1944 - Political Events

Political Events

An Italian court finds former minister of state Emilio De Bono, 77, guilty of treason and a firing squad executes him at Verona January 11 (see 1943). Benito Mussolini has his 40-year-old son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano executed the same day, but Il Duce remains at large as Allied troops storm ashore from Higgins-built assault vessels on Anzio beach January 22, putting them within 25 miles of Rome after the start of a new assault on the Gustav Line to the south. The Germans have just withdrawn their patrols in the Anzio area to reinforce the Gustav Line, but Gen. J. P. Lucas misses his chance to advance on Rome. He has the men of his VI Corps dig foxholes for 2 days to consolidate their beachhead, the Tuskegee airmen of the 99th Army Air Corps squadron shoot down 12 German fighter planes in two successive days over Anzio, but the Germans rush in reinforcements, firing from the Alban Hills to pin down Allied troops.

The RAF bombs Berlin January 20, dropping 2,300 tons of bombs in an action that provokes protests February 9 in the House of Lords.

Soviet troops recapture Novgorod January 20, relieve Leningrad completely a week later after the city's 872-day siege, reach the border of prewar Poland in February, and take Krivoi Rog in the Ukraine February 22 after trapping 10 German divisions near Cherkassy.

The 96th Bomb Squadron of the U.S. Fifth Army under the command of Air Corps major Bradford A. Evans destroys the historic Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino February 15, having dropped leaflets the day before addressed to "Italian Friends" and saying, "We have been especially careful to avoid shelling the Monte Cassino monastery. The Germans have known how to benefit from this. But now the fighting has swept closer to its sacred precincts . . . We give you warning so that you may save yourselves. We warn you urgently: Leave the monastery. Leave it at once." Gen. Frido von Senger und Etterlin has not used the abbey as an observation post, but he has employed its ruins as a fortress located 1,702 feet above the main road from Naples to Rome, and he has been evacuating the monks and civilians since January as Allied forces approached. Allied troops have been sitting ducks for German artillery and have taken heavy casualties: British-born Lt. Gen. Bernard C. (Cyril) Freyburg, 54, is commander in chief of New Zealand forces, Major Gen. Sir Francis (Ivan Simms) Tucker commands the 4th Indian division, and they have demanded that the abbey be destroyed despite its cultural importance.

Allied aircraft begin Big Week February 20 with more than 1,700 bombers taking off from English airfields to attack Germany's aircraft industry, including a Messerschmidt assembly plant at Leipzig and other such targets. U.S. high-level bombers begin daylight attacks March 6 under the direction of Gen. Carl Truesdell Jr., using the Norden bombsight first developed in 1927 and still a U.S. secret. Truesdell also drops supplies to Polish patriots in the streets of Warsaw.

German troops invade Hungary March 19, even though it is clear that Hitler is playing a losing hand (see 1943). The Germans oust Premier Miklós Kállay, whose policy has been to fight the Russians while making peaceful overtures to the Western powers; he goes into hiding, will later be taken prisoner, and will be held at Dachau and, after that, Mauthausen until the end of the war (see 1946).

Soviet troops cross the Dniester March 19, Gen. Ivan Stepanovich Konev's First Ukrainian Army traps 100,000 Germans in the Korsun salient and Konev is made a marshal of the Soviet Union in March. Adolf Hitler dismisses Gen. Erich von Manstein March 30 after he questions der Führer's decisions with regard to the Eastern Front. The Russians retake Odessa April 10, and they retake Sevastopol May 9, trapping from 60,000 to 100,000 Germans. The Germans surrender, but the Russians take no prisoners; they round up 300,000 to 500,000 Crimean Tatars who welcomed the Germans and send them into exile in Central Asia as they clear the Ukraine of German invaders; thousands of Chechens are forcibly moved farther east to prevent their collaborating with the enemy.

Allied airmen escape the night of March 24 from the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III 60 miles west of Frankfurt; most are British and Commonwealth fliers, 73 of the 76 who make their way out of the tunnel they have dug are eventually captured, and 50 are shot to death by the Gestapo on orders from der Führer.

Polish forces in Italy finally take what remains of Monte Cassino May 18 after nearly 6 months of Allied efforts to capture the abbey and break through the German lines. The battle for Monte Cassino has taken more than 60,000 Allied and German lives, more thousands have been wounded; about 1,000 men have died in the final assault, and most of the survivors are too exhausted to climb the final 200 yards.

Allied troops liberate Rome June 4 as German forces withdraw to the "Gothic Line" after dogged resistance and U.S. Fifth Army units under the command of Gen. Mark Clark enter the city to jubilant acclaim. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander has had overall command in Italy and receives credit for having used methods that compelled the enemy to evacuate the eternal city without subjecting it to destructive fighting.

