Tuesday, March 20, 1945. Hitler's last appearance in public.

Hitler visited Hitler Youth members mobilized for combat in Berlin.  The child whom he was famously photographed with, with Hitler pinching his cheek, would survive the Battle of Berlin and keep a framed copy of the scene in his house for the rest of his life.

This was Hitler's last public appearance.

The U.S. Seventh Army captured Saarbrücken.

German defensive specialist Gotthard Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula.

The Germans began to massacre forced workers in the Arnsberg Forest Massacre.

The Australian Army carried out Operation Platypus, in which troops from Z Special Unit were inserted into the Balikpapan area of Borneo to gather information and organize resistance against the Japanese.

France signed an economic pact with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

The Navy endured heavy kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa.

The USS Midway was launched.

This Day in History: Staff Sgt Ysmael Villegas charges six enemy foxholes

Last edition:

Monday, March 19, 1945. The Nero Decree.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer, British Army, Diplomacy, German Kriegsmarine, German Wehrmacht, Indian Army, Kamikaze, Populism, The Nero Decree, Turkey, U.S. Navy, USSR

Thursday, January 18, 1945. Advances in Poland, losses in Hungary.

The Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front captured Modlin. The 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front approached encircling Lodz and Krakow, and the Germans withdrew from the latter.

The 4th SS Panzer Division nearly destroyed the Soviet 135th Rifle Corps while attempting to relieve Budapest.

The Red Army liberated the Budapest ghetto.

British commandos landed on the Dutch island of Schouwen.

Last edition:

Wednesday, January 17, 1945. The Red Army enters a destroyed Warsaw.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Auschwitz, German Army, German SS, Red Army, Warsaw Poland, World War Two

Wednesday, January 3, 1945. British actions.

The US commenced the Invasion of Lingayen Gulf with a naval bombardment that would last six days.  The Japanese responded with kamikaze attacks.

British commandos and Indian Army troops made a nearly unopposed landing at the Burmese island of Akyab.

The Battle of Bure, a British attack in the Battle of the Bulge, commenced.

US troops in Belgium, January 3, 1945.

General Nikolaos Plastiras became Prime Minister of Greece.

Last edition:

Tuesday, January 2, 1945. Advances and withdrawals.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Aircraft, Alsace-Lorraine, Battle of the Bulge, Fais Island, German Wehrmacht, Red Army, Royal Navy, Siege of Budapest, Winston Churchill, World War Two

Friday, December 29, 1944. Siege of Budapest.

The Red Army and Romanian Army, the latter now fighting for the Allies, besieged Budapest.

Members of No. 9 Commando following Operation Partridge.

British commandoes raided behind German lines in Italy in Operation Partridge.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29: 1944 USS Lincoln County, a landing ship tank, commissioned.

The U-322 was sunk by the Canadian corvette Calgary off of Dorset.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 28, 1944. The German staff says Rückzug, Hitler says Angriff.

Labels: Adolf Hitler, Army, Battle of Garfagnana, Battle of the Bulge, Bernard Law Montgomery, Dwight Eisenhower, German Wehrmacht, Greece, Hockey, Italian Social Republic, Italy, Winston Churchill, World War Two, Wyoming

World War Two Amphibious Warfare Display: National Museum of Military Vehicles Dubois Wyoming.

World War Two Jeep coming off of LVT-4 amphibious tractor.

LVT-4 Amtrak.

DUKW amphibious truck.

Amphibious Jeep.

Last edition:

The Aerodrome: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. National Museum of Military Vehicles Dubois Wyoming.

Labels: Dubois Wyoming, Fighter, Mig 21, Mikoyan, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Soviet Air Forces, Wyoming (Dubois)

Sunday, October 15, 1944. Horthy attempts to take Hungary out of the war.

n Aachen, Germany, Pfc. Ragnel Lundgren, Jamestown, New York, maintains continuous communications with his headquarters with a handie-talkie radio. 15 October, 1944. 1st Infantry Division.

