Events 1 - 200 of 636
Okinawa and Iwo Jima
Jan 3 Admiral Chester Nimitz begins planning assaults on Okinawa and Iwo Jima in Japan
- Jan 3 Allies land on west coast of Burma, conquer Akyab
Churchill Visits France
Jan 3 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visits France
- Jan 3 Cato-Meridian School, New York, installs germicidal lamps in every room
- Jan 3 Greek General Plastiras forms government
- Jan 3 John Patrick's play "The Hasty Heart" premieres in NYC
- Jan 3 US aircraft carriers attack Okinawa
- Jan 4 Germans execute resistance fighters in Amsterdam
- Jan 4 US jeep-aircraft carrier Ommaney Bay sinks after Japanese kamikaze attack
- Jan 5 Pepe LePew debuts in Warner Bros cartoon "Odor-able Kitty"
- Jan 5 Surprise attack on Liese-Aktion-office on Marnix St, Amsterdam
Lord Haw-Haw
Jan 7 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) reports total German victory in the Ardennes
- Jan 7 The last surface engagement between Allies and Japanese in the Pacific campaign, World War II
- Jan 8 "Youth for Christ" organizes
- Jan 8 University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team sets an NCAA record by holding Arkansas State to 6 points in a 75-6 win
MacArthur Invades Philippines
Jan 9 US soldiers led by General Douglas MacArthur invades Philippines
- Jan 10 LA Railway (with 5 streetcar lines) forced to close
- Jan 10 No one is elected to baseball's Hall of Fame
- Jan 12 German forces in Belgium retreat in Battle of Bulge
- Jan 12 The Soviets begin a large offensive against the Nazis in Eastern Europe
- Jan 12 US Task Force 38 destroys 41 Japanese ships in Battle of South China Sea
Prokofiev's 5th Symphony
Jan 13 Sergei Prokofiev's 5th Symphony premieres by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Prokofiev, in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory
Manhattan Project
Jan 15 The Manhattan Project's G-5 Group, headed by Physicist's Donald Kerst and Seth Neddermeyer, take their first betatron pictures of a nuclear implosion at the Los Alamos Laboratory
Hitler Moves into His Bunker
Jan 16 Adolf Hitler moves into the Fuhrerbunker, his underground bunker in Berlin, where he lives until his suicide April 30
- Jan 16 Scottish 52nd land division and 1st Commando brigade-assault at Heinsberg
- Jan 16 US 1st & 3rd army meet at Houffalise
- Jan 17 Gilbert Dodds, record miler (4:05.3), retires to do gospel work
- Jan 17 Soviet army enters the devastated city of Warsaw and clears German resistance
- Jan 17 Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, arrested by Soviet secret police in Hungary
- Jan 18 Soviet Armed Forces enter Kraków, Poland to push Germans out, only to eventually occupy entire country
Roosevelt's Fourth Term
Jan 20 Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn-in for an unprecedented (and never to be repeated) 4th term as US President
- Jan 20 The Hungarian Provisional Government concludes an armistice with the USSR, US, and Britain, agree to pay reparations and to join the war against Germany
- Jan 21 WWII: British troops land on Ramree, near coast of Burma
- Jan 22 Burma highway reopens
- Jan 22 Heavy US air raid on Okinawa
- Jan 23 Dutch Premier Pieter Gerbrandy, exiled in London, tenders his resignation
Operation Hannibal
Jan 23 World War II: Karl Dönitz launches Operation Hannibal to evacuate German soldiers and civilians from Prussia by sea
- Jan 24 Scottish 52nd Lowland division occupies Heinsberg
- Jan 25 Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes 1st US city to fluoridate its water
- Jan 25 Japanese occupiers of Batavia arrest Indo-European youths
- Jan 25 NY Yankees sold by Ruppert estate to construction magnate Del Webb and partners Dan Topping and Larry MacPhail for $2.8 million
- Jan 25 West Africa 82nd division occupies Myohaung, Burma
- Jan 27 Nazi occupiers forbid food transport to West (The Netherlands)