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D-Day on the Normandy beachheads cost thousands of Allied lives, but the successful landings opened the road to Paris.

June 6 (D-Day) sees Allied troops storm ashore on Normandy beaches under the supreme command of Gen. Eisenhower, whose forces take Cherbourg June 6. Bad weather has delayed Operation Overlord, which involves the largest naval force ever assembled, but Eisenhower seizes upon a temporary clearing to launch the assault. It begins with a drop of paratroopers under the command of Gen. James M. Gavin, 37, and British airborne forces landed from wooden gliders towed by 833 C-47s; they manage to capture the town of Ste. Mère Eglise, although most of them are killed, and of the U.S. troops who land on Omaha Beach after a rough Channel crossing some 2,500 are killed by day's end and about 12,000 wounded (the men storm ashore from Higgins-built assault vessels). The U.S. troops landed at Utah Beach encounter far less resistance, as do the British and Canadian troops landed on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches; they move more than a mile inland by nightfall, while those landed on Omaha Beach have only a fragile foothold on the shore. An intrepid German spy at Istanbul has stolen allied plans for the invasion, and they are in Nazi hands, but a double agent has led the German high command to believe that the Normandy landings are a diversion to draw Hitler's panzer divisions south to Normandy while 30 divisions under the command of Gen. George S. Patton strike at Calais. The Allies have made no contingency plans, betting everything on success. Gen. Rommel is in Germany, celebrating his wife's 50th birthday; he rushes to the French coast and tries to persuade Gen. von Runstedt and der Führer that the Normandy landing is the real thing, Allied intelligence uses its knowledge of the secret German code to keep abreast of the split in German thinking, the flow of false information is redoubled, and the inability of commanders on the ground to make decisions delays efforts that would have driven the invaders back into the sea. Allied aircraft outnumber the Lüftwaffe 30 to one, and the Germans have failed to train enough pilots for a two-front war. Royal Air Force Marshal Arthur William Tedder, 53, plays a key role in the landing, as he did in Sicily last year and in North Africa before that; Admiral Bertram H. Ramsey, Royal Navy, commands Allied naval forces. The Germans do not concentrate their defense efforts until late afternoon, and some 176,000 Allied troops are ashore by day's end. French women who have consorted with enemy occupiers are shorn of their hair as the Germans fall back. The Normandy beachhead is secured by June 12.

Remote-controlled German V-1 (Vengeance) rockets hit London beginning June 13, each carries a ton of explosive, and they cause so much damage that more than 1.5 million Londoners are evacuated (see von Braun, 1942).

League of Nations promoter David Davies, 1st Baron Davies (of Llandinam), dies at his native Llandinam, Wales, June 16 at age 64.

Minsk falls to Soviet forces July 3; 100,000 Germans are captured.

A Vichy French firing squad executes former cabinet minister Georges Mandel, 59, at Fontainebleau July 7 for opposing pro-German policies.

Iceland attains the status of an independent republic July 17. A sovereign state since 1918 but a dependency of Denmark, the country discovered by the Vikings in 874 has been occupied since May 1940 by British and then by U.S. forces to prevent seizure by Germany, but withdrawal of U.S. troops will not begin until the end of 1959.

Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt July 20 at Rastenburg in East Prussia and continues to direct the Wehrmacht as it falls back before the advancing Allied armies. Count Claus Schek von Stauffenberg, 37, has lost an eye, his right hand, and two fingers of his left while fighting with the Afrika Corps; he and some of Hitler's other generals have plotted against Hitler, a bomb explodes, but although der Führer is knocked unconscious he suffers no more than a punctured eardrum (several of his aides are killed by the blast along with a Lüftwaffe general). Military intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, now 57, is arrested and sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria, where he will be executed next year, and an estimated 4,500 others will be executed as well, including Admiral Canaris's chief of staff Gen. Hans Oster, Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, and Gen. Erich Hoepner. Former minister of war Otto Gessler, now 69, is arrested and will spend 7 months in a concentration camp. The Gestapo sends Karl Haushofer to Dachau and imprisons his son Albrecht, a University of Berlin professor of geopolitics, in Berlin's Moabit Prison (see 1945).

