1942

Jan. 1, 1942: U.S. and Filipino forces in southern Luzon retreated after blowing up bridges across the Pampanga River. The South Luzon Force was disbanded. Meanwhile, the British abandoned Sarawak was abandoned after destroying the oil field facilities there.

Jan. 2, 1942: The Japanese occupied Manila and the naval base at Cavite in the Philippines. Corredor came under daily air attack.Japanese planes caused widespread destruction in raids on Singapore.

Jan. 3, 1942: Roosevelt and Churchill announced a unified command for the southwest Pacific, with General Sir Archibald P. Wavell as supreme commander of Allied forces. Wavell was directed to hold a line from Malaya through Sumatra, Java, and northern Australia. Chiang Kai-shek was given command of the China theater of operations.

Jan. 3-12, 1942: Chinese troops routed a Japanese force estimated at 70,000 men in a major battle in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha.

Jan. 4, 1942: Japanese forces bomhed Rabaul for the first time. The air offensive signaled Tokyo's intention of seizing the strategic air and naval base in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Jan. 5, 1942: Stalin directed Russian units to launch an all-out offensive along the entire front.

° In North Africa, British forces assaulted the German defenses in the Halfaya Pass in Libya.

° Japanese reinforcements for Malaya landed on the west coast of the peninsula. British forces withdrew to new defensive positions. In the Philippines, U.S. and Filipino troops established the Layac line, a holding operation to permit evacuation through Layac junction through which all roads to Bataan passed.

Jan. 6, 1942: The British ground offensive in Libya was temporarily halted east of El Agheila but had inflictied a severe defeat on Rommel's Panzer Group Africa which suffered 38,000 killed, wounded, and missing. It was the first British victory over German troops in World War II.

° A Japanese amphibious force was landed and occupied Brunei Bay in Borneo.

Jan. 7, 1942: Bataan came under seige. Meanwhile, the central Malayan defense line of the British was cracked by the Japanese. The 11th Indian Division was no longer considered an organized fighting uni, and Japanese forces in Sarawak reached the border of Dutch West Borneo.

Jan. 9, 1942: British forces in Malaya were ordered to pull back to Johore for a final stand in defense of Singapore. On Bataan, three Japanese regimental combat teams launched an offensive in simultaneous mid-afternoon attacks.

Jan. 10, 1942: Japanese aircraft launched daytime air strikes on Singapore's airfields. Kuala Lumpur and Port Swettenham were abandoned by British and Indian troops.

Jan. 11, 1942: Japan formally declared war on the Netherlands, and invaded the Celebes in the Dutch East Indies. There was only token resistance by the small defending garrisons.

° A Japanese attempt to outflank the Bataan defense line failed. U.S. and Filipino forces on Bataan were put on half rations.

Jan.11-17, 1942: British forces eliminateed the last German-Italian strongholds in Egypt. Rommel fell back to the natural defense position at El Agheila.

Jan.13, 1942: Russian forces captured Kirov on the central front, driving a deep wedge between the Second Panzer and Fourth German armies. Red Army units attacked Mozhaisk, 65 miles west of Moscow.

° A badly needed convoy reached Singapore with antiaircraft weapons and 50 Hurricane fighters. The British prepared to abandon Johore.

Jan. 14, 1942: The ARCADIA conference ended in Washington with the top-level U.S. and British strategists agreeing on a policy of defeating the Germans before embarking on an all-out war against Japan. It was decided to occupy French North Africa to prevent a German threat to Allied shipping in the Atlantic.

Jan.15, 1942: Japanese troops pushed vigorously across the entire Bataan front.

Jan.16, 1942: Burma was invaded by Japanese forces from Thailand. Units of the Fifteenth Army met no resistance until they reached Myitta, about 30 miles inside lower Burma.

° Bataan's defenses were seriously imperiled when the Japanese broke through the western flank. and in Malaya, Remaining RAF aircraft were evacuated to Sumatra in the face of relentless Japanese air attacks.

Jan. 17, 1942: Remaining German and Italian forces in Cyreneica surrendered to the British.

Jan. 18, 1942: Russian forces under General Timoshenko launched a fresh offensive against the Germans on the central front, while the Red Army in the Ukraine also attacked..

Jan. 19, 1942: Moscow was freed from immediate peril when Russian forces recaptured Mozhaisk, the last German stronghold near the Soviet capital. .

° British North Borneo formally surrendered to the Japanese, even as Japanese troops crossed the Muar River in Malaya, placing them within 80 miles of Singapore.

Jan. 20, 1942: The infamous Wannsee Conference was held, with the SS outlining Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem." Meeting in a Berlin suburb, Reinhard Heydrich told the SS, police, and civilian officials from various governmental bureaus that some Jews would be sent to work projects and many "will fall out through natural diminution." He then added, "The remnant that is able finally to survive all this ... must be given treatment accordingly, because these people, representing a natural selection, are to be regarded as the germ- cell of a new Jewish development should they be allowed to go free." It was rather vague, but soon proved to be an order for genocide.

Jan. 21, 1942: British forces in Malaya began a withdrawal to Singapore.

° In a dramatic (and to the British, surprising) move, Rommel turned his Afrika Korps around and began an offensive in Libya in three columns advancing along the coastal road. The British were ordered to pull back to Agedabia.

Jan. 22, 1942: Rommel recaptured Agedabia in Cyrenaica and on the same day, U.S. forces began another withdrawal on Bataan.

Jan. 23, 1942: Japan invaded New Britain, New Ireland, Dutch Borneo, and the Solomon Islands, bringing the war to within a thousand miles of northeast Australia. Landings were made at Rabaul, Kavieng, and Balikpapan. New Guinea was dangerously exposed.

° In a major breakthrough the Russians advanced along a 250-mile-wide front between Smolensk and Lake Ilmen.

Jan.24, 1942: Japanese ships en route to the oil center of Balikpapan, Borneo, for a landing were intercepted by four U.S. destroyers. In the ensuing Battle of Makassar Strait, four of the Japanese transports were sunk with heavy casualties. It was the first major naval engagement of the Pacific wa. Nevertheless, the Japanese captured Balikpapan center of the Borneo oil fields.

Jan. 25, 1942: Thailand declared war on the U.S. and Britain. and immediately joined in the invasion of Burma.

° British forces attempted a counterattack on Msus in Libya which had just been overrun by Rommel's forces. The Germans trounced the British 1st Armored Division, and captured 96 tanks, 12 aircraft, 38 guns, and 190 trucks.

Jan. 26, 1942: Rabaul on the island of New Britain fell to the Japanese, giving them a major strategically located air and naval base. In the Philippines, the defenders fell back to their final defense line on Bataan.

Jan .27, 1942: The British began their retreat to Singapore across the causeway from Johore Baharu.

Jan. 28, 1942: German forces reoccupied Benghazi as the British withdrew to new defense lines.

Jan. 30, 1942: British forces were driven from the mainland of Malaya and withdrew to Singapore after destroying the connecting causeway.

Jan.31, 1942: Japanese aircraft began a steady series of raids on Singapore's Kalang air base and dock facilities.

Feb. 1, 1942: U.S. warships attacked Japanese air and naval bases in the Gilbert and Marshall islands. The force of two carriers, five cruisers, and ten destroyers was the largest to go on the offensive. The American ships and planes inflicted severe damage. It was the first air attack of the war against Japanese positions.

Feb. 2, 1942: In the face of Rommel's advancing German Afrika Korps, British forces were ordered to hold Tobruk as a supply center for future offensive operations by the Eighth Army.

Feb. 3, 1942: Japanese aircraft attacked Port Moresby and the Dutch naval base at Surabaya on Java.

Feb. 4, 1942: The Japanese demanded the unconditional surrender of the British forces on Singapore.

° In order to forestall the appointment of an Egyptian government which was anti-British and leaned toward the Axis, the British ambassador in Cairo, Sir Miles Lampson, demanded King Farouk's abdication or the appointment of a pro-Allied prime minister. The 22-year-old king capitulated after a small British force seized the royal palace. Farouk and his advisers had been hoping to welcome Rommel's forces in Cairo and name Ah Mahir as prime minister. Ah Mahir Pasha had long been suspected of being on the German payroll.

Feb. 5, 1942: British reinforcements and supplies began arriving in Singapore. Air attacks, however, interfered with the effort. The Empress of Asia was sunk before reaching Singapore.

Feb. 6, 1942: Borneo's oil facilities at Samarinda were captured by the Japanese.

Feb. 7, 1942: Japanese forces began a diversionary landing on the extreme eastern end of Singapore. The British commander, Lieutenant General A.E. Percival, declared the island would not surrender. In Bataan, defending troops launched a counterattack and Japanese forces were forced to withdraw from the southwest coast.

Feb. 8, 1942: The main attack on Singapore was launched after dark as three Japanese divisions crossed the narrow waters between Johore and the island on small landing craft. A bridgehead was established without difficulty, and the Japanese set out for Tengah airfield, their immediate major objective.

° In the Philippines, Lieutenant General Masaharu Romma ordered a general pullback for all Japanese forces on the Bataan front. The Japanese were exhausted at this point and badly needed fresh troops before a final drive could be started.

Feb. 9, 1942: Singapore airfield fell to the Japanese, which permitted the quick resupply of the invading force and sealed the fall of the colony.. Percival ordered all defenses concentrated in the southern sector around the city of Singapore.

Feb.10, 1942: Wavell visited Singapore and ordered the island to be held at all costs. All remaining RAF personnel, however, were ordered evacuated.

Feb .11, 1942: The Japanese issued an ultimatum for Singapore's surrender and on the same day Japanese planes bombed Samarai Island, 380 miles north of Australia. Meanwhile, the Japanese occupied Bandjarmasin, the capital of Borneo, and Makassar, capital of the Celebes

Feb. 13, 1942: The Russian Army reentered Byelorussia. Premier Antonescu met with Hitler, who called for more Romanian troops for service in Russia.

Feb. 14-16, 1942: The Japanese invaded the island of Sumatra and quickly seized the oil-refining area of Palembang. About 360 paratroopers were used in taking the area.

Feb. 15, 1942: Singapore and its garrison fell to the Japanese. A total of 64,000 British, Indian, and Australian defenders on the island surrendered after 9,000 had been killed. The battle for Malaya and Singapore lasted 70 days; the Japanese had thought it would take a hundred..Total Allied casualties in the entire Malayan campaign were 67,340 Indian, 38,496 British, 18,490 Australian, and 14,382 local volunteer troops (of this total of 138,708 about 130,000 were prisoners). Japanese casualties were 9,824.

Feb.18, 1942: The Japanese crossed the Bilin River in Burma, and the situation on all sectors began to deteriorate. British authorities ordered mass evacuations from Rangoon.

Feb. 19, 1942: About 150 carrier-based Japanese naval aircraft attacked the Australian city of Darwin, killing 240 people and injuring 150. Without adequate defenses, the Australians lost 11 transports, an American destroyer, several supply ships, and vast quantities of stores. The result was the certain loss of Java which could no longer be supplied. More ominiously even, Japanese troops landed on the Portuguese island of Timor in the East Indies. Tokyo said the action was taken in self-defense and that its forces would withdraw when the area was secure. The neutral Portuguese accepted the occupation.

Feb. 19-20, 1942: Dutch and American warships attempt to block the build-up of the Japanese force invading Bali. All the Allies could do was inflict minor damage on a few of the invasion ships, and the Japanese landed their force without difficulty.

Feb.20, 1942: Hitler received a report on the staggering number of German casualties suffered thus far in the Russian campaign: 199,448 dead, 708,351 wounded, 112,627 cases of severe frostbite, and 44,342 missing. He was nonetheless optimistic.

° Japanese planes intercepted a U.S. Navy task force en route to Rabaul. The American ships were forced to turn back, but Japanese losses were extremely heavy and plans for operations against New Guinea had to be delayed.

Feb. 21, 1942: British forces began pulling back behind the Sittang River in Burma.

Feb.22, 1942: President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave the Philippines. The general was named commander of Allied forces in Australia.

Feb.25, 1942: The rail line between Rangoon and Mandalay was threatened as the Japanese broke through a wide gap in the British defense line at Pegu.

Feb.26, 1942: Soviet leaders forcibly pressed the British and Americans to launch a "second front" against Germany.

Feb. 27-March 1, 1942: Allied ships suffered their worst naval defeat of the war in the Battle of the Java Sea. In the first major surface-to-surface naval combat of the Pacific war, the Japanese navy was able to take control of the southwest Pacific . They sank the Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Java, the Dutch destroyer Kortenauer, and the British destroyer Electra. On the 28th, Japanese cruisers sunk two cruisers, the American Houston and Australian Perth, and the Dutch destroyer Evertsen. On the 1st, three British ships, the cruiser Exeter and destroyers Pope and Encounter, were sunk by Japanese gunfire. Now, the Japanese could move with virtual impunity throughout the southwest Pacific area.

Feb.28, 1942: The Japanese Sixteenth Army was landed on the north coast of Java, with the main force hitting Batavia (Djakarta), capital of the Dutch East Indies.

Mar. 2, 1942: During two months of fighting on Luzon, the Japanese had lost 2,700 men killed in action and nearly 7,000 wounded, but despite these losses, Japanese forces landed on Mindanao in the Philippines.

° On this date, all persons of Japanese ancestry (including U.S. citizens) were barred from Pacific coastal areas by the U.S. government. They are soon to be rounded up and deported to concentration camps.

March 3, 1942: The Dutch continued their withdrawals on Java in the face of continuing pressure by numerically superior Japanese troops.

° RAF bombers struck the Renault works in the suburbs of Paris. Many of the bombs landed on workers' homes, killing 623 French and injuring 1,500.

March 4, 1942: Japanese Zeros destroyed 23 Allied planes in an attack on Broome, Australia, the refueling station on flights from Perth to Java.

March 6, 1942: All installations which might be useful to the Japanese in Rangoon were ordered destroyed .In the Dutch East Indies the capital city, Batavia, fell to the Japanese.

March 7, 1942: Japanese forces landed unopposed at Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea.

March 8, 1942: Rangoon fell to the Japanese. Loss of the Burmese capital cut off the last port through which supplies could be funneled over the Burma Road to China.

March 9, 1942: The Dutch formally surrendered Java to the Japanese.

March 11, 1942: General MacArthur, his wife, and small child left Corregidor on a PT boat for Mindanao. MacArthur told the Filipinos in a final message, "I shall return."

March 12, 1942: A U.S. Army force of 17,500 men landed at Noumea in New Caledonia, the first placement of American troops upon non-American territory in the Pacific. .

° Under Japanese auspices King Norodom Sihanouk proclaimed Cambodia's independence.

March 14, 1942: The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to continue a defensive policy in the Pacific while building up American strength in Britain for offensive operations against Germany.

March 17, 1942: General MacArthur arrived in Darwin, Australia, to take up his new duties as supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater. He is appalled by the absence of resources, having expected to find large numbers of men and materiel. There are only three U.S. fighter squadrons which can fly out of Darwin.

March 19, 1942: General Stilwell assumed command of the Chinese Fifth and Sixth armies operating with British forces in Burma, the first time in history Chinese troops had ever been led by a foreigner.

March 20, 1942: British Eighth Army attacked Derna and Benghazi in order to divert the Axis from action against a convoy bound for Malta which was desperately in need of resupply.

March 21, 1942: The American defense of the Philippines was reduced to Corregidor in Manila Bay. General Jonathan Wainwright moved his headquarters to the heavily fortified island since any further stand on Bataan would have been futile without real hope of reinforcements or resupply.

March 22, 1942: U.S. forces on Bataan were issued a surrender ultimatum by the Japanese.

March 23, 1942: The Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal were occupied by the Japanese, posing a real threat to India.

March 24, 1942: Japanese opened up their final drive to occupy the Bataan Peninsula. Corregidor came under heavy air attack.

March 27, 1942: The U.S. issued plans for a limited cross-Channel attack in the fall of 1942 as a means of aiding the Russians if the Red Army showed signs of collapsing. But the main invasion of northwest Europe was set for the spring of 1943.

March 27-28, 1942: British forces raided the St. Nazaire naval facility in France. The operation succeeded but only after the 360-man force was severely mauled. All but two of the small ships were sunk, stranding many of the Commandos. In all, 170 of the men were killed or captured.

March 28, 1942: Bataan's defense garrison was beginning to experience severe problems as further efforts to break the Japanese blockade failed. Horses and mules were by now being slaughtered for food.

March 29, 1942: Britain offered India independence after the war.

April, 1942: Fifty-one divisions (more than half a million men) from Germany's partners was introduced into combat in Russia during the month in an effort to recapture the offensive. They came from Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, while Spain added a volunteer division.

April 1, 1942: Japanese forces began landing on Dutch New Guinea. In the United States, Forced mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast states was begun by the Army.

April 3, 1942: Japanese forces, reinforced by a fresh division, began their final assault on the last American defense line on Bataan.

April 4-8, 1942: A marauding Japanese naval surface squadron and submarines roamed the Bay of Bengal sinking merchantmen almost at will. The British had cleared Calcutta harbor, fearing an air attack, and the ships at sea were picked off at an alarming rate. During this five day period the Japanese sank twenty-eight ships, totaling 144,400 tons.

April 5, 1942: Japanese naval forces moved to complete their dominance of the Indian Ocean with an attack on Colombo, Ceylon. The carriers Akagi and Kaga, which had been involved at Pearl Harbor, launched 127 planes which inflicted only light damage on the port but which caught two British cruisers trying to escape to open water. Dorsetshire and Cornwall were sunk by dive bombers in attacks of remarkable accuracy.

April 6, 1942: A Japanese naval force under Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa sank 92,000 tons of merchant shipping along the east coast of India.

April 7, 1942: The Japanese pierce the final American defense positions on Bataan..

April 8, 1942: About 2,000 of the force of 78,000 men defending Bataan escaped to Corregidor as defense efforts collapsed.

April 9, 1942: Bataan fell to the Japanese. About 35,000 American and Filipino troops fell into Japanese hands. Almost immediately, the prisoners began the forced "Bataan Death March" from Balanga to San Fernando. Japanese air and artillery units were moved in to concentrate on Corregidor.

April 16, 1942: More than 4,000 Japanese troops were put ashore on Panay in the Philippines, with an immediate withdrawal by the 7,000-man American and Filipino defense force into the mountains to operate as guerrillas.

April 18, 1942: Japan was bombed by American war-planes. Sixteen B-25 bombers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle took off from the carrier Hornet to carry the war to Japan for the first time. Launched about ten hours ahead of schedule because the naval convoy had been spotted by a Japanese vessel, the range to Tokyo was thus increased to 800 miles instead of the planned 650, which was considered the maximum to achieve success. Some of the planes reached Tokyo during a practice air alert, and most Japanese were first confused, then startled when actual bombs started falling. Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagoya were also struck. Only one plane was hit by antiaircraft fire, suffering minor damage. Eight bombed their primary targets; five others had to select secondary objectives. Little damage was inflicted on the Japanese cities, but the Doolittle raid gave Japanese military leaders pause and was a factor in their decision to consolidate their vast holdings rather than expand even further. For the Allies, the attack was an antidote for the painful doses of defeat.

April 23, 1942: Luftwaffe bombers began a series of retaliatory air strikes directed at British cathedral cities. The initial raid was launched this date on Exeter.

April 25, 1942: U. S. troops landed in New Caledonia which was under Free French control.

April 26, 1942: General Alexander decided to defend India rather than concentrate his waning strength to hold Burma.

April 28, 1942: Forces defending Mandalay were ordered moved to help defend Lashio which was under immediate threat.

° Chiang Kai-shek told the U.S. government that as a result of the Doolittle raid, Japanese troops attacked the coastal areas of China where the U.S. crews had landed. According to Chiang, the Japanese "slaughtered every man, woman, and child in some of the villages which had assisted the American pilots.

April 29, 1942: Lashio in Burma fell to the Japanese, closing the Burma Road into China, The Japanese had covered 300 miles in only 18 days. Had the monsoon rains not been delayed the Japanese would have been bogged down in mud and water.

May 1, 1942: Mandalay fell to the Japanese as British forces found their left flank totally exposed.

May 3, 1942: Tulagi in the central Solomons was occupied by the Japanese as the first step to an invasion of Australia.

May 4-8, 1942: The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval battle in which the participants never saw the enemy (carrier aircraft were solely involved in the attacks). The Japanese suffered their first setback of the war. Even though the Japanese won a numerical victory, their losses were sufficient to cancel the planned invasion of Australia through Port Moresby in New Guinea. U.S. Navy losses were the carrier Lexington, the destroyer Sims, and the oiler Neosho. The carrier Yorktown was damaged. U.S. Navy pilots from the carriers Lexington and Yorktown sank the light carrier Shoho, the first Japanese ship larger than a destroyer to be sunk in the war. The Japanese also lost the destroyer Kikuzuki and three auxiliaries. Each side lost about 30 planes in the battle.

May 5, 1942: Japanese forces landed on the only remaining U.S. outpost in the Philippines, the island of Corregidor.

May 6, 1942: Corregidor surrendered. About 16,000 Filipinos and Americans were captured by the Japanese. On this last day of fighting, 350 defenders were killed. The force had resisted fiercely, but the notion (common in the U.S.) that Corregidor might hold out until large numbers of reinforcements could arrive was widespread. Nevertheless, the stubborn resistance did have an impact on the Pacific war. The 4th Japanese division was so hadly mauled that its remnants were returned home, although it had been earmarked for the fighting in New Guinea and the Solomons. Other forces now cleaning up in the Philippines might also have been freed for crucial battles ahead, including Guadalcanal.

May 8, 1942: German forces in the Crimea launched preparations for their summer offensive. Initial action was directed against the seaport of Kerch. The ultimate objectives were the oil fields of the Caucasus.

° Japan's hope to exploit the capture of the Dutch East Indies oil fields received a jolt when a U.S. submarine sank a transport carrying 900 Japanese supervisors and skilled workers en route to the production areas. Loss of the men seriously affected Japan's fuel supplies for a time.

May 9, 1942: Russia launched a major offensive from the Donets bridgehead in an effort to push the Germans back to Kharkov. It was premature and ended in disaster.

May 15, 1942: Japan completed the conquest of Burma..

° German forces under Manstein retook Kerch, eliminating the Russians from the Crimea, except for Sevastopol in the southwest corner of the peninsula. The Russian Crimean front suffered 176,000 casualties and most of its armor in the disastrous action.

May 17, 1942: The Russian drive toward Kharkov was halted, and the Germans began a slow, costly effort which eventually pushed the front eastward 25 miles.

May 19, 1942: German troops completed capture of the Kerch Peninsula in the Crimea, taking 100,000 Russian prisoners.

May 20, 1942: Having intercepted Japanese coded messages and learning of Tokyo's plans to attack Midway and the Aleutians, U.S. forces were ordered deployed to meet the threats, concentrating on Midway and not on the diversion to the north.

May 21, 1942: Hitler called off plans to invade Malta. He decided to wait until Egypt fell to the Axis.

May 23, 1942: Russian forces were trapped in the Izyum salient west of the Donets River as the German counteroffensive halted the Red Army advance toward Kharkov.

May 26, 1942: After a month-long lull, Rommel's Panzer Army Africa launched an attack on the Eighth Army's Gazala Line; his plan was to make a feint attack with Italian infantry while swinging his armor around Bir Hacheim, cutting across the British rear to the sea. The Axis forces were inferior in tanks, 560 to 849 for the Allies, but they had a substantial advantage in aircraft, 704 to 320.

May 28, 1942: British units halted the German drive to swing around the Gazala defenders.

May 29, 1942: SS Commander and Depuity Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, was severely wounded in an assassination attempt near Prague. His car was hit by a grenade and the blast severed Heydrich's spine.

° A Japanese midget submarine entered Diego Suarez harbor in Madagascar and heavily dam aged the British battleship Romillies and sank a tanker with its torpedoes.

May 30-31, 1942: RAF bombers launched a devastating night raid on the German cathedral city of Cologne in the first thousand bomber raid of the war. A total of 1,046 aircraft (Wellingtons, Stirlings, Whitleys, Nianchesters, Halifaxes, and Hampdens) plus 50 aircraft attacking German fighter bases took off from 52 fields in Britain. Of that number, 898 actually attacked Cologne, dropping 1,455 tons of bombs (two-thirds of them incendiaries). More than 12,000 fires were started, 1,700 of them major conflagrations. The crews returning home could see Cologne burning when they were 150 miles away. German records showed the following results: 486 people killed, 5,027 injured, 59,100 made homeless, 18,432 buildings of all kinds destroyed, 9,516 heavily damaged, 31,070 slightly damaged, 328 industrial plants destroyed or damaged (larger factories halted their production from three to nine months), and half the city's power supply eliminated. Forty-two British planes were downed, 12 were damaged so badly they could not fly again, and 104 were damaged and returned to duty.

May 31, 1942: Chiang Kai-shek pleaded with the U.S. to speed up military aid to China.

June 1, 1942: In reprisal for the RAF raid on Cologne, German bombers attacked the English cathedral city of Canterbury.

° Japanese forces opened large-scale attacks in China to clear the rail line between Canton and Hankow.

° German tanks smashed two British brigades in fierce fighting at Sidi Muftah in Libya. Rommel halted the offensive and ordered his unit to regroup.

° All Jews in France and Holland were order to wear Star of David identification badges.

June 4-6, 1942: The decisive Battle of Midway was fought, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific. Through the "Ultra" intercepts, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz knew a month before that the Japanese were planning to invade Midway and to launch a diversionary assault on the Aleutians. Nimitz was ready, and the Japanese were administered a resounding defeat which altered the course of the Pacific war. Four Japanese carriers&emdash;Kaga, Soryu, Akagi, and Hiryu&emdash;were lost, in addition to a heavy cruiser (the Mikuma). The U.S. carrier Yorktown and a destroyer, the Hammann, were sunk. American air losses were 147 planes, compared to the Japanese total of 332.

June 4, 1942: Heydrich died of wounds inflicted by the Czech partisan assassination team near Prague.

June 5, 1942: The British counterattack in Libya collapsed after the loss of two infantry brigades and four artillery regiments.

° German forces smashed Russia's outer defenses at Sevastopol.

June 6, 1942: Germans threatened to break through to Tobruk, A Free French brigade and a battalion of Palestine Jews bore the brunt of the defense. Only 45 of the 1,000 Jews survived the fighting in the next month.

° German troops opened up a massive assault and bombardment of Scvastopol.

