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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