soldiers were killed in Montenegro in clashes with Yugoslav communist partisans during WWII.
(AP, 8/10/11)
1941-1945 Sweden maintained neutrality during the war but allowed German troops to cross its territory to invade the Soviet Union. It also allowed 250,000 German troops to use the railroad system to travel between occupied Norway and Germany. The Swedish navy provided escort service for German military supply ships and Swedish industry helped make up for German losses in their ball-bearing industry due to Allied bombing raids.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A13)
1942 Jan 5, 55 German tanks reached North-Africa.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1942 Jan 20, Top Nazis met at Grossen-Wannsee, outside Berlin, and there formulated the infamous "Final Solution" to the Jewish question. Chaired by SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the one-day conference was designed to address the Nazi efforts at removing the Jews. The 15 top-ranking men of the German Reich agreed upon a blueprint for the extermination of Europe’s Jews. Their "final solution" called for exterminating Europe's Jews. Until this time, the plan had been to deport all Jews to the island of Madagascar off Africa, but by 1942 this plan was rejected in favor of transporting Jews to the east where the able-bodied would become slave laborers for the Reich. SS chief Heinrich Himmler would be in charge. Those unfit to work would be, the conference minutes noted, "appropriately dealt with." This phrase was left unexplained, but there was no doubt of its sinister meaning. After approving genocide as Nazi policy, the conference attendees adjourned for lunch. The minutes were taken by Adolf Eichmann. In 2004 Christopher R. Browning authored "The Origins of the Final Solution."
(AP, 1/20/98)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)(HNPD, 1/20/99)(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)(AP, 1/20/12)
1942 Jan 21, In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched a drive to push the British eastward.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1942 Jan 29, German and Italian troops took Benghazi in North Africa.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1942 Jan, The high Nazi bureaucracy received word of the decision to exterminate all Jews at the Wannsee Villa Conference.
(WSJ, 12/31/96, p.5)
1942 Feb 11, The German battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen began their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey took them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
(HN, 2/11/99)
1942 Feb 12, 3 German battle cruisers escaped via Channel to Brest, N. Germany.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1942 Feb 13, Hitler's invasion of England was cancelled.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1942 Feb 24, The Voice of America went on the air for the first time with broadcasts in German. The US State Dept. made William Winter (d.1999) its first Voice of America three months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
(AP, 2/24/98)(SFC, 11/9/99, p.A23)(MC, 2/24/02)
1942 Feb 26, German battle cruiser Gneisenau was deactivated by bomb.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 26, Werner Heisenberg informed Nazis about uranium project "Wunderwaffen."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 27, British Commandos raided a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. The warrior spies of the Abwehr, Germany's intelligence agency, were the Brandenburg commandos.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1942 Feb 27, The 1st transport of French Jews left to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1942 Feb 28, The German submarine U-578 torpedoed and sank the US destroyer Jacob Jones off the New Jersey coast. Only 11 of some 102 crew members survived.
(SFC, 1/15/05, p.B8)(http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/2174.html)
1942 Feb, The first transport of Jews arrived at Auschwitz, Poland, and the adjoining Birkenau camp. Dr. Josef Mengele (d.1979), the "angel of death," worked at Auschwitz and fled secretly to Sao Paolo, Brazil, after the war. Rudolf Hoess was the last commander of Auschwitz and kept a diary that was used in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1942 Mar 17, The Nazis began deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1942 Mar 17, Belzec Concentration Camp opened. 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews were transported.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1942 Mar 20-22, There was a major German assault on Malta.
(MC, 3/20/02)(MC, 3/21/02)(MC, 3/22/02)
1942 Mar 25-26, The 1st 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached concentration camp Belzec. The Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
(HN, 3/25/98)(MC, 3/25/02)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, A German offensive took place in North-Africa under Colonel-General Rommel.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 28, British naval forces continued the raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire. British Bomber Command launched an attack on the German city of Lubeck with 234 RAF bombers.
(AP, 3/28/97)(HN, 3/28/98)(MC, 3/28/02)
1942 Mar 28, A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, exploded, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.
(HN, 3/28/00)
1942 Mar 29, German submarine U-585 sank.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1942 Mar 30, SS murdered 200 inmates of Trawniki labor camp.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1942 Apr 14, Destroyer Roper sank German U-85 of US east coast.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1942 Apr 20, Heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1942 Apr 20, The battle for Moscow ended. It officially lasted from September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, but in reality spanned more than those 203 days of unremitting mass murder, and marked the first time that Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics. In 2007 Andrew Nagorski authored “The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II."
(WSJ, 1/11/08, p.W6)
1942 Apr 23, A 4-day allied bombing of Rostock began.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 23, Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 24, Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1942 Apr 26, Luftwaffe bombed Bath.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1942 Apr, A stenographic record of Hitler’s conferences with his generals from this time until Apr, 1945, was published in 2003 as: "Hitler and His Generals." It was edited by Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.D10)
1942 Apr, In Germany the Gestapo closed the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse School, the last Jewish school operating in Berlin. A film was made in 1996 of surviving pupils reuniting at the site.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A16)
1942 May 3, The Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 3, Nazis executed 72 in reprisal in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands. Johan H. Westerveld, lt.-Col, leader Order Service, was among the executed.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 7, A Nazi decree ordered all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 May 8, German summer offensive opened in Crimea.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1942 May 12, A Nazi U-boat sank an American cargo ship at mouth of Mississippi River.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 12, The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of the war and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.
(HN, 5/12/99)
1942 May 17, Dutch SS vowed loyalty to Hitler.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1942 May 26, Tank battle at Bir Hakeim: African corps vs. British army.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1942 May 27, German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
(HN, 5/27/99)
1942 May 27, Nazi overlord and SS general Reinhard Heydrich was killed in Prague by Czech commandos, who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia and ambushed his car. Hitler promptly ordered the deaths of 10,000 residents of Lidice, near Prague. Heydrich died of his wounds a week later. The commandos had been sheltered in Lidice and as a result the entire population was either executed or driven out. This has become a hallmark of Nazi brutality. Heydrich was the man charged with "The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem." Heydrich was responsible for the development of an espionage system outside Germany. As an SS general he was the first administrator of the concentration camps and the program to eliminate Jews from Europe.
(HNQ, 10/20/99)(MC, 5/27/02)
1942 May 28, Jean F. van Royen, German secretary PTT (camp Amersfoort), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1942 May 29, The German Army completed its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union. The Red Army had lost over 250,000 men including many prisoners.
(HN, 5/29/99)
1942 May 30, The Royal Air Force under RAF Commander Arthur Harris launched the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany. 1,047 RAF bombers bombed Cologne.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II)
1942 May 30, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler arrived in Prague.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1942 May 31, Luftwaffe bombed Canterbury.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1942 Jun 9, German-Neth press reported that 3 million Dutch were sent to East-Europe.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1942 Jun 10, German Gestapo massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the killing of SS Gen Reinhard Heydrich. All together, 340 people died in the Nazi reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at 1,300. This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.
(AP, 6/10/97)(HN, 6/10/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice)
1942 Jun 13, 1st V-2 rocket launch from Peenemunde, Germany, reached 1.3 km.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1942 Jun 13, Four men landed on a Long Island beach from a German submarine with plans to sabotage NYC’s water system and industrial sites across the Northeastern US. [see Jun 27]
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)
1942 Jun 20, Adolf Eichmann proclaimed the deportation of Dutch Jews.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1942 Jun 21, German General Erwin Rommel captured the port city of Tobruk in North Africa.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1942 Jun 24, The German Africa Corps occupied Egypt.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1942 Jun 25, Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II.
(AP, 6/25/97)
1942 Jun 27, The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from 2 submarines, one off New York’s Long Island and the other off of Florida. The men were tried by a military court and 6 were secretly executed in a DC jail. Ernest Burger and George Dasch were sentenced to 30 years in prison for their help in revealing the plot. They were pardoned in 1948 by Pres. Truman.
(AP, 6/27/97)(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A18)
1942 Jun 28, German troops launched “Operation Blue," an offensive to seize Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus and the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 6/28/98)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1942 Jun 30, Col-gen Von Paulus' 6th Army stormed into the Ukraine.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1942 Jun, By this month 100,000 people of the Nazi imposed Warsaw ghetto had died due to disease or starvation.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Jun, Four men waded ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats. In 2011 declassified British intelligence files described how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the US to undermine the American war effort (See June 13 and June 27).
(AP, 4/4/11)
1942 Jul 1, German troops captured Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1942 Jul 4, 1st American bombing mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II). US air offensive against nazi-Germany began.
(Maggio)
1942 Jul 10, Himmler ordered the sterilization of all Jewish woman in Ravensbruck Camp.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1942 Jul 13, 5,000 Jews of Rovno, Polish Ukraine, were executed by Nazis.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 13, SS shot 1,500 Jews in Josefov, Poland.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 15, A group of 19 merchant ships were being escorted by the US Navy and Coast Guard from Norfolk, Va., to Key West, Fla., to deliver cargo for the war effort. En route Convoy KS-520 was attacked by the German U-576 off of Cape Hatteras near North Carolina. The German submarine damaged two ships and sank Bluefields. In retaliation, a US naval aircraft bombed the U-576. The two ships sank to the ocean floor 30 miles off the cape. All 45 members of U-576 were lost. Wreckage of the two ships was found on Aug 30, 2014.
(www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141021_ww11_vessels.html)
1942 Jul 18, The German Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, made its first flight. Walter Nowotny was a rising your star in the Luftwaffe, chosen by Hitler to be the point man to lead the new jet fighter under the tutelage of General of Fighters Adolf Galland who was assigned to prove the airplane in battle. The Axis hopes were dashed when Nowotny was attacked by American pilots during landing and crashed. Col. Edward R. "Buddy" Haydon was one of those American pilots.
(www.fighter-planes.com/info/me262.htm)(HNQ, 9/2/02)
1942 Jul 19, German U-boats were withdrawn from positions off the U.S. Atlantic coast due to effective American anti-submarine countermeasures.
(HN, 7/19/98)
1942 Jul 22, Nazi’s began their transport of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death at Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Jul 23, A 2nd Treblinka Camp opened for the extermination of European Jews, as the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto began. Nearly 750,000 people died in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Jul 24, The Soviet city of Rostov was captured by German troops.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1942 Jul 26, RAF bombed Hamburg.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Jul 27, The advance of German army was halted in the first battle of El Alamein, Egypt.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Jul 30, The US passenger-freighter Robert E. Lee with 268 passengers was sunk by the German U-166 submarine. 15 crew members and 10 passengers died. In 2001 wreckage of the U-166 was found in the Gulf of Mexico and it appeared that it was sunk by Coast Guard PC-566 right after the attack. U-166 had 52 crew members. [see Aug 1, 1942]
(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 Jul 30, German SS einsatzgruppen death battalions killed 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1942 Jul, Hitler made his fateful decision to split the armies engaged in the offensive and to occupy the city of Stalingrad with the weaker of the 2 groups.
(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1942 Aug 1, Ensign Henry C. White, while flying a J4F Widgeon plane, sank U-166 as it approaches the Mississippi River, the first U-boat sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard. In the summer of 1942, German submarines put saboteurs ashore on American beaches. [see Jul 30, 1942]
(HN, 8/1/98)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 Aug 4, The 1st train with Jews departed Mechelen, Belgium, to Auschwitz.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1942 Aug 6, Goering proclaimed occupied areas "thoroughly empty to plunder."
(MC, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, The Soviet city of Voronezh fell to the German army.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1942 Aug 7, Transport 16 departed with French Jews to Nazi-Germany.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1942 Aug 8, Six convicted Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in Washington, D.C. Two others received life imprisonment.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1942 Aug 8, Gerhart Riegner (d.2001 at 90), World Jewish Congress official in Geneva, cabled the US vice consul to describe Hitler’s plan to deport an estimated 4 million Jews to Eastern Europe and to annihilate them.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A19)
1942 Aug 9, Carmelite nun Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, whose given name was Edith Stein (b.1891), was executed by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage. A Roman Catholic convert from Judaism, Stein was an educator, nun, philosopher and spiritual writer and is generally regarded as a modern saint and martyr. Born in Germany on October 12, 1891, she joined the Carmelites in 1934 and wrote a number of important philosophical and spiritual works, including "Finite and Eternal Being." With Hitler's 1942 order for the arrest of all non-Aryan Catholics, Stein was seized and shipped to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where she died in the gas chamber with her sister Rosa. A woman of singular intelligence and learning, she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II at Cologne on May 1, 1987. She was made a saint in 1998.
(HNQ, 10/6/98)(SFC, 10/12/98, p.A1)
1942 Aug 11, The German submarine U-73 attacked a Malta bound British convoy and sank the HMS Eagle, one of the world's first aircraft carriers.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1942 Aug 11, Slovakian-born Adolf Burger (1917-2016) was arrested after he was caught producing fake baptism certificates for Jews to help them escape transportation to Nazi death camps. In 1944 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, Burger became one of 139 inmates who were put to work forging British pound notes, a top secret plan to destabilize Britain known as "Operation Bernhard." Burger described his experiences in "The Commando of Counterfeiters," a 1983 memoir. The film "The Counterfeiters" went on to win the Oscar for best foreign film in 2008.
(AP, 12/8/16)(AFP, 12/8/16)
1942 Aug 19, About 5,000 Canadian and 2,000 British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France. Over 3,600 men perished in this battle. The information gathered from this landing was considered valuable for planning the successful Allied landings in Northern Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, France. Brit. Col. Pat Porteous (d.2000) received a Victoria Cross for his valor in the attack which was aimed at gaining experience for the later D-Day invasion.
(AP, 8/19/97)(HN, 8/19/98)(SFC, 10/16/00, p.A22)(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 19, Gen. Paulus ordered the German 6th Army to conquer Stalingrad.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 23, German forces began an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. From Aug. to Feb. 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad, 600 miles southeast of Moscow, was fought and ended with the encirclement and destruction of the German 6th Army Group. Stalingrad has since been renamed to Volgograd. In 1998 Antony Beevor published "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege." The German in charge was Gen’l. Friedrich Paulus. 600 Luftwaffe bombers killed some 40,000 people in the first week of fighting.
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)(HN, 8/23/98)(MC, 8/23/02)
1942 Aug 25, German SS began transporting Jews of Maastricht, Neth.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1942 Aug 27, Cuba declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1942 Aug 31, The British army under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeated Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1942 Sep 2, German troops entered Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1942 Sep 5, British & US bombed Le Havre & Bremen.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 7, The Red Army pushed back the German line northwest of Stalingrad. The Krummer Lauf allowed German infantry and motorized artillery units to actually fire around corners.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1942 Sep 10, RAF dropped 100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 17, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Moscow as the German Army rammed into Stalingrad.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1942 Sep 21, Nazis executed 116 hostages in Paris.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1942 Sep 23, At Auschwitz Nazis began experimental gassing executions.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 23, The Russian counter offensive at Stalingrad began.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 27, Heavy German assault in Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1942 Sep 27, Reinhard Heydrich, "Butcher of Prague," was appointed SS-general.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1942 Sep 28, Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1942 Sep 30, The German SS exterminated some 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland, in 6 week period.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, 98 U-boats sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, In Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, some 50,000 Jews were held by the German SS in crowded conditions and half the inmates died that year from disease.
(SFC, 10/24/97, p.A11)
1942 Oct 1, The German Army ground to a complete halt within the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1942 Oct 3, In Germany the rocket-development team of Werner von Braun conducted the 1st successful test flight of an A-4/V-2 missile from the Peenemünde test site. It flew perfectly over a 118-mile course to an altitude of 53 miles (85 km). The 13-ton, 46-foot long V2 rocket was the world’s 1st long-range ballistic missile.
(HN, 10/3/98)(AM, 5/01, p.63)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.A5)
1942 Oct 7, A single salvo Katyusha rocket destroyed a Nazi battalion in Stalingrad.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 18, Hitler orders allied commandos to be killed.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1942 Oct 23, During World War II, Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein in Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1942 Oct 25, Field marshal Erwin Rommel returned to North-Africa.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 29, Nazis murdered some 16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct 31, 94 U boats were sunk this month (619,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct 31, The 9th day in battle at El Alamein (Egypt).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct, By this month some 300,000 occupants of the Warsaw ghetto had been shipped off to the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka, Poland.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Nov 4, The 13th day of battle at El Alamein: Axis Africa corps retreated from El Alamein in North Africa in a major victory for British forces commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
(AP, 11/4/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Nov 5, Nazis raided on Greek Jews in Paris.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1942 Nov 6, Nazis executed 12,000 Minsk ghetto Jews.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1942 Nov 8, Hitler proclaimed the fall of Stalingrad from Munich beer hall.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1942 Nov 9, Transport #44 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1942 Nov 11, Germany completed its occupation of France.
(AP, 11/11/04)
1942 Nov 19, During World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front. Soviet forces took the offensive at Stalingrad
(AP, 11/19/97)(HN, 11/19/98)
1942 Nov 20, Hitler named field marshal Erich von Manstein to command.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 22, Gen-major Rodin's 26th Panzer corps recaptured Ostrov. Hitler ordered Rommel's Africa Korps to fight to last man.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1942 Nov 22, Soviet troops completed the encirclement of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1942 Nov 23, Gen. Von Paulus asked Hitler's permission to surrender at Stalingrad. The German 4th and 6th Army were surrounded at Stalingrad.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1942 Nov 24, Field marshal Erich von Manstein arrived in Starobelsk.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1942 Nov, German troops arrived in Tunisia. The nation was home to some 100,000 Jews at the time. The Germans imposed anti-Semitic policies that included fines, forcing Jews to wear Star of David badges and confiscating property. More than 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died. About 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.
(AP, 1/30/07)
1942 Nov, A Royal Air Force bomber and 2 gliders, carrying 34 British commandos, crash landed in Norway. This was part of Operation Freshman, which planned a raid on the heavy-water plant at Vemork. The survivors were captured by German soldiers and executed by the Gestapo.
(ON, 4/07, p.2)
1942 Dec 5, Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered students in Nazi Germany to work.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1942 Dec 18, Hitler met with Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1942 Dec 28, Ober Kommando Wehrmacht ordered strategic flights out of the Caucasus.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1942 Richard Strauss wrote his final opera "Capriccio" with a libretto by Clemens Krauss. In the work a poet and composer declare their love for a countess who will decide the "words vs. music" debate.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)
1942 In Germany artifacts of the German Baroque were taken from the Green Vault in Dresden to Fortress Konigstein. In 1958 the Soviets returned the lot to Communist Dresden.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.95)
1942 Nazi documents of this year showed that the Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi-run Serbian police unit, killed 6,280 Serbian Jewish women and children who were held as prisoners at Semlin Camp. In two months, those women and children allegedly were taken from a camp and forced into a specially designed van, in which they were gassed with carbon monoxide. The unit was allegedly run by Peter Egner, who emigrated to the US in 1960, and received citizenship in 1966 [see 1941]. In 2010 Serbia issued an international warrant for the arrest of Egner (88), who has denied the accusations.
(AP, 4/14/09)(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 11/26/10)
1942 Alice Sommer Herz (39) of Prague and her son were sent to the Nazi camp at Theresienstadt. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezin, Czechoslovakia. In 2011 a new documentary about Alice Sommer Herz was made public. In 2010 Alice, the world's oldest Holocaust survivor, was about to celebrate her 107th birthday. "Music is God," she said.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw)
1942 Emil von Stauss (65), chief of Deutsche Bank, died. He was a friend of Hitler and helped finance the Nazi war machine. He had acquired a 9% stake in the Wertheim retail chain in a forced sale.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A8)
1942 Nazis forced Greece to make an interest-free loan of 568 million Reichsmark (7.1 billion euros or $7.7 billion). The Economist put the loan at 476 million Reichsmark.
(AP, 3/22/15)(Econ., 3/21/15, p.44)
1942 The Jewish community paid some 1.9 billion drachmas, around 50 million euros ($55 million) today, as ransom to German occupying authorities in Greece in return for 10,000 Jewish men being held as slave laborers. The men were released only to be sent to concentration camps the following year.
(AP, 3/22/15)
1942-1944 SS Captain Bruno Melmer was in charge of valuables stolen from Nazi victims. Gold objects were turned over to the Reichsbank, which sent it to the Degussa smelting company for processing into gold bars.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.A6)
1942-1944 Gen’l. Eduard Dietl (d.1944) led the 20th mountain army and was later found to be responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of prisoners in northern Europe.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A14)
1942-1945 Victor Klemperer (b.1881), a professor in Dresden, in 2000 authored part 2 of his diaries that covered this period: "I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945." His first volume went up to 1941 and was published in 1998.
(WSJ, 3/22/00, p.A20)
1943 Jan 9, Soviet planes dropped leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refused.
(HN, 1/9/99)
1943 Jan 10, Russian offensive began against German 6th and 4th Armies near Stalingrad.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1943 Jan 11, The Soviet Red Army encircled Stalingrad.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1943 Jan 13, The Canadian corvette Ville de Quebec rammed the German U-224 submarine, which sank in the Mediterranean Sea with 57 of its crew. German Lt. Wolf Danckworth was the only survivor. Years later Danckworth established contact with Canadian sailor Frank Arsenault, who was on the Ville de Quebec when it rammed the sub, and the two became good friends.
(SFC, 12/25/10, p.C1)
1943 Jan 18, The Soviets announced they'd broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad. It was another year before the siege was fully lifted.
(AP, 1/18/98)
1943 Jan 18, Jews in Warsaw Ghetto began an uprising against the Nazis. [see Apr 19, 1943]
(MC, 1/18/02)
1943 Jan 21, A Nazi daylight air raid killed 34 in a London school.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1943 Jan 24, Hitler ordered Nazi troops at Stalingrad to fight to death.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1943 Jan 25, The last German airfield in Stalingrad was captured by the Red Army.
(HN, 1/25/99)
1943 Jan 27, Some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven and Emden in the first all-American air raid against Germany during World War II.
(AP, 1/27/98)(HN, 1/27/99)
1943 Jan 30, Field marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1943 Jan 31, The Battle of Stalingrad ended as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army under Gen Friedrich von Paulus surrendered to the victorious Red Army forces.
(HN, 1/31/99)(MC, 1/31/02)
1943 Jan 31, Chile broke contact with Germany and Japan.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1943 Feb 2, The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major World War II victory for the Soviets. 23 generals, 2,000 officers, and at least 130,000 German troops surrendered. This was later considered as the turning point of WW II.
(AP, 2/2/97)(HN, 2/2/99)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
1943 Feb 11, Transport # 47 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1943 Feb 13, There was a German assault on Sidi Bou Zid, Tunisia, as Gen. Eisenhower visited the front.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1943 Feb 14, A German offensive was made through the de Faid pass in Tunisia.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1943 Feb 14, David Hilbert (b.1862), German mathematician, died. He is considered the father of modern mathematics.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.73)(www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs462/Hall/hilbert.html)
1943 Feb 15, The Germans broke the U.S. lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1943 Feb 16, Withdrawing Africa Corps reached the Mareth-line in North Africa.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 16, Sign on Munich facade: "Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!" was posted by the "White Rose" student group. They were caught on 2/18 and beheaded on 2/22.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 16, The Red army conquered Kharkov.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 18, Munich resistance group "White Rose" was captured by Nazis.
(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html)
1943 Feb 18, Rommel took three towns in Tunisia, North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1943 Feb 19, German tanks under brig. general Buelowius attacked Kasserine Pass, Tunisia.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1943 Feb 20, German troops of the Afrika Korps broke through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.
(HN, 2/20/99)
1943 Feb 21, German tanks and two infantry battalions broke the Allied line and took Kasserine Pass in North Africa.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1943 Feb 22, In Germany Christoph Probst (22), Hans (24) and Sophie Scholl (21), student members of the Die Weisse Rose (White Rose) resistance, were executed by the Nazis.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html)
1943 Feb 23, German troops pulled back through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1943 Feb 26, U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators pounded the Reich docks and U-boat lairs at Wilhelmshaven.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1943 Feb 26, The German assault moved to Beja, North Tunisia.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1943 Feb 28, In Operation Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain bombed the Nazi heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg (d.2003) and Knut Haukelid (d.1994).
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)(ON, 4/07, p.4)
1943 Feb, German women demonstrated outside a Berlin community center where their Jewish husbands and children had been rounded up for deportation to Auschwitz. 1,200 men and children were released a week later and survived the war. It was the only public protest by Germans against Nazi persecution of the Jews.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1943 cFeb, German dictator Adolf Hitler had a pet German Shepherd named Blondi. The dog was given to Hitler by Martin Borman in an attempt to cheer up the downcast dictator after the defeat at Stalingrad. High-ranking Nazi Albert Speer claimed Blondi meant more to Hitler than any human being.
(HN, 3/29/00)
1943 Mar 1, The British RAF conducted strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines. From 1939 to 1945, R.A.F. pilots and air crews waged war on Germany from inside Hitler's Reich.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1943 Mar 2, The center of Berlin was bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs were dropped in a half hour.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1943 Mar 2, Sea battle in Bismarck Sea ended with victory for US and Australia.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 2, 1st transport of Jews from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 5, In desperation due to war losses, fifteen and sixteen year olds are called up for military service in the German army.
