This is where the Daily Chronicles are posted
Wake Island, North Pacific Ocean · December 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Wake Island defenders surrendered after two attack waves of 1,000 Japanese each stormed the beaches. Two days earlier, in their largest attack yet on Wake Island, the Japanese had sent 49 aircraft, dive bombers and fighters both, to knock out the last…
Antwerp, Belgium · December 22, 1944 The German Kriegsmarine possessed several notable midget submarines (Kleinst-U-Boote), one being the one-man Biber (German for “beaver”) and the other the two-man Seehund (German for “seal”). Neither U‑boat was particularly successful as a weapon against Allied ships and merchantman. Influenced by a captured one-man British submarine, a prototype Biber…
Bucharest, Romania · December 21, 1937 On this date in 1937 Romania’s last free elections (until 1990) ended in the ouster of the middle-of-the road National Liberal government. The Liberals, who remained the largest party in parliament, were unable to form a coalition government with the next two runner-up parties. A week later King Carol II…
Washington, D.C. · December 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William Knudsen to head a four-member board (Office of Production Management, or OPM) to plan for national defense and coordinate aid to Great Britain following Germany’s total blockade of that island nation in mid-August (Battle of the Atlantic). A…
London, England · December 19, 1939 The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union broke out on November 30, 1939, 2‑1/2 months after Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had partitioned Poland between themselves. The French and British governments strongly desired to aid the Finns with volunteers and war materiel. The only possible route for such aid…
Berlin, Germany · December 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 in Berlin, one day before receiving the credentials of the new Soviet ambassador to Germany, Adolf Hitler signed Fuehrer Directive 21, Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa), thereby initiating the secret preparations and military operations that led to the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22,…
Washington, D.C. and London, England · December 17, 1942 In remarks he made to senior Nazis at a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on January 22, 1942, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and head of the German secret police apparatus, spoke of “practical experience” that was being collected “in…
SHAEF HQ, France · December 16, 1944 “It is essential to deprive the enemy of his belief that victory is certain,” Adolf Hitler told his generals on December 12, 1944. Four days later, on this date in 1944, elements of four German armies, comprising nearly 300,000 German troops in 14 infantry and 5 panzer divisions, smashed through the Ardennes…
Montevideo, Uruguay · December 15, 1939 In the first months of World War II only the British Royal Navy, under the leadership of 65-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty (in May 1940, Prime Minister) Winston Churchill, prosecuted the war against Nazi Germany with energy. After U‑boats had sunk the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous and the…
Berlin, Germany · December 14, 1939 On this date in 1939 Adolf Hitler and high-ranking members of the German navy and army met with Norway’s Vidkun Quisling, whose private visit to Berlin had been sponsored by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s chief racial theorist. From 1931 to 1933 Quisling had served as Norway’s minister of…