This is where the Daily Chronicles are posted
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · January 10, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Soviets launched Operation Ring, their name for the action that tightened the noose around the 250,000-plus soldiers of the German Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). Operation Ring had been preceded by Operation Uranus (November 19–23, 1942), a one-million-man-plus Soviet offensive targeting…
Washington, D.C. · January 9, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C., the U.S. State Department advised American citizens to leave Japan. Two summers earlier the State Department had informed Japan that it would not renew the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the two countries, leaving the U.S. free in January…
Tokyo, Japan · January 8, 1941 On this date in 1941 the Tokyo Gazette published the Imperial War Department’s newly adopted Japanese Field Service Code. It advised soldiers in part, “Do not give up under any circumstances, keeping in mind your responsibility not to tarnish the glorious history of the Imperial Army with its tradition…
Saipan Island, Northern Marianas · January 7, 1945 In early October 1944 the U.S. high command decided that, after securing the Philippine island of Leyte (done before the end of December), Gen. Douglas MacArthur was to liberate neighboring Luzon Island, while Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, from his station in the Central Pacific, would attack the…
Washington, D. C. · January 6, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his State of the Union Address to the U.S. Congress to outline his desire for a world based not on a “new order of tyranny”—an allusion to the “new European order” championed by Adolf Hitler’s…
Berlin, Germany · January 5, 1939 On this date in 1939, 8 months before the armed forces of Nazi Germany surged over Polish borders to launch World War II in Europe, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler told Poland’s visiting Foreign Minister Józef Beck that Germany would guarantee his country’s frontiers were a “final settlement” reached over the status…
Budapest, Hungary · January 4, 1945 In March 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) to occupy his wavering Axis ally Hungary, whose Nagykanizsa (German, Grosskirchen) oil reserves and fuel storage tanks southwest of the capital Budapest in the Lake Balaton (German, Plattensee) area had grown strategically more important to the German war…
London, England · January 3, 1943 By the end of 1942 U-boats operating from ports in Germany and occupied Europe had sunk just over 1,160 ships (see Battle of the Atlantic). U‑boats claimed nearly 70 percent of all Allied and neutral shipping losses (about 7.8 million tons), and the Kriegsmarine appeared to be winning the tonnage race,…
Manila, Philippines · January 2, 1942 Japan intended to occupy the Philippine Islands as part of its plan for a “Greater East Asia War.” The nation’s Southern Expeditionary Army Group was tasked with seizing the islands, British Malaya (today’s Malaysia), and the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) simultaneously with the Japanese Navy’s assault on the…
London, England · January 2, 1945 In the 19th century the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, long associated with gingerbread, sausages, handmade toys, and Christkindlmaerkte (Christmas markets), had become an important industrial center with companies such as engineering and manufacturing giants Siemens and MAN. Both firms contributed mightily to Germany’s war effort—Siemens by producing everything from…