(HN, 3/5/99)
1943 Mar 5, RAF bombed Essen, Germany. [see Mar 6]
(MC, 3/5/02)
1943 Mar 6, British RAF fliers bombed Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1943 Mar 6, Battle at Medenine, North-Africa: Rommel's assault attack.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1943 Mar 8, 335 allied bombers attacked Nuremberg.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1943 Mar 10, Hitler called Rommel back from Tunisia in North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1943 Mar 13, There was a failed assassination attempt on Hitler during the Smolensk-Rastenburg flight.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1943 Mar 13, Germans closed the Krakow ghetto in Poland.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1943 Mar 15, In Thessaloniki, Greece, occupying German forces began founding up the first batch of Jews in Eleftherias (Freedom) Square. By August 1943, 46,091 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of those, 1,950 survived.
(AP, 3/16/13)
1943 Mar 17, The German occupation authority closed Lithuanian schools of higher education and the Academy of Education.
(LHC, 3/17/03)
1943 Mar 18, The Reich called off its offensive in Caucasus.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1943 Mar 20, German U-384 was bombed and sank.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1943 Mar 21, An assassination attempt on Hitler failed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1943 Mar 22, SS police chief Rauter threatened to kill half Jewish children.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1943 Mar 23, Germans counter attacked US lines in Tunisia.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1943 Mar, Britain hatched the Doctor Project, a secret plan to assassinate German Field Marshall Rommel. It was never executed.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.C2)
1943 Apr 5, The British 8th Army attacked the next blocking position of the retreating Axis forces at Wadi Akarit.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 13, Nazi's discovered a mass grave of Polish officers near Katyn. [see Apr 13, 1990]
(MC, 4/13/02)
1943 Apr 17, SS lt. General Jurgen Stoop arrived in Warsaw.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1943 Apr 19, Willy Graf, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell, German resistance fighters, were beheaded.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1943 Apr 19, In Warsaw, Poland, some 750 young Jews under Mordechai Anielewicz began their 1st urban uprising against the Nazis. During World War II, tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against Nazi forces. SS-Gen Jurgen Stroop led the destruction of the ghetto of Warsaw: "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more!" he wrote proudly to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler. Stroop was hanged on the site of the Warsaw ghetto after the war. Jacek Zlatka (Jack Eisner, 1925-2003) smuggled arms for the revolt. Eisner made a fortune in the import-export business after the war and in 1980 authored the autobiography "The Survivor."
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T11)(AP, 4/19/97)(HN, 4/19/97)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A29)
1943 Mar 20, The Allies attacked Rommel's forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1943 Apr 22, There was German counter attack in North Tunisia.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1943 Apr 22, RAF shot down 14 German transport planes over Mediterranean Sea.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1943 Apr 28, German-Italian forces launched a counter offensive in North-Africa.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1943 Apr 29, Internationally prominent theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer was arrested by Nazis.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1943 Apr 30, Bergen-Belsen, located near Hanover, formed as a POW camp.
(HNQ, 4/13/00)(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Dutch struck against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Etty Hillesum, Dutch diarist, died in Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 May 1, A German plane sank a boat loaded with Palestinian Jews bound for Malta.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1943 May 1, German forces were deployed in the following places: Norway (200,000), France (900,000), Africa (150,000), Balkans (80,000), Finland (180,000), Eastern Europe (210,000), Caucasus (260,000), Russia (1,900,000).
(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)
1943 May 9, The 5th German Panzer army surrendered in Tunisia.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1943 May 11, Hermann Goering division in Tunisia surrendered.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1943 May 12, The Axis forces in Tunisia and all of North Africa surrendered.
(AP, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1943 May 15, Halifax bombers sank U-463.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 15, Warsaw ghetto uprising ended in it's destruction by Nazi-SS troops.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 16, "Skipping bombs" were used for the first and only time to breach three massive Ruhr Valley dams--the Eder, the Mohne and the Sorpe--that supplied water and hydroelectric power to Germany's vital armament factories. The bombs were designed to bounce over anti-torpedo nets and explode at the base of the dams. Despite only two months of training, Royal Air Force Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his "Dambusters" breached the Eder and the Mohne dams and damaged the Sorpe. While subsequent flooding in the Ruhr Valley claimed 1,294 lives, German industrial production was affected only briefly while the dams were repaired.
(HNPD, 5/15/99)
1943 May 16, German troops destroyed the synagogue of Warsaw. Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto ended after 30 days of fighting.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1943 May 19, Berlin was declared "Judenrien" (cleansed of Jews).
(MC, 5/19/02)
1943 May 23, Thomas Mann began writing his novel Dr. Faustus.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1943 May 23-24, Some 826 Allied bombers attacked Dortmund.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1943 May, German captors took American POWs Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. to view mummified corpses of Polish officers massacred in the Katyn forest. They used coded messages to report on the Soviet guilt, but it was suppressed by the Roosevelt administration until a report in 1952. Documents of their coded messages were made public in 2012.
(AP, 9/10/12)
1943 Jun 1, A civilian flight from Lisbon to London was shot down by the Germans during World War II, killing all those aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1943 Jun 5, German occupiers arrested Louvain University's chancellor.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1943 Jun 10, The Allies began bombing Germany around the clock.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1943 Jun 23, RAF discovered and bombed Werner von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1943 Jun 24, Royal Air Force Bombers hammered Muelheim, Germany in a drive to cripple the Ruhr industrial base.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1943 Jun 29, Germany began withdrawing U-boats from North Atlantic in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Europe.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1943 Jul 3, Liberator bombers sank U-628.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1943 Jul 5, The battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, began as German tanks attacked the Soviet salient.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1943 Jul 6, In the 2nd day of battle at Kursk some 25,000 Germans were killed.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1943 Jul 7, Adolf Hitler made the V-2 missile program a top priority in armament planning.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1943 Jul 7, In the 3rd day of battle at Kursk the Germans occupied Dubrova. Erich Hartmann shot 7 Russian aircraft at Kursk.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1943 Jul 8, The 4th day of battle at Kursk: Gen Model used his last tank reserve.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1943 Jul 9, American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. The 'man who never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military history--after his death. In April Britain’s Operation Mincemeat had landed the dead body of an itinerant Welsh laborer, Glyndwr Michael, disguised as a Major Martin, on the shore of Spain near Huelva. False papers on the body led the Germans to believe the allies would attack Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The idea had been originally devised in 1939 as one of 51 submitted by Lt. Commander Ian Fleming. Operation Mincemeat was kept secret until 1953, the same year that “Casino Royale," Fleming’s first James Bond novel was published.
(ON, 10/10, p.5)
1943 Jul 12, Pope Pius XII received Baron von Weizsacker, the German ambassador.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1943 Jul 12, Russians beat Nazis in a tank battle at Prochorowka. Some 12,000 died.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1943 Jul 13, Greatest tank battle in history ended with Russia's defeat of Germany at Kursk. Almost 6,000 tanks took part and 2,900 were lost by Germany.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1943 Jul 18, The U.S. Navy airship K-74 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1943 Jul 19, American planes sank the German U-513 submarine off the coast of southern Brazil. In 2011 researchers from the Vale do Itajai University found the submarine off the coast of Santa Catarina state.
(AP, 7/15/11)
1943 Jul 23, Battle of Kursk, USSR, ended in Nazi defeat. 6,000 tanks took part.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1943 Jul 24-1943-Aug 2, The RAF and American planes bombed Hamburg. Firestorms from the bombing left at least 40,000 dead in the 1st 3 days. American B-17 Fortresses flew 252 daylight sorties in the two days following the first of 4 RAF night raids. Sir Arthur Harris directed 4 major raids against Hamburg in the space of ten nights, known as “Operation Gomorrah."
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Aug 1, Over 177 B-24 Liberator bombers attacked the German oil fields in Ploesti, Romania, for a second time. Of 1,762 airmen on the mission, 532 were killed, captured, interned or listed as missing in action. In 2007 Duane Schultz authored “Into the Fire: Ploesti" The Most Fateful Mission of World War II.
(HN, 8/1/98)(WSJ, 11/13/07, p.D5)
1943 Aug 2, The 10-day allied bombing of Hamburg, Germany, ended.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Aug 2, In Poland at the Nazi Treblinka concentration camp some 600 prisoners staged an uprising and fled into the woods. Only 40 survived. In 1999 Ian MacMillan authored "Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising."
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.5)
1943 Aug 9, Franz Jaegerstaetter, an avowed conscientious objector, was executed outside Berlin for treason after his request to be excused from regular army service for religious reasons was denied. The married father of four was posthumously exonerated in 1997 by a Berlin court. In 2007 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
(AP, 10/27/07)
1943 Aug 10, Hitler watched the lynching of allied pilots.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1943 Aug 16, Bulgarian czar Boris III visited Adolf Hitler.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1943 Aug 17, A mass attack of 376 B-17s attacked the Messerschmitt Bf-109 factory at Regensburg, Germany. 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England.
(www.thisdayinaviation.com/17-august-1943/)
1943 Aug 18, The Royal Air Force Bomber Command completed the first major strike against the German missile development facility at Peenemunde.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1943 Aug 18, The Heinkel-111 of Otto Skorzeny, Waffen SS commander, was shot down at Sardinia.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1943 Aug 18, Hans Jeschonnek, German air force general, chief-staff, committed suicide.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1943 Sep 10, German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1943 Sep 12, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.
(AP, 9/12/97)(MC, 9/12/01)
1943 Sep 13, Germans counter attacked at Salerno.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1943 Sep 14, German troops abandoned the Salerno front in Italy.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1943 Sep 18, Hitler ordered the deportation of Danish Jews (unsuccessful).
(MC, 9/18/01)
1943 Sep 19, Liberator bombers sank U-341.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1943 Sep 22, The Destroyer Keppel sank U-229.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1943 Sep 24, German forces executed 117 Italian officers on the Greek island of Cephalonia. The massacre became the basis for the 1994 bestseller Captain Corelli's Mandolin by British writer Louis de Bernieres. On Oct 18, 2013 an Italian court handed a life sentence in absentia to former German army corporal Alfred Stork (90) for his role in the execution.
(AFP, 10/18/13)
1943 Sep 25, The Red Army retook Smolensk from the Germans who were retreating to the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1943 Sep, Pope Pius XII offered Vatican assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis and in Italy ran an extensive network of hideouts for escaping Jews.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Sep, Jeannie Rousseau, code name Amniarix, collected enough information on V-2 rockets from German officers in France to send a detailed report to England. Reginald Jones, chief of Britain's scientific intelligence, included her text in his book "The Wizard War."
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A10)
1943 Oct 1, Germans attacked Jews in Denmark.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail sentence.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 6, Himmler ordered the acceleration of "Final Solution."
(MC, 10/6/01)
1943 Oct 13, During World War II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1943 Oct 14, US 8th Air Force lost 60 B-17 bombers during assault on Schweinfurt.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1943 Oct 14, In Germany Rev. Max Josef Metzger was sentenced to death for treason by Roland Freisler, chief judge of the Nazi’s People’s Court. He had written a letter to the British government that denounced the Nazis and called for a German state based on Christian democratic and legal principles. He was exonerated by a Berlin court in 1997
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.A10)
1943 Oct 14, Some 300 of 600 prisoners escaped from the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp in Poland. Alexander Pechersky, a Russian officer of Jewish origin, roused his fellow prisoners to rebellion. The event was later documented in the book "Escape from Sobibor" by Richard Rashke (1982) and the film of the same name with Alan Arkin. Josef Vallaster, an Austrian guard, was among 11 SS officers and 11 Ukrainians killed in the escape. Most of the escaped prisoners were killed as they fled. Only 50 prisoners survived the war. Vallaster had operated the motor that funneled gas into Sobibor’s shower rooms. After the uprising at Sobibor, the Nazis shut it down and leveled it to the ground, replanting over it to cover their tracks.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A19)(SSFC, 2/17/08, p.A8)(AP, 8/21/12)(AFP, 10/14/13)
1943 Oct 17, British Liberators sank U-540 and U-631.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1943 Oct 28, The German U-220 sank.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1943 Oct 29, 3 Allied officers escaped the German camp Stalag Luft 3.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1943 Oct, Germans demolished the ghetto buildings of Minsk, known as the Yama, or Pit, in an effort to find Jews in hiding. 2,000 remaining Jews were rounded up and killed. More than 100,000 Jews were killed there from August 1941.
(AP, 10/21/08)
1943 Nov 3, William Reid (died 2001 at 79), RAF bomber pilot, flew his badly damaged Lancaster bomber on a bombing mission to a ball-bearing factory in Duesseldorf, Germany, and managed to return the crippled plane to England.
(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A25)
1943 Nov 3, SS and police units shot at least 6,000 Jewish inmates of the Trawniki and Dorohucza Labor Camps.
(www.ushmm.org/wlc_ie/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007397)
1943 Nov 3-1943 Nov 4, In Poland the 2-day "Operation Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration camp executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. During the so-called "Mission Harvest Festival" massacres tens of thousands of Jews in the district of Lublin were shot by Nazi officers. Among them were members of Erich Steidtmann’s Hamburg Polizeibataillon 101 company. In 2010 prosecutors reopened an investigation on Steidtmann’s role in the massacre.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)(AP, 4/22/10)
1943 Nov 9, Bernhard Lichtenberg (67), German clergyman and antifascist, died.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1943 Nov 16, One hundred and forty American bombers flew from British bases to Vemork, Norway, to destroy the Nazi heavy water facility near Rjukan, where production had resumed despite a commando raid in February. Only 14 of some 700 bombs hit the plant killing 24 civilians. The bombing did not harm the basement level where the heavy water was collected and stored.
(ON, 4/07, p.5)
1943 Nov 18, 444 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1943 Nov 18, U-211 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1943 Nov 19, U-536 sank in Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1943 Nov 20, U-538 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1943 Nov 22, RAF began bombing of Berlin.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1943 Nov 25, U-600 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1943 Nov 29, U-86 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1943 Nov, Michael Negele joined the Death’s Head Battalion of the Waffen-SS. He later immigrated to the US and withheld information on his wartime activities. In 1997 a Missouri court acted to strip him of US citizenship.
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A3)
1943 Nov, The 2-day Nazi "Operation Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)
1943 Dec 2, The 1st RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the central SS-department) transport out of Vienna reached Birkenau camp (Poland). One of the powers of the RSHA was the imposition of "Protective Custody," which meant the deportation to a concentration camp without trial or the possibility of appeal for the victims.
(www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/Auschwitz/HTML/RSHA.html)
1943 Dec 2, Italy’s Bari harbor was attacked by German bombers. They achieved a complete surprise bombing shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian campaign. 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner were sunk. The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships added to the loss of life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1943 Dec 12, The German Army launched Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad. The attempt to relieve Stalingrad fell short due to stubborn Soviet resistance and the Germans' indecision within the besieged city.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1943 Dec 16, The German battleship Scharnhorst sank off Norway following an Allied attack led by the British battleship Duke of York. Only 36 of the 1,900 crew survived. Researchers found the wreck in 2000. [see Dec 26]
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.A12)
1943 Dec 20, Soviet forces halted a German army trying to relieve the besieged city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 12/20/98)
1943 Dec 26, Count Claus von Stauffenberg tried in vain to plant a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1943 Dec 26, The 32,000-ton German battleship, Scharnhorst was sunk by British ships in an Arctic fight. [see Dec 16]
(HN, 12/26/98)
1943 The German propaganda film "Titanic" was produced.
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.C15)
1943 In Norway Operation Gunnerside destroyed the Nazi heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg (d.2003).
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)
1943 Karlrobert Kreiten, a piano virtuoso, was executed by the Nazis after a neighbor denounced him for offhand remarks about Hitler.
(SFC, 11/28/97, p.B8)
1944 Jan 11, Crakow-Plaszow Concentration Camp was established.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1944 Jan 13, Three Reich plane plants were wrecked; 64 U.S. aircraft were lost in an air attack in Germany.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1944 Jan 15, The U.S. Fifth Army successfully broke the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1944 Jan 20, RAF dropped 2300 1-ton bombs on Berlin.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 649 British bombers attacked Magdeburg.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 447 German bombers attacked London.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 27, The Soviet Union announced the end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted 880 days with 600,000 killed.
(AP, 1/27/98)(MC, 1/27/02)
1944 Jan 28, 683 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1944 Jan 28, U-271 & U-571 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1944 Jan 31, U-592 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1944 Feb 2, The Germans stopped an Allied attack at Anzio, Italy.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1944 Feb 7, The Germans launched a [counteroffensive] second attack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy. They hoped to push the Allies back into the sea.
(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1944 Feb 9, U-734 and U-238 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1944 Feb 11, U-424 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1944 Feb 15, 891 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1944 Feb 19, The U.S. Eighth Air Force and Royal Air Force began "Big Week," a series of heavy bomber attacks against German aircraft production facilities.
(HN, 2/19/99)
1944 Feb 19, U-264 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1944 Feb 20, During World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."
(AP, 2/20/98)
1944 Feb 20, A time-bomb planted by Norwegian commando Knut Haukelid sank the Lake Tinn ferry Hydro, which carried heavy water canisters from the Vemork plant destined for Germany. 12 German soldiers and 14 civilian passengers drowned. Rescuers saved 23 Norwegians and 4 Germans.
(ON, 4/07, p.5)
1944 Mar 1, U-358 sank in Atlantic.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1944 Mar 4, A squadron of American B-17 bombers hit Berlin for the first time during daylight hours. Col. H. Griffin Mumford (d.2007) led a group 4-engine Flying Fortresses over Berlin.
(SFC, 7/20/07, p.B12)(www.100thbg.com/mainmenus/history/historysummary_home.htm)
1944 Mar 6, US heavy bombers hit Berlin during World War II.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1944 Mar 8, U.S. bombers resumed bombing Berlin.
(AP, 3/8/98)
1944 Mar 15, Otto von Below (86), German commandant (WW I), died.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1944 Mar 16, A US plane named “God Bless Our Ship" was hit by anti-aircraft fire over Berlin and crash-landed outside the city. Lt. George Lymburn (1924-2005) was captured and sent to Stalag Luft 1, where he was liberated by Russian soldiers in April, 1945.
(SFC, 4/13/05, p.B7)
1944 Mar 19, The German 352nd Infantry Division deployed along the coast of France.
(HN, 3/19/01)
1944 Mar 19, Nazi German soldiers occupied Hungary.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1944 Mar 22, Over 600 8th Air Force bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1944 Mar 24, 76 Allied officers escaped Stalag Luft 3. In 1949 Paul Brickall authored "The Great Escape." The story of Jackson Barrett Mahon (d.1999 at 78), an American fighter pilot, and the Allied POW escape from Stalag Luft III in Germany during WW II. The 1963 film "The Great Escape" starred Steve McQueen, was directed by John Sturges and was based on the true story. In 1999 Arthur A. Durand published Stalag Luft III: The Secret Story." When the Russian Army closed in tens of thousands of POWs were marched 240 miles south to a new camp and thousands died in the "Black March."
(TVM, 1975, p.222)(SFC, 8/11/99, p.C5)(SFC, 12/23/99, p.A27)(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.1)(SFC, 1/22/03, p.A19)(www.b24.net/pow/greatescape.htm)
1944 Mar 24, 811 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1944 Mar 24, In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before they killed 32 [33] German soldiers [policemen]. The Ardeatine Cave massacre near Rome, Italy, took place. In retaliation to the systematic murder of Nazi officers by the Italian underground, an SS officer ordered that 10 Italian civilian men be shot for every Nazi officer killed. The age of the civilians did not matter and so many teenagers and boys were among the dead found in the caves. Argentina extradited former Nazi officer, Erich Priebke, to Rome in 1995 to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(HN, 3/24/98)
1944 Mar 26, 705 British bombers attacked Essen.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 Mar 27, One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Thousands of Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. Forty Jewish policemen were shot in the Riga, Latvia, ghetto by the Gestapo.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 30, 781 British bombers attacked Nuremberg.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1944 Apr 3, British dive bombers attacked the battle cruiser Tirpitz.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1944 Apr 5, In Lithuania 40 prisoners filed off their chains and fled through a narrow tunnel at Paneriai. Jewish and Soviet prisoners had been brought to the Ponar forest from Stutthof concentration camp. They were forced to dig up mass graves, collect bodies and burn them. Guards quickly discovered the prisoners and many were shot, but 11 prisoners managed to escape to the forest, reach partisan forces and survive the war. In 2016 an international research team pinpointed the location of the tunnel.
(AP, 6/29/16)
1944 Apr 6, German trucks rolled up to the safehouse of Sabina Zlatin in Izieu-Ain, France, and 44 children and 7 teachers including Mr. Zlatin were arrested. The raid was ordered by Klaus Barbie, head of the German police in Lyons.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.B2)(MC, 4/6/02)
1944 Apr 13, Transport No. 71 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1944 Apr 14, 1st Jews transported from Athens arrived at Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1944 Apr 16, Germany’s U-550 torpedoed the gasoline tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania, which had lagged behind its protective convoy as it set out with 140,000 barrels of gasoline for Great Britain. One of the tanker's three escorts, the USS Joyce, saw it on sonar and severely damaged it by dropping depth charges. The crew abandoned the submarine, but not before setting off explosions to scuttle it in waters off Nantucket. On July 23, 2012, divers discovered the submarine.
(AFP, 7/27/12)
1944 Apr 22, Hitler and Mussolini met at Obersalzburg.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1944 Apr 24, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. Anton Spitaler (1910-2003), an Arabic scholar at the academy, later lamented the loss of a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran. His story however was a lie, and the collection survived hidden in his hands.
(WSJ, 1/12/08, p.A1)
1944 Apr 28, Exercise "Tiger" ended with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1944 May 1, The Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, the 1st jet bomber, made its first flight.
(HN, 5/1/98)(MC, 5/1/02)
1944 May 6, The USS Buckley, a destroyer escort, engaged and sank the German U-66. Hand to hand fighting broke out after the Buckley, under Lt. Cmdr. Brent Maxwell Abel (1916-2006), rammed the submarine. When the U-boat sank 36 German sailors were rescued and taken captive.
(SFC, 1/6/06, p.B7)
1944 May 7, There was a German assault on Tito's hideout in Drvar, Bosnia.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1944 May 14, 91 German bombers harassed Bristol.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May 14, Gens Rommel, Speidel and von Stulpnagel plotted to assassinate Hitler.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May 15, A partisan attack on a movie theater killed 5 German soldiers in Genoa. 4 days later SS Officer Friedrich Engel ordered the killing of 59 Italian prisoners in reprisal. In 2002 Engel (93) was sentenced to 7 years in prison for the order.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A14)(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 16, The 1st of over 180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1944 May 19, 240 gypsies were transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Neth.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1944 May 19, Friedrich Engel (1909-2006), a Nazi SS officer, oversaw the massacre of 59 Italian prisoners near Genoa. An Italian military court convicted Engel in absentia in 1999 and sentenced him to life for war crimes connected to a total of 246 deaths. In 2002 a German court convicted Engel of 59 counts of murder and handed him a suspended seven-year term.
(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May-1944 Jun, Some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Nazi-run Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. At least 300,000 were almost immediately gassed to death. In 2014 German prosecutors charged Oskar Groening (93) with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving as as SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp during this period.
(SFC, 9/16/14, p.A2)
1944 May-1944 Oct, About 158 trainloads of victims were brought to the Nazi-run Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In 2013 a German arest warrant accused Johann Breyer (d.2014 at 89), a resident of Pennsylvania, of 158 counts of accessory to murder, one for each trainload of victims brought to Auschwitz while he served as a guard there.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A8)
1944 Jun 2, Allied "shuttle bombing" of Germany began, with bombers departing from Italy and landing in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1944 Jun 3, Nazis pulled out of Rome.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1944 Jun 4, The U-505 became the first enemy submarine captured by the U.S. Navy under Admiral Dan Gallery. The keel for the U-505 was laid on June 12, 1940. It launched from Hamburg the following year. During its career, the U-505 gained the unwelcome but lucky distinction of being the most heavily damaged U-boat to manage to return to port. Under the command of Harald Lange, the boat was attacked by an American task group led by the USS Guadalcanal. Crewmen from the destroyer escort USS Pillsbury managed to capture the U-505 before the submariners could in scuttle her. This represented the first time since 1815 that the US Navy captured an enemy warship on the high seas (the capture remained a secret). After the war, Navy plans to scuttle the U-boat in a gunnery exercise were themselves scrapped when the president of Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry voiced interest and a plan to use the entire submarine as part of an exhibit. The U-505 was dedicated as a permanent exhibit and war memorial at the museum on September 25, 1954. In 2005 a $35 million project restored the ship and moved it to a specially constructed underground hall.
(HN, 6/4/98)(HNQ, 3/29/01)(WSJ, 8/5/05, p.W2)
1944 Jun 6, On D-Day Brig. General Norman "Dutch" Cota was the first American General to step foot on Omaha Beach. Cota, assistant commander of the 29th Infantry Division, heroically spurred his men to cross the beach under withering German fire. He went on to lead his infantrymen across France to the Siegfried Line and in the battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.
(HNQ, 4/15/99)
1944 Jun 6, Cherokee tribal members communicated via radios in their native language on the Normandy beaches. Some 6,603 Americans were killed along the coast of France during the D-day invasion. A total of 9,758 Allied soldiers died during the invasion. "D-Day" by Stephen Ambrose was published in 1994.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A6)(SFEC, 6/6/99, p.A22)(SFC, 5/30/00, p.A2)(WSJ, 8/20/01, p.A1)
1944 Jun 6, The code name for the beach used by the Canadians for the D-day invasion of Normandy was Juno.
(HNQ, 8/13/98)
1944 Jun 6, By the end of D-Day 156,000 Allied soldiers had come ashore on the Normandy beaches with losses of 2,500 men. By the end of the day, the Allies had established a tenuous beachhead that would lead to an offensive that pinned Adolf Hitler's Third Reich between two pincers--the Western Allies and the already advancing Soviets--accelerating the end of World War II. A million Allied troops, under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, moved onto five Normandy beachheads in three weeks. Operations “Neptune" and “Overlord" put forces on the beaches and supplies aimed at the liberation of Europe and the conquest of Germany. Operation Overlord landed 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy, France. In addition, US and British airborne forces landed behind the German lines and US Army Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe de Hoc. More than 6,000 trucks of the Red Ball Express kept gasoline and other vital supplies rolling in as American troops and tanks pushed the Germans back toward their homeland.
