Chronography of France & Germany
See end of page for Monaco
This page also covers
World War Two in Europe � see maps, years 1940-45, below
For World
War Two in the Pacific see China/Japan
Page last
modified 22/8/2021
Click Here for maps of Alencon, 1975 and 2002
(from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Bordeaux, 1935 and 2006
(from Michelin maps)
Click
Here for maps of Cholet 1978 and 2000 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click
Here for maps of Laval 1978 and 2000 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click
Here for maps of Metz, 1899 and 1988 (from Encuclopedia Britannica 1910 and
Michelin)
Click
Here for maps of Nantes, 1945 and 2006 (from Michelin maps)
Click Here for maps of Paris NW (Pontoise),
1960 and 2005 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Perpignan, 1977 and
2003 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Periguex, 1977 and
2001 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Poitiers, 1958 and 2000
(from Michelin maps)
Click Here for maps of Rochefort, 1976 and
2001 (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Saintes 1976 and 2001
(near La Rochefort) (from IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click Here for maps of Toulouse, ca. 1955 and
2006 (from Michelin maps); 1977 and 2001 (IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click
Here for maps of Vix (near La Rochelle) � disappearing wetlands and woods) (from
IGN 1:100,000 maps)
Click
Here for page linking to railway maps of France. Shows current and disused
railways, goods and tourist lines, canals, tunnels.
France, INSEE, statistics
site, https://www.insee.fr/fr/accueil
1)
Maps of Heligoland, Mediaeval
times.
2)
Maps of France, Germany, 843 � 880.
3)
Maps of Germany at Treaty of Verdun and
under Charlemagne.
4)
Growth of Prussia, 1415 � 1914.
For growth of Germany from
Brandenburg 1415 click here.
Click Here for map of Berlin 1910
Click Here for maps of Dresden 1813 and
now,
Click Here for image of Dresden 1945
Click Here for Youtube 54
minute video, Blitz on Dresden
Click Here for image of ElsenStrasse; 1961
(Berlin Wall just erected) and 2008
Click Here for map of Hamburg 1910.
Maps of Heligoland, Mediaeval
times.
.Growth of Prussia, 1415 � 1914
Maps of France, Germany, 843 � 880.
Maps of Germany at Treaty of Verdun and
under Charlemagne
For Dreyfus Affair see Jewish history
16/10/2020, A teenage Chechen refugee beheaded Samuel Paty,
a French teacher who had shown his class at a school on the edge of Paris
controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
26/9/2019, Jacques Chirac died aged 86. He had twice been
President of France.
15/4/2019, Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris was very
severely damaged by fire. The fire was believed to have been caused by
renovation works, which, having suffered delays due to lack of funding, had
been going on for years; the blaze started shortly after 6pm local time.
Gilet Janue (Yellow Vest)
protests across France
20/4/2019, Yellow Vest
protests in Paris for the 23rd consecutive Saturday.
23/3/2019, Yellow Vest
protestors caused disturbances in the Champs-Elys�es area of central Paris for
the 19th consecutive Saturday. The previous Saturday, 16/3/2019, the
level of destruction had ratcheted up with banks, cafes and shops being set
fire to. President
Macron put military soldiers on the streets on the 23/3/2019,
raising fears that a protestor would be shot dead.
8/12/2018, Another
weekend of rioting in Paris saw 1700 arrested and 71 injured. Riots also occurred
in Brussels and Amsterdam.
1/12/2018, Rioting by the
�yellow vests� in France escalated, with major unrest around the Arc de
Triomphe in Paris and in several other cities, also The Netherlands and Belgium
were affected. 412 were arrested and 133 seriously injured, including 23 policemen,
as several cars and other property was torched. The protestors took their name
from the yellow high-visibility jacket that motorists in France must carry;
the unrest was focussed on high fuel taxes. Protestors called for President
Macron to resign.
24/11/2018, A week of
rioting across France (began 17/11/2018) with 300,000 people protesting at high
petrol taxes. By this date, one protestor had died and over 400 had been
injured.
29/10/2018, Mrs Angela Merkel announced that she would not
stand in 2021 for re-election as Chancellor of Germany, a post she had held
since 2005. This followed disappointing election results for her Party, the CDU
(Christian Democratic Union), and her coalition partners, the Social Democrats,
in elections in Hesse.
24/9/2017, German elections. Angela Markel�s CDU (Christian
Democratic Union) Party still had the largest number of seats, but lost votes
as her share fell to 33%, from 41.5% in 2013, the lowest since 1949. Meanwhile
the Far Right AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party gained, securing 12.6% of the
vote, especially in the rural east, on the back of concerns about immigration
levels. In Saxony, the AfD got a vote of 27%.
6/7/2017, Anti-G20 Summit protestors in Hamburg blocked
roads and set cars alight.
16/6/2017, German statesman Helmut Kohl died, aged 87.
7/5/2017, In the final round of the French Presidential
Elections, Emmanuel
Macron of the En Marche Party
won 66.1% of votes cast, against 39.1% for Marine le Pen of the Front National. However Macron was only supported by 43.6% of the
total electorate, le Pen receiving 22.4%, whilst 25.4% of voters
abstained and 8.5% of ballot papers were left blank or spoilt, as a protest
against both the candidates on offer.
17/5/2016, A wave of strikes hit France. Petrol stations ran
dry as strikers picketed refinery gates. Workers were objecting to France
introducing more flexible labour laws.
Racial tensions hit France and Germany
19/12/2016, A large lorry
was driven into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin. The lorry had been
hijacked by an Islamist terrorist who killed the Polish driver and drove it, laden with
25 tonnes of steel, into the market. 12 shoppers were killed and 48 injured.
26/10/2016, Demolition of
the �Jungle� refugee camp at Calais began. Its residents were dispersed to
reception areas across France. However some inhabitants set up their own
unofficial tent cities in central Paris.
22/7/2016, A German-Iranian
gunman opened fire at a shopping mall in Munich, killing 9 and injuring 21. He
later killed himself.
14/7/2016, Islamist
terrorists drove a lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade
des Anglais, Nice, France. 84 were killed and 202 injured, 18 critically. The
lorry driver was shot dead by police. The lorry contained guns and explosives,
raising fears that a worse attack could have been possible.
31/12/2015, Some 200 women alleged they had been groped, robbed
and even raped during New Year�s Eve celebrations in Cologne by migrant gangs.
Tensions in Germany over mass immigration increased.
13/11/2015, Multiple
attacks by Islamic gunmen across six sites in Paris, including the Stade de France, the Bataclan
concert hall, and the Cambodge restaurant. 132 dead and 352 injured, 99� critically.
7/1/2015, Ten cartoonists were shot dead at the Paris offices
of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical
magazine, along with 2 policemen, by Islamists in revenge for perceived
anti-Islamic cartoons.
20/8/2014,
Anti-Semitic
attacks occurred in Paris. A synagogue in Sarcelles, a
working-class suburb of northern Paris with many Sephardic Jews, known as
�Little Jerusalem�, was threatened. Youths from the French Jewish defence
League defended the synagogue so Muslims attacked Kosher shops instead. The
Muslim attacks followed from the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
13/6/2014, A
17-year-old Roma youth was attacked by about 20 men and left in a coma in the
northern Paris suburb of Pierrefitte sur Seine. Many Roma lived in makeshift camps and had been
blamed for rat infestations and burglaries. There was conflict between
Moroccans and Roma in Paris.
5/5/2011, Claude Schoules, the last known combat veteran of World War One,
died in Australia, aged 110.
12/3/2008, Lazare Ponticelli, the last surviving French foot soldier of World
War One, died aged 110.� Born in the
Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, he loved France and joined the French Foreign
legion aged 16.� When Italy joined the
war he was enlisted in the Italian army but returned to France after the war
and became a French citizen in 1939.
24/1/2008, The French bank, Societe General, revealed that a rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel (born 11 January
1977), had cost it 4.9 billion Euros (about US$ 7 billion, or UK� 3.7 billion).
Kerviel
was arrested on charges of breach of trust and falsifying documents, and the
bank was fined 4 million Euros for failing to monitor his trading position. Daniel Bouton
resigned as the banks chief executive. Kerviel was found guilty in October 2010 and
sentenced to prison, but remained free pending an appeal. On 24
October 2012, a Paris appeals court upheld the October 2010 sentence to three
years in prison with another two suspended, and ordered to reimburse 4.9bn
euros to Societe General for its
loss.
4/4/2006, France equalised the permissible age of marriage
between males and females. Formerly, the Civil Code of 1804 had set this age as
15 for females and 18 for males.
22/11/2005, Angela Merkel became Germany�s first female
Chancellor.
Angela
Merkel became Chancellor of Germany
8/11/2005, French President Chirac declared a State of Emergency, on the 12th day of riots in
France.
29/5/2005, The French, in a
referendum, resoundingly rejected the European Constitution.� The margin was 45% to 55%.� This was effectively a vote against the
unpopular French President Chirac, and against globalisation.
27/1/2005, Nazi concentration camp survivors and world leaders
gathered at the Polish town of Oswiecim, better known as Auschwitz, to
commemorate the 60th anniversary of its liberation by Soviet forces.
19/9/2004, In regional elections in
the former East German States of Brandenburg and Saxony, neo-Nazi Parties
gained votes, polling at 6% and 7% respectively. The Democratic Socialists
(successors to the East German Communist Party) polled 28% and 23.6%
respectively. The neo-Nazi gains were due to an economic crisis in which� unemployment had exceeded 20%.
22/4/2004, The last
coal mine in France closed, ending nearly 300 years of coal mining.
10/2/2004, The French National
Assembly voted 494 to 36 in favour of banning overt religious symbols,
including Islamic headscarves and Christian crosses, in the country�s State
schools.
14/7/2002. A neo-Nazi attempted to assassinate French
President Jacques
Chirac at the Bastille Day parade in Paris.
21/4/2002. In the
French Presidential elections, the National Front candidate, Jean Marie Le
Pen, scored a surprising second place with 17% of the vote to enter
the run-off with the right wing candidate Jacques Chirac. Lionel Jospin, the left wing
candidate, was narrowly beaten into third place. Jospin�s stance as �New
Socialist�, not too far to the left, drove some left wing voters to fringe left
parties, allowing Le Pen in. In the second round of voting on
5/5/2002 Chirac
was unsurprisingly elected with a massive 82% of the vote, against 18% for Le Pen.
3/9/1999, After an 18-month French
judicial inquiry, paparazzi press were cleared of responsibility for the car
crash which killed Diana.
Restoration
of Berlin as German capital
19/4/1999,
The German Parliament returned to the new Reichstag buildings in Berlin.
8/9/1994, The last British forces left Berlin.
7/9/1994, The American
flag was lowered over the US HQ in Berlin, formally ending American presence on
the city after almost 50 years.
23/6/1993. The US lowered the Stars and Stripes for the
last time at the Tempelhof airbase in Berlin after 48 years of military service
there.
20/6/1991.
The German Parliament voted to move the
seat of government from Bonn to Berlin.
12/4/1999, Chancellor
Gerhardt Schroder became leader of the German
Social Democratic Party ()SDP)
27/9/1998, In German Parliamentary elections, the governing Centre-Right
CDU/CSU-FDP coalition lost its overall majority. Gerhardt Schroder
became Chancellor at the head of a �red-green� coalition of the Social
Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.
End of the
Red Army
20/4/1998, In Germany, the
Red Army Faction announced that it was ceasing operations and winding up, as it
no longer had a political reason to exist.
13/2/1991. Germany�s Red Army Faction carried out a gun attack on the US Embassy in
Bonn, claiming a link to the Gulf War.
30/11/1989, The
Red Army, a West German terrorist group, blew up Alfred Herrhausen, head of the
Deutschebank in Frankfurt.
14/4/1997, Former Nazi SS
Captain Eric Priebke was retried; on 22/7/1997 he was sentenced to 5 years in
prison.
3/12/1996, Algerian Islamic Fundamentalists exploded a bomb on the Paris Metro at
Port Royal Station, at 6.05pm in the rush hour, killing 2 and injuring 50
others. Algerian fundamentalists had carried out 7 attacks on the Paris Metro
in 1995. They were protesting at a referendum in Algeria, backing a crackdown
on fundamentalist political Parties.
29/1/1996. France
announced it had ended the current series of atomic tests.
8/1/1996. French
President, Mitterand, (born 1916) died of
cancer.
25/7/1995. A bomb
exploded on a train at the St Michel Metro station in Paris, killing seven people.
16/5/1995, Jacques Chirac became President of France.
7/5/1995. Jacques Chirac was elected President of
France.
20/4/1994, In France, Paul Touvier was found guilty of ordering the
massacre of 17 Jews whilst serving in the Vichy France Milice.
Racism in
Germany 1992/3
30/5/1993. Neo-Nazi
skinheads attacked and set fire to a hostel housing Turkish migrant workers in
the German steel town of Solingen. This was the worst of several such attacks
on migrant workers. The German government responded with a crackdown on
Neo-Nazis and more controls on immigration.
29/9/1992. Racism was
on the rise in Germany. 28% of Germans aged between 16 and 24 had racist views,
compared with 15% in 1990.
19/8/1992. Right
wing rioting began in Rostock, Germany.
Hundreds of right wing youths, throwing paving stones and firebombs, attacked
an immigrant hostel, cheered on by local people, in the poor Lichtenhagen area
of the city. Thousands of police were drafted in to restore order, which had
broken down when many Romanian refuges, unable to secure a place in the hostel,
had camped outside it. The asylum seekers were evacuated but fighting between
police and youths continued for days and spread to other German cities. Germany
had seen both a rise in asylum seekers and increased unemployment in the east
since reunification, as eastern industries were exposed to competition from the
more efficient west.
5/4/1992. Germany�s
extreme Right gained in elections, over the issue of immigrants from eastern Europe.
3/2/1993. Statistics showed French women had the highest life
expectancy in Europe at 81.1 years, 8 years more than French men.
20/12/1992, The Folies
Bergere, Paris music hall which opened in 1869, closed down.
17/11/1992, In
France, cave paintings were discovered at Cosquer that were estimated to date
from 25,000 BC.
8/10/1992, Willy Brandt,
Chancellor of West Germany, died.
6/7/1992. French
lorry drivers blockaded roads, causing chaos.
1/6/1992, The terrorist Carlos the Jackal was sentenced to life
imprisonment in France.
12/4/1992. Euro-Disney opened just east of Paris. The
$4 billion, 4,800 acre, complex could accommodate up to 60,000 visitors a day.
It had 6 hotels with a total of 5,200 rooms, and a total of 14,000 staff, or
�cast members�. On 4/6/1992 Euro-Disney reported that it had received 1.5 million
visitors, or 30,000 per day.
17/12/1990, Lothar de Matziere resigned from the German
government after allegations that he had worked for the Stasi.
German
Reunification
29/5/1994, Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany, (born
1912) died.
14/1/1993. Despite calls for his arrest on
manslaughter charges, the former East German leader, Eric Honecker, 80 years old and
with terminal liver cancer, was allowed to depart for Chile because of his
failing health.
29/7/1992, Herr Honecker, former leader of East Germany,
was forced to leave the Chilean Embassy in Moscow where he had taken refuge, to
face manslaughter charges over the deaths of people trying to escape over the
Berlin Wall to West Germany.
2/12/1990. Helmut Kohl
of the Christian Democrats won the first election in the reunited Germany.
14/11/1990, Germany and Poland signed a treaty agreeing
their border as the Oder-Neisse line.
3/10/1990. East
and West Germany reunited as the Federal Republic of Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November
1989 was one of the most remarkable events of the 20th century.
However the economy of the East was much poorer than the West and funds were
needed for housing, education, and health. In July 1990 the currency of West
Germany became that of the East. On
reunification on 3/10/1990 Berlin became the capital city.
1/7/1990, The
Deutschemark became the official currency of both East and West Germany.
18/5/1990. A
treaty was signed in Bonn introducing German economic and monetary union.
The reunification took place on 3/10/1990.
24/4/1990, East and West Germany agreed to
merge their currencies and economies on 1/7/1990.
18/3/1990, East
Germany held its first free elections since 1932.
9/3/1990. Talks
on German reunification began in Berlin.
15/1/1990, Thousands
stormed the Stasi HQ in Berlin in order to see their records.
22/12/1989. Berlin�s Brandenburg Gate reopened, after the
fall of the Berlin Wall.
3/12/1989. The
East German leader Egon Krenz and the
politbureau resigned. A USSR-USA
summit was held in Malta. The
Cold war was declared over at 12.55pm that day.
1/12/1989. The
East German Parliament voted to remove the Communist monopoly on power.
13/11/1989, Hans Modrow was elected Prime Minister of East
Germany.
10/11/1989, Bulldozers
began to demolish the Berlin Wall.
9/11/1989. The East German government lifted the
Iron Curtain to allow free travel between East and West Berlin. Thousands of East Berliners visited the
West. 100,000 East Berliners visited West Berlin. The Berlin Wall originally went up on 13/8/1961.
7/11/1989, The
entire East German Government resigned, replaced the following day with Hans Modrow
as Prime Minister.
5/11/1989. Refugees
were reportedly leaving East Germany at the rate of 300 an hour.
4/11/1989, See 7/10/1989. Pro-democracy rallies
sparked by Gorbachev�s
visit to East Germany resulted a a million-strong protest in East Germany.
18/10/1989, Erich Honecker was dismissed as General
Secretary of of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany).
9/10/1989, East Germans in Leipzig demonstrated,
demanding the legalisation of opposition groups and democratic reforms.
7/10/1989. On a visit to East Germany, Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev urged the East German government to introduce reforms. See
4/11/1989.
26/9/1989. Over 1,500
East German refugees occupied the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw
13/6/1989,
Mikhail Gorbachev and
Chancellor Kohl
agreed that East and West Germany should be reunited.
4/10/1989. 10,000 East
Germans left Prague by train for West Germany.
5/10/1989, In Paris, the Moulin
Rouge celebrated its centenary.
14/7/1989. Margaret Thatcher
upset French festivities on Bastille Day when she denied that the French
Revolution had inspired Human Rights.
13/6/1989, The wreck of the German battleship Bismarck which was sunk in 1941, was
discovered 600 miles west of Brest, France.
29/3/1989, In France, President Mitterrand inaugurated the huge
glass Louvre Pyramid.
24/9/1988, Large and angry protests against the World
Bank and IMF meetings in West Berlin.
10/5/1988. President Mitterand
of France won a second term. The Right was
split, but the far Right Jean Marie Le Pen got 14.38% of the vote, 4
million votes. In Marseilles, Le Pen led with 28% of the vote.
26/8/1987, The funeral and burial of Rudolf Hess.
17/8/1987. Former
top Nazi Rudolf Hess, born 1894, committed suicide in
Spandau Prison, Berlin, after 46 years spent there.� He was 93 when he died. He had been the only
inmate, and demolition of the prison began almost immediately.
4/7/1987. Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, 73. was convicted
in France, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
5/8/1987, Georg Gassman,
German politician, died.
20/3/1986, In
France, Jacques Chirac,
Gaullist, was appointed Prime Minister.
16/3/1986, In French
elections, the opposition won a narrow majority ending five years of Socialist
rule.
28/12/1985, Fernand Braudel,
French historian, died aged 83.
22/9/1985, French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted that
French agents had sunk the Greenpeace boat Rainbow
Warrior in Auckland, New Zealand, on 10/7/1985. The French Defence Minister was forced to resign.
23/8/1985, Hans Tiedge, Head of West German
counter-intelligence, was discovered to be an East German agent.
15/7/1983. Armenian terrorists set off a bomb at Paris
airport.
6/5/1983, West Germany pronounced that the �Hitler Diaries� were a fake, made from paper not available
until at least 1955.� The magazine Stern was swindled out of an undisclosed
sum for the �diaries�. See 23/4/1983.
23/4/1983, The German weekly magazine Stern announced it had possession of hitherto unknown �Hitler Diaries�. See 6/5/1983.
6/2/1983, The trial of Klaus Barbie began in Lyons, France. Known as the �Butcher of Lyons� during World War Two, Barbie deported
hundreds of French Resistance fighters and Jews on
trains to Nazi death camps Barbie was tracked down to Bolivia by
Nazi-hunters Serge and Beatie Klarsfeld in 1971 but not extradited until 1983.
5/2/1983. Klaus Barbie was extradited from Bolivia to France to face Nazi war crimes
charges.
19/1/1983, The Nazi war criminal, Klaus Barbie, was arrested in Bolivia.
18/10/1982, Pierre Mendes France, French politician, died
aged 75.
1/10/1982, In Germany, the Christian Democrat leader Helmut Kohl
was elected, replacing Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor of West Germany.
20/11/1981, The USSR contracted to supply natural gas to West
Germany.
21/6/1981, In French elections, Socialists won a landslide
victory in the second round of elections to the National Assembly. The new
Assembly included three Communists.
10/5/1981. The Socialist, Francois Mitterand was elected President of
France. He defeated Valery Giscard D�Estaing.
1980, The Green Party was established in Germany.
24/12/1980, Death of German
commander Grand
Admiral Karl Donitz, who was briefly Fuhrer in 1945.
10/10/1980, East
Germany banned the sport of hang-gliding, in case it was
used to escape to West Germany.
5/10/1980, West
Germany re-elected Chancellor Helmut Schmidt with an increased
majority.
26/9/1980. In
Munich, neo-Nazis planted a bomb at
a beer festival killing 12 and injuring 200 people.
13/8/1980, French fishermen blockaded Channel Ports, in a
campaign for government aid.
26/6/1980, French President Giscard D�Estaing disclosed
that France had the capability to produce a neutron bomb.
18/3/1980, Erich Fromm, German sociologist, died aged 79.
3/2/1980. The Communist
leader of East Germany, Mr Honecker,
praised the efforts of East German spies in the West.
16/10/1979, 23
people died when a tsunami hit Nice,
France.
16/9/1979, Three
families fled East Germany by balloon.
29/7/1979, Herbert Marcuse, German philosopher, died aged
81.
2/5/1979, Riots on Longwy, France, over the proposed closure
of steel plants.
26/6/1978, A bomb set
off by Breton nationalists damaged
Versailles.
10/9/1977. The last official execution by guillotine in France; execution of Hamida Djandoubi. See 17/6/1939.
4/9/1977, E F Schumacher, German economist, died aged
66.
28/4/1977, In Germany, the Baader
Meinhof terrorists, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan Raspe,
dedicated to the violent overthrow of
capitalism, were jailed for life. The trial began on 21/5/1975.
7/4/1977, In Germany, terrorists murdered the Attorney-General who was
prosecuting the Baader-Meinhof gang.
3/10/1976, In German elections, Helmut Schmidt�s Social-Democrat-led coalition
was returned to power with a reduced majority.
9/5/1976, The terrorist Ulrike Meinhof,
42, hanged herself in her prison cell in Stuttgart. �
27/5/1975, Jacques Chirac
became Prime Minister of France.
26/5/1976, Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, died
aged 86.
21/5/1975, The trial of the Baader
Meinhof terrorist group began. On 284/1977 they were sentenced to
life imprisonment.
27/2/1975, Peter Lorenz, Chairman of the West Berlin
Christian Democratic Union, was kidnapped by terrorists. He was released on
5/3/1975 after demands that 5 terrorists were released from German jails and
flown out of the country were met.
4/9/1974. The USA established diplomatic relations with East
Germany.
19/5/1974, Valery Giscard
d�Estaing was elected President of France.
16/5/1974, Helmut Schmidt became Chancellor of West
Germany.� Chancellor Brandt had resigned
on 6/5/1974 over a spy scandal.
6/5/1974, Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany, was forced to resign after he unwittingly
employed an East German spy as a secretary. There had been warnings fro 4
years that Gunter
Guillaume was a spy.� Brandt
became Foreign Minister in 1966 and West Germany�s first Social Democratic
Chancellor in 1969. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for his
policies of detente with the Communist bloc.
2/4/1974. Georges Pompidou,
French president from 1969, died in office, from cancer, aged 62.
5/9/1973, Jordanian terrorists held 13 hostages in the Saudi Arabian
Embassy in Paris.
22/6/1973. East and West Germany were accepted into
the UN.
9/6/1973, Erich von Manstein, military adviser to Adolf Hitler in World War Two
(born in Berlin, 24/11/1887) died, having been imprisoned by the British in
August 1945. His advice on attacking France through the Ardennes in 1940 was
crucial to Nazi success here.
24/11/1972, Finland became the first western nation to
formally recognise East Germany.
8/11/1972, East and West Germany signed the Basic
Treaty, agreeing to respect each other�s�
independence and sovereignty. The East claimed that this Treaty
finalised the division of Germany; the West claimed it did not preclude the
possible later reunification of Germany should the Cold War come to an end. In
any case the Treaty was a political triumph for Chancellor Willy Brandt and his
policy of Ostpolitik, allowing for
personal contact between the leaders of East and West Germany.
16/6/1972, German police captured Ulrike Meinhof, the last member
of the Baader Meinhof gang still at
large.
11/5/1972, In West Germany, The �Red Army
Faction� set off a bomb at the American 5th Army Corps base.
5/7/1972, Pierre
Mesmer succeeded Jacques Chaban-Delmas as Prime Minister of
France.
23/1/1972, Jerome
Guedj, French Socialist Party politician, was born.
3/9/1971, The USA,
Britain,
France and the USSR
signed the Berlin Agreement on
communications between West Berlin and West Germany.
3/5/1971, Erich
Honecker succeeded Walter Ulbricht as First Secretary of the
Socialist Unity Party of East Germany.
9/11/1970. Charles De Gaulle died, aged 79 of a heart
attack, in Colombey les Deux Eglises. See 28/4/1969. He had been President of
France between 1944 and 1945, and between 1959 and his resignation on
28/4/1969.
21/10/1969. Willy Brandt was elected Chancellor of West Germany.
He succeeded Kurt
Georg Kiesinger.
15/6/1969, Pompidou became
President of France, see 28/4/1969.
28/4/1969. �General De Gaulle, 79 years old, resigned as Prime Minister of France. President
Pompidou, who became French President on 15/6/1969, succeeded
him.� De Gaulle lost a referendum on
changes to French regional institutions.�
De
Gaulle was resented for high taxation to pay for the French
military, whilst health, education, and social services were neglected, leading
to French student riots in spring 1968.� De Gaulle
retired to Colombey.� See 9/11/1970.
1/4/1969. France formally left NATO.
1968, The Krupp steel business in Germany ceased to be a family business of the
Krupp family. The Krupp family, present in the Essen, Ruhr, region since
the 16th century, had been major arms manufacturers for over 300
years. Under Alfred
Krupp (1812-87) the business became the largest cannon manufacturer
in the world from 1847 onwards, also having ownership of mines and other
neterprises in the Ruhr region. Afred�s son, Friedrich Alfred Krupp
(1854-1902) diversified into shipbuilding and armour plate. Freidrich committed
suicide following accusations of immoral conduct and his daughter, Bertha
(1886-1957) took over the business. In 1902 she married Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach,
and he was allowed to change his name to Gustav Krupp von Bohlen (1869-1950). The Krupp
enterprise manufactured armaments for Gremany and its Allies during both World
wars; between the Wars it made tractors for the Weimar Republic. The Krupp
family, from 1932, vigorously supported
Hitler,
as did their son Alfred Felix Krupp (1906-67). In 1943 Hitler passed a special Lex Krupp to ensure the business would
remain in Krupp
family hands.
In 1945 Gustav Krupp was indicted at Nuremberg as a
major war criminal, having utilised 130,000 slave labourers at Essen and
Auschwitz, and for inhumane treatment of foreign workers; however he was deemed
too frail to stand trial. Alfred Krupp was conicted and sentenced to 12
years imprisonment in 1947; however he wasd released in 1951 to assist on the
economic recovery of west Germany. By 1963 he was the most powerful
industrialist in the Common Market. Just before his death in 1967 the Krupp
enterprise encountered financial problems and was sold out of the family.
30/6/1968. De
Gaulle won massive support in French elections.
12/6/1968, The
French Government banned demonstrations and dissolved 11 student organisations,
11/6/1968, East
Germany began requiring visas for West Germans to cross its territory.
30/5/1968, French President De Gaulle announced he would not
resign, and called a General Election.
25/5/1968. Riots
continued in Paris. Demonstrators erected barricades and students stormed
the Bourse and set fire to the interior. In London a demonstration of support
for the rioters was made outside the French Embassy; the police moved in and
arrests were made, resulting in fines totalling �145 for 17 people. In north
London, students at Hornsey College of Art continued a sit in of the main
building, demanding �a change to the college�s educational system�.
22/5/1968. Striking French workers now numbered 9 million.
19/5/1968. Two million workers in France were on strike.
17/5/1968. French President Georges Pompidou appealed to
ordinary Parisians to help stop the anarchy as student riots continued in Paris, with 30,000 people involved in a day and a night of
violence. Students at The Sorbonne were locked out of campus, causing further
unrest; the demonstrations were against the Vietnam War.
The Cannes Film Festival collapsed in chaos as
striking technicians and directors caused film screenings to be cancelled, and
three days later the number of striking
French workers had risen to about six million.
6/4/1968, In East Germany, 94.5% of voters approved the new
socialist constitution.
2/4/1968, Two West German terrorists, Baader and Ensslin, firebombed a Frankfurt
department store, in protest against the bombs being dropped by the US on
Vietnam.
21/3/1968, Students at Nanterre University, Paris, began a
sit-in, which soon spread to other French universities.
20/3/1968, Six French students were arrested in Paris during
an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.
19/4/1967, Konrad Adenauer, West German Chancellor from
1949 to 1963, died.
2/6/1967, Rioting in West Berlin against the visit of the Shah of Iran,
in which Benno
Ohnesorg is killed by a police officer. His death resulted in the
founding of the terrorist group Movement
2 June.
1/7/1966, France withdrew its armed forces from NATO.
11/3/1966, De
Gaulle announced that France was to withdraw from NATO and that NATO
must remove its bases from France by the end of 1966.
19/12/1965. De Gaulle was
re-elected president of France.
6/12/1965. General De Gaulle failed to win the French
presidential election outright, necessitating a second ballot between him and
Monsieur Mitterand.
4/9/1963, Robert Schuman, French Prime Minister, died.
23/6/1963, US President Kennedy began a five-day tour of
West Germany, including West Berlin. He promised, �we shall risk our cities to
defend yours�.
21/6/1963, France
withdrew its navy from NATO.
22/1/1963,
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
(1876-1967) signed a Treaty of Friendship with French President Charles de Gaulle, marking �the end of a
century of hostility and suspicion between the two nations�.
11/12/1962,
In West Germany, a coalition government of Christian Democrats, Christian
Socialist and Free Democrats was formed.
5/5/1962. Eleven elderly East Berliners escaped to the West
through a tunnel. They had dug the tunnel six feet high so the women wouldn�t
have to crawl.
21/1/1962 . In Paris OAS terrorists opposed to President De
Gaulle�s plans for Algeria planted ten plastic explosives bombs
7/11/1961, Konrad Adenauer was elected Chancellor of
Germany for the fourth time.
28/10/1961, The Berlin Crisis, US and Soviet tanks began a
gradual withdrawal from stand-off positions either side of the border.
17/8/1961, Construction
of the Berlin Wall began, see 13/8/1961. The Soviets had hidden building
materials close to the site of the wall, so construction was rapid.� 2,000 people a day had been leaving the east
for West Germany.
13/8/1961. East German border guards stopped cars passing
through the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin.�
The border between East and West Berlin was sealed, at first with barbed
wire, later by the Berlin Wall, erected on 17/8/1961. On 22/8/1961 a 100 metre
no-man�s-land was created either side of the Berlin Wall.
The Wall was 96 miles long and 3.6
metres high. It had 302 armed watchtowers and 20 bunkers.� 192 persons were killed at the Wall, and
another 200 wounded by shooting. The East German Government called the barrier
�an anti-fascist protection wall�. A second wall was added in June 1962, and a
third in 1965, reinforced by a fourth in 1975. The Berlin Wall finally came down on 8/11/1989.
29/5/1961, The Western European Union agreed that West
Germany would be allowed to build destroyers equipped to fire nuclear weapons.
8/1/1961, France held a national referendum on whether
Algeria should be granted independence. The result was in favour of
independence.
31/8/1960. East Germany closed the border with West
Berlin.
