Chevalier Affair: An event that remains unclear to this day occurs at the home of Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty. The Oppenheimers have guests: Haakon Chevalier and his wife, Barbara. Chevalier asks Oppenheimer to periodically pass information to a Russian diplomat (Peter Ivanov) at the
First nuclear reaction. In an abandoned courtyard in the basement of the University of Chicago, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi demonstrated the first controlled nuclear fission reaction in history. Two years earlier, Fermi, along with Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard and German physicist Albert Einstein, had written
3:25 PM local time: Fermi’s pile goes critical (it had almost gone critical a couple of hours earlier, but the imperturbable Enrico Fermi asks for his usual lunch break); the first test lasts 28 minutes with a power output of less than 0.5W to minimize
Forty people are present at the first ignition of a nuclear pile; to prevent an uncontrolled reaction, several safety measures have been taken: in addition to the cadmium rods, there are rods that are inserted by gravity by cutting a string, and volunteers stand on
The construction of Fermi’s atomic pile is proceeding steadily: it is now clear that the 57th layer, the one that will make the pile critical according to calculations, will be assembled during the following night; it will be Anderson’s turn, who however promises not to
The first Panzerkampfwagen VIs, better known as the Tiger, arrive in Libya to support the Axis. But by then it’s too late. The American Shermans have made the difference for too many months. The Sherman weighs 30 tons, is 6 meters long, has 76mm armor,
3:30 AM. Don River, 40 km west of Stalingrad. Soviet engineers use TNT to blow up the arches of the Lucinskiy Bridge over the Don River. The German Sixth Army is left virtually stranded on a 40 km-wide island between the Volga and the Don.
Rommel’s retreat reached El Agheila after 1,500 kilometers of forced march. He organized his defense with a bluff to frighten Montgomery, who remained trapped there for three weeks, despite having 120 tanks against only a few German tanks. Tripoli fell to enemy hands on January
France, During the final approach to the docks and train station at Saint-Nazaire, about twenty B-17s commanded by Curtis E. LeMay adopted a new tactic he had pioneered: instead of zigzagging to displace enemy anti-aircraft fire, they proceeded straight to the target, struck, and returned.
Stalingrad. Evening. General Stanescu, commanding the two Romanian armored armies under heavy Soviet fire, accepts the surrender terms: the Soviets take 27,000 prisoners.
Stalingrad. Seydlitz, Paulus’ subordinate, disobeying his (and the Führer’s) precise orders, makes the right move and moves the 94th Motorized Division southward to extricate itself from the Soviet pincer movement. But the Soviets, alerted by the enormous bonfires used to destroy documents, attack at night
The Soviets launched a desperate counteroffensive in Stalingrad: more than a million soldiers were involved in the assault, along with 17,000 artillery pieces, 1,200 tanks, and 1,200 aircraft. This was Operation Uranus, which allowed the Russians to annihilate the Romanian support battalions and outflank Von
The situation of the Soviet troops in Stalingrad is desperate; the dead are counted in the hundreds of thousands, entire battalions are captured or exterminated; the city is completely reduced to rubble by the Luftwaffe; this, however, will constitute an advantage for the Russians.
Stalingrad. Von Paulus launches what the OKW believes is the final offensive to take the city. Lyudnikov’s Soviet division is shattered, the rubble of the Red October factory is captured, and the Volga is reached for the third time. Tchuikov is on the brink of
Hitler orders his troops to occupy the part of France under the Vichy government. Italian troops cross the border into Tunisia, and Mussolini, not to be outdone by Hitler, has Provence and Corsica occupied.
Operation Torch: The Allies land in Algeria and Morocco.
El Alamein: Rommel begins his retreat. He suffers 9,000 dead or missing, 15,000 wounded, and 400 tanks destroyed. The British Eighth Army suffers 5,000 dead or missing, 9,000 wounded, and 500 tanks destroyed. The Second El Alamein is over. Despite the great confusion, Rommel manages
El Alamein: 2:00 PM. The remnants of the Folgore, huddled together, fire their last seven .47-caliber shells and exhaust the last 20-caliber magazine. Colonel Luigi Camosso decides to surrender. Major Zanninovich, standing at attention, presents his forces to the colonel: “32 officers, 272 troops.” Five
El Alamein: 2:00 PM. The British armored cars, with powerful loudspeakers, praise the courage and valor of the Folgore and offer to surrender with honors. The paratroopers respond, “Folgore!” and fire.
