Japan’s capitulation – the number of Japanese ships sunk was 8.5 million tons; the Japanese High Command also had 10,000 kamikaze planes and pilots, 400 midget submarines packed with explosives, 120 human torpedoes, and 2,000 explosive boats ready for a final, titanic kamikaze attack on
4:00 a.m. Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico. The wind is shifting in the right direction. This is the most important indication meteorologist Hubbard is waiting for to minimize radioactive fallout on populated areas.
At the surrender of the Third Reich, there were 1,109,400 German prisoners of war, of which 3,635,000 were in British hands, 3,097,000 in American hands, 937,000 in French hands, 3,060,000 in Russian hands, 194,000 in Yugoslavian hands, etc. Less than 0.1% of those in American
Copenhagen. The Nobel Prize medals, dissolved in acid (with nitric and hydrochloric acids) to hide them from the Nazis, and then remade immediately after the war. With the same gold. When Gyorgy Hevesy returned from Stockholm, where he had taken refuge, he found the beaker
The Mauthausen concentration camp was reached by two American armored vehicles, and the International Resistance Committee (among its members, the Italian Giuliano Pajetta), which had formed clandestinely in March, took over the camp, liberating it with weapons seized from the Nazis. At the time, the
Liberation of Dachau. American forces liberate Dachau, the first concentration camp established by the Nazis. Built in 1933, just five weeks after Hitler’s accession to the post of Chancellor, on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, 12 miles north of Munich, the camp served
American troops enter the Ohrdurf concentration camp, a subsidiary of Buchenwald, and on April 11 they arrive at the main Buchenwald camp, where 20,000 inmates are still held. General Eisenhower invites Western journalists and local residents to the camp, who are called upon to bury
Ruhr Pocket: 400,000 German soldiers taken prisoner by the Anglo-Americans
The American X Mountain Division arrives at Castel d’Aiano on the Gothic Line (Green Line for the Nazis): the breakthrough is near
Only a few weeks had passed since the Yalta meetings, but already President Roosevelt was furiously telegraphing Stalin that he was thus violating the Yalta agreements that called for the formation of freely elected democratic governments in Eastern Europe, in reference to the measures taken
United States. Returning from Yalta, President Roosevelt makes his final appearance before Congress. He no longer hides his disability: he sits at a table near the pulpit and explains: “It’s a lot easier for me not to have 10 pounds of steel to carry around
The Bachem Ba-349 Natter (Viper), designed in 1944, was a single-use fighter aircraft, mostly made of wood, armed with 24 rockets in a honeycomb on the nose, designed to slaughter Allied bombers by swooping down on them from above. It was tested on March 1,
copy of the call sign codes (alphanumeric codes identifying a military unit) is captured. The secret Nazi Heer (Wehrmacht) code is now decipherable, after the adoption of the new system for encrypting call signs in November 1944.
Romania. King Michael yields to Soviet pressure and dismisses Prime Minister Radescu to install Petru Groza.
On Valentine’s Day 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Saudi King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud aboard the USS Quincy, a US cruiser, in the Suez Canal. It was the dawn of what is now the United States’ longest relationship with an Arab state. FDR
The horrific bombing of Dresden by British and American aircraft. The capital of the German state of Saxony was hit in four raids between February 13 and 15, 1945, by 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 United States Army
Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is arrested. Military censorship has intercepted his correspondence with his friend Koka, an officer on the Ukrainian front. He is sentenced to eight years in a concentration camp (GULag). In one of the concentration camps, he meets Koka. Released, he is
Yalta. Regarding the Baltics, the United States and Great Britain do not recognize the Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, considering it illegal, but they do not discuss it at Yalta. The annexation had been recognized only by Nazi Germany and Sweden.
The German project Prufstand XII (Test Stand XII), conceived by Klaus Riedel, envisaged five V-2 missiles loaded onto U-boats with watertight silos with the aim of bombing New York and other cities on the American east coast.
The Western Allies also entered a Nazi concentration camp. They were the French, who entered the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in Alsace. The Soviets had already discovered some in Poland starting in July 1944.