(SDUT, 6/6/97, p.B9)(HN, 6/6/98)(HNPD, 6/6/99)(ON, 2/08, p.12)
1944 Jun 6, Gerrit John van de Peat (41), artist, resistance fighter, was executed.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 6, Nazi troops executed 96 prisoners by firing squad.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 7, Italian partisans shot at least one German soldier in a radio transmitter unit that included Matthias Defregger. Eventually, 17 men, ranging from 17 to 65, were shot in retaliation, and much of the village of Filetto di Camarda was burned. Defregger later became a Bishop and faced charges in 1969 for the murders. The charges were dropped in 1970.
(www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901076,00.html)
1944 Jun 9, 99 inhabitants of Tulle were hanged by the SS.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1944 Jun 10, German troops of the armored SS Division "Das Reich", as they headed toward Normandy to combat D-Day invasion forces, slaughtered 642 men, women and children in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, France. In 1983 a court in East Berlin convicted Heinz Barth (1921-2007), a former SS officer, and sentenced him to life in prison. In addition to involvement in the massacre, East German judges also found that Barth volunteered to participate in an execution of 92 Czech civilians in 1942. In 1997 his sentence was commuted to probation.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Jun 10, In Greece Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Lautenbach went door to door and massacred Greek civilians as part of a 'retaliation measure' for a partisan attack upon the unit. A total of 214 men, women and children were killed in Distomo, a small village near Delphi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distomo_massacre)
1944 Jun 13, Only one week after the Normandy invasion, the first German V-1 buzz bomb, also called the doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), was fired at London. The first guided missile to be used in force, the V-1 was powered by a pulse-jet engine and resembled a small aircraft. Only one of the four missiles London saw that day caused any casualties, but a steady stream of V-1s causing severe damage and casualties fell on London in coming months. At times, nearly 100 bombs fell each day. Many German buzz bombs never reached their targets because of primitive guidance systems or because they were destroyed in flight by anti-aircraft fire or intercepting Allied fighters.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ, 6/13/98)(MC, 6/13/02)
1944 Jun 18, The U.S. First Army broker through the German lines on the Cotentin Peninsula and cut off the German held port of Cherbourg.
(HN, 6/18/98)
1944 Jun 20, Nazis began mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1944 Jun 21, Very heavy bombing took place on Berlin.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1944 Jun 25, British assault at Caen, Normandy.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1944 Jun 26, German troops near the Italian village of Falzano di Cortona herded 11 civilians into a barn and blew it up. Gino Massetti (15) survived and in 2008 testified in the trial of former Wehrmacht Lt. Josef Scheungraber, the company commander accused of ordering the reprisal killings and four others after two German soldiers were killed. In 2009 Scheungraber (90) was convicted of 10 murders and jailed for life.
(AP, 10/7/08)(AFP, 8/11/09)
1944 Jun 27, During World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.
(AP, 6/27/97)(HN, 6/27/98)
1944 Jun 29, Rommel and von Rundstedt traveled to Berchtesgaden to confer with Hitler.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1944 Jun 29, A Russian assault battalion opened fire on German forces on the outskirts of Bobruisk, Belarus. As many as half of the 10,000 German soldiers were killed. In 1962 Nikolai Litvin, a Russian soldier present that day, completed his memoir. It was finally published in 2007 under the title "800 Days on the Eastern Front."
(WSJ, 6/30/07, p.P6)
1944 Jun 30, A US B-24H bomber nicknamed "Miss Fortune," which was returning from a mission in Germany to its base in Italy, flew into bad weather with 3 others and were shot down by German gunners over western Hungary. The remains of Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy, the tail gunner on the “Miss Fortune," were recovered in 2007.
(AP, 8/11/07)
1944 Jun, German soldiers in the Hermann Goering division, named after the head of Adolf Hitler's air force, shot and killed more than 200 civilians and destroyed most of the homes in the Tuscan town of Civitella to avenge a deadly attack by partisans. In 2008 Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of the massacre. Germany rejected the ruling.
(AP, 10/22/08)
1944 Jul 1, Over 2500 were killed in London and SE England by German flying bombs.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1944 Jul 1, Count Claus von Stauffenberg was promoted to colonel.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1944 Jul 4, Gestapo arrested German Social Democrat Julius Leber.
(Maggio)
1944 Jul 12, The Theresienstadt Family camp disbanded and some 4,000 people were executed.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1944 Jul 14, SS men Heinrich Boere and Jacobus Petrus Besteman shot and killed Dutch pharmacist Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese at his home in Breda for suspected activity in Nazi resistance. Boere was sentenced to death in absentia by a Dutch court in 1949. This was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 2009 Boere (88) was slated to stand trial for murder in Germany for the execution-style killings of three Dutch civilians during World War II. In 2010 a German court convicted Boere (88) of murdering the three Dutch civilians. He was given the maximum sentence of life in prison for the killings.
(www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/germ-n02.shtml)(AP, 7/7/09)(AP, 3/23/10)
1944 Jul 15, Greenwich Observatory was damaged by German V1 rocket.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1944 Jul 16, Soviet troops occupy Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive towards Germany.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1944 Jul 18, British Mosquitos attacked Cologne and Berlin.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1944 Jul 19, Some 1,200 8th Air Force bombers bombed targets in SW Germany. Some 500 15th Air Force Liberators (Flying Fortresses) bombed the Munich vicinity.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 19, Count Claus von Stauffenberg visited a RC church in Berlin-Dahlem.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 19, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg 1st met SS ober Sturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 20, A branch of the German resistance led by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb underneath the table where Hitler was standing at Hitler’s Rastenburg headquarters in East Prussia that wounded but did not kill Hitler. This incited the Fuhrer to wipe out the Prussian aristocracy. This is covered in Otto Friedrich’s book on the Moltke family: "Blood and Iron." [see 1800, Helmuth and/or 1840, James von Moltke] Carl Goerdeler, Mayor of Leipzig, was among those arrested and executed for the plot.
(WSJ, 11/7/95, p.A-21)(AP, 7/20/97)(HN, 7/20/98)(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A30)
"In fact, although many of the conspirators were tortured, beheaded and strangled by piano wire hung from meat hooks... Col. Stauffenburg and three of his fellow officers were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Benderblock around midnight of that fateful day." The 20th of July Special Commission of the Third Reich was created after the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler to find and expose conspirators and other enemies of the regime. Some 400 investigators employed all of the Gestapo-designed methods of torture against enemies of the Nazis until the end of the war. Some 5,000 Germans were executed in the months following the assassination attempt for their part in the conspiracy or alleged sympathy with the conspirators.
(WSJ, 11/29/95, p.A-15)(HNQ, 12/3/98)
Ludwig and Kunrat Hammerstein-Equord participated in the plot to kill Hitler and went into hiding when the plot failed. 4 members of the family were taken to concentration camps, but were later freed by the allies.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A19)
1944 Jul 20, A heavy storm hampered a British offensive at Caen.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1944 Jul 20, US 15th Air Force attacked Friedrichshafen and Memmingen. Flying Fortresses of US 8th Air Force attacked Leipzig and Dessau.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1944 Jul 21, Von Kluge warned Hitler of the impending collapse of front in Normandy.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1944 Jul 21, Henning von Tresckow, Gen-Maj, "July 20th plotter", committed suicide.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1944 Jul 22, German SS officer Siegfried Assmuss, commander of a unit of the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion, was killed by partisans near Chlaniow, Poland.
(AP, 6/14/13)(http://tinyurl.com/kk5e6s3)
1944 Jul 23, Bernard M. Cohen, attorney, was killed at Belsen concentration camp.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, Helmuth J. von Moltke, German earl (July 20th plotter), was executed.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, Soviet troops took Lublin, Poland, as the German army retreated.
(HN, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, A Ukrainian Self-Defense unit, directed to "liquidate all the residents" of Chlaniow, Poland, in a reprisal attack for the killing of German SS officer Siegfried Assmuss, killed 44 people including women and children. In 2013 Michael Karkoc (94), a retired Minnesota carpenter, was named as commander of the Nazi SS-led unit in the Chlaniov attack.
(AP, 6/14/13)(http://tinyurl.com/kk5e6s3)(AP, 11/18/13)
1944 Jul 24, Soviet forces liberated the Majdanek concentration camp.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1944 Jul 25, Allied forces begin the breakthrough of German lines in Normandy.
(HN, 7/25/02)
1944 Jul 25, The Messerschmitt 262 became the 1st jet fighter used in combat.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1944 Jul 29, Allied air force bombed Germany for 6 hours.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1944 Jul, Operation Goodwood in Normandy under Gen’l. Montgomery attempted to break through German defenses. This part of the war is covered by Stephen E. Ambrose in his 1997 book: "Citizen Soldiers," a sequel to his earlier "D-Day."
(WSJ, 12/22/97, p.A16)
1944 Aug 1-1944 Oct 2, The Warsaw Uprising was fought. The Polish underground began an uprising against the occupying German army, as the Red Army approaches Warsaw. The revolt lasted two months before collapsing. US Air Force Groups dropped medicine and food to the Polish freedom fighters under heavy fire from German fighter planes. The supply planes were also shot at by Soviet gunners. American dead were buried in the military cemetery at Poltava, Ukraine. The uprising ended with the Nazis killing 250,000 people. During the 63-day uprising the insurgents, largely ill-armed teenagers, organized a postal service to help city residents get information to relatives. Marek Edelman (1909-2009) was among the commanders of the uprising and managed to survive the war.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 23)(AP, 8/1/97)(HN, 8/1/98)(AP, 3/6/08)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.91)
1944 Aug 4, Nazi police raided the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam and arrested eight people, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, whose diary became a famous account of the Holocaust. She died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Miep Gies (1909-2010), secretary to Anne’s father Otto, collected the scattered pages of Anne’s diary and returned them to Otto Frank after the war.
(AP, 8/4/02)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.95)
1944 Aug 6, All 1,200 Jewish death marchers from Lipcani, Moldavia, died by this date.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Aug 6, The deportation of 70,000 Jews from Lodz. Poland, to Auschwitz began.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Aug 7, July 20th Plot trial under Nazi judge Roland Freisler began in Berlin.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1944 Aug 7, German forces launched a major counter attack against U.S. forces near Mortain, France.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1944 Aug 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German fieldmarshal, was hanged.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1944 Aug 16, US bombers of the 8th Air Force raided the oil refinery at Rositz, Germany. As of 2998 21 unexploded bombs were dug up at the site.
(WSJ, 11/24/08, p.A12)
1944 Aug 19, In an effort to prevent a communist uprising in Paris, Charles DeGualle began attacking German forces all around the city.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1944 Aug 20, United States and British forces closed the pincers on the German 7th Army in the Falaise-Argentan pocket in France.
(HN, 8/20/98)(MC, 8/20/02)
1944 Aug 22, Hitler ordered Paris to be destroyed.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1944 Aug 22, In Bordeaux, France, Heinz Stahlschmidt (d.2010 at 92), a junior officer in the German navy, defied his superiors plans to blow up Bordeaux's port by blowing up a munitions depot, rendering some 4,000 fuses useless and saving the port. Heinz Stahlschmidt became a French citizen in 1947 under the name of Henri Salmide and a Knight of the French Legion d’Honneur in September 2000.
(http://tinyurl.com/yesjr4g)(AP, 2/26/10)
1944 Aug 22, Last transport of French Jews departed to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1944 Aug 23, German SS engineers began placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Adolf Hitler had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuehrer’s order.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1944 Aug 23, Romanian PM Ion Antonescu was dismissed by King Michael, paving the way for Romania to abandon the Axis in favor of the Allies. King Michael organized a coup against the pro-Nazi dictator, Marshal Ion Antonescu, but was double-crossed by Joseph Stalin and betrayed by the Allies who ceded the country to the Russians at the Yalta summit in 1945.
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97)
1944 Aug 25, Paris, occupied since June 1940, was liberated from German occupation by Free French Forces under General Jacques LeClerc and his 2nd Tank division. Although ordered by Adolf Hitler to leave Paris a smoldering ruin, Paris' military governor Major General Dietrich von Cholitz lied to his superiors and left the city's landmarks intact. Retreating German troops massacred 124 of Maille's 500 residents then razed the town, possibly in retaliation for Resistance action in the region.
(AP, 8/25/97)(HNPD, 8/25/98)(HN, 8/25/98)(AP, 7/16/08)
1944 Aug 25, In France 11 US planes were shot down when a squadron was overwhelmed in a dogfight with 80 German fighters. 5 pilots survived and eluded capture. 2 pilots were captured. The remains of 3 missing were later recovered. In 2008 the remains of Army Air Force 2nd Lt. Ray Packard were identified and returned home.
(SSFC, 11/16/08, p.B8)
1944 Aug 27, 200 Halifax bombers attack oil-installations in Hamburg.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1944 Aug 28, German forces in Toulon and Marseilles, France, surrendered to the Allies.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1944 Aug 31, The British Eighth Army penetrated the German Gothic Line in Italy.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1944 Aug, Messerschmidt, Volkswagen AG and other companies met at a Strasbourg hotel to discuss financing plans for the Fourth Reich.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1944 Sep 5, Germany launched its first V-2 missile at Paris, France.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1944 Sep 5, Flight Sgt. Maximilian Volke, a German ace pilot, took off from a northern Italian air base with three other fighters to intercept a group of American bombers. He was shot down by gunners in one of the US planes. His plane and remains were found in 2007.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Sep 7, Nazi SS-General Kurt ("Panzer") Meyer took Durnal, Belgium.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1944 Sep 8, Germany's V-2 offensive against England began.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1944 Sep 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German field marshal, was hanged.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1944 Sep 12, During World War II, U.S. Army troops entered Germany for the first time, near Trier.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1944 Sep 13, US 28th Infantry division opened an assault on the Siegfried line, Westwall.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1944 Sep 15, British bombers hit the German pocket battleship Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs.
(www.history.navy)
1944 Sep 17, Infantry glider troops of the 82nd Airborne Division entered Holland. British [American] airborne troops parachuted into Holland to capture the Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market Garden. The plan called for the airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they were left stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans. The 1974 book by Cornelius Ryan, "A Bridge Too Far," was based on this operation and was made into the 1977 film.
(MT, Fall ‘96, p.8)(HN, 9/17/98)(HC, 12/12/01)
1944 Sep 19, The Luftwaffe bombed Eindhoven: 200 killed.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1944 Sep 19, The 3-month battle at Huertgen Forest on the Belgian-German border began. A 1998 HBO film made a rough portrayal: "When Trumpets Fade."
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.A15)(www.angelfire.com/ak5/combat/HuertgenForest.html)
1944 Sep 22, Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, was executed by the Nazi Waffen SS shortly after he was captured. In 2012 Dutch-born Siert Bruins (91) was charged with Dijkema’s murder. In 2014 a German court dropped the case against Bruins ruling that there are too many gaps in the evidence to deliver a verdict.
(www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4312068,00.html)(SFC, 11/27/12, p.A2)(SFC, 9/3/13, p.A2)(AP, 1/8/14)
1944 Sep 22, Mark Linenthal (1922-2010), navigator on a B-24 Liberator, was shot down on the way back from bombing an aircraft factory in Munich. He was taken to Stalag Luft I and remained there it was liberated by the Russians. He later established himself as a Prof. of English at San Francisco State Univ., where he published 2 books of poetry “Growing Light" (1979) and “The Man I Am Watching" 1987).
(SSFC, 9/12/10, p.C1)
1944 Sep 27, Thousands of British troops were killed as German forces rebuffed their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1944 Sep 28, At the Battle of Arnhem the Germans defeated the British airborne in Netherlands.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1944 Sep 29-1944 Oct 5, Nazi murders took place in Marzabotto, Italy, under SS-major Reder. Retreating Nazi troops killed some 1,000 women, children and elderly while allegedly pursuing resistance fighters. In 2002 German Pres. Rau apologized for the massacre. In 2007 an Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzabotto_massacre)(USAT, 4/18/02, p.4A)(Reuters, 1/14/07)
1944 Sep, Finland began fighting Nazi Germany in the Lapland War and continued to April 1945.
(Econ, 3/30/13, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_War)
1944 Sep-Jan, The battle at Huertgen Forest on the Belgian-German border was fought. A 1998 HBO film made a rough portrayal: "When Trumpets Fade."
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.A15)
1944 Oct 1, The U.S. First Army began the siege Aachen, Germany.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1944 Oct 2, Nazi troops crushed the 2-month-old (63 days) Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter-million people were killed.
(AP, 10/2/97)
1944 Oct 3, German troops evacuated Athens, Greece.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1944 Oct 7, Field marshal Rommel got orders to return to Berlin.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1944 Oct 7, Jews several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. During the uprising, the prisoners killed three guards and blew up the crematorium and adjacent gas chamber. The prisoners used explosives smuggled into the camp by Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Germans crushed the revolt and killed almost all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged.
(http://tinyurl.com/9avn3)
1944 Oct 12, German army retreated from Athens.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1944 Oct 13, The US 1st army entered Aachen, Germany.
(AP, 10/13/97)(MC, 10/13/01)
1944 Oct 14, German Field Marshal Rommel (52), suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, was visited at home by two of Hitler's staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chose suicide and it was announced that he died of wounds.
(AP, 10/14/97)(HN, 10/14/98)
1944 Oct 15, Hungary’s regent Miklos Horthy announced in a radio broadcast that the German Reich has lost the war and that he was negotiating with the Russians for Hungarian self-determination. Nazi operatives kidnapped Horthy’s son and forced him to abdicate and surrender to the Germans.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.2)
1994 Oct 16, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was elected to a fourth term.
(AP, 10/16/99)
1944 Oct 16, In Hungary the Horthy government fell as Adolf Eichmann returned to Budapest and immediately ordered the resumption of the Jewish deportation program. Ferenc Szalasi (1897-1946) became the prime minister.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Sz%C3%A1lasi)
1944 Oct 20, US 1st army won the battle of Aachen.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1944 Oct 21, During World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1944 Oct 28, The last Nazi transport of Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau was sent from Theresienstadt.
(http://tinyurl.com/8sf5k)
1944 Nov 7, Hannah Senesh (23), Jewish poet, was executed by Nazis in Budapest. Hannah Szenes was tortured for several months by the Gestapo before being executed by the Nazis because she was a member of the Jewish underground.
(www.jbuff.com/c031303.htm)
1944 Nov 8, In Hungary Jews under Nazi custody and the command of Adolf Eichmann began marches of 120 miles to the Austrian border.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.3)
1944 Nov 11, Private Eddie Slovik was convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1944 Nov 12, The RAF sank the German battleship Tirpitz at Troms Fjord, Norway. Great Britain so feared the Tripitz, that any hint of its use caused escort ships to flee their convoys.
(HN, 11/12/98)(MC, 11/12/01)
1944 Nov 24, Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the Auschwitz and Birkenau crematoriums.
(http://tinyurl.com/9nycv)
1944 Dec 2, General Patton’s troops entered the Saar Valley and broke through the Siegfried line. US 95th Infantry division occupied bridge at Saar.
(HN, 12/2/98)(MC, 12/2/01)
1944 Dec 3, US 5th Armour division occupied Brandenburg, Hertzgenwald.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1944 Dec 10, The US 394th Regiment’s Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon was ordered into the village of Lanzareth, Belgium, to fill a gap between allied divisions along the Western front. A German counteroffensive, launched on Dec 16, sent through Lanzareth. The platoon surrendered after running out of ammunition. All members survived imprisonment. In 2004 Alex Kershaw authored “The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon."
(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.D11)(SSFC, 1/2/05, p.E1)
1944 Dec 16, The Germans mounted a major surprise counterattack in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. As the center of the Allied line fell back, it created a bulge, leading to the name--the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler hoped to cripple the advance Allies by breaking through their lines to destroy fuel supplies and lines of communication. The striking force (the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies) amounted to 24 divisions, 10 of them armored. The German attack achieved total surprise, but slowed by the end of December due to German supply problems and Allied resistance. Between January 8-16, in the face of a fierce Allied counteroffensive, the Germans finally withdrew. By January 21, the Germans had been pushed back to their original line, having lost some 120,000 men in the offensive. The Allies suffered 81,000 casualties including some 19,000 Americans killed. In 1997 Charles B. MacDonald authored “A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN, 12/16/98)(HNQ, 7/11/01)(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.D11)
1944 Dec 17, The Germans renewed their attack on the Belgian town of Losheimergraben against the American Army during the Battle of the Bulge.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1944 Dec 19, American troops began pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1944 Dec 20, In the Battle of Bastogne the Nazis surrounded 101st Airborne.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1944 Dec 22, During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium; Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe (1898-1975) reportedly replied: "Nuts!"
(AP, 12/22/97)(HN, 12/22/98)
1944 Dec 23, In Belgium a US B-26 Marauder went down while on a mission to take out a critical rail bridge over the Moselle in Eller, Germany. William Parker Cook (27) and his 5-man crew were among ten planes and dozens of men lost in the mission. In 2006 aviation researchers found the crash site near Allmuthen, Belgium. DNA evidence identified Cook and two other crew members.
(SFC, 10/20/14, p.A1)
1944 Dec 24, Adolf Eichmann fled Hungary to Austria as Soviet troops encircled Budapest. He left orders for German forces to massacre all the Jews in Budapest. German Gen. August Schmidthuber, assigned to oversee the mass execution, cancelled the operation after receiving word from Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg that the impending carnage would mark him as a war criminal.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.4)
1944 Dec 26, In the World War II Battle of the Bulge, the embattled U.S. 101st Airborne Division was relieved by units of the 4th Armored Division. The Battle of the Bulge was the final major German counter-offensive of the war and thrust deep into allied territory in N & E Belgium and Luxembourg. US Gen Patton's tanks repulsed the Germans. Jimmy Hendrix (19) captured 13 Germans in two 88-mm gun batteries and rescued 3 Americans under enemy fire. Hendrix (d.2002 later awarded the Medal of Honor.
(WUD, 1994, p.195)(SFC, 9/1/96, T3)(AP, 12/26/97)(MC, 12/26/01)(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A25)
1944 Dec, Carol Deutsch, Jewish artist, perished in the Holocaust. Deutsch created illustrations of the Bible while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.
(AP, 1/11/08)
1944 Hans Fallada (1893-1947), German writer, was confined to a psychiatric prison after taken a shot at his wife. In 2015 his prison diary was publiched as “A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Fallada)
1944 Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer authored “Dialectic of Enlightenment," which examined the culture that gave birth to Auschwitz. This became the founding text of the post modern writers (pomos), later represented by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.106)
1944 A Germany general sent French fashion designer Coco Chanel to Madrid to initiate talks through the British Embassy in a plan code-named “Operation Modelhut." A travel companion denounced her as an enemy agent and the British ignored her.
(SSFC, 8/21/11, p.F5)
1944 Felix Nussbaum, an artist from Osnabruck, died in Auschwitz. A museum in Osnabruck, designed by Daniel Libeskind, was later named in his honor.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A16)
1944 In Germany there was mass murder at the Treblinka labor camp in Poland. In 1997 Polish guard Bronislaw Hajda, a retired machinist in Chicago’s Schiller Park, was convicted by a US federal judge for taking part in the mass murder.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A3)
1944 By this year 360,000 of the 500,000 inmates of the Nazi Majdanek concentration camp in eastern Poland had perished in the gas chambers or from brutal treatment by the guards.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)
1944 - 1945 May, Nazi's kept some 2000 Danish policemen in custody. Most of them in KZ-camps, brought to Neuengamme and from there to places as Buchenwald and Stutthof in Germany. After Danish negotiations with the Germans the Nazi's accepted their status as prisoners of war and 1600 came to the POW-camp at Mühlberg. Around 100 Danish policemen died in the camps.
