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12 March 1938: the border at 5 a.m.

German troops crossed into Austria at approximately 5 a.m. on 12 March 1938, without armed resistance.

The demands had already been met. Kurt Schuschnigg had cancelled his plebiscite on Austrian independence and resigned on 11 March under threat of invasion, ordering Austria's military not to resist.

Shortly after midnight, President Wilhelm Miklas yielded to Hitler's ultimatum and appointed the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart chancellor; Seyss-Inquart formed a Nazi-dominated cabinet.

Cheers, flowers and immediate terror

Many Austrians greeted German forces with cheers and flowers as Hitler travelled through Braunau and Linz toward Vienna.

Anti-Jewish and political terror began immediately. Austrian Nazis forced Jews to scrub the pro-independence referendum slogans from the streets while crowds jeered.

The cheering crowds were real, but they cannot establish unanimous Austrian consent: opponents were threatened, arrested or excluded.

The law on the 13th, the vote in April

On 13 March, Seyss-Inquart's government enacted the law formally incorporating Austria into Germany. The vote Schuschnigg had cancelled was designed to affirm an independent Austria, not to approve union with Germany.

A plebiscite held on 10 April returned an official result of 99.73% in favour.

That vote came after Austria had already been occupied and legally incorporated, under coercive conditions, with Jews and other regime opponents excluded.

5 October 1938: passports declared invalid

On 5 October 1938 the Reich Ministry of the Interior decreed that German passports belonging to Jews residing within the Reich were invalid. Werner Best signed the ordinance in Berlin on the ministry's behalf, in agreement with the Reich Ministry of Justice.

Holders had to submit their passports to the local passport authority within two weeks of the ordinance taking effect — or within two weeks of returning, for those then abroad. Noncompliance carried a fine of up to 150 Reichsmarks, with imprisonment also possible.

A passport valid for foreign travel could be revalidated only by adding a mark identifying the holder as Jewish.

The mark, and where it came from

The prescribed identifier became a conspicuous red letter "J", stamped on the page bearing the holder's name.

The measure followed German–Swiss negotiations. Switzerland wanted to identify and restrict Jewish entrants without imposing visas on every German traveller, and the September 1938 agreement called for a distinguishing mark on passports held by Jews of the Reich.

The German regime implemented that agreement through the October ordinance.

Not one of the Nuremberg Laws

This was a separate passport ordinance issued more than three years after the September 1935 Nuremberg Laws, under the Nazi racial classification system. It was also distinct from the domestic identity-card requirements and from the compulsory additional names "Israel" and "Sara".

The stamp was not a neutral aid to escape: it made Jewish refugees immediately recognisable to foreign border officials and enabled officials to reject them.

27 February 1940: the count that did not fade

At the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley on 27 February 1940, Martin Kamen and Samuel Ruben concluded through repeated chemical separation and radioactivity measurements that irradiated graphite contained the long-lived isotope carbon-14.

Kamen had bombarded a graphite target with deuterons in Berkeley's cyclotrons; the intended reaction converted carbon-13 into carbon-14. Ruben performed the chemical separations and measurements with him.

Their first approximate half-life for the isotope was about 4,000 years.

Why 21 minutes was not enough

The two men needed a carbon tracer that survived far longer than carbon-11's 21-minute half-life, so that they could follow carbon through photosynthesis and other biological reactions.

Their result established that carbon possessed a radioisotope sufficiently long-lived to serve as a practical tracer.

The immediate application was biochemical tracing, not archaeological dating.

Submitted within two days

Ruben and Kamen submitted their short report, "Radioactive Carbon of Long Half-Life," on 29 February; Physical Review published it on 15 March 1940.

The discovery was announced two days after the identification, during Ernest Lawrence's Berkeley Nobel Prize ceremony.

Willard Libby, whose name is attached to radiocarbon dating, took no part in the 27 February work; he developed the dating method at the University of Chicago after the war.

13 May 1940: the assault crossing at 16:00

Having reached the Meuse at Sedan on 12 May, Heinz Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps attacked across the river on 13 May 1940 with the 1st, 2nd and 10th Panzer Divisions and the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, supported by sustained Luftwaffe attacks.