June 9, 1942: On the direct orders of Hitler Nazi troops took revenge for the SS leader's murder on the Czech mining village of Lidice. All the men of Lidice&emdash;199&emdash;were killed outright. The 195 women residents were imprisoned in concentration camps and the 98 children were sent to other penal camps.

°All formal resistance in the Philippines ended. In all, 140,000 U.S. and Filipino personnel were killed, wounded, or missing in trying to defend the islands.

June 11, 1942: Rommel's forces hammered through Allied positions at Bir Hacheim and reached the approaches to Tobruk.

June 12, 1942: In fierce fighting near "Knightsbridge" behind the Gazala line, Rommel's forces inflicted severe losses on British armor units.

June 13, 1942: In a staggering defeat, which opened the floodgates to Rommel, the British Eighth Army was shorn of most of its armor in what was known as "Black Saturday." Despite Ultra knowledge that Rommel was primed for defense against an attack, Lieutenant General Sir Neil Ritchie ordered about 300 of his tanks headlong into an ambush near El Adem. Using their 88-mm cannon, within a few hours Rommel had destroyed 230 of the helpless British armored vehicles. Subsequently, he captured Tobruk and advanced all the way to El Alamein.

June 14, 1942: Auchinleck ordered Ritchie to hold a line between Tobruk and El Adem.

June 17, 1942: Under cover of night the British pulled back from El Adem and Sidi Rezegh in Libya. The Germans gained control of the coastal road to Bardia, isolating Tobruk.

June 18, 1942: Churchill arrived in the U.S. for conferences with Roosevelt with emphasis on opening a second front. Tobruk and its garrison was now isolated and besieged. German forces also captured the Gambut air field, denying the Tobruk garrison the aid of immediate close air support.

June 20, 1942: Rommel launched his attack on Tobruk, directing the main effort at the now largely derelict southeast sector perimeter defense. The Germans penetrated deep into Tobruk proper. A British relief force failed to get through to the besieged garrison.

June 21, 1942: Tobruk fell to Rommel. . The Germans took 33,000 Allied prisoners and captured vast amounts of supplies. Rommel immediately pushed eastward, an action approved by Hitler over the objections of the German staff which felt Malta had to be neutralized first.

June 24, 1942: Rommel's forces advanced to Sidi Barrani in Egypt. In Russia, German troops secured their positions east of the Donets River and established a new line on the Oskol River.

° Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed command of U.S. forces in the European theater.

June 26, 1942: As a reward for his victories in North Africa, Rommel was promoted to field marshal. Rommel's forces broke through the mine fields south of Mersa Matrub.

June 28, 1942: German forces launched their summer offensive and touched off the largest-scale battle of the war on any front, the Battle of Kursk. The drive was directed toward the Don River and was designed to cut off the Russians in the salient around Kursk.

° The British X Corps broke out of Mersa Matruh. Two days of heavy fighting resulted in the capture of 8,000 Allied troops. All British forces were ordered to pull back to El Alamein, only 70 miles from Alexandria, Egypt. On the same day, the code used by the U.S. military attache in Cairo was changed, a great blow to Rommel since he was routinely decoding these informational reports to Washington.

June 29, 1942: Rommel's forces reached a point 15 miles from El Alamein Mussolini arrives in Tripoli for the assumed victory parade in Cairo.

June 30, 1942: Axis troops reached El Alamein and Alexandria was bombed by Axis planes. Intoxicated by his military triumphs, Hitler issued a directive for a linkup in Egypt of German North African forces and those sweeping through eastern Europe. The plan was for Rommel to press for a decisive victory from the west and the Germans in Bulgaria would march through Turkey (whether Ankara agreed or not) and the Levant, to complete the destruction of the British position in the Middle East.

° In the USSR, the Germans threw more men into the Kursk offensive. All Russian resistance ended west of Volkhov on the northern front.

July 1, 1942: Intense fighting developed around El Alamein. Rommel was frustrated in a two-pronged thrust to break through Auchinleck's mobile defense. The Germans actually achieved their deepest penetration into Egypt on this date with the capture of a fortified position at Deir el-Shein. The Germans lost 18 of their 55 tanks, but Rommel's plans were thrown off by the delay.

July 2, 1942: The British began counterattacking in Egypt, with the XIII Corps sweeping around Rommel from the south.

July 3, 1942: Voronezh on the Don was taken by the German Fourth Panzer Army which then wheeled southward.

July 4, 1942: German forces advanced along a broad front in southern Russia, securing a solid base on the Don River.

° Rommel's Panzer Army Africa was reduced to a mere 36 tanks and an exhausted and depleted group of men suffering from severe ammunition shortages. Rommel began to regroup, withdrawing his remaining German armor and putting Italian units into the front line. The British Eighth Army failed to take advantage of the German exhaustion.

July 5, 1942: The Crimea was occupied totally by German forces as all Russian resistance ended.

July 7, 1942: The German Sixth Army joined up with the Fourth Panzer Army northeast of Valuyk in Russia and began their drive southward to take the Caucasus.

July 8, 1942: Orders were issued by Admiral Nimitz for the invasion of Guadalcanal.

July 9, 1942: German and Axis forces in southern Russia were redirected, with one army group ordered to drive toward Rostov and into the Caucasus, and the other to occupy Stalingrad..

July 10, 1942: Making use of detailed knowledge of Rommel's troop dispositions through Ultra intercepts of German Enigma ciphers, Auchinleck begins hitting Italian units forcing Rommel to employ his own German strike forces to plug up holes in the fron/.

July 11, 1942: Australian troops inflicted heavy casualties on the Italians near El Alamein. Significantly, from this action on, the Germans felt the Italians could not be relied upon to maintain their defensive positions.

July 12, 1942: An Australian force reached Kokoda. The small unit trekked five days over a difficult trail across the Owen Stanley Range from Port Moresby.

July 14, 1942: The Fourth Panzer Army joined in the German drive toward Rostov, reching Kamensk on the Donets, while other forces continued toward Stalingrad.

July 15, 1942: Auchinleck's forces routed the Italian Brescia and Pavia divisions south of El Alamein. Forced to send German troops to stabilize the frontRommel's troops did cappture the Ruweisat ridge, but had to abandon thoughts of an offensive..

July 16, 1942: British forces advanced to a point three miles west of El Alamein in a day of confused fighting.

July 18, 1942: Russian forces were routed along a broad front in the south as the Germans captured Voroshilovgrad, the coal and coke center of the Donets Basin.

July 20, 1942: Mussolini returned to Rome from Libya after giving up his plan for a triumphal entry into Cairo.

July 22, 1942: German forces opened an all-out attack on Rostov.

° In the General Government (former Poland, the Treblinka death camp was opened by the Germans. and the Germans began the "resettlement" of Jews from Warsaw. In the next three months, 310,322 were transferred out of the ghetto..

July 22-23, 1942: Japanese Eighteenth Army troops landed at Buna on the northern coast of Papua. Within two weeks 13,500 troops had been disembarked to cross the Owen Stanley Range and capture Port Moresby on the ground.

July 23, 1942: After fierce fighting, Rostov fell to the Germans who captured 240,000 Russian prisoners. The Germans then split their forces, with eventual disastrous results. One group headed for Stalingrad, the other for the Caucasus.

July 26, 1942: Under cover of darkness the British conducted a major attack on the northern sector of Rommel's position, hoping to force a withdrawal of the Axis forces. The effort failed because of poor coordination between infantry and armor units.

July 27, 1942: Speaking in Osaka, Prime Minister Tojo called on Australia to surrender:

July 28, 1942: Soviet forces began mass withdrawals from the lower Don River area.

July 29, 1942: Kokoda in New Guinea was captured by the Japanese, while the Australians fell back to Deniki.

July 30, 1942: Stalin issued orders to all Russian units prohibiting "another step back." No further retreats would be tolerated. The Germans were within 80 miles of Stalingrad and advancing through the Caucasus.

° Auchinleck halted offensive operations in Egypt until more troops arrived. He had nonetheless stopped Rommel in the first battle of El Alamein..

July 31, 1942: German 4th Panzer Division troops launched an offensive directed southward toward the Don River.

Aug. 1, 1942: The rail center of Salsk, on the Stalingrad-Moscow rail line, fell to the Germans.

Aug. 3, 1942: Voroshilovsk south of the Don was captured by the Germans to establish a bridgehead on the other side of the Kuban River, which would expose the Maikop oil fields.

Aug. 5, 1942: Russian forces suffered heavy losses near Stalingrad. German troops moved across the Kuban River.

Aug. 7, 1942: U.S. forces in the Pacific took the offensive for the first time in the war with the invasion of Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. The 1st Marine Division went ashore on Guadalcanal and four other islands in the Solomons group. Benefiting from bad weather, the invasion force of 11,000 Marines landed on without initial opposition. Soon, however, the Japanese landed reinforcements and the battle for Guadacanal stretched out for six months.

Aug. 8, 1942: Tulagi in the Solomons, which had been captured by the Japanese, was secured by U.S. Marines.

Aug. 9, 1942: Allied naval forces suffered one of their most severe losses of the Pacific in the Battle of Savo Island, a one-sided two-hour duel of major ships. The American cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes and the Australian cruiser Canberra were sunk, and the U.S. cruiser Chicago and the destroyers Ralph Talbot and Patterson were damaged. Japanese losses were negligible. After this battle, the waters between Guadalcanal and Florida islands became known as "Ironbo tom Bay."

° The Germans captured Krasnodar and Maikop, key oil-producing areas of the Caucasus region, reaching the foothills of that mountain range. .

Aug.10, 1942: Newly appointed British Commander of the Middle East, Alexander was ordered to destroy the Axis forces in Egypt and Libya. General Montgomery assumed command of the British Eighth Army.

Aug.11, 1942: Stalingrad was imperiled as the Russian Fourth Tank Army suffered heavy losses in the bend of the Don River near Kalach. German units began crossing into Circassia driving toward the Grozny oil fields.

Aug.12, 1942: Churchill arrived in Moscow for a four- day visit in which the second front was the main issue.

Aug.15, 1942: The German Sixth and Fourth Panzer armies opened their major offensive toward Stalingrad.

Aug.18, 1942: A large Japanese landing force went ashore unopposed near Basabua in New Guinea.

Aug.19, 1942: Canadian and British raiding forces landed at Dieppe on the coast of France but were repulsed. About 6,000 troops stayed ashore for nine hours and suffered 50 percent casualties without achieving any military objective.

° General Friedrich von Paulus, commander of the German Sixth Army, ordered his forces to take Stalingrad despite their great losses.

° By contrast, General Alexander directed Montgomery to hold the line at El Alamein and delay offensive operations until the manpower buildup was completed.

Aug.21, 1942: The Japanese launched a counterattack on U.S. Marine positions on Guadalcanal but were driven back, suffering 800 casualties to 110 for the Marines.

Aug.22, 1942: German paratroopers landed behind Russian lines near Stalingrad and were badly mauled.

Aug.23, 1942: In the north, the Russians launched a major offensive south of Lake Ladoga. On the Stalingrad front, German units reached the Volga River. Stalin- grad was bombed by 200 Luftwaffe planes.

Aug. 24-25, 1942: In the battle of the eastern Solomons, the Japanese failed in their attempt to reinforce units on Guadalcanal. Vice-Admiral Jack Fletcher intercepted the transports. In the subequent batttle, . the American carrier Enterprise and battleship North Carolina were damaged, but the Japanese lost the carrier Ryu Jo, a cruiser, and a destroyer. Ninety Japanese planes were downed to 20 U.S. The battle again demonstrated to Tokyo that Guadalcanal could not be easily defended.

Aug.25, 1942: U.S. Marine and Army planes again disrupted a Japanese force on its way to Guadalcanal, sinking a destroyer and transport and forcing the Japanese to withdraw.

Aug.26, 1942: The Battle of Stalingrad intensified with an estimated million German troops attacking the Russian defenders.

Aug.27, 1942: The battle for Stalingrad continued to increase in intensity.

Aug.30, 1942: Rommel assaulted the southern sector of the El Alamein line, with the main effort swinging north against the Alam el Halfa ridge. It was an effort to reach the coast behind the Eighth Army. Three German divisions were to break for the Nile if the maneuver succeeded.

° German and Russian forces continued battling in a costly stalemate at Stalingrad.

Aug.31, 1942: Rommel's forces were halted after bitter fighting southwest of the Alam el Halfa ridge. Axis losses were heavy, and the Germans were beginning to experience severe supply shortages, for a large tanker carrying vitally needed gasoline was sunk by a British submarine just outside Tobruk's harbor.

Sept. 1, 1942: British Eighth Army troops repulsed another German attack on the Alam el Halfa ridge.

° German forces pounded the Stalingrad defense perimeter with the heaviest fighting taking place northwest and southwest of the smashed city.

Sept. 2, 1942: German and Romanian troops crossed the Kerch Strait from the Crimea and linked up with other Axis units, adding to the threat in the Caucasus.

° Acutely aware of his supply problems, Rommel issued orders for a staged withdrawal of his main offensive forces.

Sept. 3, 1942: New Zealand troops tried to cut Rommel's withdrawal from Alam el Halfa in a furious nighttime battle.

° German elements penetrated into the western suburbs of Stalingrad.

Sept. 4, 1942: Heavy fighting took place near El Alamein as Rommel completed his retreat to positions just east of the old British mine fields.

Sept. 5, 1942: German troops "entered" Novorossiysk on the Black Sea which was the base of the Soviet fleet since the fall of Sevastopol.

Sept. 6, 1942: Violent fighting continued at Stalingrad.

Sept. 7, 1942: Japanese units continued their advance toward Port Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range.

Sept. 8, 1942: Two Australian battalions were trapped in the Owen Stanley Range.On the sme day, U.S. Marine raiders and paratroopers attacked the Japanese base near Taivu Point on Guadalcanal.

Sept. 9, 1942: German forces advanced on a broad front in the Caucasus.

Sept.10, 1942: Russian forces fell back in the western suburbs of Stalingrad.

Sept.11, 1942: The encircled Australian forces broke out of their trap and joined in the defense of Loribaiwa, 32 miles from Port Moresby. . MacArthur ordered in U.S. and Australian reinforcements to clear New Guinea of the Japanese.

Sept.13, 1942: Eisenhower took over command of TORCH planning for landings in the French colonies of North Africa. with headquarters in London.

° U.S. Marines held off a determined Japanese force of two battalions which attempted to take Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. The Japanese suffered 1,200 casualties.

Sept.14, 1942: Heavy fighting on Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal left 600 Japanese dead and 143 U.S. Marine casualties.

Sept.15, 1942: The U.S. carrier Wasp was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine near Espiritu Santo. near Guadacanal.

° Units of the U.S. 32nd Division landed at Port Moresby, the first American infantrymen to arrive in New Guinea.

Sept.16, 1942: German troops smashed their way to the northwest suburbs of Stalingrad.

° Japanese forces were finally halted in their drive toward Port Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range. Australian troops prepared to go on the offensive.

Sept.17, 1942: Heavy fighting developed in the streets of Stalingrad.

Sept.18, 1942: U.S. troops on Guadalcanal were given full food rations for the first time in about a month. More than 4,000 Marine reinforcements were landed.

Sept.20, 1942: House-to-house fighting broke out in Stalingrad.

Sept.21, 1942: All women and children were evacuated from Stalingrad.

Sept.23, 1942: Incredibly stiff Russian resistance slowed the Germans to a virtual halt at Stalingrad.

Sept.25, 1942: Australian forces went on the offensive in New Guinea, pushing the Japanese back along the Kokoda trail.

Sept.26, 1942: Stalin called for a British-U.S. second front in western Europe as soon as possible.

Sept.27, 1942: U.S. Marines were hurled back in four separate attempts to secure better positions on Guadalcanal.

Sept.30, 1942: Hitler vowed that Stalingrad would be taken. He publicly ridiculed U.S.-British military leaders planning a second front in western Europe.

Oct., 1942:. The German offensive in Russia bogged down during this month. Its forces were suffering extremely heavy casualties and fuel shortages were becoming critical. The Red Army was also fighting valiantly at Stalingrad and around the vital Grozny oil fields, but suffering incredible casualties.

Oct. 6, 1942: Montgomery issued orders for a major offensive directed at El Alamein.

Oct. 7, 1942: U.S. Marines launched a new offensive to extend the defense perimeter around Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

Oct. 8, 1942: The German High Command announced it would level Stalingrad by heavy artillery, thereby abandoning its policy of frontal assaults on the Russian city. According to Berlin, the decision was taken to avoid the "unnecessary sacrifice" of German soldiers.

Oct. 9, 1942: The U.S. renounced extraterritorial rights in China, the first nation to abandon the principle of special rights for foreigners living in China. A new treaty outlining new ties-without the humiliating abuse of sovereignty-was proposed to the Chinese.

Oct. 11-12, 1942: The midnight Battle of Cape Esperance in the Solomons ended in a victory for U.S. naval forces against the Japanese. The heavy cruiser Furutaka and three destroyers were sunk, while the heavy cruiser Aoha was seriously dam- aged. One U.S. destroyer, the Duncan, was lost. With these additional losses, the Japanese were hard pressed to block further reinforcement of U.S. forces on Guadalcanal.

Oct. 13-14, 1942: Japanese naval and air units unleashed heavy attacks on Guadalcanal. The battleships Kongo and Haruna bombarded U.S. positions on the island for 90 minutes with 16-inch guns and inflicted great damage. Henderson Field was knocked out temporarily. Only 42 aircraft were left operational, and aviation fuel was down to critical levels.

Oct.13, 1942: A regiment of the America Division reached Guadalcanal, the first U.S. Army unit to reach the island.

Oct.14, 1942: Hitler ordered a temporary halt in offensive operations on the Russian front.

Oct.15, 1942: About 4,000 Japanese reinforcementslanded at Tassafaronga Point on Guadalcanal.

Oct.16, 1942: Thirty-two U.S. aircraft landed at Guadalcanal, giving the Marines a total of 66.

Oct.20, 1942: Allied aircraft began a four-day operation to establish air superiority over El Alamein, a requirement for the planned ground offensive.

° German forces were repulsed in a massive attack on Stalingrad.

Oct.22, 1942: U.S. General Mark Clark arrived in Algiers by submarine for a secret meeting with pro-Allied French officers to facilitate the forthcoming North African invasion. The first of the cargo ships left British ports.

Oct.23, 1942: The desert war reached a turnaround point with the beginning of the second battle of El Alamein. More than a thousand British guns pounded the Axis batteries for 20 minutes before XXX Corps began its drive on the northern end of the battle line.

° Japanese forces attempted to cross the Mataniko River on Guadalcanal. After an intense artillery barrage (the heaviest in the fighting) the Japanese scored some initial success but lost an estimated 600 men. The Marines suffered 25 dead.

Oct.24, 1942: Four British Commonwealth divisions broke into the Axis defenses at El Alamein, but failed to penetrate as far as planned.

° Vice Admiral William F. Halsey assumed command of U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific, succeeding Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley who was thought to be too conservative.

Oct.25, 1942: German counterattacks at El Alamein were turned back while Montgomery continued pressing local attacks.

Oct.26, 1942: In still another attempt to control the seas around Guadalcanal, the Japanese engaged an American naval force in the battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Although the U.S. carrier Hornet and destroyer Porter were sunk, the outcome gave the U.S. more time to reinforce Guadalcanal. The loss of 100 Japanese aircraft further impaired their defenses. It was the last time carrier-based aircraft were used by the Japanese in the Guadalcanal campaign. But only 29 U.S. planes were left in operation on Guadalcanal.

° Troop convoys for the North African invasion left British ports.

Oct. 27-28, 1942: RAF aircraft scored successes in routing concentrations of German armor south of El Alamein. German counterattacks were turned back.

Oct.28, 1942: The "Tokyo Express," the American name for the Japanese resupply effort, began landing troops on Guadalcanal from Kokumbona to Cape Esperance.

Oct.29, 1942: Knowing Rommel's plans through Ultra intercepts, Montgomery changed his offensive plans and decided to direct his next attack to the south against the Italians rather than hit the newly reinforced Germans on the coastal roads. Australian forces held the Germans in a counterattack on the northern flank.

° Because of heavy losses, the Japanese began pulling back to Koli Point and Kokumbona on Guadalcanal.

Oct. 30-31, 1942: At El Alemein the British Eighth Army launched a major attack, trapping large numbers of Axis troops when the Australian 9th Division reached the sea, although most of the Germans later escaped when their tanks opened a passage along the coast.

Nov. 1, 1942: The Russian Sixty-second and Sixty-fourth armies withstood the most deadly attacks on Stalingrad and continued to hold their ground. German efforts to take the Grozny oil fields were repulsed by the Russians,

° By German count, 5,150,000 Russians had been taken prisoner since the invasion was launched 16 months before. There were only the roughest estimates of killed and disabled, but the Red Army had suffered near incomprehensible losses.

° U.S. Marines staged a new push to drive the Japanese back to Poha River on Guadalcanal.

Nov. 2, 1942: The British launched the decisive battle against Rommel's positions at El Alamein. New Zealand's 2nd Division led the attack, and the 9th Armored Brigade poured through the corridor.

° 1500 Japanese reinforcements arrived on Guadalcana east of Koli Point with instructions to build an air-field. At Point Cruz, U.S. Marines trapped another Japanese force.

Nov. 3, 1942: The British maintained a bridgehead west of the German mine fields at El Alamein although suffering 75% casualties. Facing strong German resistance., Montgomery began deploying forces to outflank the Germans. Some German units were already starting to retreat.

Nov. 4, 1942: Rommel's forces were in full retreat from El Alamein. The British delayed their pursuit.

Nov. 5, 1942: Montgomery announced that British forces had won a complete and absolute victory in Egypt and that the German Afrika Korps was in full retreat, General Ritter von Thoma, Rommel's second in command, was captured. A total of 10,000 Germans and 20,000 Italians were taken prisoner, including 9 generals.. About 450 Axis tanks and 1,000 heavy guns were destroyed or captured. The Eighth Army broke through the Axis fall-back defense line at Fuka.

Nov. 6, 1942: MacArthur arrived at Port Moresby to direct New Guinea operations.

° For the first time in weeks the fighting at Stalingrad began to slow down. Publicly, Stalin again deplored the lack of a second front. He said the Russians were facing 240 Axis divisions (179 German, 22 Rumanian, 14 Finnish, 13 Hungarian, 10 Italian, one Slovak, and one Spanish) while the Allied forces were facing only 15 German and Italian divisions in North Africa.

Nov. 8, 1942: OPERATION TORCH: Allied forces landed on the Algerian and Moroccan coasts, with Casablanca, Algiers, and Oran as their main objectives. Algiers was taken by nightfall. French resistance at Oran was stiff. One force destined for Casablanca lost 64 percent of its landing ships (242 boats) but managed to establish a solid beachhead. General de Gaulle called on all Frenchmen in North Africa to aid the Allies: "Our Algeria, our Morocco, our Tunisia, are to be made the jumping-off ground for the liberation of France." A joint U.S.-British decla ration said the North African action was only a first step in the ouster of Germany from France. Despite using a pyro-technic display of the Stars and Stripes, a hundred feet wide, and loudspeakers announcing they were Americans, the Allies were met with strong opposition, especially at Casablanca.

Nov. 9, 1942: Forces attempting to outflank Oran encountered heavy French resistance, while outside Casablanca, the French fought bitterly around Port Lyautey. In response, on this day Germany invaded the French colony of Tunisia. Forces were landed by air at Tunis. There was no French opposition.

Nov.10, 1942: Clear weather brought a renewal of the British offensive in Egypt and German forces began pulling out of Sidi Barrani when the British broke through the Halfaya Pass.

Nov.11, 1942: All French resistance in North Africa ended at 7 am In response German troops marched into all the unoccupied areas of France except the Mediterranean coast. Hitler informed Petain that Germany could no longer preserve the armistice and that all measures had to be taken to "arrest the continuation of the Anglo-British aggression," and to "protect France."

Nov. 12-15, 1942: In a major naval engagement off Guadalcanal, Japanese and American ships inflicted severe losses on each other. The U.S. cruisers Atlanta and Juneau and seven destroyers were sunk, while the Japanese lost the battleships Hiei and Kirishima, three destroyers and 11 transports. With their losses the Japanese could no longer effectively resupply its isolated units on Guadalcanal and the statemate there now turned into an American victory.

Nov.12, 1942: The British First Army occupied Bone (Annaba), 260 miles east of Algiers.

° On Guadacanal, U.S. Marines closed the Gavaga Creek pocket, killing 450 Japanese. 6,000 American reinforcements arrived from New Caledonia and New Hebrides.

Nov.13, 1942: British troops reached Tobruk.

Nov.15, 1942: Four Japanese transports which survived the Guadalcanal battle were sunk off Tassafaronga Pointand all the supplies they had unloaded were destroyed on the beach.

° British troops reached Tunisia at Takarka, 80 miles west of Tunis.

Nov.16, 1942: The British pushed out of Tunisia by German units.

° Australian and U.S. forces trying to seize the Buna-Gona beachhead on New Guinea were hard hit by Japanese forces, Nov.17 The British 78th Division met with Ger man resistance 70 miles west of Tunis, the first encounter in Tunisia.

Nov.19, 1942: Germans went on the offensive in Tunisia, but were turned back at Djebel Abiod by British and by Free French forces at Medjez el Bab.

Nov.19, 1942: The winter offensive was launched by Russian forces, with relief of the Stalingrad defenders as the immediate objective. With the temperature minus 300 centigrade artillery boomed across the Don front for nearly eight hours before 60 Red Army divisions went on the attack. The Romanian Third and Fourth armies retreated in full flight. Only the intervention of the German 22nd Panzer Division saved the Rumanians from annihilation.

Nov.20, 1942: Complementing their successes north of Stalingrad, Soviet forces forged through German positions south of the city.

° Benghazi was captured by the British.

Nov.22, 1942: Soviet forces scored major breakthroughs in their counteroffensive in the Stalingrad area. The German Sixth Army with 270,000 men was surrounded as Red Army units from the Don and Stalingrad fronts linked up at Kalach, 50 miles west of Stalingrad.

Nov.23, 1942: Hitler issued orders for the German forces at Stalingrad to "dig in and await relief."

Nov.24, 1942: Russian forces made further gains around Stalingrad.

° The British First Army was ordered to advance on Tunis.

Nov.26, 1942: British forces pressed forward toward Tunis with an armored battle south of Mateur.