(http://politihistorier.dk/english/days-to-remember.html)
Go to 1945
Return to home
1939 Jan 4, Hermann Goering appointed Reinhard Heydrich as head of Jewish Emigration.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1939 Jan 17, The Reich issued an order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and chemists.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1939 Jan 20, Hitler proclaimed to German parliament his intention to exterminate all European Jews.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1939 Jan 22, A Nazi order erased the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1939 Feb 14, The Reich launched the battleship Bismarck.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1939 Feb 24, Hungary signed an anti-Communist pact with Italy, Germany and Japan.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1939 Mar 15, Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became independent
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.2)(WSJ, 12/12/96, p.A13)(HN, 3/15/98)(MC, 3/15/02)
1939 Mar 16, Germany occupied the rest Czechoslovakia.
(HN, 3/16/99)
1939 Mar 18, The U.S. raised the duties on German imports by 25 percent.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1939 Mar 21, Nazi Germany demanded Gdansk (Danzig) from Poland.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1939 Mar 21, Ghandi called on the world to disarm, thinking that Hitler would follow.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1939 Mar 22, Germany marched into Klaipeda (Memel), Lithuania. The Lithuanian warship Prezidentas Smetona was left without a harbor. The ship soon settled at Latvia’s port of Liepaja. In December Ltn. P. Labanauskas was named captain. In 1940 Soviet occupiers called for the ship to raise the Soviet flag, but Captain Labanauskas sailed the ship out of Soviet territory. The ship was later handed over to the Soviet Baltic fleet. On Jan 11, 1945, it hit a mine and sank off the coast of Finland.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.2)(http://tinyurl.com/cs545k)
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven French islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1939 Mar, In Slovakia Germany set up a puppet regime. The Jewish community was estimated to number 70,000 at the start of the war. Fewer than 10,000 survived the war.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A11)
1939 Apr 5, Membership in Hitler Youth became obligatory.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1939 Apr 16, Stalin requested a British, French and Russian anti-Nazi pact.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1939 Apr 18, Franz von Papen became German ambassador in Turkey.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1939 Apr 20, The Kehlsteinhous, aka the Eagle’s Nest, a mountaintop teahouse located in the Kehlstein mountains near Berchtesgaden, was given to Adolf Hitler as a 50th birthday present.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.G4)
1939 Apr 28, Hitler claimed the German-Polish non-attack treaty to be still in effect.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1939 May 7, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1939 May 13, The SS St Louis departed Hamburg with some 937 passengers including over 900 Jewish refugees. They sought refuge in Cuba, but only 22 were allowed to disembark there. No country in the Americas would take them. It returned to Germany where a number of the Jews were later murdered. [see Jun 4]
(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.+Con.+Res.+185:)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)
1939 May 22, The foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance forming the Axis powers.
(HN, 5/22/99)(AP, 5/22/07)
1939 May 23, Hitler proclaimed he wants to move into Poland.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1939 May, The Ravensbruck concentration camp opened in northern Germany. It was primarily set up for women. Between 1939 and 1945, over 130,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system; only 40,000 survived.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensbr%C3%BCck)
1939 Jun 4, During what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned," the SS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. Also denied permission to dock in Canada and Cuba, the ship eventually returned to Europe. The passengers were divided among England, France, Belgium and Holland and a number of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps. By 2003 efforts to track their fates identified 935 out of the 937 passengers. Some 260 ended in Nazi killing centers.
(AP, 6/4/99)(SFC, 10/4/99, p.D3)(SSFC, 12/7/03, Par p.5)(Econ, 6/24/06, p.44)
1939 Jun 16-1939 Jun 20, Jewish refugees, whose quest for freedom in the Americas was denied, began to disembark the SS St. Louis back in Europe. Holland took 181, France received 224, 228 went to Great Britain, and 214 went to Belgium. [see May 13 and June 4]
(www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1999/ushmm-and-st-louis2.htm)
1939 Jun 28, Richard Meinertzhagen (1877-1967, a British army colonel, met with Adolf Hitler to plead on behalf of the Jews in Germany. He later claimed to have smuggled a pistol into the chancellery but lost his nerve and failed to shoot Hitler. In 2007 Brian Garfield authored “The Meinertzhagen Mystery."
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P9)
1939 Jul 3, Ernst Heinkel demonstrated an 800-kph rocket plane to Hitler.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1939 Jul 6, Nazis closed the last Jewish enterprises.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be within the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing, Germany invaded Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had claimed sections of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD, 8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1939 Aug 27, Nazi Germany demanded Danzig and Polish corridor.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Aug 27, The world's first jet-propelled plane, the Heinkel He-178, made its first flight at Marienehe, north Germany. Hans von Ohain’s aircraft became the first jet-powered airplane to fly. It remained airborne for 7 minutes. Erich Warsitz made the 1st jet-propelled flight.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)(Reuters, 8/28/01)(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Sep, 1, At 4:40 a.m., World War II began. The Germans attacked Poland with their strategy of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The war started at dawn with salvos from the cruiser Schleswig-Holstein at the Polish garrison in Gdansk. In 1989 Donald Cameron Watt authored “How War Came."
(WSJ, 4/26/95, p.A-16)(AP, 9/1/97)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1939 Sep 1, Hitler ordered the extermination of mentally ill.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1939 Sep 1, US Sen. William Borah of Idaho said 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." In 2008 Pres. Bush quoted these words in a speech to the Israeli Knesset.
(AP, 5/17/08)
1939 Sep 1, A transport train carrying 250 children from Czechoslovakia disappeared as Germany invaded Poland. It was the last transport organized by English stockbroker Nicholas Winton (1909-2015).
(Econ, 7/11/15, p.82)
1939 Sep 3, British envoy Sir Neville Henderson delivered Britain’s final ultimatum to the Reich’s Foreign Ministry.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1939 Sep 3, The British passenger ship Athenia was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30 Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1939 Sep 4, German troops stormed into Danzig (Gdansk).
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 4, The Nazis marched into Czestochowa, Poland, two days after they invaded Poland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1939 Sep 4, The Polish ghetto of Mir was exterminated.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1939 Sep 5, In Czestochowa, Poland, approximately 150 Jews were shot dead by the Germans. The day was remembered as “Bloody Monday."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1939 Sep 6, The 1st WW II German air attack on Great Britain took place.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1939 Sep 6, The Union of South Africa declared war on Germany.
(AP, 9/6/07)
1939 Sep 8, Gen. Von Reichenau's panzer division reached the suburbs of Warsaw.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1939 Sep 9, Nazi army reached Warsaw.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1939 Sep 10, Canada declared war on Nazi Germany.
(AP, 9/10/97)
1939 Sep 14, British fleet sank the German U-39 U-boat.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 17, The German U-29 sank the British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 died.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 19, Lord Haw-Haw became the radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 19, Wehrmacht (German regular army) murdered 100 Jews in Lukov, Poland.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 20, After sinking trawlers off the northern Hebrides, German U-27 was located and sunk by destroyers "Fortune" and "Forester."
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 21, Reinhard Heydrich met in Berlin to discuss final solution of Jews.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1939 Sep 25, German Luftwaffe struck Warsaw with fire bombs.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1939 Sep 25, Andorra and Germany finally signed an official treaty ending WW I. The 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty failed to include Andorra.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1939 Sep 27, Germany occupied Warsaw. Poland surrendered after 19 days of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland had endured a brutal 3 day bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe.
(AP, 9/27/97)(HN, 9/27/98)
1939 Sep 28, The Boundary and Friendship Treaty between the USSR and Germany was supplemented by secret protocols to amend the secret protocols of Aug 23. Among other things Lithuania was reassigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland’s partition line was moved eastwards from the Vistula line to the line of the Bug. Germany kept a small part of south-west Lithuania, the Uznemune region. A separate Soviet mutual defense pact was signed with Estonia that allowed 25,000 Soviet troops to be stationed there.
(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.3)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 9/28/97)
1939 Sep 29, Germany and the Soviet Union reached an agreement on the division of Poland. [see Sep 28]
(HN, 9/29/98)
1939 Sep 30, The French Army was called back into France from its invasion of Germany. The attack, code named Operation Saar, only penetrated five miles.
(HN, 9/30/99)
1939 Sep 30, Germany and Russia agreed to partition Poland. [see Sep 28,29]
(MC, 9/30/01)
1939 Sep, 41 U-boats were sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1939 Oct 4, Last Polish troops surrendered to German Wehrmacht.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1939 Oct 6, In an address to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler denied having any intention of war against France and Britain.
(AP, 10/6/97)
1939 Oct 6, Hitler announced plans to resolve "The Jewish problem."
(MC, 10/6/01)
1939 Oct 8, Germany annexed Western Poland.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1939 Oct 14, The German U-47, commanded by Kapitan Gunther Prien, sank the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, Scotland, and 833 people were killed. This prompted Churchill to order the creation of concrete barriers at the eastern entrance of Scapa Flow.
(SFEM, 10/10/99, p.49)(http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hoy/scapa/)
1939 Oct 19, Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering began plundering art treasures throughout Nazi occupied areas.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1939 Oct 24, Nazis required Jews to wear star of David.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1939 Oct 28, Anti-German demonstrations and strikes took place in Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1939 Oct 28, A Spitfire shot down a German Heinkel-111 over Scotland.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1939 Oct 30, German U boat failed in an attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill, Dudley Pound and Charles Forbes aboard.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Oct 30, USSR and Germany agreed on partitioning Poland. Hitler deported Jews.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Oct 31, 27 U boats were sunk this month (135,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1939 Nov 1, 1st jet plane, a Heinkel He 178, was demonstrated to German Air Ministry.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1939 Nov 8, There was a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in Burgerbraukeller, Munich.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1939 Nov 9, In the Venlo-incident, German Abwehr killed 2 English agents.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1939 Nov 15, Nazis began their mass murder of Warsaw Jews.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1939 Nov 16, German U-boat torpedoed the tanker Sliedrecht near Ireland.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1939 Nov 17, German U-boat torpedoed a passenger ship.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1939 Nov 24, In Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo executed 120 students who were accused of anti-Nazi plotting.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1939 Nov 25, Nazis reported four British ships sunk in the North Sea, but London denied the report.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1939 Dec 1, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of Polish Jews.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1939 Dec 13, In the Battle at La Plata 3 British cruisers fought the German "pocket battleship," Graf Spee, which took refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. The following day, the badly damaged ship left port, deliberately ran aground in the bay, where the officers led the crew in scuttling and exploding the Graf Spee. Two days later, the commander of the German warship committed suicide in his Buenos Aires hotel room. Today, at low tide, water commuters between Buenos Aires and Montevideo can see part of the superstructure breaking the surface. [see Dec 13]
(MC, 12/13/01)
1939 Dec 17, In the Battle of River Plate near Montevideo, Uruguay, the British trapped the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. German Captain Langsdorf sank his ship believing that resistance was hopeless. [see Dec 17]
(AP, 12/17/97)(HN, 12/17/98)
1939 Dec 19, The British destroyer HMS Hyperion sighted the German liner Columbus about 400 miles off the coast of Virginia. The still neutral American heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa was also in the area, and silently observed the two ships. Rather than surrender the ship, her crew scuttled her, and she burned and sank. Her passengers and crew, 567 men and nine women, were taken aboard Tuscaloosa as rescued seamen, not as prisoners of war as they would have been had the British picked them up. Tuscaloosa took all personnel to New York City. A year later 512 members of the crew were settled on Angel Island in SF Bay. After the end of war many returned to Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Columbus_%281924%29) (SSFC, 1/18/15, DB p.46)
1939 Dec 20, Hans Langsdorff, German captain of the Graf Spee, committed suicide.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1939 Dec 21, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich named Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B," the group in charge of transport of Jews for Final Solution.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1939 Dec 22, 99 died in 2nd train wreck at Friedrichshafen, Germany.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1939 Dec 22, 125 died in train wreck at Magdeburg, Germany.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1939 Berthold Brecht wrote his play "Mother Courage and Her Children." It was set during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between the German Catholics and Swedish Lutherans.
(WSJ, 1/24/97, p.A13)(WSJ, 10/23/01, p.A24)
1939 Christopher Isherwood wrote "Goodbye to Berlin." It included a story about a singer called Sally Bowles that became the basis for the 1951 play "I Am a Camera," the 1955 film "I Am a Camera," the 1966 musical play "Caberet" and the 1972 musical film "Cabaret." His Berlin books also included "The Last of Mr. Norris," and "I Am a Camera." In 1998 Norman Page published "Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years."
(WSJ, 3/23/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 9/27/98, BR p.8)
1939 Gen. Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord implored Hitler to visit the French front where he planned to kill Hitler and form a new government, but Hitler refused the offer.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A19)
1939 By this time Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, an organization dedicated to studying the Aryan roots for purposes of propaganda, included 137 scholars and scientists plus 82 members of support staff. In 2006 Heather Pringle authored “The Master Plan," an account of the Ahnenerbe.
(WSJ, 2/9/06, p.D8)
1939 Two Germany scholars unearthed a cache of mammoth ivory fragments in a cave. The pieces were fitted together after 3 decades and were found to form a 30 cm. high figure with human legs, an arm and the head of a lion. The Der Lowenmensch figure had been carved some 40 thousand years earlier.
(Econ, 2/2/13, p.71)
1939-1945 In 2015 Nicholas Stargardt authored “The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945."
(Econ, 9/26/15, p.86)
1939-1945 Heinrich Mohn and his associates used the war to transform Bertelsmann from a German provincial publisher of religious texts into the largest supplier of war literature to Hitler’s army.
(WSJ, 12/23/02, p.A6)
1939-1945 During WW II some 5-15,000 homosexual men were sent to prison camps and marked for special treatment with a pink triangle on their uniforms. The majority died in the camps.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A18)
1939-1945 During WW II the Germans and Ukrainians used Transdniestria as a killing field to purge Europe of some 150,000 Jews.
(SSFC, 2/12/06, p.E2)
1939-1945 Ball bearing, aircraft and oil production factories share top billing on the Allied bombing planners’ hit list. Ball bearings were vital to keep the German military machinery running, and Schweinfurt factories produced more than 40 percent of the country’s needs. The German aviation industry alone consumed an average of 2.4 million bearings per month.
(HNQ, 8/14/01)
1940 Jan 10, German planes attacked 12 ships off the British coast; three sank and 35 were dead.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1940 Jan 16, Hitler canceled an attack in the West due to bad weather and the capture of German attack plans in Belgium.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1940 Jan 25, Nazis established a Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1940 Jan 26, Nazis forbade Polish Jews to travel on trains.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1940 Feb 12, The USSR signed a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1940 Feb 15, Hitler ordered that all British merchant ships would be considered warships.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1940 Feb 20, Christoph Eschenbach, pianist, conductor, was born in Breslau, Germany.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1940 Feb 21, The Germans began construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz. Hans Munch was an SS doctor at the camp and later reported his experiences there in detail for the 1998 TV documentary "People’s Century."
(HN, 2/21/98)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)
1940 Feb 22, German air force sank 2 German destroyers killing 578.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1940 Mar 1, U.S. envoy, Sumner Welles met with Hitler in Berlin.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1940 Mar 3, A Nazi air raid killed 108 on a British liner in the English Channel.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1940 Mar 9, Britain freed captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop's visit to Rome.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1940 Mar 15, Reichsmarshal Herman Goering said 100-200 church bells are enough for Germany and smelted the rest.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1940 Mar 16, Germany launched an air raid on British fleet base at Scapa Flow.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1940 Mar 16, In San Francisco fourteen crewmen of the scuttled German liner Columbus, sailed for the Fatherland aboard the Italian motorship Rialto. A 2nd group soon followed. Both ships were boarded by the British in Gibraltar and the Germans were sent to a French prison camp. 451 others remained quartered on Angel Island.
(SSFC, 3/15/15, p.42)(SFC, 6/11/16, p.C2)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1940 Mar 20, The British RAF conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1940 Mar 27, Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Feb 21]
(MC, 3/27/02)
1940 Apr 8, German battle cruisers sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1940 Apr 9, The Nazi army invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway. German forces landed along the Norwegian coast and made a paratrooper assault on Oslo and Stavanger.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)(AP, 4/9/97)(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1940 Apr 10, The HMS Hunter, a British destroyer, went down with 110 men in the fist Battle of Narvik as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces from overrunning a strategic Norwegian port. Germany lost 4 destroyers in the battle. In 2008 a Norwegian minehunter found the wreck
(AP, 3/9/08)
1940 Apr 13, In the 2nd battle of Narvik, 8 German destroyers were destroyed.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1940 Apr 28, Rudolf Hoess became commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1940 Apr, The Germans sealed the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, with barbed wire. Lodz at this time had some 231,000 Jews, about one-third of the city’s population. Some 45,000 Jews from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were forced into the ghetto as well as some 5,000 Gypsies. Many died under forced labor and horrific conditions. Those remaining were killed in August, 1944.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A17)
1940 May 1, 140 Palestinian Jews died as German planes bombed their ship.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1940 May 8, German commandos in Dutch uniforms crossed the Dutch border to hold bridges for the advancing German army.
(HN, 5/8/99)
1940 May 10, German forces began a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line. Belgium was invaded by Germany and maintained resistance for 18 days.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(HN, 5/10/02)
1940 May 12, The Nazi blitz conquest of France began with the crossing at the Muese River.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1940 May 14, The Netherlands (Holland) surrendered to Nazi Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam that left 600-900 dead.
(HN, 5/14/98)(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 14, German breakthrough at Sedan, France.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 15, German troops occupied Amsterdam. Gen Winkelman surrendered.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 15, German armor division moved into Northern France.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 16, Jacques Goudstikker, Dutch art dealer, fell on a staircase of the SS Bodegraven as the ship was refused entry at Dover. He died from a broken neck. His inventory in Amsterdam totaled some 1,400 works, which Reichsmarschall Herman Goring, Hitler’s 2nd in command, soon snapped up.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.D7)
1940 May 17, The Nazis occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War II.
(AP, 5/17/97)
1940 May 18, German forces under Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler (1881-1968) occupied Antwerp, Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk. British and French forces staged a counterattack near Arras, but failed to clear a path to Le Havre.
(HN, 5/21/98)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 21, British tank forces attacked General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.
(HN, 5/21/99)
1940 May 24, Hitler ordered a halt to his forces converging on Dunkirk and the British, who were backed to the sea. This event and the next 4 days were described in the 1999 book: "Five Days in London, May 1940" by John Lukacs.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A48)
1940 May 24, Hitler affirmed Gen. von Rundstedt's "Stopbevel."
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 24, German tanks reached Atrecht, France.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 25, German troops conquered Boulogne and captured Calais.
(SC, 5/25/02)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 26, Operation Dynamo was launched for the evacuation of British, French and Belgian soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France. The German Luftwaffe launched a bombing campaign on the harbor of Dunkirk. The new British Spitfire fighters helped provide air cover. The operation continued to June 4.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)(AP, 5/26/97)(ON, 8/12, p.2)
1940 May 28, During World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/98)
1940 May 28, During the evacuation at Dunkirk a Germany torpedo boat sank the HMS Wakeful sending over 700 men to their deaths. A Germany submarine hit the destroyer HMS Grafton killing 35 army officers. Other British destroyers mistook the British drifter Comfort for an enemy torpedo boat and killed all but 5 men aboard. The Queen of the Channel was hit by Germany bombs. Most of the 950 soldiers on board were transferred to a rescue ship before the ferry went down.
(ON, 8/12, p.3)
1940 May 29, Germans captured Ostend and Ypres in Belgium and Lille in France.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1940 May 29, The German air force launched massive attacks on the harbor at Dunkirk. A British destroyer and 6 of the biggest merchant ships in the harbor were sunk.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 May-1944 Dec, In Austria approximately 30,000 physically and mentally disabled were killed at Hartheim Castle by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, named after the infamous Berlin address "Tiergartenstrasse 4." The castle was regularly visited by the psychiatrists Karl Brandt, Professor of Psychiatry at Würzburg University, and Werner Heyde.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Hartheim)
1940 Jun 1, German air attacks at Dunkirk sank 31 vessels and damaged 11. The HMS Worcester limped back to Dover with 340 dead and 400 wounded. By midnight 64,429 men were landed safely in England.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 Jun 3, The German Luftwaffe hit Paris with 1,100 bombs.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1940 Jun 4, German forces entered Paris.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1940 Jun 4, The Allied military evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. Operation Dynamo counted 235 vessels lost as well as 177 aircraft in combat at Dunkirk and the English Channel. French defenders surrendered. Some 30-40,000 French troops became prisoners of war.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 Jun 5, The Battle of France began during World War II. Germany attacked French forces along the Somme line.
(HN, 6/5/99)(AP, 6/5/07)
1940 Jun 9, Norway surrendered to the Nazis during World War II, effective at midnight.
(AP, 6/9/07)
1940 Jun 11, The German invasion of France was under way and the British had been forced to abandon their defense of northwestern France and Belgium at Dunkirk.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)
1940 June 14. The Nazis opened their concentration camp at Auschwitz. In German-occupied Poland the first inmates arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were all Polish political prisoners.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 6/14/97)(AP, 6/14/98)
1940 Jun 15, The French fortress of Verdun was captured by Germans.
(HN, 6/15/98)
1940 Jun 17, France asked Germany for terms of surrender in World War II. Marshal Henri Petain replaced Paul Reynaud, who chose to resign over surrender, as prime minister and announced his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. In 2000 Ernest R. May authored "Strange Victory," an account of the French defeat.
(AP, 6/17/97)(WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)(MC, 6/17/02)
1940 Jun 19, German 7th Armour division under gen-maj Rommel occupied Cherbourg.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1940 Jun 21, German occupiers disbanded the Dutch States-General, Council of State.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1940 Jun 22, During World War II, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris. France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis. Alsace again became part of Germany.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/22/98)(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T4)
1940 Jun 25, Adolf Hitler viewed the Eiffel tower and tomb of Napoleon in Paris.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1940 Jun, Hitler confided to Mussolini his plan to ship Jews to Madagascar.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1940 Jun, The Germans began to loot the artwork of Paris and more than 70,000 residences were plundered. A lot of artwork was sold to the Emil Buhrle Foundation in Switzerland, the largest buyer of confiscated French art. The story is told by Hector Feliciano in his 1997 book: "The Lost Museum." The best book on the fate of European art in WW II was reported to be "The Rape of Europa" by Lynn Nicholas.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.7)
1940 Jul 9, German Evangelist Church protested against euthanasia programs.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1940 Jul 10, During World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By October 31, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses. Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937), the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book "The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(AP, 7/10/97)(ON, 3/07, p.2)(ExH, 3/23/98)
1940 Jul 10-1940 Oct 31, The Battle of Britain in July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly decisive campaign (not just a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe gathered over 2,500 combat planes for a bombing campaign that would be a prelude to "Operation Sea Lion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air Marshall Hugh C. Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could muster about 650 decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The Luftwaffe came perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at about that time, a German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London, Churchill bombed Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack from the R.A.F. to London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The Luftwaffe’s bombers carried too small a bomb load for a strategic bombing campaign and were inadequately armed to defend themselves against R.A.F. fighters. The Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the range to provide sufficient escort for the bombers, which were massacred by Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Germans knew that the British radar installations existed, and did launch some attacks upon them, but never realized how vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F. fighters to intercept raiding aircraft. In 1969 the film “Battle of Britain" starred Laurence Olivier as Hugh C. Dowding. In 2010 James Holland authored “The Battle of Britain: Five Months That Changed History."
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.93)
1940 Jul 14, A force of German Ju-88 bombers attacked Suez, Egypt, from bases in Crete.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1940 Jul 19, Hitler ordered Great Britain to surrender.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1940 Jul 23, German bombers began the "Blitz," the all-night air raids on London.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1940 Jul 31, Reich's Kommissar Seyss-Inquart banned homosexuals.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 11, 38 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1940 Aug 12, Luftwaffe bombed British radar stations and lost 31 aircraft.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1940 Aug 13, Der Adler Tag (Eagle Day) was the name given to the day the German Luftwaffe launched an all-out offensive against the Royal Air Force and the British aircraft industry in southern England. With this action, Adolf Hitler hoped to knock out any aerial resistance to his planned invasion of the British Isles. RAF fighter pilots successfully held off the numerically superior Luftwaffe, in spite of the loss of 415 pilots out of a force of 1,500.
(HNPD, 8/13/98)
1940 Aug 15, In the largest–scale raids in the history of aerial warfare, hundreds of Germany planes struck against London and its suburbs. Hitler’s planned Operation Sea Lion was to have commenced on this day. However it was cancelled on Aug 17 following heavy German air raid losses. In 2008 Michael Korda authored “With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain."
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Aug 16, 45 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1940 Aug 18, 71 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1940 Aug 23, German Luftwaffe began night bombing on London.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed London.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1940 Aug 25, The 1st (British) night bombing of Germany was over Berlin.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1940 Sep 3, In Germany the SS banned Free Masons, Rotary & Red Cross.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 7, Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights. Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler believed would soften Britain for an invasion. The invasion, "Operation Sea Lion," never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over England. The blitz only strengthened Britain's resistance. The defense of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called "their finest hour."
(AP, 9/7/97)(HN, 9/7/98)
1940 Sep 9, 28 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1940 Sep 13, Buckingham Palace was hit by German bombs causing superficial damage.
(http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september13.html)
1940 Sep 15, The tide turned in Battle of Britain in WW II. A reported 185 German planes were shot down by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to abandon his invasion plans.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)
1940 Sep 17, Nazis deprived Jews of possessions.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1940 Sep 19, A Nazi decree forbade gentile woman to work in Jewish homes.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1940 Sep 24, Luftwaffe bombed the Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 25]
(MC, 9/24/01)
1940 Sep 25, German High Commissioner in Norway set up the Vidikun Quisling government.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 25, Luftwaffe bombed the Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 24]
(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 27, 55 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 27, Nazi-Germany, Italy and Japan signed a formal alliance called Tripartite Pact, a 10 year military and economic alliance strengthening the Axis alliance.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep, 59 U-boats were sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 8, German troops occupied Romania.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1940 Oct 15-16, London's Waterloo Station was bombed by Germans. The bombing continued on London for 2 days and killed 400 people.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1940 Oct 16, The Warsaw Ghetto was formed by Nazi SS troops.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1940 Oct 20, German troops reached the approaches to Moscow.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1940 Oct 24, Hitler met Marshal Petain.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 24, Protestant churches [in Germany?] protested against the dismissal of Jewish civil servants.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 25, German troops captured Kharkov and launched a new drive toward Moscow.
(HN, 10/25/98)
1940 Oct 25, Hitler visited Mussolini in Florence.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 28, A meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place in Florence.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Oct 31, 63 U boats were sunk this month (325,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Oct 31, In the Battle of Britain, the German and British duel for control of English Channel, ended.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Nov 14, During World War II, German planes destroyed most of the English town of Coventry.