16/7/1960, Albert Kesselring, German Air Commander on all fronts during World
War Two, condemned as a war criminal, died.
31/5/1960, Walter Funk, Nazi government official, died aged 69.
29/5/1959, Charles de Gaulle formed a �Government of
National Safety� in France.
8/1/1959, Charles de Gaulle
was installed as first President of the 5th Republic.� See 21/12/1958.
21/12/1958. De Gaulle was elected the first President of
the Fifth Republic, with 78% of the vote.�
He now had the strong Presidency he had desired in 1945 (see
13/11/1945). �See 29/5/1958.
5/10/1958, In France the Fifth Republic was formed.
14/9/1958, Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany,
visited French Prime Minister De Gaulle at his home in Colombey les deux
Eglises to discuss Franco-German relations.
29/5/1958. De Gaulle was voted into power
in France, to deal with the crisis in Algeria. See 21/12/1958.
28/5/1958, Pierre Pflimlin resigned as
French leader.
14/5/1958, In France, Pierre Pflimlin,
Popular Republican, formed a government.
18/4/1958, Maurice Gamelin, French Army
General, died aged 85.
19/10/1957, West Germany severed
diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia after Yugoslavia recognised East Germany.
3/10/1957, Berlin voted in its youngest ever mayor,
44-year-old Willy
Brandt.
15/9/1957, Konrad Adenauer�s Christian Democratic Union
Party won a massive victory in German general elections.
12/6/1957, In France, Maurice Bourges-Manoury, Radical, formed a
Government.
21/5/1957, In France, Guy Mollet, Socialist, resigned as Prime
Minister after a Government defeat in the Assembly.
1/1/1957, The Saar was formally integrated in the German
Federal Republic.
For Suez
Crisis 1956 see Egypt
16/10/1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and Foreign
Secretary Selwyn
Lloyd visited Paris and met with French Minister Guy Mollet
and Foreign Minister Christian Pineau to discuss joint action
against Egypt.
30/9/1956, Doenitz (born 1891), German Admiral during World War Two, and
technically head of State of Germany from Hitler�s
suicide on 1/5/1945 until his internment on 23/5/1945, was released from
Spandau Prison.� He had been sentenced to
10 years imprisonment in 1946 by the Allied Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
5/6/1956, In Luxembourg, Chancellor Adenauer of Germany
and Prime
Minister Mollet of France agreed that the Saar would have political
union with Germany from 1/1/1957, and economic union after a longer period.
1/5/1956. Germans demonstrated in favour of reunification.
19/4/1956, Prince Rainier of Monaco married American
actress Grace Kelly.
8/3/1956, West Germany amended its Constitution to allow for
the use of conscription for the military.
1/2/1956, Following French elections on 2/1/1956, Guy Mollett
formed a Socialist government in France.
6/10/1955, The first group of German PoW�s released from World War
Two captivity in Russia were brought to the Russian-Polish border at
Bialystok, to be taken on to West Germany. By the end of 1955, over 9,000 such
PoWs had been repatriated,
9/9/1955, The West German Chancellor, Dr Adenauer, went to Moscow as a
guest of the Soviet Government. At a dinner with Marshall Bulganin, they agreed
to the final release of German prisoners of war from World War Two back to West
Germany, after more than a decade in captivity.
9/5/1955. West Germany became a
member of NATO.
5/5/1955. West Germany became a sovereign state (see
26/5/1952); the Allied occupation by France, UK and USA officially ended.
23/2/1955, In France, Edgar Faure formed a Radical government.
25/1/1955. The USSR
officially ended the war with Germany.
23/10/1954. NATO voted to end the occupation of West Germany and to form the Western European Union.
West Germany became a member of NATO.
17/7/1954, In West Germany, Theodor Heuss was elected President.
17/6/1953. In East Berlin, Soviet tanks crushed an
anti-Soviet uprising. Hundreds of East Germans took to the streets in a
protest that began over increased work quotas and food shortages caused by the
collectivisation of agriculture (see 12/7/1952).� The protests escalated to demands for free
elections. The first people to protest were construction workers on
Stalinallee, a new highway slicing through east Berlin. After Stalin�s
death in March 1953 some liberation was hoped for, but instead work quotas were
raised by 10%. Churches were also to be abolished. Food prices were high, there
was little meat and no fruit at all. Red Army tanks were brought in and the
Soviet military commander proclaimed a state of emergency. 50 people were killed by Soviet forces, at
least 20 of whom were summarily executed, and over 1,000 were convicted of
taking part in the �attempted fascist coup�. Churchill and the other
western powers were reluctant to intervene because they feared a reunited
Germany. In a memo of 22/6/1953 Churchill felt a divided Germany was safer at
present, but feared to say so in public for fear of German public opinion.
6/4/1953, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited New York;
on 14/5/1953 he visited London.
1/6/1952. The Soviet
Iron Curtain isolated West Berlin.
20/8/1952, Kurt Schumacher, German politician, died aged
56.
28/5/1952, Communist demonstrations in Paris, France.
26/5/1952, A treaty was concluded for West Germany to
be a sovereign state (see 5/5/1955), so long as Germany contributed to Western
defence.� Fears of the Soviet Union
overrode fears of German aggression.
1/4/1952, Vincent Bollore, French industrialist, was born.
29/3/1952, In France, the government of Edgar Faure fell after failing
to get the National Assembly to approve tax increases. Antoine Pinay, Conservative,
formed a government with Gaullist support.
11/1/1952, French General de Lattre de Tassigny died of cancer
in Paris. He was the chief architect of the French defence plan in World War
Two.
13/12/1951, The French National Assembly ratified the Schuman Plan. This placed French and
German steel iron and coal industries under one common authority, to which
other countries could also accede.
17/6/1951, Elections for the French Assembly gave 107 seats
to the Gaullists; 97 to the Communists; 94 to the Socialists; 87 to the
Conservatives; 82 to the Popular Republicans; and 77 to the Radical Socialists.
10/3/1951, In France, political deadlock was resolved when Henry Queuille
formed a government.
28/2/1951, In France, the government of Rene Pleven fell over issues of
electoral reform.
26/1/1951, Gilles Lemaire: French politician, was born.
15/10/1950, In East German elections, a vote of 99.7% was
recorded for the Communist-dominated National Front Party.
24/6/1950, Georges Bidault, French Prime Minister,
resigned after his government was defeated in a vote on a technical issue.
15/6/1950. West Germany admitted to the Council of Europe.
30/3/1950, Leon Blum, French statesman, died
3/3/1950. France granted the Saar autonomy.
8/2/1950, The Stasi was founded in
East Germany.
19/11/1949. Prince
Ranier III was sworn in as the 30th ruling Prince of Monaco.
7/10/1949. The German Democratic Republic was set up in East
Germany.
15/9/1949, Konrad Adenauer was elected Chancellor of
Germany.
20/6/1949, The USA, the USSR, France, and the UK signed a
Four-Power agreement on Berlin, including a clause ensuring the freedom of
movement within the entire city.
23/5/1949. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formally established,
with its capital at Bonn.
28/4/1949, The Allies set up the International Authority for the Ruhr, or IAR.� This was dissolved on 10/8/1952 when the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) came into force.
5/9/1948, In France, Robert Schuman became President of the Council
while being Foreign Minister, As such, he was the negotiator of the major
treaties of the end of World War II.
Soviet blockade of West Berlin
6/10/1949, The Berlin airlift ended.� It had carried on from 12/5/1949 despite the
Soviet lifting of the land blockade.
12/5/1949. The
Soviet blockade of West Berlin was called off after 11 months, it began 28
June 1948. It had cost the Allies �200 million to fly in food and essential
supplies, with up to 200 flights a day.
9/5/1949. Prince Ranier III became Head of State of Monaco, succeeding his grandfather Prince Louis II.
5/5/1949, The USSR announced it would lift the
blockade of Berlin on 12/5/1949.
28/6/1948. The Anglo-US airlift to Berlin began;
see 12/5/1949.
24/6/1948. The
Russians began a blockade of West Berlin.� The Berlin Airlift began
on 28/6/1948 and delivered some 7,000 tons of food supplies to the city over a
period of three months by British and American aircraft, defying the Soviet
land blockade. The airlift continued until 30/9/1949, although the Soviet
blockade was lifted on 12/5/1949. See 30/3/1948.
18/4/1948, All roads
between Berlin and West Germany were now blocked by the Soviets.
1/4/1948. The Soviets
suspended all rail services between Berlin and West Germany.
30/3/1948, The Russians imposed restrictions on
Western traffic into West Berlin. See 26/4/1948. The West feared that the
USSR was trying to absorb West Berlin; Moscow said it was responding to the
West creating West Germany out of the three western occupation zones.
30/8/1947, About 90 people were killed and 60 injured in a
cinema fire in the Rueil district of Paris, France. Police said the blaze was
caused by a wire in the second balcony that short-circuited
14/4/1947, In France, De Gaulle organised the RPF (Rassemblement
du Peuple Francais) Party, also known as �Gaullists�, to unite and reform
anti-Communists.
16/1/1947, In France, Vincent Auriol was elected President.
16/12/1946, In France, Leon Blum formed a Socialist government.
10/11/1946, In France, elections to the National Assembly
produced 166 seats for the Communists, 158 for the Popular Republican Movement,
90 for the Socialists, 55 for the Radical Socialists, 70 for the Conservatives
and 5 for the Gaullists. There was political deadlock.
17/5/1946. France nationalised its coal mines.
20/1/1946. De Gaulle resigned.� Goiun became President of France.
21/12/1945, France appointed Jean Monnet as head of a
commission to repair and develop French industry.� He evolved the Monnet Plan which with 5 years enabled French industry to surpass
its per-war output level.
13/11/1945. De Gaulle was elected President of France by
the unanimous vote of all 555 deputies. �However he resigned within ten weeks when the
Fourth Republic disagreed with his idea for a strong US-style Presidency.� See 21/12/1958.
21/10/1945, Elections
in France provided gains for the Left. The Communists won 148 seats, the
Socialists 134, Radical Socialists 35 (the Popular Republican Movement won 141
seats), Conservatives 62 seats, others 2 seats.
Judicial dealings with Nazis
23/7/1951, Marshal Petain,
Head of Vichy France between 1940 and 1944,
died in prison in the Ile d�Yeu, aged 95, serving a life sentence for
collaboration, having been reprieved from a death sentence in 1945.
9/6/1951. In West Germany, the last Nazis convicted of war
crimes were hanged.
6/1/1948, The
Ministries Trial began in Nuremberg. Twenty-one officials of various ministries
of the Third Reich went on trial, facing charges for their roles in atrocities
committed by the Nazis.
19/4/1947, The
Flick Trial began in Nuremberg. Friedrich Flick
and five other leading Nazi industrialists were put on trial for using slave
labour, among other crimes.
16/10/1946. After 216 meetings of the Nuremberg Tribunal, from 20/11/1945, the
verdicts on 24 top Nazis charged with war crimes were delivered on 30/9/1945. 3 Nazis were acquitted; Hjalmar Schacht, Franz
von Papen and Hans Fritzsche.
A fourth defendant, Robert Ley, had
committed suicide in prison before the trials were completed. The industrialist
Gustav Krupp was judged to be unfit
to stand trial through senile dementia. The remaining 19 defendants were found
guilty. Four of them, Karl Donitz, Baldur von Shirach, Albert Speer and Konstantin
von Neurath, received sentences of between 10 and 20 years. Three
defendants, Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk and Erich Raeder, received
life sentences. Rudolf Hess was
detained at Spandau Prison, Berlin, until his death in 1987. The
remaining 12 defendants were sentenced to death. Martin
Bormann was not executed as he had been tried in absentia having
escaped the Allied authorities. Hermann Goering
committed suicide in prison a few hours before he was due to be hanged. The
remaining ten, Hans Frank, Willhelm Frick, Julius
Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg,
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred
Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel and Arthur Seiss-Inquart, were hanged on
16/10/1946.
As
regards lesser Nazis, the problem facing the Allies was that millions of
Germans had joined the Nazi Party, some merely for reasons of
self-preservation, so it was impractical to prosecute all those who had served
Hitler. Ultimately, out of a population of 44.5 million Germans in West
Germany,� 209,000 were prosecuted. In
East Germany the Soviets prosecuted a much smaller number, just over 17,000.
This was because many Nazis were executed by the Soviets without a formal legal
process.
13/9/1946, Captain Amon Goth, 37, Nazi SS officer who had carried out the mass
executions of more than 13,000 Jews in Krakow and Tarnow, and the Szebnia
concentration camp, was hanged, along with Dr.
Leon Gross, a Jew who had collaborated with him at the Plaszow
concentration camp.
17/6/1946, The Allied decided not to try Hirohito
as a war criminal.
22/5/1946, Karl Hermann Frank, the Nazi ruler in Czechoslovakia who ordered the massacre
at Lidice, was hanged in Prague.
21/3/1946. Goering denied he knew anything of the
�final solution�.
7/2/1946. Hess was on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes.
8/1/1946. The trial of Goering and Von Ribbentrop
began.
3/1/1946. Nazi propagandist William Joyce, the notorious Lord Haw Haw, was hanged in London for treason. He was known as Lord Haw Haw for the falsely posh
nasal tones of his radio broadcasts telling of German military �successes�
(often false). He had been convicted on 19/9/1945.
20/11/1945. The Nuremberg Trials began. Setting up a war
crimes tribunal was unprecedented and an act of doubtful legality, but the
world had a keen desire to see revenge for the atrocities the Nazis had
committees, especially in their concentration camps. 24 Nazi leaders were on
trial. Defendants included Goering,
Hess,
and Ribbentrop.
On 16/10/1946 the executions of the guilty began. These included Von Ribbentrop,
Rosenberg,
and Streicher.
24/10/1945. Vidkun Quisling was hanged as a war criminal, at Askerhus Fortress, Oslo. He had joined the
Norwegian Fascist Party (Nasjonal Samlung) in 1933, and had encouraged Hitler
to invade Norway. He was also held responsible for sending nearly 1,000
Norwegian Jews to Nazi concentration camps. See 10/9/1945.
15/10/1945, Pierre Laval, leader of the French Vichy
government, was executed for treason for collaboration with the Nazis.
9/10/1945. Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of Vichy France, was
sentenced to death.
10/9/1945. Vidkun Quisling was sentenced to death at Oslo for
collaborating with the Nazis. He
had been puppet Prime Minister during the Nazi occupation of Norway. He was
executed on 24/10/1945, by firing squad, at Akershus Fortress, Oslo.
15/8/1945, Marshal Petain was
convicted of treason (see 23/7/1945) and sentenced to death. Like all death
sentences on minors and women, this was commuted by President De Gaulle to life and
the 90-year-old Marshal was confined to the Ile de Yeu off the Vendee coast. In
June 1951 Petain,
feeble and devoid of mental faculties, was released; he died less than a month
later. Overall in France the purge of collaborators, known as l�epuration (the
purification) lasted from September 1944 to the end of 1949. Just over 2,000
death sentences were handed down, of which 768 were carried out. Even the
entertainer Maurice
Chevalier, who had merely entertained French PoWs in Germany,
narrowly escaped a firing squad. Some 12x this number of those officially
executed were summarily shot by firing squad immediately after liberation.
23/7/194, Marshal Petain was
charged with treason, see 15/8/1945.
28/5/1945, Lord Haw Haw,
William Joyce, was arrested, see 3/1/1946. William Joyce, known as Lord Haw Haw for his falsely posh tones in his
pro-Nazi radio broadcasts, was arrested in Denmark and charged with treason.
23/5/1945. Heinrich Himmler, former Nazi Chief of Police, killed
himself whilst in British custody.
He had joined the waves of German
civilian refugees unnoticed after VE Day and wandered aimlessly until he
encountered a British checkpoint at Bremervorde, where his true identity was
uncovered. As he was being searched he bit into a cyanide capsule and died.
10/5/1945, Vidkun Quisling was captured by Resistance fighters in Norway.
Judicial dealings with Nazis
Post World War Two political developments (see
above for judicial dealings with Nazis)
25/11/1947. The USSR
demanded war reparations from Germany.
10/2/1947. A
Peace Treaty concluded in Paris between Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria made the
following provisions. a) Most of the Italian province of Venezia Giulia, with
its predominantly Slovene and Croat population, as well as the enclave of Zadar
(Zara) and all the Adriatic Islands were ceded to Yugoslavia. b) A Free
Territory of Trieste, demilitarised and neutral, was to be formed. However this
was impractical and on 5/10/1954 the British, US, Italian, and Yugoslav
governments agreed to divide the territory between Italy and Yugoslavia. c)
Romania ceded Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia to the USSR. The Russian
occupation of these areas had been by aggression on 27/6/1940; the population
of Bessarabia was however mainly Romanian.
1/1/1947. The USA and British zones in West Germany
were merged.� Russia objected, and so did France, who wanted a divided Germany, and
had annexed the Saar from French-occupied Germany.
/8/1946, The German Army was officially
dissolved by the Allied Control Commission.
29/7/1946, The Paris
Peace Conference began.
26/3/1946, Allied
Control Commission set limits on the level of German industrial production.
31/12/1945, Most
Berliners were subsisting on just 800 calories a day; in 1946 in the British
sector rations dropped on occasion to a slow as 400 calories a day, less than
was received by the inmates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Not only was
food desperately short but numbers to be fed were swollen by huge numbers of
German refugees from eastern Europe. Medical supplies were also virtually
non-existent, and 43 of Berlin�s 44 hospitals had been destroyed or badly
damaged. Typhoid spread due to broken water mains and damaged sewers. Then
mosquitoes and other insects feeding on corpses spread disease, and dysentery
killed 6 out of 10 babies born in Berlin in July 1945. Another lethal hazard
was unexploded ordnance, shells, mines and grenades. In 1945 Berlin women
outnumbered men by 3 to 1.
12/9/1945, An estimate of War casualties reckoned that Britain had lost 420,000 members of
the armed forces; the US had lost 292,000, and the USSR, 13 million. German
loss of military men was put at 3.9 million, Japan�s at 2.6 million. British
civilian casualties from air raids were set at 60,000, with 860,000 severely
injured.
7/9/1945, Berlin
Victory Parade of 1945: The Allies held a victory parade in Berlin. The Soviet
JS-3 heavy tank was displayed in public for the first time.
2/8/1945, The Potsdam Conference (began 16/7/1945) ended
without agreement on the future of Europe. The Soviets would not agree to free elections in Eastern Europe.
26/7/1945. In the
Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, the banks were closed and citizens ordered to
hand over all their gold, silver, foreign currency and other valuables to the
Russians, who were also dismantling factories and taking them to Russia as
reparations.
17/7/1945, The
Potsdam Conference began, attended
by Allied leaders Truman, Stalin, and Churchill (later replaced
by Attlee).
5/6/1945. Allied
commanders signed a pact for the occupation of Germany; it was t be divided
into 4 zones, British, French, USA, and USSR.
11/5/1945. Prague, the last European capital, was liberated.
Post World War Two political developments (see
above for judicial dealings with Nazis)
/5/1945. VE Day. The Second World War officially ended in
Europe, at one minute past midnight. Field
Marshall Keitel signed the final capitulation. The
Channel Islands remained under Nazi occupation till the following day,
9/5/1945. Street parties were held all over Britain.
UK Bomber Command has calculated the following statistics
relating to the Second World War. 55,573 aircrew were killed, of whom 47,130
died on operations, 138 died as PoWs, and 8,090 were killed in �mon-operational
incidents� (mostly flying accidents). Of those killed, 38,462 were British, 9,980
were Canadian, 4,050 were Australian and 1,703 were New Zealanders. 530 RAF
groundcrew were killed, and 759 injured, in incidents such as bombs detonating
when being loaded onto aircraft or being jammed in the bomb bay. Total bombs
dropped on Axis countries amounted to 955,044 tons, of which 657,674 tons was
dropped on Germany itself. 336,037 bombing raids were carried out by the RAF.
8,655 aircraft were reported as missing (failed to return). By the end of 1944
Allied raids had reduced German oil production by 40%, so that many German
tanks and aircraft became unuseable due to lack of fuel, even if they were
serviceable.
German civilian casualties have been estimated at between
350,000 and 600,000.
Some 3.4 million German houses and flats had been destroyed out of a
total of 17.1 million; a further 30% of homes had been severely damaged by
bombing. The desperate housing shortage was exacerbated by an influx of some 10
million refugees from eastern Europe. Many Germans lived 5 or 6 to a room, or
existed in makeshift shelters. Some, as at Dachau near Munich, lived in former
concentration camps.
In Greater Manchester 684 people died in the bombing, and
an additional 2,364 were injured.
For the World
War Two period, 1 September 1939 to 9 May 1945, the timeline for France-Germany
has been split into the following categories;
1) France-Germany �home� (non-war) events
2) Eastern Front (East Europe, Finland, Russia, Greece)
3) Western Front (France, Benelux, Britain, west
Germany)
3)a)�
Scandinavia ex. Finland.
3)b) Italy, Malta
4) Africa
5) Middle East
6) America
7) Maritime
8) Air war.
Click Here for map of Europe under Nazi
occupation
in 1941.
See USA for World War Two events and United States
See China/Japan/Korea for World War Two in Pacific
For Jewish
persecution in World War Two, see Israel, Judaism
See also Great Britain, London. Click here for newspaper reports of UK WW2 events
1) GeneralAllied
events, and France-Germany �home� events
1/5/1945, Joseph Goebbels
and his wife Magda
committed suicide, having killed their six children with poison.
30/4/1945. Adolf Hitler poisoned his
wife Eva Braun with cyanide, then shot
himself, in his Berlin bunker. They had married two days earlier. Hitler
ordered that his body be burned; he was determined to avoid its being displayed
as Mussolini�s
had (28/4/1945). He feared even more being captured alive and taken to Moscow.
German radio announced that Grand Admiral Doenitz was now leader of the
Reich. Doenitz
stated that the main aim was �to defend Germany from Bolshevism�; Doenitz
and his supporters wanted to fight on, whilst another faction led by Heinrich
Himmler wanted to surrender to both the Western Allies and Russia.
As Hitler
died, Soviet tanks were entering the
ruins of central Berlin. There was panic on the Berlin streets as SS men
shot deserting Nazi soldiers, whilst low-flying Soviet biplanes machine-gunned
bread queues. Bodies littered once elegant streets, looted of all valuables.
28/4/1945, Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun,
in his Berlin bunker, in the early hours of the morning. The act was a symbolic
abandonment of Hitler�s
plans for �national socialism�� - he had
insisted that, as Fuhrer, he would have no ties to another human being.
9/4/1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German
theologian involved with anti-Hitler conspirators, was hanged in Flossenburg
concentration camp.
31/3/1945, In the last days of war,
Berlin maintained a surreal normality. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
continued recitals until now. Telephones functioned, the underground railway
ran, and post continued to be delivered right up to the last few days of the
war. Berlin workers still picked their way through rubble filled streets to work,
often in offices whose windows had all been blown out.
18/3/1945, Major air raid on Berlin.
11/2/1945, The Yalta Conference
ended. See 4/2/1945.
4/2/1945. The Yalta Conference between the Allied leaders Roosevelt, Stalin, and
Churchill opened in the Crimea. This conference concluded on 11/2/1945.
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all had very different aims. Roosevelt wanted
to disengage US troops from Europe to defeat Japan. Stalin wanted to extend
Soviet influence as far west into Europe as possible. Stalin got to occupy
eastern Poland, as agreed in Tehran on 28/11/1943. Churchill wanted to build a
democracy from the ruins of Germany. The ailing Roosevelt trusted Stalin�s
assurance that he would work to build a �peaceful and democratic world�. The
West insisted that Greece be given a western-style democracy, but otherwise all
of eastern Europe fell under the Soviet sphere. Stalin also gained Sakhalin and
the Kurile Islands in return for a war effort against Japan that was never
made. Yalta set the world order for the
next 45 years.
30/1/1945, Adolf Hitler made his very last
radio broadcast to Germany, marking 12 years of Nazi rule.
16/1/1945, Hitler left his office in
the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, for the last time, and descended to his bunker,
15 metres underground. By now most of Berlin�s buildings had been destroyed by
Allied bombing.
10/12/1944, De Gaulle and Stalin
signed a treaty of alliance.
6/12/1944, 20 million Germans were
homeless after Allied bombing.
26/11/1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the crematoria
at Auschwitz concentration camp to eliminate evidence of the mass killings
there.
19/10/1944, Churchill returned home after
talks with Stalin.
14/10/1944, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, 53, Commander of the Afrika Corps 1941-43, �took his own life by swallowing poison rather
than be executed for an attempt on Hitler�s
life. Hitler had promised him a hero�s
funeral if he committed suicide.
Otherwise Rommel
would face the notorious Nazi judge, Roland Frreisler, who had already condemned
the other conspirators against Hitler to slow hanging by piano wire. The
official cause of Rommel�s death was given as heart failure.
9- 19/10/1944, Churchill travelled to Moscow
for talks with Stalin.
5/10/1944, In Germany, Joseph Goebbels
announced a reduction in food rations.
1/10/1944, The German war economy was
hopelessly disorganised. In September 1944 German factories produced 3,000
fighter planes, but aviation fuel production was only 10,000 tons, as against
Luftwaffe consumption of 165,000 tons in April 1944. These new planes sat on
the runway with empty fuel tanks and vacant cockpits, as pilot training had
virtually ceased.
25/9/1944, Hitler called up all remaining
males aged between 16 and 60 for the Volksturm, a home defence force.
24/9/1944, The second Quebec Conference ended (began
13/9/1944), see 24/8/1943.� It was
concerned with shifting the war effort to the Pacific to finish off the
Japanese, also how best to advance into Germany (the Morgenthau Plan), and
operations in The Philippines.
19/8/1944. Differences emerged between the Americans and the
British as to how to press on against Germany. The US wanted to go
directly east into Germany via the Saar region; the British wanted to secure
Belgium and Holland and then occupy the industrial Ruhr region. This latter
option would both neutralise the V-weapon launching sites and capture the
deepwater port of Antwerp. Politically, however, both options had to be
pursued, or else public outrage would ensue if one Allied army was halted
whilst the other pressed on.
8/8/1944, Officers convicted of an
attempt on Hitler�s
life were hanged with piano wire. See 20/7/1944.
4/8/1944, Purge of the German Army
by Hitler.
20/7/1944, An
attempt was made on Hitler�s life by a German Staff Officer, Count Claus Von
Stauffenberg, at Hitler�s headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia.
A bomb was left in a briefcase under a table in the conference room where
Hitler was to speak. The plot failed because the heavy oak table top shielded Hitler
from much of the blast, as did the thick table leg against which the briefcase
was placed. The plotters were arrested, as were 1,000 other people implicated
in the plot. See 8/8/1944.
17/7/1944, Field Marshal Rommel was badly
injured when an Allied fighter plane shot up his car.
2/7/1944, Marshal von Kluge replaced General von
Rundstedt.
28/6/1944, Hitler replaced Field Marshall
Busch, of the Army Group Centre, with General Model.
21/6/1944, Berlin was heavily bombed.
16/6/1944, Marc Bloch, French historian,
died aged 57.
20/4/1944, The RAF set a new bombing
record. 4,500 tons of bombs were dropped in a single raid, on Hitler�s
55th birthday.
7/4/1944, Hitler suspended all laws in
Berlin and made Goebbels
dictator of the city.
4/1/1944. Hitler ordered the mobilisation of all children over the
age of ten. On this day Soviet
forces crossed the pre-war frontier from Russia into Poland at Rokitno. Hitler, anticipating an Allied
attack on France, was keen to hold the northern French and Belgian coasts, so
as to be able to launch the V weapons against Britain, even if this meant some
territorial losses in the east.
23/11/1943. Berlin
TV ceased broadcasting altogether after Allied bombers scored a direct hit on
the transmitter. Unlike in the UK, German TV had continued throughout the War,
but restricted to 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon and a further 2 hours in the
evening from 8 � 10pm. As Allied bombing raids intensified, the evening 2-hour
slot was gradually brought forward, to 6-8pm, so Berliners could be in their
shelters after dinner.
15/11/1943, The Nazis extended their extermination policies from the Jews to the Romany.
Heinrich
Himmler, head of the SS, ordered all Romany to be sent to the
concentration camps.
28/11/1943, The main Allied leaders, Churchill,
Roosevelt,
and Stalin,
all met in Tehran. Co-ordinating the Normandy landings with a Russian attack on
the eastern front was discussed, also a Russian attack on Japan, and a post-war
United Nations Organisation. All agreed that the USSR could have eastern Poland
as far west as the Curzon line, and Poland would be compensated with lands in
eastern Germany. This was confirmed at the Yalta
Conference of 4 � 11 February 1945.
31/8/1943, Gustav Bachmann, German World
War I Admiral, died aged 83.
24/8/1943, The Quebec Conference ended
(began 10/8/1943).� Code-named Quadrant,
it was concerned with plans for the Normandy landings, also land operations in
south east Asia (especially Burma), and with campaigns in Italy.�
10/8/1943, The Quebec Conference opened. Churchill, Roosevelt and McKenzie
were present.
4/8/1943, At the German V-2 rocket
plant at Peenem�nde, the decision was made to employ concentration camp inmates
as slave labour to build the missiles. For every non-Jewish German employee,
there would be at least ten camp inmates supplied by the SS.
22/2/1943, Members of the White Rose (die Weisse Rose) anti-war
group in Germany were publically guillotined, their execution intended to
discourage others. They had been caught distributing leaflets at university;
most members were students who once supported Hitler but who had become
disillusioned after Nazi war atrocities. Their execution, and the whole group,
was swiftly forgotten in Germany until the 1970s when they were rediscovered
and became folk heroes.
28/1/1943. Hitler ordered the mobilisation of the entire population aged between
16 and 65.
24/1/1943, The Casablanca Conference
ended, see 14/1/1943.� President Wilson,
with Churchill,
then issued a statement demanding�
unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, rather than a negotiated settlement.� This was intended to reassure Russia; the
Nazis used the statement as propaganda to warn the German people of the greed
of their enemies.
22/1/1943, Hitler ordered that shipbuilding take second place to tank
production, to make good tank losses on the Eastern Front.
14/1/1943. Churchill, de Gaulle,
and Roosevelt met at Casablanca. They demanded the unconditional surrender of the
Axis powers.� Plans were made for the
invasion of Sicily increased US bombing of Germany, and the transfer of British
forces to the far east once Germany was defeated.
15/8/1942, Winston Churchill had his first summit meeting with Joseph Stalin.
19/12/1941, Hitler made himself Commander in
Chief of the Army.
23/9/1941, In London, Charles de
Gaulle formed a Free French Government in exile.
4/6/1941, Kaiser Wilhelm II, exiled German
Emperor, died in exile in The Netherlands.
12/3/1941,
The first issue of Die Zeitung, a Free German (anti-Hitler) newspaper appeared in London.
3/1/1941, Martin Bormann promulgated a
Nazi decree banning gothic typefaces in all printing and proclaiming roman type
as the new standard. The order sought to make Nazi communications more
understandable in occupied France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and
Norway, where Roman type was used.
24/10/1940. Hitler failed to persuade Franco or Petain to help invade Britain.
20/10/1940, Andre Santini, French
politician, was born.
10/10/1940, Hitler began an emergency program called the Sofortprogramm to build protective
shelters for the civilian population and essential personnel. Aiming to build
6,000 bunkers across 92 cities, it was the largest public works program in
history.
12/9/1940, A group of five boys
discovered a cave at Lascaux, in the
Dordogne, south west France, which was to become famous because it contained
fine examples of prehistoric cave paintings.
21/8/1940, The �tree of liberty�,
planted in Saverne after Alsace was restored to France at the end of World War
I, was chopped down by members of the Hitler Youth.
28/3/1940, The Allied Supreme War
Council issued a formal Declaration of United Action.
28/2/1940, Allied divers recovered three
rotors from a scuttled German U-boat off the Shetlands. These were vital in
decoding the German Enigma codes.
24/12/1939, Pope Pius XII issued a cautious
call for peace, whilst striving to remain politically neutral.
8/11/1939. Hitler narrowly
avoided an assassination attempt at a Munich beer cellar. The Nazi leader
was making a speech on the anniversary of the failed 1923 beer-hall putsch, in
which he had tried to seize the city. Hitler left straight after his speech,
which was much shorter than usual. Eight minutes later a bomb exploded behind
the pillar where he was speaking, killing 7 people and injuring 60. It was
planted by the anti-war activist and Communist Johann Georg Elser, who was sent
to a concentration camp. He was shot on 9 April 1945, on Hitler�s orders, to prevent his
release by the advancing Russians.
