1892: Maximilian Fretter‐Pico, Axis commander, was unfortunately born.
1897: Ward Hermans, Axis collaborator, came around to make life worse for us.
1925: Rome assigned Arturo Riccardi to the Ministry of Navy.
1933: As the E7K floatplane took its first flight, the Fascist bourgeoisie gave control of all police in Prussia to its national government. Many of the former police officials retired, and NSDAP members took some of the vacated positions.
1934: Werner Mölders began receiving basic flying instructions at the Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule in Cottbus.
1937: Spanish Nationalist forces entered Malaga, Spain as Republican forces fled toward Almeria. At Madrid, the Nationalists under General Luis Orgaz renewed the attempts to capture the city; this time they concentrated their efforts on cutting the Valencia road where it ran through the Jarama valley to the southeast of the city.
1940: The Kriegsmarine commissioned the Estonian steam merchant Hanonia into its service as Schiff 11/Ulm after conversion into a minelayer.
1941: Adolf Schicklgruber made his final appeal to Francisco Franco to (officially) join the Axis. Likewise, the Reich’s High Command issued the order for Operation Sonnenblume, which called for the organization and transfer of a Germanic force to assist fellow Fascists in North Africa. Erwin Rommel, unexpectedly summoned from leave, was instructed by Berlin that he was to proceed to Libya forthwith, as commander of the Wehrmacht troops which would be shortly arriving there and would be called the German Afrika Korps. The Axis also commenced executions of prisoners by gunfire at the Flossenbürg concentration camp (the first victims being Polish political prisoners).
1942: The Third Reich published new guidelines for the conduct of anti‐guerrilla warfare, in which it spelled out that the war against irregulars (Himmler having earlier ordered that the word ‘partisan’ was to be replaced with ‘bandit’ in all correspondence) had to be fought regardless of any conventional legality or morality, ‘without limitations even against women and children’. Meanwhile, Hermann Göring departed Rome, and Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary that during this visit, some saw Göring wearing expensive jewelry and furs. In Asia, Axis artillery shelled Corregidor from Cavite at Luzon, and Axis artillery and aerial bombardment continued against various military and port facilities at Singapore. In Africa, the Wehrmacht captured Benghazi as Hans‐Joachim Marseille returned to his unit at Martuba, Libya, but the westward offensive had been halted at the Gazala Line. At sea, Axis submarine U‐107 sank a U.S. freighter off Imperial America’s east coast, slaughtering the entire crew of thirty‐five. Off Bermuda, Axis submarine U‐106 sank British ship Opawa. Northeast of the Azores islands, Axis submarine U‐109 sank Panamanian ship Halcyon, and finally, Axis submarine U‐82 attempted to attack convoy OS‐18, but depth charges sunk her in return.
1943: All female prisoners at Auschwitz gathered for a general roll call at 0330 hours then marched outside the camp. They stayed outdoors until 1700 hours, then the authorities ordered them to run back to the camp, prodding them by swinging clubs. About… about one women died during this forced march… the authorities rounded up any who survived but were unable to keep up, and sent them to block 25 in the BIa sector of the camp, from which they would later transfer to the gas chambers.

I’ve been paused for several minutes now because this was a lot for me to take in and it’s a reminder that I took upon myself a grim field of interest that sometimes feels no better than a dirty job. I’ll be honest, I am guessing that almost nobody reads or even skims these notes, which makes me tempted to stop including them, but I reminded myself that I still get a personal benefit out of including them as ideas for future topics, and because I dislike completely overlooking other important events.

Anyway… as that was going on, Adolf Schicklgruber met with Erich von Manstein at Rastenberg, East Prussia. The Field Marshal had been flown miles from Donetsk, Ukraine to the Führer’s Wolfsschanze headquarters in Schicklgruber’s personal Focke‐Wulf Fw200 V3 ‘Immelmann III’. At the four hour conference, only five days after the surrender at Stalingrad, Russia, the Army Group South commander persuaded his Chancellor to allow him to retreat to the River Mius. Likewise, two formations of Ju 88 bombers of FK II and Heinkel 111 torpedo aircraft from 4th Staffel from II/KG.26 (led by Hauptmann Rudolf Schmidt) assaulted the the convoy KMF‐8, but the Axis lost two Heinkel aircraft. Heinkel IIIs of 4/KG.26 damaged a British freighter and Axis submarine U‐77 assaulted a British convoy.
1944: As Axis and Allied artillery pieces bombarded each other at Anzio, Italy, a transport from the Drancy concentration camp in Paris arrived at Auschwitz. The Axis massacred nine hundred ninety‐nine of the 1,214 Jews upon arrival, and registered only 166 men and 49 women into the camp. In Burma, Axis attacked the forward headquarters of Indian 7th Division in Arakan by surprise.
1945: While Fulda experienced an Allied bombing raid, the Wehmacht’s Georgian Legion arrived on the island of Texel, Netherlands, and Tōkyō named Rear Admiral Tsuyoshi Matsumoto the chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy 12th Air Fleet.
1946: Allied repatriation ship Hikawa Maru arrived at Kirun (now Keelung), Taiwan and embarked former Axis personnel.
1947: A court in Najing found Lieutenant General Hisao Tani, commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese 6th Division in Nanjing from late 1937, guilty of encouraging his men to commit crimes against the Chinese.
1949: Hiroaki Abe, Axis vice admiral, died.