(AP, 11/14/97)
1940 Nov 19, A German air raid on Birmingham failed.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1940 Nov, The Nazi Bielfield memorandum argued for the seizure of Belgian and French Congo, Equatorial French Africa and a large portion of French West Africa; naval bases were earmarked for Dakar, Conakry and the Canary Islands, while Madagascar was reserved as a ‘dumping-ground’ for Jews. This vast area was to be exploited for its natural resources, upon which Germany’s European empire would be built.
(www.hodder.co.uk/lounge/blogpost.aspx?BlogPostID=68)
1940 Dec 6, The Gestapo arrested Helen Ernst, German resistance fighter and poster artist.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1940 Dec 13, Hitler issued preparations for Operation Martita, the German invasion of Greece.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1940 Dec 18, Hitler dictated Directive No. 21 to crush Russia in a quick campaign. Adolf Hitler signed a secret directive ordering preparations for a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation "Barbarossa" was launched in June 1941.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(AP, 12/18/97)
1940 Dec 29, During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1940 Richard Strauss composed the opera "Die Liebe der Danae." The libretto by Joseph Gregor was based on a scenario by Hugo von Hoffmanstahl and conflated two stories, the love affair of Jupiter and Danae and the story of King Midas.
(WSJ, 1/31/00, p.A42)
1940 Gen’l. Eduard Dietl led a surprise capture of Narvik, the Norwegian Atlantic ice-free port.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A12,14)
1940 After the Nazi invasion most of Denmark’s police were killed.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)
1940 From Greece the occupying Germans started transporting the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki to Auschwitz.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1940 In Poland "the Nazis packed 450,000 human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then walled it off and left them to starve."
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1940-1941 A secret Nazi program, code-named T4, killed an estimated 70,000 disabled or mentally ill adults in specially established death camps during this period.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A9)
1940-1941 German paratroopers were decimated in the battle for Crete.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1940-1944 Germany occupied France. In 1998 Ian Ousby published "Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944." In 2009 Frederic Spotts authored “The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation." In 2009 Charles glass authored “American in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944." In 2010 Alan Riding authored “And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied France."
(SFEC, 8/16/98, Par p.8)(WSJ, 1/3/09, p.W6)(Econ, 5/2/09, p.84)(Econ, 11/20/10, p.96)
1940-1945 In 2006 the 2002 German book “The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945" by Jorg Friedrich (b.1944), was made available in English.
(Econ, 12/2/06, p.85)
1940-1945 Turkey supplied Germany and the Allies with chromite ore, an essential metal for stainless steel.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A13)
1941 Jan 10, The Soviets and the Germans agreed on the East European borders and the exchange of industrial equipment.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1941 Jan 11, Adolf Hitler ordered forces to be prepared to enter North Africa to assist the Italian effort, marking the establishment of the Afrika Korps.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1941 Jan 11, Emanuel Lasker (b.1868), German mathematician and chess player, died. In 1927 he authored “Lasker’s Manual of Chess."
(WSJ, 3/22/08, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Lasker)
1941 Jan 20, Hitler met with Mussolini and offered aid in Albania and Greece.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1941 Feb 10, Iceland was attacked by German planes.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1941 Feb 11, Lt-Gen Erwin Rommel arrived in Tripoli.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1941 Feb 14, German Afrika Korps landed in Tripoli, Libya.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1941 Feb 17, The SS Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The British ship was carrying some 219 tons of silver when it sank in the North Atlantic some 300 miles (490 km) off the Irish coast. Of the 85 people on board, only one survived. In 2011 Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration confirmed the identity and location of the ship. In 2012 Odyssey Marine Exploration said it had succeeded in removing about 43% of the insured silver.
(AFP, 9/27/11)(www.shipwreck.net/ssgairsoppahistoricaloverview.php)(SFC, 7/18/12, p.A2)
1941 Feb 19, Nazi police were attacked and driven away from Koco, Amsterdam by young Jews. Nazis raided Amsterdam and rounded up 429 young Jews for deportation.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1941 Feb 20, The 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps left Plotsk, Poland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 20, Nazis ordered Polish Jews barred from using public transportation.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1941 Feb 22, IG Farben started building Buna-Werke in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1941 Feb 27, Jewish musicians came together in Berlin and performed Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony. In 2001 Martin Goldsmith authored "The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany."
(SSFC, 4/8/01, BR p.5)
1941 Mar 1, Bulgaria joined the Axis as the Nazis occupy Sofia.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(HN, 3/1/98)
1941 Mar 1, Himmler inspected the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1941 Mar 3, Netherlands NSB-leader Mussert visited Göring in Berlin.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1941 Mar 4, Serbian Prince Paul visited Hitler.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1941 Mar 7, Gunther Prien, German U-boat commander and war hero (U-47), died in battle.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1941 Mar 13, Hitler issued an edict calling for an invasion of the USSR
(HN, 3/13/98)
1941 Mar 20, Nazi German-Yugoslav pact was drawn.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1941 Mar 24, German troops occupied El Agheila, Libya.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1941 Mar 27, Hitler signed Directive 27 for an assault on Yugoslavia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1941 Mar 30, The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1941 Mar 30, The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel began its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
(HN, 3/30/99)
1941 Mar 31, Germany began a counter offensive in North Africa.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1941 Apr 1, Nazi's forbade Jews access to cafes in Paris.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1941 Apr 3, Churchill warned Stalin of German invasion.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1941 Apr 5, German commandos secured docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany's invasion of the Balkans.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1941 Apr 6, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop gave orders for the attack on Yugoslavia to roll forward. Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb Belgrade prior to the final drive into the capital. From August 6 to 10, more than 500 bombing sorties were flown against Belgrade, inflicting more than 17,500 fatalities. Most of the government officials fled, and the Yugoslav army began to collapse. German Luftwaffe Marshall Alexander Lohr commanded a surprise air attack on Belgrade and 17,000 died. Lohr was later tried and executed for the bombings.
(www.thehistorynet.com/wwii/blbelgradebybluff/)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A21)
1941 Apr 6, German troops invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia. Germany, with support of Italy and other allies defeated Greece and Yugoslavia.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(www, Albania, 1998)
1941 Apr 9, In Czestochowa, Poland, a ghetto for Jews was created. By the end of WW II some 45,000 of Czestochowa's Jews were murdered by the Germans, almost the entire Jewish community living there.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%99stochowa)
1941 Apr 11, Germany bombers blitzed Coventry, England.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1941 Apr 11, The Jewish Weekly newspaper was taken control by Nazis.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1941 Apr 12, Alain Le Ray (1910-2006), a leader in the French Resistance, become the first to escape from the infamous Colditz prison in Germany. Le Ray had been captured in June 1940. The Nazis had touted the jail as escape proof, and his exploits were recounted in the 1976 book "Premiere a Colditz" ("First in Colditz").
(AP, 6/8/07)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/naziprison/cold_01.html)
1941 Apr 12, Vichy-France's head of government Admiral Dalan consulted with Hitler.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1941 Apr 13, There was a heavy German assault on Tobruk.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1941 Apr 14, The 1st massive German raid in Paris rounded up 3,600 Jews.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1941 Apr 17, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany ending 11 days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(AP, 4/17/97)(MC, 4/17/02)
1941 Apr 19, B. Brecht's 1939 play "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children)," premiered in Zurich.
(www.theatre.ubc.ca/mother_courage/subject.shtml)
1941 Apr 20, 100 German bombers attacked Athens.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1941 Apr 21, Greece surrendered to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1941 Apr 27, The Greek army capitulated to the Germans. Greece and the Greek islands were secured by Hitler.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(HN, 4/27/98)
1941 May 1, A German assault took place on Tobruk.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1941 May 2, Martin Bormann succeeded Rudolf Hess as Hitler's deputy.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1941 May 3, There was a German air raid on Liverpool.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1941 May 3, Pierre Seel (17) was arrested in Alsace-Lorraine by the German Gestapo and tortured for 10 days for his homosexuality. In 1994 he authored the memoir “I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual."
(SFC, 12/2/05, p.B5)
1941 May 9, The German submarine U-110 was captured at sea by the Royal Navy, revealing considerable Enigma material. Enigma was the German machine used to encrypt messages during World War II.
(HN, 5/9/99)(HNQ, 8/30/00)
1941 May 10, Rudolf Hess (d.93), a deputy of Adolf Hitler, parachuted into Scotland to see the Duke of Hamilton on what he claimed was a peace mission. Hess ended up serving a life sentence at Spandau prison until 1987, when he apparently committed suicide.
(AP, 5/10/97)(ON, 4/02, p.7)
1941 May 11, The 1st Messerschmidt 109F was shot down above England.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1941 May 13, Martin Bormann was named head of Nazi Party Chancellery in Germany.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1941 May 15, All preparations for the German attack against Russia in Operation Barbarossa were to be finalized.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1941 May 15, Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbade Jewish music.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1941 May 16, The last great German air attack on Great Britain was at Birmingham.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1941 May 19, German occupiers in Holland forbade bicycle taxis.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1941 May 19, The new 823.5-foot Nazi battleship Bismarck left Gdynia, Poland, under the command of Commander Gunther Lutjens.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck)(ON, 10/09, p.1)
1941 May 20, Germany invaded Crete by air.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1941 May 24, The German battleship Bismarck sank the British dreadnought HMS Hood in the North Atlantic. 1416 died with only three survivors.
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/99)(ON, 10/09, p.2)
1941 May 26, Ark Royal airplane sighted the German battleship Bismarck.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1941 May 26, German occupiers began youth labor.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1941 May 27, The German battleship Bismarck was sunk off France by British naval and air forces with a loss of more than 2,100 lives. British ships rescued 4 officers and 106 of the crew. A German fishing vessel was reported to have rescued another 100 men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck)(AP, 5/27/07)(ON, 10/09, p.5)
1941 Jun 1, Germany banned all Catholic publications.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1941 Jun 1, The German Army completed the capture of Crete as the Allied evacuation ended.
(HN, 6/1/99)
1941 Jun 3, German occupiers stamped "J" on Jewish passports.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1941 Jun 4, Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern (b.1859), the last German emperor (1888-1918), died in the Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor)
1941 Jun 18, Turkey signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1941 Jun 22, German troops invaded Russia and thereby violated the 1939 Russo-German non-aggression pact. Under the codename Barbarossa, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the largest invasion of another country in history. In 2005 Constantine Pleshakov authored “Stalin’s Folly," and David E. Murphy authored "What Stalin Knew." Both provide accounts of the invasion and Stalin’s refusal to acknowledge warning signs.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/22/98)(WSJ, 6/22/05, p.D12)
1941 Jun 24, The entire Jewish male population of Gorzhdy, Lithuania, was exterminated.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1941 Jun 24, Germans advanced into Russia and took Vilnius, Brest-Litovsk and Kaunas.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1941 Jun 25, Germans invaded Dubno, Poland, and encouraged the Ukrainians to do whatever they want to 12,000 Jews living there.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1941 Jun 28, German and Romanian soldiers killed 11,000 Jews in Kishinev.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1941 Jun 28, German troops occupied Galicia, Poland.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1941 Jun 29, Nazi divisions in a surprise assault made sweeping advances toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. Joseph Stalin had ignored warnings that Hitler would betray the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. Over 500,000 square miles of Russian territory were taken in the first two months of the invasion.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1941 Jun, In the northeastern city of Iasi, Romania, up to 12,000 people are believed to have died as Romanian and German soldiers swept from house to house to killing Jews. Those who did not die were systematically beaten, put in cattle wagons in stifling heat and taken to a small town, where what happened to them would be concealed. Of the 120 people on the train, just 24 survived. In 2010 a mass grave was found containing the bodies of an estimated 100 Jews killed by Romanian troops in a forest near the town of Popricani, about 350 km northeast of Bucharest. It contained the bodies of men, women and children who were shot in 1941.
(AP, 6/14/03)(AP, 11/5/10)
1941 Jul 5, German troops reached the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1941 Jul 6, German planes attacked the SS Devon off the east coast of England. Reginald Earnshaw (14) died in the attack after serving for several months. In 2010 he was hailed as the youngest known British service casualty in World War II.
(AP, 2/5/10)
1941 Jul 7, Nazis executed 5,000 Jews in Kovno, Lithuania.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1941 Jul 8, Twenty B-17s flew in their first mission with the Royal Air Force over Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
(HN, 7/8/98)
1941 Jul 12, Moscow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe for the first time.
(HN, 7/12/98)
1941 Jul 18, SS troops drowned 40 Jews in Dvina River in Belorussia.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1941 Jul 21, Himmler ordered the building of the Majdanek concentration camp. The camp was built in eastern Poland as a principal site to exterminate Jews. It contained 7 gas chambers.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(MC, 7/21/02)
1941 Jul 24, Nazis massacred the entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1941 Jul 27, The German army entered Ukraine.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1941 Jul, The 16,000 sq. mile area of the Ukraine named Transnistria was granted by Hitler to the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu for Romania’s participation in the war against the soviet Union. Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and were Moldova were transferred here and many thousands were murdered from 1941-1944 by the Romanian Gendarmeric, the Einsatrzgruppe D, Ukrainian police and Sonderkommando R.
(WSJ, 7/30/97, p.A15)
1941 Aug 1, Luftwaffe bombed the German 23rd division.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1941 Aug 2, German 11th Army surrounded 20 Russian divisions at Uman.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1941 Aug 5, The German army completed taking 410,000 Russian prisoners in Uman and Smolensk pockets in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1941 Aug 11, Soviet bombers raided Berlin but caused little damage.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1941 Aug 12, French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain announced full French collaboration with Nazi Germany.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1941 Aug 13, A prototype of the GEE or AMES Type 7000 British radio navigation system was lost on a raid over Hanover, Germany. GEE was devised by Robert Dippy and developed at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage. Dippy later went to the United States where he worked on the development of the LORAN system. Loran, long-range navigation, later fell out of favor with the development of satellite-based navigation systems.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEE_%28navigation%29)(Econ, 3/12/11, TQ p.21)
1941 Aug 14, Josef Jakobs, German spy, was executed in Tower of London.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1941 Aug 19, The final German assault on Tallinn began.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_evacuation_of_Tallinn)
1941 Aug 20, Adolf Hitler authorized the development of the V-2 missile.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1941 Aug 21-Sep 26, The Soviet Union's greatest defeat in WWII occurred during the encirclement of the Ukrainian city of Kiev. The Germans took some 665,000 Soviet prisoners.
(HNQ, 8/12/98)
1941 Aug 22, Nazi troops reached Leningrad.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1941 Aug 25, German troops conquered Novgorod, Leningrad.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1941 Aug 27, The Soviet armada began to move out of Tallinn. By the next day 5 ships were sunk by German bombers and Soviet ships began to encounter minefields set by the Kriegsmarine and Finnish Navy. The Soviets succeeded in evacuating 165 ships, 28,000 passengers and 66,000 tons of equipment from Tallinn.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_evacuation_of_Tallinn)
1941 Aug 28, The German U-boat U-570 was captured by the British and renamed Graph.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1941 Aug 29, The German Einsatzkommando in Russia killed 1,469 Jewish children.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1941 Aug 30, The World War II siege of Leningrad began as Nazi forces took Mga.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1941 Aug, In Germany public protests curtailed the Nazi euthanasia program that had already gassed some 70,000 mentally handicapped German adults and children.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1941 Aug, 23 German U-boats were sunk this month (80,000 ton).
(MC, 8/31/01)
1941 Sep 1, Jews living in Germany were required to wear a yellow Star of David. [see Oct 24, 1939]
(MC, 9/1/02)
1941 Sep 3, Nazis made the 1st use of Zyclon-B gas in Auschwitz on Russian prisoners of war.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1941 Sep 4, German submarine U-652 fired at the U.S. destroyer Greer off Iceland, beginning an undeclared shooting war.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1941 Sep 6, Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.
(AP, 9/6/97)(HN, 9/6/98)
1941 Sep 8, The 900-day Siege of Leningrad by German forces began during World War II. The Siege of Leningrad, 400 miles northwest of Moscow, took place with Germany spread along a 2,000 mile front. It led to the death of at least one million Russians from starvation and disease. Leningrad was renamed back to St. Petersburg in 1991. In 2011 Anna Reid authored “Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II."
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(AP, 9/8/06)(Econ, 8/27/11, p.73)
1941 Sep 12, The US ship Busko captured the 1st German ship in WW II.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1941 Sep 15, Nazis killed 800 Jewish women at Shkudvil, Lithuania.
(MC, 9/15/01)
1941 Sep 19, German army conquered Kiev.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1941 Sep 19, The Nazi's forced all German Jews from the age of 6 to wear the Star of David.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1941 Sep 21, The German Army cut off the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1941 Sep 23, Germans staged an air raid on the Russian naval base at Kronstadt. The battleship Marat sank.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1941 Sep 24, There was a bomb explosion in German headquarters in Hotel Continental in Kiev.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1941 Sep 26, In Ukraine some 33,761 Jews of Kiev were killed over 3 days before Yom Kippur in the ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Over the next 2 years some 100-200 thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC, 6/26/01, p.A8)(MC, 9/26/01)
1941 Sep 29, In Ukraine some 33,711 Jews of Kiev were killed over 2 days before Yom Kippur in the ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Henrich Himmler had sent four strike squads to exterminate Soviet Jewish civilians and other "undesirables." Over the next 2 years some 100-200 thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(HN, 9/29/00)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC, 6/26/01, p.A8)(AP, 11/16/07)
1941 Sep 30, In Ukraine 33,771 Jews were killed in a two-day Nazi operation at Babi Yar ravine near Kiev [see Sep 29]. Einsatzgruppe C was responsible for the shooting of nearly 34,000 at Babi Yar.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar)(AP, 9/28/17)
1941 Sep, 53 U-boats sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1941 Oct 2, Operation Typhoon, a German all-out drive against Moscow, began in earnest. In 2006 Rodric Braithwaite authored “Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War."
(AP, 10/2/97)(http://www.bartcop.com/arc4110.htm)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.95)
1941 Oct 2, 6 Paris synagogues were bombed by Gestapo. [see Oct 3]
(MC, 10/2/01)
1941 Oct 3, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia is "broken" and would "never rise again."
(AP, 10/3/97)
1941 Oct 3, Nazi's blew up 6 synagogues in Paris. [see Oct 2]
(MC, 10/3/01)
1941 Oct 3, All elderly Jewish men of Kerenchug Ukraine, were killed by SS.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1941 Oct 6, German troops renewed their offensive against Moscow.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1941 Oct 8, Construction began on the Birkenau extermination camp.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1941 Oct 10, German U-boat torpedoes hit the US destroyer Kearney.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1941 Oct 10, Soviet troops halted the German advance on Moscow.
(HN, 10/10/98)
1941 Oct 12, Russian government moved from Moscow to Volga as Nazis closed in on Moscow.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1941 Oct 13, Nazis killed 11,000 Jewish children and old people.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1941 Oct 15, The 1st mass deportation of German Jews to Eastern Europe.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1941 Oct 16, Germany advanced within 60 miles of Moscow.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1941 Oct 17, The U.S. destroyer Kearney was damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 people were killed.
(AP, 10/17/08)
1941 Oct 20, Nazi occupiers murdered 500 inhabitants of Kragujevac, Serbia.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1941 Oct 21, The 19-day Battle of Bryansk ended. The city was subjected to heavy artillery and air bombardment and large parts of it was destroyed. After some fierce fighting the Soviet Third Army at Vyazma surrendered to German forces on Oct 14 and the Thirty-Second at Bryansk surrendered on Oct 20.
(www.warhistory.ie/world-war-2/battle-of-vyazma-bryansk.htm)
1941 Oct 24, Adolph Hitler met with Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Reinhard Heydrich, the man in charge of the forthcoming genocide program, and pronounced: "It’s not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews."
(WSJ, 4/12/00, p.A26)
1941 Oct 25, Germany attacked Moscow.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1941 Oct 31, The US Navy destroyer "Reuben James" was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland, killing 115, even though the United States had not yet entered World War II.
(www.archives.gov/exhibits/a_people_at_war/prelude_to_war/uss_reuben_james.html)
1941 Oct 31, 13 U boats were sunk this month (62,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1941 Oct, British, USSR and other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, left the country under disguise with the Italian delegation and relocated to Germany.
(SSFC, 1/8/06, p.D8)
1941 Oct-1941 Nov, Nazi doctor Aribert Heim, dubbed "Dr. Death," worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as camp doctor. Heim fled Germany in 1962.
(AP, 8/24/08)
1941 Nov 2, German troops occupied Rostov.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1941 Nov 6, Einsatz death groups killed some 18 thousand Jews of Rovno, Ukraine. “Einsatzgruppen" were special soldiers who followed the fighting forces and “cleaned up" the area.
(www.members.tripod.com/~ebionite/zikkar.htm#nov)
1941 Nov 7, British air attacks hit Berlin, Mannheim and Ruhrgebied.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1941 Nov 12, Germany's drive to take Moscow halted.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1941 Nov 13, A German U-boat, the U-81 torpedoed Great Britain's premier aircraft carrier, the HMS Ark Royal. The ship sank the next day.
(HN, 11/13/99)
1941 Nov 15, The German final attack on Moscow began. They advanced to within 25 miles of the center of Moscow.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)
1941 Nov 17, German Luftwaffe general and World War I fighter-ace Ernst Udet committed suicide. The Nazi government told the public that he died in a flying accident.
(HN, 11/17/00)
1941 Nov 19, The ship HMAS Sydney was sunk off the west coast of Australia in a battle with the German raider Kormoran, with the loss of all 645 on board. The Kormoran also sank, but 318 of the German vessel's crew of 397 were rescued. The 9,500 ton Kormoran had been disguised as a Dutch merchant ship when it opened fire on the Sydney. The government banned all media from reporting the news for 12 days as it scrambled to explain what happened. In March, 2008, the wrecks of the Kormoran and the Sydney were found. In 2009 a military inquiry said Navy Capt. Joseph Burnett made "errors of judgment" in the tragedy.
(AFP, 8/10/07)(AP, 3/16/08)(Reuters, 4/8/08)(AP, 11/19/08)(AP, 8/12/09)
1941 Nov 22, British cruiser Devonshire sank the German sub Atlantis.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1941 Nov 23, German troops conquered Klin, NW of Moscow.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1941 Nov 24, "Life Certificates" were issued to some Jews of Vilna. The rest were exterminated.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1941 Nov 24, Indian infantry attacked German tanks at Sidi Omar.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1941 Nov 27, USSR began a counter offensive, causing Germans to retreat.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1941 Nov 28, German troops vacated Rostov.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1941 Nov, Some 4,000 who remained in Gomel, Belarus, were shot by the Nazis. Most of the 40,000 who had lived there had managed to escape before the Nazis arrived.
(AP, 4/12/08)
1941 Nov, Nazis in the Ukraine set up a concentration camp near the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, and killed about 5,000 Jews. Their mass grave was found in 2007.
(AP, 6/5/07)
1941 Nov, In Germany Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, met with Adolf Hitler and reportedly urged Hitler to exterminate Jews.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A2)
1941 Dec 3, Hitler viewed Poltava, Ukraine.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1941 Dec 4, Nazi ordinances placed the Jews of Poland outside protection of courts.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1941 Dec 4, Operation Taifun (Typhoon), which was launched by the German armies on October 2, 1941 as a prelude to taking Moscow, was halted because of freezing temperatures and lack of serviceable aircraft. Temperatures near Moscow fell to 40 degrees below zero the breech-blocks of German rifles froze solid. The engines of their vehicles would not start. The Soviets began a counter-attack with 17 armies and their T-34 tanks that included 25 Siberian divisions and the Nazis were forced to retreat in panic.
(SFC, 10/29/97, p.A23)(HN, 12/4/98)
1941 Dec 5, Russian offensive in Moscow drove out the Nazi army.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1941 Dec 7, The 8 month German siege of Tobruk ended.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1941 Dec 8, The Nazi Chelmno extermination camp opened in Poland.
(WUD, 1994 p.252)(MC, 12/8/01)
1941 Dec 8, Russians took Krijukovo back from Germany.
(d.com, 12/8/02)
1941 Dec 9, Hitler ordered US ships torpedoed.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 11, The US declared war on Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(TL, 1988, p.112)(AP, 12/11/97)
1941 Dec 12, German occupying army searched house to house in Paris looking for Jews.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1941 Dec 13, U-81 torpedoed the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1941 Dec 14, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered the construction of defensive positions along the European coastline.
(HN, 12/14/99)
1941 Dec 17, German troops led by Rommel began to retreat in North Africa.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1941 Dec 18, German submarine U-434 sank.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1941 Dec 19, Hitler took complete command of German Army.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1941 Sigmar Polke, artist, was born.
(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.A20)
1941 Luise Rinser (d.2002) authored "The Glass Rings." Nazis blocked a 2nd edition and arrested her in 1944 for high treason. In 1946 she published "A Woman’s Prison Journal."
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A20)
1941 Pelham Graham (PG) Wodehouse (1881-1975), English-US writer, made 5 radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany. This kept him out of England for the last 34 years of his life.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.87)
1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Ante Pavelic led a pro-Nazi dictatorship that controlled newly-independent Croatia. Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb, initially embraced the Pavelic government.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1941 The amber room in St. Petersburg was dismantled by German officers and shipped to Konigsburg for safekeeping. The Allied bombing in 1945 was thought to have destroyed the work.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A16)
1941 Nazi documents from this year showed that the Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi-run Serbian police unit, executed 11,164 people, mostly Serbian Jewish men, suspected communists and Gypsies [see 1942]. The unit was allegedly run by Peter Egner, who emigrated to the US in 1960, and received citizenship in 1966. In 2009 Serbian authorities sought his extradition. In 2010 Serbia issued an international warrant for the arrest of Egner (88), who has denied the accusations.