Nov.21, 1942: Germans occupied the southern French seaport of Toulon, and the French immediately scuttled the navy ships anchored there. .

° British troops advanced to within 20 miles of Tunis.

Nov.28, 1942: British and U.S. troops reached a point 15 miles from Tunis.

Nov.29, 1942: Red Army troops went on the offensive in the Caucasus, attacking the Terek bridgehead.

° British paratroopers failed to take the airfield at Ovnda, south of Tunis, denying the Allies that approach to the city. Allied forces to the west were also stalled.

Nov.30, 1942: A major naval battle off Tassafaronga Point developed when nine U.S. ships intercepted eight Japanese destroyers heading to Guadalcanal with reinforcements. The Japanese displayed masterful night-fighting tactics and their torpedoes struck and sank the cruiser Northampton and crippled the cruisers New Orleans and Minneapolis, while losing one destroyer. The Japanese won a major tactical victory but no reinforcements were landed.

° In Tunis the battle turned against the Allies, with 15,500 Axis troops fighting desperate battles to avoid being thrown into the sea.

Dec. 2, 1942: The first nuclear chain reaction (fission of uranium isotope U-235) was achieved at an abandoned football stadium on the campus of the University of Chicago. Under the direction of physicists Arthur Compton and Enrico Fermi, the United States had produced the scientific breakthrough for the creation of an atomic bomb.

Dec. 3, 1942: U.S. and French forces captured the Faid Pass south of Tunis.

Dec. 4, 1942: The British were forced to evacuate Tebourba in Tunisia after suffering heavy losses.

Dec. 8, 1942: U.S. Navy PT boats intercepted Japanese destroyers attempting to resupply Guadalcanal and turned them back.

Dec. 9, 1942: Australian forces captured Gona on New Guinea in brutal hand-to-hand fighting.

Dec.10, 1942: Field Marshall Manstein's Fourth Panzer Army, with the aid of seven German divisions drawn from the Caucasus front began an offensive to relieve the Germans trapped around Stalingrad.

Dec.11, 1942: Russian forces made small gains around Stalingrad, despite heavy losses.

Dec.12, 1942: Hitler refused to permit a withdrawal of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, saying such a move would destroy "the whole meaning of the campaign."

Dec.13, 1942: Rommel's Panzer Army Africa forces withdrew from El Agheila in Libya., pursued by British and New Zealand troops pursued German forces fleeing to the west in Libya.

Dec.14, 1942: Manstein's Fourth Panzer Army made headway in its efforts to reach Stalingrad.

Dec.15, 1942: The 2nd New Zealand Division moved to outflank the retreating Germans in Libya.

Dec.16, 1942: Manstein's attempt to aid the trapped German Sixth Army was abandoned after the Fourth Panzer Army reached a point 40 miles from Stalingrad.

Dec.17, 1942: Foreign Secretary Eden told the House of Commons that Germany was "now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe." He revealed Jews from the occupied nations were being sent to eastern Europe where they were "worked to death in labor camps" or "deliberately slaughtered in mass executions." It was the first public statement by any official on the campaign of genocide being waged against European Jewry.

Dec.21, 1942: British Eighth Army troops reached Sirte in Libya before halting.

Dec.22, 1942: Soviet forces made new attacks in the Caucasus as the Germans started to pull back.

Dec.23, 1942: After a delay of nearly four weeks, the British First Army renewed its drive for Tunis., but heavy rain soon brought the action to a standstill.

Dec.24, 1942: Darlan was assassinated by a French monarchist in Algiers. Giraud succeeded him as high commissioner of French Africa.

° Eisenhower decided to abandon the attack for Tunis until the rainy season ended.

Dec.26, 1942: Closing in on the important Don river ports, Soviet troops advanced to within 105 miles of Rostov.

Dec.28, 1942: To avoid having the entire German Army Group A trapped, Hitler approved its withdrawal from the Caucasus.

Dec.31, 1942: The Japanese decided to evacuate Guadalcanal and establish a new defense line in New Georgia.

1943

Jan. 1, 1943: Red Army troops continued to reduce the pocket in which the German Sixth Army was trapped around Stalingrad, an area of only 25 by 40 miles. In order to avoid encirclement in the Caucasus, Field Marshal Kleist's Army Group A began falling back toward Rostov.

Jan. 2, 1943: Japanese resistance ended at Buna in Papua. 2,800 Japanese were killed; U.S. and Australian casualties were 620 dead, 2,065 wounded, and 132 missing. The overland threat to Port Moresby was now ended

Jan. 5, 1943: The major German air base supplying Stalingrad, fell to the Russians.

Jan. 8, 1943: General Konstantin K. Rokossovsky sent a surrender ultimatum to Paulus at Stalingrad.

Jan. 9, 1943: Japan and the Nanking regime signed an agreement abolishing all its extraterritorial rights in China . In return, the puppet Chinese government in Nanking declared war on the U.S. and Britain.

Jan. 10, 1943: Paulus refused to surrender, and seven armies of 281,000 men from the Red Army closed the ring around the trapped Germans.

° The U.S. 25th Division began the final offe sive to clear Guadalcanal.

Jan. 12, 1943: German fighter protection within Stalingrad was lost when the Russians captured the airstrip at Pitomnik.

Jan. 14-23, 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met at Casablanca to plan future Allied strategy. The American Chiefs of Staff pushed for a 1943 cross-Channel attack, but Churchill argued for a more limited operation against Sicily, which was agreed upon in the end. Roosevelt surprised almost everyone at the conference by announcing a policy of unconditional surrender.

Jan. 15, 1943: British forces began their drive to take Tripoli and on the same day Red Army troops crashed through the defenses of the Second Hungarian Army south of Voronezh, opening up a 175-mile gap in the Axis defenses.

Jan. 16, 1943: Italian forces were routed by the Russians west of the Don as the Red Army launched a major offensive across the upper reaches of the river.

Jan. 18, 1943: Moscow announced that the 900-day- long siege of Leningrad had been lifted by a corridor ten miles wide. The city's population was dying at the rate of 20,000 a day.

° New Mark VI Tiger tanks were used by the Germans for the first time, in Tunisia. They were employed in a major counteroffensive to recover the approaches to Tunis. Colonel General Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of Axis forces in Tunisia.

° Armed resistance took place for the first time in the Warsaw ghetto. The Jews began to fight back with the resumption of deportations, which they now realized meant certain death.

Jan. 19, 1943: Novgorod, south of Leningrad, was occupied by the Russian Fifty-ninth Army, forcing the German Army Group North to fall back or risk entrapment east of Lake Peipus. Red Army forces pressed forward in massive waves along the central and southern fronts.

Jan. 20, 1943: The Germans pressed on in Tunisia. Allied forces on the southern flank went to defensive positions.

Jan. 22, 1943: Red Army forces launched an offensive to retake Voronezh. Paulus requests permission from Hitler to withdraw from Stalingrad, citing over 12,000 wounded unattende. Hitler responded: "Surrender is out of the question."

° The Papuan campaign on New Guinea ended as Allies score their first land victory against the Japanese. About 16,000 Japanese participated in the fight and at least 7,000 were killed. Australian casualties were about 5,700, U.S. 2,788. By clearing Papua, the Allies had eliminated the most pressing threat to Australia. Earlier, the Battle of the Coral Sea had ended an amphibious invasion attempt and now the overland challenge had been turned back as well. But stiff Japanese resistance on Guadalcanal slowed the final drive to clear that island.

Jan. 23, 1943: British forces entered Tripoli to receive the surrender of the city and the province.

° All Japanese resistance ended on Guadalcanal's Mount Austen.

Jan. 25, 1943: British Eighth Army units pressed westward from Tripoli to drive the Axis forces into Tunisia.

Jan. 26, 1943: The Stalingrad pocket was reduced as Russian forces split it in half.

Jan.27, 1943: The Leningrad-Moscow rail line was cleared, permitting delivery of supplies. Moscow announced the capture of 86,000 Axis troops, mostly Hungarians, on the Voronezh front.

Jan. 28, 1943: After more than three years of war Germany finally went to a wartime footing, ordering full mobilization of the labor force.

Jan. 30, 1943: Soviet forces reoccupied the oil center of Maikop. German Army Group Don was no longer an effective force.

° Counterattacking German troops overran the Faid Pass in Tunisia.

Jan. 31, 1943: Paulus, promoted to field marshal the day before, surrendered at Stalingrad.

Feb. 2, 1943: All resistance at Stalingrad ended. About 147,200 Germans were killed in the extended and abortive campaign for the city, and another 91,000 surrendered, including 24 generals. Only 34,000 men ever made it out on the airlift.

° The first group of Japanese troops was evacuated from Guadalcanal.

Feb. 4, 1943: Eisenhower assumed command of all Allied forces in North Africa.

Feb. 7, 1943: Moscow announced that the Red Army completely controlled the south bank of the Don River.

° Japanese destroyers began final evacuation from Guadalcanal.

Feb. 8, 1943: Kursk, held by the Germans since Nov. 11,1941, was reoccupied by Soviet troops.

° Japanese rear-guard units were evacuated from Guadalcanal. Remarkably, a total of 10,652 men were removed from the island, in the face of strong American air and naval forces which remained completely unaware of the pullout and were surprised when they realized the next day that no Japanese were left.

Feb. 12, 1943: The escape route for the Germans from Rostov was narrowed as the Russians cut the main rail line. Red Army units threatened encirclement of the German corps defending Kharkov.

Feb. 14, 1943: Red Army troops recaptured Rostov, the major outlet for Germans retreating from the Caucasus. General Kleist had to withdraw to the Taman Peninsula between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. The First Panzer Army was the only force to get through to the north before Rostov fell. By retaking Rostov, the Russians eliminated the threat to the Caucasus and its oil riches.

° Field Marshal Rommel launched a powerful counteroffensive from the Faid Pass in Tunisia and broke through to the Kasserine Pass. Allied forces began pulling back to the west toward Sbeitla.

Feb. 16, 1943: Kharkov was reoccupied by the Russian armies when contrary to Hitler's orders to stand and fight, the II SS Panzer Corps withdrew. The Russians had now advanced 375 miles west of Stalingrad.

° British Eighth Army troops attacked the Mar eth defense line in Tunisia at Ben

Feb. 17, 1943: U.S. and British forces suffered heavy losses in Tunisia, with the Germans advancing 25 miles northwestward from Gafsa. British forces captured Medenine in Tunisia, but U.S. and British units began falling back on the other fronts in the face of heavy German armor attacks. The Mark VI tanks were proving effective for the Germans. since their introduction into combat.

Feb. 19-20, 1943: Allied defenses in Tunisia were restructured in the face of a deteriorating situation. The Germans and Italians began frontal assaults on American positions in the Kasserine Pass. The U.S. II Corps fell back to avoid being totally routed.

Feb. 21, 1943: Churchill tanks were put into action in Tunisia as the Allies groped to stop the Axis offensive. Fighting was intense in several sectors as the three-pronged German drive reached a point 21 miles beyond the Kasserine Pass and threatened the entire Allied force in central Tunisia.

° The U.S. 43rd Division and a Marine force occupied the Russell Islands in the Solomons. Occupation of the islands provided the Allies with a fighter airstrip 60 miles northwest of Guadalcanal.

Feb. 22, 1943: Failing to get support form General Arnim, Rommel ordered a halt in the his drive toward El Kef, and pulled back to the Kasserine Pass.

Feb.23, 1943: Rommel was appointed to command the newly formed Army Group Africa.

Feb. 25, 1943: U.S. troops of II Corps reoccupied the Kasserine Pass, encountering only mines and booby traps.

Feb. 26-27, 1943: The German Fifth Panzer Army launched a strong offensive in Tunisia making rapid progress until stiff resistance by the British First Army halted the German advance near Beja.

Feb. 27-28, 1943: Norwegian Commandos destroyed the Norsk Hydro heavy-water facilities at Vemork. Nine men parachuted into Norway from Britain, demolished the heavy-water tanks and let 2,000 pounds of the material spill uselessly in the area. but German and Norwegian engineers returned the facility to full production in June.

Feb. 28, 1943: German forces were contained in Tunisia. The inexperienced American troops of II Corps had suffered heavy casualties, 6,500. Total Allied casualties in the Kasserine fighting were 10,000 to 2,000 for the Axis troops.

March 1, 1943: Moscow told the Polish government-in-exile it would claim eastern Poland, the lands seized in 1939, as Russian territory.

March 2-5, 1943: Tokyo's last attempt to strengthen Japanese units in the South Pacific fails when American and Australian planes intercept a 16-ship Japanese convoy en route to Lae, New Guinea. Four destroyers were sunk by the Allied aircraft which were then joined by PT boats, resulting in the destruction of eight transports. About 3,000 Japanese were killed, most of them aboard the troop ships. More than 20 Japanese planes were downed, to five U.S.

March 5, 1943: RAF bombers used the OBOE navigational aid for the first time, in a raid on Essen. The attack marked the beginning of the air battle of the Ruhr to destroy German industry in the area.

March 6, 1943: Rommel fought his last battle in Africa, directing an offensive against British positions at Medenine. The Germans were routed, losing 50 tanks. Rommel urged Hitler to evacuate North Africa, and is removed as Commander of German Forces and recalled to Germany. Coincidentally, on the same day, General George S. Patton took command of the U.S. II Army Corps.

March 11, 1943: In a brilliant tactical move by Manstein, German forces reached Kharkov in their counterattack and violent fighting in the streets ensued. Although Russian units held a seven-to-one manpower advantage, the Germans were able to secure a solid line along the Donets River.

March 13, 1943: The first of two attempts to kill Hitler within the span of a few days failed. General Henning von Tresckow, Field Marshal Hans Günther von Kluge's chief of staff, planted a bomb aboard Hitler's private plane. The device, made of plastic explosives, was contained in a package supposedly containing two bottles of brandy for delivery to a member of Hitler's staff at Wolfsschanze (wolf's lair), Hitler's military headquarters in East Prussia. The detonator failed. as the conspirators discovered when they recovered the bomb.

March 14, 1943: Two German SS divisions recaptured Kharkov. Russian resistance west of the Donets River collapsed.

March 16-19, 1943: Nazi U-boat destruction reached its height in a running battle between 38 of the German underwater craft and two Allied convoys and their escorts in the North Atlantic. 21 of the Allied merchant ships were sunk, a loss of 141,000 tons. A naval escort ship was also lost. Only one of the U-boats was destroyed when it came under aerial attack. The entire convoy concept was now in jeopardy.

March 17, 1943: Patton's II Corps went on the offensive in Tunisia, making good progress despite heavy rains.

March 20, 1943: For the second time in a week, anti-Hitler military officers tried and failed to kill him. Kluge's chief of intelligence, Colonel Rudolf von Gertsdorff, wearing a concealed bomb approached Hitler reviewing new uniforms in Berlin. Hitler left the exhibit hall before the acid-fuse could act, and Gertsdorff flushed the fuse down a toilet in the men's room.

March 21, 1943: Mud caused by the spring thaw slowed action along the entire Russian front. Both side, drained by the intense and costly winter action, welcomed the spring respite.

March 28, 1943: The British Eighth Army completed occupying the main positions on the Mareth line in South Tunisia. Patton's II Corps opened up an offensive in the north directed at Gabes.

April 2, 1943: A stalemate developed in Tunisia with both sides battered and unable to dislodge the opposing forces.

April 7, 1943: U.S. 9th Division troops from Gafsa linked up with British Eighth Army units in Tunisia, 20 miles from the coast.

April 11, 1943: Allied forces in Tunisia retake the Faid Pass, thus restoring the positions which existed two months before.

April 12, 1943: Germany announced its forces had uncovered a mass grave of thousands of Polish army officers killed by the Russians at Katyn, near Smolensk.

April 15, 1943: General Omar Bradley assumed command of the U.S. II Corps from Patton who was assigned to plan the invasion of Sicily.

April 18, 1943: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, was killed when his plane was shot down just before landing at the southern tip of Bougainville. P-38s from Guadalcanal had been sent up to "get Yamamoto" after the U.S. had intercepted coded radio messages of his planned arrival. Surprisingly, the Japanese did not consider the possibility that the code was compromised, and no effort was made to change the code.

° In what became known as the "Palm Sunday Massacre," 51 Luftwaffe transports and 16 escorting fighters were shot down in about ten minutes while attempting to ferry supplies from Europe to the hard-pressed Army Group Africa. 70 U.S. and British fighters had been directed to the proper intercept point from Ultra intercepts. Seven of the Allied planes were lost.

April 19, 1943: Jews in the Warsaw ghetto began a heroic but suicidal battle against the Germans. Poorly armed, they fought 2,000 tank-supported SS troops who withdrew from the ghetto after suffering 200 casualties. (Fighting continued through May 10, with few Jews surviving.)

April 22, 1943: Allied forces in Tunisia began the final phase of the North African campaign. The main thrust was directed at the capture of Tunis and Bizerte.

April 26, 1943: Moscow broke off relations with the London-based Polish government because of its request for an Intenational Red Cross investigation into the Katyn massacre.

April 28-May 6, 1943: In a turning point of the battle of the Atlantic, new antisubmarine measures began achieving results. A running battle between 51 U-boats and westbound convoy ONS 5, made up of 42 ships and 9 escorts, resulted in a reversal of the usual pattern of surface ship destruction when confronted by wolf packs. Although 13 merchantmen were sunk, the Allies were able to sink seven of the submarines, two of them by land-based Catalina patrol craft.

April 30, 1943: New antisubmarine strategies were formally adopted by the Royal Navy, centering on carrier-based aircraft cover and long-range patrol planes. They were immediately employed in the Bay of Biscay, where in the following month 38 U-boats were sunk. The key to the program was catching the submarines while they were leaving or returning from their bases on the French coast. Ultra messages were invaluable in giving British ships and planes specific times and locations for intercepting the submarines. During the next 30 days, a total of 41 German U-boats&emdash;a third of the submarines on station&emdash;failed to return to their bases. The battle of the North Atlantic was effectively and decisively ended in favor of the Allies.

May 1, 1943: German troops in Tunisia began withdrawing from positions opposite the U.S. II Corps.

May 6, 1943: Allied forces launched the final offensive against Axis positions in Tunisia. The defenses were breached by the British First Army, and two armored divisions pushed on to Massicault, halfway to Tunis.

May 7, 1943: Tunis and Bizerte were occupied by Allied forces. The main body of Axis forces under Arnim retreated into the Cape Bon peninsula, but 41,000 Germans were captured at Bizerte alone.

May 9, 1943: German forces facing the U.S. II Corps in Tunisia surrendered. Six generals were among the prisoners.

May 10, 1943: Allied forces cut off all escape routes for the Germans on the Cape Bon peninsula.

May 12, 1943: General Jürgen von Arnim surrendered all Axis forces in North Africa. A total of 238,243 German and Italian prisoners were taken.

May 18, 1943: Japanese forces opened a new offensive across the Yangtze River in China. Its ultimate objective was the Chinese capital of Chungking.

May 25, 1943: Roosevelt and Churchill concluded their Washington (TRIDENT) conference after having selected May 1, 1944, as the date for the invasion of France. It was also agreed to knock Italy out of the war after the capture of Sicily, to increase aid to China, and to step up the tempo of the war against Japan by island-hopping through the central Pacific. Churchill's calls for a strike through the Balkans, the "soft underbelly," were rejected.

May 31, 1943: General Guderian tried to talk Hitler out of a summer offensive on the Russian front. Hitler replied, "You're quite right. Every time I think of this attack my stomach turns." (In the end, however, he approved Operation CITADEL, which turned into the disastrous Battle of Kursk.)

June 2, 1943: Pope Pius XII appealed to the combatants to apply the "laws of humanity" in air warfare. The British particularly were stung by the inference that its large-scale attacks against German population centers were immoral.

June 10, 1943: In a totally rational evaluation of the military situation, aided by a clever British ruse of planting the corpse of an alleged high military official carrying top secret plans, the German High Command concluded that the Allies would land in Sardinia and Corsica. The Germans discounted the possibility of a Sicilian operation and a prolonged campaign up the Italian peninsula.

June 11, 1943: The tiny Italian island of Pantelleria surrendered to Allied forces. The British met very little opposition following more than four weeks of air attacks which included 5,285 sorties and dropping 6,200 tons of bombs.

° Himmler ordered the liquidation of all the Polish ghettos into which Jews had been concentrated.

June 18, 1943: Targets in Sicily were pounded by Allied bombers in preparation for the forthcoming invasion.

June 19, 1943: Goebbels boasted that Berlin was now "free of Jews."

June 20, 1943: In anticipation of an Allied landing the Italian government ordered the evacuation of Naples and all cities and towns in Sicily.

June 21, 1943: Himmler ordered the liquidation of Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Russia. Simultaneously, German execution teams began carrying out the murder of Jews in the Lwow ghetto. Through the 27th 20,000 Jews were killed.

June 30, 1943: Allied forces launched amphibious oper ations against Japanese-held islands in the southwest Pacific (Operation CARTWHEEL) aimed at Rabaul. The islands included New Georgia, Sasavele, Baraulu, Vangunu, Trobriand, Rendova, and New Guinea. Nassau Bay was denied to the Japanese, isolating Lae and Salamaua.

July 2, 1943: A Yugoslav draftee in the German army who deserted to the Russians told his questioners the Germans were planning a huge attack around Kursk at dawn on the 5th. Russian forces were alerted and moved into stronger defense positions.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF GERMAN ARMY

Divisions in	June 16, 1942	July 1, 1943
Soviet Union	167	175
France/Low Countries	26	38
Norway/Denmark	12	12
Balkans	5	14
Finland	5	7
Africa	3	-
Italy	-	6
Total	218	252

July 5, 1943: German forces launched a major offensive against the Kursk salient which turned out to he their last such effort for thereafter the initiative passed to the Russians. Three armies were involved which met with some success but were quickly blocked by the strength and depth of the Russian defenses, and by the fact that the Russians had learned of the entire plan from a defector.. The Soviets established a comfortable superiority of numbers in armor and manpower. Kursk, like Stalingrad, was a major turning point in the Russian war.

July 7, 1943: Russian forces began counterattacking at Kursk.

July 9, 1943: U.S. and British airborne troops began being dropped in Sicily as a prelude to the full-scale invasion. Bad weather and errors, however, placed the men 30 to 50 miles away from the airfields which they were assigned to capture.

July 10, 1943: Sicily was invaded at 2:45 am on the southeast coast of Sicily. This was a prelude to an attack on Italy itself. The landings caught the ten Italian and three German divisions (350,000 men in all) by surprise, and there was very little initial resistance. In the first day about 160,000 Allied soldiers were put ashore, along with 1,000 artillery pieces and 600 tanks.

July 12, 1943: Russian troops began their massive counteroffensive around the Kursk salient. The largest tank battle in history was fought near the village of Prochorovka. The Germans alone lost more than 400 tanks. About 3,000 tanks were deployed by the two sides in this vicious clash of armor.

° British and U.S. forces joined up at Ragusa on Sicily. U.S. 1st Infantry forces hurled back a German counterattack spearheaded by 100 tanks. The port of Syracuse was taken by the British.

July 13, 1943: Hitler ordered a halt to German offensive operations around Kursk and began pulling troops out for redeployment to Italy because of the invasion of Sicily.

° British Commandos and paratroopers landed on the Sicilian east coast to capture key bridges on the highway between Syracuse and Catania.

July 15, 1943: In an overwhelming defeat of Japanese air units in the central Solomons, U.S. aircraft downed 45 out of 75 planes while losing only three. Japanese daylight attacks were now sharply curtailed.

July 17, 1943: General Alexander was appointed Allied military governor of Sicily, and "benevolent" control of the island was to be established by non-Fascist Italians under the Military Government of Occupied Territory.

° Still confused by Allied planning, Hitler ordered the reinforcement of German units in the Balkans, believing the Allies' next landing would be there.

July 19, 1943: Patton's army in Sicily made rapid progress in striking to the northern part of the island.

July 22, 1943: Sicily's chief city of Palermo fell to General Patton's forces. A planned final assault was found to be unnecessary when all resistance in the city ended.

July 23, 1943: All German forces involved in the Kursk offensive had been pushed back beyond their starting positions 18 days before.

July 24, 1943: "Window" decoy tinfoil to confuse German radar was used for the first time by RAF aircraft in the Hamburg raid. Only 12 of 740 bombers were downed, testament to its initial success.

July 24-25, 1943: The first in a series of massive RAF and U.S. Air Force raids on Hamburg began as 740 British planes dropped 2,396 tons of bombs.

July 25, 1943: Mussolini was overthrown. With the Allies poised to invade the Italian mainland, Italian generals and politicians moved to oust the 60 year-old Mussolini. The Fascist Grand Council voted 19 to 7 to give King Victor Emmanuel III command of the armed forces. Placed under arrest in the palace grounds, Mussolini was first exiled to the island of Ponza and then transferred to a hotel in the Abruzzi mountains.

° Hitler dispatched Rommel, his "favorite general," to command German forces in Greece. Hitler still believed the Allied landings in Sicily were a deception prior to the main operation which would be in Greece.

July 26, 1943: A new Italian government under Pietro Badogho proclaimed martial law throughout the country, dissolved the Fascist party, and banned all political meetings.

July 27-28, 1943: In the deadliest RAF raid of the war, 739 bombers attacked Hamburg, killing about 20,000 and wounding 60,000. A total of 2,417 tons of bombs were dropped, including large numbers of incendiaries which touched off fire- storms with temperatures rose to 1,000 degrees centigrade and winds of more than 150 miles an hour.

Aug. 1, 1943: U.S. bombers from Libya&emdash;flying at low levels&emdash;attacked the Ploesti oil complex in Rumania. Out of a force of 178 B-24s, 41 were downed by the heavy defenses and another 13 were lost for other reasons.

° German and Italian troops were ordered to begin pulling back to Messina for evacuation to the Italian mainland and at the same time, German divisions under the command of Rommel began infiltrating into northern Italy in order to take control of the area from the Italians. On Crete units of the Italian army were disarmed by the Germans.

Aug. 2, 1943: U.S.S. PT-I09, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was sunk after it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in Blackett Strait in the Solomons. Eleven of the 13 crewmen survived and a week l

° Allied air units completed a week-long bombardment of Hamburg. While industrial facilities were heavily damaged, the raids tkilled close to 50,000 civilians and destroyed 40,385 houses, 275,000 apartments, 2,632 shows, and 277 schools. More than 2,600 bombers were involved between 24 July and 2 August.

