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 denizen […]
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 six-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 six 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’S CALL 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 succeeded a war-weary Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister on May 10, 1940. Chamberlain had appointed Churchill to be First Lord of the Admiralty, a […]
14
CONGRESS APPROVES WOMEN’S AUXILIARY ARMY CORPS (WAAC)
Washington, D.C. • May 14, 1942 Early in 1941 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts informed Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall that she intended to introduce a bill in the U.S. Congress to establish a volunteer women’s Army corps, separate and distinct from the existing Army Nurse Corps. After long debate—and after […]
15
BRITAIN ASKS U.S. FOR DOZENS OF DESTROYERS
London, England • May 15, 1940 On this date, just five days after assuming the top leadership position in Great Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a telegram to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was also five days since the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) had flooded over the borders of the Low Countries and […]
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. One suggestion was to attack dams in the Ruhr region. The idea was to blow up the dams […]
17
ICELAND SEVERS TIES WITH 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
ALLIES SEIZE RENOWNED BENEDICTINE ABBEY
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 pastoral town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (or Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in January, British, American, and French […]
19
OPERATION DYNAMO TO RESCUE TRAPPED BRITISH ARMY
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, which was in a treaty relationship with the two Western powers. The […]
20
GERMAN PARATROOPERS SNATCH CRETE FROM BRITAIN
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 oil supplies in and around Ploiești, Romania, where he had sent a German “military mission,” would not come under Allied bomber attack from stationary […]
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 German 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 combat voyage of Nazi Germany’s monstrous battleship, the most lethal weapon […]
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” (German, Stahlpakt; Italian, Patto d’Acciaio). The pack, known formally as the “Pact of Friendship and Alliance,” tied the two dictatorships in a ten-year military and political alliance and stipulated, among other things, that neither […]
23
GEN. EISENHOWER DISSOLVES NAZI GOVERNMENT
Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany • May 23, 1945 Twenty-three days after German dictator Adolf Hitler had committed suicide under the rubble of his Reich capital, and sixteen days after military emissaries from Reich President Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces, a telephone call reached the admiral’s […]
24
SHORT-LIVED 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 […]
25
OPERATION OLYMPIC TO INITIATE JAPAN’S DOWNFALL
Operation Olympic was the U.S. high-casualty plan to invade Japan’s southernmost Home Island, Kyushu. It was never put into operation due to Japan’s capitulation and unconditional surrender in August and September 1945
26
HITLER OPENS VOLKSWAGEN FACTORY
Fallersleben (Wolfsburg), Lower Saxony • May 26, 1938 On this date in 1938 near Fallersleben in the German state of Lower Saxony, Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Nazi dignitaries laid the foundation stone for the KdF-Wagen car factory. The state-owned factory was placed under the umbrella of the Nazi Party’s German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or […]
27
JAPANESE CARRIER FORCE HEADS TO MIDWAY FOR EPIC SHOWDOWN
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 airmen of […]
28
HITLER PLANS TO END CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S EXISTENCE
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 the German dictator ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European […]
29
FIRST ENEMY STRIKE BY CONSOLIDATED B-32 DOMINATORS
Clark Field, Philippines • May 29, 1945 On this date in 1945 three test versions of the B‑32 four-engine Dominators made their first combat appearance in World War II. Leaving Clark Field 60 miles north of the Philippine capital of Manila, the Dominators targeted a Japanese supply depot less than a flight hour away. Four more B‑32 […]
30
OPERATION FORTITUDE DECEPTION READY FOR LIVE TESTING
London, England • May 30, 1944 In the run-up to the invasion of mainland Europe (Operation Overlord), the Western Allies concocted an ambitious strategic deception plan to mislead their adversaries as to where and when the actual invasion would take place. Called Operation Fortitude, the plan had two polar-opposite components. Fortitude North supposedly threatened German-occupied […]
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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