(AP, 4/14/09)(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 11/26/10)
1941-1945 In Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, the German SS ran Jewish ghetto as a holding station for Jews on their way to death camps.
(SFC, 10/24/97, p.A11)
1941-1945 Some 1600-2000 German soldiers were killed in Montenegro in clashes with Yugoslav communist partisans during WWII.
(AP, 8/10/11)
1941-1945 Sweden maintained neutrality during the war but allowed German troops to cross its territory to invade the Soviet Union. It also allowed 250,000 German troops to use the railroad system to travel between occupied Norway and Germany. The Swedish navy provided escort service for German military supply ships and Swedish industry helped make up for German losses in their ball-bearing industry due to Allied bombing raids.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A13)
1942 Jan 5, 55 German tanks reached North-Africa.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1942 Jan 20, Top Nazis met at Grossen-Wannsee, outside Berlin, and there formulated the infamous "Final Solution" to the Jewish question. Chaired by SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the one-day conference was designed to address the Nazi efforts at removing the Jews. The 15 top-ranking men of the German Reich agreed upon a blueprint for the extermination of Europe’s Jews. Their "final solution" called for exterminating Europe's Jews. Until this time, the plan had been to deport all Jews to the island of Madagascar off Africa, but by 1942 this plan was rejected in favor of transporting Jews to the east where the able-bodied would become slave laborers for the Reich. SS chief Heinrich Himmler would be in charge. Those unfit to work would be, the conference minutes noted, "appropriately dealt with." This phrase was left unexplained, but there was no doubt of its sinister meaning. After approving genocide as Nazi policy, the conference attendees adjourned for lunch. The minutes were taken by Adolf Eichmann. In 2004 Christopher R. Browning authored "The Origins of the Final Solution."
(AP, 1/20/98)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)(HNPD, 1/20/99)(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)(AP, 1/20/12)
1942 Jan 21, In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched a drive to push the British eastward.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1942 Jan 29, German and Italian troops took Benghazi in North Africa.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1942 Jan, The high Nazi bureaucracy received word of the decision to exterminate all Jews at the Wannsee Villa Conference.
(WSJ, 12/31/96, p.5)
1942 Feb 11, The German battleships Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen began their famed channel dash from the French port of Brest. Their journey took them through the English Channel on their way back to Germany.
(HN, 2/11/99)
1942 Feb 12, 3 German battle cruisers escaped via Channel to Brest, N. Germany.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1942 Feb 13, Hitler's invasion of England was cancelled.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1942 Feb 24, The Voice of America went on the air for the first time with broadcasts in German. The US State Dept. made William Winter (d.1999) its first Voice of America three months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
(AP, 2/24/98)(SFC, 11/9/99, p.A23)(MC, 2/24/02)
1942 Feb 26, German battle cruiser Gneisenau was deactivated by bomb.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 26, Werner Heisenberg informed Nazis about uranium project "Wunderwaffen."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1942 Feb 27, British Commandos raided a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. The warrior spies of the Abwehr, Germany's intelligence agency, were the Brandenburg commandos.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1942 Feb 27, The 1st transport of French Jews left to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1942 Feb 28, The German submarine U-578 torpedoed and sank the US destroyer Jacob Jones off the New Jersey coast. Only 11 of some 102 crew members survived.
(SFC, 1/15/05, p.B8)(http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/2174.html)
1942 Feb, The first transport of Jews arrived at Auschwitz, Poland, and the adjoining Birkenau camp. Dr. Josef Mengele (d.1979), the "angel of death," worked at Auschwitz and fled secretly to Sao Paolo, Brazil, after the war. Rudolf Hoess was the last commander of Auschwitz and kept a diary that was used in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1942 Mar 17, The Nazis began deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1942 Mar 17, Belzec Concentration Camp opened. 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews were transported.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1942 Mar 20-22, There was a major German assault on Malta.
(MC, 3/20/02)(MC, 3/21/02)(MC, 3/22/02)
1942 Mar 25-26, The 1st 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached concentration camp Belzec. The Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
(HN, 3/25/98)(MC, 3/25/02)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, A German offensive took place in North-Africa under Colonel-General Rommel.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 28, British naval forces continued the raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire. British Bomber Command launched an attack on the German city of Lubeck with 234 RAF bombers.
(AP, 3/28/97)(HN, 3/28/98)(MC, 3/28/02)
1942 Mar 28, A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, exploded, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.
(HN, 3/28/00)
1942 Mar 29, German submarine U-585 sank.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1942 Mar 30, SS murdered 200 inmates of Trawniki labor camp.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1942 Apr 7, There was a heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1942 Apr 14, Destroyer Roper sank German U-85 of US east coast.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1942 Apr 20, Heavy German assault on Malta.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1942 Apr 20, The battle for Moscow ended. It officially lasted from September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, but in reality spanned more than those 203 days of unremitting mass murder, and marked the first time that Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics. In 2007 Andrew Nagorski authored “The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II."
(WSJ, 1/11/08, p.W6)
1942 Apr 23, A 4-day allied bombing of Rostock began.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 23, Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 24, Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1942 Apr 26, Luftwaffe bombed Bath.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1942 Apr, A stenographic record of Hitler’s conferences with his generals from this time until Apr, 1945, was published in 2003 as: "Hitler and His Generals." It was edited by Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.D10)
1942 Apr, In Germany the Gestapo closed the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse School, the last Jewish school operating in Berlin. A film was made in 1996 of surviving pupils reuniting at the site.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A16)
1942 May 3, The Luftwaffe bombed Exeter.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 3, Nazis executed 72 in reprisal in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands. Johan H. Westerveld, lt.-Col, leader Order Service, was among the executed.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 7, A Nazi decree ordered all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 May 8, German summer offensive opened in Crimea.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1942 May 12, A Nazi U-boat sank an American cargo ship at mouth of Mississippi River.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1942 May 12, The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of the war and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.
(HN, 5/12/99)
1942 May 17, Dutch SS vowed loyalty to Hitler.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1942 May 26, Tank battle at Bir Hakeim: African corps vs. British army.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1942 May 27, German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
(HN, 5/27/99)
1942 May 27, Nazi overlord and SS general Reinhard Heydrich was killed in Prague by Czech commandos, who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia and ambushed his car. Hitler promptly ordered the deaths of 10,000 residents of Lidice, near Prague. Heydrich died of his wounds a week later. The commandos had been sheltered in Lidice and as a result the entire population was either executed or driven out. This has become a hallmark of Nazi brutality. Heydrich was the man charged with "The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem." Heydrich was responsible for the development of an espionage system outside Germany. As an SS general he was the first administrator of the concentration camps and the program to eliminate Jews from Europe.
(HNQ, 10/20/99)(MC, 5/27/02)
1942 May 28, Jean F. van Royen, German secretary PTT (camp Amersfoort), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1942 May 29, The German Army completed its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union. The Red Army had lost over 250,000 men including many prisoners.
(HN, 5/29/99)
1942 May 30, The Royal Air Force under RAF Commander Arthur Harris launched the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany. 1,047 RAF bombers bombed Cologne.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II)
1942 May 30, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler arrived in Prague.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1942 May 31, Luftwaffe bombed Canterbury.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1942 Jun 9, German-Neth press reported that 3 million Dutch were sent to East-Europe.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1942 Jun 10, German Gestapo massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the killing of SS Gen Reinhard Heydrich. All together, 340 people died in the Nazi reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at 1,300. This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.
(AP, 6/10/97)(HN, 6/10/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice)
1942 Jun 13, 1st V-2 rocket launch from Peenemunde, Germany, reached 1.3 km.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1942 Jun 13, Four men landed on a Long Island beach from a German submarine with plans to sabotage NYC’s water system and industrial sites across the Northeastern US. [see Jun 27]
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)
1942 Jun 20, Adolf Eichmann proclaimed the deportation of Dutch Jews.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1942 Jun 21, German General Erwin Rommel captured the port city of Tobruk in North Africa.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1942 Jun 24, The German Africa Corps occupied Egypt.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1942 Jun 25, Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II.
(AP, 6/25/97)
1942 Jun 27, The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from 2 submarines, one off New York’s Long Island and the other off of Florida. The men were tried by a military court and 6 were secretly executed in a DC jail. Ernest Burger and George Dasch were sentenced to 30 years in prison for their help in revealing the plot. They were pardoned in 1948 by Pres. Truman.
(AP, 6/27/97)(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A18)
1942 Jun 28, German troops launched “Operation Blue," an offensive to seize Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus and the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 6/28/98)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1942 Jun 30, Col-gen Von Paulus' 6th Army stormed into the Ukraine.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1942 Jun, By this month 100,000 people of the Nazi imposed Warsaw ghetto had died due to disease or starvation.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Jun, Four men waded ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats. In 2011 declassified British intelligence files described how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the US to undermine the American war effort (See June 13 and June 27).
(AP, 4/4/11)
1942 Jul 1, German troops captured Sevastopol, Crimea, in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1942 Jul 4, 1st American bombing mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II). US air offensive against nazi-Germany began.
(Maggio)
1942 Jul 10, Himmler ordered the sterilization of all Jewish woman in Ravensbruck Camp.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1942 Jul 13, 5,000 Jews of Rovno, Polish Ukraine, were executed by Nazis.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 13, SS shot 1,500 Jews in Josefov, Poland.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1942 Jul 15, A group of 19 merchant ships were being escorted by the US Navy and Coast Guard from Norfolk, Va., to Key West, Fla., to deliver cargo for the war effort. En route Convoy KS-520 was attacked by the German U-576 off of Cape Hatteras near North Carolina. The German submarine damaged two ships and sank Bluefields. In retaliation, a US naval aircraft bombed the U-576. The two ships sank to the ocean floor 30 miles off the cape. All 45 members of U-576 were lost. Wreckage of the two ships was found on Aug 30, 2014.
(www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141021_ww11_vessels.html)
1942 Jul 18, The German Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, made its first flight. Walter Nowotny was a rising your star in the Luftwaffe, chosen by Hitler to be the point man to lead the new jet fighter under the tutelage of General of Fighters Adolf Galland who was assigned to prove the airplane in battle. The Axis hopes were dashed when Nowotny was attacked by American pilots during landing and crashed. Col. Edward R. "Buddy" Haydon was one of those American pilots.
(www.fighter-planes.com/info/me262.htm)(HNQ, 9/2/02)
1942 Jul 19, German U-boats were withdrawn from positions off the U.S. Atlantic coast due to effective American anti-submarine countermeasures.
(HN, 7/19/98)
1942 Jul 22, Nazi’s began their transport of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death at Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Jul 23, A 2nd Treblinka Camp opened for the extermination of European Jews, as the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto began. Nearly 750,000 people died in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
(www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/TreblinkaEng.html)
1942 Jul 24, The Soviet city of Rostov was captured by German troops.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1942 Jul 26, RAF bombed Hamburg.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Jul 27, The advance of German army was halted in the first battle of El Alamein, Egypt.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Jul 30, The US passenger-freighter Robert E. Lee with 268 passengers was sunk by the German U-166 submarine. 15 crew members and 10 passengers died. In 2001 wreckage of the U-166 was found in the Gulf of Mexico and it appeared that it was sunk by Coast Guard PC-566 right after the attack. U-166 had 52 crew members. [see Aug 1, 1942]
(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 Jul 30, German SS einsatzgruppen death battalions killed 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1942 Jul, Hitler made his fateful decision to split the armies engaged in the offensive and to occupy the city of Stalingrad with the weaker of the 2 groups.
(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1942 Aug 1, Ensign Henry C. White, while flying a J4F Widgeon plane, sank U-166 as it approaches the Mississippi River, the first U-boat sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard. In the summer of 1942, German submarines put saboteurs ashore on American beaches. [see Jul 30, 1942]
(HN, 8/1/98)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
1942 Aug 4, The 1st train with Jews departed Mechelen, Belgium, to Auschwitz.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1942 Aug 6, Goering proclaimed occupied areas "thoroughly empty to plunder."
(MC, 8/6/02)
1942 Aug 6, The Soviet city of Voronezh fell to the German army.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1942 Aug 7, Transport 16 departed with French Jews to Nazi-Germany.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1942 Aug 8, Six convicted Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in Washington, D.C. Two others received life imprisonment.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1942 Aug 8, Gerhart Riegner (d.2001 at 90), World Jewish Congress official in Geneva, cabled the US vice consul to describe Hitler’s plan to deport an estimated 4 million Jews to Eastern Europe and to annihilate them.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A19)
1942 Aug 9, Carmelite nun Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, whose given name was Edith Stein (b.1891), was executed by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage. A Roman Catholic convert from Judaism, Stein was an educator, nun, philosopher and spiritual writer and is generally regarded as a modern saint and martyr. Born in Germany on October 12, 1891, she joined the Carmelites in 1934 and wrote a number of important philosophical and spiritual works, including "Finite and Eternal Being." With Hitler's 1942 order for the arrest of all non-Aryan Catholics, Stein was seized and shipped to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where she died in the gas chamber with her sister Rosa. A woman of singular intelligence and learning, she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II at Cologne on May 1, 1987. She was made a saint in 1998.
(HNQ, 10/6/98)(SFC, 10/12/98, p.A1)
1942 Aug 11, The German submarine U-73 attacked a Malta bound British convoy and sank the HMS Eagle, one of the world's first aircraft carriers.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1942 Aug 11, Slovakian-born Adolf Burger (1917-2016) was arrested after he was caught producing fake baptism certificates for Jews to help them escape transportation to Nazi death camps. In 1944 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, Burger became one of 139 inmates who were put to work forging British pound notes, a top secret plan to destabilize Britain known as "Operation Bernhard." Burger described his experiences in "The Commando of Counterfeiters," a 1983 memoir. The film "The Counterfeiters" went on to win the Oscar for best foreign film in 2008.
(AP, 12/8/16)(AFP, 12/8/16)
1942 Aug 19, About 5,000 Canadian and 2,000 British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France. Over 3,600 men perished in this battle. The information gathered from this landing was considered valuable for planning the successful Allied landings in Northern Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, France. Brit. Col. Pat Porteous (d.2000) received a Victoria Cross for his valor in the attack which was aimed at gaining experience for the later D-Day invasion.
(AP, 8/19/97)(HN, 8/19/98)(SFC, 10/16/00, p.A22)(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 19, Gen. Paulus ordered the German 6th Army to conquer Stalingrad.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 23, German forces began an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. From Aug. to Feb. 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad, 600 miles southeast of Moscow, was fought and ended with the encirclement and destruction of the German 6th Army Group. Stalingrad has since been renamed to Volgograd. In 1998 Antony Beevor published "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege." The German in charge was Gen’l. Friedrich Paulus. 600 Luftwaffe bombers killed some 40,000 people in the first week of fighting.
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)(HN, 8/23/98)(MC, 8/23/02)
1942 Aug 25, German SS began transporting Jews of Maastricht, Neth.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1942 Aug 27, Cuba declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1942 Aug 31, The British army under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeated Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1942 Sep 2, German troops entered Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1942 Sep 5, British & US bombed Le Havre & Bremen.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 7, The Red Army pushed back the German line northwest of Stalingrad. The Krummer Lauf allowed German infantry and motorized artillery units to actually fire around corners.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1942 Sep 10, RAF dropped 100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 17, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Moscow as the German Army rammed into Stalingrad.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1942 Sep 21, Nazis executed 116 hostages in Paris.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1942 Sep 23, At Auschwitz Nazis began experimental gassing executions.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 23, The Russian counter offensive at Stalingrad began.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1942 Sep 27, Heavy German assault in Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1942 Sep 27, Reinhard Heydrich, "Butcher of Prague," was appointed SS-general.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1942 Sep 28, Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1942 Sep 30, The German SS exterminated some 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland, in 6 week period.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, 98 U-boats sunk this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, In Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, some 50,000 Jews were held by the German SS in crowded conditions and half the inmates died that year from disease.
(SFC, 10/24/97, p.A11)
1942 Oct 1, The German Army ground to a complete halt within the city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1942 Oct 3, In Germany the rocket-development team of Werner von Braun conducted the 1st successful test flight of an A-4/V-2 missile from the Peenemünde test site. It flew perfectly over a 118-mile course to an altitude of 53 miles (85 km). The 13-ton, 46-foot long V2 rocket was the world’s 1st long-range ballistic missile.
(HN, 10/3/98)(AM, 5/01, p.63)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.A5)
1942 Oct 7, A single salvo Katyusha rocket destroyed a Nazi battalion in Stalingrad.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1942 Oct 18, Hitler orders allied commandos to be killed.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1942 Oct 23, During World War II, Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein in Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1942 Oct 25, Field marshal Erwin Rommel returned to North-Africa.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 29, Nazis murdered some 16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct 31, 94 U boats were sunk this month (619,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct 31, The 9th day in battle at El Alamein (Egypt).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1942 Oct, By this month some 300,000 occupants of the Warsaw ghetto had been shipped off to the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka, Poland.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Nov 4, The 13th day of battle at El Alamein: Axis Africa corps retreated from El Alamein in North Africa in a major victory for British forces commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
(AP, 11/4/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein)
1942 Nov 5, Nazis raided on Greek Jews in Paris.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1942 Nov 6, Nazis executed 12,000 Minsk ghetto Jews.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1942 Nov 8, Hitler proclaimed the fall of Stalingrad from Munich beer hall.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1942 Nov 9, Transport #44 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1942 Nov 11, Germany completed its occupation of France.
(AP, 11/11/04)
1942 Nov 19, During World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front. Soviet forces took the offensive at Stalingrad
(AP, 11/19/97)(HN, 11/19/98)
1942 Nov 20, Hitler named field marshal Erich von Manstein to command.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov 22, Gen-major Rodin's 26th Panzer corps recaptured Ostrov. Hitler ordered Rommel's Africa Korps to fight to last man.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1942 Nov 22, Soviet troops completed the encirclement of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1942 Nov 23, Gen. Von Paulus asked Hitler's permission to surrender at Stalingrad. The German 4th and 6th Army were surrounded at Stalingrad.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1942 Nov 24, Field marshal Erich von Manstein arrived in Starobelsk.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1942 Nov, German troops arrived in Tunisia. The nation was home to some 100,000 Jews at the time. The Germans imposed anti-Semitic policies that included fines, forcing Jews to wear Star of David badges and confiscating property. More than 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died. About 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.
(AP, 1/30/07)
1942 Nov, A Royal Air Force bomber and 2 gliders, carrying 34 British commandos, crash landed in Norway. This was part of Operation Freshman, which planned a raid on the heavy-water plant at Vemork. The survivors were captured by German soldiers and executed by the Gestapo.
(ON, 4/07, p.2)
1942 Dec 5, Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered students in Nazi Germany to work.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1942 Dec 18, Hitler met with Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1942 Dec 28, Ober Kommando Wehrmacht ordered strategic flights out of the Caucasus.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1942 Richard Strauss wrote his final opera "Capriccio" with a libretto by Clemens Krauss. In the work a poet and composer declare their love for a countess who will decide the "words vs. music" debate.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)
1942 In Germany artifacts of the German Baroque were taken from the Green Vault in Dresden to Fortress Konigstein. In 1958 the Soviets returned the lot to Communist Dresden.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.95)
1942 Nazi documents of this year showed that the Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi-run Serbian police unit, killed 6,280 Serbian Jewish women and children who were held as prisoners at Semlin Camp. In two months, those women and children allegedly were taken from a camp and forced into a specially designed van, in which they were gassed with carbon monoxide. The unit was allegedly run by Peter Egner, who emigrated to the US in 1960, and received citizenship in 1966 [see 1941]. In 2010 Serbia issued an international warrant for the arrest of Egner (88), who has denied the accusations.
(AP, 4/14/09)(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 11/26/10)
1942 Alice Sommer Herz (39) of Prague and her son were sent to the Nazi camp at Theresienstadt. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezin, Czechoslovakia. In 2011 a new documentary about Alice Sommer Herz was made public. In 2010 Alice, the world's oldest Holocaust survivor, was about to celebrate her 107th birthday. "Music is God," she said.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw)
1942 Emil von Stauss (65), chief of Deutsche Bank, died. He was a friend of Hitler and helped finance the Nazi war machine. He had acquired a 9% stake in the Wertheim retail chain in a forced sale.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A8)
1942 Nazis forced Greece to make an interest-free loan of 568 million Reichsmark (7.1 billion euros or $7.7 billion). The Economist put the loan at 476 million Reichsmark.
(AP, 3/22/15)(Econ., 3/21/15, p.44)
1942 The Jewish community paid some 1.9 billion drachmas, around 50 million euros ($55 million) today, as ransom to German occupying authorities in Greece in return for 10,000 Jewish men being held as slave laborers. The men were released only to be sent to concentration camps the following year.
(AP, 3/22/15)
1942-1944 SS Captain Bruno Melmer was in charge of valuables stolen from Nazi victims. Gold objects were turned over to the Reichsbank, which sent it to the Degussa smelting company for processing into gold bars.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.A6)
1942-1944 Gen’l. Eduard Dietl (d.1944) led the 20th mountain army and was later found to be responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of prisoners in northern Europe.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A14)
1942-1945 Victor Klemperer (b.1881), a professor in Dresden, in 2000 authored part 2 of his diaries that covered this period: "I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945." His first volume went up to 1941 and was published in 1998.
(WSJ, 3/22/00, p.A20)
1943 Jan 9, Soviet planes dropped leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refused.
(HN, 1/9/99)
1943 Jan 10, Russian offensive began against German 6th and 4th Armies near Stalingrad.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1943 Jan 11, The Soviet Red Army encircled Stalingrad.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1943 Jan 13, The Canadian corvette Ville de Quebec rammed the German U-224 submarine, which sank in the Mediterranean Sea with 57 of its crew. German Lt. Wolf Danckworth was the only survivor. Years later Danckworth established contact with Canadian sailor Frank Arsenault, who was on the Ville de Quebec when it rammed the sub, and the two became good friends.
(SFC, 12/25/10, p.C1)
1943 Jan 18, The Soviets announced they'd broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad. It was another year before the siege was fully lifted.
(AP, 1/18/98)
1943 Jan 18, Jews in Warsaw Ghetto began an uprising against the Nazis. [see Apr 19, 1943]
(MC, 1/18/02)
1943 Jan 21, A Nazi daylight air raid killed 34 in a London school.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1943 Jan 24, Hitler ordered Nazi troops at Stalingrad to fight to death.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1943 Jan 25, The last German airfield in Stalingrad was captured by the Red Army.
(HN, 1/25/99)
1943 Jan 27, Some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven and Emden in the first all-American air raid against Germany during World War II.
(AP, 1/27/98)(HN, 1/27/99)
1943 Jan 30, Field marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1943 Jan 31, The Battle of Stalingrad ended as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army under Gen Friedrich von Paulus surrendered to the victorious Red Army forces.
(HN, 1/31/99)(MC, 1/31/02)
1943 Jan 31, Chile broke contact with Germany and Japan.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1943 Feb 2, The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major World War II victory for the Soviets. 23 generals, 2,000 officers, and at least 130,000 German troops surrendered. This was later considered as the turning point of WW II.
(AP, 2/2/97)(HN, 2/2/99)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
1943 Feb 11, Transport # 47 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1943 Feb 13, There was a German assault on Sidi Bou Zid, Tunisia, as Gen. Eisenhower visited the front.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1943 Feb 14, A German offensive was made through the de Faid pass in Tunisia.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1943 Feb 14, David Hilbert (b.1862), German mathematician, died. He is considered the father of modern mathematics.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.73)(www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs462/Hall/hilbert.html)
1943 Feb 15, The Germans broke the U.S. lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1943 Feb 16, Withdrawing Africa Corps reached the Mareth-line in North Africa.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 16, Sign on Munich facade: "Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!" was posted by the "White Rose" student group. They were caught on 2/18 and beheaded on 2/22.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 16, The Red army conquered Kharkov.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1943 Feb 18, Munich resistance group "White Rose" was captured by Nazis.
(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html)
1943 Feb 18, Rommel took three towns in Tunisia, North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1943 Feb 19, German tanks under brig. general Buelowius attacked Kasserine Pass, Tunisia.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1943 Feb 20, German troops of the Afrika Korps broke through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.
(HN, 2/20/99)
1943 Feb 21, German tanks and two infantry battalions broke the Allied line and took Kasserine Pass in North Africa.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1943 Feb 22, In Germany Christoph Probst (22), Hans (24) and Sophie Scholl (21), student members of the Die Weisse Rose (White Rose) resistance, were executed by the Nazis.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html)
1943 Feb 23, German troops pulled back through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1943 Feb 26, U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators pounded the Reich docks and U-boat lairs at Wilhelmshaven.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1943 Feb 26, The German assault moved to Beja, North Tunisia.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1943 Feb 28, In Operation Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain bombed the Nazi heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg (d.2003) and Knut Haukelid (d.1994).
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)(ON, 4/07, p.4)
1943 Feb, German women demonstrated outside a Berlin community center where their Jewish husbands and children had been rounded up for deportation to Auschwitz. 1,200 men and children were released a week later and survived the war. It was the only public protest by Germans against Nazi persecution of the Jews.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1943 cFeb, German dictator Adolf Hitler had a pet German Shepherd named Blondi. The dog was given to Hitler by Martin Borman in an attempt to cheer up the downcast dictator after the defeat at Stalingrad. High-ranking Nazi Albert Speer claimed Blondi meant more to Hitler than any human being.