- Jan 27 S Romberg, H&D Fields' musical premieres in NYC
- Jan 27 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland - now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day [1]
- Jan 27 Wally van Hall, Dutch banker and resistance leader, arrested
- Jan 28 Dutch airplanes dump pamphlets on Java
- Jan 28 General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell and truck convoy reopen Burma Road to China
- Jan 28 Swedish ships bring food to starving Netherlands
- Jan 30 American Rangers and Filipino resistance fighters liberate over 500 Allied POWs from Japanese at Cabanatuan
- Jan 30 German passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff torpedoed off Danzig by a Soviet submarine - killing about 9,000 people, the world's greatest maritime disaster
- Jan 31 Soviet troops reach the Oder River, less that 50 miles from Berlin
- Jan 31 US 4th Infantry division occupies Elcherrath
- Feb 1 US Army arrives at Siegfriedlinie
- Feb 2 Escape attempt at Mauthausen concentration camp
- Feb 3 Almost 1,000 Flying Fortresses drop 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin
- Feb 3 Walt Disney's "3 Caballeros" released
Yalta Conference
Feb 3 WWII: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union for the "Big Three" Yalta Conference
Conference of Interest
Feb 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss the final phase of World War II
- Feb 5 Big Racket becomes fastest race horse at 69t.6 kph (440 yd/20.8 s)
'I Shall Return'
Feb 5 US troops under General Douglas MacArthur enter Manila in the Philippines after a month long battle, ending three years of Japanese military occupation
- Feb 6 WWII: Russian Red Army crosses the Oder River between Poland and Germany
- Feb 6 WWII: US 8th Air Force bombs oil facilities in Magdeburg and Chemnitz, Germany
- Feb 7 General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila
- Feb 7 Harry Truman appoints Irwin C. Mollison judge of US Customs Court
- Feb 7 London, Washington and Moscow discuss final phase of World War II
- Feb 7 US 76th/5th Infantry divisions begin crossing the Sauer river near Echternach, Luxembourg, and breach the Siegfried Line
- Feb 8 Allied air attack on Goch, Kleef, Kalkar and Reichswald
Brown to Coach Cleveland
Feb 8 Paul Brown agrees to coach the new American football expansion team in Cleveland, which would later be named the Cleveland Browns after their coach
- Feb 9 -Feb 10] Germany destroys Ruhrdammen
- Feb 9 The Battle of the Atlantic: HMS Venturer sinks U-Boat 864 off the coast of Norway
- Feb 9 WAAF-corporal flies along the tail of a Spitfire
- Feb 10 "Rum and Coca-Cola" by the Andrews Sisters hits #1
- Feb 11 1st gas turbine propeller-driven airplane flight tested, Downey, CA
- Feb 11 Declaration of Liberated Europe signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin after the Yalta Conference
- Feb 12 SF selected for site of UN Conference
- Feb 12 Tornado strikes Montgomery, Alabama, with estimated Fujita scale of F3 intensity, kills 26, destroys about 100 houses, two warehouses, and a freight train;
- Feb 12 Tornado strikes near York and Livingston, Alabama, with estimated Fujita scale of F4 intensity, kills 11 people
Bombing of Dresden
Feb 13 Allied planes begin bombing the German city of Dresden, resulting in a devastating firestorm that destroys the city and kills over 22,000 people
- Feb 13 Gerbrandy Dutch government refuses Dutch Jewish right to buy
- Feb 13 Soviet forces capture Budapest after a 49-day battle with Nazi Germany that killed 159,000 people
- Feb 14 Peru, Paraguay, Chile & Ecuador joins UN
- Feb 14 Second day of the bombing of Dresden by Allied air forces
- Feb 14 World War II: Mostar is liberated by Yugoslav partisans.
- Feb 14 World War II: Prague is bombed probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.
