5.11.2005
IT HAPPENED TODAY MAY 11 TO 20

May 11
During the Civil War
1864 Battle of Yellow Tavern, Virginia on Sheridan's Richmond Raid
1864 Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia continues
1865 Confederate sailors blow up CSS Virginia to keep her from falling into Union hands
May 12
1940 Germany Invades France
Two days after the German Wehrmacht stormed into Belgium, Holland, and the Netherlands, the Nazi invasion of France began. In a lightning strike, German forces simply out-flanked the northwest corners of the Maginot Line, previously alleged by the French military command to be an impregnable defense of their eastern border. Within a week, Dutch and Belgian resistance had ended, making the Allied defense of France untenable. On May 26, with German tanks racing across Western Europe, the British initiated Operation Dynamo--the total evacuation of Allied forces from the beach at Dunkirk on the Belgian coast. The ten-day evacuation, during which 340,000 British, French, and Belgian troops were brought to the safety of the British isle, was constantly inflicted by attacks from the German air force. All British citizens in possession of sea-worthy vessels were asked to lend their ships to the effort, and all but 40,000 of the Allied troops who massed at Dunkirk escaped capture. With Western Europe abandoned by its defenders, the German army swept through the rest of France, and on June 14, Paris fell to the Nazis. Eight days later, Henri Petain and other French leaders signed an armistice with the Nazis at Compiegne, and Germany annexed half the country, leaving the other half in the hands of their puppet French rulers. In July, Petain took office as "chief of state" at Vichy, a city in unoccupied France. The Vichy government under Petain and later Pierre Laval collaborated with the Nazis, and French citizens suffered on both sides of the divided nation. On June 6, 1944, liberation of France began with the successful Allied landed at Normandy.
May 13
1943 Battle for North Africa Ends
During World War II, the last of some 250,000 Axis troops surrendered in Tunisia to Allied forces, ending the three-year Battle for North Africa. In September of 1940, Italian forces commanded by Marshall Rodolfo Graziani opened the North African theater of war by crossing into British-controlled Egypt and occupying Sidi Barrani. Three months later, British forces under Sir Richard O'Connor launched a crushing counteroffensive, liberating Sidi Barrani at the cost of only 133 British soldiers killed to the nearly 40,000 Italians taken prisoner. Over the next two months, British and Australian forces devastated Italian divisions in Egypt and in Cyrenaica to the east, and after a major Allied victory at Beda Fomm in February of 1941, the tide seemed to have turned against the Axis in North Africa. However, German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had yet to make his appearance in North Africa. In early 1941, Rommel was first sent to the North African desert by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on a mission to strengthen the Italian tank divisions that had suffered grave defeats against the British desert forces. By the end of May, Rommel's Africa Korps had won back much of the territory lost by the Italians, and Rommel earned the nickname "Desert Fox" for his skill in fashioning elegant deceptions to confuse his enemy. However, in November, British General Claude Auchinleck launched Operation Crusader, a campaign that forced Rommel back into eastern Libya. In January 1942, Rommel launched an offensive in Cyrenaica, decisively defeating the comparatively inexperienced British First Armored Division. By July, the Africa Korps had pushed as far east as El Alamein, Egypt, less than fifty miles from Alexandria, and Rommel's forces paused to rest. Three months later, the Axis suffered a major defeat against British General Bernard Montgomery at the Battle of El Alamein, and the tide turned for the last time in the battle for North Africa. The Germans and Italians fled to Tunisia in the east, where they prepared a defense against Allied forces massing in North Africa. In November 1942, U.S. forces arrived to liberate French North Africa, controlled by the Vichy French, and early in the next year, they joined the other Allied forces preparing for their offensive into Tunisia. On April 22, 1943, the main Allied attack came, and by May 7, the British and Americans had broken through the Axis line, capturing both Bizerta and Tunis. On May 10, Axis forces began to surrender in large numbers, and by May 13, North Africa was clear.