Aug. 6, 1943: Fearing a complete defection by Italy, German troops started pouring into the country to assume complete control of its defense.

Aug. 9, 1943: Hungary and Britain reached a secret agreement. RAF and American bombers on missions from Italy would not be fired on while overflying Hungary. In return the Allies promised not to bomb Hungarian targets.

Aug.12, 1943: German forces began being evacuated from Sicily, but Marshall removed seven divisions to be employed in an invasion of southern France. This decision prolonged the Italian campaign and contributed nothing to winning the war.

Aug.14, 1943: Rome was proclaimed an open city.

° Russian units reached the Donets River and the suburbs of Kharkov.

Aug. 14-24, 1943: The QUADRANT (Quebec) Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt made several key decisions. The cross-Channel invasion was confirmed for May 1, 1944; Pacific action was to be directed along two routes leading to Japan, one "island-hoping" through the Gilberts and Marshalls and the other over a route leading through the Philippines. They also agreed to an Allied landing near Naples, and a subsequent drive into France.

Aug.15, 1943: The Italian government began negotiations for peace in Madrid. General Giuseppe Castellano met with Allied representatives at the British embassy. Italy offered its forces to fight on the Allied side when the invasion of Italy began.

Aug.16, 1943: Only Axis rear guards remained on Sicily. More than 60,000 Germans were safely evacuated to the Italian mainland.

Aug.17, 1943: U.S. troops entered Messina, Sicily, and the islands of Stromboli and Lipari, north of Sicily, surrendered to an American destroyer and PT boats. The conquest of Sicily made it easier to invade Italy and to step up the air campaign against Italian mainland targets. Axis casualties in the 39-day Sicilian campaign were 167,000, including 37,000 German. It was viewed as a "major military disaster" for the Axis, having delayed the invasion of Italy by only five weeks. Allied casualties were 25,000. The Germans and Italians lost all of their heavy equipment, including 1,500 planes, 78 tanks, and 287 artillery guns.

Aug.18, 1943: Eisenhower was authorized to send representatives to Lisbon to discuss an armistice with Italy.

Aug.24, 1943: Hitler appointed SS Chief Heinrich Himmler as Reichminister of the Interior. The German State has now effectively become run by the SS..

Aug.26, 1943: A campaign to drive the Germans out of the eastern Ukraine was launched by the Russians.

Aug.27, 1943: A German division occupied Ljubljana, the capital of Italian-controlled Slovenia, and began fighting the Italian XV Corps. The Italians refused to withdraw from the city. Croatian troops joined the Germans in attacking them.

Aug.28, 1943: King Boris III of Bulgaria died under peculiar circumstances after visiting Hitler. Boris had resisted joining Germany, but eventually and very reluctantly had yielded to German presure. Although many are convinced he was murdered, it appears he died a natural death..

Aug.29, 1943: The U.S. issued a warning to Germany on crimes against civilians. Washington said it had received "trustworthy information" on atrocities committed by "the German invaders against the population of Poland." The U.S. government would, said the statement, take such "crimes into account against the time of the final settlement with Germany."

° The German commander in Denmark declared a state of emergency, imposing censorship and banning public meetings. The small Danish army disbanded. The Danish government resigns in protest, and in retaliation, the Danish king was seized by the Germans. Thereupon, the Danes scuttled their fleet, destroying 28 ships. The Germans were able to seize only 13 small craft.

Aug.31, 1943: General Castellano met with Allied officers in Sicily and told them the new Badoglio government could not accept the surrender terms until they were guaranteed sufficient Anglo~American troops would be landed to protect the Italians from German reprisals.

Sept., 1943: A catastrophic famine swept Bengal in India. More than a million people died of starvation. The 1942-43 rice crop was disasteriously poor and a lack of transportation facilities prevented outside supplies from reaching the people.

Sept. 2, 1943: Five Russian armies bore down on the Germans on a broad front. The Bryansk-Kiev rail line was cut 150 miles from Kiev.

Sept. 3, 1943: A secret armistice was signed, ending Italy's participation in the war as a member of the Axis.. It was, however, not the unconditional surrender outlined at the Casablanca conference. The British Eighth Army landed on the Italian toe, in order to draw the Germans down from the area south of Naples but Field Marshal Albert Kesselring did not take the bait, correctly assuming the main Allied force would land around Salerno.

Sept. 7, 1943: Italian units were in full retreat in southern Italy.

Sept. 8, 1943: The Italian surrender was made public. Italian ships and planes moved to predesignated points to surrender. An American airborne drop on Rome was canceled at the last minute since the Germans had concentrated troops there. Elsewhere, Italian forces attempt to disarm German contigents and ask for Allied assistance. None came.

° Hitler belatedly approved a withdrawal from the Ukraine. The decimated German forces were permitted to fall back to the Dnieper River, the final natural buffer before the Carpathian Mountains.

Sept. 9, 1943: The U.S. Fifth Army (made up of the British X and U.S. VI Corps) began landing south of Salerno. A beachhead was quickly established against the defending 16th Panzer Division. Only on the right flank was there any significant resistance. A British airborne division was also landed at Taranto, on the Italian heel.

Sept.10, 1943: German troops marched into Rome and seized control of the Italian capital. Italian soldiers in northern Italy were disarmed by the Germans. Subsequently, Italian units were disbanded in the Balkans and France as well. In all, the Germans neutralized a total of 43 Italian divisions without resistance.

Sept.11, 1943: Sardinia was evacuated by the Germans. The Salerno beachhead was expanded. The bulk of the Italian fleet which escaped to Malta surrendering to the British, although the Germans seized 10 cruisers, 10 destroyers, and several submarines. In all, the Italians surrendered 6 battleships, 8 cruisers, 28 destroyers, and 19 submarines.

Sept.12, 1943: In a daring action 90 German glider-borne troops under Colonel Otto Skorzeny rescued Mussolini from imprisonment at the Hotel Camp Imperatore in Abruzzi. The 250-man Italian force guarding Mussolini surrendered within minutes.

Sept.13, 1943: The U.S. Fifth Army at Salerno came under heavy counterattack. Kesselring's XIV Panzer Corps almost cut the beachhead in two but heavy artillery held the aggressive German divisions from pushing the Allied forces into the sea. They came within three miles of doing so at one point.

Sept. 15, 1943: Mussolini reconstituted the Italian Fascist party and formed a governmen, the so-called Saló Republic.

Sept.16, 1943: Americans at Salerno began pushing out from their beachhead. Units of the U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army met 40 miles southeast of Salerno, uniting the Fifteenth Army Group under General Alexander in a single front. This critical phase of the Italian front was now considered over.

Sept.19, 1943: Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands was attacked by U.S. Navy and Army planes.

Sept.20, 1943: U.S. and British units linked up at Eboli in Italy, completing the consolidation of a solid Allied line.

Sept.21, 1943: Arundel Island in the Solomons was secured by U.S. Army forces. The Japanese lost 600 men in the fight. Tokyo decided to abandon the central Solomons.

Sept.22, 1943: Poltava fell to the Russians. Red Army forces established bridgeheads on the west bank of the Dnieper River.

Sept.27, 1943: Foggia, with its large airfield, was abandoned by the Germans. It became vital in future Allied operations in Italy, and South-Eastern Europe.

° Russian troops forged a bridgehead across the Dnieper near Pereyaslav, 60 miles southeast of Kiev.

Oct. 1, 1943: Naples was occupied by the British. The heavily damaged port was repaired and put back in operation.

Oct. 3, 1943: After years of stalemate, Japanese troops opened up offensive operations on a broad front in central China.

Oct. 6, 1943: U.S. Fifth Army troops reached the south bank of the Volturno River about 15 miles northwest of Naples to being an assault on the German Gustav Line.

Oct. 7, 1943: The frontwide Russian offensive slowed down in the face of stiffening German resistance.

Oct. 8, 1943: Prime Minister Tojo assumed control over the Japanese ministries of commerce and industry, in addition to the military..

Oct.13, 1943: Italy declared war on Germany and is now considered on the Allied side as "cobelligerents."

Oct. 14-15, 1943: U.S. B-17s bombed the German ball-bearing manufacturing center at Schweinfurt, but the raid was extremely costly and for a time ended daylight attacks deep in Germany. Of the 291 aircraft which took off, 288 reached their targets. Sixty of them were shot down by German fighters. Most of the bombs missed the factories.

Oct.16, 1943: Preceeded by a massive two-hour artillery barrage, Russian forces launched a major offensive from the bridgeheads on the Dnieper.

Oct.18, 1943: Bougainville in ths Solomons came under heavy air attack as a prelude to an Allied landing.

° The first trainloads of Jews left Rome for the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Oct.25, 1943: Dnepropetrovsk and Dneprodzerzhinsk were recaptured by the Russians.

Nov. 1, 1943: U.S. Marines invaded Bougainville, landing at Cape Torokina on the west coast. The 3rd Marine Division encountered heavy resistance on the ground and was subjected to constant aerial attack.

Nov. 3, 1943: Russian forces launched a major drive to recapture Kiev. Marshal Nicholas Vatutin's army group (40 infantry and armored divisions) crossed the Dnieper in a drive for the city.

° With the advance of the Red Army, the SS killed the 17,000 remaining Jews in the Maidanek death camp.

Nov. 5, 1943: Despite the declaration of Rome as an "open city," the Vatican was bombed by Allied aircraft.

Nov. 6, 1943: Russian forces recaptured Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, after the Germans withdrew. Under German occupation since Sept. 19, 1941, the third largest city of the Soviet Union had been almost totally ruined during the fighting.

Nov. 7, 1943: In Beirut, the Free French military denied Lebanon's independence which had been granted by the Vichy government.

Nov.11, 1943: A heavy air offensive was launched against Rabaul. Marines on Bougainville were reinforced. At least 500 Japanese had been killed in the campaign thus far.

Nov.12, 1943: Admiral Dönitz admits in his diary that the German U-boat fleet is losing the battle of the North Atlantic. What Dönitz did not know was that Ultra&emdash;the decoding of intercepted German radio messages&emdash;gave the Allies precise knowledge of German submarine locations and plans.

° Lebanon was placed under martial law while the French French Gaullist government in Algiers said the actions taken in Beirut did not have its approval.

° Japanese aircraft were withdrawn from Rabaul, ending the threat from that once powerful base.

Nov.15, 1943: Alexander ordered Allied forces to halt operations in Italy and to regroup and prepare for an assault on the German Winter Line, held by the Tenth Army under General Heinrich von Vietinghoff.

° The German counterattacked toward Kiev.

Nov.16, 1943: American B-17 bombers attacked the heavy-water production facility at Vemork, Norway. The results were disappointing, leaving production untouched, but the Germans decided it would be impractical to continue production at the site, thus ending any attempt to build a German an bomb.

Nov.20, 1943: U.S. 2nd Division Marines landed on Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands, the first of the central Pacific operations aimed at the ultimate invasion of Japan. Despite a heavy pre-assault air and naval bombardment, the landings were met with fierce resistance, compounded by communications confusion on the beaches of Tarawa.

Nov. 22-26, 1943: Chiang Kai-shek participated directly in Allied war planning for the first time with Roosevelt and Churchill in the Cairo conference. General plans were made for offensive operations in Burma and for B-29s based in China to bomb the Japanese home islands. Churchill and the British were again turned down in their arguments to launch a large-scale military operation in the Balkans.

Nov.22, 1943: U.S. Marines captured the western portion of Tarawa, effectively ending all Japanese resistance.

° The Free French decided to reinstate the Lebanese government and its independence previously granted by Vichy.

Nov.25, 1943: Formosa was attacked for the first time by China-based U.S. bombers. Japanese forces retaliate by occupying Changteh in Hunan Province of China.

° In the Battle of Cape St. George, New Ireland, five U.S. destroyers intercepted a force of five Japanese destroyers bringing reinforcements to Buka and suffered no damage while sinking three of the Japanese ships. It was the last of the nighttime naval clashes in the Solomons area.

Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943: Stalin met for the first time with Churchill and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference. It was agreed that the invasion of France (Operations OVERLORD and ANVIL) would receive highest U.S. and British priority.

Nov.28, 1943: Tarawa was completely secured. The small atoll was the scene of the most bitter, intense fighting in the Pacific war. In a little more than a week, 4,630 Japanese were killed. Only 17 Japanese and 125 Koreans were taken prisoner. U.S. casualties were 1,115 killed or presumed killed and 2,292 wounded.

Dec. 1, 1943: U.S. forces began assaulting German positions on the Winter Line in the Italian Camino Hills.

Dec. 3, 1943: Göring issued orders to the commander of German bomber forces to launch a new round of bombing against Britain:.

Dec. 4, 1943: A provisional Yugoslav government under Tito was announced by the Partisans.

Dec. 8, 1943: Heavy fighting continued along the Winter Line. Italian troops on the Allied side made limited progress. It was the first active combat for the Italians since switching sides.

Dec.10, 1943: Russian troops launched a new offensive in the Ukraine.

Dec.12, 1943: Rommel was appointed commander of German forces deployed along the coastal areas for defense against the anticipated Allied cross-Channel assault.

Dec.20, 1943: Plans for an Allied amphibious assault on the west coast of Italy were canceled because of a lack of landing craft and an inability to overcome the German defenses along the Winter line.

Dec.24, 1943: Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force ; General Sir Henry Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater; General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander, Allied armies in Italy'; General Bernard Montgomery', Commander, Allied ground forces under Eisenhower; and General Carl A. Spaatz, Commander, U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe.

°U.S. bombers launched a major effort to knock out German secret weapons sites with attacks involving more than 1,300 planes. A record number of about 3,000 Allied planes were involved in missions against cities and military targets in Europe, including an RAF Christmas Eve raid which dropped 1,120 tons on Berlin.

Dec.25, 1943: Allied military leaders, meeting in Tunis, agreed to revive the plan for an amphibious landing south of Rome to break the Italian impasse. The slowness of Allied advances in Italy is becoming embarrasing.

Dec.29, 1943: The Russian First Ukrainian Front, achieved a spectacular breakthrough along a 185-mile front west of Kiev. Twentv-two German divisions were hurled back toward the Polish border.

Dec.31, 1943: Red Army units captured Zhitomir, leaving Vitebsk virtually isolated. German resistance at this time became fierce.

1944

Jan. 1, 1944: Rommel was appointed to command Army Group B, covering the expected invasion front from Brittany to the Netherlands.

Jan. 2, 1944: Russian forces advanced to within 18 miles of the original Polish-Russian frontier.

Jan. 3, 1944: Russian units drove across the prewar border into Poland, cutting the rail line to Warsaw.

Jan. 4, 1944: British 46th Division forces crossed the Peccia River in Italy but only after overcoming stiff opposition.

Jan. 5, 1944: The U.S. Fifth Army launched the final assault on the German Winter line. British troops pulled back from the Peccia River bridgehead because tanks were unable to cross.

° Australian and U.S. forces were within 60 miles of reaching a juncture in New Guinea as the Australians reached Kelanoa.

Jan. 8, 1944: German troops began falling back to positions to block Allied advances to Rome through the Liri valley.

Jan.10, 1944: German defenders offered strong resistance on the Winter Line's remaining positions.

° The rail line between Smela and Kristinovka in the Ukraine was cut by the Russians. A large German force trapped north of Kirovograd was annihilated.

Jan.11, 1944: Allied bombers launched Operation POINTBLANK, designed to cripple the German aircraft industry and render the Luftwaffe ineffective before the cross-Channel invasion. The initial attack caused heavy damage to the targeted factories but 60 of the 663 heavy bombers were lost.

° Moscow announced that the Soviet-Polish border established by the 1939 Russian-German partition including the western Ukraine and western Byelorussia would remain permanent.

Jan.14, 1944: Russian forces began mass attacks against the Germans in the Baltic stateswhile other units of Group North prepared a pincers movement to recapture Novgorod.

Jan.15, 1944: All Germans were cleared out south of the Rapido River. U.S. forces capture rest of the Winter Line. Allied forces were now confronted by the Gustav Line, anchored by Monte Cassino.

° Russian forces launched major offensives to lift the siege of Leningrad and recapture Novgorod.

° A British cabinet committee recommended the partition of Germany after the war.

Jan.16, 1944: The U.S. II Corps was ordered to drive toward Anzio.

Jan.17, 1944: British X Corps troops crossed the Garigliano River on the western hinge of the Gustav Line. In the East, U.S. and French Expeditionary Corps forces began attacking the Gustav Line along the Rapido.

Jan.20, 1944: Russian forces blocked off the German corridor to the Gulf of Finland. In Italy, U.S. 36th Division forces reached the Rapido River but faced heavy fire when they attempted a crossing. The Americans suffered heavy casualties and abandoned the effort.

Jan.22, 1944: An Allied amphibious force invaded the coastal area around Anzio, 35 miles south of Rome, catching the Germans by surprise. More than 37,000 British and American troops were put ashore; by nightfall, the beachheads were consolidated and the U.S. VI Corps had moved seven miles inland. The port facilities of Anzio and Nettuno were captured intact. In outflanking the Germans the Allies had secured a great advantage but American Major General John P. Lucas failed to press forward and trap the Germans to the south. Instead, the Hermann Göring Panzer Division was moved in before the trap could be sprung.

Jan.23, 1944: The Anzio beachhead was consolidated but troops are under constant Luftwaffe attacks. as

Jan.24, 1944: U.S. troops on Anzio were halted to await reinforcements. Elsewhere, German resistance on the main Italian front as Hitler ordered the Gustav Line to be held at all costs.

Jan.27, 1944: Fighting was heavy all along the Italian front. Allied pressures were countered by unexpectedly strong German resistance.

Jan.29, 1944: A massive Red Army force opened up an offensive aimed at eliminating the German Eighth Army in the Ukraine.

° U.S. naval planes began nine consecutive days of raids in the Marshall Islands to knock out Japanese air power and shipping.

Jan.30, 1944: U.S. Rangers in the Anzio beachhead were ambushed and two battalions were almost entirely eliminated in a drive to capture Cisterna.

Jan.31, 1944: U.S. forces invaded Kwajalein and other islands in the Marshalls. Casualties were extremely light. The islands were the first of Japan's prewar territories to fall.

Feb. 1, 1944: The U.S. 3rd Division in the Anzio beachhead abandoned efforts to take Cisterna and began preparing for German counterattacks. British efforts to expand the Garigliano bridgeheads continued in the face of determined German resistance.

bRussian forces crossed the Estonian border and on the Ukrainian front advanced on a 60-mile front west of the Dnieper.

° German troops launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, directed against the Campoleone salient which was held by the British 1st Division.

Feb. 4, 1944: Kwajalein was declared secure. Japanese losses were 4,938 killed and 206 captured. U.S. casualties were 142 killed.

° U.S. troops were forced back at Cassino. British forces yielded ground at Anzio.

° Moscow announced the Gulf of Finland and the Novgorod-Leningrad railway were totally secure.

Feb. 5, 1944: Air and naval resupply efforts for the Allied forces at Anzio were further restricted by fresh German attacks.

Feb. 6, 1944: Allied troops along the Cassino front and in the Anzio pocket were forced to pull back in the face of heavy German counterattacks.

Feb. 7, 1944: German troops attacked Anzio in their biggest counterattack yet, accompanied by heavy air and artillery support.

Feb. 9, 1944: Allied forces at Anzio suffered more setbacks despite heavy naval and air support to keep the Germans from driving the Allies into the sea.

° Roosevelt requested Chiang's permission to send a U.S. military mission to the Chinese Communist base area and headquarters in Shensi Province.

Feb.10, 1944: Hungary's ambassador in Lisbon was instructed to inform the Western Allies that Budapest wished to surrender unconditionally, but not to the Russians.

Feb.11, 1944: Allied forces were repulsed in their efforts to stem the German pressures at Anzio. New efforts were begun to break through the Gustav Line at Monte Cassino.

Feb.12, 1944: Germans forced Allied troops on the Anzio beachhead to fall back to the final defense line. The first Allied assault on Monte Cassino in Italy was repulsed.

Feb.15, 1944: St. Benedict's abbey atop Monte Cassino was heavily bombed by Allied air and artillery. Even though the abbey was virtually leveled, the Allies still could not take it. Indian and New Zealand forces were repulsed in a frontal assault after the bombardment.

° The London-based Polish government said it would refuse to accept the Curzon Line as the postwar frontier between Poland and Russia.

Feb. 15-16, 1944: RAF bombers dropped 2,642 tons of explosives on Berlin in 39 minutes. It was the heaviest raid of the war on the German capital. Forty-two of the 806 aircraft were downed.

Feb. 15-20, 1944: Japanese forces in the Solomons were completely cut off as Green Island was taken by New Zealand forces. Capture of the island also provided the Allies with an air base only 117 miles from Rabaul.

Feb.16, 1944: German forces launched their major attack on the Anzio beachhead. The Fourteenth Army-aided by the Luftwaffe which was more active than ever before in attacking the pocket- hoped to drive the Allies into the sea. The Germans made limited gains against the U.S. 3rd Division positions but suffered heavy personnel and tank losses.

Feb. 16-17, 1944: U.S. warships (led by six battleships) and planes (from nine carriers) attacked the Japanese base at Truk in the Carolines. Most of the airstrips were destroyed and two cruisers, three destroyers, and 200,000 tons of merchant shipping were sunk, which included about 1/3 of all tankers carrying fuel for the Imperial Navy. . Because of the damage inflicted and the inability of the Japanese to use Truk as a forward base, the Allies were able to bypass the island and neutralize it by keeping it isolated.

Feb.17, 1944: Soviet forces completed the "liquidation" of ten German divisions trapped in the Ukraine. Moscow announced that 55,000 Germans were killed and 18,200 taken prisoner in the Kanyew pocket.

Feb.18, 1944: Despite more than 1,000 tons of bombs dropped by Allied planes, German forces made their deepest penetration into the Anzio beachhead, driving the U.S. 179th Infantry Regiment back to its final line. The U.S. military regarded this as the crucial day of the Anzio operation.

Feb.19, 1944: The Anzio battle turned in favor of the Allies. German reserve strength was sapped by costly actions to clear the beachhead. U.S. troops and tanks of the 6th Armored Infantry, backed by air and artillery, advanced more than a mile.

Feb.20, 1944: Allied forces drove a wedge into the middle of the German line at Anzio and inflicted heavy losses, but the Germans were already pre paring another offensive.

Feb.22, 1944: U.S. Fifteenth Air Force bombers from Italy fly first missions over Germany, hitting German aircraft factories.

° Japanese aircraft attacked U.S. Naval Task Force 58 approaching the Marianas but suffered heavy casualties. Allied ships operating around Rabaul and Kavieng encountered no Japanese aircraft, a further measure of Tokyo's thinly stretched resources.

Feb.23, 1944: Lucas was replaced by Major General Lucian K. Truscott. for having failed to expand the Anzio beachhead before the German Fourteenth Army organized.

° Heavy carrier-based air strikes were conducted against Japanese positions in the Marianas, the first attacks of the war against the islands. Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam were bombed.

Feb.25, 1944: About 20 percent of the bombers of the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force attacking Regensburg aircraft factories were shot down.

Feb.29, 1944: German troops again assaulted the Anzio beachhead.

March 1, 1944: Anzio defenders continued to beat back German attacks.

March 2, 1944: More than 350 sorties were flown by U.S. bombers in support of the Anzio forces. The pounding of the German positions disrupted a planned counteroffensive.

March 3, 1944: The Anzio beachhead was secured as the Germans tried for the last time to mount offensive action. The U.S. 3rd Division held off the attack.

March 4, 1944: A lull developed at Anzio. German troops were told to hold their positions and prepare for defensive action.

March 5, 1944: Russia launched its offensive to drive the Germans out of the Dnieper bend in the Ukraine. Red Army forces under Marshal Zhukov advanced 31 miles.

March 6,1943: OPERATION THUNDERCLAP, a round-the-clock bombing operations against German cities, began with a U.S. 800-plane daylight raid against Berlin in which 2,000 tons of bombs were dropped.

° Red Army troops advanced along a 100-mile front in the Ukraine.

March 8, 1944: Allied positions on Bougainville came under heavy Japanese artillery fire. Four aircraft were lost, and the undamaged planes were withdrawn to New Georgia.

° Russian forces were within 60 miles of Romania.

March 10, 1944: Russian troops occupied the German air base at Uman.

° Ireland refused to oust Axis diplomats, as requested by the U.S.

March 12, 1944: London ordered a halt to all travel between the Irish Republic and Great Britain because the Irish refused to order German and Japanese diplomats out of the country.

March 14, 1944: Russian troops closed the trap around the Germans at Nikolayev.

March 15, 1944: Allied bombers again bombed Monte Cassino, dropping 1,200 tons on the ruins of the monastery. Indian and New Zealand forces followed with a direct assault, which was repulsed.

° Russian forces broke through German defenses on the Bug River and advanced along a broad front. Simultaneously, German troops massed along the Hungarian border, preparing to occupy the territory of their shaky ally.

March 18, 1944: An armored attack on the abbey of Monte Cassino by New Zealanders was turned back with heavy losses.

° After the Hungarian regent Admiral Miklos Horthy refused to sign a document requesting direct intervention, Hitler ordered German troops into Hungary.

March 19, 1944: Russian troops of the Second Ukrainian Front swept into northern Romania crossing the Dniester at several points.

° German paratroopers occupied the airfields of Hungary, while other units began crossing the frontier to take control of the country.

March 20, 1944: Germany completed its occupation of Hungary.

March 22, 1944: Japan advanced its large-scale offensive into India from Burma. Units of the Eighteenth Army reached a point 30 miles east of Imphal in the mountainous area of Manipur. But on the same day, Prime Minister Tojo informed the Japanese Diet the war situation was grave.

March 23, 1944: New Zealand forces broke off their costly attempt to take Monte Cassino.

March 26, 1944: Red Army troops reached the Prut River in the Ukraine on a 53-mile front.

March 28, 1944: The Allies conceded the campaign to take Monte Cassino was a "temporary failure."

March 29, 1944: Japanese troops cut the road between Imphal and Kohima. Chinese troops in northeast Burma try to divert the Japanese from moving into India.

March 30-April 2, 1944: U.S. Naval Task Force 58 aircraft hammered Japanese targets in the western Carolines, including Palau, Yap, and Ulithi. The raids, destroyed 150 Japanese planes, 6 combat ships, and 104,000 tons of miscellaneous shipping; 20 U.S. planes were lost.