17/9/1939, De Valera said Ireland would
remain neutral in the War. Australia and New Zealand took sides with Britain
straightaway. The Canadian debated the issue for three days then voted to join
the War with one vote against. In South Africa the Prime Minister General Hertzog
wanted to stay out of the war; he was forced to resign and replaced by General Smuts
who immediately took Britain�s side.
2) Eastern Front
(East Europe, Russia, Greece, also Finland)
7/5/1945,� Soviet forces took Wroclaw, south-west Poland.
3/5/1945, Rijeka (Fiume) was captured by the
Yugoslavs; the Germans left, but blew up the port installations first.
2/5/1945, German
soldiers in Austria surrendered. Berlin finally surrendered to the Russians at
3 pm. British and Russian troops linked up at Wismar on the Baltic.
Final Russian conquest of Berlin
1/5/1945, Berlin was totally in Russian hands.
Click
here for contemporary newspaper maps of WW2, April-May 1945.
29/4/1945, At 1am on
30/4/1945 Hitler
was informed that all Nazi forces he had been hoping would relieve Berlin were
now encircled or on the defensive.
28/4/1945, The
Wehrmacht withdrew from the town of Demmin,
north-eastern Germany, blowing up bridges as they retreated and abandoning the
town�s civilians to the oncoming Red Army.
27/4/1945, Berlin
was now totally surrounded by Soviet forces.
25/4/1945, US and
Soviet forces met on the Elbe near Torgau. Zhukov�s and Koniev�s armies met
west of Berlin, surrounding it.
22/4/1945, Hitler
was told that forces under SS General Felix Steiner were unable to rescue
Berlin from Soviet occupation.
21/4/1945, Soviet
forces under Zhukov
(1st Belorussian Front) entered the suburbs of Berlin.
Final Russian conquest of Berlin
20/4/1945,
Nuremberg, once the scene of huge Nazi rallies, fell to the Allies, on Hitler�s
56th birthday. There was also the last air raid on Berlin. Soviet forces were
to enter Berlin tomorrow. Since the first raid on 29/8/1940, some 76,652 tons
of explosives and incendiary bombs had been dropped on the German capital.
50,692 tons were British, and 25,962 American. Soviet artillery also rained
down some 40,000 tons of shells during the final stages of the war.
18/4/1945, Russians
fighting on the Seelow Heights broke
through westwards towards Berlin.
16/4/1945, The
Russians began a major assault on the Seelow
Heights, crossing the Oder River.
15/4/1945, The
Allies captured the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.� Eva Braun descended to Hitler�s bunker; she had
previously resided in a private apartment in the Chancellery, since March 1945.
13/4/1945, Vienna was captured� by Soviet troops from the Germans.
9/4/1945, Konigsberg, capital of east Prussia,
taken by the Russians.
4/4/1945, Bratislava, capital of Slovakia,
captured by Soviet forces. The last Wermacht forces evacuated Hungary.
2/4/1945, The
Soviet Army began an offensive to take Vienna.
30/3/1945, The
Russians took Danzig (Gdansk), Poland, also the town of Ratibor in
Silesia.� The Poles renamed the city
Gdansk,� from Danzig, expelled the
Germans, and linked the city administratively with the neighbouring port of
Gdynia, built on Polish territory in the 1920s.
29/3/1945, Soviet
troops entered Austria.
28/3/1945, Gdynia captured by the Russians.
22/3/1945, Soviet
forces broke the Danzig / Gdynia defence
perimeter.
17/3/1945, Brandenburg, East Prussia, captured by
the Russians.
15/3/1945, The
Soviet Army launched the Upper Silesian offensive.
13/3/1945, The
Battle of Kiauneliskis, Lithuania.
6/3/1945, German forces launched Operation Spring
Awakening, their last offensive of the war. This was in Hungary, near Lake
Balaton, and was aimed at securing some
of the last oil supplies still available to the Germans, the Nagyakanisza
oilfield. Troops from the failed Ardennes offensive were utilised. However by mid-March the
operation had failed and the Germans were being pushed back by overwhelming
Soviet strength. Also on this day the Soviets began arresting and executing any
members of the Polish Home Army of Polish Government in Exile they could find.
4/3/1945, Finland declared war on Nazi Germany.
22/2/1945, Poznan, on the Berlin to Warsaw road,
fell to the 1st Belorussian Front after a pocket of German soldiers there had
been surrounded but held out.
14/2/1945, U.S. Army
Air Forces bombed Prague. 701 people
were killed and about 100 houses and historical sites were destroyed in what
was attributed to a navigation mistake.
13/2/1945. Allied
bombers devastated the German city of Dresden.
Many civilians had moved to the cultural city of Dresden, and its population in
1945 was over 1,000,000. There were up to 400,000 casualties, including 130,000
civilian deaths. Dresden was famous for its 17th and 18th century architecture,
but was also an industrial centre and was a key communications centre for the
German armies on the Eastern Front. 1,400 RAF fighters and 450 US planes bombed
Dresden over a 14 hour period. Soviet forces took Budapest. Soviet forces took Sommerfeld, just 80 miles from Berlin.
5/2/1945, Soviet
forces crossed the River Oder, and pushed deeper into Germany.
2/2/1945,� Under Soviet occupation, the Bulgarian
authorities began to try and execute various �war criminals� including Prince Cyril,
former government ministers, and businessmen.�
Further trials and executions continued till June 1945, when the legal
process was declared complete.
31/1/1945, Soviet
troops crossed the River Oder into the province of Brandenburg, north of
Frankfurt, 40 miles from Berlin.
Russian troops entered pre-WW2
German territory (East Prussia), continued westwards towards Berlin
29/1/1945, The
Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front advanced into the city of Konigsberg.
28/1/1945, Soviet
forces invaded Pomerania.
27/1/1945, The Red
Army now captured Silesia, and the loss of the mines and factories there was a
severe blow to Nazi war production. Russian forces captured Memel, liberating
all of Lithuania.
24/1/1945, Gleiwicz in Silesia taken by the
Russians, as was the key fortress of Lotzen
in East Prussia. The Russians were now close to Konigsberg, capital of East
Prussia.
23/1/1945, Bromberg taken by the Russians.
22/1/1945, Allenstein taken by the Russians.
21/1/1945, Russia
and Hungary signed an armistice.
20/1/1945, The
German evacuation of East Prussia began. The 4th Ukrainian Front advancing
through Slovakia took Presov.
19/1/1945, Russian
troops took Tilsit. They were now on
the pre-War frontier of Germany.
17/8/1944, The
Russians reached the border of East Prussia.
Russian troops entered pre-WW2
German territory (East Prussia), continued westwards towards Berlin
18/1/1945, Soviet
troops took Lodz.
17/1/1945, Soviet
and Polish troops captured Warsaw.
Only 162,000 citizens remained, compared to a pre-war population of
1,310,000.� See 14/9/1945.
15/1/1945, Soviet
forces captured Cracow from Germany.
14/1/1945, Radom in central Poland taken by the
Russians.
13/1/1945, Budapest was completely in Soviet
hands. Hungary, Nazi Germany�s last ally in the Balkans, was now siding openly
with Russia.
12/1/1945, 5.am,
Moscow time, Konev�s 1st Ukranian Front began an offensive against Nazi forces
from the Sandomierz bridgehead, north east of Cracow.
9/1/1945, General
Guderian warned Hitler that the eastern front was like a house
of cards, ready to collapse at any time; Hitler dismissed reports of superior Russian
military strength as �the greates bluff since Genghis Khan�. In fact, the Soviets
possessed a 5:1 advantage in manpower, a 7:1 advantage in artillery, and a 17:1
advantage in aircraft.
28/12/1944, Hungary
renounced all treaties with the Third Reich and declared war on Germany.
27/12/1944, The
Soviet Army began to besiege Nazi forces in Budapest.� See 13/1/1945.
21/12/1944, The
Soviet Army, having entered Hungarian�
territory in early September 1944, set up a provisional government in
Debrecen.
9/12/1944, The
Danube north of Budapest was reached by the Russians.
5/12/1944, The 3rd
Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Army captured Szigetv�r and Vukovar.
29/11/1944, Russian
troops crossed the Danube, in Hungary.
21/11/1944, The
Moscow Conference ended.
17/11/1944, Tirana, capital of Albania, was
recovered from German occupation.
9/11/1944, The
Moscow Conference began.
6/11/1944, Monastir liberated by Yugoslav forces.
30/10/1944, Soviet
forces attacked Budapest, but the
Germans held it until February 1945.
24/10/1944, The Riga
Offensive ended in Soviet victory.
22/10/1944, Russian
troops in Finland reached the Norwegian border.
20/10/1944, Tito�s
partisans and the Red Army took Belgrade.
It had been taken by Germany on 13/4/1941.
18/10/1944. The
Russian army entered East Prussia and Czechoslovakia.
13/10/1944, Athens was liberated from the Germans,
who occupied it on 27/4/1941.
11/10/1944, Cluj, capital of Transylvania,
recaptured by the Russians.
9/10/1944, Russian
forces reached the Baltic coast near Libau.
6/10/1944, Soviet
troops entered Hungary.
3/10/1944, The
insurgents in the Warsaw Uprising surrendered to German forces.
28/9/1944, Soviet,
Yugoslav Partisan and Bulgarian forces began the Belgrade Offensive.
27/9/1944, Soviet
troops and Yugoslav Partisans crossed the border into Albania.
23/9/1944, Soviet
forces entered Hungary,
22/9/1944,� The Russians captured Tallinn, capital of
Estonia. This blocked the final seaborne escape route for German Army Group
North.
19/9/1944, Finland agreed to the peace terms demanded by Russia (see
20/6/1944), except that the indemnity was halved to US$300million.
16/9/1944, The
Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front occupied the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.
14/9/1944, Russian
forces took Praga, on the right bank of the River Vistula, opposite
Warsaw.� An anti-Nazi uprising by Poles
had begun in Warsaw on 1/8/1944.� However
the Russian forces did not immediately cross the Vistula to Warsaw, but held
back whilst the Nazis put down the Polish rebellion and razed the city.� Warsaw was only taken by the Russians on
17/1/1945.
9/9/1944, The
Russians captured Sofia, capital of
Bulgaria.
7/9/1944, Hungary
declared war on Romania and crossed into southern Transylvania
6/9/1944, Bulgaria
declared war on Germany.� Bulgaria had
wanted to become neutral but Russia fund this �insufficient� and threatened to
declare war on Bulgaria.� Bulgaria
therefore declared war on Germany and Russian troops marched into Bulgaria
unopposed�� On 28/10/1944 Bulgaria signed
an armistice with the Allies and the Bulgarian Army, under Soviet command,
attacked German forces in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria. �See 2/2/1945.
30/8/1944, Soviet
forces took Bucharest.
31/8/1944. Russian and Romanian forces captured the Ploesti oilfields,
which had supplied Germany with one third of its military oil.� Meanwhile Hitler declared that the
political differences between the Allies would result in the collapse of their
efforts against Germany (see 19/8/1944).
29/8/1944, Constanza
taken by Russia.
25/8/1944, Finland was forced to sue the USSR for peace (see 12/3/1940)
under pressure from the Soviet Army.� Finland gave up territory gained from the USSR since 1940, and
also ceded the Petsamo region, with the Arctic port at Porkkala; this gave the
USSR a common border with Norway.
For more events of USSR-Finland conflicts 1940s see
Finland
23/8/1944. Following
a coup d�etat in Bucharest, in which pro-Nazi dictator General Ion Antonescu was
overthrown (born 1882, acceded 1940), Romania
changed sides and declared war on Germany and Soviet troops entered Rumania
as allies. Germans had entered Bucharest as allies in September 1940, after Antonescu
seized power, forcing King Carol II into exile after Carol
had surrendered Romanian territory to Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia. Romania
then supported Germany when it invaded Russia in June 1941, and assisted in the
Nazi capture of Odessa, which was then renamed �Antonescu�, with areas of
south-west Ukraine annexed to Romania. However the Soviets began to force back
the Romanians, and other Axis forces, in the winter in 1942/3. On this day,
23/8/1944, Carol
II�s 23-year-old son, King Michael, had Antonescu arrested. Antonescu
was subsequently charged with war crimes in May 1946 and on 1/6/1946, after a
brief trial, was condemned to death and shot.
1/8/1944, Anti-Nazi
rising in Warsaw began.� Russian forces were close to the city, see
14/9/1944.
30/7/1944, Soviet
forces captured Simno, Poland, only 35
miles from the Prussian border and 330 miles as the crow flies from Berlin.
They also took Gluda which cut the
railway line west from Riga. German forces in Riga now had just one minor rail
line west as an escape route, leading to Windau, a small Baltic port.
28/7/1944, Soviet
forces took Brest Litovsk, Poland.
27/7/1944, Russian
forces captured Lvov from Germany.
26/7/1944, Dvinsk retaken by Russia.� Narva,
Estonia, retaken by Russia.
24/7/1944, Lublin retaken by Russia. Russia.
German losses in the past 5 weeks amounted to over 2,000 tanks, 340 aircraft
and 113,000 men. Only 10,000 men replaced them.
13/7/1944. The capital
of Lithuania, Vilnius, was
recaptured by the Russians.
12/7/1944, The
Russians advanced 21 miles on the Baltic Front.
3/7/1944, Minsk was recaptured by the Russians.
Click here for contemporary newspaper maps of WW2, Eastern
Front, 1944.
29/6/1944, The
Russians captured Petrozavodsk from
Finland, see 20/6/1944.� See 19/9/1944.
26/6/1944, Vitebsk retaken by Russia. The Nazi 3rd
Pamzer Amy was surrounded.
23/6/1944, The
German 4th Army, NE of Minsk, was
surrounded.
22/6/1944, The Russians commenced Operation Bagration.
Under the supreme command of Zhukov, some 1.2 million troops launched a
4-pronged assault towards Minsk. A
simultaneous assault was launched towards Lithuania.
20/6/1944, The
Russian attacked Finland, which had begun peace discussions
with the USSR in February 1944. Russia had demanded restoration of the 1944
frontier, plus Petsamo, thus excluding Finland from the Arctic
Ocean, and an indemnity of US$600million, Finland�s entire national
income for 1939.� Finland
refused such humiliating terms, and Russia attacked, capturing Viipuri this day.� See 29/6/1944.
See Finland for more details of war with Russia
10/6/1944, The USSR
began an offensive against Finland.
25/5/1944. Tito
escaped to the hills as German troops captured his Bosnian headquarters.
16/4/1944, Soviet
forces cleared out the last pockets of German resistance at Yalta.
13/4/1944, The
Russian army took Simferopol,
capital of Crimea.
11/4/1944, The USSR
began the liberation of the Crimea. Odessa
retaken.
4/4/1944, On the
Eastern Front, a counterattack by the German 4th Panzer Army captured Kovel.
2/4/1944, USSR
troops crossed the Romanian frontier.
27/3/1944, Germany
poured massive reinforcements into Hungary as the Russians approached.
25/3/1944, German
army commander, Von
Manstein, leader of Army Group South, successfully argued with Hitler
that the 1st Panzer Army must be allowed to retreat to avoid a Soviet
encirclement south-east of Tarnopol.
Von Manstein
was a much better strategist than Hitler, and was never afraid to argue
persuasively and strongly with the Fuhrer when necessary. However Von Manstein
was replaced by Field
Marshal Model. Army Groups South and A were renamed, respectively,
Army Groups Northern and Southern Ukraine; an ironic move given that by now very little of the Ukraine remained
under German occupation.
19/3/1944, Germany
began a direct occupation of its ally, Hungary, as Soviet forces advanced
towards the Danube Plain. Hungarian oil was vital for Germany, and Hitler was
alarmed at reports that Admiral Horthy, Hungarian Regent, was
intending to surrender to the Russians as soon as they crossed the border into
Hungary.
18/3/1944, The
Soviets took Zhmerynka, central Ukraine.
13/3/1944, Kherson retaken by Russia.
22/2/1944, Krivoi Rog retaken by Russia.
2/2/1944, The
Battle of Narva began on the Eastern Front.
27/1/1944, Russia
announced the complete lifting of the 2-year blockade against Leningrad.� The Leningrad to Moscow railway reopened.
20/1/1944, Russia
recaptured Novogorod.
14/1/1944, German
Army Group North was overwhelmed by a new Soviet offensive on the entire
Leningrad, Volkhov and 2nd Baltic Fronts.
19/12/1943, At the
first war crimes trial, in the USSR, three Germans were found guilty of atrocities
and hanged at Kharkov.
6/11/1943, Russian
troops retook Kiev.
1/11/1943, Russians
cut off the Germans who were attempting to retreat from the Crimea.
7/10/1943, Russian
forces crossed the Dnieper River.
25/9/1943, The USSR
retook Smolensk.
21/9/1943, The
Soviet 43rd Army captured Demidov.
17/9/1943, Briansk retaken by Russia.
16/9/1943, Novorossisk retaken by Russia.
14/9/1943. Yugoslav
partisans were advancing along the Dalmatian coast, and Allied officers had
reached Tito.
7/9/1943, German
troops began a retreat from the Ukraine.
30/8/1943, Taganrog retaken by Russia.
23/8/1943, Kharkov retaken by Russia.
5/8/1943, The USSR
retook Orel.
3/8/1943, The
Russian Voronezh, Steppe and South-West Fronts began a major offensive against
German Army Group South below the Kursk Salient.
1/8/1943, Allied
raid on the Ploesti oil refineries, Romania, which supplied much of Germany�s
oil. However anti-aircraft fire was much heavier than anticipated. Some
refining capacity was taken out but some remained intact.
13/7/1943, The Germans lost the greatest tank battle
in history, in the cornfields around Kursk.
7/7/1943, The 4th
Panzer Army under Hoth, in the south of the Kursk Salient, made good progress,
advancing 20 miles into the Salient at Yakovlevo and Pokrovka.
6/7/1943, Marshall-General
Rokossovsky�s counter attacked against the Germans at Kursk but
could not prevent their advance. However stiff Soviet resistance prevented the
Germans gaining more than six miles of ground.
5/7/1943, At 4.30
am, German forces in Russia began Operation
Citadel, an assault into the Kursk Salient. However the main concentration
of German troops did not reach the battle area until 5.00 am, due to Soviet
shelling of the assembly areas. Soviet intelligence had picked up details of
the offensive.
Click here for contemporary newspaper maps of WW2,
Eastern Front, 1941-43.
16/5/1943, German
forces began an offensive against Tito�s partisans in Yugoslavia.
14/3/1943, The
Germans re-occupied Kharkov in a counter offensive against the Russians.
16/2/1943, Kharkov
retaken by Russia.
14/2/1943, Rostov
retaken by Russia.
12/2/1943, Krasnodar
recaptured by the Russians.
8/2/1943. Russia recaptured Kursk.
Kursk was a major rail junction, and this significant Russian victory followed
their major success at Stalingrad.
The Russians created a salient 160 km wide and 130 km deep into German lines
around Kursk, and in the summer of 1943 Hitler ordered this salient eliminated under �Operation Citadel�.2,500 German tanks,
supported by 1,000 aircraft, attempted to cut off the salient from Orel in the north and Belgorod in the south. Fighting was
especially severe at Prokhorova, where Germany lost 300 tanks in one day, but
made a deep penetration into the salient. However the Russians had filled the
salient with an even greater number of tanks and aircraft, protected by deep
minefields. The Battle of Kursk, 5 �
15 July 1943, was the greatest tank battle in history. Orel was liberated by the Russians on 4/8/1943 and Belgorod on 5/8/1943. German losses
were so heavy as to rule out any further�
major offensives by them on the Eastern Front.
6/2/1943, Mannstein
hurried back to Rastenburg to persuade Hitler of his plans for a counter offensive in
the Russian South. Hitler agreed.
The fight for Stalingrad � the
turning point of the War
31/1/1943. The German 6th Army under Field Marshal Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad
after five months of fighting. The last Germans fighting in
Stalingrad surrendered on 2/2/1943.� Hitler
had refused to countenance an attempted German breakout from Stalingrad and
insisted his troops hold on, despite, from December 1942, increasing shortages
of food, ammunition, and medical supplies.�
The Luftwaffe tried to drop supplies by air to the besieged city but often
failed in this task. The Stalingrad Campaign cost the lives of 479,000 men from
November 1942; German deaths amounted to 147,000, with a further 91,000 troops
captured (many to be worked to death as Stalinpferde, Stalin horses, in Soviet
labour camps).
25/1/1943, The
Russians retook Voronezh, see
7/7/1942.
21/1/1943, The
Russians retook Stavropol.
19/1/1943, Soviet
forces retook Sclusselberg, south of
Leningrad, reopening a narrow land corridor to the city. However food supplies
to Leningrad remained very
precarious.
18/1/1943, The Russians broke the 890-day siege of Leningrad.
Supplies had only reached the city intermittently over frozen Lake Ladoga.
13/1/1943, German
forces in Russia retreated from Terek to the Nagutskoye-Alexandrovskoye line.
12/1/1943, The
Second Hungarian Army was annihilated in fierce fighting against Russia at
Voronezh, near Stalingrad.
8/1/1943, German
forces began to retreat from the Stalingrad
area, leaving some of their compatriots under siege in Stalingrad itself.
1/1/1943, Velikye Luki re-occupied by the
Russians.
31/12/1942, Battle of the Barents Sea. An Allied
convoy bound for Murmansk was attacked by German destroyers. Allied destroyers
succeeded in fighting off a superior German naval force.
23/12/1942, Operation Winter Storm ended
with the German 6th Army still trapped in Stalingrad.
26/11/1942, 250,000
German troops under General von Paulus were surrounded at Stalingrad.
25/11/1942, Greek
guerrillas fighting the Axis occupation destroyed the Gorgopotamos railway.
22/11/1942, During
Operation Uranus the Red Army secured the vital bridge over the Don River at
Kalach-na-Donu, west of Stalingrad.
19/11/1942, The Russians counterattacked at Stalingrad,
across ground hardened by the winter frosts but not yet clogged by snow.� The Russians had more of their superior T34
battle tanks, and created a giant pincer movement to encircle the 250,000
Germans at Stalingrad. German generals, knowing they were overstretched, wanted
to shorten their lines and conserve men, equipment, and supplies.� However Hitler initially refused to sanction giving up
any occupied territory. Only in January 1943 did Hitler realise that the fall of
Stalingrad could entail the cutting off of his forces in the Caucasus; he
ordered Kleist
to retreat from this region, whilst Paulus hung on inside Stalingrad., diverting
Soviet forces. The Germans in Stalingrad surrendered on 2/2/1943, after 7 weeks
under siege; had they surrendered 3 weeks earlier, Kleist would also have been cut
off. Kleist
retreated along the northern shores of the Black Sea, assisted by a sudden thaw
that swelled Russian rivers and hindered the movements of the Soviet army.
16/11/1942, Russian
forces took Kharkov.
11/11/1942, Russian
forces took Lozovaya Junction.
8/11/1942, Russian
forces took Kursk.
2/11/1942, Ordzhonikidse, Caucasus, captured by
German forces.
14/10/1942, German
forces now held most of Stalingrad.
The Russians retained just two small enclaves on the west bank of the
Volga. However the Russian forces at
Stalingrad were in fact bait for a trap set by Zhukov.
6/10/1942, German
forces captured Malgobek, in the
Terek Salient, Russia.
25/9/1942, Hitler
suspended plans for further territorial advances in the Leningrad area as
winter approached.
24/9/1942, German
advance in Russia towards Tuapse.
23/9/1942, A Russian
counter-attack north-west of Stalingrad
began.
17/9/1942, Paulus, having
captured most of southern Stalingrad,
now turned his attention to the Russian-held industrial districts in the north
of the city.
13/9/1942, The German attack on Stalingrad began. Fighting
became so intense that each side at times fought the other from different
stories of the same building.
6/9/1942, The
Germans captured the major Black Sea naval base of Novorossiisk.
4/9/1942, Soviet
planes bombed Budapest for the first time.
1/9/1942, German
troops in Russia crossed the Kerch Straits and advanced into the Taman
Peninsula.
31/8/1942, British
Commandos began Operation Anglo, a raid on the island of Rhodes.
26/8/1942, German
forces reached the outskirts of Stalingrad.
12/8/1942, The
Germans captured Elista,
Kalmukkensteppe, Russia.
6/8/1942, The
Germans advanced on Stalingrad.
5/8/1942, German
troops crossed the Kuban River, Russia.
28/7/1942, Germans
captured Rostov on Don, USSR.
7/7/1942, The
Germans took the city of Voronezh,
see 25/1/1943.
1/7/1942, The
Germans captured Sevastopol after a
9 month siege.
29/6/1942, The
Germans launched an offensive at Kursk,
south of Moscow.
28/6/1942, The Germans launched Operation Blue, an offensive to capture the Russian
Caucasus oilfields and secure the Volga River. The Soviets responded by
concentrating resistance at Stalingrad, threatening the northern flank
of this Operation. On 23/7/1942 Hitler
ordered General Paulus to capture
Stalingrad at all costs. Meanwhile Stalin
could not let go the city that bore his name.
The fight for Stalingrad � the
turning point of the War
German advances into Russia
began to falter
9/6/1942, The
Germans massacred the inhabitants of the Czech mining village of Lidice, as a reprisal for the
assassination of Heydrich, Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia.� The village of Lezaky was also obliterated.
4/6/1942, The
�Protector of Bohemia-Moravia, the Nazi Heydrich, was assassinated by Czechs.� See 9/6/1942.
24/1/1942, German
forces relieved an encirclement of their garrison at Sukhinichi, Russia.
9/1/1942, The
Battle of Dra�go�e began between the Slovene Partisans and Nazi occupying
forces.
7/1/1942, The
Soviet Army began a new offensive on the Kalinin and Western Fronts in order to
encircle Army Group Centre.
29/12/1941, Russia
re-occupied Kerch and Feodosia.
15/12/1941, The
Germans abandoned attempts to take Moscow.
12/12/1941. (1) The
USSR began to push back Nazi forces.
Rostov in the south was retaken by the USSR, and the German advance towards Moscow was turned back at Solechnaya Gora,
40 miles north-west from the Russian capital. 30,000 German soldiers ware taken
prisoner and 700 German tanks captured or destroyed.� German supply lines had become
over-stretched, and the varying gauges and fuel requirements of Russia�s
railways meant that 70% of the Wermacht forces had to walk into Russia.� German hopes that Russian civilians would see
them as liberators failed to materialise.�
The German soldiers were ill-prepared for winter temperatures as low as
-40 C. However Stalin now made some tactical errors. He anticipated the main
German thrust for 1942 would be against Moscow whereas the Nazis now aimed for
Stalingrad, so as to capture the Caucasus oilfields.
10/12/1941, Tikhvin, near Leningrad, was recaptured by
the Russians, see 9/11/1941.
6/12/1941. Britain
declared war on Finland, after it
ignored warnings not to continue fighting on the German side. A Russian
counterattack began to relieve the pressure on Moscow.
5/12/1941, Britain
declared war on Hungary and Romania.
29/11/1941, German
troops withdrew from Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.
28/11/1941, Russia
re-occupied Rostov.
26/11/1941, A Russian
counter attack saw them advance 70 miles in the Ukraine.
24/11/1941, Von Rundstedt
defied a direct order from Hitler and withdrew from Rostov-on-Don due to Soviet
counter-attacks in the rear.
German advances into Russia
began to falter
Germans come close to capturing
Moscow
23/11/1941, Rostov
occupied by Germany.
22/11/1941, In the
Battle of Moscow, the Germans captured Klin.
21/11/1941, The Battle of
Rostov began on the Eastern Front.
9/11/1941, Tikhvin, a railway junction town east
of Leningrad, fell to the Germans. It was a staging point for supplies to
Leningrad via Lake Ladoga. See 10/12/1941.
3/11/1941, The
Germans captured Kursk, Russia � see
8/2/1943.
1/11/1941, Simferopol captured by Germany.
29/10/1941, Germans
began to cross the Perikop isthmus into Crimea.
24/10/1941, Kharkov occupied by Germany.
20/10/1941, German
forces reached close to Moscow.� The city suffered heavy bombing raids as
fighting raged in the countryside around.
19/10/1941, German
forces captured Mozhaysk, Russia.
16/10/1941. The
Germans advanced to within 60 miles of Moscow. Odessa evacuated by Russia.
Germans come close to capturing
Moscow
12/10/1941, Briansk evacuated by Russia.
2/10/1941, As the
first winter snows began, the Russian Army launched a counter-attack at Leningrad.
30/9/1941, Finland
took Petrozavodsk from Russia.
25/9/1941, Germany
attacked the Crimea.
24/9/1941, Russian Marshall
Budenny launched a counter-attack against the Germans at Kherson, on the River Dnieper.
19/9/1941, The
Germans captured Kiev, USSR.
30/8/1941, The Germans began the siege of Leningrad.� The siege ended in January 1943.
29/8/1941, The Germans
captured Tallinn, capital of
Estonia.
28/8/1941, The
Russians destroyed the Dnieper Dam, near Dnipropetrovsk, as they retreated from
the area under their scorched earth policy.
26/8/1941, The
Germans captured Dnipropetrovsk,
Ukraine.
17/8/1941, The Germans
took Narva, Estonia.
16/8/1941, In the Dnipropetrovsk area, the Russians
retreated east of the Dnieper River.
14/8/1941, German
forces near Stalingrad crossed the
Kuban River.
9/8/1941, Hitler
outlined to his government ministers his vision for Russia. �The German
colonist will live on handsome spacious farms. The German services will be
lodged in marvellous buildings, the governors in palaces. Beneath the shelter
of the administrative services we shall gradually organise all that is
indispensable to the maintenance of a certain standard of living. Around the
city to a depth of thirty of forty kilometres we shall have a belt of handsome
villages connected by the best roads. What exists beyond that will be another
world in which we mean to let the Russians live as they like. It is merely
necessary that we should rule them. In the event of a revolution we shall only
have to drop a few bombs on their cities and the affair will be liquidated.
Once a year we shall lead a troop of Kirghizes through the capital of the Reich
in order to strike their imagination with the size of our monuments�.
27/7/1941, German
forces entered the Ukraine.
13/7/1941, Britain
and the USSR concluded an assistance pact.
5/7/1941, Ukrainians seized control in Buczacz,
Poland. They were backed by the Nazis. The Ukrainians massacred any Poles,
Jews, or Russians they caught, and proclaimed an �Independent Ukrainian State�.
In September 1939 the Jews of Buczacz had been relieved to be included in the
Soviet-occupied sector of Poland, and therefore not under Nazi rule in German
occupied western Poland. At that time, Jews, backed by the Russians, took over
the local administration and assisted the Russians in deporting many Poles..
However the German attack on Soviet Russia of June 1941 caught them by
surprise.
30/6/1941, German
forces took Lvov from Russia.
28/6/1941, Germany
captured Minsk.
27/6/1941, Finland
joined with Germany in attacking Russia, to recover territory lost in 1939/40. Hungary
declared war on Russia.
26/6/1941, The Kosice
(Hungarian name, Kassa) incident. Kosice, the principal town of eastern
Slovakia, became part of Hungary on 12/11/1938. On this day, four days after
Hitler invaded Russia, and when Hungary was still a non-combatant in the war,
three airplanes bombed Kasice. The official story was that these planes were
Russian, and this incident helped bring in Hungary against Russia. However the
planes were far more likely to have been German, to provoke aggression by
Hungary against Russia.
22/6/1941. (1) Germany invaded Russia. Hitler
expected the war in Russia to be over by Christmas 1941, saying �We only have to kick in the door and the
whole rotten structure will come crashing down�. Hitler calculated that Stalin�s
purges of the officer class had badly weakened the Red Army.
The
invasion plan, called Operation
Barbarossa had been announced by Hitler to his generals on 30/3/1941 in a
speech to 200 senior army officers. At 3.am on 22 June the greatest offensive
in history was launched. Three million men poured across a front nearly a
thousand miles long. Hitler had said that the Communists must be
not only beaten but annihilated, or �in 30 years we shall have to fight them
again�. By the
end of World War Two, four million Russians had died in battle and a further
3.5 million had been taken captive. 97% of these died in captivity; Hitler had
decided that the Geneva Convention did not apply to them, or to millions more
captured later. 17,000 Russian villages were wiped off the map by the Germans.