- Feb 16 US forces land on Corregidor, complete conquest on March 3
- Feb 16 Venezuela declares war on Nazi Germany
- Feb 16 WWII: US Navy 5th Fleet aircraft carriers and planes begin two-day bombardment of airfields and aircraft plants near Tokyo, Japan; over 500 hundred Japanese aircraft are destroyed
- Feb 19 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma
- Feb 19 Brotherhood Day-1st celebrated
- Feb 19 US 5th Fleet launches invasion of Iwo Jima against the Japanese with 30,000 US Marines
- Feb 21 Battle of Monte Castello (Italy): Allied forces, including the first land battle of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, defeat Germans after three months of fierce fighting in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains
- Feb 21 Dutch Archbishop of Utrecht Johannes de Jong calls to the Allies for help with war casualties following the Nazi occupation of Netherlands
- Feb 21 Operation Veritable: British Army captures Goch from Germany, forcing German retreat away from the Rhineland
- Feb 21 WWII: US Army 10th Armored Division overthrows Germany's Orscholz line of defense
- Feb 22 Arab League forms (Cairo)
- Feb 22 British troops take Ramree Island, Burma
- Feb 22 Canadian 3rd Division occupies Moyland
- Feb 23 2nd Dutch government of Gerbrandy forms in London
- Feb 23 Canadian troops occupy Kalkar
- Feb 23 Operation Grenade: US Lieutenant General Simpson's 9th Army crosses Ruhr
- Feb 23 US Marines raise the flag of the United States on top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Pulitzer Prize winning photo of which by Joe Rosenthall later became iconic, inspiring the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture
- Feb 24 Egypt & Syria declare war on nazi-Germany
- Feb 24 Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree
- Feb 24 Manila freed from Japanese
- Feb 25 WWII: Turkey declares war on Germany
- Feb 26 Very heavy bombing on Berlin by 8th US Air Force
- Feb 27 Battle of US 94 Infantry
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Feb 28 Film adaptation of Betty Smith's novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" premieres; director Elia Kazan's first feature film stars Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, and Peggy Ann Garner
- Mar 1 British 43rd Division under General Hubert Essame occupies Xanten
- Mar 1 Chinese 30th division occupies Hsenwi
- Mar 1 US infantry regiment captures Mönchengladbach
- Mar 1 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces success of the Yalta Conference
- Mar 2 King Michael of Romania gives in to Communist government
- Mar 2 US 8th Air Force bombs Dresden
- Mar 3 RAF bombing error hits The Hague killing 511
- Mar 3 Roermond & Venlo, Netherlands, liberated
- Mar 3 US & Philippine forces recaptures Corregidor
- Mar 3 US 7th Army occupies last part of Westwall
- Mar 3 Winston Churchill visits Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters
- Mar 4 Finland declares war on Nazi Germany
Princess Elizabeth Becomes ATS Driver
Mar 4 United Kingdom's Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service (ATS) as a driver
- Mar 5 Allies bombs The Hague, Netherlands
- Mar 5 Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Alexander Patch meet in Lunéville, France
- Mar 5 US 7th Army Corps captures Cologne
- Mar 5 World War II: The Battle of the Ruhr begins.
- Mar 6 Chinese 38th division occupies Lashio
- Mar 6 Dutch resistance fighters kill two, and injure one Nazi officer in an attempt to hijack food supplies at de Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands
- Mar 6 Erich Honnecker & Erich Hanke flee Nazis
- Mar 6 Federico Garcia Lorca's "La Casa" premieres in Buenos Aires
Trampoline Patented
Mar 6 George Nissen of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, receives a patent for the first modern trampoline
- Mar 7 Attack on car of Netherlands SS Police Chief Hans Rauter by Dutch resistance, Rauter injured
- Mar 7 Cologne taken by allied armies
- Mar 7 US 9th Armoured Division attacks Remagen Germany, crosses Rhine
- Mar 8 "Kiss Me Kate" opens in Britain
- Mar 8 53 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 8 International Women's Day is 1st observed
- Mar 8 Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD) intelligence agency executes 116 prisoners, and one reluctant police official, at de Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands in response to raid by resistance forces two days earlier
- Mar 8 Phyllis M Daley is 1st black nurse sworn in as US Navy ensign
Firebombing of Tokyo
Mar 9 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs
