366 Days
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May
News Headlines
1
SOVIETS TURN THUMBS DOWN TO GERMAN PEACE OFFER
Berlin, Germany • May 1, 1945 A little before 4 a.m. on this date in 1945 in Berlin, the new Chief of German Army General Staff Gen. Hans Krebs was shown into the tactical headquarters of Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet Eighth Guards Army, on the west side of Tempelhof airport. A […]
2
REDS IMPOSE PEACE, U.S. CAPTURES ROCKET SCIENTISTS
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France • May 2, 1945 On this date in 1945, a rain-sodden but peaceful day in Berlin, the battle for the war-ravaged Reich capital ended when General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling surrendered his garrison to Soviet Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, whose Eighth Guards Army was part of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s First Belorussian […]
3
HITLER PAYS STATE VISIT TO ITALY
Rome, Italy • May 3, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler began a 6‑day Italian state visit to Rome, Naples, and Florence in a display of Axis solidarity. The choreographed visit featured a parade by the Italian armed forces (demonstrating to German reviewers a lack of modern equipment), a review of the Italian […]
4
FIRST OF THREE UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDERS OF GERMAN FORCES
Lueneburg Heath, Northern Germany • May 4, 1945 Lueneburg (German, Lüneburg), a district in Lower Saxony, Northern Germany, had been captured by elements of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s 21st Army Group on April 18, 1945. Montgomery made his headquarters at Moellering Villa in the village of Haecklingen just south of Lueneburg. At midday, May 3, […]
5
POLES FIRM: NO CONCESSIONS TO HITLER
Warsaw, Poland • May 5, 1939 In 1923 Poland’s Baltic neighbor to the north, Lithuania, unlawfully annexed Memel Territory (now Klaipėda Region in present-day Lithuania) that had been, up to 1918, part of Prussia under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Like the Danzig enclave in Poland and the former Territory of the Saar Basin that had briefly been […]
6
KEEL LAID FOR LIBERTY CARGO SHIP SS JEREMIAH O’BRIEN
South Portland, Maine • May 6, 1943 On this date the New England Shipbuilding Corporation laid down the keel of SS Jeremiah O’Brien. Named after a Scots-Irish Revolutionary War hero from Maine (then part of Massachusetts), the SS Jeremiah O’Brien was one of 2,710 emergency cargo (EC)‑class freighters built in 18 different shipyards across the United States. The […]
7
JAPANESE SCORE TACTICAL VICTORY IN BATTLE OF CORAL SEA
With Rear Adm. Fletcher’s Task Force 17 • May 7, 1942 In the 6 months following Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on U.S. naval and air facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese had the advantage of dominant air and naval power in the Pacific Ocean region. During these months the Japanese military looked to expand […]
8
GERMAN MILITARY SIGNS DEFINITIVE UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
Berlin-Karlshorst, Germany • May 8, 1945 Five days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in Berlin on April 30, 1945, Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, an emissary from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, arrived in the French cathedral town of Reims, headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. For the second time in less […]
9
ENIGMA, GERMAN ENCRYPTION DEVICE, CODES SEIZED
Bletchley Park, England • May 9, 1941 As war loomed in Europe, British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park outside London worked feverishly to unravel the Enigma cipher machine, which the Germans used to encrypt their most secret communications. The Enigma had a number of differently wired scrambler rotors that operators changed and shuffled through billions […]
10
BLITZ CULMINATES IN LONDON DEVASTATION
London, England • May 10/11, 1941 Although it would not be known for over a month, the Luftwaffe raid on London on this night, May 10/11, 1941, brought closure to Nazi Germany’s 15‑month strategic bombing campaign of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The British public dubbed the aerial campaign the Blitz (September 7, 1940, to May 10, 1941), […]
11
U.S. SETS OUT TO RECAPTURE ATTU ISLAND
Attu, Aleutian Islands, Alaska • May 11, 1943 The Japanese assault on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands began with a carrier-based aerial attack on June 3 and 4, 1942, that targeted U.S. Navy and Army facilities at Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island (see map below), the most populous island in the Alaskan archipelago. The carrier strike force was […]
12
NAZI GERMANY INVADES FRANCE, CAPTURES CAPITAL PARIS
Sedan, France • May 12, 1940 Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, on account of Germany’s aggression against its eastern neighbor Poland 2 days earlier. Both nations honored their guarantee to protect Poland’s borders in the event of a German invasion. Ten days into May 1940 Germany attacked neutral Belgium […]
13
CHURCHILL CALLS NATION TO ARMS VS. HITLER
London, England · May 13, 1940 As Adolf Hitler’s armies raced across Europe, seemingly unstoppable, gobbling up country after country for Nazi Germany, and (God forbid) perhaps Britain herself, Winston Churchill on this date in 1940 succeeded a war-weary Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister. After a lukewarm reception from fellow Members of Parliament, Churchill […]
14
GERMANS CRUSH DUTCH DEFENSES
Rotterdam, The Netherlands • May 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 in Holland, the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam’s medieval city center, killing nearly 1,000 people and leaving 85,000 homeless. Rather than endure more ferocious bombings—leaflets dropped on Utrecht indicated it was next Dutch city in German crosshairs—the Dutch Army surrendered the next day. The German […]
15
DUTCH PAY PRICE, BECOME NAZI VASSALS
The Hague, Netherlands · May 15, 1940 Following the Dutch surrender on this date in 1940, Adolf Hitler appointed fellow Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart to be Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands. Previously, long-time Nazi Party member Seyss-Inquart had served as Reichsstatthalter (governor) of the new German province of Ostmark, which had once been the independent country […]