The assault crossing began at approximately 16:00. German troops had penetrated the French main line of resistance by 20:00 and captured Hill 301 at about 23:00.

The crossing itself was an infantry-and-engineer operation; German tanks did not begin crossing until the following day.

Rubber boats, and a rumour that travelled faster than armour

Walter Rubarth, a German engineer NCO, led a small assault group across in overloaded rubber boats and attacked French bunkers from their flanks. By nightfall six of his eleven-man team were dead and three wounded.

A false report that German tanks had already reached Bulson helped trigger a flight among elements of the French 55th Infantry Division, a second-tier reserve formation under Pierre Lafontaine holding the principal crossing sector.

German war diaries indicate that the first German tank did not cross the river until roughly twelve hours after that report.

What the phrase "Maginot Line" hides

On 14 May, German armour poured over a pontoon bridge at Gaulier; by that afternoon about 570 tanks had crossed the Meuse, and Guderian sent the 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions westward.

The Meuse defences at Sedan were a weaker northern extension of the fortified system rather than the strong concrete works usually meant by the Maginot Line, and the main German manoeuvre bypassed the principal line entirely.

The frequently repeated "60-mile-wide breach" cannot be substantiated from the military histories consulted; one U.S. Army study instead describes an opening of about 12 kilometres between the French Second and Ninth Armies after the 55th Division collapsed.

13 January 1941: the first transport

T4's organizers converted Hadamar into the sixth centralized killing facility. Its first transport arrived on 13 January 1941 — thirty men from the Eichberg institution, among them 29-year-old Hans Frey — and all were murdered that day.

Staff killed the victims with bottled carbon monoxide in a cellar gas chamber built to look like a shower room, cremated the bodies, and sent relatives urns with invented causes and dates of death.

The deception ran to the vehicles as well: the buses that brought patients to Hadamar had painted-over windows to conceal their passengers.

Not a date but a phase

The entry's figure of 10,072 is cumulative, not a single day's toll, which is why it resists a date. The Hadamar Memorial dates the murders from 13 January 1941 and the halt of the T4 programme to 24 August 1941; the last transport reached Hadamar on 21 August.

The 10,072 figure itself comes from the perpetrators' own internal compilation, the Hartheim statistics, which records that many people murdered at Hadamar during the 1941 centralized gassing phase. An updated Hadamar victim list raises the count to 10,122. The Hadamar Memorial says more than 10,000 people were murdered there; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says around 10,000.

August 1941 was when the cumulative phase ended, not a single month — or day — in which the entire toll was incurred. The buses kept arriving through the summer, and people were still being gassed in August, up to the last transport on the 21st.

What the numbers must not be merged with

T4's internal calculation for all six centralized gassing facilities between January 1940 and August 1941 is 70,273. That total should not be merged with estimates of roughly 250,000 to 300,000 victims of the broader Nazi "euthanasia" programme and other disability-targeted killing actions through 1945.

Killing at Hadamar resumed in August 1942 in decentralized form — lethal drug overdoses, starvation and deliberate neglect rather than gas — and more than 4,400 people were killed there before March 1945.

"Euthanasia" was the perpetrators' own euphemism; the victims did not consent, and what the term describes is organized mass murder.

8 September 1941: Shlisselburg falls

German forces captured Shlisselburg on Lake Ladoga on 8 September 1941, severing Leningrad's last overland connection with unoccupied Soviet territory and beginning the conventional siege period.

Army Group North's summer advance had already cut the city's principal rail links; taking Shlisselburg brought German troops to the lake and closed what remained. The 20th Motorized Division is the formation commonly identified with the seizure.

The city suffered its first massive German air raid the same day, and the fires included the blaze at the Badayev food warehouses.

A blockade, not a sealed ring

Leningrad was land-blockaded but not hermetically sealed. Lake Ladoga stayed outside complete Axis control — a possible and dangerous route for supply and evacuation.

Finnish forces held the northern approaches, but the action that cut the southern land connection on 8 September was German.

