366 Days
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April
News Headlines
1
JAPANESE-HELD OKINAWA UNDER U.S. ASSAULT
Aboard Admiral Spruance’s Flagship USS Indianapolis • April 1, 1945 For weeks the largest Allied fleet since Operation Overlord ten months earlier—nearly 1,500 U.S. and British vessels—fired 2.3 million shells onto Okinawa, the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago and a little more than 300 miles/483 km from Kyūshū and Shikoku, the southernmost Japanese Home Islands. (Tokyo was 550 miles/855 km away.) […]
2
GERMANS MUST CHOOSE VICTORY OR DEATH
Berlin, Germany • April 2, 1945 In the spring of 1945 senior leaders of the Third Reich were growing panicky. In the west, American troops had succeeded in crossing the Rhine River at Remagen 35 miles south of Cologne on March 7 and were advancing into the German heartland. In the east, the tracks of Soviet mechanized […]
3
ADM. CHESTER W. NIMITZ TO HEAD U.S. PACIFIC OPERATIONS
Washington, D.C. • April 3, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Roosevelt administration appointed Gen. Douglas MacArthur Commander-in-Chief U.S. Army Forces Pacific (AFPAC), responsible for all Army and Army Air Forces units in the Pacific Theater excepting Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Twentieth Air Force based in the Marianas. At the same time Adm. Chester […]
4
FORCED LABOR CAMP SHOCKS U.S. ARMY LIBERATORS
Ohrdruf, Central Germany • April 4, 1945 Over the first three weeks of April 1945, during the brutal terminal phase of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, Allied armies discovered more than one hundred concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Nordhausen, Flossenbuerg, and Bergen-Belsen. On this date in 1945 soldiers of Gen. George S. Patton’s Fourth Armored Division, U.S. […]
5
NAZIS ARREST OUTSPOKEN GERMAN THEOLOGIAN
Berlin, Germany • April 5, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Berlin, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested at his parents’ home by two agents of the Gestapo (Secret State Police). One of the leading Protestant theologians of the past century, Bonhoeffer was a founding pastor of the dissident Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), which […]
6
JAPAN UNLEASHES KAMIKAZE HELL OFF OKINAWA
Off the Coast of Okinawa, Japan • April 6–7, 1945 For centuries the concept of individual suicide was accepted within Japanese society. Among the warrior, or Samurai, class especially, suicide was seen as the way to, among other things, atone for one’s failure, attenuate shame, and restore honor for oneself or for one’s family or […]
7
DEATH OF BATTLESHIP YAMATO NEAR OKINAWA
East China Sea • April 7, 1945 On this date the Japanese super-battleship Yamato steamed toward Okinawa and to a martyr’s death dispensed by pilots from Rear Adm. Mark A. “Pete” Mitscher’s U.S. Fast Carrier Task Force 58 (TF58). Early in World War II, Mitscher commanded the Hornet, which from her deck famously launched Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders […]
8
HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS DEALT BAD HAND
Berlin, Germany • April 8, 1940 On this date, April 8, 1940, when Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich was at the top of its game (the occupation of Denmark and the invasion of Norway were a day away), the German Fuehrer issued his order regarding the “handling of Jewish mixed-breeds in the German armed forces” (Behandlung […]
9
HITLER ORDERS CONQUEST OF NEUTRAL DENMARK, NORWAY
Berlin, Germany • April 9, 1940 On this date in 1940 German land, sea, air, and specialized forces advanced overland into Denmark and attacked various points along Norway’s coast from the air and sea. Earlier in the year, on January 27, the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) had established a task force to orchestrate […]
10
ROOSEVELT SENDS TROOPS TO OCCUPY GREENLAND
Washington, D.C. • April 10, 1941 On April 9, 1941, a full year after Operation Weseruebung had brought Denmark and Norway into Nazi Germany’s orbit, the Danish ambassador in Washington, D.C., Henrik Kauffmann, signed an executive agreement with the U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, authorizing the U.S. to protect the remote Danish colony of […]