16
“DAMBUSTERS” BREACH RUHR DAMS
London, England · May 16, 1943 At least since 1937, two years before the outbreak of European hostilities, British intelligence had looked into developing alternative ways to destroy German factories in the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland. Late on this date in 1943 in Germany, a British squadron of nineteen modified Avro Lancaster bombers, each […]
17
ICELAND CUTS TIES TO DENMARK
Reykjavik, Iceland · May 17, 1941 On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, ostensibly to protect the neutrality of the two Scandinavian countries against Franco-British aggression. Adolf Hitler had become convinced in mid-December 1939 that the two West European Allies, at war with Germany for three and a half months now, were […]
18
FAMOUS BENEDICTINE ABBEY FALLS TO ALLIES
Cassino, Italy · May 18, 1944 On February 15, 1944, British Gen. Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief of all Allied armies in Italy, ordered the aerial bombing of the ancient Benedictine abbey towering over the town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (or Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in January, British, American, and French troops […]
19
CHURCHILL ORDERS DUNKIRK RESCUE
London, England · May 19, 1940 Following Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, neither of the Allies committed to launching a significant land offensive against Adolf Hitler’s Germany as punishment for the invasion of its eastern neighbor, Poland. The most the British were prepared to do was deploy a 315,000‑man […]
20
GERMAN PARATROOPERS SEIZE CRETE
Crete, Eastern Mediterranean · May 20, 1941 With the start of marathon German operations against the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, a month away, Adolf Hitler needed to ensure that his Romanian oil supplies in and around Ploiești would not come under bomber attack from stationary bases in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most likely source […]
21
BISMARCK’S BREAKOUT WORRIES ROYAL NAVY
London, England · May 21, 1941 On this date in 1941 the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck set out from occupied Norway into the main Atlantic shipping lanes, there to act as long-distance commerce raiders. It was the maiden voyage of Germany’s monstrous battleship, the most lethal weapon in any navy’s […]
22
HITLER, MUSSOLINI INK BLOOD PACT
Berlin, Germany · May 22, 1939 On this date in 1939 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed the “Pact of Steel,” which tied the two dictatorships in a ten-year military alliance and stipulated that neither side could make peace without the other’s consent. Ominously dubbed the “Pact of Blood” in the planning stage, the alliance […]
23
EISENHOWER DISSOLVES NAZI GOVERNMENT
Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany · May 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, twenty-three days after Adolf Hitler’s suicide under the rubble of the Reich capital, Berlin, and sixteen days after emissaries from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German military forces, a British liaison officer went to […]
24
BRIEF HALT IN ATLANTIC U-BOAT WAR
Berlin, Germany · May 24, 1943 In June 1942 German submarines sank 637,000 tons of British shipping—a greater total than in any previous or subsequent month. So many prowling U‑boats made it hard for merchant convoys sailing in the major trans-Atlantic traffic lanes to evade detection. The next year, in March, Atlantic U‑boats sank 82 ships (476,000 tons) […]
25
U.S. FIFTH ARMY IN RACE TO ROME
With Maj. Gen. Mark Clark in Italy • May 25, 1944 In 1943–1944 the centerpiece of German defenses in Italy was the Gustav Line, whose most famous bastion was centered on the historic Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. Thousands of German soldiers and conscripted Italian civilians worked hard to strengthen the line, 65 miles north of the […]
26
AFRIKA KORPS THREATENS BRITISH ARMY IN LIBYA
Near Tobruk, Libya, North Africa • May 26, 1942 The yearlong Western Desert Campaign (Desert War) in the wasteland of Western Egypt and Eastern Libya had reached a stalemate in May 1942, with both Allied and Axis sides licking their wounds. The fighting started four days after Benito Mussolini’s Italy declared war on Great Britain […]
27
JAPANESE NAVY SET TO LAUNCH BATTLE OF MIDWAY
Hashirajima Anchoring Area, Hiroshima Bay, Japan · May 27, 1942 A little over four months after Japan devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet riding at peaceful anchor at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japanese Shōwa Emperor Hirohito and his Army and Navy staff officers received a rude calling card from Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle and 79 other […]
28
HITLER PLANS TO ERADICATE CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Berlin, Germany · May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard Hitler ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European order that […]
29
NAZIS DEPLOY MIDGET SUBS IN FRANCE
Off the Normandy Coast, France • May 29, 1944 The German Kriegsmarine experimented with a half-dozen stealthy combat vessels that could send torpedoes crashing into Allied ships. Perhaps the most unusual was the Neger (“Negro,” a play on the name of its designer, Richard Mohr, i.e., Moor). Almost 25 ft long, the battery-powered Neger was shaped […]
30
RAF VENGEANCE BEGINS WITH 1,000 BOMBER RAID
Cologne, Germany • May 30, 1942 During World War II in Europe Allied air power had several principle objectives. Foremost among them were destroying Nazi Germany’s war-making capacity, oil installations, and transportation networks; demoralizing Germans by laying waste to their population centers, where mostly civilians lived, many working for the military-industrial firms in the area; […]
31
PLANNERS MULL USING A-BOMB ON JAPAN
Pentagon, Washington, D.C. · May 31, 1945 On this date in 1945 a special group met in the Pentagon to search for an alternative to dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. The group had been called into existence by the new American president, Harry S. Truman. Neither Truman nor anyone else in the room knew […]
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