El-Alamein: Montgomery launches the decisive attack. The German commander of the Afrika Korps declares, “I’m going, but the Führer’s order is the product of a sick mind; we can’t continue like this.” The general surrenders to a British officer, followed by 300 other German soldiers.
At El-Alamein Hitler orders resistance at all costs: victory or death (the Germans have only 24 tanks)
El Alamein, Egypt. Montgomery unleashes the great “Supercharge” attack with 800 tanks and 360 guns simultaneously. These include Sherman, Grant, Valentine, Crusader, and Matilda tanks. The fighting continues throughout the night. The Panzer and Ariete divisions are now exhausted, but most of the tanks remaining
Port Said. The second edition of the book “Wetterkurzsclussel” is captured aboard U-559, before it sinks, by Anthony Fasson, Colin Grazier, and sixteen-year-old mess attendant Tommy Brown (all from HMS Petard). Knowledge of the meteorological messages will allow Bletchley Park to regain access to the
El Alamein, Egypt. After two days of relative calm, the British Eighth Army returns to the attack. The Australians break through the German defenses and break through the front, continuing along the coast. Further south, the Bersaglieri attack with melee weapons and hand grenades. The
Erwin Rommel takes command again but the entire Italian-German front is routed at El-Alamein; only the Folgore resists the British.
Stalingrad. The German 14th Armored Division captures the bread factory.
El Alamein, Egypt. On the second day of battle, the Panzer Army wins the first round: the British fail to break through and remain pinned down in the “devil’s gardens.”
Stalingrad. The German 14th Armored Division captures the Red Barricade weapons factory.
Stalingrad. The tractor factory is also attacked by the Wehrmacht. Elements of the 16th Panzer Division settle in the northern suburbs.
Stalingrad. Von Paulus launches three divisions against the Red Barricade cannon factory and the Red October foundry.
At Peenemunde base, Von Braun achieved the first successful launch of a V-2 (third attempt, called “Cucumber”); the previous two attempts had failed; the experimental A-4 prototype, however, traveled 190.5 km at 1.34 km/s, reaching an altitude of 85 km.
Greece. The health and medical situation is so critical that the British resort to an unprecedented measure: they lift the naval blockade of Nazi-occupied Greece to allow relief supplies to arrive. Thanks to an agreement between the Germans and the British, relief supplies flow throughout
General Groves purchases land in Argonne Forest in Chicago, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington.
Oppenheimer’s name begins to be discussed in high military circles as head of the atomic bomb project
MetLab (Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago). Enrico Fermi gives a series of lectures on the theory behind the pile. When asked what to do if the pile starts an out-of-control chain reaction, he replies, “Just run, like, behind a hill quite far away.”
The Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers (MED) is formed, named, as is Army tradition, for the location where the decision was made. General Leslie R. Groves is appointed commander of the Manhattan District. Groves had previously overseen other major Army projects, including the
Stalingrad. The central station is in the hands of the Wehrmacht. In just a few days, it has changed sides 15 times. The Univermag department store on Red Square and the granary silo also fall.
Stalingrad. Four infantry divisions and the 24th Panzer advance on the central station, the granary silo.
Iran. 110,000 Polish prisoners from the Gulags arrive on the shores of the Caspian Sea. They are the Second Polish Army Corps, formed when Polish General Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile, convinces Stalin to free all Polish prisoners in the Gulags to contribute to
Stalingrad. Waves of Junkers 88s, Stukas, and Heinkel 111s from General Wolfram von Richthofen’s (cousin of the Red Baron) Fourth Air Fleet dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on the city.
In London’s most exclusive circles, the sensational news spreads that Erwin Rommel is ill. The source, which has remained secret, is actually an Enigma interception by Ultra. The British will blame the leak on the Italians, the Germans will believe it (especially Rommel), and this
9:42 a.m.: Allied raid on Dieppe in northern Normandy, repelled by the Germans; of the 6,000 Allied soldiers who attempted to land, 3,000 were killed or taken prisoner, only 3,000 managed to return, having been practically thrown back into the sea.
