Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in 1944, the largest amphibious invasion in history. Weeks later, the Allies liberated Paris from its Nazi occupiers. Meanwhile, Soviet forces battered the Nazis on WWII’s eastern front. In the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth presidential term and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall starred in their first film together, “To Have and Have Not,” introducing the immortal line, “You know how to whistle, don’t you?”
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June 6, 1944 is considered one of the most pivotal moments in modern history. Better known by its codename, D-Day, the Allied assault on five beaches in Nazi-occupied France was the result of over a year of planning and jockeying amongst various military and political leaders. On January 31, 1944, several key leaders agreed to postpone the invasion over concerns that there would not be enough ships available by early May, finally setting the stage for the June invasion.
Feb
03
American forces invade and [take control](http://Finally, the Division halted movement for the night of 3 February and issued a new order for the 32nd Regiment to finish off the last 600 yards or so of island clearing remaining. After fending off five night attacks by desperate Japanese, the fresh attack kicked off on the morning of the 4th of February, and by that afternoon the island was declared secure.) of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations.
Feb
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On February 21, 1944, Hideki Tojo, prime minister of Japan, grabs even more power as he takes over as army chief of staff, a position that gives him direct control of the Japanese military.
JAPAN – DECEMBER 08: On December 8Th 1942, General Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister Of The Japanese Empire, Gives A Speech For The First Anniversary Of The Beginning Of The Japanese Offensive On South-East Asia, Especially Indonesia And The Philippines. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images
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Mar
02
On March 2, 1944, a train stops in a tunnel near Salerno, Italy, and more than 500 people on board suffocate and die. The details of the incident, which occurred in the midst of World War II, were not revealed at the time and remain somewhat murky.
Mar
04
Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc., is executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York. Lepke was the leader of the country’s largest crime syndicate throughout the 1930s and was making nearly $50 million a year from his various enterprises. His downfall came when several members of his notorious killing squad turned into witnesses for the government.
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On April 8, 1944, Russian forces led by Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin attack the German army in an attempt to win back Crimea, in the southern Ukraine, occupied by the Axis power. The attack would result in the breaking of German defensive lines in just four days, eventually sending the Germans retreating.
Apr
14
The cargo ship Fort Stikine explodes in a berth in the docks of Bombay, India (now known as Mumbai), killing 1,300 people and injuring another 3,000 on April 14, 1944. As it occurred during World War II, some initially claimed that the massive explosion was caused by Japanese sabotage; in fact, it was a tragic accident.
Jun
04
On June 4, 1944, U.S. naval forces seize one of Adolf Hitler’s deadly submarines, the U-505, as it makes its way home after patrolling the Gold Coast of Africa The German submarine was the first enemy warship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812.
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06
On June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northern France, commonly known as D-Day.
Colorized photo “Into the Jaws of Death,” photographed by Robert F Sargent of the United States Army First Infantry Division disembarking from a landing craft onto Omaha Beach during the Normandy Landings on D Day, June 6, 1944.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Jun
10
On June 10, 1944, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall becomes the youngest person ever to play Major League Baseball when he pitches in a game for the Cincinnati Reds. Nuxhall threw two-thirds of the ninth inning in an 18-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals; he was pulled only after one wild pitch and allowing five runs on five walks and two hits. The game was played during World War II, when it became common for adolescent and older players to fill in for big leaguers fighting overseas.
Jun
11
Lieutenant John F. Kennedy receives the Navy and Marine Corps Medal—one of the Navy’s highest honors for gallantry—for his heroic actions as the commanding officer of a motor torpedo boat during World War II on June 11, 1944. The future president also received a Purple Heart for wounds received during battle.
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15
On June 15, 1944, American aircraft bomb German-occupied Budapest—with leaflets threatening “punishment” for those responsible for the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The U.S. government wanted the SS and Hitler to know it was watching, to deter further deportations.
Jun
19
On June 19, 1944, the U.S. begins a two-day attack that decimates Japan's aircraft carrier force—and shifts the balance of naval air power in World War II's Pacific theater. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, an epic carrier duel that came to be known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” would incur only a minimum of losses for the Americans.
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22
Jul
06
In Hartford, Connecticut, a fire breaks out under the big top of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus, killing 167 people and injuring 682. Two-thirds of those who perished were children. The cause of the fire was unknown, but it spread at incredible speed, racing up the canvas of the circus tent.
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Jul
17
An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 320 people on July 17, 1944. The United States’ World War II military campaign in the Pacific was in full swing at the time. Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.