(HN, 3/29/00)
1943 Mar 1, The British RAF conducted strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines. From 1939 to 1945, R.A.F. pilots and air crews waged war on Germany from inside Hitler's Reich.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1943 Mar 2, The center of Berlin was bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs were dropped in a half hour.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1943 Mar 2, Sea battle in Bismarck Sea ended with victory for US and Australia.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 2, 1st transport of Jews from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 5, In desperation due to war losses, fifteen and sixteen year olds are called up for military service in the German army.
(HN, 3/5/99)
1943 Mar 5, RAF bombed Essen, Germany. [see Mar 6]
(MC, 3/5/02)
1943 Mar 6, British RAF fliers bombed Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1943 Mar 6, Battle at Medenine, North-Africa: Rommel's assault attack.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1943 Mar 8, 335 allied bombers attacked Nuremberg.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1943 Mar 10, Hitler called Rommel back from Tunisia in North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1943 Mar 13, There was a failed assassination attempt on Hitler during the Smolensk-Rastenburg flight.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1943 Mar 13, Germans closed the Krakow ghetto in Poland.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1943 Mar 15, In Thessaloniki, Greece, occupying German forces began founding up the first batch of Jews in Eleftherias (Freedom) Square. By August 1943, 46,091 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of those, 1,950 survived.
(AP, 3/16/13)
1943 Mar 17, The German occupation authority closed Lithuanian schools of higher education and the Academy of Education.
(LHC, 3/17/03)
1943 Mar 18, The Reich called off its offensive in Caucasus.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1943 Mar 20, German U-384 was bombed and sank.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1943 Mar 21, An assassination attempt on Hitler failed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1943 Mar 22, SS police chief Rauter threatened to kill half Jewish children.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1943 Mar 23, Germans counter attacked US lines in Tunisia.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1943 Mar, Britain hatched the Doctor Project, a secret plan to assassinate German Field Marshall Rommel. It was never executed.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.C2)
1943 Apr 5, The British 8th Army attacked the next blocking position of the retreating Axis forces at Wadi Akarit.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 13, Nazi's discovered a mass grave of Polish officers near Katyn. [see Apr 13, 1990]
(MC, 4/13/02)
1943 Apr 17, SS lt. General Jurgen Stoop arrived in Warsaw.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1943 Apr 19, Willy Graf, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell, German resistance fighters, were beheaded.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1943 Apr 19, In Warsaw, Poland, some 750 young Jews under Mordechai Anielewicz began their 1st urban uprising against the Nazis. During World War II, tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against Nazi forces. SS-Gen Jurgen Stroop led the destruction of the ghetto of Warsaw: "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more!" he wrote proudly to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler. Stroop was hanged on the site of the Warsaw ghetto after the war. Jacek Zlatka (Jack Eisner, 1925-2003) smuggled arms for the revolt. Eisner made a fortune in the import-export business after the war and in 1980 authored the autobiography "The Survivor."
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T11)(AP, 4/19/97)(HN, 4/19/97)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A29)
1943 Mar 20, The Allies attacked Rommel's forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1943 Apr 22, There was German counter attack in North Tunisia.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1943 Apr 22, RAF shot down 14 German transport planes over Mediterranean Sea.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1943 Apr 28, German-Italian forces launched a counter offensive in North-Africa.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1943 Apr 29, Internationally prominent theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer was arrested by Nazis.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1943 Apr 30, Bergen-Belsen, located near Hanover, formed as a POW camp.
(HNQ, 4/13/00)(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Dutch struck against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Etty Hillesum, Dutch diarist, died in Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 May 1, A German plane sank a boat loaded with Palestinian Jews bound for Malta.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1943 May 1, German forces were deployed in the following places: Norway (200,000), France (900,000), Africa (150,000), Balkans (80,000), Finland (180,000), Eastern Europe (210,000), Caucasus (260,000), Russia (1,900,000).
(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)
1943 May 9, The 5th German Panzer army surrendered in Tunisia.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1943 May 11, Hermann Goering division in Tunisia surrendered.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1943 May 12, The Axis forces in Tunisia and all of North Africa surrendered.
(AP, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1943 May 15, Halifax bombers sank U-463.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 15, Warsaw ghetto uprising ended in it's destruction by Nazi-SS troops.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 16, "Skipping bombs" were used for the first and only time to breach three massive Ruhr Valley dams--the Eder, the Mohne and the Sorpe--that supplied water and hydroelectric power to Germany's vital armament factories. The bombs were designed to bounce over anti-torpedo nets and explode at the base of the dams. Despite only two months of training, Royal Air Force Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his "Dambusters" breached the Eder and the Mohne dams and damaged the Sorpe. While subsequent flooding in the Ruhr Valley claimed 1,294 lives, German industrial production was affected only briefly while the dams were repaired.
(HNPD, 5/15/99)
1943 May 16, German troops destroyed the synagogue of Warsaw. Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto ended after 30 days of fighting.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1943 May 19, Berlin was declared "Judenrien" (cleansed of Jews).
(MC, 5/19/02)
1943 May 23, Thomas Mann began writing his novel Dr. Faustus.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1943 May 23-24, Some 826 Allied bombers attacked Dortmund.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1943 May, German captors took American POWs Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. to view mummified corpses of Polish officers massacred in the Katyn forest. They used coded messages to report on the Soviet guilt, but it was suppressed by the Roosevelt administration until a report in 1952. Documents of their coded messages were made public in 2012.
(AP, 9/10/12)
1943 Jun 1, A civilian flight from Lisbon to London was shot down by the Germans during World War II, killing all those aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1943 Jun 5, German occupiers arrested Louvain University's chancellor.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1943 Jun 10, The Allies began bombing Germany around the clock.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1943 Jun 23, RAF discovered and bombed Werner von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1943 Jun 24, Royal Air Force Bombers hammered Muelheim, Germany in a drive to cripple the Ruhr industrial base.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1943 Jun 29, Germany began withdrawing U-boats from North Atlantic in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Europe.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1943 Jul 3, Liberator bombers sank U-628.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1943 Jul 5, The battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, began as German tanks attacked the Soviet salient.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1943 Jul 6, In the 2nd day of battle at Kursk some 25,000 Germans were killed.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1943 Jul 7, Adolf Hitler made the V-2 missile program a top priority in armament planning.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1943 Jul 7, In the 3rd day of battle at Kursk the Germans occupied Dubrova. Erich Hartmann shot 7 Russian aircraft at Kursk.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1943 Jul 8, The 4th day of battle at Kursk: Gen Model used his last tank reserve.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1943 Jul 9, American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. The 'man who never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military history--after his death. In April Britain’s Operation Mincemeat had landed the dead body of an itinerant Welsh laborer, Glyndwr Michael, disguised as a Major Martin, on the shore of Spain near Huelva. False papers on the body led the Germans to believe the allies would attack Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The idea had been originally devised in 1939 as one of 51 submitted by Lt. Commander Ian Fleming. Operation Mincemeat was kept secret until 1953, the same year that “Casino Royale," Fleming’s first James Bond novel was published.
(ON, 10/10, p.5)
1943 Jul 12, Pope Pius XII received Baron von Weizsacker, the German ambassador.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1943 Jul 12, Russians beat Nazis in a tank battle at Prochorowka. Some 12,000 died.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1943 Jul 13, Greatest tank battle in history ended with Russia's defeat of Germany at Kursk. Almost 6,000 tanks took part and 2,900 were lost by Germany.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1943 Jul 18, The U.S. Navy airship K-74 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1943 Jul 19, American planes sank the German U-513 submarine off the coast of southern Brazil. In 2011 researchers from the Vale do Itajai University found the submarine off the coast of Santa Catarina state.
(AP, 7/15/11)
1943 Jul 23, Battle of Kursk, USSR, ended in Nazi defeat. 6,000 tanks took part.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1943 Jul 24-1943-Aug 2, The RAF and American planes bombed Hamburg. Firestorms from the bombing left at least 40,000 dead in the 1st 3 days. American B-17 Fortresses flew 252 daylight sorties in the two days following the first of 4 RAF night raids. Sir Arthur Harris directed 4 major raids against Hamburg in the space of ten nights, known as “Operation Gomorrah."
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Aug 1, Over 177 B-24 Liberator bombers attacked the German oil fields in Ploesti, Romania, for a second time. Of 1,762 airmen on the mission, 532 were killed, captured, interned or listed as missing in action. In 2007 Duane Schultz authored “Into the Fire: Ploesti" The Most Fateful Mission of World War II.
(HN, 8/1/98)(WSJ, 11/13/07, p.D5)
1943 Aug 2, The 10-day allied bombing of Hamburg, Germany, ended.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Aug 2, In Poland at the Nazi Treblinka concentration camp some 600 prisoners staged an uprising and fled into the woods. Only 40 survived. In 1999 Ian MacMillan authored "Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising."
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.5)
1943 Aug 9, Franz Jaegerstaetter, an avowed conscientious objector, was executed outside Berlin for treason after his request to be excused from regular army service for religious reasons was denied. The married father of four was posthumously exonerated in 1997 by a Berlin court. In 2007 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
(AP, 10/27/07)
1943 Aug 10, Hitler watched the lynching of allied pilots.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1943 Aug 16, Bulgarian czar Boris III visited Adolf Hitler.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1943 Aug 17, A mass attack of 376 B-17s attacked the Messerschmitt Bf-109 factory at Regensburg, Germany. 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England.
(www.thisdayinaviation.com/17-august-1943/)
1943 Aug 18, The Royal Air Force Bomber Command completed the first major strike against the German missile development facility at Peenemunde.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1943 Aug 18, The Heinkel-111 of Otto Skorzeny, Waffen SS commander, was shot down at Sardinia.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1943 Aug 18, Hans Jeschonnek, German air force general, chief-staff, committed suicide.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1943 Sep 10, German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1943 Sep 12, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.
(AP, 9/12/97)(MC, 9/12/01)
1943 Sep 13, Germans counter attacked at Salerno.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1943 Sep 14, German troops abandoned the Salerno front in Italy.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1943 Sep 18, Hitler ordered the deportation of Danish Jews (unsuccessful).
(MC, 9/18/01)
1943 Sep 19, Liberator bombers sank U-341.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1943 Sep 22, The Destroyer Keppel sank U-229.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1943 Sep 24, German forces executed 117 Italian officers on the Greek island of Cephalonia. The massacre became the basis for the 1994 bestseller Captain Corelli's Mandolin by British writer Louis de Bernieres. On Oct 18, 2013 an Italian court handed a life sentence in absentia to former German army corporal Alfred Stork (90) for his role in the execution.
(AFP, 10/18/13)
1943 Sep 25, The Red Army retook Smolensk from the Germans who were retreating to the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1943 Sep, Pope Pius XII offered Vatican assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis and in Italy ran an extensive network of hideouts for escaping Jews.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Sep, Jeannie Rousseau, code name Amniarix, collected enough information on V-2 rockets from German officers in France to send a detailed report to England. Reginald Jones, chief of Britain's scientific intelligence, included her text in his book "The Wizard War."
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A10)
1943 Oct 1, Germans attacked Jews in Denmark.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail sentence.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1943 Oct 6, Himmler ordered the acceleration of "Final Solution."
(MC, 10/6/01)
1943 Oct 13, During World War II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1943 Oct 14, US 8th Air Force lost 60 B-17 bombers during assault on Schweinfurt.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1943 Oct 14, In Germany Rev. Max Josef Metzger was sentenced to death for treason by Roland Freisler, chief judge of the Nazi’s People’s Court. He had written a letter to the British government that denounced the Nazis and called for a German state based on Christian democratic and legal principles. He was exonerated by a Berlin court in 1997
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.A10)
1943 Oct 14, Some 300 of 600 prisoners escaped from the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp in Poland. Alexander Pechersky, a Russian officer of Jewish origin, roused his fellow prisoners to rebellion. The event was later documented in the book "Escape from Sobibor" by Richard Rashke (1982) and the film of the same name with Alan Arkin. Josef Vallaster, an Austrian guard, was among 11 SS officers and 11 Ukrainians killed in the escape. Most of the escaped prisoners were killed as they fled. Only 50 prisoners survived the war. Vallaster had operated the motor that funneled gas into Sobibor’s shower rooms. After the uprising at Sobibor, the Nazis shut it down and leveled it to the ground, replanting over it to cover their tracks.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A19)(SSFC, 2/17/08, p.A8)(AP, 8/21/12)(AFP, 10/14/13)
1943 Oct 17, British Liberators sank U-540 and U-631.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1943 Oct 28, The German U-220 sank.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1943 Oct 29, 3 Allied officers escaped the German camp Stalag Luft 3.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1943 Oct, Germans demolished the ghetto buildings of Minsk, known as the Yama, or Pit, in an effort to find Jews in hiding. 2,000 remaining Jews were rounded up and killed. More than 100,000 Jews were killed there from August 1941.
(AP, 10/21/08)
1943 Nov 3, William Reid (died 2001 at 79), RAF bomber pilot, flew his badly damaged Lancaster bomber on a bombing mission to a ball-bearing factory in Duesseldorf, Germany, and managed to return the crippled plane to England.
(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A25)
1943 Nov 3, SS and police units shot at least 6,000 Jewish inmates of the Trawniki and Dorohucza Labor Camps.
(www.ushmm.org/wlc_ie/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007397)
1943 Nov 3-1943 Nov 4, In Poland the 2-day "Operation Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration camp executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. During the so-called "Mission Harvest Festival" massacres tens of thousands of Jews in the district of Lublin were shot by Nazi officers. Among them were members of Erich Steidtmann’s Hamburg Polizeibataillon 101 company. In 2010 prosecutors reopened an investigation on Steidtmann’s role in the massacre.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)(AP, 4/22/10)
1943 Nov 9, Bernhard Lichtenberg (67), German clergyman and antifascist, died.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1943 Nov 16, One hundred and forty American bombers flew from British bases to Vemork, Norway, to destroy the Nazi heavy water facility near Rjukan, where production had resumed despite a commando raid in February. Only 14 of some 700 bombs hit the plant killing 24 civilians. The bombing did not harm the basement level where the heavy water was collected and stored.
(ON, 4/07, p.5)
1943 Nov 18, 444 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1943 Nov 18, U-211 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1943 Nov 19, U-536 sank in Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1943 Nov 20, U-538 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1943 Nov 22, RAF began bombing of Berlin.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1943 Nov 25, U-600 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1943 Nov 29, U-86 sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1943 Nov, Michael Negele joined the Death’s Head Battalion of the Waffen-SS. He later immigrated to the US and withheld information on his wartime activities. In 1997 a Missouri court acted to strip him of US citizenship.
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A3)
1943 Nov, The 2-day Nazi "Operation Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)
1943 Dec 2, The 1st RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the central SS-department) transport out of Vienna reached Birkenau camp (Poland). One of the powers of the RSHA was the imposition of "Protective Custody," which meant the deportation to a concentration camp without trial or the possibility of appeal for the victims.
(www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/Auschwitz/HTML/RSHA.html)
1943 Dec 2, Italy’s Bari harbor was attacked by German bombers. They achieved a complete surprise bombing shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian campaign. 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner were sunk. The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships added to the loss of life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1943 Dec 12, The German Army launched Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad. The attempt to relieve Stalingrad fell short due to stubborn Soviet resistance and the Germans' indecision within the besieged city.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1943 Dec 16, The German battleship Scharnhorst sank off Norway following an Allied attack led by the British battleship Duke of York. Only 36 of the 1,900 crew survived. Researchers found the wreck in 2000. [see Dec 26]
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.A12)
1943 Dec 20, Soviet forces halted a German army trying to relieve the besieged city of Stalingrad.
(HN, 12/20/98)
1943 Dec 26, Count Claus von Stauffenberg tried in vain to plant a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1943 Dec 26, The 32,000-ton German battleship, Scharnhorst was sunk by British ships in an Arctic fight. [see Dec 16]
(HN, 12/26/98)
1943 The German propaganda film "Titanic" was produced.
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.C15)
1943 In Norway Operation Gunnerside destroyed the Nazi heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the 1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus Helberg (d.2003).
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)
1943 Karlrobert Kreiten, a piano virtuoso, was executed by the Nazis after a neighbor denounced him for offhand remarks about Hitler.
(SFC, 11/28/97, p.B8)
1944 Jan 11, Crakow-Plaszow Concentration Camp was established.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1944 Jan 13, Three Reich plane plants were wrecked; 64 U.S. aircraft were lost in an air attack in Germany.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1944 Jan 15, The U.S. Fifth Army successfully broke the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1944 Jan 20, RAF dropped 2300 1-ton bombs on Berlin.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 649 British bombers attacked Magdeburg.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 447 German bombers attacked London.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 27, The Soviet Union announced the end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted 880 days with 600,000 killed.
(AP, 1/27/98)(MC, 1/27/02)
1944 Jan 28, 683 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1944 Jan 28, U-271 & U-571 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1944 Jan 31, U-592 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1944 Feb 2, The Germans stopped an Allied attack at Anzio, Italy.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1944 Feb 7, The Germans launched a [counteroffensive] second attack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy. They hoped to push the Allies back into the sea.
(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1944 Feb 9, U-734 and U-238 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1944 Feb 11, U-424 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1944 Feb 15, 891 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1944 Feb 19, The U.S. Eighth Air Force and Royal Air Force began "Big Week," a series of heavy bomber attacks against German aircraft production facilities.
(HN, 2/19/99)
1944 Feb 19, U-264 sank off Ireland.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1944 Feb 20, During World War II, U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers in a series of attacks that became known as "Big Week."
(AP, 2/20/98)
1944 Feb 20, A time-bomb planted by Norwegian commando Knut Haukelid sank the Lake Tinn ferry Hydro, which carried heavy water canisters from the Vemork plant destined for Germany. 12 German soldiers and 14 civilian passengers drowned. Rescuers saved 23 Norwegians and 4 Germans.
(ON, 4/07, p.5)
1944 Mar 1, U-358 sank in Atlantic.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1944 Mar 4, A squadron of American B-17 bombers hit Berlin for the first time during daylight hours. Col. H. Griffin Mumford (d.2007) led a group 4-engine Flying Fortresses over Berlin.
(SFC, 7/20/07, p.B12)(www.100thbg.com/mainmenus/history/historysummary_home.htm)
1944 Mar 6, US heavy bombers hit Berlin during World War II.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1944 Mar 8, U.S. bombers resumed bombing Berlin.
(AP, 3/8/98)
1944 Mar 15, Otto von Below (86), German commandant (WW I), died.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1944 Mar 16, A US plane named “God Bless Our Ship" was hit by anti-aircraft fire over Berlin and crash-landed outside the city. Lt. George Lymburn (1924-2005) was captured and sent to Stalag Luft 1, where he was liberated by Russian soldiers in April, 1945.
(SFC, 4/13/05, p.B7)
1944 Mar 19, The German 352nd Infantry Division deployed along the coast of France.
(HN, 3/19/01)
1944 Mar 19, Nazi German soldiers occupied Hungary.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1944 Mar 22, Over 600 8th Air Force bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1944 Mar 24, 76 Allied officers escaped Stalag Luft 3. In 1949 Paul Brickall authored "The Great Escape." The story of Jackson Barrett Mahon (d.1999 at 78), an American fighter pilot, and the Allied POW escape from Stalag Luft III in Germany during WW II. The 1963 film "The Great Escape" starred Steve McQueen, was directed by John Sturges and was based on the true story. In 1999 Arthur A. Durand published Stalag Luft III: The Secret Story." When the Russian Army closed in tens of thousands of POWs were marched 240 miles south to a new camp and thousands died in the "Black March."
(TVM, 1975, p.222)(SFC, 8/11/99, p.C5)(SFC, 12/23/99, p.A27)(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.1)(SFC, 1/22/03, p.A19)(www.b24.net/pow/greatescape.htm)
1944 Mar 24, 811 British bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1944 Mar 24, In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before they killed 32 [33] German soldiers [policemen]. The Ardeatine Cave massacre near Rome, Italy, took place. In retaliation to the systematic murder of Nazi officers by the Italian underground, an SS officer ordered that 10 Italian civilian men be shot for every Nazi officer killed. The age of the civilians did not matter and so many teenagers and boys were among the dead found in the caves. Argentina extradited former Nazi officer, Erich Priebke, to Rome in 1995 to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(HN, 3/24/98)
1944 Mar 26, 705 British bombers attacked Essen.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 Mar 27, One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Thousands of Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. Forty Jewish policemen were shot in the Riga, Latvia, ghetto by the Gestapo.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 30, 781 British bombers attacked Nuremberg.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1944 Apr 3, British dive bombers attacked the battle cruiser Tirpitz.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1944 Apr 5, In Lithuania 40 prisoners filed off their chains and fled through a narrow tunnel at Paneriai. Jewish and Soviet prisoners had been brought to the Ponar forest from Stutthof concentration camp. They were forced to dig up mass graves, collect bodies and burn them. Guards quickly discovered the prisoners and many were shot, but 11 prisoners managed to escape to the forest, reach partisan forces and survive the war. In 2016 an international research team pinpointed the location of the tunnel.
(AP, 6/29/16)
1944 Apr 6, German trucks rolled up to the safehouse of Sabina Zlatin in Izieu-Ain, France, and 44 children and 7 teachers including Mr. Zlatin were arrested. The raid was ordered by Klaus Barbie, head of the German police in Lyons.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.B2)(MC, 4/6/02)
1944 Apr 13, Transport No. 71 departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1944 Apr 14, 1st Jews transported from Athens arrived at Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1944 Apr 16, Germany’s U-550 torpedoed the gasoline tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania, which had lagged behind its protective convoy as it set out with 140,000 barrels of gasoline for Great Britain. One of the tanker's three escorts, the USS Joyce, saw it on sonar and severely damaged it by dropping depth charges. The crew abandoned the submarine, but not before setting off explosions to scuttle it in waters off Nantucket. On July 23, 2012, divers discovered the submarine.
(AFP, 7/27/12)
1944 Apr 22, Hitler and Mussolini met at Obersalzburg.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1944 Apr 24, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. Anton Spitaler (1910-2003), an Arabic scholar at the academy, later lamented the loss of a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran. His story however was a lie, and the collection survived hidden in his hands.
(WSJ, 1/12/08, p.A1)
1944 Apr 28, Exercise "Tiger" ended with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1944 May 1, The Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, the 1st jet bomber, made its first flight.
(HN, 5/1/98)(MC, 5/1/02)
1944 May 6, The USS Buckley, a destroyer escort, engaged and sank the German U-66. Hand to hand fighting broke out after the Buckley, under Lt. Cmdr. Brent Maxwell Abel (1916-2006), rammed the submarine. When the U-boat sank 36 German sailors were rescued and taken captive.
(SFC, 1/6/06, p.B7)
1944 May 7, There was a German assault on Tito's hideout in Drvar, Bosnia.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1944 May 14, 91 German bombers harassed Bristol.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May 14, Gens Rommel, Speidel and von Stulpnagel plotted to assassinate Hitler.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May 15, A partisan attack on a movie theater killed 5 German soldiers in Genoa. 4 days later SS Officer Friedrich Engel ordered the killing of 59 Italian prisoners in reprisal. In 2002 Engel (93) was sentenced to 7 years in prison for the order.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A14)(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 16, The 1st of over 180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1944 May 19, 240 gypsies were transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Neth.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1944 May 19, Friedrich Engel (1909-2006), a Nazi SS officer, oversaw the massacre of 59 Italian prisoners near Genoa. An Italian military court convicted Engel in absentia in 1999 and sentenced him to life for war crimes connected to a total of 246 deaths. In 2002 a German court convicted Engel of 59 counts of murder and handed him a suspended seven-year term.
(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May-1944 Jun, Some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Nazi-run Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. At least 300,000 were almost immediately gassed to death. In 2014 German prosecutors charged Oskar Groening (93) with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving as as SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp during this period.
(SFC, 9/16/14, p.A2)
1944 May-1944 Oct, About 158 trainloads of victims were brought to the Nazi-run Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In 2013 a German arest warrant accused Johann Breyer (d.2014 at 89), a resident of Pennsylvania, of 158 counts of accessory to murder, one for each trainload of victims brought to Auschwitz while he served as a guard there.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A8)
1944 Jun 2, Allied "shuttle bombing" of Germany began, with bombers departing from Italy and landing in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1944 Jun 3, Nazis pulled out of Rome.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1944 Jun 4, The U-505 became the first enemy submarine captured by the U.S. Navy under Admiral Dan Gallery. The keel for the U-505 was laid on June 12, 1940. It launched from Hamburg the following year. During its career, the U-505 gained the unwelcome but lucky distinction of being the most heavily damaged U-boat to manage to return to port. Under the command of Harald Lange, the boat was attacked by an American task group led by the USS Guadalcanal. Crewmen from the destroyer escort USS Pillsbury managed to capture the U-505 before the submariners could in scuttle her. This represented the first time since 1815 that the US Navy captured an enemy warship on the high seas (the capture remained a secret). After the war, Navy plans to scuttle the U-boat in a gunnery exercise were themselves scrapped when the president of Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry voiced interest and a plan to use the entire submarine as part of an exhibit. The U-505 was dedicated as a permanent exhibit and war memorial at the museum on September 25, 1954. In 2005 a $35 million project restored the ship and moved it to a specially constructed underground hall.