March 30, 1944: Russian forces reached 30 miles from the Ruthenian border.Meanwhile, U.S. bombers based in the Mediterranean began a series of heavy raids on the Balkans.

March 30-31, 1944: In a costly raid 795 RAF planes attacked Nürnberg but 95 were lost and 71 severely damaged. Long-range area raids were suspended as a result.

April 2, 1944: Units of the Second Ukrainian Front crossed into Romania over the Prut River. Moscow called on all Rumanians to abandon the Germans and cease fighting or face destruction.

° U.S. and RAF bombers began bombing Budapest and other Hungarian cities, ending the August 1943 agreement to refrain from such attacks in exchange for free and safe access over Hungary. Germans, not Hungarians, now manned aerial defenses in Hungary.

April 5, 1944: U.S. planes launched the first air attack on the critical oil refinery at Ploesti in Rumania. 588 tons of bombs were dropped on rail facilities around the refining and production center.

April 8, 1944: Russia launched its final drive to oust the Germans from the Crimea. Red Army troops on the central front were approaching the Czech border.

April 9, 1944: Large units of the British Fourteenth Army were surrounded at Kohima in Burma, as the Japanese blocked the final escape route. Air resupply was essential, but the onset of the monsoon rains made the task difficult.

April 10, 1944: The Black Sea port of Odessa was recaptured by Soviet forces. It had been under German occupation since October 1941. Kleist's Army Group A fell back beyond the Dniester River into Romania.

April 11, 1944: The German Seventeenth Army fell back to Sevastopol as the Red Army took Kerch in the Crimea.

April 13, 1944: Soviet troops reoccupied Simferopol in the Crimea and captured 20,000 Germans.

April 14-17, 1944: The German defense line in the Ukraine was split in two in a series of fierce battles.

April 14, 1944: The first Jews from Greece began being transported from Athens to the Auschwitz concentra tion camp.

April 16, 1944: Yalta in the Crimea was recaptured by the Russians.

April 17, 1944: Japan launched what was to be its last major offensive in China. A division struck over the Yellow River in Honan Province in the first move of the campaign to seize Allied air bases and decimate Chinese ground forces.

April 19, 1944: Two Japanese divisions launched a southward thrust along the Peking-Hankow railroad in Honan Province, China.

April 23, 1944: Sensitive to growing criticism of the heavy Allied bombing of Germany, Britain defended the raids as essential to the liberation of the peoples of western Europe.

April 24, 1944: The Strategy Section of the U.S. War Department's Operations Division determined that "the collapse of Japan can be assured only by the invasion of Japan proper.

April 25, 1944: The Japanese intensified offensive operations in Honan Province in China with heavy attacks directed toward Chenghsien (Chengchow).

April 28, 1944: Japanese forces made broad gains in Honan Province. U.S. planes were concentrated in attacks on the Yellow River bridges to slow up the Japanese offensive.

May 5, 1944: General Alexander ordered Allied units in Italy to break through the Gustav Line and take Rome.

May 7, 1944: Russian forces launched their decisive attack on Sevastopol.

May 8, 1944: Eisenhower designated D-Day, for the cross-Channel invasion, as June 5. It had originally been set for an unspecified day in May.

May 9, 1944: Soviet forces recaptured Sevastopol after a 24-day siege.

° Allied air units commenced a series of intensive raids on Luftwaffe bases in France to neutralize the German air threats on D-Day.

° Japanese troops captured Lushan in China, completely cutting the Peking-Hankow rail line.

May 11, 1944: A major offensive was launched by Allied forces in central Italy to break through the Gutav Line.

May 12, 1944: Allied forces in Italy advanced on a broad front, crossing the Rapido River. German resistance was fierce.

° The last of the German troops in the Crimea were evacuated.

° More than 800 U.S. bombers, with American and RAF fighter escorts, attacked synthetic oil plants in Germany, knocking several out of production temporarily. Luftwaffe losses were heavy, nearly 200 planes were downed, while the Allies lost 46 bombers and 10 fighters.

May 13, 1944: French colonial troops captured three key positions in the Abruzzi Mountains and smashed through the Gustav Line. The dramatic breakthrough opened the way for the Allies to move northward. German losses were heavy. More than 1,000 Germans were captured.

May 15, 1944: Other key points on the Gustav line fell to the Allies, led by French Moroccan troops.

° The first groups of 380,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to concentration camps, mostly to Auschwitz. (A total of 250,000 of them were to be gassed.)

May 16, 1944: Allied forces smashed the last Gustav Line defenses on its eastern hinge.

May 17, 1944: Kesselring ordered German troops out of the Monte Cassino area. Allied troops were already attacking the next German defense positions, the Hitler Line.

May 18, 1944: Monte Cassino fell to the Allies. Poles of the 3rd Carpathian Division raised their improvised national and regimental flag over Monte Cassino, ending the bitter four-month struggle for the Benedictine monastery. Men from 15 nations had participated in the battle. About 20,000 were killed. Another 100,000 were wounded.

May 19, 1944: It was publicly revealed that 47 RAF officers had been executed by the Germans when they were recaptured after escaping from a POW camp This becomes the basis of the movie, The Great Escape.

May 23, 1944: A large-scale American and British offensive was begun to break out of Anzio. Among the units involved in the Anzio breakout was the 100th Japanese Infantry Battalion, made up of Americans of Japanese descent. About 1,500 Germans were captured in the day's action.

May 24, 1944: Fighting was heavy at Anzio in seesaw encounters.

° Six hundred German paratroopers made a surprise assault on Yugoslav Partisan headquarters near Drvar. Tito and Randolph Churchill, son of the prime minister, barely escaped.

May 25, 1944: Units from Anzio linked up with patrols from the U.S. Fifth Army at Terracina, breaking the pressing encirclement of the Anzio units which had been put ashore four months before. The Germans were pulling back in the face of the advancing ground forces and incessant Allied air attacks. More than 2,600 Germans were captured by noon.

May 26, 1944: The Allied offensive toward Rome was slowed down, primarily because of terrain and continuing stiff German resistance.

May 27, 1944: Two Japanese divisions advanced east of the Hsiang (Siang) River to press the campaign to overrun Allied air bases in China.

May 29, 1944: The U.S. 1st Armored and 34th divisions suffered heavy losses on the approaches to Rome. On the same day, Göring admitted to Hitler that the Allies had achieved total air superiority on the Italian front:.

May 31, 1944: Allied troops began boarding ships for the Normandy invasion.

June 1, 1944: Allied forces took the offensive along a broad front south of Rome in an effort to knock out the German Fourteenth Army. Heavy resistance was encountered.

June 2, 1944: Alexander called on the people of Rome to save the Eternal City from destruction. Pope Pius XII made an appeal to the Axis and Allied armies to save Rome. German troops began withdrawing all along the Italian front.

° Having won all their objectives in Honan Province and linked up with their units occupying the Chinese seaports, Japanese units halted their offensive actions.

June 3, 1944: Hitler authorized Kesselring to withdraw his forces from Rome.

June 4, 1944: The U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome. With the German evacuation, the city was spared the devastation of comba, although Germans withdrawing northward from Rome were hit steadily by Allied aircraft. Rome's population greeted the Allies enthusiastically after a lengthy period in which the Germans defended southern Italy with incredible determination.

June 5, 1944: American and British airborne troops began taking off for France to seize vital ground behind the German forces on both flanks of the Normandy invasion front and block German reinforcements from reaching the beachhead.

June 6, 1944: Allied forces under the command of Eisenhower landed on the northern coast of France between Cherbourg and Le Havre. It was the greatest amphibious operation in military history. Within 24 hours, 176,000 troops were put ashore from 4,000 ships (including 6 battleships, 122 destroyers, 23 cruisers and 360 PT boats) . They were protected by 9,500 aircraft (5,409 fighters, 1,645 medium bombers, 3,467 heavy bombers, and 2, 316 transports). The air forces flew 14, 676 sorties, dropping 11, 912 tons of explosives. The Allies lost 113 planes, mostly to anti-aircraft fire. The Germans had only 319 airplanes in the Normandy area, and only 100 of them were fighters. U.S. First Army forces quickly secured Utah Beach. The British Second Army overcame most resistance rapidly and drove toward Caen, where, however, they were soon bogged down. Only at Omaha Beach were the forces almost totally stymied, but the U.S. V Corps established a firm beachhead by evening.

° On the same day, US planners set Oct. 1, 1945, as the date for invading Japan.

June 7, 1944: Only minor progress was made in Normandy. Bayeux was attacked and main units hooked up with paratroopers who had landed inland.

° It Italy, U.S. forces reached points 40 miles north of Rome.

° German authorities remove King Leopold III of Belgium to Germany.

June 8, 1944: U.S. First and British Eighth armies link up near Port-en-Bessin. Bayeux, five miles from the landing beache. The rail link from the invasion area to Cherbourg was cut.

° The Soviets launch an attack on the Karelian Isthmus north of Leningrad. The Red Army began assaulting the Finish Mannerheim Line between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland.

June 10, 1944: In one of the most savage actions of the war, a company of the SS Das Reich Division, en route from Southern France to the landings in Normandy, killed all the inhabitants of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near Limoges. About 600 people, including women and children, were executed on the spot or burned alive in the village church. The SS division had been harassed by French Resistance fighters and their commander had been kidnapped.

° The U.S. 36th Division advanced to a point 65 miles north of Rome.

° Russian troops pushed 15 miles into Finland through the Mannerheim line.

° U.S. naval and air forces attacked Guam, Saipan, and Tinian in the Marianas. Twelve U.S. planes were lost, but more than 200 Japanese aircraft were destroyed or seriously damaged.

June 12, 1944: All beachheads on Normandy were linked, with the Allies established on a 50-mile-wide front.

June 13, 1944: Germany began launching V-1 rocket bombs against England. The missiles (Vergeltungswaffe-1, or Reprisal Weapon-1) were unmanned rockets with a maximum range of 155 miles. Ultimately, 8,000 V-1's were fired and 2,300 reached London. They had a profound psychological effect on the civilian population, killing 5,479, injuring 15,934, destroying or damaging 1,104,000 houses, 149 schools, 11 churches and 95 hospitals.

June 14, 1944: After an absence of four years, de Gaulle made a triumphal return to France.

June 15, 1944: The 2nd and 4th Marine divisions invaded Saipan in the Marianas defended by a Japanese force of 17,600 men. The landing areas were bombarded by an awesome force of 7 battleships, 11 cruisers, and 26 destroyers. Saipan, together with Guam and Tinian, were regarded as essential bases for B-29 attacks on Japan. Resistance on Saipan was fierce, but the Marines secured a five-mile-wide beachhead on the first day. A furious counterattack by the Japanese 136th Infantry Regiment was hurled back by the 6th Marine Regiment. In eight hours of relentless combat, 700 Japanese were killed.

° B-29s made their first raids on Japan from China, the first bombing attack on the home islands since the Doolittle raid more than two years before.

° Iwo Jima and the Bonin Islands were attacked by U.S. naval aircraft.

June 17,1944: The U.S. 9th Division sealed off the Cotentin Peninsula by reaching its west coast. Cherbourg was now isolated.

June 18,1944: Russian forces breached the Mannerheim line in Finland.

June 19-20,1944: The decisive naval Battle of the Philippine Sea was fought in a giant clash of aircraft, surface ships, and submarines. Planning to destroy the U.S. fleet operating in the Marianas, two Japanese carriers, Shokaku and Taiho, were sunk by U.S. submarines before the battle began, crippling the Japanese strike force en route to its interception point and foredooming the operation. Now able to take the offensive American planes sunk the carrier, Hiyo. Two U.S. battleships, two carriers, and a heavy cruiser were damaged, but the effect was negligible compared to Japanese losses, especially of aircraft. In two days of fighting, 476 Japanese planes were destroyed (some on suicide missions). A total of 130 U.S. aircraft were lost (80 percent of them because they ran out of fuel or could not find their carriers in the dark). The Japanese fleet pulled back to Okinawa. Its naval air arm was never again a factor in the Pacific war. The Japanese High Command abandoned whatever hope was left that Japan could possibly win the war.

June 19, 1944: Three U.S. divisions advanced toward Cherbourg.

June 20,1944: U.S. Army units reached the outskirts of Cherbourg, advancing to within four miles of the port itself.

° Vupuri (Vyborg) in Finland was occupied by the Red Army thus opening the Gulf of Finland to Russian ships, insuring Leningrad's security.

June 21,1944: American forces give an ultimatum to the commander of the German garrison at Cherbourg to surrender by 9:00 am. on the 22nd.

June 22,1944: No reply to the ultimatum was received, and today Cherbourg was hit by 1,000 Allied bombers as ground forces prepared to assault the key port city.

° Russian troops opened their summer offensive along a 300-mile front. The Red Army massed 146 infantry divisions and 43 tank brigades in the drive which ended a comparative lull in fighting on the Eastern Front.

° Finnish officials began seeking formal peace terms from Russia while the Germans pressed to keep Finland in the war.

° The GI Bill of Rights was signed into law, granting U.S. veterans educational and other special benefits for their eventual readjustment to civilian life.

June 24,1944: Russian troops reached the Dvina River on the Baltic front.

June 25,1944: Emperor Hirohito summoned Japan's field marshals and fleet admirals to Tokyo to discuss the worsening military situation. He was advised that holding Saipan and other key islands would be extremely difficult and emphasis must now be placed on establishing an "Inner Perimeter" around the home islands.

° Five German divisions were trapped as Russian troops cut the road between Smolensk and Minsk by encircling Vitebsk. German Army Group Center under General Ernst Busch broke under the assault.

June 26, 1944: Vitebsk fell to the Russians. Eighty thousand Germans were captured Stalin ordered salvos from Moscow's 224 guns to mark the first major victory of the summer offensive.

June 27, 1944: In the south, Russian troops crossed the Dnieper River.

° Cherbourg was taken by the U.S. 4th Division.

June 28, 1944: The British government agreed to establish a homeland for war refugees in one of the former Italian colonies of Africa.

June 30, 1944: Russian forces under Rokossovsky captured Bobruysk, opening up the way to Warsaw.

July 1, 1944: The Germans place Copenhagen under martial law.

° Admiral Nagumo, who led the Pearl Harbor attack force and successful Japanese naval and air units in southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean in the early months of the Pacific war, shot and killed himself on Saipan.

July 2, 1944: Disappointed by the failure to drive the Allies into the sea, Hitler dismissed Field Marshal Rundstedt as German commander in chief, west, and replaced him by Field Marshal Hans Günther von Kluge.

July 3, 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows began as the U.S. VIII Corps launched a general offensive down the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula. Heavy rain precluded air support.

° Minsk captured by the Russians, and in Italy, Siena was taken by Algerian forces, but the Germans stiffened their opposition southeast of Leghorn.

° Iwo Jima and the Bonin Islands were subjected to intense bombardment by U.S. naval ships and aircraft. Two Japanese transports were sunk.

July 7, 1944: Frustrated in their attempts at breaking out of the sea coast, Britain orders the destruction of the medieval city of Caen. RAF bombers dropped 2,602 tons of explosives on a defenseless city.

° About 3,000 Japanese made a suicidal attack on U.S. Marine units on Saipan, inflicting heavy casualties, before being stopped.

July 8, 1944: The British Second Army assaulted Caen.

° Guam was bombarded by U.S. Navy warships, the beginning of daily attacks on the Mariana island, until it was invaded on the 21st.

July 9, 1944: Saipan is captured. U.S. casualties were 3,674 Army and 10,437 Marines (including 3,126 dead), but the Japanese garrison of about 27,000 was almost completely killed, although for the first time several hundred Japanese troops surrendered.

° Caen was taken by Canadian and British forces. Stiff German opposition and the hedgerows slowed the drive of the U.S. VII Corps.

July 10, 1944: Hitler refused to permit the withdrawa of Army Group North behind the Dvina River. The German Ninth and Fourth armies had been virtually annihilated already.

° U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace, after a visit to China, wrote a report scathingly critical of Chiang Kai-shek, proposing that the US try to mediate differences between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists.

July 11, 1944: Red Army units crossed into Latvia and penetrated 40 miles into Lithuania.

July 12, 1944: In France, U.S. forces remained blocked northeast and west of St.-Lo, while in Italy, Allied war planes struck at the Po River bridges to block German resupply efforts.

July 13, 1944: Russian troops captured Vilna after five days of intensive street fighting, opening the way for a drive through the Baltic states. Red Army elements in Poland were now within 100 miles of the German border.

July 14, 1944: Pinsk, the last major German stronghold in the Pripet Marshes, was abandoned to the Russians. It was the last major German stronghold in the Pripet Marshes.Driving toward Warsaw, the Russians for the first time clearly dominated the skies, employing thousands of aircraft in support of their ground forces.

July 16, 1944: British Eighth Army troops reached the Arno River but the Germans had fought a strong delaying action, giving them time to build up their third embedded set of defenses, the Gothic line.

July 17, 1944: Russian forces swept into Poland, crossing the Bug River. German units trapped in the Baltic states were ordered not to yield.

° Rommel was seriously wounded in Normandy when his car was attacked by a strafing aircraft.

° In one of the worst accidents in US military history, two ammunition ships exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 322 people and injuring hundreds more.

July 18, 1944: Hideki Tojo was removed as Japanese premier, war minister, and army chief of staff, the three positions he had held concurrently since the early part of the year. Disgraced by Japan's military setbacks in the Pacific, the fall of Saipan was the final straw which set the rest of the cabinet and Japan's ruling elders against him.

° Finally, nearly five weeks into the Normandy campaign, St.-Lo was captured by the U.S. XIX Corps, ending the Battle of the Hedgerows. British forces resumed their offensive in the Caen area, which was actually a diversion to draw German strength away from the U.S. sector. Allied aircraft dropped 7,700 tons of bombs around Caen on this day alone.

July 19, 1944: Five German divisions were trapped west of Brody in the Ukraine. Russian troops crossed into Latvia near Dvinsk (Daugavpils).

July 20, 1941: Anti-Nazis in the military, primarily the higher officer corps of the army, attempted to kill Hitler. Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg set off a bomb in Hitler's bunker at Rastenburg. Of the 24 people in the room, four were killed. Stauffenberg and five collaborators, including Generals Ludwig Beck and Erich Hoepner, paid with their lives for their roles in the plot.

° Red Army troops reached the Bug River on a 40-mile front.

July 21, 1944: U.S. 3rd Marine and 77th Army Division troops landed on Guam and established bridgeheads a mile inland.

° Red Army troops raced toward Brest-Litovsk and Lublin.

July 22, 1944: Russian troops reached the 1940 Finnish-Russian border.

July 23, 1944: The last prewar Soviet city held by the Germans, Pskov, was recaptured by the Third Baltic Army.

July 24, 1944: Two U.S. Marine divisions landed on Tinian Island. The Japanese garrison fought for nine days until all were killed.

° Russian troops reached the Maidanek death camp. Lublin was occupied.

° Following the failure of the military's assassination attempt, for the first time, German army troops were ordered to give the "Hitler salutes."

July 25, 1944: As the weather cleared in Normandy, the U.S. First Army launched a major breakout in the St.-Lo area. About 3,000 Allied planes began carpet bombing for the first time. 5,000 tons of bombs, plus napalm. exploded, many on American troops by mistake, killing more than a hundred men of the 30th Division as well as Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, chief of the Army Ground Forces, who was an observer.

° Goebbels was named Reich minister for total war.

July 26, 1944: Roosevelt arrived in Honolulu to confer with MacArthur and Nimitz to decide whether the next major amphibious landing would be made in the Philippines or Formosa. Roosevelt opted for the MacArthur proposal, which was to reoccupy the Philippines.

July 27, 1944: Red Army troops rolled through what was once Poland, capturing Lwow (Lvov) and Stanislawow (Ivano-Frankovsk).

July 28, 1944: U.S. forces made rapid progress in Normandy as German defenses began collapsing.

July 29, 1944: Germany introduces the first jet to be used in combat, the German Me-163 fighter.

July 30, 1944: Red Army troops crossed the Vistula River above Warsaw.

July 31, 1944: Russian troops reached positions within ten miles of Warsaw as a Polish uprising developed inside the city. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's First Byelorussian Front halted its drive toward Warsaw. The Russians feared a German counterattack from the south and decided not to extend their bridgeheads over the Vistula.

Aug. 1, 1944: East Prussia was isolated from the Baltic states by the Russians, who reached the Gulf of Riga 25 miles west of Riga. Kaunas fell. The Russians under General Vasili Chuikov crossed the Vistula. The Polish underground army in Warsaw, led by General Tadeusz Komorovski began full-scale military operations against the Germans, anticipating the imminent arrival of the Russians who were only a few miles outside the city.

° Tinian was declared secure. The Japanese lost about 5,000 men in the fight for the island. U.S. Marine and Navy losses were 389 killed.

Aug. 2, 1944: The newly formed U.S. Third Army, under General George S. Patton, gained control of the Brittany peninsula. Power-packed with armor, the force pushed through from the Avranches breach.

Aug. 4, 1944: The U.S. Third Army liberated Rennes but encountered strong opposition at St.-Malo, which was then bypassed. Montgomery ordered the British Second Army to attack Falaise and cut off the Germans to the west. Allied forces were 150 miles from Paris.

Aug. 6, 1944: Four German divisions on the Brittany Peninsula were cut off by Patton's Third Army. U.S. forces reached the German outer defense perimeter around Brest. Nantes was occupied.

° Twenty-seven thousand Jews being held in the death camps east of the Vistula River were transported to Germany.

Aug. 7, 1944: After three months, the Russian summer offensive stalled because of overextended supply lines, having advanced from the Dnieper to the Vistula, a distance of more than 400 miles. German counterattacks had pushed the Red Army back about 60 miles northeast of Warsaw.

Aug. 8, 1944: Canadian and British units advanced south from Caen toward Falaise, where they hoped to cut off the retreating German forces.

Aug. 9, 1944: Canadian First Army units were bogged down eight miles north of Falaise. U.S. First Army forces wheeled northeast to join up with the Canadian troops in an attempt to close the Falaise gap. American units reached Le Mans, 110 miles from Paris.

° As a result of the military setbacks suffered in south-eastern China by Nationalist forces, pro-Allied warlords informed the U.S. they would seek Chiang Kai-shek's resignation and prosecute the war vigorously.

Aug.10, 1944: Japanese resistance ended on Guam, gaining bases for the B-29s to bomb Japan. The fight for Guam left at least 10,000 Japanese dead. U.S. casualties were about 5,000, including 1,400 killed in action.

Aug.11, 1944: Despite intense Allied efforts, the Falaise gap was still open for retreating German soldiers, but narrowed to 20 miles.

Aug.13, 1944: German troops started pulling out through the Falaise gap. The escape corridor was held open by fierce German resistance. U.S. and Canadian units began sweeping around the Falaise-Argentan outlet to close it.

Aug.14, 1944: Red Army troops resumed their offensive toward Warsaw.

° The Canadian II Corps began outflanking the Germans on the Caen-Falaise road, with its 2nd Division advancing to within four miles of Falaise.

Aug.15, 1944: In one of the most questionable decisions of the war, U.S. and French forces under Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch landed in southern France in the Cannes-Toulon area. They encountered practically no resistance and did not succeed in drawing German forces away from the Normandy front.

Aug.16, 1944: Canadian forces completed the encirclement at Falaise, but most of the German forces escaped. The British I Corps began pushing toward the Seine River.

Aug.17, 1944: Falaise was captured. Patton's tanks advanced to within 40 miles of Paris.

° Suspecting Field Marshal Kluge of being involved in the bomb plot to kill him, Hitler removed him and appointed Field Marshal Model as German commander, west. Kluge killed himself while returning to Berlin on the 19th.

° Red Army units reached the East Prussian border along the Sesupe River, bringing the ground war to prewar German soil for the first time.

Aug.18, 1944: Plans were announced for the Allied occupation of Germany.

Aug.19, 1944: A five-day cease-fire was declared in the Paris area to permit German evacuation of their forces from the French capital. One of the reasons for the German request was an uprising by French resistance fighters in Paris. American troops reached the Seine River.

° Russian forces launched their major offensive to clear the Balkans.

° Canadian and U.S. units close the Falaise gap, capturing 50,000 men. At least 10,000 Germans were killed in the fighting to escape the trap.

Aug.20, 1944: 939,000 Red Army troops, 1,400 tanks, and 1,700 aircraft crossed the Danube into Romania. At the same time the Romanians turned on the Germans, seizing the bridges over the Danube and Prut rivers, effectively trapping 16 German divisions.

° U.S. forces secured the Biak area of New Guinea. In three months of fighting, 4,700 Japanese were killed, 220 captured. American casualties were 400 killed, 2,000 wounded.

Aug.21, 1944: Field Marshal Model, commander in chief, west, informed Berlin the German Seventh Army was no longer an effective fighting force. It had followed Hitler's orders to stand and fight instead of withdrawing and regrouping. As a result, the Germans suffered enormous losses and exposed the entire western front.

Aug.22, 1944: The U.S. 5th Division advanced toward Fontainebleau. Orders were issued for the attack to take Paris.

Aug.23, 1944: Rumania's King Michael accepted Soviet surrender terms and ordered all forces to stop fighting. He had the pro-German Prime Minister, Antonescu, arrested.

° With the cease-fire period completed, French resistance forces began taking over the administration of Paris. U.S. and French troops were blocked in their advance toward Paris in the Versailles area. The U.S. 5th Division took Fontainebleau.

Aug.24, 1944: Romanian troops battled German forces who attempted to seize control of Bucharest.

° As the new Head of Germany's Total War Effort, Joseph Goebbels ordered new mobilization measures. Workers were ordered to go on a 60-hour workweek; all holidays were abolished. All schools and theaters were closed. Within the military, headquarters staffs were purged of what Hitler termed "rear area swine," who were assigned to combat units.

Aug.25, 1944: Paris was liberated as tanks of the French 2nd Armored Division began rolling into the French capital from the southwest at 7 A.M. U.S. forces marched in from the south shortly afterwards. The German commander in Paris, General Choltitz, surrendered to French Briga dier General Jaques Philippe Leclerc. Since D-Day the Germans had suffered 200,000 dead and wounded in the fighting for France. Another 200,000 had been captured.

° Romania declared war on Germany.

Aug.26, 1944: Bulgaria proclaimed its neutrality and announced it was ordering an end to all fighting and would disarm German troops in the country.

° Soviet forces reached the Danube near Galati in Rumania, opening up a clear path through the Balkans.