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Aug
01
Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl hiding out in Nazi-occupied Holland whose [diary](http://U.S. forces attempt risky air raid on Axis oil refineries) came to serve as a symbol of the Holocaust, writes her final entry three days before she and her family are arrested and placed in concentration camps.
Aug
01
During World War II, an advance Soviet armored column under General Konstantin Rokossovski reaches the Vistula River along the eastern suburb of Warsaw, prompting Poles in the city to launch a major uprising against the Nazi occupation. The revolt was spearheaded by Polish General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, who was the commander of the Home Army, an underground resistance group made up of some 40,000 poorly supplied soldiers. In addition to accelerating the liberation of Warsaw, the Home Army, which had ties with the Polish government-in-exile in London and was anti-communist in its ideology, hoped to gain at least partial control of Warsaw before the Soviets arrived.
Aug
04
Acting on tip from an informer, the Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken shelter there in 1942 out of fear of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. They occupied the small space with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man and were aided by Christian friends, who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent much of her time in the so-called “secret annex” working on her diary. The diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo that discovered the hiding place, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.
2M4NPW5 Anne Frank. School photo of Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (1929-1945), the young Jewish girl who's diary of life under Nazi occupation made her famous, 1940
Alamy Stock Photo
Aug
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Aug
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On August 20, 1944, Soviet forces launch Second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, an offensive in northeastern Romania in which they ultimately surround the invading German Sixth Army. One of the most successful, and little-remembered, joint operations between Soviet and American forces (who provided air support), the operation succeeded ultimately in convincing Romania’s king to sign an armistice with the Allies and concede control of his country to the USSR.
Aug
21
On August 21, 1944, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China meet in the Dumbarton Oaks estate at Georgetown, Washington, D.C., to formulate the formal principles of an organization that will provide collective security on a worldwide basis—an organization that will become the United Nations.
Aug
25
On August 25, 1944, after more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris’ landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation. Choltitz signed a formal surrender that afternoon, and on August 26, Free French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d’Elysees.
Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Sep
02
On September 2, 1944, future President George Herbert Walker Bush is serving as a torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific theater of World War II when his squadron is attacked by Japanese anti-aircraft guns. Bush was forced to bail out of the plane over the ocean.
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Sep
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On September 15, 1944, the U.S. 1st Marine Division lands on the island of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands in the Pacific, as part of a larger operation to provide support for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was preparing to invade the Philippines. The cost in American lives would prove historic.
Sep
23
On September 23, 1944, during a campaign dinner with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes a reference to his small dog, Fala, who had recently been the subject of a Republican political attack. The offense prompted Roosevelt to defend his dog’s honor and his own reputation.
Sep
24
On September 24, 1944, Allies begin their retreat from the Dutch town of Arnhem after Operation Market Garden, a plan to seize bridges there, fails, and thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Oct
02
On October 2, 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower distributes to his combat units a report by the U.S. Surgeon General that reveals the hazards of prolonged exposure to combat. “[T]he danger of being killed or maimed imposes a strain so great that it causes men to break down. One look at the shrunken, apathetic faces of psychiatric patients…sobbing, trembling, referring shudderingly to ‘them shells’ and to buddies mutilated or dead, is enough to convince most observers of this fact.”
Oct
02
The Warsaw Uprising ends on October 2, 1944, with the surrender of the surviving Polish rebels to German forces.
Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Oct
07
On October 7, 1944, in a bold act of resistance, several hundred prisoners incarcerated in the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau stage the Sonderkommando revolt, destroying most of the gas chambers and crematoria where they were forced to work. While some of the inmates manage to kill a handful of Nazi officers and briefly escape the camp, the uprising is swiftly crushed and its perpetrators executed.
Oct
14
On October 14, 1944, German Gen. Erwin Rommel, nicknamed “the Desert Fox,” is given the option of facing a public trial for treason, as a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, or taking cyanide. He chooses the latter.
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Dec
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After departing from an airfield outside London on December 15, 1944, a single-engine aircraft carrying trombonist and bandleader Glenn Miller goes missing over the English Channel. Miller was traveling to France for a congratulatory performance for American troops that had recently helped to liberate Paris.
Dec
16
On December 16, 1944, the Germans launch the last major offensive of the war, Operation Autumn Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a “bulge” around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front.
Dec
17
During World War II, U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issues Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that, effective January 2, 1945, Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast could return to their homes.
Roosevelt controversially supported the internment of Japanese in America during the war.
Dec
23
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.
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