The 4th Division of the 5th British Corps liberates the city of Forlì. The 46th Division crosses the Rabbi stream and heads towards Montone. The 5th Division of the 2nd Polish Corps liberates Castrocaro while the 3rd Carpathian Division, starting from Dovadola, heads towards Forlì
Japan. Richard Sorge (Russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge) was a German journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer active before and during World War II, working undercover as a German journalist in both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. His code name was
782,582 Poles were forcibly transferred from Soviet Ukraine to Poland. Another 231,152 were expelled from Belarus and 162,244 from Lithuania, for a total of 1.2 million. Poland, with the Soviets’ blessing, responded in kind, repatriating 482,000 Ukrainians. At the end of 1946, to halt these
Island in the Baltic Sea: according to some witnesses, the first nuclear test by Kurt Diebner’s group; probably a “dirty” bomb with a core of light elements covered with 100g of (unenriched) uranium and a thick layer of explosives; the whole thing enclosed in a
Goto, near Berlin: according to some witnesses, the military explosives expert Kurt Diebner may have caused a chain reaction in his experimental reactor; he worked for the SS and alongside Werner Heisenberg’s group, which, however, did not enjoy Himmler’s sympathy.
Meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow between Stalin, Churchill, and Harrimann, the American ambassador to Moscow; one evening at 10 p.m., Churchill, during a meeting with Stalin, hands him a note with a note: Romania: 90% to you, 10% to us; Greece: 90% to us,
The Red Army crosses the border and enters German territory near Nemmersdorf. In a frenzy of violence, men, women, and children are killed and their bodies mutilated.
Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico. Bainbridge and others visit the likely site of the first nuclear explosion.
An RAF Spitfire pilot managed to damage the inertial navigation system of a V-1 by touching one of the fins that stabilized the aircraft with the tip of his wing; with this method and refinements to it (which included diving close to the V-1) 1847
The German Foreign Office was not convinced of Enigma’s security and used “one-time pad” ciphers to encrypt the highest-level traffic, a system known as GEE. However, GEE did not contain truly random numbers because it was machine-generated. American cryptographers leveraged this to decrypt GEE.
Signal Intelligence: The Kriegsmarine begins distributing special decryption algorithms (Sonderschlussel) for each individual U-Boat. They will not actually be applied in the field until mid-November 1944. If applied correctly, they are very difficult to crack, especially if cribs are scarce. It will take 5,300 bomb
00:00: Paratrooper drops from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions begin in Normandy.
RAF Colonel J.M. Stagg makes the most famous weather forecast in history: the bad weather would probably subside on June 6th.
Rome, at dawn. American officer Mark Wayne Clark, commander of the US Fifth Army, is photographed on the outskirts of the city, holding a sign with the four letters he so deeply distressed. The photo will go viral. A sniper attempts to shoot the American
Enigma and related documents are captured on U505 by US Navy Task Force 22.3
Ciociaria, central Italy. The French commander of the Moroccan troops had given clear instructions: “…behind the enemy’s back are women, houses, some of the best wine in the world, and gold. All this will be yours if you win! (…) What I have told you
U.S. Navy cryptographers crack the Japanese Navy’s Jade and Coral codes. The Military Attaché and Diplomatic Purple codes are also already transparent.
Niels Bohr is smuggled from Copenhagen aboard a speedboat to the Swedish coast. He reaches Stockholm, where the Nazis unsuccessfully plot to assassinate him. From there, British intelligence flies him to Scotland aboard a Mosquito, in the bomb cargo hold. There, Bohr is fitted with
The Four Days of Naples. During the uprising, civilians, with the support of soldiers loyal to the Kingdom of the South, managed to liberate the city of Naples from Wehrmacht occupation. This event, which earned the city the Gold Medal of Military Valor, allowed the
Cassibile, Sicily (near Syracuse). General Castellano, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, signs the armistice with the Americans. The Americans wanted a general, but Badoglio had replied that he didn’t know one, and so he named Castellano, who didn’t speak English. Castellano. Before
720 RAF and USAF bombers drop 2,400 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs on Hamburg (5,000 dead)
Tunisia. The plane of Italian airman Fulvio Setti (born in Modena) takes off from Finocchiara airfield, carrying a unit of Bersaglieri from the 8th Regiment, along with four other aircraft. Escorted by 16 Aermacchi C.202 Folgore fighters, the Italian formation begins its sea crossing when,
Manhattan, New York. John Trump, of the New York Police Department, spends two days poring over the papers found in Nikola Tesla’s apartment after his death. He finds nothing of interest. He also decides to examine the locked box Tesla left at the Governor Clinton
Stalingrad. With 120 flights a day, an attempt is made to send supplies to von Paulus’s Sixth Army. But at least 150 flights a day would be needed to deliver at least 300 tons a day. Initially, the estimate was 500 tons a day. Everything
The Soviets in Stalingrad launch Operation Saturnus which also involves an attack on the Italian battalions north of the Don
One-third of Europe is under the direct rule of the Third Reich, governing half of its population: 244 million people. Two years later, there will be nothing left, becoming one of the most ephemeral empires in history, as well as one of the worst.