(HN, 6/4/98)(HNQ, 3/29/01)(WSJ, 8/5/05, p.W2)
1944 Jun 6, On D-Day Brig. General Norman "Dutch" Cota was the first American General to step foot on Omaha Beach. Cota, assistant commander of the 29th Infantry Division, heroically spurred his men to cross the beach under withering German fire. He went on to lead his infantrymen across France to the Siegfried Line and in the battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.
(HNQ, 4/15/99)
1944 Jun 6, Cherokee tribal members communicated via radios in their native language on the Normandy beaches. Some 6,603 Americans were killed along the coast of France during the D-day invasion. A total of 9,758 Allied soldiers died during the invasion. "D-Day" by Stephen Ambrose was published in 1994.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A6)(SFEC, 6/6/99, p.A22)(SFC, 5/30/00, p.A2)(WSJ, 8/20/01, p.A1)
1944 Jun 6, The code name for the beach used by the Canadians for the D-day invasion of Normandy was Juno.
(HNQ, 8/13/98)
1944 Jun 6, By the end of D-Day 156,000 Allied soldiers had come ashore on the Normandy beaches with losses of 2,500 men. By the end of the day, the Allies had established a tenuous beachhead that would lead to an offensive that pinned Adolf Hitler's Third Reich between two pincers--the Western Allies and the already advancing Soviets--accelerating the end of World War II. A million Allied troops, under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, moved onto five Normandy beachheads in three weeks. Operations “Neptune" and “Overlord" put forces on the beaches and supplies aimed at the liberation of Europe and the conquest of Germany. Operation Overlord landed 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy, France. In addition, US and British airborne forces landed behind the German lines and US Army Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe de Hoc. More than 6,000 trucks of the Red Ball Express kept gasoline and other vital supplies rolling in as American troops and tanks pushed the Germans back toward their homeland.
(SDUT, 6/6/97, p.B9)(HN, 6/6/98)(HNPD, 6/6/99)(ON, 2/08, p.12)
1944 Jun 6, Gerrit John van de Peat (41), artist, resistance fighter, was executed.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 6, Nazi troops executed 96 prisoners by firing squad.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 7, Italian partisans shot at least one German soldier in a radio transmitter unit that included Matthias Defregger. Eventually, 17 men, ranging from 17 to 65, were shot in retaliation, and much of the village of Filetto di Camarda was burned. Defregger later became a Bishop and faced charges in 1969 for the murders. The charges were dropped in 1970.
(www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901076,00.html)
1944 Jun 9, 99 inhabitants of Tulle were hanged by the SS.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1944 Jun 10, German troops of the armored SS Division "Das Reich", as they headed toward Normandy to combat D-Day invasion forces, slaughtered 642 men, women and children in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, France. In 1983 a court in East Berlin convicted Heinz Barth (1921-2007), a former SS officer, and sentenced him to life in prison. In addition to involvement in the massacre, East German judges also found that Barth volunteered to participate in an execution of 92 Czech civilians in 1942. In 1997 his sentence was commuted to probation.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Jun 10, In Greece Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Lautenbach went door to door and massacred Greek civilians as part of a 'retaliation measure' for a partisan attack upon the unit. A total of 214 men, women and children were killed in Distomo, a small village near Delphi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distomo_massacre)
1944 Jun 13, Only one week after the Normandy invasion, the first German V-1 buzz bomb, also called the doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), was fired at London. The first guided missile to be used in force, the V-1 was powered by a pulse-jet engine and resembled a small aircraft. Only one of the four missiles London saw that day caused any casualties, but a steady stream of V-1s causing severe damage and casualties fell on London in coming months. At times, nearly 100 bombs fell each day. Many German buzz bombs never reached their targets because of primitive guidance systems or because they were destroyed in flight by anti-aircraft fire or intercepting Allied fighters.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ, 6/13/98)(MC, 6/13/02)
1944 Jun 18, The U.S. First Army broker through the German lines on the Cotentin Peninsula and cut off the German held port of Cherbourg.
(HN, 6/18/98)
1944 Jun 20, Nazis began mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1944 Jun 21, Very heavy bombing took place on Berlin.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1944 Jun 25, British assault at Caen, Normandy.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1944 Jun 26, German troops near the Italian village of Falzano di Cortona herded 11 civilians into a barn and blew it up. Gino Massetti (15) survived and in 2008 testified in the trial of former Wehrmacht Lt. Josef Scheungraber, the company commander accused of ordering the reprisal killings and four others after two German soldiers were killed. In 2009 Scheungraber (90) was convicted of 10 murders and jailed for life.
(AP, 10/7/08)(AFP, 8/11/09)
1944 Jun 27, During World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.
(AP, 6/27/97)(HN, 6/27/98)
1944 Jun 29, Rommel and von Rundstedt traveled to Berchtesgaden to confer with Hitler.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1944 Jun 29, A Russian assault battalion opened fire on German forces on the outskirts of Bobruisk, Belarus. As many as half of the 10,000 German soldiers were killed. In 1962 Nikolai Litvin, a Russian soldier present that day, completed his memoir. It was finally published in 2007 under the title "800 Days on the Eastern Front."
(WSJ, 6/30/07, p.P6)
1944 Jun 30, A US B-24H bomber nicknamed "Miss Fortune," which was returning from a mission in Germany to its base in Italy, flew into bad weather with 3 others and were shot down by German gunners over western Hungary. The remains of Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy, the tail gunner on the “Miss Fortune," were recovered in 2007.
(AP, 8/11/07)
1944 Jun, German soldiers in the Hermann Goering division, named after the head of Adolf Hitler's air force, shot and killed more than 200 civilians and destroyed most of the homes in the Tuscan town of Civitella to avenge a deadly attack by partisans. In 2008 Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of the massacre. Germany rejected the ruling.
(AP, 10/22/08)
1944 Jul 1, Over 2500 were killed in London and SE England by German flying bombs.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1944 Jul 1, Count Claus von Stauffenberg was promoted to colonel.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1944 Jul 4, Gestapo arrested German Social Democrat Julius Leber.
(Maggio)
1944 Jul 12, The Theresienstadt Family camp disbanded and some 4,000 people were executed.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1944 Jul 14, SS men Heinrich Boere and Jacobus Petrus Besteman shot and killed Dutch pharmacist Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese at his home in Breda for suspected activity in Nazi resistance. Boere was sentenced to death in absentia by a Dutch court in 1949. This was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 2009 Boere (88) was slated to stand trial for murder in Germany for the execution-style killings of three Dutch civilians during World War II. In 2010 a German court convicted Boere (88) of murdering the three Dutch civilians. He was given the maximum sentence of life in prison for the killings.
(www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/germ-n02.shtml)(AP, 7/7/09)(AP, 3/23/10)
1944 Jul 15, Greenwich Observatory was damaged by German V1 rocket.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1944 Jul 16, Soviet troops occupy Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive towards Germany.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1944 Jul 18, British Mosquitos attacked Cologne and Berlin.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1944 Jul 19, Some 1,200 8th Air Force bombers bombed targets in SW Germany. Some 500 15th Air Force Liberators (Flying Fortresses) bombed the Munich vicinity.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 19, Count Claus von Stauffenberg visited a RC church in Berlin-Dahlem.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 19, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg 1st met SS ober Sturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul 20, A branch of the German resistance led by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb underneath the table where Hitler was standing at Hitler’s Rastenburg headquarters in East Prussia that wounded but did not kill Hitler. This incited the Fuhrer to wipe out the Prussian aristocracy. This is covered in Otto Friedrich’s book on the Moltke family: "Blood and Iron." [see 1800, Helmuth and/or 1840, James von Moltke] Carl Goerdeler, Mayor of Leipzig, was among those arrested and executed for the plot.
(WSJ, 11/7/95, p.A-21)(AP, 7/20/97)(HN, 7/20/98)(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A30)
"In fact, although many of the conspirators were tortured, beheaded and strangled by piano wire hung from meat hooks... Col. Stauffenburg and three of his fellow officers were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Benderblock around midnight of that fateful day." The 20th of July Special Commission of the Third Reich was created after the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler to find and expose conspirators and other enemies of the regime. Some 400 investigators employed all of the Gestapo-designed methods of torture against enemies of the Nazis until the end of the war. Some 5,000 Germans were executed in the months following the assassination attempt for their part in the conspiracy or alleged sympathy with the conspirators.
(WSJ, 11/29/95, p.A-15)(HNQ, 12/3/98)
Ludwig and Kunrat Hammerstein-Equord participated in the plot to kill Hitler and went into hiding when the plot failed. 4 members of the family were taken to concentration camps, but were later freed by the allies.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A19)
1944 Jul 20, A heavy storm hampered a British offensive at Caen.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1944 Jul 20, US 15th Air Force attacked Friedrichshafen and Memmingen. Flying Fortresses of US 8th Air Force attacked Leipzig and Dessau.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1944 Jul 21, Von Kluge warned Hitler of the impending collapse of front in Normandy.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1944 Jul 21, Henning von Tresckow, Gen-Maj, "July 20th plotter", committed suicide.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1944 Jul 22, German SS officer Siegfried Assmuss, commander of a unit of the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion, was killed by partisans near Chlaniow, Poland.
(AP, 6/14/13)(http://tinyurl.com/kk5e6s3)
1944 Jul 23, Bernard M. Cohen, attorney, was killed at Belsen concentration camp.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, Helmuth J. von Moltke, German earl (July 20th plotter), was executed.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, Soviet troops took Lublin, Poland, as the German army retreated.
(HN, 7/23/02)
1944 Jul 23, A Ukrainian Self-Defense unit, directed to "liquidate all the residents" of Chlaniow, Poland, in a reprisal attack for the killing of German SS officer Siegfried Assmuss, killed 44 people including women and children. In 2013 Michael Karkoc (94), a retired Minnesota carpenter, was named as commander of the Nazi SS-led unit in the Chlaniov attack.
(AP, 6/14/13)(http://tinyurl.com/kk5e6s3)(AP, 11/18/13)
1944 Jul 24, Soviet forces liberated the Majdanek concentration camp.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1944 Jul 25, Allied forces begin the breakthrough of German lines in Normandy.
(HN, 7/25/02)
1944 Jul 25, The Messerschmitt 262 became the 1st jet fighter used in combat.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1944 Jul 29, Allied air force bombed Germany for 6 hours.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1944 Jul, Operation Goodwood in Normandy under Gen’l. Montgomery attempted to break through German defenses. This part of the war is covered by Stephen E. Ambrose in his 1997 book: "Citizen Soldiers," a sequel to his earlier "D-Day."
(WSJ, 12/22/97, p.A16)
1944 Aug 1-1944 Oct 2, The Warsaw Uprising was fought. The Polish underground began an uprising against the occupying German army, as the Red Army approaches Warsaw. The revolt lasted two months before collapsing. US Air Force Groups dropped medicine and food to the Polish freedom fighters under heavy fire from German fighter planes. The supply planes were also shot at by Soviet gunners. American dead were buried in the military cemetery at Poltava, Ukraine. The uprising ended with the Nazis killing 250,000 people. During the 63-day uprising the insurgents, largely ill-armed teenagers, organized a postal service to help city residents get information to relatives. Marek Edelman (1909-2009) was among the commanders of the uprising and managed to survive the war.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 23)(AP, 8/1/97)(HN, 8/1/98)(AP, 3/6/08)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.91)
1944 Aug 4, Nazi police raided the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam and arrested eight people, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, whose diary became a famous account of the Holocaust. She died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Miep Gies (1909-2010), secretary to Anne’s father Otto, collected the scattered pages of Anne’s diary and returned them to Otto Frank after the war.
(AP, 8/4/02)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.95)
1944 Aug 6, All 1,200 Jewish death marchers from Lipcani, Moldavia, died by this date.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Aug 6, The deportation of 70,000 Jews from Lodz. Poland, to Auschwitz began.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1944 Aug 7, July 20th Plot trial under Nazi judge Roland Freisler began in Berlin.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1944 Aug 7, German forces launched a major counter attack against U.S. forces near Mortain, France.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1944 Aug 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German fieldmarshal, was hanged.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1944 Aug 16, US bombers of the 8th Air Force raided the oil refinery at Rositz, Germany. As of 2998 21 unexploded bombs were dug up at the site.
(WSJ, 11/24/08, p.A12)
1944 Aug 19, In an effort to prevent a communist uprising in Paris, Charles DeGualle began attacking German forces all around the city.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1944 Aug 20, United States and British forces closed the pincers on the German 7th Army in the Falaise-Argentan pocket in France.
(HN, 8/20/98)(MC, 8/20/02)
1944 Aug 22, Hitler ordered Paris to be destroyed.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1944 Aug 22, In Bordeaux, France, Heinz Stahlschmidt (d.2010 at 92), a junior officer in the German navy, defied his superiors plans to blow up Bordeaux's port by blowing up a munitions depot, rendering some 4,000 fuses useless and saving the port. Heinz Stahlschmidt became a French citizen in 1947 under the name of Henri Salmide and a Knight of the French Legion d’Honneur in September 2000.
(http://tinyurl.com/yesjr4g)(AP, 2/26/10)
1944 Aug 22, Last transport of French Jews departed to Nazi Germany.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1944 Aug 23, German SS engineers began placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Adolf Hitler had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuehrer’s order.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1944 Aug 23, Romanian PM Ion Antonescu was dismissed by King Michael, paving the way for Romania to abandon the Axis in favor of the Allies. King Michael organized a coup against the pro-Nazi dictator, Marshal Ion Antonescu, but was double-crossed by Joseph Stalin and betrayed by the Allies who ceded the country to the Russians at the Yalta summit in 1945.
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97)
1944 Aug 25, Paris, occupied since June 1940, was liberated from German occupation by Free French Forces under General Jacques LeClerc and his 2nd Tank division. Although ordered by Adolf Hitler to leave Paris a smoldering ruin, Paris' military governor Major General Dietrich von Cholitz lied to his superiors and left the city's landmarks intact. Retreating German troops massacred 124 of Maille's 500 residents then razed the town, possibly in retaliation for Resistance action in the region.
(AP, 8/25/97)(HNPD, 8/25/98)(HN, 8/25/98)(AP, 7/16/08)
1944 Aug 25, In France 11 US planes were shot down when a squadron was overwhelmed in a dogfight with 80 German fighters. 5 pilots survived and eluded capture. 2 pilots were captured. The remains of 3 missing were later recovered. In 2008 the remains of Army Air Force 2nd Lt. Ray Packard were identified and returned home.
(SSFC, 11/16/08, p.B8)
1944 Aug 27, 200 Halifax bombers attack oil-installations in Hamburg.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1944 Aug 28, German forces in Toulon and Marseilles, France, surrendered to the Allies.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1944 Aug 31, The British Eighth Army penetrated the German Gothic Line in Italy.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1944 Aug, Messerschmidt, Volkswagen AG and other companies met at a Strasbourg hotel to discuss financing plans for the Fourth Reich.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1944 Sep 5, Germany launched its first V-2 missile at Paris, France.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1944 Sep 5, Flight Sgt. Maximilian Volke, a German ace pilot, took off from a northern Italian air base with three other fighters to intercept a group of American bombers. He was shot down by gunners in one of the US planes. His plane and remains were found in 2007.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Sep 7, Nazi SS-General Kurt ("Panzer") Meyer took Durnal, Belgium.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1944 Sep 8, Germany's V-2 offensive against England began.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1944 Sep 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German field marshal, was hanged.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1944 Sep 12, During World War II, U.S. Army troops entered Germany for the first time, near Trier.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1944 Sep 13, US 28th Infantry division opened an assault on the Siegfried line, Westwall.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1944 Sep 15, British bombers hit the German pocket battleship Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs.
(www.history.navy)
1944 Sep 17, Infantry glider troops of the 82nd Airborne Division entered Holland. British [American] airborne troops parachuted into Holland to capture the Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market Garden. The plan called for the airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they were left stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans. The 1974 book by Cornelius Ryan, "A Bridge Too Far," was based on this operation and was made into the 1977 film.
(MT, Fall ‘96, p.8)(HN, 9/17/98)(HC, 12/12/01)
1944 Sep 19, The Luftwaffe bombed Eindhoven: 200 killed.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1944 Sep 19, The 3-month battle at Huertgen Forest on the Belgian-German border began. A 1998 HBO film made a rough portrayal: "When Trumpets Fade."
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.A15)(www.angelfire.com/ak5/combat/HuertgenForest.html)
1944 Sep 22, Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, was executed by the Nazi Waffen SS shortly after he was captured. In 2012 Dutch-born Siert Bruins (91) was charged with Dijkema’s murder. In 2014 a German court dropped the case against Bruins ruling that there are too many gaps in the evidence to deliver a verdict.
(www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4312068,00.html)(SFC, 11/27/12, p.A2)(SFC, 9/3/13, p.A2)(AP, 1/8/14)
1944 Sep 22, Mark Linenthal (1922-2010), navigator on a B-24 Liberator, was shot down on the way back from bombing an aircraft factory in Munich. He was taken to Stalag Luft I and remained there it was liberated by the Russians. He later established himself as a Prof. of English at San Francisco State Univ., where he published 2 books of poetry “Growing Light" (1979) and “The Man I Am Watching" 1987).
(SSFC, 9/12/10, p.C1)
1944 Sep 27, Thousands of British troops were killed as German forces rebuffed their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1944 Sep 28, At the Battle of Arnhem the Germans defeated the British airborne in Netherlands.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1944 Sep 29-1944 Oct 5, Nazi murders took place in Marzabotto, Italy, under SS-major Reder. Retreating Nazi troops killed some 1,000 women, children and elderly while allegedly pursuing resistance fighters. In 2002 German Pres. Rau apologized for the massacre. In 2007 an Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzabotto_massacre)(USAT, 4/18/02, p.4A)(Reuters, 1/14/07)
1944 Sep, Finland began fighting Nazi Germany in the Lapland War and continued to April 1945.
(Econ, 3/30/13, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_War)
1944 Sep-Jan, The battle at Huertgen Forest on the Belgian-German border was fought. A 1998 HBO film made a rough portrayal: "When Trumpets Fade."
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.A15)
1944 Oct 1, The U.S. First Army began the siege Aachen, Germany.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1944 Oct 2, Nazi troops crushed the 2-month-old (63 days) Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter-million people were killed.
(AP, 10/2/97)
1944 Oct 3, German troops evacuated Athens, Greece.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1944 Oct 7, Field marshal Rommel got orders to return to Berlin.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1944 Oct 7, Jews several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. During the uprising, the prisoners killed three guards and blew up the crematorium and adjacent gas chamber. The prisoners used explosives smuggled into the camp by Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Germans crushed the revolt and killed almost all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged.
(http://tinyurl.com/9avn3)
1944 Oct 12, German army retreated from Athens.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1944 Oct 13, The US 1st army entered Aachen, Germany.
(AP, 10/13/97)(MC, 10/13/01)
1944 Oct 14, German Field Marshal Rommel (52), suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, was visited at home by two of Hitler's staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chose suicide and it was announced that he died of wounds.
(AP, 10/14/97)(HN, 10/14/98)
1944 Oct 15, Hungary’s regent Miklos Horthy announced in a radio broadcast that the German Reich has lost the war and that he was negotiating with the Russians for Hungarian self-determination. Nazi operatives kidnapped Horthy’s son and forced him to abdicate and surrender to the Germans.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.2)
1994 Oct 16, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was elected to a fourth term.
(AP, 10/16/99)
1944 Oct 16, In Hungary the Horthy government fell as Adolf Eichmann returned to Budapest and immediately ordered the resumption of the Jewish deportation program. Ferenc Szalasi (1897-1946) became the prime minister.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Sz%C3%A1lasi)
1944 Oct 20, US 1st army won the battle of Aachen.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1944 Oct 21, During World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1944 Oct 28, The last Nazi transport of Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau was sent from Theresienstadt.
(http://tinyurl.com/8sf5k)
1944 Nov 7, Hannah Senesh (23), Jewish poet, was executed by Nazis in Budapest. Hannah Szenes was tortured for several months by the Gestapo before being executed by the Nazis because she was a member of the Jewish underground.
(www.jbuff.com/c031303.htm)
1944 Nov 8, In Hungary Jews under Nazi custody and the command of Adolf Eichmann began marches of 120 miles to the Austrian border.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.3)
1944 Nov 11, Private Eddie Slovik was convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1944 Nov 12, The RAF sank the German battleship Tirpitz at Troms Fjord, Norway. Great Britain so feared the Tripitz, that any hint of its use caused escort ships to flee their convoys.
(HN, 11/12/98)(MC, 11/12/01)
1944 Nov 24, Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the Auschwitz and Birkenau crematoriums.
(http://tinyurl.com/9nycv)
1944 Dec 2, General Patton’s troops entered the Saar Valley and broke through the Siegfried line. US 95th Infantry division occupied bridge at Saar.
(HN, 12/2/98)(MC, 12/2/01)
1944 Dec 3, US 5th Armour division occupied Brandenburg, Hertzgenwald.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1944 Dec 10, The US 394th Regiment’s Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon was ordered into the village of Lanzareth, Belgium, to fill a gap between allied divisions along the Western front. A German counteroffensive, launched on Dec 16, sent through Lanzareth. The platoon surrendered after running out of ammunition. All members survived imprisonment. In 2004 Alex Kershaw authored “The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon."
(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.D11)(SSFC, 1/2/05, p.E1)
1944 Dec 16, The Germans mounted a major surprise counterattack in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. As the center of the Allied line fell back, it created a bulge, leading to the name--the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler hoped to cripple the advance Allies by breaking through their lines to destroy fuel supplies and lines of communication. The striking force (the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies) amounted to 24 divisions, 10 of them armored. The German attack achieved total surprise, but slowed by the end of December due to German supply problems and Allied resistance. Between January 8-16, in the face of a fierce Allied counteroffensive, the Germans finally withdrew. By January 21, the Germans had been pushed back to their original line, having lost some 120,000 men in the offensive. The Allies suffered 81,000 casualties including some 19,000 Americans killed. In 1997 Charles B. MacDonald authored “A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN, 12/16/98)(HNQ, 7/11/01)(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.D11)
1944 Dec 17, The Germans renewed their attack on the Belgian town of Losheimergraben against the American Army during the Battle of the Bulge.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1944 Dec 19, American troops began pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1944 Dec 20, In the Battle of Bastogne the Nazis surrounded 101st Airborne.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1944 Dec 22, During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium; Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe (1898-1975) reportedly replied: "Nuts!"
(AP, 12/22/97)(HN, 12/22/98)
1944 Dec 23, In Belgium a US B-26 Marauder went down while on a mission to take out a critical rail bridge over the Moselle in Eller, Germany. William Parker Cook (27) and his 5-man crew were among ten planes and dozens of men lost in the mission. In 2006 aviation researchers found the crash site near Allmuthen, Belgium. DNA evidence identified Cook and two other crew members.
(SFC, 10/20/14, p.A1)
1944 Dec 24, Adolf Eichmann fled Hungary to Austria as Soviet troops encircled Budapest. He left orders for German forces to massacre all the Jews in Budapest. German Gen. August Schmidthuber, assigned to oversee the mass execution, cancelled the operation after receiving word from Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg that the impending carnage would mark him as a war criminal.
(ON, 10/20/11, p.4)
1944 Dec 26, In the World War II Battle of the Bulge, the embattled U.S. 101st Airborne Division was relieved by units of the 4th Armored Division. The Battle of the Bulge was the final major German counter-offensive of the war and thrust deep into allied territory in N & E Belgium and Luxembourg. US Gen Patton's tanks repulsed the Germans. Jimmy Hendrix (19) captured 13 Germans in two 88-mm gun batteries and rescued 3 Americans under enemy fire. Hendrix (d.2002 later awarded the Medal of Honor.
(WUD, 1994, p.195)(SFC, 9/1/96, T3)(AP, 12/26/97)(MC, 12/26/01)(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A25)
1944 Dec, Carol Deutsch, Jewish artist, perished in the Holocaust. Deutsch created illustrations of the Bible while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.
(AP, 1/11/08)
1944 Hans Fallada (1893-1947), German writer, was confined to a psychiatric prison after taken a shot at his wife. In 2015 his prison diary was publiched as “A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Fallada)
1944 Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer authored “Dialectic of Enlightenment," which examined the culture that gave birth to Auschwitz. This became the founding text of the post modern writers (pomos), later represented by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.106)
1944 A Germany general sent French fashion designer Coco Chanel to Madrid to initiate talks through the British Embassy in a plan code-named “Operation Modelhut." A travel companion denounced her as an enemy agent and the British ignored her.
(SSFC, 8/21/11, p.F5)
1944 Felix Nussbaum, an artist from Osnabruck, died in Auschwitz. A museum in Osnabruck, designed by Daniel Libeskind, was later named in his honor.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A16)
1944 In Germany there was mass murder at the Treblinka labor camp in Poland. In 1997 Polish guard Bronislaw Hajda, a retired machinist in Chicago’s Schiller Park, was convicted by a US federal judge for taking part in the mass murder.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A3)
1944 By this year 360,000 of the 500,000 inmates of the Nazi Majdanek concentration camp in eastern Poland had perished in the gas chambers or from brutal treatment by the guards.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)
1944 - 1945 May, Nazi's kept some 2000 Danish policemen in custody. Most of them in KZ-camps, brought to Neuengamme and from there to places as Buchenwald and Stutthof in Germany. After Danish negotiations with the Germans the Nazi's accepted their status as prisoners of war and 1600 came to the POW-camp at Mühlberg. Around 100 Danish policemen died in the camps.
(http://politihistorier.dk/english/days-to-remember.html)
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