What the day set in motion

Movement of people and supplies now depended increasingly on air transport and the lake rather than on rail or road, while the same day's bombing had damaged food stocks.

The conventional inclusive count of the blockade is 872 days; the familiar "900 days" is commemorative shorthand.

Close to one million city residents are estimated to have died during the blockade, though totals vary according to whether evacuees and military deaths in the wider battle for Leningrad are included.

30 November 1941: from the ghetto to the pits

On 30 November 1941, German SS and police units and Latvian auxiliaries forced thousands of Jews from the Riga ghetto toward prepared pits in the Rumbula Forest, where they were stripped and shot.

A transport of approximately 1,000 Jews from the German Reich arrived the same day. Its passengers were taken to Rumbula and murdered rather than admitted to the ghetto.

Survivors described victims being made to place shoes and clothing into separate piles before being driven onward.

The second operation: 8–9 December

A second operation following the same pattern took place on 8–9 December, destroying most of the remaining population of the large Riga ghetto.

Approximately 30,000 people had been confined when the ghetto was sealed. Roughly 4,000–5,000 Latvian Jews survived the principal operations and were held in a smaller section.

Who organised it

Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln selected the site and organised the operation after Heinrich Himmler ordered the Riga ghetto liquidated. Rudolf Lange, commander of the Security Police and SD in Latvia, took part in organising it.

German Security Police, Einsatzkommando and Order Police personnel conducted the shootings, while Latvian auxiliary formations helped clear the ghetto and guard the columns. "Rumbula" covers the murders committed inside the ghetto and along the march route as well as at the forest pits.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum gives at least 25,000 victims from the Riga ghetto, and separately notes the approximately 1,000 deportees from the Reich.

15 February 1942: the morning conference in the Battlebox

At a morning command conference in the Battlebox at Fort Canning on 15 February 1942, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and his senior officers concluded that they could not mount a viable counterattack to recover the reservoirs, and decided to seek surrender.

Japanese forces had taken the reservoirs and pumping stations; Singapore's water supply was close to failure, and fuel and heavy-ammunition stocks were running low.

Percival's surrender party approached Japanese lines carrying both a white flag and the Union Jack.

6:10 p.m. in a factory boardroom

The party reached Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita's headquarters at the Ford Motor Factory in Bukit Timah at approximately 5 p.m. Percival surrendered British-led forces unconditionally in the factory boardroom at approximately 6:10 p.m.

Some secondary accounts give the signing as 6:20 p.m.; the National Archives of Singapore timeline gives 6:10.

The surrender took effect at 8:30 p.m., when fighting ceased and the guns fell silent.

Prisoners, and a new name

Approximately 80,000 British, Indian, Australian and local troops became prisoners, joining roughly 50,000 Allied personnel captured earlier in the Malayan campaign — the two figures behind the commonly quoted total of more than 130,000. More than 15,000 of them were Australian.

The following day Japan staged a victory parade and renamed Singapore Syonan-to, beginning military occupation.

An almost empty camp outside Lublin

Majdanek's SS garrison carried out its final evacuation and liquidation on 22 July 1944 and abandoned the camp. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum dates Soviet troops' first arrival to the night of 22–23 July and labels 23 July the liberation date.

The Red Army did not storm a functioning camp. Before leaving, the SS burned documents and bodies and set the crematorium building on fire, but lacked the time to destroy the gas chambers and much of the other physical evidence.

The soldiers found a group of disabled Soviet prisoners who had been left behind in the camp's hospital area.

23 or 24 July: the institutions that hold the history disagree

The State Museum at Majdanek dates the entry of Red Army troops onto the camp grounds to 24 July, two days after the garrison left and while fighting for Lublin was still under way.

USHMM uses 23 July, while the museum standing on the site itself uses 24 July. Polish historians note dates ranging from 22 to 24 July.

The reported counts also conflict: USHMM says fewer than 500 prisoners, while the State Museum identifies 985 Soviet invalids in the field-II hospital.

Evidence left standing

The final evacuation had marched about 800 Majdanek prisoners, joined by more than 200 from the Lipowa labour camp, over 100 km before putting them on a train; 837 of them reached Auschwitz.