Stalin had not
believed Germany would attack, despite troop movements on the frontier in the
weeks before the invasion.
The
German invasion was to have begun on 15/5/1941, but the need to intervene in
the Balkans against Greece and Yugoslavia delayed the Russian invasion by seven
(crucial) weeks.� The original plan was
for German forces to have reached a line from Archangel to the Volga by autumn
1941.� Russian resistance was greater
than Hitler
anticipated, and Hitler�s orders to try and capture Moscow whilst Leningrad was
already besieged, whilst simultaneously taking tanks from the Moscow front to
the southern front gave a respite to the defence of Moscow.
The
Germans correctly estimated Russian military strength in the west at 150
divisions but thought the Soviets had just 50 further divisions in reserve; in
fact the Red Army summoned up over 200 reserve divisions. Unexpected July rains
turned unsurfaced Russian roads into mud whilst the scorched earth policy meant
roads, bridges, railways and factories were destroyed before the Germans
advanced. The Russians also destroyed the railway rolling stock and because the
Russian gauge was different from the German one, the Nazis could not use the
Russian rail network.
(2) Romania joined in with Germany in
attacking Russia. Rumania was led by Ion Antonescu (born 2/6/1882 in
Transylvania). Antonescu
was pro-Nazi, and during a period of serious internal disorder in Rumania, King Carol
of Rumania was compelled to offer Antonescu the Premiership on 5/9/1940. Antonescu
then demanded the abdication of Carol. In 1944 Russia counterattacked into
Rumania and King
Michael I, who had succeeded Carol, arrested Antonescu. Antonescu was convicted of war
crimes on 17/5/1946 and executed near the Rumanian fort of Jilava on 1/6/1946.
2/5/1941, Germany�s Staatssekretare met to discuss
the invasion of Russia.
30/4/1941, Major
General Bernard Freyberg took command of all Allied forces on Crete.
26/4/1941, Allied
codebreakers decoded Nazi communications relating to an operation on Crete.
25/4/1941, Hitler
issued Fuhrer Directive No.28, ordering the airborne invasion of Crete. The
operation would be led by the commander of German airborne forces, General Kurt
Student.
17/4/1941,
Yugoslavia capitulated to Germany.
16/4/1941,� The German Afrika Corps recaptured Bardia.
Germany occupied Belgrade.
12/4/1941, Allied
troops in Greece withdrew to the Olympus Line.
7/4/1941, German
breakthrough, with Yugoslav forces, towards Salonika.
6/4/1941, Axis
troops invaded Yugoslavia. Belgrade fell on 13/4/1941. Yugoslavia fell on
16/4/1941. The Croats, who had been irritated by Belgrade�s treatment of
non-Serb minorities within Yugoslavia, often welcomed the German invaders.
Belgrade was recaptured by the Soviets and Tito�s forces on 20/10/1944.
30/3/1941.
Hitler outlined, to his generals, plans for the invasion of Russia � see
22/6/1941.
25/3/1941, Prince
Paul, the Yugoslav Regent, signed a pact with the Nazis; in return for
neutrality and the demilitarisation of the Adriatic coast, Germany would
respect Yugoslav neutrality. However the Yugoslav Army, with popular backing,
then deposed Prince Paul on 27/3/1941, and 17-year-old King Peter II took the
throne. The move angered Hitler and he prepared Operation Strafgericht
(Punishment), the invasion of Yugoslavia. See 6/4/1941.
3/3/1941, Nazi
troops entered Bulgaria, occupying its Black Sea ports.
1/3/1941, Bulgaria
joined the Axis. Bulgaria then allowed German troops to mount operations
against Yugoslavia and Greece from its territory.� However on 4/3/1941 Turkey refused to join
the Axis.
9/1/1941, At a conference with his Generals, Hitler stated that the territory of Russia
contained vast riches which Germany should dominate economically and
politically, but not incorporate into the Third Reich. German military leaders
expected Russia to crumble quickly under a German invasion. In February 1941
German plans for the invasion of Afghanistan and India were being prepared.
For more events of USSR-Finland conflicts 1940s see
Finland
18/12/1940, Hitler signed the
directive for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia.
13/12/1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 20 on the German invasion of
Greece, codenamed Operation Marita.
12/11/1940, Molotov was invited to Berlin for
Nazi-Russian talks.
3/11/1940, The Greeks
recaptured Samarina from the Italians.
12/10/1940, Germany
captured Bucharest.
10/9/1940, Italy
began a build-up of 200,000 troops in Albania, for the invasion of Greece.
8/10/1940, German
and Italian troops invaded the Romanian oilfields. Bucharest was occupied on
12/10/1940.
1/10/1940, Finland
signed a military and economic treaty with Germany.
26/10/1939, The Republic of Slovakia was established
as a German protectorate with Tiso
as President, see 14/3/1939 and 22/5/1945.
8/10/1939. Hitler made western Poland
part of the Third Reich.
5/10/1939, German
troops held a victory parade in Warsaw
in front of Hitler.
4/10/1939, Adolf Hitler
issued a secret decree granting an amnesty to all crimes committed by German
military and police personnel in Poland between September 1 and October 4. The
decree justified the crimes as being natural responses to "atrocities
committed by the Poles�.
2/10/1939, The last Polish resistance ceased. Troops
under Admiral Unruh on the Pubwysep Hela
Peninsula, north of Danzig, surrendered.
1/10/1939, Hitler
entered Warsaw. The RAF dropped propaganda leaflets on Berlin.
30/9/1939. Germany
and the USSR signed a pact agreeing on the partition of Poland.
28/9/1939, Polish
troops holding out at the fortress of Modline fortress, 36 km from Warsaw,
finally surrendered after an 18-day siege.
27/9/1939. German forces occupied Warsaw; the city
capitulated from the siege (see 8/9/1939), having run out of food, water, and
ammunition.
24/9/1939, All-day
German air raids on Warsaw.
21/9/1939, Germany
and Russia declared that Poland no longer existed.
18/9/1939, The city
of Lublin fell to the Germans.
17/9/1939, Soviet troops invaded Poland. The German
army reached Brest Litovsk in Poland.
14/9/1939, The
Germans entered Gdynia.
13/9/1939, German
troops crossed the Vistula at Annopol.
12/9/1939,� German troops reached Lvov.
11/9/1939, The Battle of Jarosław ended with a
successful Polish delaying action.
8/9/1939, The
Germans began a siege of Warsaw (see
27/9/1939).
6/9/1939, Cracow fell to the Germans.
4/9/1939, Romania,
alarmed by the German invasion of Poland and unable to help the Poles, declared
its neutrality.
3/9/1939, The
Polish town of Bydgoszcz (German,
Bromberg), fell to the Nazis.
1/9/1939, Germany invaded Poland. Without a declaration of
war, 1.25 million German troops invaded Poland under Operation Fall Weiss
(White Plan) as the Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish rail system and its airforce. Some
60,000 Poles were killed, 200,000 wounded, and 700,000 taken prisoner. Germany
here eschewed the static trench warfare of World War One, and the English
language acquired a new word � blitzkrieg,
meaning lightning war. Warsaw was bombed at 6.am. On 11.am. 3/9/1939 Britain declared war on Germany because of this
invasion. For the first time in history the King went to Downing Street rather
than the Prime Minister going to the Palace, because Neville Chamberlain needed
to stay near his phone. On the same day, 3/9, New Zealand, Australia, and
France, at 5.pm. also declared war on Germany. See 28/3/1939.
3) Western Front France, Benelux, Britain, western Germany.
7/5/1945. �German Chief of
Staff Jodl unconditionally surrendered to
Allied forces at Reims, ending the fighting in Europe. The surrender was at 2.40
am in a small schoolhouse that served as General
Eisenhower�s headquarters.
5/5/1945,
German troops in Holland under General Johannes
von Blaskowitz surrendered to the Canadian Commander Charles Foulkes.
4/5/1945,
German troops in The Netherlands, Denmark, north-west Germany surrendered.�
3/5/1945, Hamburg
captured� by the British.
1/5/1945,
US troops entered Bavaria.
29/4/1945,
Munich entered by US forces. British troops crossed the Elbe near Hamburg. RAF
bombers dropped their first load of food in German-occupied Holland.
27/4/1945, Hitler received reports that Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, had
offered to surrender to the western Allies.
26/4/1945,
Bremen captured by Allied forces.
25/4/1945,
US and Soviet forces met on the Elbe near Torgau. Marshal
Petain was arrested.
24/4/1945, Himmler offered to surrender the German Reich
to the governments of Great Britain and the USA.
22/4/1945, Stuttgart
taken by French forces.
21/4/1945, Dessau
entered by US forces.
19/4/1945,
US forces took Leipzig; the city was later handed to the Soviet sector,
East Germany.
18/4/1945,
The US took Magdeburg (later handed to the Soviet Zone).
18/4/1945,
US troops under General Patton entered Czechoslovakia.
14/4/1945,
Canadian forces in Holland reached the North Sea and captured Leeuwarden.
French and US forces attacked Germans in the Bordeaux area. The
Americans crossed the Elbe south of Dessau.
11/4/1945, Buchenwald
concentration camp, near Weimar, was liberated by US forces. On the Western
Front, the Allies reached the Elbe, 60 miles from Berlin.
10/4/1945, Hanover
taken by US forces. The Nordhausen underground V2 assembly plant was overrun by
US forces.
5/4/1945,
British forces reached Minden.
4/4/1945,
French forces entered Karlsruhe.
3/4/1945, Hamm
and Cassel captured by US forces.
1/4/1945,
German forces in the Ruhr area trapped, and 21 German divisions
destroyed.
29/3/1945, Mannheim
captured by US forces.
27/3/1945. The
last German V-2 rocket fell on Britain, at Orpington. (see 8/9/1944).� The Allies then overran the last V-2
launching site. In all, 1,050 rockets fell on England, each carrying a ton
of explosive with a range of 200 miles. 518 of these V2s hit London, killing
2,754 people and seriously injuring a further 6,523.� The V-2s were designed by Werner von Braun,
who surrendered to the Americans in 1945.�
Von Braun was given US citizenship and helped design the rockets for the
US space programme, including the Saturn rockets and the Apollo missions.
25/31945, The
US Army broke out of the bridgehead at Remagen and advanced 6 miles east
(see 7/3/1945). After their failure to destroy the bridge, Germany sent the
Luftwaffe to bomb it; 5 out of 20 Luftwaffe aircraft were lost, the bridge was
successfully destroyed, but the Americans, holding both river banks, had laid
temporary bridges alongside.
24/3/1945, Darmstadt
captured by US forces.
23/3/1945, The US 2nd Army crossed the
Rhine at Oppenheim. By 20/4/1945 British troops had advanced 200
miles into Germany.
21/3/1945, Ludwigshaven
entered by US forces.
19/3/1945, Worms
and Saarbrucken captured by US forces. Hitler issued an order to destroy
all German industrial infrastructure, so the invading Allies would find nothing
of value, but this order was ignored.
17/3/1945, Coblenz
captured by the Americans.
14/3/1945,
First use of ten-ton bombs by the RAF. The �Grand Slam�, 22,000 lbs, was
dropped on Bielefeld railway viaduct.
11/3/1945,
The huge Krupps factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 allied bombers took
part in the biggest ever daylight raid. Essen taken by US forces.
8/3/1945,
Canadian forces took Xanten, Germany.
7/3/1945. Cologne
fell to the Allies. Allied troops crossed the Rhine by the Ludendorff Bridge at
Remagen. The Germans had intended to destroy this bridge like all others on the
Rhine, as German resistance west of the Rhine had been crushed; however the
explosive charges failed to detonate and US forces found the bridge intact and
defended only by a few engineers and teenagers from the Volkssturm Stalin became alarmed that the western Allies
crossing of the Rhine so quickly meant the Americans would take Berlin, not the
Russians. Stalin wanted the Nazi stores of uranium and above all their A-bomb
expertise, located in a research facility in the south western Berlin suburb of
Dahlem. However the US was concentrating on southern Germany.
15/2/1945,� British troops reached the Rhine.
8/2/1945,
British and Canadian troops broke through the northern, weaker, section of the
Seigfried Line near Millingen.
7/2/1945, All
gains made by Germany in the Ardennes
Offensive have now been erased, with the loss of 82,000 German
soldiers and 77,000 US casualties.
6/2/1945,
The US 8th Air Force bombed Magdeburg and Chemnitz.
4/2/1945,
Belgium liberated of German forces.
2/2/1945,� The French took Colmar.
1/2/1945,
US forces reached the Seigfried Line, see 8/2/1945.
Battle of the Bulge
26/1/1945,
German troops from the Battle
of the Bulge now forced back to the German frontier.
25/1/1945,
The Battle of the Bulge
ended in Allied victory.
6/1/1945,
The Battle of the Bulge
ended as German forces under Gerd von Rundstedt
and Hasso von Manteuffel in the
Ardennes were forced back by Allied forces under US
General George Patton. See 16/12/1944. Hitler,
to the despair of his Generals, started fantasising of a great offensive in the
Alsace-Lorraine area, seemingly oblivious of the Russians advancing to the
east.
2/1/1945,
Allied air raid on Nuremberg.
31/12/1944, Rochefort
retaken by the Allies.
2/3/1945, Trier
and Krefeld captured by US forces.
26/12/1944, The US Army completed operations, begun
17/12/1944, to move 2.8 million gallons of motor fuel away from the Ardennes, so that German
troops in this offensive would not capture the fuel supplies they needed to
continue the Battle of the Bulge successfully and reach Antwerp. The German
military was desperately short of fuel and needed to capture more in order to
continue their initiative.
25/12/1944, The Germans reached their furthest point of
advance in the Ardennes
Offensive. They had reached Dinant, 97 km from the start point. This day
alone the Germans lost over 3,500 men and 400 vehicles, including 81 tanks.
24/12/1944, In reprisal for an attack by the French
Resistance, German SS units massacred all adult males in the village of Bande.
23/12/1944, The heavy overcast weather in the Ardennes area cleared,
allowing Allied aircraft to attack the Germans.
22/12/1944, An American unit was surrounded at Bastogne
by the German advance in the Battle
of the Bulge.� The unit held out
until relieved on 26/12/1944. Inside Bastogne, General Anthony C McAuliffe
received a message from the besieging Germans inviting him to surrender; his
reply, scrawled on the surrender invite, was one word� -�NUTS�.
17/12/1944, Soldiers of the 6th SS Panzer Army
massacred 87 US PoWs at Malmedy, under the orders of Colonel Joachim Pieper. This had
the effect of stiffening Allied resolve against the Ardennes Offensive.
16/12/1944, Germany began the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. 15 German
divisions, 250,000 men and 950 tanks, under General von Rundstedt confronted
83,000 Americans with 420 tanks, and�
advanced 60 miles before they were halted. The German Army was
desperately short of fuel, and were hoping to capture the fuel they needed from
Allied dumps as they advanced. This was their last offensive of the war.
Germany had conjured up a large fighting force from sources such as back
administration offices and prisons. See 6/1/1945. The sleet and low cloud that
protected them from Allied air attacks soon cleared.
4/12/1944, German bridgehead west of
the Maas taken by the British.
1/12/1944, The U.S. Ninth Army
captured Linnich.
28/11/1944, Antwerp reopened to port traffic.
24/11/1944, Strasbourg taken by Allied forces.
23/11/1944, U.S. troops liberated the
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France.
22/11/1944, Mulhouse and Metz
retaken by Allied forces.
20/11/1944, Belfort taken by the French.
7/11/1944, Middleburg,
Holland, captured by the Allies.
4/11/1944,
RAF Bomber Command sent 749 aircraft to conduct the last major raid on Bochum.
Over 4,000 buildings were destroyed and nearly 1,000 people were killed.
3/11/1944, Flushing
captured by the British. Canadian troops captured two bridges from South
Beveland onto Walcheren.
2/11/1944,
Belgium was clear of German troops. The Germans re-entered Belgium on
16/12/1944, and were finally expelled on 4/2/1945.
1/11/1944,
British troops landed on Walcheren Island. Walcheren commended the
approaches to Antwerp, which had been captured by the Allies on 1/9/1944;
however until Walcheren was cleared of German forces, Antwerp Harbour was
unusable. It took five weeks to capture the Walcheren fortifications, at a cost
of 12,873 Allied lives. Before Walcheren fell, opening up Antwerp, Allied
forces in Belgium had to be supplied from the Normandy beaches, because every
Channel port from Cherbourg to Ostend had been wrecked by Allied bombing or by
German demolition squads.
31/10/1944,
British forces reached the River Maas.
28/10/1944, General De Gaulle ordered the French
Resistance to disarm.
26/10/1944,
British troops crossed the River Scheldt and occupied the Beveland peninsula.
23/10/1944, De Gaulle was officially recognised by the
Allies as French leader.� However De Gaulle was offended by the Allies refusal
to treat France as a Great Power, or to invite him to the Yalta or Potsdam
Conferences alongside the USA, UK and USSR.
21/10/1944. Aachen
was captured by the Allies. The battle for the city, the first major German
city to fall to the Allies, lasted a week, and over 10,000 prisoners were
taken. Much of the city was destroyed.
16/10/1944, Aachen
was surrounded by US forces.
9/10/1944,
Canadian and British forces landed behind German lines south of the Scheldt
Estuary.
30/9/1944,
Canadian forces captured Calais.
29/9/1944,
The Battle of Arracourt ended in American victory.
26/9/1944,
The Canadian 2nd Army captured the German guns on Cap Gris Nez; the
Allies now had total control of The Channel.
25/9/1944,
The Allied forces who had been parachuted into Arnhem (17/9/1944) had succeeded
in capturing key bridges over the Rhine, Maas and Waal rivers but had met
fierce resistance from the 9th and 10th German Panzer Divisions. This
resistance forced the withdrawal of Allied troops from Arnhem to south of the
Rhine.
22/9/1944, Boulogne
surrendered to Canadian forces.
20/9/1944,
British forces reached The Rhine at Nijmegen.
19/9/1944, Brest
taken by US forces.
18/9/1944,
The Battle of Arracourt began near the French town of Arracourt.
17/9/1944.
The British airborne invasion of Arnhem and Nijmegen, Holland, began as part of
Operation Market Garden, to secure a bridge over the Rhine.� However a hard winter for Holland began as
German forces in the north of the country resisted Allied attacks under Field Marshal Model.� Food became scarce and could only be bought
by barter on the black market.� Money had
no value and the rations system collapsed. In Britain the blackout was replaced
by the dimout, except for all areas within 5 miles of the coast where the
blackout remained in force.
14/9/1944,
Patton�s Third Army took Nancy in France.
13/9/1944,
The Maastricht area was captured by Allied forces.
12/9/1944, Le
Havre captured by the British.
11/9/1944, The Allies in the west under US
First Army General Omar Bradley took their troops onto German soil, north of
Trier. Large numbers of German troops were deserting. Civilian
morale in Aachen collapsed as Nazi SS officials, troops and police hurriedly
left the German city for Cologne, as US troops drew close.
8/9/1944, Liege
taken by US forces.
5/9/1944,
German and Dutch Nazis began to flee Holland, as Allied forces advanced through
Belgium.
4/9/1944,
The Allies crossed into Holland. Antwerp was liberated.
3/9/1944,
The Allies entered Belgium, and liberated Brussels. The Belgian
resistance was then well trained and armed, and German plans to destroy the
docks at Antwerp as they retreated were thwarted. Thus the Allies could use
this port to land ammunition and troops during the remaining eight months of
fighting. Lyons also liberated by the Allies.
1/9/1944, Dieppe
taken by the Canadians. British forces, helped by the Belgian Resistance, took Antwerp;
see 1/11/1944.
8/1944,
The dissolution of the French Right-wing group Action Francaise, as their
eponymous newspaper ceased publication. Action Francaise, founded ca. 1900,
advocated the overthrow of the Third Republic and the restoration of the French
monarchy. Supoorted by many amongst the middle class and Catholics, Action
Francaise had been discredited by its close association with the Vichy
Government.
8/1944,
As the Allies drew close to St Malo, the Germans burnt it before
retreating.
30/8/1944, Rouen
taken by the Canadians. German forces, putting up little resistance to the
Allied advance in France, were retreating across the Seine; they were flooding
the lower reaches of the Somme to delay the Allied advance there.
31/8/1944,� Allied troops reached Amiens, northern
France.
28/8/1944, Marseilles
fell to the Allies.
26/8/1944,
The Battle of Toulon ended in Allied victory.
25/8/1944, Germans
in Paris surrendered. The Nazi commander, General
von Cholitz, ignored Hitler�s instructions to destroy the city. The
USA had held back to allow the French under General
LeClerc to retake Paris, led by General
De Gaulle.� Paris had been
under German occupation since 14/6/1940.
24/8/1944,
Canadian forces captured Bernay and crossed the Risle River at
Nassandres.
21/8/1944,
US forces crossed the Seine.
20/8/1944, Toulouse
taken by French forces.
19/8/1944, Paris
rebelled against German occupation.
18/8/1944,
The Allies closed the Falaise Gap, trapping German forces to the north
and west.
17/8/1944, Falaise
taken by the Canadians.
16/8/1944,
Canadian troops surrounded Falaise, France.
15/8/1944. US
and French forces landed in southern France, on a front from Nice to Marseilles,
and joined up in eastern France with the forces landing in Normandy. This was
Operation Anvil. From Marseilles Allied forces swung north up the Rhone Valley.
12/8/1944.
PLUTO, or Pipeline Under The Ocean, began operating. It carried fuel from
Shanklin, Isle of Wight, to Allied forces advancing against the Germans in
France.
10/8/1944,
US/French offensive at Alencon.
9/8/1944, St
Malo and Le Mans taken by US forces.�
7/8/1944,
RAF attacked German lines south of Caen.
3/8/1944, Rennes
taken by US forces.
31/7/1944,
The Allies drove the Germans out of Normandy. Avranches was captured,
opening the way into Brittany.
25/7/1944,
Allied forces in Normandy forced through weakened German defences at St Lo.
9/7/1944,
The Allies took Caen.
8/7/1944,
British and Canadian troops approached the outskirts of Caen. The German
defenders contested every street.
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contemporary newspaper maps of WW2, Western Front, 1944-45.
30/6/1944,
The last German resistance in the Contentin Peninsula, France, ceased with the
Allied capture of Auderville.
27/6/1944. The Allies took Cherbourg.
This was important as it gave the Normandy bridgehead its first deep water
port.
19/6/1944,
The French retook Elba.
12/6/1944,
Churchill visited the front in Normandy. The 101st American Airborne division
captured the town of Carentan, which commended the Vire estuary; this
closed the last gap in the Normandy beachheads, between Omaha and Utah beaches,
into a single front 42 miles wide.
10/6/1944,
Allied troops began a push towards Caen. This tied down large numbers of
German troops and Hitler sent in his
elite Panzer forces. Troops from the 2nd SS Panzer Division massacred 642
people in the French village of Oradour sur Glane in revenge for
Resistance attacks. After the war, President De
Gaulle ordered that the village be left as a ruin, as a memorial; a
new village was built nearby.
9/6/1944, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery ordered massive
air raids on German positions in northern France as the Allies advanced from
Normandy. 450 Allied bombers hit towns including Lisieux and le Havre.
8/6/1944, Bayeux
liberated.
6/6/1944. D � Day. Allied forces landed in Normandy. Operation
Overlord was the biggest sea-borne invasion in history. It was delayed 24 hours
due to bad weather.
In the
early morning of Tuesday 6 June 1944 11,600 aircraft, 6,000 surface craft, and
nearly 170,000 men assaulted the coast of France on a 50 mile front, and 9,000
had been killed. Men from boats joined with parachutists. By the sixth day,
326,000 Allied soldiers were in the French bridgehead.
The Luftwaffe mustered 183 planes, which faced
11,000 Allied planes. The Allies had also intercepted a Luftwaffe
message indicating they were critically short of aviation fuel, and Allied
bombing raids were concentrated on German oil installations. Crucially for
the Germans, Hitler was asleep when the
D-Day landings began, at 06.35 local time, and no-one dared waken him.
Extra reinforcements could not be ordered without him, and vital hours were
lost by the Axis forces battling to hold Normandy. By the end of the first day,
the Allies had a beachhead 25 miles long and 5 miles deep. Further initial
advance was delayed by the Normandy bocage, small fields with thick hedgerows,
and steep valleys and hillsides. See 15/5/1944.
5/6/1944. The Caf� Gondree was the first place to be
liberated from the Germans on the eve of the D-Day landings when paratroopers from the 6th Brigade
dropped on the town of Benouville to seize a vital canal bridge.
4/6/1944. Eisenhower decided on a 24-hour delay to D-Day due to poor
weather.
2/6/1944, Eisenhower settled on 5 June for D-Day.
1/6/1944, The BBC transmitted a coded alert to the French Resistance� warning od the D-Day landings; the message
was the first verse of Paul Verlaine�s poem, Chanson D�Automne.
15/5/1944, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel attempted to cut
off occupied France from neutral countries to stop information being passed out
to the Allies.
8/5/1944, Eisenhower settled on 5, 6, or 7 June as date
for the D-Day landings.
19/4/1944,
The RAF bombed railways and river bridges in France.
9/4/1944, General Charles De Gaulle became commander in
chief of the Free French forces. This angered his rival for the post, World War
One veteran General Henri Giraud. De Gaulle fled France for Britain in 1940.
18/2/1944,
The RAF raided Amiens prison, where many French Resistance fighters were being
held. They succeeded in bringing down the prison walls, and although 56
Resistance were shot by guards, 258 more escaped. They had faced execution the
next day.
13/2/1944.
The Allies dropped weapons for the French Resistance in Haut-Savoie.
4/10/1943,
Allied troops occupied Corsica, the first part of France to be liberated.
29/9/1943,
In a decisive battle, which lasted until 4/10/1943, French forces, together
with Italians, fought the Germans and forced them to evacuate Corsica.� The Germans retreated to mainland France and
the Italians moved to Sardinia.
13/9/1943,
Free French forces attacked the German and Italians on Corsica, see 29/9/1943.
24/7/1943, Operation
Gomorrah, the destruction of the German port of Hamburg began. British and
Canadian airplanes bombed the city by night, and American planes followed
during the day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of
explosives had killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
For the first time, the British forces used "Window", aluminium
strips dropped to distort radar images, against the German anti-aircraft
defences.
8/7/1943,
French Resistance leader, Jean Moulin,
died after torture by the Gestapo.
12/12/1942,
British commandoes blew up six ships in Bordeaux harbour.
27/11/1942,
The French fleet was scuttled in the harbour of Toulon, six hours after German
troops arrived there.
11/11/1942,
The Axis invaded Vichy France.
19/8/1942. Allied commando raid on Dieppe, by the Canadians and British. There
were heavy Allied casualties.� The aim of the raid was to try and seize a
Channel port from the Germans; the raid failed, with 1,000 Allied troops
killed and 2,000 taken prisoner out of a total of 6,100 men, and all their
tanks and equipment abandoned� there was
nine hours of fighting along 11 miles of coastline. However information from
the raid was very useful in planning the D-Day landings of June 1944. The principal lesson was that any attempted
Allied landing in France must be on a beach using artificial harbours, not at
an existing port.
31/5/1942, Major 1,000 bomber Allied
raid against Cologne.
26/12/1941,
Second British raid on the Lofoten Islands. Winston Churchill discussed war
strategy in America.
16/12/1941,
Allied raids on Ostend, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven.
17/9/1940. Hitler ordered the
indefinite postponing of the invasion of Britain, after the Luftwaffe had
failed to establish command of the air over Britain.
15/9/1940,� The Battle of Britain ended with victory to the
Allies.� 1,733 German planes were destroyed as against
915 lost by the RAF. It began on 8/8/1940. The Nazis had given up hope of
achieving air superiority and invading Britain. The RAF had also destroyed much of the shipping that was to carry
German troops to England.
8/8/1940. Battle of Britain began. See 31/10/1940. German aircraft had
already made raids on Britain; on 10/7/1940 the Cornish port of Falmouth was
attacked by 63 Junkers 88s. However it was on this day that mass attacks of
over 1,000 German aircraft began. Hermann Goering was confident of victory. Until 30/8/1940 German air attacks were
mainly on British shipping and coastal towns, and German air losses exceeded
those sustained by the RAF. But between
30/8/1940 and 6/9/1940 the Luftwaffe switched its attacks to airfields in
southern Britain. The RAF lost 20% of its fighter planes and at one stage only
2 airfields in southern Britain were operational. In one week 185 RAF fighter
planes were destroyed. There was a real possibility that the Luftwaffe could
destroy the RAF.
But on 24/8/1940 a German pilot accidentally dropped
his bombs on London, and Churchill ordered revenge raids on Berlin. This
angered Hitler and he ordered Goering to switch the Luftwaffe�s raids to London, which
faced continual bombing until 2/11/1940. The Luftwaffe faced the problem that
if their aircraft were shot down, the pilot was captured as a POW; however if a
British plane was shot down, over Britain, the pilot could return to the
fighting. Pilots were much harder to replace, with all their training, than an
aircraft was to build. Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that
�never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so
few�.
7/8/1940. Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg were made part of Germany.
31/7/1940. Hitler gave orders for a massive air offence against
Britain (see 8/8/1940).
19/7/1940. Hitler offered some prospect of peace in Europe, having occupied Paris
(14/6/1940). He said he was willing to recognise the British Empire, so long as
Germany could have Egypt and Iraq, and would negotiate with a British
government containing Lloyd George and the Duke of Windsor. Both men had
expressed some sympathy for Hitler, and the UK Cabinet would have none of
it.
16/7/1940. Adolf Hitler issued
Directive 16, to invade Britain, under Operation Sealion. He had delayed issuing this order because he had
still hoped that Britain would jon with Germany in an �anti-Communist
Alliance�. But Churchill
had soundly rejected this idea.
The German conquest of
France was now complete. Hitler now set his sights on Britain.
5/7/1940. The Vichy
government broke off relations with Britain.
3/7/1940. The British Royal Navy destroyed a
large part of the French navy at Oran in Algeria to prevent it falling into
German hands. The French navy at
Alexandria was immobilised but those ships at Oran were a more serious threat.
The French commander at Oran was offered 4 choices by the British. 1) to sail
his forces to a British port and join forces with Britain. 2) To sail to a
British port and have his men repatriated to France. 3) To sail to a West
Indian port, and have his ships de-commissioned, or handed over to the USA. 4)
To sink his own ships. The French admiral, on instructions from Vichy France,
refused these alternatives. At 5.55pm on 3/7/1940 the British opened fire, destroying the
French ships, wounding 351 and killing 1,279 French sailors. See
18/7/1940.
2/7/1940. The Vichy French government was officially formed after the collapse
of France.� Henri Petain was Head of State.
Click here for contemporary newspaper maps of WW2,
Western Front, 1940-44.
1/7/1940, Click Here for map of German invasion
of France June 1940. Note isochrones of invasion front line and
ineffectiveness of Maginot Line.
28/6/1940, Britain formally recognised De Gaulle as leader in exile of France.
27/6/1940, German
troops in France reached the Spanish border.
25/6/1940, Official
ceasefire in France on all fronts.
23/6/1940, Hitler flew in to Paris for a three-hour tour,
his only ever visit to the city.
22/6/1940, (1) The French armistice with Germany (see
16/6/1940) cut the country in half.�
Although the French Government was nominally in control of all pre-1940
French territory, including its colonies, except for Alsace and Lorraine which
were annexed to Germany, the Germans claimed �occupying rights� across northern
and western France.� Germany held some
2,500,000 French POWs and required the French Government to pay the costs of
occupation.� France was allowed to retain
a small army (100,000 men), and all its navy, albeit disarmed.� The arrangement was designed to keep France
quite until Britain was conquered. The Germans had the armistice signed in
Marshall Foch�s old railway carriage in the Forest of Compeigne, where in 1918
a defeated Germany had to accept French armistice terms.
(2)
Britain evacuated 30,000 civilians from the Channel islands, about a third of
the population. Germany invaded these islands a week later.
21/6/1940,
Italian troops advanced into the French Alps, meeting little resistance.