Aided by the armored force, Yank infantry moves forward to engage the enemy in Aachen, Germany. 15 October, 1944. Company M, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

Regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy made a radio broadcast announcing a separate peace with the Soviet Union.  The Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust, a commando operation to seize Horthy and keep Hungary in the war.  He was in fact seized later that day and resigned in favor of Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi when he learned that his son had been seized and his life was in danger.

The Red Army too Riga.

Partisans launched an operation to expel the Germans from Kosovo.

The Poles took Gambettola.

The Leipzig collided with the Prinz Eugen in the Baltic fog and was rendered a total loss.

The U-777 was sunk by the RAF.

Task Force 38.4 conducted air raids north of Manila.

Pfc. Hoyle E. Lougherty, Knoxville, Tenn., looks at a warning sign posted by the Nazis for the German citizenry of Aachen, Germany. It means "Take care, the enemy may be listening". 15 October, 1944.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 14, 1944. Rommel kills himself.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Battle of Peleliu, Bill Mauldin, Erwin Rommel, Food, German Army, Greece, Italian Social Republic, Italy, July 20 Plot, Palau Island, Philippines, Taiwan, U.S. Navy

Sunday, October 1, 1944. Battle of Tornio starts.

Miss Betty Brittian, Pasadena, Calif., hands Cpl. Wm. B. Brooks, Clayton, Ga., inside the tank, a cup of coffee and doughnuts. 1 October, 1944. Company B, 609th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

The Battle of Tornio began with a Finnish attack on German positions in Lapland.

The U.S. Army took Monte Battaglia.  II and IV Corps launch an offensive towards Bologna.

The Germans commenced the Putten Raid in the Netherlands, removing 660 men in reprisals for a failed assassination attempt on a German official.

British commandos landed at Poros, Greece.  Greek troops landed at Mitilini, Lemnos, and Levita.

British General General Richard McCreery assumed command of the 8th Army, in Italy. General Oliver Leese, was assigned to command Allied Land Forces, Southeast Asia.

Gen. Rudolf Schmundt, age 48, died of wounds sustained in the July 20 plot.  He had been an adjutant to Hitler.

Sally Reed, Durham, Mass., a Red Cross worker somewhere in France, does a bit of KP on the large containers about her--and she doesn't believe in signs for they're all coffee urns. 1 October, 1944.

Last edition: 

Saturday, September 30, 1944. Counteroffensive at Nijmegen.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Peleliu, boats and ships, British Army, Canadian Army, Defence of the Nijmegen bridgehead, German Wehrmacht, Operation Market Garden, Palau, Pas-de-Calais France, World War Two

August 15, 1944. Operation Dragoon. The added invasion of France

A second, nearly forgotten invasion of France, this time in the south, commenced.

Operation Dragoon.

Ordinally planned on concert with Operation Overlord, a shortage of landing craft caused it to be postponed to August.  In just four weeks the Allies would clear southern France of the Germans.

Troops of the 15th Inf. Regt., 3rd Div., take cover in the sand as they await orders to advance inland. 15 August, 1944. 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.

SC 411764 - Infantrymen of B Company, 120th Infantry, 30th Division, cut through a field alongside a road to avoid crossing in the open and giving German snipers a target. 15 August, 1944.

A paratrooper thanks the French fighters who saved his life. Pvt. Winifred D. Eason, of Atlanta, Ga., Company B, 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, landed 34 hours before H-Hour, D-Day, Aug. 15, 1944, for the invasion of southern France. On the left is the man who saved him, Monsieur Marc Rainaut, leader of the French forces of the Interior of St. Tropez. In the center is Mademoiselle Nicole Celebenovitch, who secured a .45 (seen in her belt) and led the paratroopers to a group of hidden Germans. Rainaut received the Silver Star for his work on D-Day.

It is at this point, frankly, that the Germans should have rationally concluded they had lost the war.

The Battle of Port Cros took place in which the U.S. Navy and the Kriegsmarine engaged in a rare surface engagement in connection with Operation Dragoon in which Axis ships operating out of Port Cros engaged the U.S. Navy.  Later in the day, a mixed regiment of United States Army and Canadian Army infantry, the 1st Special Service Force, dropped onto Port Cros and captured the five forts there after a day-long battle with their German garrisons.