- Mar 9 Japanese proclaim "independence" of Indo-China
- Mar 10 Deadliest air raid of World War II sets Tokyo on fire after night time B-29 bombings, more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians
Kesselring Succeeds Rundstedt
Mar 10 Fieldmarshal Albert Kesselring succeeds Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German Army Command in the West
3rd Army and 1st Army Make Contact
Mar 10 George S. Patton's 3rd U.S. Army makes contact with General Courtney Hodge's 1st U.S. Army
- Mar 10 Germany blows up Wessel Bridge on Rhine
- Mar 10 Japan grants occupied Vietnam independence
- Mar 10 US troops land in western Mindanao, Philippines in Operation VICTOR IV
- Mar 11 1,000 allied bombers harass Essen, 4,662 ton bombs
- Mar 11 Flemish nazi collaborator Maria Huygens sentenced to death
- Mar 12 30 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 12 Italy's Communist Party (CPI) calls for armed uprising in Italy
- Mar 12 NY is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
- Mar 12 USSR returns Transylvania to Romania
Queen Returns from Exile
Mar 13 Dutch monarch Queen Wilhelmina returns to Netherlands at Eede, after five years in exile in the UK
- Mar 13 Nazi Sicherheitsdienst arrests Dutch resistance fighter Henry Werkman
- Mar 14 RAF bomb cuts railway link Hannover-Hamm
17th Academy Awards
Mar 15 17th Academy Awards: "Going My Way", Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman win
- Mar 15 As a symbol of wartime baseball, Bert Shepard (one-legged WWII veteran) begins a successful tryout as a pitcher for the Washington Senators
- Mar 15 Billboard publishes its 1st album chart (King Cole Trio is #1)
- Mar 15 Catholic University of Nijmegen reopens
- Mar 16 Würzburg, Germany is 90% destroyed, with 5,000 dead, in only 20 minutes by British bombers
- Mar 17 Allied ships bomb North-Sumatra
Richard 1st to Score 50
Mar 18 Montreal Canadien Maurice "Rocket" Richard becomes the 1st NHLer to score 50 goals
- Mar 18 US Army Air Force completes largest bombing raid on Berlin Germany: Over 1200 bombers drop 3,000 tons of explosives [1]
- Mar 18 US Task Force 58 attacks targets on Kyushu, Japan
- Mar 19 800 killed as Kamikaze attacked USS Franklin off Japan
- Mar 19 Adolf Hitler issues "Nero Decree" to destroy all German factories
- Mar 19 British 36th division conquers Mogok (ruby mine)
- Mar 19 US Task Force 58 attacks ships near Kobe/Kure
- Mar 20 US 70th Infantry Division captures Saarbrucken, immediately prior the invasion of Germany by the western Allies
- Mar 21 1st Japanese kamikaze "flying bombs" (MXY-7 Ohka) attack Okinawa
- Mar 21 During WW II Allied bombers begin 4-day raid over Germany
- Mar 21 Dutch Resistance fighter Hannie Schaft arrested by Nazi police
- Mar 22 Arab League forms with adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt
- Mar 22 US 3rd Army crosses Rhine at Nierstein
Battle of Okinawa
Mar 23 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion; it would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II
- Mar 23 British 7th Black Watch crosses the Rhine into Germany
- Mar 23 British Prime Minister Churchill visits Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen
British Cross the Rhine
Mar 23 Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey becomes the first British commander to cross the Rhine during the Allied invasion of Germany
S. S. Cars Rebranded Jaguar
Mar 23 The Swallow Sidecar Company headed by William Lyons agrees to change its name to Jaguar
Allied Generals Discuss Advance
Mar 24 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery and Omar Bradley discuss advance in Germany
- Mar 24 Operation Varsity: In the largest one-day airborne operation of all time, British, US & Canadian paratroopers land east of the Rhine in Northern Germany
- Mar 24 US minesweepers reach Kerama Retto, South coast of Okinawa
- Mar 25 US 1st army breaks out bridgehead near Remagen, Germany after crossing the Rhine
- Mar 25 US 4th Armored div arrives at Hanau & Aschaffenburg
- Mar 25 US Northern Tractor Flotilla departs Ulithi to Okinawa
- Mar 26 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton launch attack at Remagen on the Rhine
- Mar 26 Allies led by US Marine Corps secure island of Iwo Jima from Imperial Japanese Army, after 18,000 Japanese & 6,000 Americans killed
- Mar 26 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill looks over at the Rhine (near Ginsberg)
- Mar 26 Kamikaze attack on US battle fleet near Kerama Retto
- Mar 26 US 7th Army crosses Rhine at Worms
- Mar 26 Venray soccer team forms
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