May 14
During the Civil War
1863 Engagement at Jackson, Mississippi
1864 Battle of Resaca, Georgia begins
1864 Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia continues

May 15
1988 Soviets Begin Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Near the end of the ten-year Afghan-Soviet War, the U.S.S.R. began a withdrawal of its estimated 115,000 troops in Afghanistan by pulling a unit out of Jalabad. The previous month, representatives of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, the United States, and Pakistan had signed an agreement calling for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. In exchange for the withdrawal, the U.S. agreed to end its arms support for the Afghan anti-Soviet factions, and Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to not interfere in each other's affairs. In 1978, a Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan installed a new Communist government under Nur Mohammad Taraki. However, in 1979, a second coup toppled Taraki's government in favor of Hafizullah Amin, a Muslim leader less favorable to the Soviets. In December of the same year, Soviet tanks and troops invaded Afghanistan, but were met with unanticipated resistance from the conservative Muslim opposition. Afghan tribesmen, calling themselves "holy warriors," fought a fierce and bloody guerrilla war against the Soviets. In the U.S.S.R., the Red Army's failure to suppress the guerrillas, and the high cost of the war in Russian lives and resources, caused significant discord in the Communist Party and Soviet society. By 1988, the anti-Soviet factions, bolstered by military arms aid from the U.S. and other sources, had exhausted the U.S.S.R., leading Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to accept a U.N.-brokered agreement calling for a total Soviet military withdrawal. On May 15, the withdrawal began, and on February 15, 1989, the last exhausted Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan.
May 16
1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Ends
In Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as Nazi soldiers gained control of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto, blowing up the last remaining synagogue and initiating the mass deportation of the ghetto’s remaining dwellers to the Treblinka extermination camp. Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens into a "ghetto" surrounded by barb wire and armed S.S. guards. The Warsaw ghetto had an area of only 840 acres but soon held almost 500,000 Jews in deplorable conditions. Disease and starvation killed thousands every month and, beginning in July of 1942, six thousand Jews per day were transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp. Although the Nazis assured the remaining Jews that their relatives and friends were being sent to work camps, word soon reached the ghetto that deportation to the camp meant extermination. An underground resistance group was established in the ghetto--the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB)--and limited arms were acquired at great cost. On January 18, 1943, when the Nazis entered the ghetto to prepare a group for transfer, a ZOB unit ambushed them. Fighting lasted for several days, and a number of Germans soldiers were killed before they withdrew. On April 19, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler announced that the ghetto was to be cleared out in honor of Hitler’s birthday the following day, and over a thousand S.S. soldiers entered the confines with tanks and heavy artillery. Although many of the ghetto’s remaining 60,000 Jewish dwellers attempted to hide themselves in secret bunkers, over a thousand ZOB members met the Germans with gunfire and homemade bombs. Suffering moderate casualties, the Germans initially withdrew but soon returned, and on April 24 launched an all-out attack against the Warsaw Jews. Thousands were slaughtered as the Germans systematically moved down the ghettos, blowing up the buildings one by one. The ZOB took to the sewers to continue the fight, but on May 8 their command bunker fell to the Germans and their resistant leaders committed suicide. By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control and mass deportation of the last Warsaw Jews to Treblinka began. During the uprising some 300 hundred German soldiers were killed to the thousands of Warsaw Jews who were massacred. Virtually all of those who survived to reach Treblinka had been killed by the end of the war.

May 17
1863 Battle of Big Black River, Mississippi
The Union army defeats the Confederates on the Big Black River and drives them into Vicksburg in part of a brilliant campaign by General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had swung his army down the Mississippi River past the strong riverfront defenses, and landed in Mississippi south of Vicksburg. He then moved northeast toward Jackson and split his force to defeat Joseph Johnston's troops in Jackson and John C. Pemberton's at Champion's Hill.
During the engagement at Champion's Hill, a Confederate division under William Loring split from Pemberton's main force and drifted south of the battlefield. Pemberton was forced to retreat to the Big Black River where he waited for Loring's troops. Loring, however, was heading east to join Johnston's army because he believed he could not reach Pemberton. While Pemberton waited for Loring on a bridge over the Big Black River, Grant attacked.
Pemberton suffered his second defeat in two days at the Big Black River. The battle began at dawn, and by 10 a.m. the Confederate position appeared hopeless. Confederate casualties numbered 1,752 killed, wounded, and captured, to the Yankees' 279. Pemberton withdrew across the bridge and then burned it down. With the bridge out, Grant could no longer advance. But he now had Pemberton backed up into Vicksburg. He soon closed the ring and laid siege to the town, which surrendered on July 4.