Egypt. Bernard Montgomery takes command of the Eighth Army. He is (even according to Churchill himself, who appointed him) unpleasant, punctilious, intolerant, and boring, despotic, cantankerous, and inhibited. He reads only the Bible, eats only boiled beef and biscuits, is a teetotaler, and plays a
Kalach, on the Don, Southern Russia. The last major pocket of Operation Barbarossa closes: the vanguards of the 16th Armored Division Angerm and General von Hauenschild’s 24th Armored Division join hands.
Egypt. Churchill travels to Cairo accompanied by Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the General Staff. They dismiss the honest commander of the Eighth Army, Auchinleck, who is replaced by Montgomery for the Eighth Army and Sir Harold Alexander for the Middle East. In reality, they
Glenn Seaborg isolates plutonium for the first time. This is also the first time any artificial element—one that doesn’t exist in nature—has been synthesized in its pure form. It’s the first time the human eye can observe an artificial element. Following the name of the
Benedetto Croce published the famous essay: “Why We Cannot Not Call Ourselves Christians” where he observes: “…the long age of glory that was called the Middle Ages completed the Christianization of the barbarians and encouraged the defense against Islam, so threatening to European civilization.”
The German submarine Innsbruck, departing from its base in Lorient, France, dropped off eight saboteurs off Long Island, New York. Their task was to wreak havoc on the city by sabotaging factories, blowing up bridges, and disrupting power and rail networks. The Germans were discovered
Stalin issues Order No. 227: “No more steps back” (Ни шагу назад!; Russian: “ni shàgu nazàd!”). This follows Order No. 270 of August 1941, which equated surrender with desertion, under penalty of execution on the spot (10,000 since the beginning of the conflict) and the
Russia. Upon reaching Stalino, the Germans found themselves faced with majestic industrial complexes. Seventy kilometers of factories: from ore deposits to blast furnaces, from partial processing to smelting, to assembly. At Stalino, they began with iron; at Rykovo, tanks rolled out.
Egypt. Rommel’s advance is halted by the British at El Alamein. The fighting is extremely violent, and for the first time, the word “panic” appears in the war diary of a German division.
Richard Feynman and Arline get married in Richmond, en route to a public hospital in New Jersey, where Arline has moved to be closer to Richard. For the trip, Feynman borrows a friend’s station wagon, which he converts into a sort of ambulance for the
Benito Mussolini flies to Libya to witness the Italian victory over the British Eighth Army. His arrival is immediately marred by tragedy: the second aircraft collides with a departing bomber, killing three agents and his personal barber, Pietro Sciaretta. Mussolini expects a great victory. Upon
Italian secret agent Colonel Frank B. Fellers, who had infiltrated the American embassy in Rome, was discovered and recalled to the United States. Through Fellers, the Italians had been able to for months gain advance knowledge of several Allied moves in the Mediterranean.
The Boston Globe headlines: “Mass killings of Jews in Poland top 700,000.”
Libya. Erwin Rommel tells Bastico: “I’ll push forward as far as I can: I’m running out of gas and water, but in this climate of success, the soldiers just want to keep going. The Italian soldiers were also magnificent. Now, on the field, there’s no
Libya. Erwin Rommel welcomes the Italians Bastico and Barbasetti (who wish to follow Il Duce’s orders regarding the invasion of Malta) with a harangue about striking while the iron is hot (the Eighth Army is in rout) and also hints at a possible meeting in
Libya. The Italian-German army reaches the sea and completes the encirclement of Tobruk.
Prague. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in the British SOE’s Operation Anthropoid, the SOE agents, Slovak Jozef Gabčík and Czech Jan Kubiš, who carried out the assassination, are hunted by the Gestapo and the SS. With large sums of money and interrogations, the Gestapo
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Joe Rochefort’s cryptography unit successfully deciphers Admiral Yamamoto’s orders for his fleet to ambush the U.S. Navy off the coast of Midway. This information will allow the Americans to turn the battle in their favor, inflicting irreparable damage on the Imperial Japanese