366 Days
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February
News Headlines
1
ALLIES PLOT TO OUST JAPAN FROM BURMA
New Delhi, India • February 1, 1943 On this date in 1943 in New Delhi, delegates from Great Britain, the U.S., and China opened a conference to develop a campaign plan (codenamed Anakim) for the reconquest of Burma (also called Myanmar), then a British colony, and to reopen the land supply route to China. The […]
2
SOVIETS AIM TO DOMINATE EASTERN EUROPE
Washington, D.C. • February 2, 1945 The Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was the supreme military staff for the Western Allies during World War II. CCS members were drawn from the British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and typically met in Washington, D.C. On occasion Soviet military officers […]
3
MANILA’S DELIVERANCE AT HAND
Manila, Philippines • February 3, 1945 On this date in 1945, 35,000 soldiers of the U.S. Sixth Army under German-born Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger, supported by 3,000 Filipino guerrillas, began entering Manila, capital of the Philippines, a U.S. Commonwealth, and soon liberated nearly 6,000 Allied and Filipino prisoners. Some of them, like the 64 U.S. Army nurses, […]
4
HITLER TAKES HELM OF GERMAN ARMED FORCES
Berlin, Germany • February 4, 1937 On this date in 1937, in a bold, sweeping decree, Adolf Hitler assumed command of the entire German armed forces, or Wehrmacht. He abolished the Reichskriegsministerium (Ministry of War), in the act liquidating the traditional power of the army general staff as the ultimate controller and director of Germany’s […]
5
PLEA TO RESCUE POWS IN GERMANY
Stockholm, Sweden • February 5, 1945 Within five months from the start of the German conquest of Norway in April 1940 the first Norwegian political prisoners, initially Jews, communists, and prominent political opponents, were deported to Germany, first by Adolf Hitler’s Norwegian Reichskommisar, or Governor-General, Josef Terboven, then by the Norwegian government of Nazi collaborator […]
6
HITLER PICKS ERWIN ROMMEL TO HEAD AFRIKA KORPS
Berlin, Germany • February 6, 1941 During the German invasion of France in 1940, an ambitious general named Erwin Rommel distinguished himself as the “lead from the front” commander of the 7th Panzer Division. Disregarding the performance-enhancing effects of his consumption of Army-issued Pervitin, a methamphetamine soldiers dubbed “Panzer Schokolade,” Rommel was a daredevil by […]
7
QUISLING IMPOSES DICTATORSHIP ON NORWAY
Oslo, Occupied Norway • February 7, 1942 On this date in 1942 in German-occupied Norway, Minister President Vidkun Quisling abolished the Norwegian constitution and established a dictatorship one year after ascending to the presidency. Quisling had been a reserve officer in the Norwegian Army and served as the Norwegian Minister of Defense from 1931 to […]
8
JAPANESE SURGE INTO BRITAIN’S SINGAPORE STRONGHOLD
Singapore Island, British Malaya • February 8, 1942 On this night and the next day in 1942 in British Malaya (today’s Malaysia) Japanese forces surged over and soon pushed the British-led defenders back to the edges of the 220-sq-mile island of Singapore (the “Gibraltar of the East”), nearly 600 miles from the initial Japanese landing sites. […]
9
ADM. YAMAMOTO ORDERS AIR RAID ON DARWIN
Tokyo, Japan • February 9, 1942 On December 8, 1941, the U.S. Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan in response to the massive Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That same December day and the next the governments of Great Britain, Canada, China, and Australia declared war […]
10
CARRIER FORCE SET TO CLAIM SKIES FOR U.S.
Ulithi Atoll, Western Pacific • February 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 Task Force 58 under Vice Adm. Marc “Pete” Mitscher, assigned to U.S. Adm. Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet, steamed out of its anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, 1,700 miles south of the main Japanese island of Honshū. Except for the Coral Sea […]
11
HITLER, AUSTRIAN HEAD TO CONFER
Salzburg, Austria • February 11, 1938 On this date in 1938 Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg arrived in Salzburg for a quick trip over the German border to confer with Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian Alps residence above Berchtesgaden, the Berghof. An Austrian native who had served as a lance corporal in the Bavarian Army in […]
12
GERMAN MILITIA ENLISTS WOMEN RECRUITS
Berlin, Germany • February 12, 1945 On this date in 1945 German women were called up for service in the Volkssturm (Home Guard, or national militia). Adolf Hitler was playing his final card in World War II by mobilizing practically every German civilian for an apocalyptic defense of the Third Reich, a 20th‑century Wagnerian Goetterdaemmerung. Nazi […]
13
HELLISH FIREBOMBING RAVAGES DRESDEN
Dresden, Germany • February 13, 1945 On this night in 1945, Fat (or Shrove) Tuesday, and over the next day, Ash Wednesday, some 1,300 British and American bombers appeared over largely untouched Dresden in Eastern Germany. A city of 642,000 (1939) swelled by 300,000 refugees fleeing from fighting on the Eastern Front, Dresden, 120 miles/310 km south […]
14
BUDAPEST GARRISON ENTERS SOVIET CAPTIVITY
Budapest, Hungary • February 14, 1945 On December 29, 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops (Romania had broken from the Axis and was now a Soviet ally) began laying siege to Budapest, the capital of Adolf Hitler’s vassal state of Hungary. Budapest, split in two by the River Danube, was a city of over 800,000 residents and […]
15
MONTE CASSINO ABBEY ORDERED DESTROYED