May 18
1863 The siege of Vicksburg commences
On this day, Union General Ulysses S. Grant surrounds Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war.
Beginning in the winter of 1862-63, Grant made several attempts to capture Vicksburg. In March, he marched his army down the west bank of the Mississippi, while union Admiral David Porter's flotilla ran past the substantial batteries that protected the city. They met south of the city, and Grant crossed the river and entered Mississippi. He then moved north to approach Vicksburg from its more lightly defended eastern side. In May, he had to split his army to deal with a threat from Joseph Johnston's Rebels in Jackson, the state capital that lay 40 miles east of Vicksburg. After defeating Johnston's forces, Grant moved toward Vicksburg.
On May 16, Grant fought the Confederates under John C. Pemberton at Champion's Hill and defeated them decisively. He then attacked again at the Big Black River the next day, and Pemberton fled into Vicksburg with Grant following close behind. The trap was now complete and Pemberton was stuck in Vicksburg, although his forces would hold out until July 4.
In the three weeks since Grant crossed the Mississippi in the campaign to capture Vicksburg, Grant's men marched 180 miles and won five battles. They took nearly 100 Confederate artillery pieces and nearly 6,000 prisoners, all with relatively light losses.

May 19
1588 The Spanish Armada Sets Sail for England
A massive Spanish invasion fleet, known as the "Invincible Armada," set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish army to the British isle from the Netherlands. In the late 1580s, Queen Elizabeth’s support of the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands led King Philip II of Spain to plan the conquest of England. A giant Spanish invasion fleet was completed by 1587, although Sir Francis Drake’s daring raid on the Spanish port of Cadiz delayed the Armada’s departure until May 19, 1588. The Invincible Armada consisted of 130 ships and carried 2,500 guns and 30,000 men, two-thirds of them soldiers. Delayed by storms, the Armada did not reach the southern coast of England until late July, and, by that time Elizabeth had prepared an adequate defense. On July 21, the outnumbered English navy began bombarding the seven-mile-long line of Spanish ships from a safe distance, taking full advantage of their superior long-range guns. Over the next week, the Spanish Armada continued to advance, but its ranks were thinned considerable by the English assault. On July 28, the Spanish retreated to Calais, France, but English sent ships loaded with explosives into the crowded harbor, which, along with damage caused by panicked ship collisions, took a heavy toll on the Armada. The next day, an attempt to reach the Netherlands was thwarted by a small Dutch fleet, and the Spanish were forced to face the pursuing English fleet. The superior English guns again won the day and the Armada retreated north to Scotland. Battered by storms and suffering from a lack of supplies, the Armada sailed on a difficult journey back to Spain around Scotland and the east of Ireland. By the time the last of the surviving fleet reached Spain in October, half of the so-called Invincible Armada had been destroyed. Queen Elizabeth’s decisive defeat of the Armada made England a world-class naval power, and introduced effective long-range weapons into naval warfare for the first time, ending the era of boarding and close-quarter fighting.
May 20
1969 Battle for Hamburger Hill Ends
After ten days and ten bloody assaults, Hill 937, known as "Hamburger Hill" by the Americans who fought there, was finally captured by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. Located one mile east of the Laotian border, Hill 937 was to be taken as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast. On May 10, following air and artillery strikes, a U.S.-led infantry force launched its first assault on the North Vietnamese stronghold, but suffered a high proportion of casualties and fell back. Ten more infantry assaults came over the next ten days, and Hill 937’s North Vietnamese defenders did not give up their fortified position until May 20. Almost one hundred Americans had been killed and more than 400 had been wounded, amounting to a shocking 70-percent casualty rate during the ten-day battle. The same day that Hamburger Hill was finally captured, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called the operation "senseless and irresponsible" and attacked the military tactics of President Richard Nixon’s administration. His speech before the Senate was seen as part of a growing public outcry over the U.S. military policy in Vietnam. In the next week, U.S. military command reversed their stance on the strategic importance of Hamburger Hill, and, on May 28 it was abandoned, just one week after it was taken. North Vietnamese forces eventually returned and re-fortified their original position.