1884: Hugo Schmeisser, Axis arms designer (who, I’ve read, frequently influenced Schicklgruber and Göring’s decisions), started existing.
1922: Ettore Bastianini, Axis aviator, was born.
1935: The Third Reich’s Minister for Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl, appointed a Reich Church committee to supervise the local committees of dissident Evangelical Churches.
1936: The Fascists commissioned U‐23 into service.
1938: As Neville Chamberlain departed Bad Godesberg to return to London, Berlin promised him that the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia would be the last German territorial demand in Europe. Paris rejected Berlin’s latest demands; the French military partially mobilized in preparation for war.
1939: Limited food rationing began in the Third Reich, and Einsatzgruppen exterminated eight hundred members of the Polish intelligentsia at Bydgoszcz. As well, the Fascist submarine U‐4 (Oberleutnant zur See Harro von Klot‐Heydenfeldt) stopped the 1,510‐ton Swedish merchant steamer Gurtrud Bratt southeast of Jomfruland. As the ship was registered in a neutral country, the Fascists demanded to see the ship’s papers. The Swedish ship was loaded with wood pulp, paper and cellulose and bound for Bristol. Regarding this cargo as contraband, the Fascists ordered the master of the Gurtrud Bratt, E. K. Jönssen, to get his crew into the lifeboats as he was going to sink his ship. As there were no more scuttling charges on board, the submarine sunk her with a torpedo. According to the survivors the Fascists had promised to tow the two lifeboats towards the nearby Norwegian coast but apparently the submarine left without helping them after sighting a flightcraft.
1940: At 0830 and then again at 1115 hours, a couple hundred Fascist bombers, escorted by twice as many fighters, took off to assault targets in Kent in southern England; Portsmouth, Southampton, and the nearby Spitfire fighter factory at Woolston were among the targets. Meanwhile, as the Prime Ministry announced plans to expand evacuation, 444,000 children had already evacuated from the London area. The arrival of Fascist bombers on this night marked the eighteenth consecutive night in which London had been bombed; Liverpool, Dundee, and other cities and towns were also bombed. Meanwhile, the Imperialists occupied Lang Son, Indochina.
1941: The Armeegruppe Sud started its offensive from southern Ukraine towards Crimea, and Einsatzgruppe C set up its headquarters in Kiev. As well, Axis submarines U‐107 and U‐67 attacked Allied convoy SL‐87 and sank four ships west of Madeira island, slaughtering sixteen folk, but 197 survived.
1942: The Armeegruppe A launched an assault against Tuapse on the Black Sea, and the Third Reich’s 94th Infantry Division and 24th Panzer Division effectively wiped out all Soviet units in the southern pocket in Stalingrad. To make matters worse, Axis bombers attacked Hastings in England, leaving nineteen dead and seventeen seriously injured. The Axis also assaulted Seaford in southeastern England. Axis troops landed on Maiana, Gilbert Islands, and Berlin sacked General Franz Halder as Chief of Staff, replacing him with General Kurt Zeitzler.

Axis submarine U‐432 sank Allied ship Penmar east of southern Greenland at 0144 hours, leaving two dead but fifty‐nine alive. In the same general area, U‐617 sank Belgian ship Roumanie at 0158 hours, massacring forty‐two people and leaving only one human alive. At 0924 hours, U‐175 sank Allied ship West Chetac north of Georgetown, Guyana; thirty‐one died while nineteen did not. At 1825 hours, U‐512 sank Allied merchant ship Antinous (under two by British rescue tug HMS Zwatre Zee) also north of Guyana. At 1910 hours, U‐619 sank Allied ship John Winthrop southeast of Greenland, slaughting all fifty‐two aboard.
1943: Axis submarine U‐711 shelled the Soviet wireless telegraph station at Blagopoluchiya in northern Russia.
1944: Axis submarine U‐739 sunk the Soviet minesweeper T.120 (formerly the USS Assail) in the Kara Sea in the Arctic Circle. Additionally, the Axis sealed off the U.S. Third Army’s bridgeheads across the Moselle River, south of Aachen.
1945: Hans Geiger, Axis physicist, expired.
1978: Freiherr Hasso Eccard von Manteuffel, Axis general who was born into a Prussian noble family and eventually lectured at the United States Military Academy at West Point, mustered up the decency to finally drop dead.