1944: Western New Guinea campaign/MacArthur
The code name for the whole Hollandia-Aitape operation was RECKLESS.

Hollandia: the Reckless Task Force

A well-designed deception effort fed General Adachi and his staff a steady diet of false information about an Allied landing in Hansa Bay that the Japanese were predisposed to believe. The deception was so successful that on the 24th and 41st Divisions, led by Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, commander of I Corps and the RECKLESS Task Force, landed unopposed twenty-five miles apart at Hollandia.

NOISELESS reaching Tanahmerah Bay shortly before sunrise, and LETTERPRESS reaching Humboldt Bay about the same time. When the naval bombardment lifted there was little or no reaction from the enemy to either landing; it later turned out that the few Japanese on the coast had fled to the hills, some of them leaving their breakfast tea and rice still warm in their dugouts. The enemy had been taken completely by surprise.

Aitape: the Persecution Task Force

The landing at Aitape was made on schedule on the morning of 22 April. Here as at Hollandia, the Japanese (chiefly service troops) fled after the air and naval bombardment, offering little or no opposition. The landing beach, designated Blue, was better than the beaches at Hollandia and behind it lay ample firm ground for the supply dumps. By the evening of D-day, seven LST's had been unloaded, roads were under construction, and the airfields that were the main object of the landing area were in Allied hands.

In one swoop MacArthur had split the Japanese defenses on New Guinea in half, isolating Eighteenth Army in eastern New Guinea.

1942 : Germans begin "Baedeker Raids" on England

On this day in 1942, in retaliation for the British raid on Lubeck, German bombers strike Exeter and later Bath, Norwick, York, and other "medieval-city centres." Almost 1,000 English civilians are killed in the bombing attacks nicknamed "Baedeker Raids."

On March 28 of the same year, 234 British bombers struck the German port of Lubeck, an industrial town of only "moderate importance." The attack was ordered (according to Sir Arthur Harris, head of British Bomber Command) as more of a morale booster for British flyers than anything else, but the destruction wreaked on Lubeck was significant: Two thousand buildings were totaled, 312 German civilians were killed, and 15,000 Germans were left homeless.

As an act of reprisal, the Germans attacked cathedral cities of great historical significance. The 15th-century Guildhall, in York, as an example, was destroyed. The Germans called their air attacks "Baedeker Raids," named for the German publishing company famous for guidebooks popular with tourists. The Luftwaffe vowed to bomb every building in Britain that the Baedeker guide had awarded "three stars."

Black Luftwwaffe humor... A good thing they did not succeed their three star challenge.

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1876 : Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the German navy, is born on this day

On this day in 1876, Erich Raeder, proponent of an aggressive naval strategy and the man who convinced Adolf Hitler to invade Norway, is born.

Raeder began his career by violating the terms of the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles, advocating the construction of submarines in 1928 to strengthen the German navy. He was made grand admiral during World War II and executed the invasion of Norway and Denmark. He fell out with Hitler over strategy and was ultimately removed from his command. He would end his career before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sentenced to life imprisonment for "instigation of the navy to violate the rules of war," he was released because of ill health in 1955.

There were certainly worse guys than this man

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1945 : Americans and Russians link up, cut Germany in two

On this day in 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory.

The Allies sounded the death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of the link-up between the two armies resulted in a 324-gun salute; in New York, crowds burst into song and dance in the middle of Times Square. Among the Soviet commanders who participated in this historic meeting of the two armies was the renowned Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, who warned a skeptical Stalin as early as June 1941 that Germany posed a serious threat to the Soviet Union. Zhukov would become invaluable in battling German forces within Russia (Stalingrad and Moscow) and without. It was also Zhukov who would demand and receive unconditional surrender of Berlin from German General Krebs less than a week after encircling the German capital. At the end of the war, Zhukov was awarded a military medal of honor from Great Britain.

1894 : Rudolf Hess is born

Rudolf Hess, Nazi party secretary and deputy to Adolf Hitler who caused an international sensation when he parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate a truce between Britain and Germany, is born on this day in Alexandria, Egypt.

Hess joined the Nazi Party as early as 1920 and became a friend and confidant to Hitler, editing much of Mein Kampf as it was dictated to him in Landsberg Prison, where both landed after the famous, and failed, November 1923 Munich beer hall putsch. On May 10, 1941, the day Hitler planned to invade Russia, Hess parachuted into Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with Britain, in the person of the Duke of Hamilton, whom Hess claimed to have met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Such a peace would have prevented Germany from fighting on two fronts and greatly increased Hess's own prestige within the Nazi regime, many of whose members saw Hess as little more than a yes-man and sycophant (his nickname was "the Brown Mouse").

Hess did, in fact, find peace--in the Tower of London, where the British imprisoned him, the last man ever to be held there under lock and key. After the war, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau prison by the Nuremberg tribunal. He died, in prison, in 1987.