Aug.27, 1944: Allied forces in France were beginning to experience extreme supply shortages, although few units were actually stalled.

Aug.28, 1944: Russian troops entered Transylvania through the Oituz Pass in the Carpathians.

Aug.29, 1944: Russian troops occupied Constanta on the Romanian Black Sea coast and then pushed south into Bulgaria, ignoring Sofia's self-proclaimed neutrality.

Aug.30, 1944: Ploesti and its oil facilities fell to the Russians and the capital city of Bucharest was occupied by the Third Ukrainian Army. South of Romania, German troops began withdrawing from Bulgaria.

Aug.31, 1944: Since D-Day, German losses were staggering. In a three-month period total losses on the eastern and western fronts were 1,200,000 dead, wounded, and missing. Fifty divisions were destroyed in the east, 28 in the west. In addition, 230,000 German troops were surrounded in pockets in France. Together with the defection of two Romanian armies and the Bulgarians to the Russians, the German High Command faced its bleakest outlook of the war. 555 Soviet divisions were advancing from the east.

Sept. 1, 1944: British Eighth Army troops finally broke through the German Gothic defense line in Italy. U.S. Fifth Army forces crossed the Arno River.

Sept. 2, 1944: Finland accepted Russia's armistice terms. On the same day, Red Army troops reached the Bulgarian border.

° U.S. First Army units crossed into Belgium, but Eisenhower ordered a halt to the drives of the U.S. First and Third armies because of a lack of fuel. They were to remain in place until gasoline supplies could be replenished. Each army needed about 400,000 gallons a day. The Third was down to 25,000. The U.S. 3rd Cavalry Group was one of the few units still attacking, but with captured gasoline. Germany used this pause to build up its defenses along the Siegfried line.

Sept. 3, 1944: Brussels was liberated by the British 21st Army Group.

Sept. 4, 1944: The Russian-Finnish war ends .

° Rundstedt was reinstated as German com mander in chief, west.

° British forces entered Antwerp. U.S. units in the south were 40 miles beyond Lyon.

Sept. 5, 1944: On this the ninetieth day since the Normandy landings, the Allies had 2,086,000 men ashore in France. They had been supplied with 3,446,000 tons of goods.

° Russia declared war on Bulgaria, which surrendered in 20 hours.

Sept. 6, 1944: Russian troops crossed the Yugoslav border from Rumania at Turnu-Severin near the Iron Gate (gorge) on the Danube.

Sept. 7, 1944: The British Guards Armored Division reached the Albert Canal in Belgium but found all bridges destroyed.

° Hungary and Romania began fighting each other for control of Transylvania.

Sept. 8, 1944: The first V-2 rocket bombs landed in England, in west London.

Sept. 9, 1944: U.S. cavalrymen entered the Netherlands near Maastricht.

Sept.10, 1944: The British Eighth and the U.S. Fifth armies began attacks to break through the rugged Apennine Mountains into the Po valley. The long battle, plagued by bad weather, was one of the most difficult of the Italian campaign.

Sept.11, 1944: Advance units of the U.S. First Army are the first to enter German soil near Stalzenburg, and met no opposition.

° One of the great tragedies of the war took place on this date when three American submarines sank two Japanese transports carrying 2,218 British, Australian, and U.S. prisoners of war (all of whom had survived the infamous building of the bridge over the River Kwai) from Singapore to Formosa. 1,274 lost their lives as both Japanese vessels went down almost immediately. Other Japanese ships rescued 792 of the men (of whom 606 survived the war after being reimprisoned). U.S. submarines picked up 159, but seven died shortly thereafter.

Sept. 12-16, 1944: The second Quebec conference (OCTAGON) was held to concentrate on Pacific strategy. U.S. and British planners agreed on the invasion of Japan, to be launched in October 1945.

Sept.12, 1944: U.S. First Army troops advanced five miles into Germany near Trier. Units of the 3rd Division pushed to within 1,000 yards of the Siegfried line. Bridgeheads across the Moselle were established by the U.S. XII Corps north and south of Nancy.

° Red Army forces broke through the Negotin gap in Yugoslavia, opening the way to the Dalmatian coast.

° Britain, the U.S., and Russia signed an armistice agreement with Romania who agreed to join in the war against Germany and Hungary and Russia promised to return Transylvania to Romania.

Sept.13, 1944: Eisenhower ordered the capture of the Ruhr basin and a deep-water port, either Antwerp or Rotterdam, to facilitate the flow of supplies.

Sept.14, 1944: Russian troops reached the Warsaw suburbs and in the south advanced to the Czech frontier.

Sept.15, 1944: U.S. Marines began landing on the Japanese Peleliu Island of the Palau group, about 450 miles east of Mindanao in the Philippines. For three days U.S. ships had pounded the island but the 1st Marine Division could establish only a shallow beachhead. Peleliu became a bitter month-long battle, one of the roughest of the Pacific war.

Sept.16, 1944: Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, was occupied by Russian troops. Red Army units opened an offensive toward the Baltic with Tallinn and Riga as immediate objectives.

° The Danes launch a general anti-German strike. On the same day, Hitler outlined a plan for a massive counteroffensive in the Ardennes Forest. At the time, Germany had 55 divisions on the Western Front, facing 96 Allied divisions in place and another dozen in Britain.

Sept.17, 1944: Twenty thousand Allied airborne forces landed behind German lines between Eindhoven and Arnhem in the Netherlands. Their task was to take three bridges over the Maas (Meuse), Waal, and Lower Rhine respectively. The purpose of Operation MARKET GARDEN was to outflank the Siegfried line and drive to the Ruhr basin, Germany's industrial heartland..

Sept.18, 1944: German units counterattacked around Arnhem. Allied reinforcements were late in arriving.

Sept. 18-21, 1944: As the German army was abandoning Tallinn, Estonian civilians rose up, proclaimed an independent governmen and battled the retreating Germans. Russian armor swept into the city on the 21st.

Sept.19, 1944: Allied troops were trapped at Arnhem as all breakthrough attempts and reinforcement efforts failed, mostly because of bad weather and strong German resistance. One hundred German bombers attacked Eindhoven, the only time long-range Luftwaffe aircraft were used in the fight for western Europe.

Sept.20, 1944: The British 1st Airborne Division suffered heavy casualties at Arnhem. Three hundred wounded surrendered to the Germans. Allied forces faced a critical situation even though small advances were made at Nijmegen.

°U.S. Marines took heavy losses on Peleliu. It became apparent the island could not be taken easily.

Sept.21, 1944: A Polish paratrooper force of 750 men landed at Arnhem. British attempts to reach the surrounded forces was stopped three miles outside of Nijmegen.

° The general strike in Denmark was crushed by the Germans.

° Eisenhower ordered Patton's Third Army to halt its offensive to the Moselle valley because of the growing supply shortage.

Sept.23, 1944: The U.S. 34th Division passed through the Gothic Line in Italy.

° Russian units reached the Gulf of Riga at Parnu. To the south, Red Army forces crossed the prewar Hungarian border.

Sept.24, 1944: Red Army forces penetrated 20 miles into Czechoslovakia from Poland. Soviet naval units began occupying Estonian ports on the Baltic.

Sept.25, 1944: Survivors at Arnhem started to be evacuated.

Sept.26, 1944: Allied withdrawals continued from Arnhem, with the operation a costly failure.

° Estonia was completely occupied by the Russians.

Sept.28, 1944: German troops launched a strong counterattack at Arnhem to retake the Nijmegen bridge.

Sept.30, 1944: More Russian forces crossed the Danube into Yugoslavia from Rumania and raced for Belgrade.

Oct. 1, 1944: The U.S. First Army plan to attack the Siegfried Line on this date was frustrated by bad weather. For the rest of the month the Americans were confined to reducing the perimeter around Aachen.

Oct. 2, 1944: The Warsaw uprising was crushed by the Germans. An estimated quarter-million Poles were killed in two months of fierce fighting. Poles insisted the Russians purposely delayed their advance into Warsaw so the Germans could annihilate the anti-Communist Polish Home Army, which they did. The pro-Moscow Lublin government denounced the "futile uprising which cost thousands of lives."

Oct. 3, 1944: U.S. 2nd Armored Division forces crossed the shallow Wurm River at Marienberg and established a bridgehead beyond the Siegfried Line.

° German forces seized control of Hungary after learning of secret peace talks in Moscow.

Oct. 4, 1944: Russian units advanced to within 10 miles of Belgrade.

Oct. 6, 1944: Russian forces crossed into Czechoslovakia over the Tisza River from Hungary.

Oct. 9-18, 1944: The Moscow conference of the three powers, with Churchill, Stalin, and Ambassador Harriman (representing Roosevelt) was convened to consider Poland and the Balkans. No progress was made on the composition of a Polish government, but ratios of "interests" were established, with Britain to have 100 percent in Greece, the Russians and Britain 50 percent each in Yugoslavia, and the Russians with 75 or 80 percent in Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary.

Oct. 9, 1944: The Dumbarton Oaks conference ended and plans were concluded for collective security measures to be organized by the United Nations.

Oct.10, 1944: Russian troops reached the Baltic Sea near Memel, Lithuania, cutting off the Germans in Latvia. Advance elements in Hungary were within 45 miles of Budapest.

° British and Greek forces seize Corinth in Greece.

° Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyus were attacked by U.S. naval aircraft from 17 carriers, with Japan's air capability reduced still further.

Oct.12, 1944: British paratroopers and engineers land near Athens.

Oct.13, 1944: British units entered Athens.

° Riga, the Latvian capital on the Baltic, was captured by Soviet troops, trapping a large German force in western Latvia.

Oct.14, 1944: For his suspected association in the anti- Hitler plot, Field Marshal Rommel was given the choice of suicide or a military trial and certain execution. He chose suicide and Berlin claimed he died of wounds suffered in combat.

° Belgrade was surrounded by the Russians.

° Russian troops crossed into Norway in its northernmost province of Finnmark.

° Peleliu was declared secure, although scattered resistance continued through the end of November. An estimated 10,700 Japanese were killed in the month-long fighting. U.S. Marine losses were 1,124 killed and 117 missing.

Oct.15, 1944: Hungary publicly announced it was seeking an armistice. Admiral Horthy broadcast a request for terms from the Allies. Three hours after the broadcast Horthy was ousted by the Germans who installed a Hungarian Nazi, Fereuc Szalasi, as regent.

Oct.16, 1944: Horthy and all top officials of the Hungarian government were arrested by the Germans and removed to Germany. Hitler determined that Hungary would be held at all costs because of its oil, manganese, and bauxite.

° The Russians begin their all-out attack on East Prussia.

Oct.11, 1944: U.S. Rangers began landing on the islands off Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.

Oct.18, 1944: Tokyo issued orders for Operation SHO ("VICTORY"), a series of "decisive battles" to be initiated by the Japanese to end the threat to the home islands.

° Russian troops swept into Czechoslovakia through the Carpathian passes from Poland.

Oct.19, 1944: In retaliation for the Polish uprising, Hitler ordered Warsaw destroyed. The Germans evacuate Belgrade.

Oct.20, 1944: After two-and-a-half years U.S. troops returned to the Philippines. The Sixth Army lands on the east coast of Leyte. There was light opposition and the the two beachheads were expanded, separated by only a ten-mile gap. By nightfall, 132,400 men and 200,000 tons of equipment and supplies were ashore. Four hours after the first landing, having assembled a large group of cameramen, General MacArthur waded ashore and broadcast his famous "I have returned" address to the Filipinos.

° Belgrade and Dubrovnik were liberated by Russian troops and Tito's Yugoslav army.

Oct.21, 1944: After a bitter six-day battle, Aachen surrendered to the Americans. It was the first major German city to be captured. The defense of the city seriously damaged Germany's ability to contest future advances by the Allies since it drained Berlin's reserve strength to perilous levels.

Oct. 22, 1944: The Red Army drive in East Prussia was halted, and the front there was to remain static until Janaury. Other Russian forces reached the Danube in Hungary and advanced into Norway..

Oct. 23-26, 1944: In the greatest battle in the history of naval warfare American naval ships and planes inflicted staggering losses on the Japanese in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Imperial Navy lost 34 ships, including 3 battleships (Musashi, Fuso, and Yamashiro), 4 carriers (Zuikaku, Chiyoda, Zuiho, and Chitose), 10 cruisers (Atago, Mayo, Chokai, Suzuya, Chikuma, Mogami, Tama, Kimu, Ahakuma, and Noshiro), 13 destroyers, and 5 submarines. U.S. losses were the light carrier Princeton, 2 escort carriers, 2 destroyers, and a destroyer escort. Leyte Gulf marked the deepest decline of the Japanese navy as an effective fighting force. Loss of the super battleship Musashi was a particularly difficult loss for the Japanese. The supposedly indestructible dreadnought took 20 torpedoes and 17 bomb hits, and then rolled over taking nearly half of the 2,200-man crew with her.

Oct.23, 1944: U.S. forces pressed forward in several-pronged attacks to consolidate their gains on Leyte.

Oct.26, 1944: What remained of the Japanese fleet was split between the Inland Sea of Japan and the waters near Singapore.

Oct.27, 1944: Kamikaze attacks were launched on ships of U.S. Task Force 38 off the Philippines.

Oct.28, 1944: The first Japanese Kamikaze hit was scored when a suicide plane damaged the U.S. cruiser Denver off Leyte.

° Eisenhower issued orders for Allied troops to cross the Rhine and drive into the German heartland.

Oct.30, 1944: Threatened by the advancing Red Army, the last gassings took place at Auschwitz. Subsequently the inmates were evacuated westward. The gas chambers and crematoria were blown up.

Nov. 1, 1944: Germany completed its withdrawal from Greece.

Nov. 2, 1944: Leyte valley was cleared of all Japanese forces.

Nov. 4, 1944:The Russians advanced along the rail line to Budapest but rain and troop exhaustion slowed down the drive.

Nov. 7, 1944: Roosevelt was elected for a fourth term as U.S. president. His new Vice-President was Harry S. Truman.

Nov. 8, 1944: Germany began transferring 38,000 Jews from Budapest to camps in Germany.

Nov. 9, 1944: U.S. Third Army troops broke across the Moselle in an offensive aimed at taking Metz.

Nov.10, 1944: Heavy fighting developed as the Germans offered strong resistance to the US offensive on the Moselle.

° Japanese units captured the U.S. airbases at Kweilin and Liuchow in China. Wang Ching-wei, head of the pro-Japanese Nanking government, died and was succeeded by Chen Kiung-po.

Nov. 11, 1944: The giant aircraft carrier Shinano joined the Japanese fleet. It was considered unsinkable, with a special steel deck over a layer of concrete considered capable of withstanding any kind of bombing attack. She carried 70 planes and was expected to revive Japan's fading naval strength in the Pacific. 17 days later Shiano was torbedoed by the U.S. submarine Archerfish in the Kumano Sea. She sank with a loss of 500 men from her crew of 1,400, making hers the shortest record of any major man-of-war.

Nov.12, 1944: Allied forces finally succeeded in sinking the Battleship Tirpitz. Although long considered a major threat Tirpitz actually ontributed nothing to the war, firing her guns only once, in September of 1943. Bottled up in a fjord in Norways, 32 RAF Lancasters caught the Tirpitz under perfect bombing conditions on this date and scored hits with three 12,000-pound bombs. The ship turned over, taking about 1,200 crewmen to their death, further proof, if any was needed, that the battleship was obsolete.

Nov.13, 1944: Fierce German resistance continued as the U.S. Third Army was either stalled or thrown back in the Moselle area.

Nov.14. 1944: Yugoslav forces took Skoplje, the staging point for the German forces withdrawing from Greece.

Nov.16, 1944: In the heaviest aerial attack of the war in support of a ground operation, 2,807 U.S. and British planes dropped more than 10,000 tons of bombs on German positions near Aachen as a prelude to an offensive. The towns of Duren, Jülich, and Heinsburg were obliterated.

Nov.17, 1944: The U.S. 10th Armored Division pursued the retreating Germans to the Saar River. Troops of the U.S. 5th Division reached the suburbs of Metz.

Nov.19, 1944: Metz was entered by U.S. troops.

Nov.20, 1944: The U.S. 4th Division was stalled in the Hürtgen Forest, gaining only a little more than a mile in five days of hard fighting with heavy losses.

Nov.21, 1944: Fierce fighting continued within Metz. A strong German counterattack threatened French forces at Mulhouse.

Nov.22, 1944: British troops reached the Maas River, advancing toward Venlo. The Germans beefed up their defenses behind the Roer River, generally holding back the U.S. Ninth Army.

Nov.23, 1944: The French 2nd Armored Division cleared Strasbourg. With the Rhine now occupied this far north and the French in control from Mulhouse to the Swiss border, a large area known as the Colmar pocket of Alsace was the only part of Lorraine, France, still held by the Germans.

Nov.24, 1944: U.S. B-29s began attacking Japan from bases on Saipan in the Marianas, The first strike was against Tokyo with 111 bombers,

° Eisenhower issued orders to clear all areas west of the Rhine, before attempting to cross it. French armored units in Strasbourg urgently called for infantry help to hold the city.

° Japanese forces captured Nanning in China in an effort to link up with units from Indochina.

Nov.25 , 1944: Japanese kamikaze planes began attacking Allied ships in force off Luzon and in Leyte Gulf. The U.S. carriers Essex, Intrepid, Hancock, and Cabot were all damaged.

Nov.26, 1944: Himmler ordered destruction of the crematoria at Auschwitz.

Nov.27, 1944: All fighting on Peleliu and the adjacent Palau Islands ended. About 13,600 Japanese were killed; 400 were captured. U.S. Army and Marine casualties were 1,792 killed and 8,006 wounded.

° Chiang Kai-shek refused to permit U.S. muni tions to be shipped to Chinese Communist forces, as proposed by General Wedemeyer.

° The port of Antwerp was opened to Allied shipping. V-bomb attacks were intensified, falling at a rate of one every 12 1/2 minutes at the height of the raids. Despite the V-weapons, the Allies were able to move 25,000 tons through Antwerp daily.

Nov.28 , 1944: U.S. Third Army units broke into the Saar basin.

Nov.29, 1944: German counterattacks were repulsed by the U.S. 95th Division at the Saar heights commanding Saarlautern (Saarlouis).

Dec. 1, 1944: U.S. 4th Division troops still could not push clear of the Hürtgen Forest, gaining only 1,000 yards in three days of heavy fighting.

° Soviet troops pushed on to Budapest from the north and northeast.

Dec. 2, 1944: U.S. forces reached Saarlautern and were engaged in house-to-house fighting.

Dec. 3, 1944: U.S. 95th Division troops surprised the Germans defending the last bridge over the Saar River near Saarlautern. The span was captured intact, permitting the 379th Regiment to break across the river and capture the first bunkers of the Siegfried line. Hitler dismissed General Otto von Knobelsdorff, blaming him for the penetration of the West Wall.

° Civil war erupted in Greece as pro-and anti-monarchy forces refused to lay down their arms as demanded by the British.

Dec. 5, 1944: U.S. forces of the Seventh Army pressed into Germany on a 30-mile front. Saarlautern fell to the U.S. Third Army, but the city was now virtually destroyed.

° Russian advances were made on a broad front in Hungary with forward units reaching Lake Balaton.

° The Allied offensive in Italy remained stalled by stiff defenses.

Dec. 7, 1944: Intense fighting took place at the Saarlautern bridgehead as the U.S. Third Army attempted to break through German fortified positions.

Dec. 8, 1944: U.S. bombers and naval ships began the systematic bombing of Iwo Jima as a prelude to amphibious attack. The island came under attack for the next 72 days.

Dec. 9, 1944: Budapest was about two-thirds encircled as Russian troops tightened their control around the Hungarian capital.

° The British Eighth Army suspended its Italian offensive, too weak even to exploit the advantages of beating off counterattacks which had been extremely costly to the Germans.

Dec.10, 1944: German troops launched savage counterattacks against the U.S. Third Army around Saarlautern but were contained.

Dec.14, 1944: Polish and British forces launched a new offensive in Italy.

Dec.15, 1944: Mindoro in the Philippines was invaded by U.S. Army forces. Japanese suicide planes attacked the landing convoy, causing heavy damage and sinking two LST's. There was no opposition on the beaches and elements moved inland quickly.

Dec.16, 1944: In a carefully coordinated counteroffensive the Germans launched a massive attack on the U.S. First and Ninth armies along a 40-mile front in the Ardennes Forest in Luxembourg. It became famous as the Battle of the Bulge. About 300,000 men of the German Fifth and Sixth Panzer armies caught the Americans by surprise and paratroopers were landed behind the American lines, causing havoc and breaking communications. Rundstedt intended to advance to the Albert Canal and eventually to retake Antwerp.

Dec.17, 1944: Allied reinforcements were rushed to the Ardennes. In Malmedy, Belgium, about 90 American POW's were killed in what became known as the "Malmedy Massacre."

° Russian main force units were within five miles of Budapest.

Dec. 17-18, 1944: A mighty typhoon about 500 miles east of the Philippines inflicted heavy losses and damage on the U.S. Third Fleet. Three destroyers capsized and 769 lives were lost. Eight carriers, a light cruiser, seven destroyers, and a variety of other ships were severely damaged. Nearly 150 planes were lost off carrier decks. Nature thus inflicted greater losses on the U.S. Navy than they were to suffer in any single battle in the Pacific war.

° In the Battle of the Bulge two regiments of the U.S. 106th Division near Schönberg failed to break out of their trapped positions. The 7th Armored Division was heavily engaged at St. Vith.and the 28th Division was badly mauled.outside Bastogne.

Dec.18, 1944: Russian troops crossed the Hungarian-Czech border on a 70-mile front.

Dec.19, 1944: All Allied offensive actions against the Rhine were halted because of the German Ardennes offensive. Montgomery was given command of all Allied forces north of the Bulge, Bradley all forces to the south. Bastogne was almost surrounded as the 101st Airborne Division arrived in the village.

Dec.21, 1944: Bastogne came under siege. U.S. ammunition and food supplies were running low, U.S. units beat back the German drive to take Stavelot.

Dec.22, 1944: German forces launched their final drive to reach the Meuse River. U.S. forces within the Bastogne pocket retreated to avoid entrapment. Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting commander of the trapped 101st Airborne Division, was issued an ultimatum by the Germans at Bastogne: Surrender honorably or face "annihilation." His famous reply was, "Nuts." By today, Patton, shifting from his attack on the Saar river, had made a brilliant maneuver, bringing the U.S. Third Army into attacking the Germans in the Ardennes salient from the south.

° The Vietnamese Liberation Army under Vo Nguyen Giap was formed in Indochina.

Dec.23, 1944: Clearing weather permitted Allied aircraft to come to the aid of the besieged Bastogne garrison. Supplies were dropped by air and German positions were bombed.

Dec.24, 1944: U.S. forces began to push the Germans back on some sectors of the Ardennes front as reinforcements began arriving.

Dec.25, 1944: The Bastogne perimeter held against strong German pressure from all sides. German tanks advanced to within four miles of the Meuse, where the crossings were now covered by British troops.

Dec.26, 1944: Bastogne's siege was lifted as tanks of the U.S. 4th Armored Division broke the German encirclement. Although the Ardennes offensive was a tactical victory for the Germans, it was so costly that the German army was never able to recover from its staggering losses, including 220,000 men (half of them as prisoners) and more than 1,400 tanks and heavy assault guns. The net effect of the final German offensive delayed the Allies by only six weeks.

Dec.27, 1944: A secure corridor out of Bastogne was cleared as trucks and ambulances sped in to assist the trapped Americans.

° Budapest was totally blocked as Russian forces sealed the city on all sides. Fighting broke out in the eastern and western suburbs.

Dec.29, 1944: Door-to-door fighting broke out in central Budapest. The provisional Hungarian gov ernment declared war on Germany.

Dec.31, 1944: The U.S. 77th Division, in 11 days of fighting on Leyte, killed 5,779 Japanese while losing 17 Americans.

1945:

Jan. 1, 1945: U.S. Eighth Army units began a campaign which lasted through May to clear Leyte in the Philippines. A series of deception operations was initiated, but the Japanese did not fall for the several feints.

Jan. 1-2, 1945: In its last major operation of the war, the Luftwaffe sent about 800 planes against Allied air bases and ports in France and the Low Countries. The results were disastrous for the Germans as 364 of the aircraft were downed. About 125 Allied planes were lost, but operations continued from the target fields.

Jan. 2, 1945: Japanese kamikazes attacked the American fleet leaving Leyte Gulf for Luzon.

Jan. 3, 1945: German units penetrated Aachen in their counterattack against the U.S. Seventh Army but were thrown back. Rundstedt began pulling out some of his troops and armored forces.

° American Third Fleet units attacked Japanese units around Formosa, Okinawa, and the Pescadores. Despite bad weather, the two-day operation netted 12 ships sunk and 110 planes destroyed for the loss of 18 U.S. planes.

Jan. 4, 1945: The U.S. invasion force approaching Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines was subjected to heavy Japanese air attack. The escort carrier Ommaney Bay had to be sunk by other U.S. ships after being hit by a kamikaze.

° German troops attempted but failed to fight their way out of Budapest.

Jan. 6, 1945: U.S. Seventh Army forces halted the German counterattack on the Rhine, and resumed the offensive in the Ardennes.

° The Japanese air force on Luzon was reduced to 35 planes, from a total of 150 only a week before.

Jan. 7, 1945: German forces, trying to break through to Budapest and relieve the hard-pressed garrison, captured Esztergom, northwest of the capital.

Jan. 8, 1945: Heavy fighting broke out in central Budapest, while Frankfurt was attacked by 1,000 U.S. bombers.

Jan. 9, 1945: U.S. Sixth Army forces landed at Lingayen Gulf in Luzon, 100 miles north of Manila. Most units advanced without encountering serious opposition, but I Corps could only establish a narrow beachhead. By nightfall, 68,000 U.S. troops were ashore.

° U.S. Seventh Army units failed to dislodge the Germans from their positions on the west bank of the Rhine.

Jan.11, 1945: Serious fuel shortages began to affect German armored units. Allied bombing of transport cut supplies drastically. The Panzer Lehr division alone abandoned 53 tanks during the next four days because of a lack of gasoline.

Jan.12, 1945: Russian forces, under Zhukov and Marshal Ivan S. Konev, launched their greatest offensive of the war from Poland and East Prussia. A total of 1,350,000 Russians went into action, attacking a German force one-sixth their size. Stalin advanced the start of the offensive at the request of Churchill to relieve the pressure on the western front.