Stalingrad. Von Weich alerts Paulus: the southern flank of the Sixth Army is threatened. The Soviet plan finally becomes clear.
Stalingrad. Less than 10% of the city remains in Chuikov: a bridgehead 200 meters in diameter. The rest is in the hands of von Paulus’s Germans.
Rommel returns to Germany due to health problems; the Battle of El Alamein begins with Georg Stumme leading the Germans.
John Vincent Atanasoff, an engineer at Iowa State University, built a full-scale model of his computer, using 300 vacuum tubes. His computer, however, received little attention, and his patent was not applied for by his legal department. The computer’s limitations, however, were that despite the
According to the criteria used in many other battles, Stalingrad was technically conquered by the Wehrmacht. In reality, this was not the case.
The news is now official: Rommel is ill. Rommel is returning home for health reasons. He is in the throes of a deep depression.
Boeing Field, Seattle, Washington State. The first XB-29, the prototype of the B-29, takes flight. It was the first aircraft with a pressurized cabin, and many future aircraft, particularly passenger aircraft, would be modeled after it. The B-29 project would become the most expensive of
The decision to begin an all-out effort to develop an atomic bomb for anti-Nazi purposes is announced in the United States.
Yamamoto’s combined task force sailed from the assembly point at Hitokappu-Wan; leading the mighty formation was the gunboat Kunajiri, the aircraft carriers were Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, Zuikaku; also part of the group were the battleships Hiei, Kirishima, and the heavy cruisers Tone and
Isoroku Yamamoto on the bridge of the Akagi told those present: “Japan has faced many worthy opponents in her glorious history – Mongols, Chinese, Russians – but in this operation we will encounter the strongest and most determined opponent of all.”
The aircraft carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku (29,800 tons) depart Kure (north of Hiroshima); the Sotyu and Hiryu (20,000 tons) are also en route to Pearl Harbor.
Libya. The British attempt a counteroffensive at Sollum, with hundreds of powerful Matilda tanks, against which the 47 Italian tanks are powerless, much less the 37 Germans. Rommel improvises: he orders the use of anti-aircraft guns: the powerful 88s, which massacre the British tanks. 180
Bletchley Park, central England. A Nazi message encrypted with Enigma, and decrypted with the so-called Bombe machines, reveals the Bismarck’s destination: Brest, France.
Peter, Kitty and Robert Oppenheimer’s first child, is born. Kitty suffers a postpartum crisis and goes on a two-month vacation. Peter is placed in the care of the Chevaliers.
The British interception of Enigma at Bletchley Park allowed the Royal Navy to intercept and neutralize the fearsome Italian Royal Fleet off Cape Matapan. It would be one of the last major naval battles fought by the Italians. The cause of the defeat would be
Winston Churchill makes the first of five air trips to the French front, to gain first-hand insight into the situation.
During World War II, Iceland was occupied by British forces on May 10, 1940 (Operation Fork), and in July 1941, the United States replaced the British, assuming control of Iceland’s defense. On the easternmost tip of Iceland, a rusting Allied landing craft still lies abandoned
The Poles handed over to the British intelligence services a clone of the Enigma plugboard. The Poles had cracked an early version of Enigma as early as the early 1930s. French and British cryptanalysts had first arrived at Biuro Szyfrow’s headquarters in Poland. Szyfrow had
The German Henkel HE178 piloted by Erich Warsitz becomes the first jet aircraft to take flight.
Spain. The Spanish Civil War ends with the victory of Generalissimo Franco and his protectors, Mussolini and Hitler. The Spanish government is forced to surrender after Stalin withdraws military support and disbands the International Brigades. Stalin’s sudden about-face can be seen as a calculated change
The cathode ray tube TV developed by the Englishman John Logie Bard, with 240 mechanically scanned lines, cedes the market, after years of competition, to the Marconi-EMI system, with 405 electrically scanned lines, developed by the consortium led by Guglielmo Marconi, which includes the interests
Tushino Air Show, just north of Moscow. The gigantic Maxim Gorky airplane, designed by Andrei Tupolev’s team, crashes after a mid-air collision with another plane. At the time, the accident, which killed 35 people on Maxim Gorky, the pilot of the other plane, and nine