11
NEW HEAD TO STRENGTHEN NAZI LEBENSBORN PROGRAM
Berlin, Germany • April 11, 1940 On this date in 1940 Reichsfuerhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany, appointed SS-Standartenfuehrer (Colonel) Max Sollmann to be managing director of the Lebensborn Program (German, Lebensborn e.V), which was heavily in debt. It was Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (commonly abbreviated to SS), who founded […]
12
U.S. LEAVES CAPTURE OF BERLIN TO SOVIETS
Forward SHAEF HQ, Reims, France • April 12, 1945 On this date in 1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, and Harry S. Truman became the thirty-third president of the United States. That same day the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, informed his staff that neither American […]
13
ADM. YAMAMOTO TO VISIT BOUGAINVILLE GARRISON
Rabaul, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea • April 13, 1943 On this date in 1943 the headquarters of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto on Rabaul, the important Japanese garrison on New Britain Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, sent a coded military radio signal to various Japanese commands in the Western South Pacific. The message listed the dates […]
14
U.S. TROOPS ENCIRCLE GERMAN ARMY IN RUHR POCKET
Ruhr Pocket, Northwestern Germany • April 14, 1945 In the spring of 1945 senior leaders of the Third Reich were on edge. On Germany’s Eastern Front, the tracks of Soviet mechanized armor and the boots of their infantry could be heard approaching the outskirts of the epicenter of Nazism, Berlin. On the Western Front, elements of […]
15
GROUND BROKEN FOR TULE LAKE RELOCATION CENTER
Tulelake, Modoc County, California • April 15, 1942 On this date in 1942, in a remote, underdeveloped reclamation district roughly 35 miles southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and about 10 miles from the town of Tulelake (or Newell), the federal government began construction of the Tule Lake Relocation Center for persons of Japanese ancestry forcibly “evacuated” from […]
16
SEELOW HEIGHTS NEXT-TO-LAST NAIL IN HITLER’S COFFIN
Seelow Heights, Germany • April 16, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Allies called off their strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany because most targets were already in Allied hands or, like the Reich capital, Berlin, would be soon. So on the day the aerial campaign stopped the Red Army unleashed a battle to […]
17
ALLIES SET UP RHINE MEADOW CAMPS FOR GERMAN PRISONERS
Rhine Meadow Camps, German Rhineland • April 17, 1945 By this date in 1945 and over the next two months, American, British, and French armies established 19 Rhine Meadow camps (German, Rheinwiesenlager) principally on the west bank of the Rhine River in the German states of North-Rhine Westphalia and Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) (see map below). The Rhineland camps […]
18
DOOLITTLE RAID PAYBACK FOR PEARL HARBOR
Aboard the USS Hornet • April 18, 1942 The Doolittle Raid—a top-secret U.S. retaliatory airstrike following the surprise Japanese bombing of American naval and air bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, nineteen weeks earlier—was the country’s first joint action with the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy. The groundbreaking mission shipped 16 North American B‑25B […]
19
WARSAW GHETTO RESIDENTS STAGE REVOLT
Warsaw, Occupied Poland • April 19, 1943 In October 1940, a little over a year after Nazi Germany’s conquest of its eastern neighbor Poland, German Governor-General Hans Frank established a Jewish ghetto in Poland’s capital, Warsaw, moving some 90,000 Jews from all over Poland into the ghetto. (Poland’s Jewish community numbered 3.5 million at the time.) The […]
20
HITLER CELEBRATES 56TH BIRTHDAY
Berlin, Germany • April 20, 1945 On this date in 1945 a stooped, haggard, yellowish gray- and jowly-faced Adolf Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in the safety of his underground command bunker 50 ft beneath Berlin’s battered Old Reich Chancellery. Unlike previous birthdays marked by much ceremony and fuss, this one was all gloom and doom […]