Jan.13, 1945: In the Philippines, Japan's depleted air defense forces launched their final strike against U.S. positions at Lingayen Gulf.

Jan.14, 1945: U.S. First Army forces made broad advances, establishing several bridgeheads across the Ambléve, while the Red Army widened its offensive with forces pushing forward from positions north and south of Warsaw.

Jan.15, 1945: Russian forces in Poland wheeled south to the Carpathians southwest of Krakow, capturing Kielce. Hitler refused Army Group Center permission to withdraw from the Warsaw area.

° The U.S. beachhead on Luzon was widened to 45 miles.

Jan.16, 1945: The U.S. First and Third armies eliminated the German Ardennes salient. Russian forces captured Radom in Poland. Hitler moved his headquarters from East Prussia to the bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. and he ordered the Sixth Panzer Army out of the western front to protect Hungary.

Jan.17, 1945: Warsaw was taken by forces of the First White Russian Front under Marshal Zhukov and units of the Lublin Polish army. Ukrainian units occupied Czestochowa.

Jan.18, 1945: Russian forces advanced rapidly toward German Silesia. Modlin in Poland was captured.

° The Japanese government directed the military to "concentrate converting all armament production to special attack weapons of a few major types." This meant Japan's limited facilities were to be concentrated on suicide planes, human torpedoes, and high-speed small attack boats.

Jan.19, 1945: Krakow, Lodz, and Tarnow in Poland were occupied by the Russians. German forces were in full retreat along a 800-mile front.

Jan.20, 1945: East Prussia was almost encircled by Red Army forces advancing from the south and east. Tilsit fell and trapped German troops in Budapest attempted to break out of the city toward the Danube.

° Roosevelt was inaugurated for a fourth term as U.S. president.

Jan.21, 1945: First Ukrainian Front troops crossed into Germany. Several towns fell as Russian units reached points 10 miles from the Oder River.

Jan.22, 1945: The Burma Road was declared open, but Japanese activity along the Sino-Burmese border precluded a free flow of traffic. .Menawhile, Corregidor was bombed by Allied aircraft.

Jan.23, 1945: German forces regained control of Berg on the Rhine in a powerful armor-infantry counterattack, but Red Army troops advanced to the Oder River 24 miles west of Breslau.

Jan.24, 1945: The American air base at Suichuan in China was abandoned.

Jan.25, 1945: Tokyo directed its China Expeditionary Force to discontinue offensive operations in the interior and to concentrate its efforts in defending the coast and north China.

Jan.26, 1945: Russian troops reached the Auschwitz concentration camp, freeing the remaining 2,819 inmates. Red Army units are120 miles from Berlin and have sealed off East Prussia by reaching the Gulf of Danzig.

Jan.27, 1945: The Masurian Lakes region of East Prussia was overrun, tightening the Red Army encirclement of Königsberg. In the West, U.S. Third Army units finally reached the border between Germany and Luxembourg.

Jan.26, 1945: The last Germans were eliminated from the Ardennes bulge, and the line was restored to the original German starting point of Dec. 16. The German offensive inflicted 75,000 casualties on 29 U.S. and 4 British divisions. In turn, the Germans suffered 100,000 dead and wounded, and lost 800 tanks and about 1,000 planes.

Jan.29, 1945: Russian forces crossed into Pomerania in Germany, 95 miles from Berlin.

° U.S. Army units were landed northwest of Subic Bay near San Antonio on Luzon. They were deployed eastward to cut off the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula.

Jan.30, 1945: Hitler marked the 12th anniversary of his accession to power in a speech still filled with defiance. It was his last radio broadcast. Russian forces reached a point 70 miles from Berlin.

Jan. 30-31, 1945: The 25,000-ton German transport Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed and sunk while evacuating soldiers and civilians from East Prussia. Only 900 of the 6,000 aboard survived.

Jan.31, 1945: The U.S. Sixth Army began its final drive toward Manila, but China was sliced in half as the Japanese captured Kukong, the last Chinese strongpoint on the Hankow railroad.

Feb. 1, 1945: Berlin was subjected to heavy Allied bombing, which continued on an almost round-the-clock basis. The Red Army captured Torun on the Vistula, and armored units pressed to within 43 miles of Berlin on the Oder River.

Feb. 2, 1945: Roosevelt and Churchill met on Malta before proceeding to Yalta in the Crimea for conferences with Stalin. It was Churchill's last and again unsuccessful attempt to win American support for a push into the Balkans.

° The U.S. 1st Infantry and 82nd Airborne divisions made their first breach in the Siegfried Line, capturing two small villages, Udenbreth and Neuhof.

Feb. 4-9, 1945: In the last international war conference in which Roosevelt and Churchill would participate, the U.S. and British leaders and Stalin met at Yalta and agreed on the next phase of the war. Believing Germany would collapse around July 1, they planned a program to weaken Japan before actually invading the home islands. As a reward for its forthcoming entry into the war against Japan, Russia was to receive parts of Manchuria (a fact not disclosed to the Chinese until later).

Feb. 4, 1945: U.S. Eighth Army units began their push into Manila from the south.

Feb. 5, 1945: Soviet troops under Zhukov reached the Oder River at Kustrin, 50 miles from Berlin.

Feb. 6, 1945: German defenses stiffened as the U.S. Third Army continued its assault on the Siegfried Line, but the fortifications were penetrated.

° Most of Manila was cleared north of the Pasig River. Four thousand Americans were released from Manila prisons.

Feb. 7, 1945: The Germans blew up the floodgates of the Schwammenauel Dam in an effort to halt the Allied advance.

Feb. 8, 1945: The British XXX Corps launched an offensive to clear the area between the Meuse and Rhine rivers, opening the battle of the Reichswald, the area just north and west of the Ruhr.

Feb. 9, 1945: British and Canadian forces cracked the Siegfried line and reached the Rhine in the north. To the south, the Colmar pocket was closed, with the German Nineteenth Army eliminated as a fighting force. It had lost about 25,000 men in the Alsace fighting. Allied forces now held the west bank of the Rhine from Strasbourg to the Swiss border and a small portion of the northern section..

Feb. 9-10, 1945: A Soviet submarine sank the German transport General von Steuben in the Baltic. Of the 3,000 injured soldiers and civilian evacuees from East Prussia aboard, 300 survived.

Feb.10, 1945: Germans flooded the Roer River valley, effecitvely frustrating the U.S. Ninth Army's planned offensive toward Dusseldorf, the heart of the Ruhr valley. German forces were able to concentrate on defending positions elsewhere.

Feb.11, 1945: More than 15,000 Germans were killed trying to escape Budapest. . Breslau was threatened with encirclement, exposing Dresden 80 miles to the west.

Feb. 11-12, 1945: Record raids were launched against Essen and Dortmund as 1,079 and 1,108 heavy bombers raided the cities with 5,000 and 5,487 tons of bombs, respectively.

Feb.12, 1945: The 20th Indian Division crossed the Irrawaddy west of Mandalay, Burma.

Feb. 13-14, 1945: In the most intense incendiary attacks of the war, RAF and U.S. planes devastated the German city of Dresden in raids which have become synonymous with the term "terror bombing." At least 35,000 people were killed in the firestorms. After the war, Churchill said, "The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."

Feb.13, 1945: Budapest fell after a 45-day fight. About 35,000 Germans were captured. Breslau's 150,000-man garrison was threatened by encirclement.

Feb.14, 1945: The U.S. XII Corps established a solid bridgehead beyond the Siegfried line.

° In the Philippines, the U.S. Sixth Army forces reached the Bataan Peninsula. American PT boats entered Manila Bay for night reconnaissance.

Feb.16, 1945: American paratroopers landed on Corregidor Island, followed by boat-borne 34th Division infantrymen two hours later, completely surprising the Japanese. (A total of 4,215 Japanese died defending the island, to the loss of 136 Americans.)

° Breslau was totally surrounded by the Red Army.

Feb.17, 1945: U.S. forces began operations to retake the Bataan Peninsula. Meanwhile, in a disastrous attempt to clear beach defenses on Iwo Jima prior to the intended landing, 170 U.S. Navy frogmen were killed.

Feb.18, 1945: U.S. Third Army troops launched another drive to break through the Siegfried Line.

Feb.19, 1945: U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima. The island was known as the "unsinkable airfield," 775 miles from the main Japanese home island of Honshu. It was used by Japanese fighters to intercept U.S. bombers attacking the home islands. The 30,000-man invasion force was not sure of what to expect because Iwo had been pounded by ships and planes for 72 days before the amphibious assault. Despite the merciless pre-invasion raids, the Japanese were stubborn defenders, and the next month of fighting was to exact one of the highest casualty tolls of the Pacific war.

Feb.20, 1945: Allied units broke through the Siegfried line entering Germany along a broad front.

° Japanese units on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima pounded the Marines, whose units suffered 20 to 30 percent casualties in the first two days of combat.

Feb.21, 1945: Bataan, except for a small Japanese pocket around Mount Natib, was retaken by U.S. forces, who suffered a total of only 50 casualties in regaining an area which was contested four years before at a cost of thousands of lives. But elsewhere, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima had now lost half their tanks while making progress measured in yards.

Feb.22, 1945: The Allies launched Operation CLARION, a massive bombing attack by 10,000 aircraft from Britain, France, Italy, Holland, and Belgium to cut transportation lines in central Germany and isolate the western front. Two hundred individual targets were bombed, with the heavy bombers coming in as low as 5,000 feet instead of the normal bombing altitude of 25,000. The raids are credited with marking the end of large-scale mobility of the German armed forces.

Feb.23, 1945: Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima was taken by the Marines, captured in a famous picture of the American flag being raised..

Feb.24, 1945: Except for a few small pockets of resistance, U.S. forces established control over Manila. Most of Corregidor was cleared, with the Japanese clinging to a two-mile pocket at the eastern end of the island.

° U.S. and Brazilian forces made limited advances in Italy, breaking what had been a virtual stalemate.

Feb.25, 1945: Three U.S. Marine divisions abreast attempted to advance northward the width of Iwo Jima, but Japanese resistance remained fierce.

° U.S. B-29s were directed to begin night fire raids on large Japanese cities instead of daylight precision raids against industrial centers. In the first of the fire raids on Tokyo, 334 B-29s dropped 1,667 tons of incendiaries. The attack destroyed 15 square miles of the Japanese capital. Naval aircraft continued attacking aircraft production plants and airfields around Tokyo.

Feb.27, 1945: U.S. VII Corps forces advanced rapidly towards Cologne but ran into determined resistance outside the city. Just to the north, Canadian divisions broke through to the Hochwald Forest and reached the Rhine.

Feb.28, 1945: Elements of the U.S. Ninth Army advanced to within 16 miles of Cologne.

March, 1945: The central Pacific was effectively cleared of all Japanese submarines. Only a few reconnaissance patrols were undertaken by the Japanese, but Allied shipping was free from any serious underwater threat until the end of the war.

March 1, 1945: U.S. Ninth Army and First Canadian Army troops continued their swift pursuit through Germany and Holland, capturing 20 towns and villages. The Panzer Lehr Division was forced out of Mönchengladbach. Thus far in the three weeks of the offensive toward the Rhine, 66,000 Germans had been taken prisoner.

° A limited Allied offensive in Italy was postponed because of extremely bad weather.

March 2, 1945: U.S. 10th Armored Division forces occupied Trier. Allied units had now reached the Rhine north and south of Düsseldorf.

° MacArthur returned to Corregidor shortly after all Japanese resistance ended. The Japanese lost about 5,200 men defending the island. Total U.S. casualties were more than 1,000. Two-thirds of Iwo Jima was now in Marine hands. The first of the island's airfields was opened to U.S. transports.

March 3, 1945: German forces remaining on the west bank of the Rhine began to withdraw.

March 4, 1945: The Ninth U.S. and Canadian First armies hooked up on the Rhine, while . U.S. First Army troops advanced reached the outskirts of Cologne Synthetic oil facilities in Hamburg and Gelsenkirchen were pounded by 2,000 Allied bombers.

March 5, 1945: U.S. troops reached Cologne, which was largely in ruins. German demolition teams were busy destroying those bridges left standing over the Rhine.

March 6, 1945: Cologne was largely cleared of German troops.

° U.S. Air Force fighters began operating out of Iwo Jima.

March 7, 1945: The Rhine River was crossed at Remagen by the U.S. 9th Armored Division. The historic crossing of the final natural barrier to the German heartland came when the Ludendorff rail bridge was found intact. The 9th and 78th divisions were quickly moved into position to exploit the major breakthrough. German artillery failed to destroy the bridge as U.S. troops and equipment poured over the Rhine.

March 8, 1945: U.S. troops pushed into Bonn, as remnants of two German army corps retreated across the Rhine, giving the Allies full control of the area west of the river.

° Thirty thousand Germans surrendered to the Red Army in the former Polish Corridor.

° Secret talks began between Allen Dulles, OSS (Office of Strategic Services) intelligence chief in Bern, and Karl Wolff, SS commander in northern Italy, on ending the war in Italy. Field Marshal Kesselring was willing to stop the fighting if the forces under his command could be repatriated and fight with the Allies in Germany against Russia. Stalin, when he learried of the talks, accused Britain and the U.S. of duplicity.

March 9, 1945: Japanese troops began attacking French garrisons in Indochina and removing all vestiges of Vichy rule. (The Japanese feared Allied amphibious operations involving Free French troops and assumed the French garrisons around Hanoi and Haiphong would join the fight against the occupiers.)

° The 3rd Marine Division reached the northern coast of Iwo Jima, splitting the Japanese defenders.

° B-29s firebombed Japanese cities, hitting Tokyo hardest. More than 83,000 were killed and 40,000 wounded in the Japanese capital. It was one of the most destructive air attacks in history. About 16 square miles of Tokyo were obliterated. A total of 279 Superforts hit the city from altitudes of 7,000 feet. actual causes of death were direct incineration, suffocation, or scalding, primarily of those forced into boiling canals and rivers. Another 41,000 victims were injured. More than a million people lost their lives in the 1944-1945 Allied air attacks as 15.8 square miles of central Tokyo were completely destroyed.

Japanese 1945 Air Raid Deaths

Tokyo, March 9-10 incendiary raid 83,793 deaths

Hiroshima, Aug. 6 atomic bomb attack 70,000 deaths

Nagasaki, Aug. 8 atomic bomb attack 20,000 deaths

March 10, 1945: The U.S. First and Second armies linked up at the Rhine, trapping large numbers of Germans west of the river.

° In another fire raid on Tokyo, 170 B-29s destroyed a square mile of the city and 27,970 buildings. Premier Koiso expressed sympathy to the Japanese people for their suffering at the hands of the "most cruel and barbaric" Americans.

March 11, 1945: U.S. 78th Division units moved up from the Remagen crossing to cut the Autobahn between Cologne and Frankfurt but were slowed by fierce resistance. Positions on the east bank of the Rhine were extended and strengthened. U.S. Navy landing craft went into operation at Remagen and ferried troops and supplies over the Rhine for the rest of the month.

° Red Army forces began attacking Danzig and Gdynia, both of which were encircled, while Dortmund was struck by 5,000 tons of RAF bombs.

° Emperor Bao Dai proclaimed Vietnam's independence from the French, but the Japanese remained in firm control.

March 12, 1945: Russian troops captured Küstrin, a German strongpoint on the eastern approaches to Berlin. And the RAF "earthquake" bomb was dropped for the first time. The 10-ton weapon was used to knock out the Bielefeld viaduct.

March 14, 1945: U.S. 11th Armored and 90th Infantry Division units crossed the Moselle River southwest of Koblenz. First Army troops advanced to within two miles of the Autobahn linking Frankfurt and the Ruhr. A total of 372 Luftwaffe planes attacked the Rhine River bridges during the past week. Allied antiaircraft shot down 80.

° Only a few Japanese pockets remained on Iwo Jima as U.S. Marines began mop-up operations.

March 14-15, 1945: U.S. bombers raided Osaka, inflicting 13,000 casualties.

March 16, 1945: Russian troops broke through to the Baltic southwest of Königsberg.

March 16, 1945: The British Foreign Office confirmed there had been German peace feelers through its legation in Stockholm.

° Soviet forces launched an offensive to take Vienna from bases in Hungary.

° Iwo Jima was declared secure.

March 18-17, 1945: Kobe was bombed by B-52s, resulting in 15,000 casualties.

March 17, 1945: The U.S. 87th Division entered Koblenz on the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers.. Eisenhower called on civilians in Frankfurt and Mannheim to evacuate the cities. On this day, the badly weakened Ludendorff bridge at Remagen finally collapsed, but Allied forces were already firmly entrenched east of the Rhine. .

° Japanese forces on Iwo Jima were reduced to a pccket less than one-half square mile in size.

March 18, 1945: Massive air attacks were launched against Berlin and Frankfurt. More than 1,000 people were killed in Frankfurt. The attack on Berlin was the heaviest launched by the U.S. Eighth Air Force, involving 1,250 bombers. For the first time, they were attackedby German jet fighters. The ME-262s and other interceptors, plus heavy antiaircraft fire, accounted for the loss of 24 bombers and 5 fighters. Another 600 planes were damaged.

March 19, 1945: Hitler ordered the destruction of industrial, communications, and transportation facilities threatened by Allied capture, the so-called "Nero Decree." U.S. 70th Division units began crossing the Saar River near Saarbrucken.

March 20, 1945: Nagoya was hit by B-29 incendiaries.

° Hitler made his last public appearance, decorating children who had distinguished themselves in combat.

March 21-24, 1945: In a major effort to draw off German planes from the Rhine area, U.S. and RAF planes attacked Berlin and other targets. During this period, Allied aircraft from Britain, France, and Italy flew 42,000 sorties.

March 21, 1945: Japanese piloted bombs made their first known appearance of the war while futilely attempting to attack the U.S. naval fast carrier task force whose planes were striking targets on Honshu and Kyushu.

° A flight of 18 RAF Mosquitos bombed the Gestapo headquarters building in Copenhagen. While the building was hit (35 were killed, including 9 Danish prisoners) greater damage was done to a nearby Catholic grade school, killing 86 children and 17 adults.

March 22, 1945: U.S. 90th Division forces cleared Mainz. Other U.S. units achieved total surprise in establishing a late night crossing of the Rhine at Oppenheim, south of Mainz.In the east, Danzig and Gdynia came under Russian siege. Heavy fighting developed between Lake Balaton and the Danube in Hungary. Other Red Army units began an offensive directed at Vienna and Bratislava.

March 23, 1945: U.S. First Army troops broke out of the Remagen bridgehead while British and Canadian troops began assaulting German positions on the Rhine north of the Ruhr. Wesel came under attack after the river was crossed by the British 1st Commando Brigade. U.S. units to the south continued breaching the Rhine fortifications on a broad front. The German First Parachute Army could offer only slight opposition to the advancing Allies.

March 24, 1945: Russian troops southwest of Budapest advanced 44 miles and occupied large numbers of towns and villages.

° The Japanese pocket on Iwo Jima was reduced to 50 square yards.

° British 6th and U.S. 17th Airborne Division paratroopers were dropped north and northeast of Wesel. They soon made contact with British infantry units advancing from the west. It was the largest airborne operation of the war, involving 5,051 aircraft and 40,000 men.

March 25, 1945: U.S. Third Army units began their attack across the Rhine, after a preliminary bombardment by 1,250 guns. The 6th Armored Division broke through and started driving toward Frankfurt along the Autobahn. The Remagen bridgehead was expanded to a 30-mile-long front, 10 miles deep. American forces moved into Darmstadt. All organized resistance west of the Rhine had ended.

March 26, 1945: The U.S. Seventh Army crossed the Rhine near Worms and made contact with the Third Army which had reached the Main near Offenbach. The Rhine-Main airport was captured and Frankfurt was penetrated.

° Red Army units made substantial advances through Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

° A final attack was made by the Japanese on Iwo Jima. About 200 of the trapped troops staged a suicidal assault from their tiny pocket. At least 196 were killed.

March 27, 1945: The U.S. Third and First armies linked up near the Lahn Rive, bringing the Allies to within 200 miles of Berlin. In the east, the Red Army engaged in house-to-house fighting in Danzig and Gdynia, while Russian troops were 60 miles from Vienna.

° The last V-2 rocket bomb fell on Britain. In all, the 1,115 V-2s launched against England killed 2,855 people and seriously injured 6,268.

March 28, 1945: Hitler dismissed Guderian as chief of the Army General Staff after a violent quarrel in the Reich Chancellery. Russian units reached the Austrian border and occupied Gdynia in the north. British Second Army forces began an offensive to reach the Elbe. U.S. troops began occupying Frankfurt, while the American 4th Armored Division found a bridge over the Main intact. First Army units reached Marburg and Giessen, advancing up to 40 miles a day.

° Eisenhower confirmed plans for the final campaign to knock Germany out of the war, choosing Leipzig instead of Berlin as the ultimate objective. Russia was to occupy the German capital. The decision had wide-ranging political implications. Churchill futilely tried to change the thrust of the final Allied push, continuing to express his concern over Russian political gains after their military conquests.

March 29, 1945: U.S. 5th Division forces completed the capture of Frankfurt. Mannheim was abandoned by the Germans.The U.S. 3rd Armored Division units pursued disorganized German forces 50 miles northward toward Paderborn.

March 30, 1945: The Russian Third Ukrainian Front crossed into Austria from Hungary near Köszeg. Danzig fell. Bulgarian and Soviet units advanced to the Drava River boundary between Hungary and Yugoslavia. The capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, was threatened as the Russian Second Ukrainian Front pressed westward.

° Tanks of the U.S. 6th Armored Division broke through German defenses north of Frankfurt and dashed toward Kassel. Heidelberg fell.

March 31, 1945: German troops began withdrawing from the Netherlands.

April 1, 1945: In what was to become the last-and the bloodiest-major amphibious operation of the Pacific war, the U.S. Tenth Army invaded the island of Okinawa, 360 miles south of Japan. Two Army and two Marine divisions, a force of about 60,000 men, came ashore after intensive air and naval bombardment. At first there was little Japanese opposition, except for the kamikaze attacks on the invasion fleet. Kadena airfield was taken and the beachheads were firmly established, but the defenses stiffened to a level probably unmatched in the Pacific war.

° The Ruhr was completely encircled as the U.S.First and Ninth armies linked up at Lippstadt, 20 miles west of Paderborn, trapping German Army Group B and two corps of Army Group H. It was one of the largest envelopments in history, with 325,000 Germans eventually captured. In numbers, it was a loss greater than Stalingrad.

° Radio Werwoif began broadcasting. The radio station was created by Goebbels to rally Germans to suicidal resistance. Its repeated theme was besser tot als rot ("better dead than red").

April 2, 1945: Russian forces crashed through to within 50 miles of Berlin, but swifter progress was made toward Vienna.

April 3, 1945: The British Guards Armored Division reached the Dortmund-Ems Canal near Lingen. Münster was completely secured by the U.S. 17th Airborne Division. A hard-fought battle ended when the Germans at Aschaffenburg surrendered.

April 4, 1945: Hungary was cleared of all German troops, who retreated into Yugoslavia. Bratislava in Slovakia fell. Red Army troops moved westward along the Polish-Czech border toward the Moravian gap.

° The U.S. Ninth Army reached the Weser River but found the bridges destroyed. Patton's tanks were within 70 miles of Leipzig. In the advance , the U.S. 4th Armored Division liberated the first concentration camp outside Ohrdruf. General Patton (who vomited on visiting the site) rounded up townspeople to witness the horrors which had been perpetrated in their immediate area. Many victims were still lying where they had been shot by the retreating Nazis. Ohrdruf's burgomaster and his wife were among those brought to the camp by Patton. When they returned home, they hanged themselves.

° For the first time since landing, U.S. forces on Okinawa encountered significant Japanese resistance.

April 5, 1945: In an unmistakable order for mass suicide, the Japanese Imperial Navy commanded its remaining men-of-war to engage the Americans in a final banzai: "Second Fleet is to charge the enemy anchorage of Kadena off Okinawa Island at daybreak of 8 April. Fuel for only a one-way passage will be supplied."

April 6, 1945: The first of the concentrated kamikaze attacks off Okinawa sank two U.S. destroyers, Bush and Calhoun, and four auxiliaries. Only 24 of the 355 suicide planes from Kyushu actually hit targets, but they caused great destruction. The furious fighting also resulted in many U.S. ships hitting each other. A battleship (North Carolina), a cruiser (Pasadena), two transports, a sub-chaser, a cargo ship, and two LST's were all damaged by friendly fire.

April 7, 1945: Russian units crossed the Danube and smashed into Vienna. Street fighting commenced.

° Japanese air and naval units suffered a disastrous setback in the battle of the East China Sea. Task Force 58 planes intercepted the Japanese Second Fleet heading for Okinawa. The 72,200- ton battleship Yamato was subjected to three hours of bombing and torpedo attacks and finally capsized with only 269 survivors from the 3,292- man crew. It was the largest single loss involving a warship in history. Other casualties of the battle included the cruiser Yahagi, 4 destroyers, and 54 aircraft. Ten U.S. planes were downed, of the 900 which were involved in the attacks.

° Iwo Jima-based U.S. aircraft made their first attacks on Japan. Fighters began arriving on Okinawa.

April 8, 1945: Russian troops began an all-out assault on Königsberg in East Prussia. Red Army units started driving toward Linz and Graz in Austria. The British Guards Division broke for Bremen after overwhelming German defenders east of Lingen. U.S. 42nd Division forces reached the outskirts of Schweinfurt.

April 9, 1945: The Allied Fifteenth Army Group opened its final offensive in Italy, smashing across the Semo River. In East Germany, the fortress at Königsberg fell to the Third White Russian Front, virtually ending all German resistance in East Prussia. The fight for the city left 42,000 Germans dead. Another 92,000 were captured.

April 10, 1945: Thirty of 50 German Me-262 jet fighters were shot down by U.S. bombers and their B-51 escorts in the Berlin area. The attacking force of 1,232 B-17s and B-24s was able to beat off the largest jet effort of the war. Only ten of the bombers were lost.

b Allied forces occupied Coburg. Survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp were liberated: 5,000 French, 3,500 Poles and Polish Jews, 2,200 Germans, 2,000 Russians, 2,000 Czechs, 2,000 Ukrainians, 600 Yugoslavs, 400 Dutch, 500 Austrians, 200 Italians, 200 Spaniards, and 300 of other nationalities. The American Seventh Army forces drove into Bavaria while the US Ninth Army units reached the Elbe near Magdeburg. More than 300,000 Germans were taken prisoner during the past two weeks of fighting.