1941 : German forces enter Athens

On this day in 1941, the German army enters the Greek capital, signaling the end of Greek resistance. All mainland Greece and all the Greek Aegean islands except Crete are under German occupation by May 11. In fending off the Axis invaders, the Greeks suffer the loss of 15,700 men. Greece will not be liberated until 1944, by British troops from the Mediterranean theater.

1945 : Mussolini is executed

On this day in 1945, "Il Duce," Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.


The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.


He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

I wonder what would have happened if he he had made it across the border.

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1945 : Adolf and Eva marry

Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler's official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler's political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide.

Also on this day in 1945, the Americans liberate the concentration camp at Dachau. Five hundred German garrison troops guarding the camp are killed within an hour, some by inmates, but most by the American liberators, who are horrified by what they bear witness to, including huge piles of emaciated dead bodies found in railway cars and near the crematorium.

There were 33,000 survivors of the camp, 2,539 of them Jewish. Dachau, about 12 miles north of Munich, was the first concentration camp established by the Nazi regime, only five weeks after Hitler came to power. At least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp and another 90,000 through its 150 branches scattered throughout southern Germany and Austria. Medical experiments, ranging from studying the effects of freezing on warm-blooded creatures to treating intentionally inflicted malaria, were carried out on prisoners. At least 32,000 prisoners died of malnutrition and mistreatment at the camp itself; innumerable more were transported to the Auschwitz gas chambers. A memorial was established at the campsite on September 11, 1956.

you never really hear about the probably thousands of German guards murdered after liberation.

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"When we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area." - General Zukhov to Eisenhower

Many were murdered indeed, I don't know know how many. Howewer I also have testimonies from ex-pows who were disgusted when the allied hired the same men who guarded them during the war. When they told such and such a men had commited crimes , they were told to shut up..... because guards were needed ...... so don't expect me to pity these guys.

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who has pity for an ss guard? nobody i should think.

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"When we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area." - General Zukhov to Eisenhower

1945 : Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his underground bunker

Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his "1,000-year" Reich collapses above him.

Hitler had repaired to his bunker on January 16, after deciding to remain in Berlin for the last great siege of the war. Fifty-five feet under the chancellery (Hitler's headquarters as chancellor), the shelter contained 18 small rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. He left only rarely (once to decorate a squadron of Hitler Youth) and spent most of his time micromanaging what was left of German defenses and entertaining such guests as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. At his side were Eva Braun, whom he married only two days before their double suicide, and his dog, an Alsatian named Blondi.


Warned by officers that the Russians were only a day or so from overtaking the chancellery and urged to escape to Berchtesgarden, a small town in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler owned a home, the dictator instead chose suicide. It is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his "beloved" dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol.


The bodies of Hitler and Eva were cremated in the chancellery garden by the bunker survivors (as per Der Fuhrer's orders) and reportedly later recovered in part by Russian troops. A German court finally officially declared Hitler dead, but not until 1956.

Just a few days after the Duce was executed...

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The USSR did not inform the West until early 1960´s that they had "found Hitler´s body". I guess you called it " The Cold war"....

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And today would have been Der Fuhrers what? 118th birthday.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

He should have committed suicide after his birtday, not the day before. At least you get the presents and have a party and you won't have to do the washing up in your bunker that day.....

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1887 : Alan G. Cunningham, British liberator of Ethiopia, is born

On this day, General Alan Gordon Cunningham, commander of the British forces that captured Ethiopia, liberating it from its Italian invaders, is born.

The younger brother of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, the man who effectively eliminated the Italian naval threat in the Mediterranean as early as 1940, General Alan Cunningham did virtually the same to the Italian threat in Ethiopia. Overcoming topographical and administrative obstacles, Cunningham's forces entered Italian Somaliland, occupied the ports of Chisimaio and Mogadiscio, and then pursued the Axis enemy into the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. On May 20, 1941, along with General Sir William Platt, whose army was advancing on the Italian invaders from the north, Cunningham received the surrender of Amadeo di Savoia, commander of the Italian armies. The way was paved for the return of Ethiopia's emperor, Haile Selassie.

Cunningham was less successful in campaigns in Libya and was finally relieved of his command. He returned to England and in 1941 was knighted for the successes he had enjoyed. He went on to become British high commissioner in Palestine from 1945 until Israel's independence in 1948.

1945 : German troops in Italy surrender to the Allies, while Berlin surrenders to Russia's Zhukov.

On this day in 1945, approximately 1 million German soldiers lay down their arms as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta on April 29, come into effect. Many Germans surrender to Japanese soldiers-Japanese Americans. Among the American tank crews that entered the northern Italian town of Biella was an all-Nisei (second-generation) infantry battalion, composed of Japanese Americans from Hawaii.

Early that same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepts the surrender of the German capital. The Red Army takes 134,000 German soldiers prisoner.