21
AFTER SURRENDER GREEKS STARE HOLOCAUST IN FACE
German 12th Army HQ, Larissa, Greece • April 21, 1941 After their prime minister’s suicide three days earlier representatives of the leaderless Greek government signed a document of capitulation at the headquarters of the German 12th Army at Larissa in Central Greece on this date in 1941. Fourteen Greek divisions laid down their arms. An […]
22
GERMAN NAVY HEAD DOENITZ FLEES BERLIN
Ploen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany • April 22, 1945 By the start of April 1945 most large German cities were rubbish heaps. Cityscapes were characterized by great rows of apartment blocks with their brick or stone facades ripped open. Church spires and factory chimneys poked into grimy skies, their walls and roofs collapsed. These scenes of civilian […]
23
HITLER BEGS ARMY TO SAVE CAPITAL
Berlin, Germany • April 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, with most land communications and electrical power lines down, Adolf Hitler broadcast on Greater German Radio the order to save his beleaguered capital. The order called for Wehrmacht forces opposing the Americans at the Elbe River to withdraw and move north to rescue Berlin, […]
24
HIMMLER PROPOSES GERMAN SURRENDER TERMS
Luebeck, Northern Germany • April 24, 1945 Reichsfuehrer-SS, Reich Minister of the Interior, Gestapo chief, and Adolf Hitler-devotee Heinrich Himmler began making clumsy attempts to secure a separate peace treaty with the Western Allies as German defenders of the Reich capital—ground zero of Nazi resistance—failed to push the Red Army back across the Spree River, […]
25
JAPAN CONSTRUCTS GIGANTIC I-400 SUB
Kure Navy Yard, Hiroshima Bay, Japan • April 25, 1943 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the architect of his country’s December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, envisioned a different fleet of Japanese aircraft and ships for a second round of […]
26
PACIFIC ALLIES LAUNCH OPERATION CARTWHEEL
SWPA HQ, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia • April 26, 1943 By January 1943, as the six-month campaign for Guadalcanal in the Southwest Pacific Solomon Islands was winding down (the Japanese abandoned the island on February 7), it became clear that the Allies lacked sufficient resources to swiftly dislodge the Japanese from heavily fortified Rabaul, 650 miles to the west. […]
27
ITALIAN PARTISANS CAPTURE MUSSOLINI
Dongo near Lake Como, Northern Italy • April 27, 1945 On this rainy date in 1945, with the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) in Italy in full retreat—indeed, their commanders had signed surrender documents on this date—61-year-old Italian strongman Benito Mussolini was en route to what he hoped would be safe haven in neutral Switzerland and from […]
28
NORMANDY INVASION DRY RUN ENDS TRAGICALLY
Slapton Sands, Devonshire Coast, Southwest England · April 28, 1944 Shortly after midnight on this date in 1944 German torpedo boats (S‑boats, short for Schnell [Fast] boats, aka E-boats) on a routine patrol out of Cherbourg in occupied France suddenly found themselves in the middle of Operation (or Exercise) Tiger, codenamed T‑4. Operation Tiger consisted of […]
29
ANGLO-FRENCH-NORWEGIAN OFFENSIVE LAUNCHED
Narvik, Norway • April 29, 1940 Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, and Oslo, Norway’s capital, succumbed to German invaders on April 9, 1940, the first day of Operation Weseruebung. Though planning for Weseruebung had begun the previous December, Adolf Hitler did not order full speed ahead until British warships entered the territorial waters of neutral Norway in February […]
30
HITLER, WIFE CREMATED AFTER SUICIDES
Berlin, Germany · April 30, 1945 On this date in 1945 Adolf Hitler, to all the world the face of unspeakable evil, shot himself in the right temple after he and Eva Braun had poisoned themselves by ingesting cyanide. The Fuehrer’s psychotic desire for an apocalyptic end for Germany—a Wagnerian Goetterdaemmerung—was nearly completed by his […]
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