20/6/1940,
The first Australian and New Zealand troops arrived in Britain. In France,
Lyons was occupied by the Germans, who also captured Brest this day.
19/6/1940, Nancy
and Luneville fell to the Germans.
18/6/1940, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the French
Resistance, broadcast an appeal for his countrymen to carry on fighting. It was
in response to Marshall Petain�s
announcement of an armistice with Germany, German forces reached Cherbourg and
Rennes.
16/6/1940, Paul Reynaud resigned as French Prime
Minister. Marshall Petain took over
and asked the Germans for an armistice. See 22/6/1940.
15/6/1940, Verdun
fell; the Maginot Line was pierced. The French Government moved to Bordeaux.
14/6/1940, German troops entered Paris, and the Swastika flew
from the Eiffel Tower. The French
government had fled to Bordeaux, and was seeking release from the British
Alliance so it could negotiate separately with Germany. On 22/6/1940 an
armistice between France and Germany was signed and the Vichy government was
set up.� Paris was liberated on
25/8/1944. With continental Europe largely occupied, Hitler now hoped the
British would negotiate a settlement.
13/6/1940,
German offensive south of Rouen; Montmedy fell. Paris was
declared an open city.
12/6/1940, Rheims
fell to the Germans.
11/6/1940,
French forces retreated south of the River Marne.
10/6/1940,
The Germans were within 35 miles of Paris; the French government moved to
Tours. Italy declared war on Britain and France; French troops did repel
Italian attacks across the frontier, but they could not hold the Germans back
in the north. France declared Paris an �open city� on this day and French
troops left. This was to spare the city, its people and buildings, from
destruction by war.
9/6/1940,
German forces reached the suburbs of Rouen; German offensive began in
Champagne.
7/6/1940,
German offensive north and east of Soissons; they crossed the Ailette
Canal.
4/6/1940, Dunkirk
evacuation completed by British forces (see 10/9/1939). Evacuation
(Operation Dynamo) had begun on 29/5/1940, and 338,226 troops (114,000 French
and Belgian, 228,000 British) had been rescued by an armada of destroyers,
fishing boats, ferries, and assorted small craft. It was thought that only
45,000 could be rescued, under attack from the Luftwaffe who were dive-bombing
the beaches. However the German army stopped its advance just outside Dunkirk,
apparently unwilling to risk� pressing
forward through the coastal marshes. Churchill made his famous �we shall
fight them on the beaches� speech in the Commons.
3/6/1940,
The Germans launched Operation Paula, an attempt to destroy the French Air
Force. However, British intelligence had warned the French of the impending
attack and the operation failed to achieve its strategic goals.
2/6/1940,
A further 80,287 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
1/6/1940,
A further 64,229 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
31/5/1940,
A further 68,104 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
30/5/1940, (1) Two divisions were shipped from Britain to
France, to help defend Brittany. However on 22/6/1940 France signed an
armistice with Germany. The 51st Highland Division was surrounded and forced to
surrender at St Valery. A further 52,823 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
(2)
The Nazi Reichskommisar Arthur Seyss-Inquart
took control of The Netherlands.� German
occupation became heavier-handed as Germany invaded Russia, and became very
oppressive after Stalingrad and the Allied victories in North Africa.
29/5/1940,
A further 47,310 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
28/5/1940,
Belgian troops under King Leopold III
surrendered to Germany. A further 17,804 men were evacuated from Dunkirk.
27/5/1940,
Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British and French troops from the Dunkirk
beaches, began � see 4/6/1940. 7,669 men were evacuated to England.
26/5/1940,
The Germans took the port of Bolougne. Calais later surrendered after
being held against two German divisions from 24 to 27 May, leaving Dunkirk the
only French Channel port on Allied hands (see 4/6/1940).
22/5/1940,
German forces were now just 15 kilometres from Calais.
21/5/1940,
The Germans took Amiens and Arras in France.
20/5/1940,
German forces reached the French coast, splitting the Allied defences.
18/5/1940,
The Germans took Antwerp and Brussels. Germany now occupied all
of Holland. See 3/9/1944.
16/5/1940,
The British Expeditionary Force withdrew from the River Dyle to the River
Scheldt.
15/5/1940,
Germany took The Hague. The Dutch army surrendered.
14/5/1940,
The centre of Amsterdam was destroyed by German bombing.� Rotterdam was also heavily bombed by the
Germans, and the city centre and large parts of the east of the city destroyed.
13/5/1940, (1) The Battle
of Sedan began the German invasion of France.
(2)
Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch Cabinet fled Holland for England.
12/5/1940, The
RAF bombed bridges near Maastricht, to slow the German advance into Holland.
11/5/1940,
Maastricht was attacked by German forces.
10/5/1940, Germany attacked westward through Belgium towards
France. Along a 150 mile front,
German troops seized key positions before the defenders could react.� Germany also occupied Luxembourg, and German
forces entered Holland.
20/3/1940, Daladier resigned as leader of the French War
Cabinet (see 13/9/1939); replaced by Reynaud.
8/3/1940, Martial
Law was declared throughout The Netherlands because of the Nazi threat.
Dutch troops were put on full alert on 2/4/1940.
31/12/1939, In France, the battle lines had been quiet up to the
end of 1939; bored cold soldiers dug more trenches, and the odd shot was fired
between the Maginot and Siegfried Lines. In contrast to the rapid invasion of Poland, German forces hesitated
as Hitler and his generals argued over the best invasion plan, and the Allies
remained under-prepared. This �phoney war� or �sitskrieg� as the French termed
it, led to some evacuees in Britain returning to the cities. Only at sea was
the War being fought. All this changed in 1940.
29/11/1939, Hitler issued Directive No. 9, Instructions
for Warfare against the Economy of the Enemy. The directive focused on
attacking British shipping and ports and blockading sea lanes using U-boats and
naval mines.
22/11/1939,
German attacks on The Shetlands began; lasted until 24/11/1939.
12/10/1939, Hitler made a peace proposal to Britain, which
was rejected.
9/10/1939, Hitler issued Directive No. 6 ordering
preparations for an offensive in the west with an initial date set for November
12. However protests from his service chiefs and very cold weather caused the
date of the attack to be postponed repeatedly.
6/10/1939,
Britain and France rejected Hitler's peace bid. Hitler
claimed to be satisfied with his occupation of western Poland, as Russia took
the eastern half, and maintained he had no wish to fight Britain.
25/9/1939,
French artillery began bombarding German fortifications on the Rhine.
13/9/1939, French War cabinet formed under Daladier (see 20/3/1940).
10/9/1939, The British Expeditionary force arrived in Cherbourg, France. Four
divisions, comprising 158,000 men and 25,000 vehicles crossed the Channel with
no interference from U-boats or the Luftwaffe.
The Dunkirk evacuation was
completed on 4/6/1940.
7/9/1939,� Saar Offensive: the French Army began a
ground operation in the Saarland against light German defences.
4/9/1939, French troops crossed the
German border into Saarland.
3)a) Scandinavia (For Finland
see Eastern Front)
6/5/1945, German
forces in Norway surrendered.
5/5/1945, Denmark
liberated from Nazi occupation � see 9/4/1940.�
20/2/1944, Saboteurs
blew up a ship on Lake Tinnsjo, Norway, which was carrying heavy water for use
in a Nazi atomic research facility.
16/11/1943, US 8th
Army Air Force bombers attacked the German heavy water plant at Vermork,
Norway. This was a vital centre for Germany�s atomic weapons programme.
25/8/1941, Canadian
and British and Norwegian forces raided Spitzebergen.
2/8/1941, All
civilian radios in Norway were confiscated by the Germans.
7/7/1941, American
troops joined the British force occupying Iceland. This released 20,000 British
troops.
4/3/1941, British
forces, assisted by Norwegian resistance fighters, raided the German-occupied
Lofoten Islands; 11 German boats were destroyed.
10/2/1941, The
Luftwaffe bombed Iceland.
1/2/1941, Vidkun Quisling
was appointed puppet Prime Minister of Norway by the Germans.
28/5/1940, Narvik
captured by Germany.
9/5/1940, Britain occupied the Danish territories of Iceland
and the Faroe Islands. This was to forestall any Nazi occupation of these
territories, which might have facilitated attacks on the UK and even the USA.
2/5/1940, The
Allies withdrew their troops south of Trondheim.
30/4/1940, Germany
claimed to have taken the Norwegian towns of Dombaas and Stoeren.
British and French troops fought the Nazis in northern Norway.
17/4/1940, Allied
troops landed at Aandalsnes;
challenged by German forces at Stenkjer.
14/4/1940, Allied
troops landed at Namsos, Norway.
11/4/1940, British
troops landed in Norway.
9/4/1940, Germany began the invasion of Denmark and Norway.
Hitler occupied Denmark because of its strategic importance and to pave the way
for an invasion of Norway. The Norwegian Royal Guard offered only token resistance.
The small Danish air force was destroyed on the ground at Vaerlose airfield. It
took just two hours for the Danish government to surrender.
Germany wanted to invade Norway for several reasons.� To safeguard the export of iron ore from
neutral Sweden, to stop the British entering The Baltic, and to prevent UK aid
reaching Finland through Norway; Finland was then at war with Russia, and
Russia was still allied to Germany.
Germany installed Major
Vidkun Quisling as head of their puppet government in Oslo. Making
radio broadcasts calling for resistance to Germany to cease, Quisling
became a synonym for traitor.
The Allies
also chose this day to begin occupying Norway to deny the Nazis iron ore
However the German occupation meant the Allies now faced not �friendly�
territory but a formidable foe. The Allies planned to occupy Trondheim and Narvik. For Trondheim,
Allied troops landed at Namsos to
the south and Aandalsnes to the
north, but had to be evacuated on 2/5/1940 without achieving anything. Narvik did fall to Allied forces on
28/5/1940 but it was impossible to sustain such an isolated force and Narvik was evacuated by the Allies on
8/6/1940.
However
Denmark remained nominally a sovereign state until 29/8/1943. When Germany
attacked the Soviet Union, the Danish Government was forced to allow the
formation of a Danish Volunteer corps fighting with the Nazis; however the
Danish people began active resistance against the Nazis. Railway lines and
German military installations were bombed, delaying German supplies to both
eastern and western fronts. In the summer of 1943 the Danish government refused
to introduce the death penalty for sabotage, to allow the persecution of Jews,
or to use force against strikers.
In
September 1943 Danes became aware that the Nazis were about to round up all Danish Jews.
The Danes then began a massive effort to save the Jews. Jewish names on doors
were changed to common Danish ones such as Jensen or Hansen, and hundreds of
these �Jensens� were suddenly admitted to hospital, or hidden by Danes in their
flats and houses. Then some 7,200 Jews, along with 680 non Jews, many married
to Jews, were secreted aboard fishing boats and smuggles across to neutral
Sweden. Only 447 Danish Jews were captured by the Germans and overall less than
25 of Denmark�s Jews died in the Holocaust.
Germany
then declared a state of emergency in Denmark. Danish resistance continued
until Allied forces liberated Denmark on 5/5/1945.
3/4/1940, Vidkun Quisling
revealed secrets of Norwegian defences to German agents in Copenhagen.
21/2/1940, Hitler
authorized Operation Weser�bung, the
invasion of Norway.
3)b) Italy, Malta
2/5/1945, Trieste captured by New Zealand forces.
30/4/1945, Turin entered by US forces.
29/4/1945, The Allies
took Venice. German troops in Italy
unconditionally surrendered at 12 noon on 29/4/1945.
28/4/1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara
Petacci were caught and shot in Azzano, near Milan, by Italian
partisans, as they tried to flee Italy.
Born in 1883, Mussolini
allied with Nazi Germany in WW2. However as the Allies invaded Italy the
Italian Communist partisans decided to execute him. He tried to cross the
frontier disguised as a German soldier retreating towards Innsbruck, Austria,
but was recognised. Democracy was restored to Italy after 20 years and a neo �
Fascist party supporting Mussolini�s ideals won only 2% of the vote in
the Italian elections of 1948. The body of Mussolini, his mistress, and other government
officials, were hung upside down in Milan.
27/4/1945, Genoa captured by US forces.
25/4/1945, The Allies captured Verona. Italian partisans liberated Milan.
23/4/1945, River Po reached by the
Allies.
21/4/1945, Bologna, Italy, was
liberated by the Allies, cutting links between the German 10th and 14th Armies.
It had been under German occupation from September 1943, when Italy switched
sides in the War.
6/4/1945, Allied forces began
Operation Grapeshot, a renewed Spring offensive in Italy.
10/11/1944, Allied troops took Forli, Italy.
22/9/1944,� Rimini
captured by Allied forces.
21/9/1944, San Marino declared war on
Germany.
2/9/1944, Allied forces took Pisa.
19/8/1944, Allied forces in Italy
took Florence.�
11/8/1944, Florence evacuated by the Germans.
3/7/1944, Siena retaken by French troops.
20/6/1944, Perugia, Italy, taken by the Allies.
4/6/1944, Rome liberated by the Allies.
23/5/1944. The Battle of Anzio, Italy. Landings by the Allies had begun at Anzio
on 22/1/1944, 40 miles behind German lines and just 30 miles south of Rome.
German troops in the area were sparse but rather than break out straightaway,
taking advantage of the element of surprise, the Allies waited until further
reinforcements came, by which� time the
Germans had brought in more troops too.
18/5/1944. Allied troops captured Monte Casino in
Italy.� This opened the way to Rome.� See 15/2/1944 and 4/6/1944.
15/3/1944, Heavy air raids against
the ancient monastery at Casino by
the Allies.
15/2/1944, Casino monastery bombed by the Allies.� The
monastery, founded in 529 AD by St Benedict, occupied a strategic position at
the entrance to the Liri valley and the route to Rome.� See 18/5/1944.
3/2/1944, Germans reopened an offensive against the Anzio beach head.
29/1/1944, Battle of Cisterna in
central Italy.
22/1/1944. The Allies landed at Anzio, Italy.� Anzio was over 60 miles behind German lines and only 35 miles from Rome.
The Allies found the town deserted; the Italians had evacuated the place and
the German army had moved elsewhere. 50,000 Allied troops and 3,000 vehicle
swere put ashore with only 13 casualties, from mines. Initially the Germans
were taken by surprise but rushed troops to the area to contain the bridgehead,
which did not rejoin Allied forces until May 1944 with the general retreat of
the Germans north of Rome.� Anzio made it impossible for Kesselring to establish a German defensive line
south of Rome.
17/1/1944, British troops crossed the
Garigliano River, Italy.
10/1/1944, Mussolini�s son in law was
sentenced to death for treason.
Click here for contemporary newspaper maps of WW2,
Italian Front, 1943-44.
28/12/1943, Allied troops landed at Ortona, east coast of Italy.
19/10/1943, Italian troops began to
help Tito�s partisans in their fight against the Germans.
16/10/1943, Nazi German forces began
to round up Jews
from Rome for deportation to the death camps. 1,200 Jews were deported, of whom
only 15 survived the War. However Giovanni Borromeo, head of the
Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Rome, rapidly admitted many Jews and other
anti-fascists with so-called K Syndrome. The Nazis took this to mean Koch
Syndrome (tuberculosis) and feared to enter the hospital, on an island in the
Tiber, saving many from the Nazi extermination camps.
13/10/1943, Italy changed sides and declared war on
Germany. See 8/9/1943.
30/9/1943, Allied troops entered Naples.
20/9/1943, Allies attacked Naples.
19/9/1943, Germany evacuated
Sardinia.
15/9/1943, Three days after freed from imprisonment by Germany, and seven weeks
after his overthrow in July, Benito Mussolini was restored to leadership of Italy by the Nazi occupiers; German
paratroopers also landed in St. Peter's Square at Vatican City in Rome, despite
the Vatican's neutrality in the war� Mussolini
made his announcement of a return to power from Adolf Hitler's headquarters at
Rastenburg.
12/9/1943. Mussolini was rescued from prison by the Germans.
11/9/1943, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring declared that
all Italian territory was under German military control, which former dictator Benito
Mussolini would later describe as reducing Italy to the status of a
German "colony". Adolf Hitler ordered that the occupied Italian
territory be divided into three zones, with the area around Rome extending
south toward the front lines against the Allies, the Alpine mountain region
("Alpenvorland") and the coast along the Adriatic Sea
("Adriatische Kusterland"). Hitler also issued orders to deal with any
Italian military units that had gone over to fight for the Allies, with all
officers to be executed, and soldiers and non-combatants to be deported to
Germany as labourers.
10/9/1943. (1) German troops occupied Rome.
(2) Allied troops took Tarantino, Italy.
9//9/1943. Allied forces landed at Salerno, Italy. Allied forces landed at Salerno, Italy. King Umberto of
Italy left Rome and fled to Brindisi in the south. This was seen as
an abandonment by many Italians and contributed to the conversion of the
country to a Republic in 1946.
8/9/1943 The
Italian Prime Minister, Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel agreed to Italy�s
unconditional surrender to the Allies (see 25/7/1943, 15/9/1943 and
13/10/1943).
14/9/1943, Allied troops landed at
Bari, SE Italy.
3/9/1943. Allied troops landed on the Italian mainland, in the
province of Calabria. See 25/7/1943.
Allied
conquest of Sicily, 1943
17/8/1943, The Allies completely controlled Sicily.
16/8/1943, US troops took Messina, Sicily.
15/8/1943, The Allies attacked Messina.
13/8/1943, The Allies bombed Rome, Milan, and Turin.
7/9/1943, Suspecting
that Italy was about to make peace with the Allies, German troops quickly
occupied Italy, especially its airfields, to forestall a complete Allied
possession of the country. However the entire Italian navy escaped to Malta,
thereby freeing up Allied ships for combat in the Pacific or Atlantic.
28/7/1943, The
Italian Fascist Party was formally dissolved.
25/7/1943. Mussolini was ousted from power by the Fascist Grand Council. On
3/9/1943 the Italian Prime Minister, Badoglio, secretly signed an armistice with
the Allies. See 8/9/1943.
23/7/1943, Allied
troops took Palermo, Sicily. Only
the north east of the island now remained under German occupation.
19/7/1943, First
Allied air raid on Rome. The raid was a political warning that Mussolini�s
regime must be overthrown.
11/7/1943, The
German headquarters at Taormina, Sicily, was destroyed by Allied forces.
10/7/1943. Allied forces under US
General Patton invaded Sicily (Operation Husky), landing on the south
and south west of the island.� 3,000
Allied troopships were used. Palermo
fell on 23/7/1943.
11/6/1943, The Allies captured the island of
Pantelleria, between Tunisia and Sicily, after a heavy bombardment.
25/5/1943, The Allies bombed Sardinia.
10/5/1943, The Allies bombed Sicily.
16/4/1942. The island of Malta was awarded the
George Cross by George VI
for its heroism during the German and Italian bombardment.
11/1/1941, Hitler issued Directive
No. 22, German Support for Battles in the Mediterranean Area.
10/1/1941, British bases on Malta
were bombed.
24/6/1940, France signed an armistice
with Italy in Rome; Italian troops occupied Mentone.
4) Africa
End of Axis resistance in north Africa, 1942-3
12/5/1943. All resistance by Axis forces in North
Africa was over.
7/5/1943. Tunis, and
Bizerta, 60 miles NNW of Tunis, were recaptured by the Allies. See 14/11/1942.
21/4/1943, Battle
of Enfidaville. Montgomery attempted to break into the Axis
bridgehead around Tunis. However he was not equipped for fighting in the
mountainous terrain there and failed.
14/4/1943, Rommel
evacuated his troops from Tunis. The Allies entered Tunis on 7/5/1943.
10/4/1943, The
Allied 8th army took Sfax, Tunisia.
6/4/1943, In north
Africa, Rommel�s
forces retreated north from Gabes gap, Tunisia, enabling British and US forces
to link up.
29/3/1943, Montgomery
broke through the Axis Mareth Line in north Africa.
25/2/1943, US forces
recaptured the Kasserine Pass, but the Allies have lost 10,000 casualties
there.
20/2/1943, US forces
in North Africa suffered a heavy defeat by Rommel at the Kasserine Pass, Tunisia.
10/2/1943, The
Allied 8th Army reached the border of Tunisia.
23/1/1943, The
British 8th army captured Tripoli
from the Germans and Italians.
7/1/1943, Free
French forces took Oul-el-Araneb, the main Axis base in southern Libya.
20/11/1942, Benghazi re-occupied by the British.
14/11/1942, Bizerta, 60 miles NNW of Tunis, was
captured by the Axis. See 7/5/1943.
13/11/1942, The
Allies recaptured Tobruk, north
Africa.� Rommel�s army was in full
retreat.
8/11/1942, Rommel
retreated from Egypt into Libya.� British and US forces took Algiers, a move
which precipitated the German occupation of all of France.
7/11/1942, Allied
troops landed in Vichy-French North Africa. 65,000 Allied troops and 650
warships under General Dwight Eisenhower landed in North Africa under
Operation Torch to secure French North Africa and link up with Montgomery�s
Eighth Army. Oran, Casablanca, and Algiers were the main landing points.
Surprisingly little resistance was met and Bougie and Boune were soon occupied
by paratroopers.
4/11/1942, The
second Battle of El Alamein ended
after 12 days with Montgomery sending Rommel�s army into full retreat
westwards. Axis losses were 2,000, but 30,000 Axis troops were taken PoW;
Allied casualties were 13,500.
30/10/1942, Montgomery won a key victory at El
Alamein. El Alamein was only 80 miles west of Alexandria. This began
an Allied advance of 1,400 miles in six months, culminating in the clearance of
Axis forces from North Africa.
23/10/1942, The Second Battle of El Alamein began, see 30/10/1942 and
30/6/1942. The British forces had been reinforced and now numbered 230,000 men,
against the 80,000 Axis army.
30/9/1942, The
Allies seized key positions near El
Alamein in a dawn raid.
23/9/1942, British
troops captured Antananarivo,
capital of Madagascar.
18/9/1942, The
battle of El Alamein began with a
barrage of one thousand guns aimed at Italian and German troops.
7/9/1942, The Battle of Alam Halfa, north Africa,
ended. Rommel
attacked the southern sector of the El Alamein Line, in an attempt to break
through to the Suez Canal. Montgomery strengthened the Alam Halfa Ridge,
which Rommel
would have to capture once he had crossed the British minefields. Rommel
cleared the minefields on 30-31 August then as expected swung north to attack
the Ridge. Here Rommel
was successfully repulsed by Montgomery. Montgomery did not make the
mistake of counter-pursuing the Italians into the desert, which could have cost
many Allied lives, but pounded the retreating Axis forces with air and ground
artillery.
30/8/1942, The Battle of Alam Halfa, north Africa,
began, see 7/9/1942.
19/8/1942, Montgomery became commander of the
British Eight Army in North Africa.
27/7/1942, The first Battle of El Alamein ended
after 27 days; the British under Auchinlek held back the Germans and Italians, preventing their advance into Egypt.
30/6/1942, The First Battle
of El Alamein began.� It lasted till
25/7/1942, and prevented an Axis
breakthrough to Cairo and the Suez Canal. See 23/10/1942.
28/6/1942, The
Allied 8th Army retreated to El Alamein,
north Africa.
21/6/1942, Tobruk fell to Rommel�s Afrika Corps (see
18/11/1941). 25,000 Allied troops were taken prisoner.
26/5/1942. (1) The Germans attacked Bir Hakeim, an Allied fortified position in eastern Libya, about 90
kilometres south of Tobruk.�� The fort of
Bir Hakeim was blocking the Axis advance towards El Alamein. Over the next two
weeks the Luftwaffe flew 1,400 sorties against the fort, whilst 4 German /
Italian divisions attacked on the ground.�
Despite an explosion destroying the fort�s ammunition dump, Bir Hakeim
refused to surrender, and the Allies dropped food and water as British armoured
cars brought in fresh ammunition by night.�
On the night of 10-11/6/1942 the French defenders retreated, leaving the
badly wounded to hold the lines.
Although Bir Hakeim fell to the Axis forces, it did
give the Allies time to regroup and hold the Axis advance at El Alamein.� Without this, the Germans might have
succeeded in occupying Egypt and taking the Suez Canal.
28/1/1942, German
and Italian forces recaptured Benghazi.
21/1/1942, German
offensive began in the Western Desert, Egypt.
12/1/1942, In North
Africa, the British took Sallum
after a 56-day siege when the Germans ran out of ammunition.
6/1/1942, British
forces advancing westwards through Libya reached Mersa Brega, near El Agheila.
24/12/1941, Benghazi recaptured by the British.
27/11/1941, Gondar, Abyssinia, captured by Allied
forces.
20/11/1941, The
German Afrika Korps gave battle over a broad area around Sidi Rezegh.
19/11/1941, Start of First Battle of Sidi Rezegh (ended
22/11/1941). Rommel captured the airfield from the Allies, who however managed
to avoid encirclement and capture.
18/11/1941, Allies
under General Auchinlek began Operation
Crusader, ousting the Italians from North Africa. By 25/12/1941 the British
gained territory and were back to where they were in February 1941. On
21/1/1942 Rommel
hit back and Tobruk surrendered to
him on 21/6 1942.
17/11/1941, British
commando raids on German HQ at Tobruk,
300 kilometres behind enemy lines.
20/4/1941, The
German Afrika Corps attacked Tobruk,
Libya.
8/4/1941, Germans
retook Doiran (Libya),
6/4/1941, Allied
forces, including British, Indian, and South African troops, recaptured the
Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, from the Italians.
5/4/1941, The
British army took Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
3/4/1941, Allied
troops evacuated Benghazi in the face of Rommel�s advance. There was a pro-Axis coup
d�etat in Iraq.
1/4/1941, Allied
troops took the Eritrean capital, Asmara, four days after storming Keren.
29/3/1941, The
Abyssinian town of Dire Dawa was captured by South African forces from the
Italians, This cut the Addis Ababa to Djibouti railway and opened the way to
attack the Ethiopian capital.
27/3/1941, The
British took Keren and Hasara in Ethiopia, defeating an Eritrean-Italian force.
At the Battle of Kerem, nearly 4,000 British and Indian soldiers had died.
21/3/1941, The
Allies captured Jarabub, Libya.
16/3/1941, The
Allies recaptured Berbera.
7/3/1941, The
British army entered Ethiopia.
6/3/1941, Haile
Selassie�s troops recaptured Burye from Italy.
25/2/1941,
Mogadishu, the main port of British Somaliland, was recaptured by the British
from the Italians.
16/2/1941, The last
Italians were expelled from Sudan.
15/2/1941, Allied
forces took Kismaya.
14/2/1941. The first
of Rommel�s
Afrika Corps arrived in Tripoli.
7/2/1941, End of
the Battle of Beda Fomm, north
Africa (began 5/2/1941). Allied forces launched a surprise attack on the
withdrawing Italian Tenth Army, at a point 96 km south of Benghazi. The Allies
cut the coast road along which the Italians were retreating, capturing some
25,000 Italians as PoWs.
6/2/1941, The
British 8th Army captured Benghazi in Libya.
4/2/1941, British
forces occupied Maus, Libya.
3/2/1941, Cyrene
re-occupied by the British.
1/2/1941, The RAF
raided Tripoli, Libya.
22/1/1941. Allied
forces recaptured the Libyan port of Tobruk
from Italy.
19/1/1941, Kassala in
Sudan re-occupied by the British.
5/1/1941, The
Italian garrison of Bardia in the
Western Desert fell to the Allies, 5,000 Italians were taken as POWs. On
30/1/1941 the Italian garrison of Derna
fell to General
Wavell. Benghazi fell to
the Allies on 6/2/1941.
15/12/1940. Italian
troops were driven by the British back across the Libyan border from Egypt.
11/12/1940, British
forces recaptured Sidi Barrani, western Egypt, from the Italians.
9/12/1940, British
troops launched an attack on the Italians in the Western Desert.
27/11/1940, The last
of the Italian forces occupying Abyssinia surrendered to the British.
16/9/1940, Italian
forces reached Sidi Barani in the Western Desert, Egypt.� Their aim was to capture the Suez Canal and
open a route to the Persian oil fields.
26/8/1940, Mr Eboue,
the Black Governor of the French colony of Chad, promised allegiance to General de
Gaulle and Free France.
4/7/1940, Three
weeks after Italy entered the War, Italian forces invaded Sudan, occupying
Kassala, 300 kilometers east of Khartoum, They also occupied Gallabat, further
south.
5) Middle East
16/1/1943, Iraq
declared war on Germany, Italy, and Japan.
1/5/1942, Iraq was
declared eligible for US Lend-Lease.
18/11/1941, Iraq
broke off relations with Japan.
16/11/1941, Iraq
broke off relations with Vichy France.
25/8/1941, British and Soviet troops occupied Iran.
This was a violation of Iran�s neutrality but was seen as a vital move to
pre-empt German Fifth Columnists who might sabotage the oil installations.
3/7/1941, Allied
forces took Palmyra (Syria) and Tabor (Abyssinia).
21/6/1941, British
forces took Damascus, Syria.
9/6/1941, Allied
forces occupied Tyre.
8/6/1941, A
combined force of British and Free French invaded Syria.
3/6/1941, Britain
installed a pro-British regime in Baghdad.
1/6/1941, British
forces occupied Baghdad.
30/5/1941,
Anti-British politicians fled from Baghdad and Iraq asked for an armistice as
British forces occupied the country.
20/5/1941, Italian
East Africa forces surrendered to British Empire forces. British forces
occupied Falluja, Iraq.
9/5/1941, British
forces occupied Rutba, Iraq.
7/5/1941, The
British Air Force forced the relief of the base at Habbaniya, see 29/4/1941.�
See 9/5/1941.
29/4/1941, The Iraqi
Army laid siege to the British airbase at Habbaniya, se 7/5/1941.
6) America
22/8/1942, Brazil declared war on Germany and
Italy. Besides participating in the defence of the South Atlantic against
German U-boats, Brazil sent an expeditionary force to Italy in July 1944.
1/6/1942, Mexico declared war on the Axis.
11/12/1941. Hitler declared war on
the USA, as did Italy, even though he
had not yet conquered Russia or invaded Britain. The USA declared war on
Germany and Italy.
19/6/1941, Germany
and Italy expelled US consuls.
10/9/1939, Canada
declared war on Germany.
7) Maritime
7/5/1945. �The last
ship sunk by German forces, the Avondale
Park, was lost. See 4/9/1939.
11/1/1945, The British escort carrier
HMS Thane was torpedoed in the Irish
Sea and declared a total loss.
30/11/1944, HMS Vanguard, Britain�s largest and last battleship, was launched
at Clydebank � see 20/10/1941.
12/11/1944, The last big German battleship,
the Tirpitz, was sunk by the
Lancaster bombers from the RAF, in Tromso Fjord, Norway. She had been lurking
in Norwegian waters for several years, diverting Allied resources to protect
Atlantic convoys. Three 5,500 kg bombs dropped on her decks resulted in the
battleship turning turtle and sinking, trapping some 1,000 crewmen. A squadron
of German fighter planes assigned to protect the Tirpitz did not even take off.
10/9/1944, RAF Bomber Command began Operation Paravane, another attack on
the German battleship Tirpitz
anchored in northern Norway.
22/8/1944, The Royal Navy began Operation Goodwood, a series of raids
against the German battleship Tirpitz
anchored in northern Norway.
26/12/1943, The German battleship Scharnhorst was sunk by the Royal Navy
off the North Cape.
23/9/1943, The German battleship Tirpitz was severely damaged and
disabled.
22/5/1943, After a month of disastrous losses, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz ordered his U-boats out
of the \North Atlantic. On
19/5/1943 his son Peter died when U-954 was sunk by an RAF
Liberator bomber from Iceland. Allied losses from U-boats had declined sharply
from 1942 when 8 million tons of shipping was lost. Even in March 1943 600,000
tons were sunk. However the Allies developed new shortwave radar that could
detect U-boats surfacing to recharge their batteries (see 26/10/1940), also
more powerful depth charges. A week earlier, 5 U-boats out of 33 were lost in
an unsuccessful attack on convoy SC-130. The Allies were better at breaking
Germans communications codes; from 24 codebreakers at the beginning of the war
the Royal Navy now had 1,000 codebreakers, including historians, mathematicians
and linguists, many of them German refugees. Listening posts to intercept
German communications were scattered across Britain and British territories
overseas.