What remained on the site was an unusually extensive body of physical evidence, and Soviet officials soon invited journalists in to inspect it.

A state museum was established on the former grounds later in 1944; it now identifies 70 preserved elements of German-built camp infrastructure and estimates approximately 80,000 deaths at Majdanek, including approximately 60,000 Jews.

11 April 1945: the SS leaves

As U.S. armored units approached the Ettersberg near Weimar on 11 April 1945, the SS command ordered its personnel to leave Buchenwald, and most guards abandoned the camp around midday.

Tanks of the U.S. 4th Armored Division's 37th Tank Battalion defeated the remaining SS defences and passed through the SS area during the afternoon.

The first American tanks passed the camp itself without stopping.

Taken from inside

Fearing a last-minute massacre, the organised prisoner underground had distributed hidden weapons. Armed resistance groups occupied the gate and watchtowers, raised a white flag, took control of the camp and captured 76 SS personnel.

At 3:15 p.m. the prisoner camp senior, Hans Eiden, used the loudspeaker to announce that the SS had fled and that the prisoners were free.

Approximately 21,000 left alive

Reconnaissance troops from the U.S. 4th and 6th Armored Divisions entered later that afternoon and encountered approximately 21,000 surviving prisoners, more than 900 of them children and adolescents. The 6th Armored Division, part of Patton's Third Army, is the U.S. Army's recognised liberating unit.

The Buchenwald Memorial describes the liberation as coming "from outside and inside": U.S. armour defeated the remaining SS forces while armed prisoners seized the camp itself.

The prisoner committee administered the camp before transferring control to the U.S. Army two days later, and hundreds of weakened survivors died after 11 April.

5 June 1947, 2:50 p.m., Harvard Yard

U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke in Harvard Yard at 2:50 p.m. on 5 June 1947, after receiving an honorary degree. The address belonged to the afternoon Harvard Alumni Association exercises, not the formal morning commencement ceremony.

An estimated 15,000 people were in the Yard.

Charles E. "Chip" Bohlen had drafted the speech, using memoranda from George Kennan and William Clayton.

The argument

Marshall said the deeper problem in Europe was the dislocation of its economic system — trade, currency, production, and the exchange between farms and cities — not merely the visible wartime destruction. He argued that ruined factories mattered less than a farmer refusing to sell food for money he could not use.

He committed the United States to consider substantial assistance for European recovery, while insisting that European countries themselves must initiate and jointly develop the programme. Europe, he said, would need extraordinary imports for the next three to four years.

No budget, no country list

The speech named no dollar amount, no recipient list, no administrative agency and no country allocations. It was a framework; the detailed European Recovery Program was negotiated and legislated afterwards.

British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin heard a BBC report of the address and contacted French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault the next day to arrange a 17 June conference on Marshall's proposal.

Signed aboard an airplane

Harry S. Truman signed Public Law 80-253, the National Security Act, on 26 July 1947 aboard the presidential VC-54C aircraft Sacred Cow, immediately before departing Washington.

The law provided for a Secretary of Defense and a National Military Establishment; separate Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force; a statutory Joint Chiefs of Staff; the National Security Council; the Central Intelligence Agency; and the National Security Resources Board.

The same day, Truman issued Executive Order 9877 assigning primary functions and responsibilities to the three armed services, and nominated James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. The Senate confirmed Forrestal that evening.

Not yet the Department of Defense

The umbrella organization the act created was called the National Military Establishment. The name Department of Defense dates from the 1949 amendments, which also substantially strengthened the Secretary of Defense's authority.

The service departments remained separately administered, so the Secretary's initial power was limited. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, had functioned since 1942 without a statutory basis; the act gave them their first authority in law.

Fifty-four days before most machinery became operative

Signing the bill did not put most of the new machinery to work that afternoon. Most provisions took effect on 18 September, the day after Forrestal was sworn in on 17 September 1947.

The CIA's assigned duties were to coordinate, evaluate and disseminate intelligence. Departmental intelligence services remained independent, and the act did not centralize all intelligence collection in the new agency.