366 Days
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September
News Headlines
1
GERMAN NAVAL, LAND, AIR UNITS OVERPOWER POLISH DEFENSES
Warsaw, Poland • September 1, 1939 Eighty-five years ago World War II in Europe began on this date in 1939 in Danzig (now the present-day Polish city of Gdańsk) when the elderly German training ship Schleswig-Holstein, under the guise of a ceremonial visit to the city, bombarded Poland’s naval base in Danzig harbor. After a […]
2
BRITAIN, FRANCE STAND FIRM ON POLAND
London, England and Paris, France • September 2, 1939 Shortly after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Édouard Daladier confirmed for themselves the German invasion of Poland on September 1, the two leaders gave the order for general mobilization and evacuation of hundreds of thousands of children and mothers, tens of thousands of hospital […]
3
BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY
London, England • September 3, 1939 Addressing a national audience by radio on this date in 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain intoned the following words: “This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to […]
4
MULBERRY ARTIFICIAL HARBORS GET GO-AHEAD
London, England • September 4, 1943 On this date in 1943 the British War Office and Admiralty gave the go-ahead to build two temporary portable deep-water artificial harbors, one (codenamed Mulberry “A”) to be positioned off Omaha Beach at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer and the second (Mulberry “B”) off Gold Beach at Arromanches-les-Bains. The components of both harbors were to […]
5
BRITISH BEST ROMMEL IN BATTLE OF ALAM EL HALFA
Alam el Halfa, Egypt • September 5, 1942 The years-long back-and-forth Western Desert Campaign (June 11, 1940 to February 4, 1943) in the scrubby desert wastelands of Western Egypt and Eastern Libya had reached a stalemate at the end of July 1942, when both Allied and Axis sides licked their wounds in the wake of the quick […]
6
JAPAN: WAR INEVITABLE WITHOUT U.S. CONCESSIONS
Tokyo, Japan • September 6, 1941 On this date in 1941, in an Imperial Conference in Tokyo, Japanese military and political leaders embarked on a collision course with the West. It was decided that Japan would begin war preparations against the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands (all countries with territorial claims in Southeast Asia; […]
7
BRITISH KEEN TO TEST EXPERIMENTAL WEAPONS
On an English Beach • September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in Southwest England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle consisted of a pair of 10‑ft-/3‑m-high […]
8
TIZARD MISSION’S WAR-WINNING GIFT: CAVITY MAGNETRON
Washington, D.C. • September 8, 1940 On this date in 1940 the 7-member British Technical and Scientific Mission to the United States, or Tizard Mission as it was informally known, assembled in the nation’s capital. Sir Henry Tizard, brilliant visionary scientist and head delegate, had been in Washington, D.C., since August 22, meeting with notables, including […]
9
ITALIANS FORM NATIONAL LIBERATION COMMITTEE
Rome, Italy • September 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Italy, the Allies from their strongholds in North Africa (since November 1942) and Sicily (since July‑August 1943) invaded the boot-shaped Italian mainland at Salerno, some 170 miles/274 km southeast of Rome, Italy’s capital, with diversionary landings at Reggio di Calabria (September 3, […]
10
NAZIS PASS SWEEPING RESTRICTIONS AGAINST JEWS
Nuremberg, Germany • September 10, 1935 On date in 1935 the Nazis convened their annual Party congress in Nuremberg completely fixated on the charismatic savior-figure Adolf Hitler, Germany’s chancellor since January 1933. The 1935 “Rally of Freedom” (Reichsparteitag der Freiheit) touted Hitler’s wildly popular reintegration of the Saar region into the German Reich (from 1920 […]
11
U-BOATS ARE “RATTLESNAKES OF THE ATLANTIC”—ROOSEVELT
Washington, D.C. • September 11, 1941 Eight months before Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on U.S. assets at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Nazi Germany’s navy began mounting a series of U‑boat attacks on cargo ships crossing the North Atlantic from North America to Great Britain, a nation at war with Germany since September 3, 1939. The […]
12
HITLER JUBILANT AFTER MUSSOLINI’S RESCUE
Fuehrer HQ, Rastenburg, Germany • September 12, 1943 On September 11, 1943, imprisoned in the Hotel Campo Imperatore high in the Apennine Mountains, deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini learned of the terms of the Long Armistice the Allies had presented to Marshal Pietro Badoglio’s new Italian government. (A Short Armistice had been signed in Sicily on […]
13
MACARTHUR OPENS FIRST GROUND OFFENSIVE AGAINST JAPAN
Southwest Pacific Area HQ, Brisbane, Australia • September 13, 1942 On May 14, 1942, after a voyage of 23 days and 9,000 miles, 12,000 men and equipment of the U.S. 32nd Infantry Division arrived in Australia for the purpose of bulking up the understrength defenses of that country. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Allied Supreme Commander of all […]
14
NAZIS BET BIG, WIN BIG AT BALLOT BOX
Berlin, Germany • September 14, 1930 On this date in 1930 German voters went to the polls to elect a new Reichstag, and the results were shocking. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) was the ninth and smallest of Germany’s political parties, with but 12 members in the national parliament. In […]
15
U.S. MARINES DESCEND ON PELELIU
Peleliu, Palau Islands, Western Pacific Ocean • September 15, 1944 Beginning on this date in 1944 3 U.S. Marine Corps infantry regiments—the 1st, 5th, and 7th—of the 1st Marine Division landed on Japanese-held Peleliu, a 6‑mile-/9.7‑km-long by 2‑mile-/3.2‑km-wide speck of coral in the Pacific Ocean’s Palau Island chain. The first wave of Marines was followed less than […]
16
HITLER SOWS SEEDS FOR LATE-YEAR ARDENNES OFFENSIVE
Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, Germany • September 16, 1944 On this date in September 1944, at his forward headquarters in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler laid out his demands for a surprise counteroffensive on the Western Front that came to be known as the Ardennes Offensive, or Battle of the Bulge. September’s date is notable because […]
17
U.S. NAVY OPENS ARMED GUARD TRAINING CENTER
Little Creek Naval Training Center, Virginia • September 17, 1941 On this date in 1941 the U.S. Navy created a camp for Armed Guard gun training at Little Creek, Virginia, 12 miles/19 km northeast of the huge naval complex at Norfolk. Few people then and even less now have ever heard of this branch of the U.S. Navy. […]
18
JAPANESE ARMY SEIZES MANCHURIA
Tokyo, Japan • September 18, 1931 The assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in June 1928 was the first in a daisy change of major Sino-Japanese crises faced by the new Japanese emperor, Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), whose reign began 18 months before. Manchuria (sometimes referred to by its historical name Guandong) […]
19
NAZIS, SOVIETS DIVIDE POLISH SPOILS
Brest-Litovsk, Occupied Eastern Poland • September 19, 1939 Adolf Hitler’s armies stormed over Poland’s border on September 1, 1939, in what became known as the world’s first blitzkrieg—“lightning war.” Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin hastened to claim his share of the spoils under the terms of a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Treaty signed in Moscow […]
20
GERMANY TO SEND TROOPS TO AID ROMANIA
Berlin, Germany • September 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 the chief of the German high command, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, announced that Wehrmacht troops were being dispatched to Romania “in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.” The announcement was Berlin’s warning shot across Moscow’s bow that the Soviets were […]
21
BOEING B-29 SUPERFORTRESS FIRST FLIGHT
Seattle, Washington State • September 21, 1942 On this date Boeing’s largest-to-date, four-engine heavy bomber lifted off on its maiden flight from its namesake’s airfield in Seattle, Washington. Three years earlier the forerunner of the U.S. Army Air Forces had expressed its interest in a replacement bomber for the company’s first four-engine heavy bomber, the […]
22
JAPAN SET TO GARRISON FRENCH INDOCHINA
Vichy, France • September 22, 1940 As early as June 1940, after French resistance to the German conquest of France crumbled, Japan made overtures to Vichy French authorities for permission to station troops in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and for their warships to take up naval stations off Northern Indochinese ports in […]
23
HITLER BACKS NAZI TO LEAD GERMAN LUTHERANS
Berlin, Germany • September 23, 1934 On this date in 1934 Ludwig Mueller, a crew-cut former naval chaplain, was installed as the new Reich Bishop in a gaudy spectacle at the swastika-bedecked Berlin Cathedral. The year before, 1933, German chancellor Adolf Hitler had proposed, as part of an administrative overhaul of the German Evangelical (Lutheran) […]
24
LUFTWAFFE PREPARES FINAL TERROR BOMBING OF WARSAW
Forward German HQ in Poland • September 24, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering prepared to send hundreds of aircraft to blitz Warsaw in the largest air raid ever up to that time, while German armored forces prepared for a ground assault on the Polish capital. At 8 a.m. the […]
25
HITLER, MUSSOLINI CONSPIRE TO END AUSTRIAN INDEPENDENCE
Munich, Germany • September 25, 1937 On this date in 1937 Italian strongman Benito Mussolini paid his first visit to Germany, meeting Adolf Hitler in the Fuehrer’s private, luxurious 9‑room apartment in Munich, 10 minutes away from the Brown House, Nazi Party national headquarters, and the Fuehrerbau, where Hitler had formal offices. During the visit Mussolini […]
26
MONTGOMERY’S MARKET GARDEN GAMBLE FAILS
Berlin, Germany • September 26, 1944 On this date in 1944 the German news agency announced the surrender of 600 British troops in a small village west of Arnhem in the Netherlands. For days the lightly armed men of the British 1st Airborne “Red Devil” Division had held the northern end of a key bridge […]
27
REINHARD HEYDRICH NEW CZECH MILITARY GOVERNOR
Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia • September 27, 1941 On this date in 1941 SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich arrived in Prague to take up his post as Acting Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Five days later the new military governor of Czech lands, which Germany had seized in March 1939, outlined […]
28
FRENCH HOSTAGES TO DIE TIT FOR TAT
Paris, Occupied France • September 28, 1941 On this date in 1941, in the wake of the first public assassination of a German officer in France, the German military authorities issued a Code of Hostages to the French people. Pools of Frenchmen, whether detained by French authorities or by the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) or […]
29
JAPANESE AMERICAN 442nd RCT AT THRESHOLD OF FAME
Marseille, France • September 29, 1944 On this date in September 1944 three U.S. Liberty cargo ships arrived off the port of Marseille, France carrying the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT), their weapons, and vehicles. The 442nd consisted of Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) volunteers from the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii who had been recruited, […]
30
JAPAN ADOPTS “ABSOLUTE DEFENSE PERIMETER” STRATEGY
Tokyo, Japan • September 30, 1943 On this date in 1943, at the fourth Imperial Conference held since the start of the Pacific War, senior Japanese military and civilian leaders adopted the “absolute defense perimeter” strategy after securing the requisite imprimatur of Shōwa Emperor Hirohito. The strategy reflected a shift in the expectations of both […]
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