28/3/1942, British commandos made a
dawn raid on the French port of St Nazaire. In �Operation Chariot� they rammed
an old destroyer, the Campbeltown, full of explosives, against the dock gate,
putting the port out of action for the rest of the war.
25/11/1941, The Royal Navy battleship,
HMS Barham, was sunk.
14/11/1941, The British aircraft
carrier, HMS Ark Royal, was sunk. She was torpedoed by a U-boat near Gibraltar;
she was under tow to Gibraltar for repair when fire broke out, her list
increased and she was abandoned.
11/11/1941, The British attacked
several Italian Navy ships at anchor in the Gulf of Taranto.
23/7/1941, The German battleship Scharnhorst was bombed at La Pallice
(where she had been moved from Brest).
27/5/1941, The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by the battleships
Prince of Wales, King George V, and Rodney, after torpedo attacks by Swordfish
aircraft from the carrier Ark Royal.
24/5/1941, The German battleship Bismarck sank the 42,000 ton battle
cruiser HMS Hood 13 miles off the coast of Greenland. Only 3 of her crew of
1,421 survived.
24/3/1941, The Battle of the Bismark began; Allied forces sunk the
German battleship Bismark on
27/3/1941.
9/2/1941, Allied naval bombardment
of Genoa.
13/11/1940, HMS Ark Royal was sunk by an Italian submarine, near Gibraltar.
5/11/1940, HMS Jervis Bay was lost defending an Atlantic convoy from the
German battleship Admiral Scheer.
30/10/1940, Sabotage attempt by Italian divers on British ships in Gibraltar Harbour;
no damage resulted.
26/10/1940, German U-boats used new tactics developed by Admiral Karl Donitz to sink much
Allied supply shipping. The U-boats operated in �wolf packs�, forming long lines then gathering when one boat
spotted a convoy. They then outnumbered the defence ships. Allied shipping losses in October 1940 rose to 88,000 tons a week,
eight times the average weekly loss in January 1940. Worse for the Allies, the
U-boats could only be detected when underwater, not on the surface, where their
low profile made them almost invisible. However see 22/5/1943.
21/10/1940, The Empress of Britain, en route to Canada with child refugees, was
sunk by a German submarine. British warships rescued most of the 634 crew and
passengers.
8/7/1940, The British Navy put the
French warship Richelieu, moored at Dakar, out of action.
6/7/1940, The first U-boat base in
France became operational at Lorient.
17/6/1940, The British troop ship Lancastria was sunk by German bombs off
St Nazaire; 2,300 troops and crew were killed.
8/4/1940, Britain mined the waters
off Norway. HMS Glow-Worm was sunk.
20/2/1940, Hitler ordered his submarines to
open fire on all neutral shipping in the waters around Britain. Britain had
been allowing neutral ships to pass through the Dover straits after checking
they were not carrying cargo to Germany. However Hitler wished to control neutral
shipping, and force neutral nations to divert exports from Britain and France.
Norway said that 50 Norwegian merchant ships have been sunk, although Norway
was not a participant in the war. No USA ships had so far been hit, perhaps
because of memories of the Lusitania.
16/2/1940, HMS Cossack regained 299 British POWs from the German naval
auxiliary ship Altmark, which had ran
aground in Norwegian waters.
17/12/1939, The Graf Spee was scuttled in the River Plate, see 13/12/1939.� The Uruguayan Government had refused to give
her sanctuary.� Her captain, Hans Landsdorf,
shot himself, in the mistaken belief that a large British naval force was
waiting for her to put to sea. Hitler sent an ultimatum, scuttle or fight; Landsdorf
chose not to send his crew out to their deaths.
13/12/1939, The Battle of the River Plate began with British warships, Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles,
attacking the German battleship Graf Spee.
On 17/12/1939 the Graf Spee was
scuttled in the River Plate.
21/11/1939, The Rawalpindi, an auxiliary cruiser, was sunk in the Atlantic.
4/9/1939, The British liner Athenia sank the day after being
torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. 93 lives were lost.
She had sailed from Liverpool on 2/9/1939 on her way to Montreal, and was
informed about the outbreak of war at 11.am on the 3rd. She sank with the loss
of 19 crew and 93 passengers. This was
the start of the Battle of the Atlantic. The last ship sunk was the British
Avondale Park on 7/5/1945. The German
fleet was attacked by the RAF.
8) Air/Rocket war
7/4/1945, Germany
sent out 120 student pilots to face 1,000 American bomber planes with the
objective of ramming their planes into the U.S. aircraft and then parachuting
to safety. Only a few of the pilots managed to hit the bombers and
three-quarters of the Luftwaffe pilots were shot down.
3/3/1945, Germany
deployed 30 of its latest jet fighters
against the Allies. The jets were individually superior to the Allied planes,
but were too few in number, with too short an operational time, to
significantly hamper allied operations.
8/11/1944, Joseph Goebbels
announced the V-2 rocket campaign for the first time. Winston Churchill followed suit
and finally announced that England had been under rocket attack, providing the
people of London with an explanation for all the mysterious explosions of
recent weeks.
8/9/1944, The first V-2 fell in on Chiswick in the
London area, killing three people. By the end of the war, 1,100 V-2s fell
in England an a further 1,675 on the continent, mainly on Antwerp.� V-2 stood for Vergeltungswaffe, or �reprisal
weapon�. The V-2 rocket weighed 12 tons and travelled at 3,600 mph, faster than
sound, so there was no warning of its imminent arrival. It had a range of 200
miles and carried a one ton bomb. The Germans fired them from launchers in The
Netherlands, but the explosions in London were attributed, by the authorities,
to gas explosions to mislead the German intelligence. The earlier V-1 rocket
was slower and had a shorter range; V-1 strikes on London ceased as the Allies
captured the launch sites in France.
6/3/1944. US planes
began daylight bombing raids on Berlin,
flying from bases in Britain.
9/2/1945, 2,000 US
Air Force bombers, escorted by 900 fighter aircraft, hit oil targets across
Germany. By now the entire Western Luftwaffe�s fighter strength was only around
900 aircraft; this US offensive cost the Luftwaffe a further 80 aircraft.
20/1/1944, The RAF
dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
22/11/1943, A major
RAF raid on Berlin destroyed the armaments ministry, the Charlottenburg Palace,
and the British Embassy.� A church at the
end of the Kurfurstendamm, the main shopping street in Berlin, was also
destroyed, but its bell tower was rebuilt as a landmark in post-War Berlin.
24/9/1943, Repairs
were finished on the M�hne river dam, which had been heavily damaged in a
British bombing raid on May 16; the Edersee Dam, which had been bombed in the
same raid, was restored to full operation six days later.
2/8/1943, Hamburg
was seriously damaged by Allied aircraft, at a cost of 87 British aircraft. The
RAF had considerably enlarged its bomber force; in January 1943 the RAF only
had 260 heavy bombers, but now it regularly sent 700 bombers on a single raid,
One million civilians had fled the city after three nights of bombing, and
40,000 were killed. 7,000 tons of bombs destroyed 10 square miles of Hamburg,
creating a 1,000 C firestorm, and U-boat construction yards were severely
damaged. The RAF used Pathfinder aircraft to drop marker bombs on the target
city, then release masses of aluminium foil to confuse enemy radar, followed by
the main bomber raid. The scale of these
raids forced Hitler to withdraw Luftwaffe
forces from the Russian front, where in August 1943 just 20% of Luftwaffe
strength was then deployed. Albert Speer, Hitler�s Minister for War
Production, feared that just six more raids on the scale of Hamburg could bring
Germany to its knees.
16/5/1943 (1) The RAF launched its �Dambuster�
raid on the Ruhr dams, which had
provided power to Germany�s industrial heartland. The Mohne, Eder, and
Sorpe dams were destroyed by special �bouncing bombs� designed by Dr Barnes Wallis;
these bombs could skip over barriers placed in the dam lakes. The bombing
squadron consisted of 19 Lancaster bombers from 617 squadron, from Scampton,
led by Guy
Gibson. The dams were destroyed, but less than half the bombers
returned to the UK.
2/5/1943, The RAF
bombed Berlin.
24/4/1943, Heavy bombing
raid on Dortmund.
6/3/1943,� The RAF pounded the Ruhr city of Essen.
30/1/1943, The RAF
made its first daytime raid on Berlin.
27/1/1943, Air raids
on Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The USA made its first bombing raid on Germany.
24/12/1942, At
Peenemunde, Werner
von Braun perfected the first flying bomb.
24/10/1942, RAF
bombing raids on Genoa and Milan.
10/9/1942, The RAF
dropped 100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf in a single raid.
23/8/1942, The
Luftwaffe mounted a bombing raid on Stalingrad, with 600 aircraft.
17/8/1942, Daylight
air raids by the Allies began, with a raid on the railway marshalling yards of
Rouen. The first US bombing raids in Europe.
11/8/1942, Sir Barnes
Wallis, born on 26/9/1887, patented the bouncing bomb, which was
used against the German Mohne and Eder dams in 1943 by the RAF Dambusters
Squadron.
16/7/1942, The RAF
made its first daylight raid on the Ruhr.
25/6/1942, The RAF
launched a 1,000 bomber raid on Bremen.
31/5/1942, An air
raid of 1,000 planes was made against Cologne. 1,455 tons of bombs were dropped
in 90 minutes. 2,300 separate fires started, destroying over 3,000 buildings.
45,000 people were made homeless.
28/4/1942, Bombing
raid on Rostock, Germany. The target was the large Heinkel military aircraft
factory there.
30/3/1942, The first
1,000 bomber raid took place on Cologne.
28/3/1942, The RAF
began continuous bombing of German munitions factories. They also raided Lubeck
and Rostock, Germany. These were coastal targets, easy to find and highly
combustible.� Lubeck, with its naval
stores, oil tanks, submarine shipyards, and naval school, was 40% (200 acres)
destroyed.
14/2/1942, A
controversial �Area Bombing� directive by the RAF meant that German civilian
areas were now targets for future bombing raids.
15/11/1941, RAF raids
on Boulogne and Emden.
13/10/1941, RAF raid
on Nuremberg.
1/10/1941, RAF raid
on Stuttgart.
21/8/1941, The first
of the Arctic Convoys left Scapa Flow, Scotland, taking military supplies to
Russia, including Hurricane fighter planes.
8/8/1941, The
Soviet air force raided Berlin for the first time, in revenge for the 22 July
raid.
25/7/1941, RAF raid
on Berlin.
22/7/1941, Germany
made its first bombing raid on Moscow.
21/7/1941, First
German air raid on Monaco.
7/6/1941, Allied
air raid on German navy at Brest, France.
8/5/1941, Allied
air raid on Bremen.
8/4/1941, Heavy air
raid on Coventry.
23/3/1941, RAF raids
on Berlin, Kiel and Hanover.
16/3/1941, Heavy air
raid on Bristol.
14/3/1941, RAF raids
on Dusseldorf and Lorient.
31/1/1941, Allied
air raid on Emden.
1/1/1941, 141
aircraft of the Royal Air Force bombed the Focke-Wulf aircraft production plant
south of Bremen.
16/12/1940, Bombing
of Mannheim: The first area bombardment of a German city was conducted by the
Royal Air Force when 134 bombers attacked Mannheim during the night, starting
large fires on both banks of the Rhine.
26/11/1940, RAF raid
on Cologne,
18/11/1940, RAF raid
on Pilsen.
11/11/1940, The
Italian Fleet at Tarantino was crippled in a raid by naval planes of the
British Fleet Air Arm.
8/11/1940, British
air raid on Munich.
1/11/1940, Allied
air raid on Naples.
24/9/1940, Gibraltar
was bombed by French aircraft.
14/9/1940, The RAF
heavily bombed Antwerp.
9/9/1940, The RAF
carried out a three-hour raid on Hamburg.
18/7/1940, In
retaliation for the British bombing the French Navy in Algeria, French Air
Force planes from Morocco half-heartedly bombed Gibraltar. Most of their bombs
fell in the sea, though 3 were killed and 11 wounded on the Rock. French planes
also bombed Gibraltar on 24/9/1940 dropping a total of 450 bombs; again most
fell in the sea and damage was minimal.
9/7/1940, The RAF
began night raids on Germany.
17/5/1940, The Dutch
town of Middelburg was bombed by the German Luftwaffe, to force the surrender
of the Dutch armies in Zeeland.
21/4/1940, The RAF
raided Nazi forces at the Danish airbase of Aalborg.
19/3/1940, The RAF
bombed the German submarine base at Hornum.
3/12/1939, RAF raids
on warships at Heligoland.
31/10/1939, First
dogfight between British and German aircraft over France.
20/91939, The first
German aircraft, a Messerschmitt, was shot down, by gunner Sergeant Letchford.
4/9/1939, The RAF
dropped 6 million leaflets over Germany. It also bombed Wilhelmshaven.
For the World
War Two period, 1 September 1939 to 9 May 1945, the timeline for France-Germany
has been split into the following categories;
1) France-Germany �home� (non-war) events
2) Eastern Front (East Europe, Finland, Russia, Greece)
3) Western Front (France, Benelux, Britain, west
Germany)
3)a)�
Scandinavia ex. Finland.
3)b) Italy, Malta
4) Africa
5) Middle East
6) America
7) Maritime
8) Air war.
Click Here for map of Europe under Nazi
occupation
in 1941.
See USA for World War Two events and United States
See China/Japan/Korea for World War Two in Pacific
For Jewish
persecution in World War Two, see Israel, Judaism
See also Great Britain, London.
The start of major fighting in World War Two. Hostilities
began between Germany and Poland, and Germany and France.
Germany invaded Poland; start of World War Two,
with Britain and France involved.
31/8/1939, In Gleiwitz, a small German town close to
the border with Poland, a small force of Nazi agents, dressed in Polish Army
uniforms, took over the local radio station and broadcast anti-German
propaganda in Polish. They then took bodies from Dachau concentration camp,
dressed these in Polish Army uniforms, and mutilated the corpses to make
identification impossible. Within a few
hours Adolf Hitler was denouncing the
�Gleiwitz Incident� in the German Reichstag and using it as a pretext to invade
Poland.
26/8/1939, Daladier and Chamberlain attempted to negotiate with Hitler,
but nothing was achieved.
25/8/1939, Britain signed an assistance pact with Poland, the Anglo-Polish Alliance. Britain had seen Hitler
seize Czechoslovakia, in breach of the Munich Agreement; Hitler was now demanding the
return of Gdansk (Danzig) and the coastal strip of land linking Germany to East
Prussia (depriving Poland of its Baltic coast).�
Britain therefore abandoned its policy of appeasement with Germany.
23/8/1939. Hitler and the USSR concluded a 20 year non-aggression pact, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This left Hitler
free to invade Poland.� Hitler believed the German-Soviet pact would
lead France and Britain to withdraw their guarantees of assistance to
Poland.� When instead Britain reaffirmed
its support for Poland on 25/8/1939, Hitler postponed the attack on Poland,
originally scheduled for the night of 25-26/8/1939.�� Diplomatic moves with Britain failed to
dislodge UK support for Poland, and Hitler invaded on 1/9/1939.
22/8/1939, Hitler gave the Obersalzberg
Speech to commanders of the Wehrmacht, detailing
the pending invasion of Poland and plans for extermination of the Poles.
3/4/1939, Hitler ordered his generals to prepare plans for invading
Poland.
31/3/1939. The British Prime Minister, Neville
Chamberlain, pledged to defend Poland, if attacked by Germany; so
did France.�
28/3/1939. Hitler�s deputy Von Ribbentrop signed an agreement with the USSR that they would both invade Poland. See 31/3/1939 and
1/9/1939.
27/3/1939, Nazi
Germany began an anti-Polish propaganda campaign against �oppression of Germans
in German lands now controlled by Poles�.
Germany invaded Poland; start of World War Two,
with Britain and France involved.
Nazi Germany annexes Memel (Lithuania)
23/3/1939, Between 5
and 7 a.m. German troops crossed into Memel. 31 ships of the German fleet
arrived at the port at 10:20 a.m. Aboard the Deutschland, Hitler signed the decree formally turning the
Territory over to Germany.
22/3/1939. Memel, part
of Lithuania, was ceded to Germany, see 20/3/1939.
20/3/1939, Germany
issued an ultimatum to Lithuania demanding the return of Memel, ceded by
Germany in 1919.
16/1/1939, Lithuania
and Germany signed a non-aggression pact. However in March 1939 Germany seized
the Lithuanian territory of Memel-Klaipeda, where many ethnic Germans lived.
Nazi Germany annexes the remainder of
Czeckoslovakia
16/3/1939, Slovakia
became a German protectorate.� Hungary
annexed Ruthenia, another part of Czechoslovakia.
15/3/1939. Germany occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia
(Bohemia and Moravia). The Sudetenland
had already been occupied by Germany. Hitler
described this as his last territorial claim in Europe. See 6/6/1938.
9/3/1939. President Hacha of Czechoslovakia sacked his pro-German prime
Minister. Germany invaded a week later.
20/9/1938, The
Hungarian leaders, Imredy and Kanya, were summoned to Germany.
Hitler
told them he had no objections to Hungary�s desires to regain Slovakia and
Ruthenis, so long as Hungary actively took part in the destruction of
Czechoslovakia.
Refugees from Spanish Civil War flee to France
13/2/1939, France closed its border with Spain.
9/2/1939, In Spain, Franco�s army, pursuing the
fleeing Republicans north from Barcelona, reached the French border. France had
given refuge to the Republican forces, having confiscated their vehicles and
weapons.
30/1/1939, France opened refugee camps for Republican
women and children fleeing Barcelona after the defeat of the Republicans there
on 26/1/1939. By March 1939, these camps at Argeles and other locations in SE
France housed 250,000 refugees. This population movement was known as the
Retirada (withdrawal).
Final prelude to War 1938-39, last attempts to preserve peace in Europe
22/5/1939. Hitler and Mussolini signed the 'Pact of Steel' in Berlin.
15/4/1939, US President Roosevelt asked Hitler and Mussolini for assurances that
they would not attack 31 named States.
13/4/1939, Britain and
France guaranteed the independence of Romania and Greece.
17/3/1939, The French
Parliament granted Edouard Daladier extensive powers to
accelerate rearmament.
14/2/1939 �The German battleship Bismarck was launched.
27/1/1939, Hitler approved Plan Z, an ambitious naval construction
program that would give the Kriegsmarine some 800 ships by 1948.
1/11/1938, In Britain,
Balloon Command was formed, under Fighter Command, to establish barrage balloon
protection for 12 cities including Bristol and Cardiff. Experiments with
barrage balloons had been carried out by the Germans back in 1917; the Allies
also used them to protect Venice in 1918. The idea was to hoist a �barrage�
of cables to prevent bomber aircraft diving low, so their accuracy was
impaired. With the balloons, they could still dive but could not pull out
afterwards without hitting a cable and crashing. The balloon wincher faced
danger from lightning bolts, and from the static electric charge built up on
the wincher, especially in wet weather. An operator had to jump away from the
winch when leaving to avoid electrical conductance between his body and the
winch and earth.
24/10/1938, Hitler demanded the return from Poland to Germany of
Danzig.� Poland refused.
1935-38, Nazi Germany annexes
the Sudetenland (Czeckoslovakia)
5/10/1938, President
Benes of Czechoslovakia resigned.
1/10/1938. Germany
annexed the Sudetenland, see
6/6/1938.
30/9/1939, Chamberlain told a crowd �I believe it is peace in our time�
and waved the agreement he had made with Hitler at Munich,
bearing Hitler�s
signature.� Chamberlain said �How horrible,
fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on
gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of
whom we know nothing�.
29/9/1938. In Munich, Chamberlain
appeased Hitler over Sudetenland.� Under the Munich Agreement, an agreement between Germany, Britain, France,
and Italy, the Sudetenland was surrendered to Nazi Germany.� No Czech representative was present.
15/9/1938.
Neville Chamberlain visited Hitler at the Berchtesgarten, over the Czech crisis. Hitler declared
he only wanted the Sudetenland.
7/9/1938. Sudetenland gained autonomy from Czechoslovakia, see 6/6/1938.
15/8/1938. Chamberlain visited Hitler
for crisis talks.
12/8/1938. Germany
mobilised its forces.
6/6/1938.
President Benes of
Czechoslovakia offered self-government to the Sudetenland. However on 27/9/1938 Hitler stated his intention to annex the Sudetenland. On 21/9/1938 Prague
agreed to Anglo-French proposals to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. Czechs protested. German troops entered the Sudetenland on 1/10/1938, as Teschen, in
Czech Silesia, was annexed by Poland. On 5/10/1938 President Benes of Czechoslovakia resigned.
20/5/1938. Czechoslovakia
ordered 400,000 troops to the Austro-German border.
28/4/1938. Anglo-French
talks on the Sudeten question. President Benes was urged to make concessions.
24/4/1938, Sudeten
German leader Konrad
Henlein presented a list of demands in a speech in Karlsbad. The
principal demand was the creation of an autonomous German state within
Czechoslovakia. Though left unsaid, it
was readily inferred that this state could then vote to secede and join Germany.
23/4/1938. Sudeten Germans
in Czechoslovakia demanded total self-government.
24/3/1938. The
British Prime Minister, Chamberlain,
announced that Britain would not oppose the German occupation of
Czechoslovakia, in the interests of peace. However Britain would fight for
France and Belgium.
29/11/1937, Sudeten
Germans walked out of the Czech Parliament following a ban on political
meetings.
17/11/1937, Lord Halifax arrived in Berlin for talks with Hitler on the
Sudetenland; this was the first step in the process of appeasement.
17/10/1937. Sudeten
Nazis rioted in Czechoslovakia.
19/5/1935. The Nazi Party made gains in elections in the
Sudetenland.
1936-38, Nazi Germany annexes Austria
13/3/1938 Austria
was declared to be part of the German Third Reich (the Anschluss, or �joining�); a province of Germany called Ostmark.� A Nazi-controlled referendum gave a �vote� of
99.75% in favour of unification.
The
Anschluss had been expressly forbidden by the Treaties of Versailles and St
Germain, 1919, and a proposed customs union between the two countries in 1931
had been vetoed by France and Czechoslovakia. However after Austrian
Chancellor von Schuschnigg was forced to resign in early 1938, the
Germans occupied Austria and formally declared a union anyway.
12/3/1938. Germany invaded Austria.� This was 24
hours before an Austrian plebiscite was to have been held concerning closer
relations with Germany.� At 10.00 am
German troops crossed into Austria, thereby tearing up Article 88 of the Treaty
of Versailles, which forbade union of Germany and Austria.
11/3/1938, Hitler demanded the resignation of Austrian Chancellor Kurt von
Schusnigg, after Schusnigg tried to forestall Hitler�s
demands for unification with Germany by a referendum.
1/3/1938, Field
Marshal Hermann
Goering was named Chief of Staff of Germany�s Luftwaffe.
12/2/1938. Hitler insisted that Austria released Nazi prisoners.
15/1/1937. Austria announced an amnesty for Nazis.
11/7/1936, Austria and Germany entered closer relations.� Hitler forbade the Austrian Nazis from
mounting another uprising to preserve a face of legality.
19/7/1938, King George VI of Britain visited Paris.
10/3/1938, In France, the Chautemps Government collapsed,
weakening the French administration.
20/12/1937, Erich Ludendorff, German general who helped formulate strategy in
World War One, died.
24/11/1937, In Germany, Walter Funk replaced Dr Schacht as Minister of
Economics.
18/11/1937, A Fascist plot was discovered in Paris.
22/10/1937. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Berlin to
meet Hitler,
study housing conditions, and hear a concert by the Nazi District Orchestra.
The Duke had been advised not to go to Germany, but, having abdicated as King,
he wanted to show he still had influence.
12/7/1937, Lionel Jospin,
Prime Minister of France, was born.
4/2/1937, The German
Ambassador gave King George VI a Nazi salute.
Consolidation
of Nazi power in Germany; political, cultural
and economic
4/2/1938. Hitler took over as War Minister in Germany.
Joachim Von
Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister.
5/9/1937. A huge rally marked the start of the
Nazi congress in Nuremberg.
16/7/1937, The Buchenwald concentration camp opened in
Germany, on a plateau overlooking Weimar. The first inmates were mainly
political prisoners, but most of the 238,980 prisoners ultimately sent there
were Jews,
of whom 56,545 died in the gas chambers.
For details of Nazi
anti-Semitism, see Judaism, history
2/6/1937, German
War Minister Werner
von Blomberg began a three-day visit to Italy to discuss
German-Italian military ties.
20/6/1937, All
Catholic
schools in Bavaria were closed by the Nazis.
30/1/1937, Hitler made a speech on the 4th
anniversary of the beginning of the Nazi Revolution.� He spoke of having friendly relations with
other European powers but also spoke of the need for �lebensraum� �
living space � stating that Germany needed colonies for economic expansion. He
also promised to respect the neutrality of Belgium and The Netherlands.
5/1/1937, Nazi Germany recommended its artists
depict at least four children in illustrations of German families.
1/12/1936. In Germany the Hitler Youth Law was ratified, making membership of the
Hitler Youth compulsory for children aged 10 to 18.
25/11/1936. Germany and
Japan
agreed to protect world civilization from the Bolshevik menace, and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, organised by Ribbentrop.� Germany recognised the Japanese puppet state
in Manchuria.� See 6/11/1937.
14/11/1936, Germany denounced the clauses of the
Versailles Treaty internationalising its waterways.
1/11/1936. Mussolini announced an anti-Communist
�axis� with Germany, and urged France and Britain to join.
20/10/1936, Hitler established closer relations with Mussolini,
using the Spanish Civil war as a pretext.
24/8/1936, Germany extended conscription from one year to two.
16/8/1936. Hitler�s dreams of the
proof of Aryan supremacy at the Berlin Olympics were shattered when the Black
athlete, Jesse
Owens, won four gold medals in the 100 metres, 200 metres, 400
metres relay, and the long jump. After Owens�s
second win,
Hitler
stormed out
of the stadium in disgust.
11/8/1936, Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed German
Ambassador to London.
1/8/1936. Adolf Hitler opened the 11th
Olympic Games in
Berlin.�
The Olympic flame was carried to the venue from Greece for the first
time.� See 16/8/1936.
18/2/1936, Charlie Chaplin�s film, Modern Times, was banned in
Nazi Germany because it had �Communist tendencies�. Many suspected the real
reason for the ban was the resemblance of Charlie Chaplin to Hitler in the film.
6/2/1936. Hitler opened the Winter Olympic Games
in Germany.
1/5/1936, Starting on this day, every newlywed couple in Nazi
Germany was to receive a copy of Mein Kampf from the registrar.
30/11/1935. Non-belief in Nazism was made legal grounds for divorce
in Germany.
12/10/1935, Hitler banned American jazz from
German radio, calling it decadent. Music of Jewish
or Black origin was also banned.
4/1/1937, Paul Behncke, German admiral, died aged 67.
17/7/1936, France nationalised its munitions industry.
30/6/1936, The Fascist Party in France was suppressed.
4/6/1936, In France, Leon Blum formed a Leftist Popular Front
government.
8/5/1936, Oswald Spengler, German historian, died aged
55.
3/5/1936, The Left won in French elections.
4/6/1935, In France, Pierre Laval formed a government.
31/5/1935, In France, politician Pierre Flandin lost power.
2/5/1935. France and the USSR signed a mutual defence pact in
case of attack.� See 7/3/1936.
14/4/1935. Britain, France, and Italy agreed to form a united
front against German re-armament.
15/10/1934, Raymond Poincare, French statesman, died aged
74.
9/10/1934, Alexander
(1888 � 1934), King of Yugoslavia since 1921, was assassinated by Croatian
terrorists from the Ustase Movement in Marseilles. The French Foreign Minister,
Louis
Barthou, was also killed. Alexander I was succeeded by his 11-year old
son Peter II
(1923-1970). Alexander�s
cousin, Paul
(1893-1976) acted as Regent until 27/3/1941; however just a
fortnight after this, Peter II was forced into exile by invading
German forces.
Increasing
power of Hitler and the Nazis
29/3/1936. Hitler won 99% of the vote in German 'elections'.
12/3/1936, Germany threatened to enter a state of
"honourable isolation" and increase its military presence in the
Rhineland if France and Belgium continued to mass troops on their eastern
borders.
7/3/1936. The German Army re-entered the Rhineland,
supposedly a demilitarised area. A token force of 22,000 troops marched into
the 50-kilometre wide strip of territory bordering the Rhine, goose-stepping
through Essen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Cologne. France wanted action but
Britain did not object. This was in breach of the Treaties of Versailles
and Locarno. Germany justified its move by saying the French-Soviet pact,
concluded in 1934 and ratified by the French government in early 1936, was
against the Locarno Treaty.
7/11/1935, Germany introduced a new Reichskriegsflagge (Reich war
flag). It resembled the national swastika flag, with elements of the old
Imperial war flag included.
15/9/1935. The Swastika was made the official flag of
Germany.
15/8/1935. Hitler decreed that the Swastika was to be Germany�s
national flag, and banned German-Jewish marriages.
18/6/1935. France was angry at an Anglo-German naval deal that
allowed Germany to build up its naval strength, albeit to only 35% of the Royal
Navy. This was in contravention of
the Treaty of Versailles.
8/5/1935, The UK Cabinet heard that it was
estimated that the RAF was inferior to the Luftwaffe by 370 aircraft and that
in order to reach parity the RAF must have 3,800 aircraft by April 1937�an
extra 1,400 on the existing air programme. It was learnt that Germany was
easily able to outbuild this revised programme as well. On 21 May 1935, the Cabinet agreed to expanding the
home defence force of the RAF to 1,512 aircraft (840 bombers and 420 fighters).
7/4/1935. In the free city of Danzig, the
Nazis won 60% of the vote.
29/3/1935,
Stalin
and Eden met in Moscow to discuss German
re-armamament.
16/3/1935, Germany announced it was reintroducing conscription, for one year (see 24/8/1936), with a view to
building a peacetime army of 35 divisions.�
This was in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles; other European� powers protested but did nothing else.
15/3/1935. France extended
compulsory military service to two years.
11/3/1935. In Germany,
Hermann Goering announced the
creation of the Luftwaffe, or German air force.
13/1/1935. A plebiscite in the Saar indicated a desire to
return to Germany.� The vote was 90.36% in favour of joining
Germany, with an almost-100% turnout.�
The Saar rejoined Germany on 1/3/1935.�
2,000 refugees fled the Saar for
France.
1934, Nazi Germany
began the Erzengungsslacht program to
make the country self-sufficient in food. By 1937 Germany was producing 90% of the food
it consumed.
28/11/1934. Churchill warned of growing German air strength.
24/10/1934. Nazi labour movement formed.
18/9/1934. Britons first heard Lord Haw Haw (Irishman William Joyce)
make a pro-Nazi broadcast.
4/9/1934. In
Germany, 750,000 attended the opening of the Nazi Party Conference.
19/8/1934. A plebiscite in Germany gave sole power to the
Fuhrer; agreeing to his merging the offices of President and Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
Of 45.5 million voters, 38m voted for Hitler, 4.25m voted against him, and
870,000 spoilt their ballot papers.
3/8/1934, Following the death of Hindenberg,
the German Cabinet merged the offices of President and Chancellor, and made Hitler �Der Fuhrer�.
4/5/1936, Ludwig von Falkenhausen, German General, died
aged 91.
2/8/1934. Paul von Hindenburg, German military leader
and President from 1925, died aged 86.
31/7/1934, The murderers of Chancellor Dolfuss were
executed.
30/7/1934, Kurt von Schuschnigg was appointed Chancellor
of Austria.
27/7/1934, Louis HG Lyautey, French Minister of Defence
1916-17, died aged 79
26/7/1934. Following
the murder of Chancellor Dollfus in Austria, on 25/7/1934 in a failed Nazi coup, the
Austrian government ordered the round up of all Nazis. Over 150 Austrian
Nazis were arrested. The Nazis in Austria had attempted an unsuccessful coup
against the Dollfus administration; Dollfus was a devout Catholic and violently
anti-Socialist. He had used the army to crush the schutzbund, the big socialist
defence force established in the housing estates outside Vienna. The workers
held out against the army for five days. A Nazi gang broke into the Austrian
Chancellery; Dollfus
was shot in the throat and left to bleed to death for four hours. When it was
clear the Nazi coup was going to fail the gang took other government ministers
hostage and negotiated a promise of safe conduct to the German border. This
promise was withdrawn when it was discovered that Dollfus was dead. Three police
and two Nazis died in a three hour battle for the radio station.