° U.S. 38th Division forces counted 5,500 Japanese dead in the fighting to clear the area west of Clark Field in the Philippines. Japanese suicide planes continued to strike U.S. naval ships off Okinawa, disabling the carrier Enterprise and damaging the battleship Missouri.

April 12, 1945: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the U.S. longer than anyone, died of a massive stroke at the winter White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. Harry S. Truman became the 33rd president.

April 13, 1945: Russian troops of the Second and the Third Ukrainian fronts completed the capture of Vienna.

April 14, 1945: U.S. Fifth Army units pushed off on an offensive to clear the Po River valley from positions in the Apennines south and southwest of Bologna.

April 14-15, 1945: A group of Japanese army officers attempted to seize control of the government in Tokyo. Fearing an imminent capitulation to the Allies, the officers won some support from the Imperial Guards Division and occupied part of the palace. There they searched futilely for the emperor's surrender speech which had been recorded. General Takeshi Mon was killed when he refused to give the dissidents control of the army. The uprising was quelled, and its leader, Major Kenji Hatanaka, committed suicide.

April 15, 1945: British troops freed 40,000 prisoners at the Belsen concentration camp and found 10,000 unburied dead bodies.

April 16, 1945: In the greatest maritime loss in history, about 6,500 Germans were drowned while being evacuated from Danzig. Their ship, the overloaded 5,230-ton merchantman Goya, was torpedoed in the Baltic near Cape Rixhöft and quickly sank.

° A huge Russian force began its drive for Berlin along the Oder and Neisse rivers, attacking the German Ninth and Fourth Panzer armies.

April 17, 1945: Red Army forces began establishing bridgeheads across the Oder and Neisse rivers in their drive for Berlin.

° The American Seventh Army began closing in on Nürnberg, symbolic center of the Nazi state. U.S. 30th Division units captured most of Magdeburg. German resistance was ferocious in the fighting around Nurnberg.

° Japanese troops suffered heavy casualties as U.S. Marines finished taking the Motobu Peninsula on Okinawa.

April 18, 1945: All resistance in the Ruhr pocket ended with the surrender of 325,000 German troops under the command of Field Marshal Model. Except for the Russian surrender around Kiev in September 1941, this was the single largest capitulation of the war.

° British Eighth Army units gained control of the Argenta gap, over the key route to the Po valley.

April 19, 1945: British Second Army forces began assaulting Bremen. The British 11th Armored Division reached the Elbe. The U.S. XV Corps broke into the walled city within Nürnberg. Leipzig fell to the U.S. 2nd and 69th divisions.

° Under tremendous naval and air support, U.S. Army forces launched a general offensive to break Japanese defenses on Okinawa. The heaviest fighting was on Kakazu Ridge.

April 20, 1945: Three U.S. divisions finally cleared Nürnberg. Rothenburg was taken by the Second Polish Army. French troops entered Stuttgart.

° U.S. Fifth Army columns broke out of the Apennine Mountains and into the Po plain.

April 21, 1945: The Russian Eighth Guards Army under General Chuikov penetrated to the suburbs of Berlin. The Germans counterattacked the advancing Red Army but failed to forestall a pincers movement developing around the German capital.

° American and Polish troops occupied Bologna, an elusive objective for months. French troops took Stuttgart.

April 22, 1945: Hitler refused to leave Berlin although its encirclement was imminent. Units of the First White Russian Front continued to advance in the eastern suburbs.

April 23, 1945: Hitler stripped Göring of authority because of Göring's apparent assumption of power. Fighting developed in Berlin proper, with the Russians penetrating from the east and south. British troops entered Bremen.

° Allied bridgeheads were established over the Po River.

April 23-24, 1945: SS Chief Himmler offered to surrender to Britain and the U.S. but not the Soviet Union. The offer was made through Count Bernadotte.

April 24, 1945: Hitler ordered Göring arrested. Elements of the First White Russian and First Ukrainian fronts linked up inside Berlin. Potsdam was occupied.

° U.S. and British forces in Italy. began pouring across the Po River, with the German Gothic line almost totally eliminated.

April 25, 1945: U.S. 69th Division and Russian 59th Guards Division patrols made contact on the Elbe near Torgau, the first linkup of ground forces from east and west. Eisenhower ordered Allied forces not to advance beyond the Elbe and Mulde rivers. Berlin is now completely encircled by the Russians.

April 26, 1945: Italian partisans seized control of Genoa and fighting broke out around Milan. Verona, Reggio nell' Emilia, and Parma fell to Allied troops.

° U.S. troops on Okinawa met furious Japanese resistance on the Maeda escarpment.

April 27, 1945: Count Bernadotte informed Himmler the U.S. and Britain would not accept German armistice talks without the Russians. Soviet troops now controlled three-fourths of Berlin. U.S. 11th Armored Division units crossed into Czechoslovakia.

April 28, 1945: Benito Mussolini was shot and killed after being caught by Italian partisans as he was attempting to flee Italy. As the Allied forces pressed closer to the area, Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, headed first for Milan where fruitless discussions took place on a surrender, then for the Swiss border. When the partisans at Dongo found Mussolini he was wearing a German noncommissioned officer's overcoat. A quick execution-from a submachine gun-was followed the next day by the exhibition of their bodies, hung upside down, in the Piazza Loreto in Milan.

° U.S. troops advanced to Venice and American units of the Seventh Army reached the Austrian border near Füssen and occupied Augsburg.

April 29, 1945: Hitler designated Dönitz as his successor and was married to Eva Braun in his Berlin bunker. The Reich Chancellery came under Russian artillery fire.

° An unconditional surrender was signed at Caserta by German Army Group Southwest commander in Italy, General Vietinghoff. The fighting was to end on May 2. Allied forces reached Genoa and Padua, which had been previously taken over by partisans. Milan was under partisan control.

April 30, 1945: Hitler committed suicide. Dressed in a new Nazi uniform he took a cyanide capsule while seated on a couch in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. His new wife, Eva Braun, also took poison. Their bodies were doused in gasoline and burned. Only the Russians saw their remains, and it is still not known what became of the final evidence of Hitler's death. Goebbels and his wife killed themselves and their six children at the same time.

° Munich was occupied by the Americans . More than 110,000 Allied POW's were liberated. Dachau concentration camp was liberated and 32,000 prisoners were released.

° Japanese assaults on U.S. ships off Okinawa intensified. During the month 20 were sunk and 157 were damaged, 90 by kamikazes. U.S. naval forces during this period destroyed 1,100 Japanese planes.

May 1, 1945: As a successor to Hitler's government, Admiral Dönitz announced his new, so-called "Flensburg government." U.S. Third Army forces advanced into Czechoslovakia on a 100-mile-wide front southeast of Ascha.

° British paratroopers landed south of Rangoon.

May 2, 1945: All fighting in Italy ended as the unconditional surrender of one million German troops there took effect, ending what the Allies called the "slow and bitter" campaign. Allied troops completed the occupation of Turin and Milan. Berlin is completely under the control of Russian forces.

° U.S. 1st Division Marines suffered heavy losses while making only negligible advances around the Asa River in Okinawa.

May 3, 1945: German forces in Hamburg surrendered. U.S. Seventh Army units reached the Brenner Pass after taking Innsbruck. The 2nd Armored Division was ordered to take Berchtesgaden. A civilian uprising began in Prague.

° A brigade of the 26th Indian Division entered Rangoon. Allied paratroopers and amphibious forces converged on the city. The war in Burma was effectively ended with the recapture of Rangoon. The campaign to retake Burma cost 4,115 British and Indian dead, 13,764 wounded, in addition to smaller numbers of U.S. and Chinese casualties. Japanese losses in the campaign were about 100,000.

° Japanese troops on Okinawa began their only major offensive of the Ryukyus campaign. An amphibious force tried to land behind U.S. lines on both coasts. As many as 800 Japanese were killed, and those who did land were soon killed or captured.

May 4, 1945: About one million German troops surrendered in the Netherlands, Denmark, and northwest Germany. The terms were to become effective at 8 am the next day. Salzburg surrendered as officers of the German Nineteenth Army began negotiating an end to the fighting in Bavaria.

May 5, 1945: German representatives arrived at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), a school building in Reims, to discuss final surrender terms. British airborne troops landed in Copenhagen after street fighting broke out between Danish civilians and the Germans. Prague resistance forces battled the Germans inside the city. All fighting ended in Bavaria and the U.S. Fifth Army from Italy linked up with the U.S. Seventh Army from Germany at the Brenner Pass.

° Japanese kamikazes sank 17 U.S. ships off Okinawa in a 24-hour period. A total of 131 Japanese planes were destroyed.

May 6, 1945: U.S. Third Army units captured Pilsen, 65 miles from Prague, but withdrew at the request of the Soviets. German Army Group G, comprising all units in Austria, surrendered unconditionally to the U.S. Sixth Army Group.

May 7, 1945: The German High Command surrendered unconditionally. General Jodl signed the instrument of surrender at SHAEF headquarters. The fighting was to end at 11:01 PM. on May 9. Breslau in Silesia fell to the Red Army.

May 8, 1945: The war in Europe was declared ended. Churchill and Truman proclaimed V-E Day. All resistance ended in Latvia. The German Sixteenth and Eighteenth armies surrendered along the Leningrad front. Göring surrendered near Fischhorn in Austria. Prince Olaf and British representatives accepted the surrender of German troops in Norway.

° Rain brought a respite to the fierce fighting on Okinawa.

May 9, 1945: All fighting was officially ended in Europe. The surrender was ratified by a ceremony in Berlin, with Zhukov and Keitel signing the document. Russian forces under Marshal Konev occupied Prague, the last of the European capitals to be liberated.

May 10, 1945: The U.S. announced that 3,100,000 American troops would be withdrawn from Europe.

° The U.S. Marine 5th Division attacked across the Asa estuary on Okinawa, establishing a mile- wide beachhead.

May 11, 1945: An attack by two corps of the U.S. Tenth Army was launched on Okinawa. Some elements advanced to positions commanding the island's capital of Naha. Japanese aircraft staged heavy attacks on U.S. ships in the area, damaging the carrier Bunker Hill and two destroyers.

May 12, 1945: German troops on Crete and in the Baltic states surrendered.

May 13, 1945: Most German resistance ended in Czechoslovakia. Red Army troops concluded all offensive operations.

May 14, 1945: An Austrian republic was reestablished in Vienna.

May 15, 1945: U.S. Eighth Army forces launched new attacks on Mindanao and Negros in the Philippines. Naha, on Okinawa, was captured.

May 16, 1945: U.S. planes began one of the most intensive napalm bombing operations of the war, against Japanese units defending the Ipo Dam, east of Manila, which provided the main source of water for the capital of the Philippines, dropping 110,000 gallons of napalm on the well-entrenched Japanese in a three-day period. Meanwhile, U.S. 6th Division Marines were badly mauled in attacking Sugar Loaf hill on Okinawa.

May 17, 1945: Five British destroyers sank the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro in the Malacca Strait. It was the last surface naval battle of the war.

May 18, 1945: Sugar Loaf on Okinawa was taken by U.S. Marines. In 10 days of intense fighting for the hill, the 6th Division suffered 2,662 casualties. A further indication of the level of combat was that 1,289 Marines were victims of combat fatigue.

May 19, 1945: The U.S. 77th Division suffered heavy casualties in fighting for the Ishimmi ridge on Okinawa and had to be withdrawn.

° The arrival of French troops touched off anti-colonial demonstrations in Syria and Lebanon.

May 20, 1945: Japanese troops began pulling out of Kwangsi Province in China to return to Japan for defense of the home islands.

May 21, 1945: The British coalition ended as the Labor party rejected Churchill's proposal to continue the alliance with the Conservatives. Churchill was forced to call for general elections, Britain's first in ten years.

May 22, 1945: Heavy rains began pounding Okinawa, hampering operations for almost two weeks.

May 23, 1945: Heinrich Himmler, who had been arrested in disguise two days earlier, committed suicide while being held by the British at Lüneburg, swallowing poison from a concealed vial. Surviving senior members of the Nazi government and the German High Command were imprisoned at Flensburg.

May 24, 1945: Japanese forces attacked U.S. air bases on Okinawa and le Shima and offshore shipping. Paratroopers were landed on the Yontan airfield on Okinawa, but the Japanese force was eliminated after several U.S. planes were destroyed. The aerial attacks against the fleet, which continued through the next day, caused heavy damage but no ships were lost.

May 25, 1945: The U.S. Chiefs of Staff set Nov. 1 as the date for the invasion of Japan.

May 26-27, 1945: Chinese troops occupied Nanning, the capital of Kwangsi Province, cutting off the land outlet from Indochina for the Japanese, stranding 200,000 Japanese soldiers.

May 27, 1945: Japanese aircraft launched a heavy two-day series of strikes against U.S. ships around Okinawa. More than a hundred Japanese planes were destroyed in the attacks. The U.S. destroyer Drexler was sunk.

U.S. Navy Ships Hit by Kamikazes

Sunk Damaged

o Fleet carriers 16

o Light carriers 3

3 Escort carriers 17

o Battleships 15

o Heavy cruisers 5

o Light cruisers 10

13 Destroyers 87

1 Destroyer escorts 24

0 Submarines 1

2 High-speed minelayers 15

0 Light minelayers 13

5 Landing ships - tanks 11

1 Mine sweepers 10

9 Auxiliaries and small craft 61

34 Total Total 288

May 28, 1945: More than 100 Japanese planes were shot down in attacks off Okinawa. This was Japan's final effort to turn the Okinawan campaign around. One U.S. destroyer was sunk, but the air strikes were not successful.

° Open fighting broke out between the French and Arabs in Syria and Lebanon.

May 29, 1945: French forces shelled Damascus and Hama in Syria, and the Syrians asked the British for help.

May 30, 1945: Two battalions of U.S. Marines reached the southeast edge of Naha on Okinawa.

° Damascus was again bombed by the French.. Tehran asked Britain, the U.S., and Russia to remove their troops from Iran.

May 31, 1945: Organized resistance ended on Negros Island in the Philippines.

June 1, 1945: Japanese resistance on Luzon was reduced to rear-guard delaying actions.

June 3 , 1945: French troops were withdrawn from Beirut and Damascus.

June 4, 1945: U.S. Marines landed on the Oroku Peninsula on Okinawa. About half the Naha airfield was cleared.

June 5, 1945: Nature hurled a typhoon almost as destructive as the kamikazes against the U.S. ships around Okinawa. Severe damage was inflicted on 4 battleships, 8 carriers, 7 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and a host of auxiliaries.

° Japanese units fought desperately on Okinawa's Oroku Peninsula. The severe rains subsided but land transport was extremely difficult because of the mud.

June 6, 1945: The Naha airfield on the Oroku Peninsula was cleared by the U.S. Marine 6th Division.

June 9, 1945: Japanese forces on Okinawa's Oroku Peninsula were trapped when the 4th and 22nd Marine regiments were linked.

° In the Philippines, all Japanese escape routes from the Cagayan valley in Luzon were blocked, and on Mindanao the final Japanese defense position was captured by the U.S. 24th Division.

June 10, 1945: The Japanese pocket on the Oroku Peninsula of Okinawa was reduced to an area 1,000 yards by 2,000 yards.

June 11, 1945: The Japanese on Oroku were forced into a 1,000-yard square but fought tenaciously.

June 12, 1945: Japanese troops on Oroku began committing mass suicide or surrendering.

June 13, 1945: All resistance ended on the Oroku Peninsula. A total of 159 Japanese were captured. About 200 bodies were found.

June 14, 1945: The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued directives to the top military leaders in the Pacific to prepare plans for the occupation of Japan in the event Tokyo suddenly capitulated.

June 17, 1945: U.S. Army forces pierced the final defense line of the Japanese Thirty-second Army on Okinawa. The commander of the Japanese naval base on Okinawa, Admiral Minoru Ota, was found dead, having committed hara-kiri.

June 18, 1945: Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., commander of the attacking U.S. Tenth Army, was killed by a Japanese shell on Okinawa.

° Eisenhower addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress as he began a series of victory celebrations in his honor. The next day, four million New Yorkers turned out to cheer Eisenhower in a 35-mile motorcade through the city.

June 20, 1945: Japanese civilians and troops on Okinawa began surrendering in greater numbers. Nearly a thousand soldiers laid down their arms, an unprecedented action by Imperial Army forces. By this day, Japanese air attacks on U.S. ships off Okinawa had killed 2,658 American sailors..

June 22, 1945: Okinawa was declared captured by U.S. forces. The commanding general of the Japanese defenders, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, committed suicide. Thus ended the 81-day campaign in which the Americans suffered their heaviest losses of the Pacific war. In securing the island considered essential for the invasion of Japan proper, 12,520 U.S. soldiers and marines were killed, and 36,631 wounded. About 110,000 Japanese were killed (90 percent of the number involved) and 7,400 were captured. Okinawan action virtually eliminated Japanese home air defenses as 7,830 planes were destroyed or lost in kamikaze attacks. Eight hundred Allied planes were downed. The U.S. Navy lost 4,907 men and 36 ships-none larger than a destroyer. About 180 Japanese vessels&emdash;including the largest battleship in the world, Yamato&emdash;were sunk. U.S. officials were alarmed by the ferocity of the Japanese on Okinawa and feared even greater resistance on the Japanese home islands. The battle for Okinawa thus was a key considerationin the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan.

June 23, 1945: U.5. paratroopers and glider forces linked up with a large Filipino guerrilla force on Luzon and began closing a trap around the Japanese.

June 26, 1945: The United Nations Charter was signed at the San Francisco UN Conference on International Organization (it was ratified Oct.24).

° U.S. B-29s began nighttime attacks on Japanese oil refineries.

June 27, 1945: A kamikaze hit the U.S. carrier Bunker Hill off Okinawa, killing 373 men.

June 29, 1945: Ruthenia was formally ceded to the Soviet Union by Czechoslovakia.

June 30, 1945: In the Philippines, the Luzon campaign was declared officially ended, but 11,000 Japanese were still in the Sierra Madre Mountains and 12,000 in the Ifugao-Bontoc area. (The Japanese lost 317,000 men in the Philippines campaign. Another 7,236 were captured. U.S. dead, wounded and missing totaled 60,228.)

July 2, 1945: The Okinawan campaign was declared officially ended.

° Only 200,000 people remained in Tokyo. All others were evacuated to safer areas. Japan said five million people had been killed or wounded in the American air raids.

July 3 , 1945: The Allies took over their zones of occupation in Berlin.

July 5, 1945: MacArthur announced the liberation of the Philippines, even as U.S. and Filipino guerrilla units began clearing out Japanese pockets of resistance around Sarangani Bay on Mindanao

July 10, 1945: More than 1,000 U.S. and British aircraft bombed the Tokyo area, concentrating on airfields and industrial facilities. It was the greatest assault yet on the Japanese capital.

July 12, 1945: Japan requested Moscow to serve as mediator to bring about a cease-fire with the western Allies.

July 14, 1945: A thousand naval aircraft raided Hokkaido and the port of Kamaishi. The latter was also bombarded by U.S. battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, the first naval gunfire directed against the Japanese home islands.

July 15, 1945: U.S. naval ships bombarded Muroran on Hokkaido. Ten large Japanese cities were devastated by U.S. bombers.

July 16-Aug 2, 1945: Leaders of the Big Three met in the final conference of the war, appropriately code named TERMINAL, in Potsdam, Germany. Stalin, Truman, and Churchill&emdash;initially&emdash;drew up terms for the surrender of Japan. The thrust of the conference was political, however, with the first indications of suspicion and mistrust manifesting themselves. In a real sense, Potsdam was the termination of World War II and the onset of the Cold War.

July 16, 1945: The first atomic bomb was exploded at the U.S. Test facility at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Truman was advised of the successful test at Potsdam in a terse coded message, "Babies satisfactorily born."

° A force of 500 B-29s bombed targets on Honshu and Kyushu. Altogether, more than 1,500 American planes pounded Japan.

July 17, 1945: Allied aircraft and Third Fleet ships attacked Tokyo and other key areas and encountered no defending planes or opposition of any kind. Battleships alone fired 2,000 tons of bombs on their targets.

July 21, 1945: U.S. radio broadcasts called on Japan to surrender or face destruction.

July 23-24, 1945: In a series of almost unopposed sea and air attacks, U.S. and British units pounded Japanese military positions on the home islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. More than 100 ships were sunk.

July 24, 1945: An air armada of 1,600 planes attacked the Japanese airfields, the naval base at Kure and ships in the Inland Sea. The battleships Hyuga, Ise, and Haruna were sunk. Six hundred B-29s bombed the Osaka-Nagoya area, Japan's second largest population center.

° On this day Truman told Stalin that the US had a powerful new bomb which would be used against the Japanese. Although he did not give details about the atomic weapon, it seems certain that Stalin already knew about the bomb from his spies in the United States.

July 25, 1945: In a statement from Potsdam the Allied leaders called on Japan to surrender or face "utter destruction." Radio Tokyo indicated Japan would accept peace terms but not unconditional surrender.

July 26, 1945: Winston Churchill was ousted as British prime minister as the Labor party was swept into power. Labor garnered 393 seats to 213 for the Conservatives (31 went to minor parties), while the popular vote was 47.8 percent Labor to 39.8 Conservative. Clement Attlee, leader of the Labor party and deputy prime minister in the Churchill coalition cabinet, was named head of the British government

July 27, 1945: Leaflets were dropped on Japan's major cities, warning of their destruction if the Japanese did not surrender.

July 28, 1945: Two thousand Allied planes bombed Kure, Kobe, and targets on the Inland Sea. The U.S. destroyer Callaghan was sunk by a suicide plane off Okinawa, the last ship to be destroyed by the kamikazes.

July 30, 1945: In a rather vague statement, whose translation has been challenged by some scholars, Tokyo rejected the Potsdam ultimatum.

July 31, 1945: Japan was told eight of its cities would be leveled if it did not surrender.

Aug. 1, 1945: Allied forces completely sealed off Japanese troops at Bum, at the southern tip of Bougainville.

Aug. 2, 1945: B-29s dropped 6,600 tons of bombs on five Japanese cities. Most of Toyama was obliterated.

Aug. 3, 1945: Japan was totally blockaded.

Aug. 6, 1945: A 9,000-pound atomic bomb with destructive power previously unimagined was dropped by the U.S. B-29 Enola Gay on Hiroshima at 8:15 A.M. It seared the center of the city for a fraction of a second with a heat of 300,0000 centigrade. It is still not clear how many people died. Official U.S. estimates of the dead were placed as high as 78,000. Japanese sources place the figure as high as 240,000 (about half the people in Hiroshima at the time).

Aug. 8, 1945: Russia declared war on Japan, effective the next day.

Aug. 9, 1945: The second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Casualties were estimated at 35,000. On the same day, Red Army troops invaded Manchuria, attacking from the Maritime Province. Another force attacked a thousand miles west from Transbaikalia, north of Mongolia.

Aug. 9-10, 1945: In an effort to destroy Japanese aircraft which had been moved to northern Honshu, U.S. and British carrier-based planes attacked airfields in continuous waves. Thirty-four of the Allied planes were downed, but 397 Japanese aircraft were destroyed and 320 damaged.

Aug.10, 1945: Tokyo announced the Japanese were willing to surrender but only if the status of the emperor remained unchanged.

Aug.11, 1945: The Allies responded to the conditional peace terms of the Japanese by declaring that the emperor would be subject to Allied authority.

Aug.12, 1945: Soviet troops advanced into northern Korea and invaded southern Sakhalin Island.

Aug.13, 1945: In one of the most concentrated raids of the war, 1,600 aircraft attacked Tokyo.

Aug.14, 1945: Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally.

Aug.15, 1945: V-J Day was proclaimed by the Allies. All offensive actions were ended. MacArthur was informed he would become Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). Emperor Hirohito went on radio for the first time to order all Japanese to lay down their arms.

JAPANESE MILITARY CASUALTIES (1937-1945)

Actions against U.S. forces 485,717

Actions against British and

Dutch forces 208,026

China 202,958

Actions in Australian battle

zones 199,511

French Indochina 2,803

Manchuria and U.S.S.R. 7,483

Other overseas 23,388

Japan proper 10,543

Total wounded 295,247

Missing in action 240,000

Total killed in action, all theaters 1,140,429

Aug.17, 1945: Indonesian nationalists proclaimed the independence of the Dutch East Indies.

Aug.19, 1945: A Japanese delegation arrived in Manila from Tokyo to receive instructions on the plans for the occupation of Japan and the signing of the surrender documents. MacArthur ordered a halt on all amphibious landing operations. Meanwhile in northeast China, Russian units linked up with Chinese Communist forces.

Aug.21, 1945: Japanese forces in Manchuria were told by their officers to surrender. The Kwantung Army surrendered at Hsinking.

Aug.22, 1945: For the first time in the war a Japanese force surrendered en masse. The garrison on Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands capitulated in a ceremony on an American destroyer escort.

Aug.23, 1945: Stalin announced that Soviet forces had occupied Manchuria, southern Sakhalin, Shimushiru, and Paramushiro in the Kuriles.

Aug.25, 1945: Radio Tokyo reported "groups are committing hara-kiri before the Imperial Palace in large numbers." General Yamashita informed the commander of the U.S. 32nd Division that he had ordered all Japanese troops in the Philippines to lay down their arms.

Aug.27, 1945: Victorious U.S. Navy ships steamed into Tokyo's Sugami Bay. Admiral Halsey, Third Fleet commander, led the force which was probably the greatest display of naval might in history. It included 23 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 26 cruisers, 116 destroyers and escorts, 12 submarines, and 185 other smaller ships.

Aug. 30, 1945: The Allied occupation of Japan began with the arrival of units of the U.S. 1st Marine Division at the Yokosuka naval base and the Army's 11th Airborne Division at the Atsugi air base.

Sept. 2, 1945: Japan surrendered. Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the formal instrument of surrender for Japan in Tokyo Bay aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur signed for the Allied powers, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz for the United States, General Hsu Yung-chang for China, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom, Lieutenant General K. Derevyanko for the Soviet Union, General Sir Thomas Blamey for Australia, Colonel L. Moore-Gosgrove for Canada, General Jacques Leclerc for France, Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich for the Netherlands and Air Vice-Marshal Sir L. M. Isitt for New Zealand. World War II ended.