Audie Murphy received the Distinguished Service Cross for action taken on 15 August 1944.

"U.S. Army nurses, newly arrived, line the rail of their vessel as it pulls into port of Greenock, Scotland, in European Theater of Operations. They wait to disembark as the gangplank is lowered to the dock.", 08/15/1944"

The U-741 was sunk off of Le Havre by the USS Somers.

Last edition:

Monday, August 14, 1944. Closing Gaps

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Canadian Army, Falaise Pocket, France, Ft. Lawton Washington, German Army, Italian Army, Operation Bagration, Operation Overlord, Partisans, Polish Army, Red Army, World War Two

Friday, June 2, 1944. Eisenhower moves, Operation Frantic commences, Romania and the Soviet Union talk.

American medics from the First Special Services Force giving aid to a group of French soldiers... some of whom were killed and others wounded when three shells landed in Colleferro. Picture taken one minute after the shells landed. 2 June, 1944.

Hitler ordered Kesslering to abandon Rome, which Kesselring was already doing.

Some of the prisoners who were flushed out of the buildings on the eastern side of town.  The Alied troops are from the First Special Services Force, which explains their baggy M1943 paratrooper field trousers.  Artena and Colleferro area, Italy. 2 June, 1944.

3rd Division troops move into Valmontone, Italy, a strong point of German resistance for several days. 2 June, 1944.

Diplomats from the USSR and Romania met in secret in Stockholm to negotiate a Romanian surrender.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—June 2, 1944 Countdown to D-day: Gen. Dwight Eisenhower moves his headquarters to a trailer at Southwick House in Hampshire.

The French Committee of National Liberation proclaimed itself to be the Provisional Government of France in a declaration from Algeria.

Operation Frantic, which saw U.S. aircraft fly from the United Kingdom and Italy on bombing missions, and then land in Ukraine, and then bomb again on their way back, commenced.

This would be done only seven times.  By and large, the effort was not a success as the Soviets were hostile to it, U.S. personnel assigned to Soviet bases were wary of the Soviets (for good reason and because of their backgrounds as having come from refugee families), and the Soviets proved to be incapable of defending the airfields, which they had warned they might be.

B-17 landing in Ukraine, June 2, 1944.

An ammunition train derailed in Soham Cambridgeshire and exploded, killing two people.

Lost on this day in 1944 with all of its crew.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, June 1, 1944. Chanson d'automne.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, boats and ships, British Army, French Resistance Movements, Italy, Lighter than air aircraft, Operation Hasty, Operation Overlord, Paratroopers, Rangers, Rome, U.S. Navy, Weapons, World War Two

Wednesday, April 26, 1944. Pyrrihic Kidnapping.

Example of wartime propaganda aimed at the Japanese.

In a mission months in the making, members of the SOE and Cretan resistance kidnapped Heinrich Kreipe.

Originally directed at Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller as a reprisal for actions committed under his orders, Kreipe had succeeded him by the time the SOE team arrived.  Kreipe's kidnapping would cause Müller to return and order mass reprisals, something that had not occurred under Kreipe.

In short, it was a pointless action and poorly thought out, with ultimately tragic results.

Kreipe would be reunited with his kidnappers in a 1972 Greek television program.

In New Guinea, American beachheads at Tanahmerah Bay and Humboldt Bay were linked up.  Australian forces took Alexishafen.

The Yoshida Maru No. 1 was sunk by the USS Jack resulting in the loss of 2,669 men.

The U-488 was sunk off of Cape Verde by the U.S. Navy.

The I-180 was sunk off of Chirikof Island by the USS Gilmore.

The Royal Navy, in an effort to attack the Tirpitz which failed due to weather, found a coastal convoy instead and sunk three ships  in it.

The POW camp in Hoopeston, Illinois, received its first prisoners.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 25, 1944. The Blood for Goods deal extended, Air disaster at Montreal, the death of George Herriman.

1940s, 1944, 1944 at the Movies, Brazil, Commandos, Munich Germany, New Guinea, Personalities, Prisoners of War, Royal Air Force, Special Boat Service, Switzerland, United States Air Force, World War Two