25/7/1934, Engelbert Dolfuss (1892-1934), Chancellor of Austria, was
assassinated in Vienna by rebel Austrian Nazis.�
Otto
Planetta was convicted of the crime and hanged.
20/7/1934, In Germany, the
SS was constituted an independent organisation within the Nazi Party.
13/7/1934. Heinrich Himmler (33) was put in charge of Germany�s concentration
camps.
3/7/1934. German Vice-Chancellor Von Papen resigned.
30/6/1934. Hitler�s rival Ernst Rohm
and hundreds of influential Nazis were murdered by the SS in the �night of the
long knives�. Hitler justified this by
claiming the SS were planning to overthrow him. The Army probably also
threatened to take over unless Hitler got rid of the brownshirt thugs and
stopped talk of socialist revolution. So they were crushed and the blackshirts,
or SS, emerged triumphant.
3/5/1934. The author H G Wells predicted there would be a major
world war by 1940.
27/4/1934, Britain and France warned Germany not to
default on reparations payments.
23/4/1934, Berlin police prohibited fortune-telling.
29/3/1934, Germany published
its defence estimates' which showed a total increase of one-third and an
increase of 250% in its air force
12/2/1934, General
Strike in France began (until 13/2/1934) in protest at the dangers of Fascism.
6/2/1934, Riots in Paris between far Right and Communist factions. These riots continued until
9/2/1934. They had been sparked by the suicide, on 3/1/1934, of the Russian-born
Serge
Stavisky, a dubious speculator who had been protected from
prosecution by corrupt government officials. There were allegations that he had
in fact been killed to protect these officials, and both Far Right and
Communist factions protested over the inefficiency and corruption of the French
administration. Civil war loomed in France, until the establishment of a group
of new government officials who were innocent of any corruption allegations.
26/1/1934. Germany signed a
non-aggression pact with Poland.
30/1/1934. In Germany the regional Lander Diets were abolished
and power centralised.
1/1/1934. Sterilisation became
law in Germany.
23/12/1933, In Germany, the
sentences were announced at the Reichstag Fire Trial.
12/12/1933. In Germany, the
new Reichstag met but adjourned indefinitely.
12/11/1933. In a plebiscite in Germany, the Nazis won 92% of
the vote.
14/10/1933. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations.
23/10/1933, Albert Sarraut became Prime Minister of
France.
27/9/1933, In Germany the
National Synod elected the pro-Nazi Ludwig Muller as Reichs-Bishop. Opponents
rallied round Pastor
Neimoller and formed the anti-Nazi Confessional Church.
21/9/1933,The Reichstag Fire
trial began.
2/9/1933, Adolf Hitler addressed a huge crowd at Zeppelin Field, promising that the Nazi Party would meet in
Nuremberg for the next 1,000 years.
25/8/1933, The
Haavara (�transfer�) Agreement was signed between the Nazi German Government
and Zionist Jews. It provided for the relocation of Jews from hostile Germany
to what was then British Mandated Palestine, and for these Jews to take some
assets that would otherwise have been confiscated by Germany. Advantages to
Nazi Germany included the removal of Jews from their territory and a possible
easing of sanctions on the country which had been imposed by Jews in the rest
of Europe, which were a threat to the still-fragile German economy. The
Agreement was cancelled in 1939 after Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler inititally opposed the
Haavara Agreement, but supported it in the period 1937-9.
25/7/1933. Hitler�s Cabinet announced that disabled people would be sterilised.
14/7/1933. Nazis banned
all other political parties in Germany.
4/7/1933. The Deutsche
Volkspartei (DVP) was dissolved. The DVP had been formed in December 1918
as a moderate right-wing Party representing liberalism and industry. Its
leader, Streseman,
served as German Foreign Minister from 1923 until his death in 1929; he did
much to alleviate the harsher provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. However
from 1930 the DVP lost most of its electoral support.
22/6/1933, In Germany, the Social Democrat Party was suppressed.
19/6/1933. The Prime Minister of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, banned all Nazi organisations.
30/5/1932, German Chancellor
Heinrich
Briening (1885-1970) was ousted from office by the pro-Nazi Franz von Papen.� Breining had been appointed as Chancellor by President
Hindenburg on 28/3/1930, as a counterweight to Nazi influence.� Breining
escaped from Germany to Holland in 1934 and went on to lecture at Harvard.
28/5/1933. The Nazis
won elections in the free city of Danzig.
21/5/1933. Britain signed a ten-year non-aggression pact with
Italy, France, and Germany.
17/5/1933, Hitler made the first of his �Peace� speeches.
16/5/1933, Hitler gave a secret instruction to begin mass production
of weaponry for the German Army.
9/5/1933. Hitler ordered the burning of more than 25,000 books.
�Un-German� volumes were thrown onto a huge bonfire outside Berlin University.
Other similar fires took place in other German cities and over 1 million books
may have been burned altogether.
6/5/1933, In a prelude to
mass book burnings in Germany, a gang of students destroyed the work of Magnus
Hirschfeld, burning the contents of the Institut f�r
Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research) in Berlin. Hirschfeld was out of the
country at the time and never returned to Germany. He died in 1935 aged 67.
2/5/1933, Trades Unions were forbidden in Germany.
The
�ADGD (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund)
had been formed in 1919, as a federation of German Trades Unions, and had
gained a total membership of 5 million workers. On this day it was banned by the Nazi Party.
26/4/1933, The Gestapo German secret police force was
established.
29/3/1933, Austrian
Nazis staged a large demonstration, in defiance of Chancellor Dollfuss.
Meanwhile Germany instituted a punitive 1,000 Mark tourist tax on any German
visiting Austria, which severely damaged the Austrian tourist industry.
23/3/1933. Germany passed
'Enabling Laws' giving Hitler dictatorial
powers.
21/3/1933, The first
meeting of the German Reichstag, after the fire of 27/2/1933.� The Reichstag met in the garrison church in Potsdam,
a historical site of Prussian military power.
See Jewish History 1930s for anti-Semitism in
Nazi Germany
14/3/1933. Goebbels
was appointed as Nazi Minister of
Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.
The Nazis
banned Kosher meat.�
5/3/1933. The Nazis won almost half the seats in the German
elections (43.9% of the vote). The
Communists won 12.3% of the vote.� Hitler capitalised on the Reichstag Fire
(27/2/1933) to raise the spectre of a Bolshevist takeover of Germany. The
result was, Nazis 288 seats, Social Democrats 120 seats, Communists 81 seats,
Centre 74 seats, National People�s Party 52 seats, Others 32 seats.
1/3/1933. The Nazis began
mass arrests of all political opponents.
28/2/1933, In Germany, the Reichstag Fire Decree banned the
Communist Party.
27/2/1933. The German Reichstag burned down. The fire was blamed on a simple-minded Dutch
Communist, Marinus
Van Der Lubbe, who police found in the Reichstag grounds. Marinus Van Der
Lubbe was guillotined on
10/1/1934. However many suspect the Nazis. Hitler
now pressed for, and succeeded in getting, dictatorial powers from President
Hindenburg, and the lack
of a majority in the Reichstag was no longer a hindrance to the Nazis.
26/2/1933, James Goildsmith, financier, was born in
Paris.
10/2/1933. Hitler made a speech in Berlin attacking democracy.
31/1/1933, Edouard Daladier became Prime Minister of
France.
30/1/1933. Adolf
Hitler, 43 years old, was appointed
Chancellor of Germany by 85-year old President Paul
Von Hindenburg. Hitler�s
Cabinet included only two Nazis; Hermann Goering (Minister without Portfolio)
and Wilhelm
Frick (Minister of the Interior). Franz von Papen was
vice-Chancellor, and Constantin von Neurath was Foreign Minister.
28/1/1933, In Germany, Kurt von Schleicher�s Government fell, after
the Left and Centre failed to reach agreement.
18/12/1932, In France, Edouard Herriot resigned after defeat over
proposal to pay War Debt to the USA, and Joseph Boncour formed a Government.
4/12/1932, In Germany, Kurt von Schleicher attempted to form a
coalition with a majority in the German Parliament, but failed.
29/11/1932. (1) Jacques Chirac, French Prime Minister
1995-2007, was born in Paris.
(2) The USSR and France signed
a non-aggression pact.
19/11/1932, At President
Hindenburg�s invitation, Adolf Hitler attempted to form a coalition
with a majority in the German Parliament, but failed.
17/11/1932. In
Germany, Prime Minister Von Papen
resigned after failing to form a government. Hitler refused the Chancellorship, if it meant a coalition with other parties,
as Hindenburg wanted.
6/11/1932, In Germany�s last
elections before Hitler assumed absolute power, the Nazi Party lost 34
Reichstag seats, with gains for the Communists. The Nazis won 192 seats, Social
Democrats 121 seats, Centre Party 70 seats, Communists 100 seats, National
People�s Party 52 seats, Others 45 seats.
14/9/1932, Germany
withdrew from the Geneva Disarmament Conference (until December 1932),
demanding to be allowed to possess armaments equal to the other powers.
12/9/1932. Von Papen dissolved the Reichstag.
30/8/1932. Herman Goering, Nazi Party, was elected President of the Reichstag.
13/8/1932. Hitler refused to serve as Chancellor under Von Papen.
4/8/1932. Nazi versus
Communist riots in Berlin.
31/7/1932. The Nazis were now the biggest party in the
Reichstag, with 230 seats, but
without an overall majority.
26/7/1932. The War Minister
of Germany, Kurt
Von Scheidler, said that
Germany was ready to re-arm.
20/7/1932, As law and order deteriorated in Prussia, Chancellor
Franz von Papen dismissed the Prussian Social Democrat Prime Minister
(Otto Braun)
and the Prussian Minister of the Interior (Severing).
9/7/1932. In Switzerland,
the Allies voted to ease Germany�s economic crisis by suspending the repayment
of war debts.
16/6/1932, In Germany, a ban
on Nazi storm troopers, in place since April, was lifted.
4/6/1932, Second Government of Edouard Herriot began in France.
2/6/1932, In Germany, Franz von Papen, having been repudiated by the
Centre Party, formed a non-party �Cabinet of Barons�.
31/5/1932. (see 10/4/1932) President Hindenburg invited Franz Von Papen to form a government. On
1/6/1932 Von
Papen formed one that excluded
the Nazis. However on 14/6/1932 Hitler promised
to co-operate with Von Papen. On 16/6/1932 the ban on Nazi storm troopers in Germany was lifted.
10/5/1932, Albert Lebrun succeeded Doumier as French
President.
8/5/1932, The Left gained around 100 seats in French
elections.
7/5/1932, Albert Thomas, French socialist politician
(Minister of Armament in WW1), died aged 53
6/5/1932, President Doumer of France was assassinated.
24/4/1932. The Nazis led in four state elections (Prussia,
Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Hamburg; in Prussia they were the largest single Party
in Parliament). In the Prussian
state Parliament, their share of the seats rose from 6 to 162.
13/4/1932. The Nazi
paramilitary SA and SS were banned in Germany.
10/4/1932. Paul Von Hindenburg
won the German Presidency against Adolf Hitler after a second ballot to
secure a majority. See 31/5/1932. Paul von Hindenburg received 19.5 million
votes, 53%, against Hitler, 13.4 million votes, 36.8%. Thalmann
received 3.7 million, 10.2%.
13/3/1932. Hindenburg
defeated Hitler in the German presidential
elections.� Paul von Hindenbiurg received
18.6 million votes (49.6%); Adolf Hitler received 11.3 million votes
(30.1%), and the Communist Ernst Thalmann received 4.9 million votes
(13.2%). Because Hindenburg was o.4% below an absolute majority, a second round
was held on 10/4/1932.
10/3/1932, Paul von Hindenburg gave a radio address in
his one and only public speech of the German presidential campaign, emphasizing
his non-party status and pledging to "oppose those who merely stand for
party interests"
25/2/1932. Adolf
Hitler was granted German citizenship.
He had been technically stateless since renouncing Austrian citizenship in
1925.
22/2/1932. The Nazis
choose Hitler as presidential candidate.
7/1/1932, German Chancellor
Heinrich
Bruning declared that Germany could not, and would not, resume
Reparations payments.
30/12/1931. The Nazi Party was
formed in Holland.
15/11/1931. The Nazi Party won elections in
the state of Hesse.
7/11/1931, French police launched large raids against
Corsican bandits.
17/10/1931, 100 were injured in fighting between Nazis and
Communists in Braunschweig, Germany.
22/7/1931. Britain, France,
and the USA renewed credits for Germany to help it through financial problems.
13/7/1931. All German
banks closed till 5/8/1931 following the collapse of Danatbank.
9/7/1931, In Germany, Nazi
leader Adolf
Hitler and German Nationalist leader Alfred Hugenberg agreed to
cooperate.
13/6/1931. German bank
failure (Danatbank) caused the closure of all German banks.
13/5/1931, In France, Paul Doumier was elected President.
11/5/1931. In
Austria, the bankruptcy of
Credit-Anstalt began Europe�s financial collapse.
5/4/1931, Germany formed a
customs union with Austria. See 25/3/1931.
25/3/1931. Germany
announced plans for a customs union with Austria, in defiance of the terms of
the Treaty of Versailles.� France and Britain strongly objected. See
5/4/1931.
24/2/1931. German
unemployment reached almost 5 million.
2/2/1931. The Nazis demanded
that Germany withdraw from the League of Nations.
27/1/1931, Pierre Laval became Prime Minister in France.
7/1/1931, State funeral of MarshaL Joffre in Paris.
3/1/1931, Joseph Joffre, French marshal and commander in chief of the
French armies on the Western Front, died.
23/9/1930, Three Reichswehr artillery officers went on trial
before the Leipzig Supreme Court in Germany, charged with high treason for
conspiring with the Nazis to overthrow the German Government.
16/9/1930, The Berlin city council met for the first time
since summer recess, but broke up in turmoil after the Communists and Nazis
introduced a motion demanding that the council dissolve. The motion was
defeated.
15/9/1930. Adolf Hitler, because he was an Austrian citizen, was barred
from taking his seat at the Reichstag. There was further trouble at the
Reichstag when Nazi deputies turned up, on 13/10/1930, wearing uniform; this
was illegal for civilians.
14/9/1930, The Berlin stock market fell 20 points as news that
the Nazis (denouncing the Versailles
Treaty) had gained 107 seats to become
the second largest party after the Socialists.�
Before the elections they had only 12 seats. Their vote rose from 800,000 in 1928 to 6.409,000,
only 2,000,000 behind the Socialists. Adolf Hitler played on voter�s fears of
economic chaos and social disorder. He blamed Jews and Bolsheviks as the cause
of the nation�s problems and promised to make Germany great again.
15/7/1930, Jacques Derrida, French philosopher, was born
(died 2004).
30/6/1930. France pulled the
last of its troops out of the Rhineland, 5 years before the date set by
the Versailles Treaty.
17/5/1930, French Prime Minister Andr� Tardieu decided to
withdraw the last French troops from the Rhineland (they departed by
30/6/1930).
3/4/1930. Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor, was born.
27/3/1930, In Germany, Hermann Muller�s Government resigned because of Social Democrat opposition to
planned cuts in Unemployment Benefits.
6/3/1930, Alfred von Tirpitz, German Admiral, died.
23/2/1930, Nazi thug Horst Wessel
died in a Berlin hospital of blood poisoning, aged 22. He had been shot
in a street brawl 14/1/1930. The Nazis made him a martyr, and used his
�Horst-Wessel-song�, with anti-Semitic lyrics and a tune plagiarised from
older Hamburg sailor�s ballads.
23/1/1930, In Germany, Wilhelm Frick
was appointed Minister for Education and the Interior in Thuringia, the first Nazi party member to become a
Minister in State Government.
8/12/1929. Hitler�s Nazi
Party won municipal elections in Bavaria.
24/11/1929, Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France,
died.
12/10/1929, The last British
troops left the Rhineland, moving out of their base in Wiesbaden.
22/9/1929. Communists and Nazis fought on the streets of
Berlin.
27/9/1929, In France, Raymond Poincare resigned due to ill health. Aristide Briand
became Prime Minister.
8/6/1929. At The Hague, Germany�s war debts were rescheduled.
Germany was no longer required to pay for the reconstruction of France�s
war-damaged provinces. The Young Plan, named after its American author Owen
Young, removed controls on the German economy. However Germany must still repay
�1.65 billion over the next 40 years, including �2 million a year that Britain
insists upon to cover its American debt. Militant
Germans, including the Nazis,
demonstrated against these payments.
3/5/1929. Severe civil unrest in Berlin.
1/5/1929, Communists in Berlin attacked policemen. Three
days of clashes ensued, with 15 dead.
20/3/1929. The French military commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch died aged
68.
15/2/1929. German unemployment was over 3 million.
In 1926 it had been 2 million, falling to around 1.3 million in 1927 and 1928.
6/2/1929, Germany ratified the Kellogg-Briand anti war pact.
15/1/1929 The USA ratified the Kellogg-Briand anti war pact.
1928. Jean Marie Le Pen, French Far
Right Wing politician was born, son of a Breton fisherman. He formed the
National Front Party in 1972.
27/8/1928. In Paris, 15 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact,
outlawing war. The USSR signed the pact on 6/9/1928.
28/6/1928, In
Germany, Hermann
Muller, Social Democrat, was appointed Chancellor following the
resignation of Wilhelm
Marx on 13/6/1928.
13/6/1928, In
Germany, Chancellor
Wilhelm Marx resigned.
20/5/1928, In Germany, Socialists won the elections. The
result was, Social Democrats rose from 131 seats to 153, to become the largest
party but without an overall majority. Centre Party, 62 seats. Communists, 54
seats. German National People�s Party, 73 seats. German People�s Party, 45
seats. Nazis,
12 seats.
22/4/1928. In French elections Right-wing Parties won 325 out of the 610 seats.
28/3/1928. France shortened its term of compulsory military
service to one year.
16/9/1927. President Von
Hindenburg
repudiated German responsibility for the Great War (World War One).
24/7/1927, The Menin Gate, a
memorial at Ypres to the soldiers of the British Empire, was unveiled by Lord Plumer.
7/2/1927, Emile Coue, French psychotherapist, died at
Nancy.
8/9/1926. The League of Nations voted to admit Germany as a
member. On 11/9/1926 Spain left the League in protest at Germany joining.
29/8/1926. A Nazi Party
rally was held at Nuremberg.
24/4/1926. Germany signed a friendship treaty with the USSR.
13/3/1926. Germany was refused a place on the League of
Nations Council.
8/2/1926. Germany applied to join the League of Nations.
2/2/1926, Giscard D�Estang, French President, was born.
30/1/1926. British
troops ended a 7-year occupation of the Rhineland.
1/12/1925, The Peace of Locarno was signed (by UK,
France, Italy, and Germany), guaranteeing peace and existing national frontiers
in Europe.
27/11/1925, Aristide Briand formed a Government in France.
9/11/1925. The German
Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad (SS), was formed.
16/10/1925, France and Germany concluded the Locarno Treaty, guaranteeing their
mutual frontier. Italy and Britain also signed.�
Germany reaffirmed its renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine and guaranteed
not to attack France or Belgium.� Russia feared the Locarno Treaty meant an
alliance of western powers against it, see 24/4/1926.
12/10/1925, Germany and the USSR signed a commercial treaty.
5/10/1925, The Locarno Conference opened, to decide
the German border and future of the Rhineland.
13/7/1925. French
troops begin to withdraw from the Rhineland.
18/6/1925. France accepted German proposals for a security
pact. Hitler�s
Mein Kampf was published.
25/4/1925. Hindenburg became President of
Germany. He won 48.5% of the popular vote, against 42.5% for Wilhelm Marx of
the Centre Party.
10/4/1925, In France, Paul Painleve became Prime Minister after the
defeat of Edouard
Herriot.
26/3/1925, Hindenburg was elected President of Germany.
27/2/1925, Hitler spoke at a Nazi meeting at a Munich beer hall.
14/2/1925. The ban on the
Nazi Party in Bavaria was lifted.
15/1/1925, After a month of intense political negotiations in
Germany, Hans
Luther (Independent) succeeded Wilhelm Marx as Chancellor, and Gustav
Stresemann became Foreign Minister.
20/12/1924. Adolf Hitler was freed from prison on parole after serving just
8 months of his jail term for high treason.
7/12/1924, In German elections, the Communists (45 seats)
lost ground to the Social Democrats (131 seats). The Conservative Nationalists
also gained (103 seats) whilst the Nazis slumped to 14 seats. The
Centre Party won 69 seats.
2/12/1924, The UK and Germany signed a trade pact.
30/11/1924, The last French
and Belgian troops left the Ruhr.
7/11/1924, Germany announced its first balanced budget since
the war.
30/8/1924, The German
Reichsbank was made independent of the government.� It issued a new currency, the ReichsMark, at 1,000,000 million old Marks to the new
currency.
17/8/1924. French and Belgian
troops agreed to withdraw from the Ruhr within 1 year following Germany�s
agreement on war reparations.
16/8/1924, The Allies and
Germany accepted the Dawes Plan, for a revised timetable of reparations.
8/8/1924, A ten-nation
summit agreed a plan drawn up by US banker Charles Dawes, designed to assist Germany�s
economy and fulfil reparation payments.
8/7/1924, Adolf Hitler resumed leadership of the Nazi Party.
11/5/1924, In French elections the Left bloc emerged with the
largest number of seats, 287 out of 581.
4/5/1924, In elections to
the German Parliament (Reichstag), the Nationalists made gains, winning 95
seats, as did the Communists with 62 seats. The Social Democrats won 100 seats
and the Centre Party had 65 seats. For
the first time the National Socialist (Nazi) Party entered Parliament, with 32 seats.
1/4/1924. Adolf
Hitler was jailed for 5 years for his
part in the abortive Munich beer hall putsch.
26/2/1924, Adolf Hitler was
charged with treason for his part in
the abortive Munich beer hall putsch.
28/12/1923. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who designed the 300
metre Eiffel Tower, Paris, died aged 91.
15/11/1923. Rampant German inflation peaked with the Mark worth 4,200,000 Million to the US Dollar, and 10,000,000 Million
to the UK Pound � if you could find anyone willing to change your marks for
dollars. It had been 4.2 to the Dollar in 1914, 350,000 to the pound (1 pound
was 5 dollars) on 1/6/1923, and 622,000 to the pound on 22/6/1923. A loaf of
bread cost 63 pfennigs in 1918, and 250 pfennigs in January 1923. But by July
1923 a loaf cost 3,465 pfennigs, and by November 1923, 201,000 million marks. Workers were paid twice a day and by the
evening a loaf of bread would cost what a house was worth in the morning.
Money had effectively become
worthless; trade was done by barter. Middle class families with cash in the
bank had been ruined. The problem had
been that, after French troops occupied the Ruhr to enforce war reparations,
the German Government began to print marks in huge numbers. German industry
was unable to produce the goods� to match
the vast increase in money supply. On 15/11/1923 Germany introduced the
Rentemark, tied to the country�s real estate. Each rentemark was worth 1,000
million old marks.
9/11/1923. The Munich
beer hall putsch marked the start of Hitler�s
rise to power in Germany. This
putsch against the Bavarian Government failed and Hitler was arrested on
11/11/1923 in a village outside Munich and imprisoned.� Hitler then spent several months in prison in
Landsberg Am Lech, Bavaria, where he dictated part of his Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.
23/10/1923, A Communist
uprising occurred in Hamburg.
22/10/1923, Communists in Hamburg led by Ernst Th�lmann were secretly
called on to mobilize.
11/10/1923, The German Mark reached 10,000 million to the UK
Pound.
1/10/1923, The German mark reached 242,000,000 to the US$
30/9/1923, A German uprising in Dusseldorf against French
occupation of The Ruhr.
27/9/1923. Martial law
was proclaimed in Germany, under Article 48 of the Constitution.
15/9/1923, As the German
economy deteriorated, the German Bank Rate was raised to 90%.
2/9/1923, Hitler fiercely denounced the Weimar Republic.
10/8/1923, Civil unrest
began in Germany; strikes and riots, until 13/8/1923.
6/8/1923, In Germany, Gustav Stresemann was appointed Chancellor
following the sudden resignation of Wilhelm Cuno. Stresemann formed a coalition
Government.
1/7/1923, The German Mark reached 160,000 to the US$.� Pre 1914 it had been 4.20; during 1922 the
rate fell from 162 to over 7,000 to the US$.
31/5/1923, Prince Ranier III, prince of the House of Grimaldi, was born in Monaco.
31/3/1923, Rioting German
workers at the Krupps works in Essen in French-occupied Ruhr were shot by French troops.
1/2/1923. Inflation in
Germany continued; �1 was now worth 220,000 Marks. On 2/1/1922� �1 had been worth 30,000 Marks.
27/1/1923. The German Nazi Party held its first rally, in
Munich.
12/1/1923 �Germany protested at the occupation of the Ruhr (see
11/1/1923) and ceased all coal reparations shipments to France.� The French erected customs posts and
economically divided the region from the rest of Germany.� This was a serious blow to the German
economy, especially after the loss of the industrial Upper Silesia to Poland.� The
resultant economic disruption hit the German economy and its currency began to
collapse. �See 31/7/1925.
11/1/1923, Germany defaulted
on reparations payments (see 26/12/1922), and French and Belgian troops occupied Essen and The
Ruhr.
23/12/1922, Birth of Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor.
16/12/1922, The Reparation
Commission accused Germany of intentional shortfalls in wood and coal
deliveries to France.� See 11/1/1923.
22/11/1922, Wilhelm Cuno succeeded Wirth as German Chancellor.
4/9/1922, Silesia voted to remain with Prussia.
24/6/1922, German Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau, aged 54, was
murdered by anti-Semitic
nationalists.
16/4/1922. Germany restored relations with the USSR, signing
the Second Treaty of Rapallo. Secretly, the USSR agreed to let Germany build and
test weapons in Soviet territory that were forbidden within Germany under the
Treaty of Versailles.
26/2/1922, Britain
and France concluded a 20-year alliance.
25/2/1922, The
French murderer Henri
Landru, known as Bluebeard, was guillotined. He had killed 10 women after
luring them to his flat by dating adverts in newspapers.
31/1/1922, In
Germany, Walter
Rathenau was appointed Foreign Minister.
15/1/1922, In
France, Raymond
Poincare formed a Government in France, following Aristide
Briand�s resignation on 12//1/1903.
13/1/1922, At a
conference at Cannes, the Allies agreed to postpone Germany�s reparation
payments.
2/1/1922. As inflation
soared in Germany, �1 bought over 30,000 German Marks. See 1/2/1923.
15/12/1921. Germany sought
a moratorium on reparations.
4/11/1921. The German
currency began to collapse.
17/10/1921, Ludwig III, King of Bavaria, died.
14/10/1921, Demolition of the
great fortress of Heligoland was completed.
12/10/1921, The Council of the League of Nations awarded
the upper two thirds of Silesia to Poland (along with most of its coal mines and
steelworks). Germany reluctantly accepted the decision.
30/9/1921. French troops
pulled out of the Ruhr.
21/9/1921, Large explosion at German factory near Mannheim;
2,000 killed or injured.
26/8/1921, The former German Finance Minister, Mathias
Erzberger, was assassinated by a nationalist gang.
25/8/1921. Peace treaty (Treaty
of Berlin) signed between Germany and the USA.
29/7/1921 Hitler became President of the National Socialist Party.
28/5/1921, In Germany, Chancellor Wirth appointed industrialist Walter� Rathenau as Minister for
Reconstruction, including responsibility for reparations.
20/5/1921, Germany and China resumed diplomatic relations.
6/5/1921, Germany and Russia signed a peace treaty.
4/5/1921. France invaded the
Ruhr to enforce reparations.
2/5/1921, France mobilised
its troops in preparation for an invasion of the Ruhr.
27/4/1921, The Allies
claimed �6,650 million (132,000 million gold Marks) compensation from Germany. Germany reluctantly agreed, but it would put a
great strain on the German economy.� The
Fehrenbach German government at once resigned.�
The Allies threatened that if Germany did not agree, they would occupy
the Ruhr.
24/4/1921. Germany pleaded
in vain to the USA for aid on reparations. On 27/4/1921 reparations were set at �6.65 billion.
24/3/1921, Pro-Communist riots in Hamburg, Germany.
23/3/1921. Germany
defaulted on reparations.
20/3/1921, A plebiscite in Upper Silesia resulted in a
majority vote for remaining with Germany.�
Germany tried to claim that the whole territory should therefore remain
as German, no part passing to Poland.�
The resultant crisis, with France supporting Poland, was passed to the
League of Nations, see 20/10/1921.
8/3/1921. Because of
Germany�s failure to give a satisfactory response to demands for war
reparations, Allied troops occupied the Ruhr towns. Germany agreed to pay war reparations on
11/5/1921. These consisted of �10 billion in gold over the next 42 years plus a
12.5% tax on Germany�s exports.
1/3/1921, Allied troops
entered Germany to enforce war reparations payments.
24/1/1921, The
Reparations Conference in Paris fixed German war reparations at US$ 56 billion,
to be paid over 42 years; of this sum, France would get 52%. German politician
reacted with outrage, seeing this as �enslavement of the German economy�, and
defaulted on repayments on 23/3/1921. Under pressure from the US, the Allies
reduced their claim but when Germany defaulted on this, too, they reoccupied
the Rhineland.
21/1/1921, The
French Chamber of Deputies approved Aristide Briand as the new Premier, along
with his government, with a vote of 475 to 68 of confidence in his more
moderate policy regarding German reparations due to France.
16/1/1921, In
France, Aristide
Briand formed a Government.
10/1/1921, In Leipzig,
war trials began at the German Supreme Court.
30/12/1920, The
French Communist Party was founded at Tours.
10/12/1920, Woodrow Wilson
and Leon
Bourgeois were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
23/9/1920, Alexandre
Millerande was elected President of France, succeeding Paul Deschanel
who had resigned due to ill-health.
10/8/1920. Other post-war
provisions included the creation of
Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia,� Galicia was given to Poland, Transylvania to Romania, and Istria,
Trentino, and South Tyrol to Italy. Greece and Yugoslavia acquired parts of
Bulgaria.� German East Africa went to
Britain, the Samoan Islands to New Zealand, and South West Africa to South
Africa.� Germany itself lost territory to
Poland, France, Denmark, and Lithuania.
11/7/1920, The result of a plebiscite in East and West
Prussia was a 97% vote to remain with Germany.
21/6/1920, In Germany, Konstantin Fehrenbach of the Centre Party
became Chancellor. His coalition Government of Social Democrats and Centre
Party was joined by the People�s Party.
14/6/1920, Max Weber, German sociologist died aged 56.
6/6/1920, In Germany, the first elections held after the
Treaty of Versailles showed a shift away from the Social Democrats and Centre,
towards extremist Parties.
1/4/1920, The Nazi Party
was officially founded in Germany.
19/4/1920, The Conference of San Remo opened.� Following on from the London Conference (see
12/1/2920), post World War One frontiers in Europe were settled.
19/3/1920. In Germany, Socialists rebelled and captured Essen.
14/3/1920, A plebiscite in the middle zone of Schleswig
favoured integration with Germany.
13/3/1920. A pro-Royalist coup was attempted in Berlin, led by
Dr Wolfgang
Kapp. The German Government had to retreat to Stuttgart but the
German workers opposed the coup and began a general strike; the coup plotters
had to flee.
24/2/1920. The National Socialist Workers (Nazi) party,
led by Adolf Hitler, published a programme for a Third Reich.
6/2/1920, The League of Nations took over administration of Saarland from France.
5/2/1920, Germany refused to
hand over alleged war criminals to the Allies.
23/1/1920, The Netherlands refused to extradite Kaiser Wilhelm
II, as demanded by the Suprme Allied War Council.
20/1/1920, Peace Talks in
Paris concluded, see 18/1/1919.
17/1/1920, Paul Deschanel was elected President of
France.
31/7/1919. Germany adopted the Weimar Constitution, named after the town where the constitution
was drafted.
12/7/1919, Britain and France authorised the resumption of
commercial relations with Germany.
4/7/1919. France demobilised
its troops.
