PN1501

In September 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened to unleash a European war unless the Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, was ceded to Germany. Between September 29 and 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany met in Munich and agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange … Read more

On the morning of March 23, 1945, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery received confirmation at 6 a.m. at his 21st Army Group headquarters in Venlo, Holland. American troops had crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim the previous night, using assault boats and suffering only light casualties. Patton's Third Army was already on the eastern bank of the … Read more

The life of Margot Frank is often remembered only through the diary of her younger sister, Anne. Yet Margot was a bright, modest, and determined young woman whose own story ended in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen. She was born on February 16, 1926, in Frankfurt, Germany, to Otto and Edith Frank. Her sister Anne was … Read more

Mala Zimetbaum was born on January 26, 1918, in Pszczyna, today part of Poland and then part of Austria-Hungary. She was the youngest of five children of Pinhas and Chaya Zimetbaum, both Jewish. Her family had lived in Germany for several years before her birth, which is why German was the main language spoken in … Read more

On the afternoon of December 12, 1941, a telephone rang inside the headquarters of the Third Army in San Antonio, Texas. Five days earlier, Japanese bombs had turned Pearl Harbor into a graveyard of steel and fire. The man who answered was a brigadier general almost nobody outside the army had ever heard of. His … Read more

In March 1945, a message arrived at Third Army headquarters with an instruction its authors almost certainly considered reasonable. Bypass Trier. The city, according to planners at SHAEF, would require four divisions to capture. Do not commit forces to the assault. Continue the advance. The logic was sound in the abstract. Trier was a significant … Read more

In the last days of March 1945, four words moved through the corridors of Allied high command in France, passed between officers in the low voice men use when they are not certain they are allowed to say something out loud. Patton crossed last night. Not the British. Not the greatest river assault ever assembled. … Read more