Cassino, Italy • February 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 British Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, the highly decorated commander in chief of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theater, ordered the aerial bombing of the historic Benedictine abbey towering majestically over the town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (Gari) River in […]
16
2ND MARINE RAIDER BATTALION ACTIVATED
Washington, D.C. • February 16, 1942 In the wake of the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on U.S. naval and army bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt settled on the U.S. Marine Corps as the home for a new commando-type force in the mold of British special operations forces to take the […]
17
JAPANESE TRUK TARGET OF NAVY AIR/SEA ATTACK
Task Force 58 Off Truk (Chuuk), Central Pacific • February 17, 1944 Chuuk Lagoon, known up to 1990 as Truk Lagoon, is a sheltered body of water in the Central Pacific north of New Guinea. Consisting of eleven major islands, Chuuk is part of the larger Caroline Islands group. Truk was part of the Spanish East […]
18
JAPAN CREATES CHINESE PUPPET STATE
Hsinking (Changchun), Manchukuo • February 18, 1932 The Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule in Japan in 1868 resulted in the downfall of that country’s powerful military commanders, the shoguns, and the Japanese samurai warrior class. Partly as a concession to the samurai, the Japanese government embarked on an aggressive foreign policy in Manchuria in Northeastern China […]
19
JAPANESE ON U.S. WEST COAST TO BE RELOCATED
Washington, D.C. • February 19, 1942 Eighty-two years ago on this date in 1942, celebrated today as the Day of Remembrance, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It authorized the War Department to designate “military areas” in the U.S. and admit, exclude, or remove from these areas anyone whom the department felt to […]
20
“BIG WEEK” KICKS OFF IN SKIES OVER GERMANY
London, England • February 20, 1944 On this date in 1944, while Soviet armed forces were ridding their country of the German Wehrmacht (German armed forces) on the Eastern Front, U.S. and British air forces embarked on Operation Argument in the skies over the Western Front. Unofficially dubbed “Big Week,” Operation Argument was an intensive […]
21
U.S. POUNDS NUREMBERG IN FOLLOW-UP RAID
SHAEF HQ, Reims, France • February 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 U.S. fighter-bombers attacked the Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s three-story Alpine retreat on the 6,700‑ft Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden on the Bavarian-Austrian border. The Berghof, bought and developed with royalties from the sale of Hitler’s crackpot political testimony, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), served as an […]
22
WHITE ROSE SIBLINGS PUT TO DEATH
Munich, Germany • February 22, 1943 On this date in 1943 siblings Sophie (age 21) and Hans Scholl (24) and their friend Christoph Probst (24), members of the underground White Rose (Weisse Rose) resistance circle, were charged with sedition for writing, printing, and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets; “tried” by “Hitler’s Hanging Judge,” the notorious Nazi jurist […]
23
JAPANESE SUB SHELLS U.S. WEST COAST
Santa Barbara, California • February 23, 1942 Japanese submarines initiated the first shore bombardments of the war with an attack on the U.S. Navy base at Johnston Island in the Pacific in mid-December 1941, just days after Japanese carrier-based planes had destroyed, in their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, one-half of the United States’ […]
24
JAPANESE CAPITAL FIREBOMBED
Tokyo, Japan • February 24, 1945 The first appearance over Japan in June 1944 of the massive four-engine B‑29 bomber—with its service ceiling of 33,000 ft/9,144 m, an operational range of over 3,200 nautical miles/5,926 km, and a maximum takeoff weight of 133,500 lb/60,555 kg—meant that the enemy’s Home Islands were squarely in the crosshairs of the war’s deadliest delivery system. […]
25
FIRST FLIGHT OF NAZI MONSTER TRANSPORTER
Berlin, Germany • February 25, 1941 The first flight of the German prototype Me 321 Gigant (“Giant”) took place on this date in 1941. The previous October German aircraft maker Messerschmitt had been given just 14 days to submit a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged Messerschmitt to […]
26
HITLER BECOMES GERMAN CITIZEN
Munich, Germany • February 26, 1932 On this date in 1932 in Germany, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler was granted German citizenship. A decade earlier the stateless Austrian (Hitler had formally renounced his Austrian citizenship in April 1925) was the unlikely leader of a fringe Populist-nationalist movement, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. In November 1923 he […]
27
NORWEGIAN COMMANDOS HALT HEAVY WATER PRODUCTION
In February 1943’s Operation Gunnerside Norwegian saboteurs temporarily crippled heavy-water production crucial to Germany’s atomic weapons program.
28
GERMANS ABANDON DEMYANSK POCKET
Moscow, Soviet Union • February 28, 1942 On this date in 1943 the 13-day Battle of Demyansk ended with the evacuation of the last batch of German armed forces from the Demyansk salient. Beginning the previous February 96,000 (eventually 131,000) German troops and auxiliary service personnel forced themselves into what was a relatively insignificant village […]
29
MACARTHUR KICKS OFF ADMIRALTY ISLANDS CAMPAIGN
Aboard the USS Phoenix in the Southwest Pacific • February 29, 1944 The Admiralty Islands lie 200 miles northeast of large contested island of New Guinea, which itself lies 93 miles north of Australia at the narrowest point, and nearly 1,800 miles southeast of Japanese-held Philippines (Mindanao). Consisting chiefly of the large island of Manus and the smaller […]
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