28/6/1919. The Treaty of
Versailles was signed. This peace treaty between the
Allies and the Germans was signed at Versailles and officially ended World
War One, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand started it.
Alsace Lorraine was returned to France, German colonies were under mandate,
German East Africa went to Britain and German South West Africa (Namibia) to
South Africa.� The west bank of the Rhine
and a zone 30 miles deep on its east bank was demilitarised. See 7/5/1919.
22/6/1919, The German
National Assembly at Weimar authorised the signing of the Peace Treaty.
20/6/1919, The German
Chancellor, Schiedemann,
fell due to his opposition to the Paris Peace Plan. On 21/6/1919 Gustave Bauer
formed a Cabinet comprising Social Democrats, Centre, and Democrats.
29/5/1919, German delegates
made counter-proposals to the Paris Peace conference,
7/5/1919, Peace terms were dictated to Germany.� Germany had
to ceded Alsace-Loraine to France; Upper Silesia, most of Poznan, and West
Prussia went to Poland.� This separated
East Prussia from the rest of Germany as Poland gained a corridor to the sea at
Danzig.� North Schleswig went to Germany
and Memel went to Lithuania. See 28/6/1919.
6/5/1919. Peace conference
shared out former German colonies.
2/5/1919. German troops entered Munich to crush the fledgling
Soviet Republic in Bavaria.
4/4/1919. At Versailles, the
Germans agreed to make Danzig a �free city�.
11/3/1919. The Allies agreed
to supply famine-hit Germany with food.
22/2/1919. After the murder of the Bavarian Prime Minister, Kurt Eisner,
a Soviet Republic was declared in
Bavaria.
4/2/1919, The �Soviet Republic of Bremen� was suppressed.
23/1/1919. The Socialists won the German elections.
18/1/1919, Peace talks opened at Versailles.� See 20/1/1920. 27 nations attended; Germany
was excluded
12/1/1919, Delegates arrived
in Paris for the Peace talks, see 18/1/1919.
11/1/1919. The Spartacus League initiated a week of revolt in
Berlin. Led by Rosa Luxembburg and Karl Leibknecht, they wanted a Communist
workers State� in Germany
10/1/1919, Bremen
declared itself a Soviet Republic; this was crushed on 4/2/1919,
5/1/1919.� The Nazi
(National Socialist) Party was founded in Germany. Adolf Hitler, a soldier in World War One
who was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, and who was angry at the armistice
terms imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, and extremely opposed to
Communism, headed the new Party. Hitler was a poor student in the Austrian secondary
school system. He became an artist but failed to gain entry to the Academy of
Fine Arts; Hitler
was a melancholic character, obsessed by fears that Jews, linked to communists,
would take over the world.
30/12/1918, The German Communist Party was founded.� However within a fortnight, irregular German
troops had murdered its leaders.
23/12/1918, Helmut Schmidt, German leader, was born (died
2015)
6/12/1918. Allied troops
occupied Cologne.
5/12/1918, The British Prime
Minister demanded that the ex-German Kaiser be prosecuted by an International
Court.
2/12/1918, One of the last
acts of the British War Cabinet; it demanded the extradition of the German Kaiser Wilhelm.
1/12/1918. The British Second
Army entered Germany.
30/11/1918. German occupation of Bucharest,
capital of Rumania, ended, see 6/12/1916.
25/11/1918, French troops
entered Strasbourg.
23/11/1918, Mutinous German
sailors occupied the Chancellery and took Ebert hostage; he was rescued on 24/11/1918 by
soldiers from Potsdam.
21/11/1918. Surrender of the German Fleet to the Allies at Scapa
Flow, for internment. On 21/6/1919
it was scuttled at Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys.
18/11/1918. The German
occupation of Brussels ended, see 20/8/1914.
11/11/1918. Armistice Day. World War One ended. Fighting ceased on the Western Front, and
Austro-Hungary signed an armistice with the Allies. See 29/9/1918.� Church bells rang out across Britain in
celebration. The Allies had not expected such a sudden collapse of Germany; in
September 1918 they were planning campaigns for 1919. However General
Ludendorff was shaken by the sudden Allied advance (see 8/8/1918)
and begged Kaiser
Wilhelm to seek an armistice immediately. The Armistice was signed
in Marshal
Foch�s railway carriage, near Compiegne.� Warsaw
became the capital of a restored Polish State. The armistice required
Germany to relinquish 5,000 heavy guns, 30,000 machine guns, 2,000 aircraft,
all U-boats, 5,000 locomotives,� 150,000
wagons and 5,000 lorries. The surface fleet was to be interned (see 21/11/1918),
the Allies were to occupy the Rhineland, and the blockade of German ports would
continue. World War One cost 9 million lives, with a further 27 million
injured. Britain alone had lost 750,000 men, and a further 200,000 from the
Empire, with another 1.5 million seriously injured. The War had cost the Allies
an estimated US$ 126 billion, and the Central Powers a further US$ 60 billion.
Britons now celebrated, and wages rose, although higher food prices eroded some
of those gains. Women, at least those over 30, finally had the vote, and
smoking, gambling and movies boomed, with Charlie Chaplin as movie star. The US was the greatest beneficiary of the War. US
losses amounted to 53,000 men, a small number compared to 8,500,000 casualties
of the European combatants. US industry had become more efficient, and key
sectors such as chemicals had learned to do without Europe; the US aviation
industry had been transformed. Economically, The US had needed European capital
before 1914; by 1918 Europe owed the US some US$ 10,000 million.
9/11/1918. �Kaiser
William II abdicated and fled to
Holland, and a German Republic was founded. On 11/11/1918 the Emperor of Austria, Karl, abdicated and a Republic
was founded.
8/11/1918, Abdication of the King of Wurttemberg and Duke
Ernest of Brunswick.
3/11/1918.. Austria
signed an armistice with the Allies.
30/10/1918. Austria
completed the evacuation of its troops from Italian territory. Austria became an independent German
speaking state.� See 23/10/1918,
28/10/1918, Mutiny
broke out amongst German sailors at Kiel, spreading rapidly to Hamburg and
Bremen. On 7/11/1918 insurrection broke out at Munich.
23/10/1918, Italian forces counterattacked
against the Austrians near Vittorio Veneto, reaching the Piave River on
27/10/1918,� By 30/10.1918 the Italians,
with the aid of British forces, had the Austrians in full retreat.
20/10/1918. Germany stopped
U-boat warfare.
19/10/1918, Belgian forces
recaptured Zeebrugge and Brugges.
18/10/1918. Lille
was recaptured from the Germans.
12/10/1918, Germany and
Austria agreed to US President Woodrow�s demand that their
troops should return to their own territory before an armistice could be signed.
9/10/1918, British forces
took Le Cateau.
8/10/1918, The French retook
Cambrai, see 26/8/1914.
29/9/1918. (1) Allied troops captured part of the Hindenburg Line.
Ludendorff called for an armistice to avert a�
catastrophe for Germany. Negotiations opened with President Woodrow Wilson of the
USA on 4/10/1918 but fighting continued till 11/11/1918.
(2) Bulgaria signed an armistice with the
Allies.
26/9/1918, General Allied
offensive on the Western Front; the
Germans were fighting now only to cover their retreat.
14/9/1918, Austria-Hungary
attempted to negotiate a separate peace deal with the Allies, which was refused.
13/9/1918. In the USA, 14
million men had registered for conscription.
12/9/1918, At the Battle of
St Mihel, the US 1st Army under Pershing captured the St Mihel salient.
4/9/1918. The Germans retreated to the Siegfried Line.
30/8/1918. British troops crossed
the Somme.
8/8/1918. General Haig initiated a surprise offensive against the Germans
at Amiens which started a continuous retreat of the Germans through to Armistice Day on 11/11/1918.
The lessons of The Somme (see 13/11/1916) had finally been learnt. Low flying
aircraft drowned out the noise of tank manoeuvres, ammunition dumps were
camouflaged, and decoy tank movements distracted the Germans. When the Allies
began a major creeping bombardment, the tanks moved in behind to crush the
barbed wire and infantry swiftly followed to consolidate the territorial gains.
On their part, the Germans were demoralised by the stalling of their great
Spring offensive (see 13/4/1918) and also by news of hunger, rioting and
strikes back in Germany. Reinforced by US troops, the Allies found the Germans
ready to retreat, and advanced eight miles on the first day.� The battle lines had become mobile again, and
were moving east. In Ludendorff�s words, it was a black day for the
German Army.
The Allies were reinforced by US
troops and further British troops were returning from Palestine. The British
Prime Minister, David
Lloyd George, agreed to release reserve divisions of conscripts,
which he had held back, now convinced he was not simply sending them into
another meat grinder like The Somme or Passchendaele. With an assembly of 456
tanks and 2,000 guns and howitzers the Allies forced the Germans back on a
14-mile front, for 8 miles. 400 German guns were captured, along with 12,000
prisoners. The new Allied tactics
continued to work against stiff German resistance and by mid September the
Germans had retreated to the massive defences of their Hindenburg Line, 3 miles
in depth. However the Germans were demoralised and after 10 days of fighting
the Hindenburg Line was broken through at Saint Quentin. German soldiers
going on home leave, passing fresh troops travelling west to the front, taunted
them with calls of �you�re only prolonging the war�. However casualties on all sides were very
high. In the three months following Amiens, August 1918, 531,000� French soldiers died or were wounded or
captured, as many as in the eight months of Verdun 1916. The figure for US
soldiers for those three months was 127,000, over twice as many as lost in Vietnam.
For British and Empire troops, the toll was 411,000, the same as during the 4 �
months of The Somme. German losses were even higher; 785,000 killed and
wounded, and 386,000 prisoners taken by the Allies.
A major issue for Germany was lack of food. Germany had
been over 80% self-sufficient in food in 1914, but the military had removed
labour from the farms without compensatory inputs of fertiliser or
mechanisation. German food production�
plummeted and by 1918 German citizens had just 64% of pre-war cereals,
18% of the meat, and 12% of the fats they had consumed in 1913.
On the German Home Front, Ludendorff
and the other Generals knew the War was lost weeks before the November 1918
Armistice. Although by then Germany was effectively a military dictatorship,
the military pretended that surrender was only due to the wishes of civilian
politicians. This perpetuated a post-War myth that the German Army had not been
defeated at all, but betrayed by left-wing politicians, that the German Army
was in fact invincible. Less than 20 years later that myth helped fuel the rise
of the Nazis.
From this day, the final German retreat began. Closing
stage of World War Two.
18/7/1918. Allied forces
launched a counter offensive on the Marne, capturing Soissons (see 9/4/1918).
15/7/1918, The Second Battle of the Marne began, when General Ludendorff attempted an advance; this
was thwarted by British, French, and US troops.� Marshall Ferdinand Foch of France� launched an offensive on the Marne which led
the Germans to seek an armistice in November 1918.
15/6/1918, The Austrians
began an offensive against the Italians along the Piave River Front; they were
attempting to break through to the fertile farmlands of the Veneto.� See 23/10/1918.
10/6/1918, The Battle of
Belleau Wood ended.
9/6/1918, Germany opened an
offensive near Compeigne.
6/6/1918, Battle of Belleau
Wood began.
27/5/1918, The Germans took
Soissons in a thrust towards Paris.
9/5/1918, British troops
averted a German attack on Ostend, Belgium.
7/5/1918. Romania signed a peace treaty
with Germany (The Fourth Treaty of
Bucharest).� Southern Dobruja was
transferred from Romania to Bulgaria; Bulgaria had been seeking the whole of
the Dobruja.� See 27/11/1919.
29/4/1918. The last big
German offensive on the Western Front petered out.
23/4/1918.British forces raided Zeebrugge.
They accomplished their objective of sinking concrete-filled British ships in
the harbour entrance to block it, bottling up German submarines.
9/4/1918. Germany
launched a major offensive at Ypres.
Reinforced by the arrival of 70 divisions freed up on the eastern front by the
capitulation of Russia, Germany tried to knock the western Allies out of the
war before new American troops could arrive. However instead of concentrating
his attack here on the British forces, Ludenforff ordered secondary attacks on the
French sector of the front at Chemin des Dames on 27/5/1918 and west of Reims
on 15/7/1918. The Allied line held and a major counter offensive was launched
on 18/7/1918,
28/3/1918, Ludendorff launched Operation Mars against the left wing of
the British Third Army, to force a salient into Allied lines, but he was
repulsed.
26/3/1918, The Battle of Rosieres, northern France,
began.
24/3/1918, The Battle of Baupame, northern France, began.
23/3/1918. Ludendorff made a tactical error. Believing the Allied forces
were already almost defeated, he failed to set definite objectives for his
offensive and simply made general thrusts, gaining territory to the north west,
west and south west, towards Beauvais and Paris. However he should have concentrated his efforts towards capturing the
strategic rail junction of Amiens, whose loss would have forced the Allies to
the negotiating table before US troops could be fully deployed. Meanwhile
German troops shelled Paris from a distance of 75 miles, using a large gun
called �Big Bertha�.Bertha�.
21/3/1918. Major German offensive began on the Somme. This was Ludendorff�s
desperate bid for victory before American troops could become effective.� British
casualties were over 300,000, and the Germans advanced on a 50 mile-wide front,
in an attempt to reach the Channel ports, and drive a wedge between the British
and French Armies,� but the German advance was halted.
The last German offensives on the Western Front began.
Penultimate stage of World War One.
3/3/1918. The
Bolshevik government in Russia assigned the Treaty of Brest Litovsk with the Germans. Lenin
insisted on signing, against the wishes of Trotsky.�
Trotsky
wanted the Communist Revolution to spread throughout Germany, but Lenin
feared the rapid advance of German troops into Russia, approaching Petrograd.
Russia lost heavily in terms of
land and industry (Russia
lost 56 million inhabitants, 79% of its iron, and 89% of its coal production), but the Bolsheviks needed peace at any
cost before their new and shaky administration was overthrown, by
Germany or by anti-Bolshevik White Russians and Czechoslovak troops.� Under
this Treaty, Finland regained its independence from Russia.� The Baltic Republics were ceded to
Germany.� Communists (recruited from
Finnish labourers) joined Red Guards� to
try and re-establish Communist control in Finland.� Germany moved in to repulse them.� See 6/4/1918.�
Turkey regained territories lost to Russia even in 1877.
For events of
1917 Russian Revolution see Russia
25/2/1918. Minsk was occupied
by the Germans.
21/2/1918. Australian cavalry
captured Jericho from the Turks.
18/2/1918, Germany launched
a big offensive on the Russian Front.
9/2/1918. Ukraine signed a
separate peace treaty with Germany.
28/1/1918. A general workers strike began in Berlin.
20/1/1918, The German naval
base at Ostend was bombarded by Allied ships.
31/12/1917, During
the year 1917 German submarines sank 6,500,000 tons of Allied shipping whilst
only 2,700,000 tons was built. In April 1917 Britain had only two months� worth
of food stocks. However with US destroyer patrols searching for German
submarines, escorted transatlantic convoys and the mining of the seas between
Scotland and Norway, Allied losses were dramatically reduced and after April
1918 never exceeded 200,000 tons a month.
22/12/1917. The Bolsheviks
opened peace talks with Germany and Austria. The Allies accused |Russia of
betrayal.
10/12/1917, Italy torpedoed
the Austrian warship Wien in Trieste.
5/12/1917. Russia signed
an armistice with Germany, at Brest-Litovsk.
3/12/1917, Britain refused to
recognise Bolshevik Russia.� Meanwhile
German and Austrian delegates met at Brest-Litovsk to end Russian participation
in World War One, see 3/3/1918.
1/12/1917. German East Africa cleared of German forces.
29/11/1917, The Inter Allied War Conference opened. Lloyd George
of Britain, Georges
Clemenceau of France and Baron Sidney Sonnino of Italy were concerned
that US soldiers and material quickly reach the front lines against Germany,
since post-Revolution Russia had ceased fighting.
20/11/1917. Major British tank
offensive at Cambrai.� The Battle of
Cambrai ended on 3/12/1917.
15/11/1917, General Allenby advanced to within three miles of Jaffa.
12/11/1917, Austrian forces
established a bridgehead at Zenson, 20 miles north-east of Venice.
10/11/1917, The Third Battle of Ypres ended, see
31/7/1917. The plans of British General Haig to break through the German lines
was in tatters; all
the Allies had gained was a few square miles of swamp and an obliterated
village, after 156 days of fighting and 250,000 deaths, at Paschaendaele.
The tremors from the mining of the�
Messines Ridge had been felt in Downing Street. That August had been the
wettest in living memory, turning the ground into an impassable quagmire;
Allied troops faced death by drowning as much as by gunfire. The constant
shelling had disrupted the system of dykes and streams which drained the flat
fields of Flanders. Meanwhile in
Palestine, British forces captured Tel-Aviv.
6/11/1917. Canadian troops captured the
village of Paschendaele, during the
Third Battle of Ypres.
5/11/1917. American
troops under General Pershing went into action for the first time on the
Western Front.
1/11/1917, In Germany, Count von Hertling was appointed Chancellor.
31/10/1917. The Italian army was shattered
unexpectedly by a German onslaught in northern Italy and was retreating towards
the Piave River, just 15 miles
from Venice. The Italian Second Army had held the Austrians off during 1916 and
had captured the fortress of Monte Santo only 2 months earlier. The Italians
had seemed well dug in around the mountains of Caporetto and Udine. However a
heavy creeping artillery barrage by the Germans and gas attacks drove the
Italians back. Morale collapsed within the Italian army, and despite roadblocks
and court martials, up to half a million soldiers deserted.� A further 300,000 Italian soldiers were
captured by the Germans, and the Italians lost 10,000 dead and 30,000 wounded
in the German attacks.
24/10/1917, The Austrian
offensive against Italy was halted on the Piave River.� Boroevics army was so reduced by Italian
forces during August and September 1917�
that Germany and Austria feared a collapse of Austro-Hungary.
23/10/1917, The Battle of
Caporetto began.
15/10/1917. The legendary
Dutch spy Mata
Hari, who danced in the nude, was executed by a firing squad in
Paris, having been found guilty of espionage by the Germans.
4/10/1917, British victory on
Passchendaele Ridge.
3/10/1917, The Battle of
Polygon Wood (Ypres) ended.
1/10/1917. (1) Air raids on London.
(2) Damascus fell to General Allenby.
1/9/1917, German
offensive against Russia; Riga fell to the Germans.
20/8/1917 The French broke through the Verdun front on an 11 mile wide
offensive.
17/8/1917, Eleventh Battle
of the Isonzo; Italy made minor gains.
3/8/1917, German sailors
mutinied at Wilhelmshaven.
31/7/1917. The Third Battle
of Ypres (Passchendaele) began, see
10/11/1917.
25/7/1917, Mata Hari, a Dutchwoman called Margaretha Geetruida Macleod
(nee Zelle),
aged 41, who used her charms to tempt French Army officers to betray military
secrets, was found guilty of spying by a military court (despite very little
evidence of her guilt) and sentenced to death by firing squad. She was
initially hired by the French to spy in German-occupied Belgium.
19/7/1917. Mutinies broke out
in the German Navy. The German Reichstag passed a motion to end the
war.
14/7/1917, General Pershing, 57,
arrived in Paris to set up the headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force
(AEF).
27/6/1917. 14,000
American troops arrived in France to fight with the Allies.� The American expeditionary force was
commanded by General
John Pershing.
8/6/1917. Haig launched a new Flanders offensive.
7/6/1917, The British
captured the Messines Ridge. The British had begun tunnelling under the Ridge
from august 1915, and placed high explosives in the tunnels, detonated at 3.10
am. A million pounds of explosive was used, and the explosion was heard in
London and Dublin.
4/6/1917. Brazil
declared war against Germany and seized all German ships in
its ports In France, with the co-operation of the provisional Russian government,
a Polish army was formed to fight Germany.
15/5/1917. Henri Petain became French Commander in Chief.
5/5/1917. The Battle of Arras, 9 April to 5 May. The
Allied Spring offensive against the Germans pushed them back 3 to 4 miles from
the eastern suburbs of Arras, capturing several important hills.
4/5/1917. Widespread mutiny amongst French
units on the Front.
3/5/1917, US destroyers
arrived to join the British navy.
18/4/1917, The Second battle
of Gaza; Turkish forces, with German support, forced back British forces.
11/4/1917. (1) Brazil
broke off relations with Germany after the steamer Parana was torpedoed off
France. On 1/6/1917 Brazil revoked
its neutrality in the War as a mark of �continental solidarity and friendship
with the USA�. After more Brazilian shipping was sunk, Brazil declared war on
Germany on 26/10/1917. Brazil�s direct contribution to the war was the dispatch
of part of its fleet to European waters and the sending of a medical mission
and some aviators to the Western Front. The main contribution was placing its
food supplies and other resources at the disposal of the Allies.
(2)� British
general Sir Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force,
occupied Jerusalem following his
victory in Palestine over the Turks.
10/4/1917 �Canadian troops captured Vimy Ridge in northern
France, with heavy casualties. This was a major assault during the Battle of
Arras, World War One.
9/4/1917, The Canadians
stormed Vimy Ridge, see 10/4/1917.
7/4/1917. Cuba declared war on Germany.
6/4/1917. The USA declared
war against Germany, with a
declaration signed by President Woodrow Wilson. This followed the
revealing by the British on 1/3/1917 of the Zimmerman Telegram, a missive from Germany to Mexico urging it to
declare war on the USA and recover its lost territories. The German Foreign
Minister, Arthur
Zimmerman, had sent a coded telegram to the German Ambassador in
Mexico offering an alliance against the US, in which Mexico would recover its
territories of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. British naval intelligence
intercepted and decoded the message and passed it to President Wilson. American
shipping bound for Britain had also been attacked by German submarines
The Germans did not believe that
the US could raise and equip an effective army quickly enough to make a
difference in Europe, and that even if they did, it could not be transported
across a submarine-infested ocean. They seriously underestimated the
determination and resources of the US. The US did indeed have only a relatively
small standing army, 300,000 men including the National Guard and reserves, but
conscription was introduced and many willingly signed up.
Meanwhile this day the King and
Queen of England attended a Thanksgiving service at St Pauls Cathedral for the
US�s entry into the �war for freedom�.
26/3/1917. Britain attacked the Turks at Gaza (First Battle of Gaza).
20/3/1917. A German U-boat sank a fully-lit hospital ship.
19/3/1917, French Prime Minister
Briand resigned. Alexandre Ribot
formed a Cabinet.
26/2/1917. News of the sinking of the Cunard
liner Laconia by German U-boats
reached capitol Hill just as Congress was debating measures to protect US
shipping from the growing menace of U boats in the Atrlantic. Earlier in
February 1917� a US ship, the Housatonic was sunk, making a total of
134 neutral ships destroyed by the Germans in the last 3 weeks. The US navy was
already mounting patrols to protect its ships in the Atlantic.
The entry of the United States of America into the War;
from this time on the German cause was doomed.
25/2/1917. The Germans
retreated on the Ancre, and on 28/2/1917 the British captured Gommecourt.
13/2/1917, The Dutch spy Mata Hari
was arrested by the French.
12/2/1917, US President Wilson refused to reopen negotiations with Germany until
it abandoned its policy of unrestricted naval warfare; on 3/2/1917 the US liner
Housatonic had been sunk by a German U-boat.
31/1/1917. Germany announced a policy of unrestricted naval
warfare. All ships, passenger or
cargo, found by Germans could now be sunk without warning. This was a
calculated risk by Germany because it
was bound to involve US shipping being sunk, and would therefore bring the USA
in against Germany. But Germany reckoned on the inevitability of the USA
entering the war against here soon anyway, and believed she could win the war
before this happened. The German Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Von Holtzendorff,
presented a memo to the Kaiser saying that if 600,000 tons of Allied
shipping could be sunk each month, within five months Britain would have to
surrender. In fact, in the worst month, April 1917, German U-boats sank 869,103
tons of shipping, 373 ships. The British adopted a convoy system, despite fears
that a convoy�s speed was limited to that of the slowest ship. The Navy had
feared it had too few destroyers for this job but then realised that it had
enough if only ocean-going ships, not cross-Channel traffic, was guarded.
Meanwhile the British navy
deployed Q-ships, gunships disguised as merchant ships which lured U-boats to
the surface then opened their gun hatches at the last moment. The first trial
convoy ran from Gibraltar on 10/5/1917. The convoy system worked; of 26,604
vessels convoyed in 1917, only 147 were sunk. Meanwhile the Germans lost 65 of
their 139 U-boats. Meanwhile Allied shipping blockaded German trade, creating
shortages of tea and coffee, but more seriously, fertiliser shortages too. In
the final German land offensive of 1918, advancing German troops discovered
their privations were not being endured by the enemy, and German morale fell.
4/1/1917, Britain and Germany agreed to
exchange all internees aged over 45.
31/12/1916, By the end of 1916, Russia had seen
some 3,600,000 of its citizens killed or wounded in the Great War, and a
further 2,000,000 taken prisoner by the Central Powers.
15/12/1916. The Battle of Verdun,
which began on 21/2/1916, ended. 364,000 Allied soldiers and 338,000 German
soldiers, had died in this battle.
13/12/1916. New British
offensive in Mesopotamia.
12/12/1916, Robert Nivelle was appointed Commander in Chief of French armies
in N and NE France.
6/12/1916, The Central
Powers occupied Bucharest.
13/11/1916, The Battle of the Somme ended.� It had
begun on 1/7/1916, and succeeded in driving the Germans north towards the
coast, but
cost over 600,000 Allied lives; 420,000 British and 200,000 French. German
casualties were 450,000. At
Verdun, ten
months of fighting had cost another 400,000 men from both sides. The
Allies gained, at the Somme, some two miles of ground for these casualties, about five
lives lost per inch gained. The Germans knew the �Big Push� was
coming, and had prepared well by stockpiling ammunition then sitting deep in
underground bunkers waiting. The Allied bombardment fully announced this push,
but did not destroy the German bunkers. After
the bombardment the Allied soldiers walked forward over no man�s land carrying
their kit, guns, and grenades, at least 30 kg or 60 lbs per person on a hot
summer day. The Germans, as soon as the bombardment ended, climbed back up and
scythed down the Allies in a hail of machine gun fire. On the first day of
that offensive, the Allies lost 19,000 men with a further 57,000 wounded, the
greatest loss ever on a single day. Bad
communications and slowness meant the few gains made were mostly lost again.
10/11/1916, Theobald von Bethmann, German
Chancellor, made a speech to the Reichstag pledging that Germany would join or
even lead a peace league after the War, to prevent such a catastrophic war from
ever happening again. In part he was responding to anti-war concerns from
Social Democrats within Germany. The German Government was also now open to a
peace agreement for the same reason as the Allies opposed it � because Germany
was now in control of large swathes of Europe from France to Russia.
2/11/1916, French
forces recaptured Fort Vaux, which the Germans had taken on 7/6/1916.
26/10/1916. Francois Mitterand, President of France from 1981, and founder of the
French Socialist Party, was born.
24/10/1916. French troops
broke open a four mile stretch of the German lines at Verdun, and another offensive started there.
24/9/1916, The French bombed
the Krupp works at Essen.� A second
Zeppelin was shot down in England.
17/9/1916, Manfred von Richtofen, the �Red Baron�, Germany�s greatest air ace,
won the first of his 80 confirmed kills over Cambrai, France.
14/9/1916, Seventh
Battle of Isonzo; Italian forces made small gains.
12/9/1916, British
and Serbian forces mounted an attack from Salonika, but were unable to help
Romania.
9/9/1916, Battle of
Ginchy. The Irish 16th Division captured the German-held village of Ginchy in
north eastern France, but� at a cost of
4,330 casualties.
4/9/1916. British troops took Dar Es Salaam
in east Africa.
30/8/1916. Paul Von Hindenburg became Chief of General Staff in
Germany. He became Commander in Chief on the Western Front on 29/11/1916.
28/8/1916. Italy declared war on Germany.
27/8/1916. Rumania declared
war on Germany, see 6/12/1916. Austria declared war on Rumania.
26/8/1916, Battle of Delville Wood. After a week�s delay due
to rain, the British attacked and captured the German trenches.
22/8/1916, Romania declared
war on Austro-Hungary.� Its troops
crossed the passes into Transylvania but were expelled again by mid-November.
19/8/1916. German warships
bombarded the east coast of England.
17/8/1916, The UK, France,
Russia, and Italy guaranteed Romania the Banat, Transylvania, the Hungarian
Plain as far as the Tisza River and Bukovina as far as the Prut River, if it
declared war on Austro-Hungary.
19/7/1916, At Fromelles, a preliminary British bombardment of
a German salient gave away all hopes of a surprise attack, then troops were
ordered to advance across open marshy ground towards a well defended German
position. Allied casualties e3xceeded 7,000 with only minor and temporary
territorial gains.
14/7/1916, Bazentin le Grand
and Bazentin le Petit, villages in the Somme
area, were taken by the Allies. They were lost and then recaptured again in
1918.
1/7/1916. Battle of the Somme began. Britain and France launched a major
offensive. This offensive lasted until 8/11/1916, and one million were killed,
including 500,000 British. However the Germans were only beaten back ten miles
� over one
casualty per inch of ground won.�
The Germans retained the key rail junction of Bapaume.� On this first day of battle alone, there were
over 100,000 casualties, including 60,000 British.� However
for the Germans the massive casualties of the Somme made it impossible
thereafter to obtain enough trained soldiers, hence it marked the turning point
of the War for France.
24/6/1916. A new German offensive began at Verdun.
23/6/1916. A Russian
offensive captured most of Galicia.
22/6/1916, The Germans
gassed French artillery positions around Verdun, France, causing 1,600
casualties.
18/6/1916, Russian forces
took Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy, Ukraine).
14/6/1916, Allied economic
conference in Paris.
7/6/1916, German forces captured Fort Vaux. Recaptured by
the French on 2/11/1916.
6/6/1916, Allied forces
blockaded Greece.
5/6/1916. Lord Kitchener,
British General and conqueror of the Sudan, born 24/6.1850 near Listowel,
County Kerry, died when his cruiser HMS Hampshire hit a German mine off
the Orkney Islands, en route to Russia. There were no survivors.
4/6/1916, Russia began the Brusilov Offensive, pushing back
Austrian forces south of the Pripet Marshes. German reinforcements halted the
Russian advance.
2/6/1916. Second Battle of Ypres.
1/6/1916, Germany established a War Food Office to set
controlled prices for food. A bad harvest in Autumn 1916 led to strict food
rationing.
31/5/1916. Battle of Jutland. On 31/5/1916 German Admirals Scheer and Hipper set sail from the Jade
and Elbe estuaries. British intelligence�
picked up on this and Admirals Beatty and Jellicoe set out to engage them.
Beatty
happened to meet Hipper�s battle cruiser squadron, and the two main fleets
began to engage. Although the British suffered larger losses, the British fleet
had been much larger to begin with, and Scheer managed to retreat back to the safety
of the Jade estuary. The German fleet
rarely ventured to sea after this.
16/5/1916, French diplomat Francois-Georges Picot and
British diplomat Mark Sykes began a secret correspondence to decide how the
Middle East would be divided up after World War One (see also 30/10/1917). The
Western Powers had already decided that the Ottoman Empire was too vast and too
corrupt to be allowed to survive. Britain would claim Jordan, most of Iraq, and
the port city of Haifa. France� would
take SE Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Palestine would be jointly
administered between Britain and France. Russia would be granted the city of
Constantinople and several Armenian-dominated regions. In fact the Russian
Revolution of 1917 and further diplomatic developments meant that not all these
provisions became reality, but the Sykes-Picot agreement set the scene for many
of the issues of the Middle East during the 20th century.
8/5/1916. Australian and New Zealand troops
arrived in France.
18/4/1916, Russian forces
captured Trebizond, Turkey.
17/4/1916. The Boer leader Jan Smuts led an
anti-German drive from Kenya.
24/3/1916. German forces sank a
cross-Channel steamer, the Sussex, after a decision in February 1916 that
German forces would sink any armed merchant ships on sight. See 31/1/1917.
21/3/1916. Austrian soldiers killed 10,000
Serbian civilians.
20/3/1916. Food scarcities in
Germany caused rationing to begin.
13/3/1916, Germany loosened its rules on its submarines
attacking ships; they could now sink vessels around Britain if they �appeared
not to be passenger ships�.
9/3/1916. Germany declared war on� Portugal.
21/2/1916