Adolf Hitler appoints his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels "General Plenipotentiary for Total War Measures" in July as he becomes increasingly reclusive. Goebbels gives false reassurances that Germany is winning her war for world domination and hints at a "secret cache" of miracle weapons. A Messerschmidt Me 262 attacks a British photo-reconnaissance Mosquito over Munich July 25, becoming the first jet aircraft to be used in combat (see 1943). British Gloster Meteor jets go into action against Me 262s, and most of the German jets remain on the ground for lack of fuel, spare parts, or trained pilots. Ernst Heinkel has unveiled his own jet aircraft design, but although the He-178 has performed well against Willy Messerschmidt's Me-109 the Lüftwaffe high command has refused to fund it. Frank Whittle's design will evolve into engines with 50,000 to 60,000 pounds, enabling jet aircraft to fly at much higher altitudes and higher speeds, but by the 1950s most jets will employ Hans von Ohain's axial-flow engine rather than Whittle's centrifugal-flow engine.

Soviet troops cross the Curzon line in Poland July 23, the Kremlin recognizes the Lublin Committee of Polish Liberation in Moscow July 26 as the governing authority of a liberated Poland, Warsaw rises against the Germans August 1 on orders from Gen. Bor-Komorowski (Tadeusz Komorowski), 49, of the Polish underground, who responds to an appeal by Moscow Radio, but Soviet troops are unable to come to the support of Bor-Komorowski. The Germans crush the uprising, inflict heavy losses, and force Bor-Komorowski to surrender along with a few survivors after 2 months of ferocious fighting.

Allied forces break out of the Normandy beachhead at Avranches August 1, Gen. Omar Bradley takes command of the 1.2 million-man U.S. 12th Army Group a few days later.

German industrialists who include members of the Krupp and Messerschmidt families meet in secret August 10 at the Paris hotel Maison Rouge under the chairmanship of financier Hjalmar Schacht, now 67, and plan ways to help Nazi leaders get out of the country to escape Allied retribution after the war and get hundreds of millions of dollars in assets into foreign banks where they cannot be touched.

Marshal Konev's army crosses the Vistula in August, sweeps across Poland, and becomes the first Soviet force to enter German territory.

Allied forces cross the Loire August 11, the Canadian 1st Army reaches Potigny August 15, and as many as 300,000 Germans find themselves trapped in what is soon called the "Falaise Pocket," an area 30 miles long and 15 wide with the U.S. 1st Army at its rear, Gen. Patton's U.S. 3rd Army on its southern flank, Field Marshal Montgomery's British 2nd Army on its northern flank. The U.S. 7th Army lands in southern France August 15 and begins moving up the Rhine Valley. French forces invade southern France August 16 under the command of Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, now 55, and begin a drive that will take them into southern Germany and Austria. Adolf Hitler relieves Gen. Günther von Kluge of his command in the Falaise Pocket, replacing him with Field Marshal Walter Model, 53; von Kluge is recalled to Germany, and swallows a cyanide tablet August 17 at age 61 rather than face execution (so do some others suspected of having participated in the July 20 assassination plot). Allied paratroopers land behind German lines in the Netherlands August 17 as Field Marshal Montgomery launches Operation Market Basket to secure control of bridges across the Rhine, Gen. Patton's 3rd Army reaches the Seine August 19, and Polish forces play a key role in cutting down or capturing the Germans as they retreat through the Falaise Gap between August 13 and 21, losing half their men and much of their equipment (which is more complex and sometimes less reliable than Allied equipment). Some 10,000 Germans are killed in the slaughter of men and horses, 50,000 are captured, but 200,000 escape.

French troops retake Marseilles August 23 and liberate Paris after more than 4 years of German occupation. Gen. de Gaulle enters Paris August 25, followed by the U.S. 1st Army under the command of Georgia-born Gen. Courtney (Hicks) Hodges, 57; the French provisional government moves there from Algiers August 30.

Romania surrenders to Soviet forces August 24; the Red Army enters Bucharest August 30, and Romanian troops redirect their efforts to fight the Germans.

Delegates to two international conferences at Washington, D.C., discuss the formation of a United Nations organization that will succeed in doing what the League of Nations failed to do (see 1943). Both meetings are held at Dumbarton Oaks, the 16-acre Georgetown estate of career diplomat Robert Bliss and his wife, Mildred, whose house has stood since 1801.

Finland names 77-year-old field marshal Carl G. von Mannerheim president in hopes that he can negotiate a separate peace with the Soviet Union, and an armistice negotiated in September by Mannerheim with Soviet diplomat Aleksandra Kollontai, now 72, ends hostilities between Moscow and Helsinki (see 1940). Finland has ceded 41,540 square kilometers (16,000 square miles) of territory to the USSR and in 1941 joined with Germany (under pressure from Berlin) against the Russians. Former prime minister Pehr Evind Svinhufvud has died at Luumäki February 29 at age 82. Cabinet minister Väinö Tanner, now 63, is imprisoned at Moscow's insistence and will not be released until 1949. A coalition government is formed under the leadership of diplomat Juho Kusti Paasikivi, now 73, with Mannerheim continuing as president (see 1946).

British anti-aircraft and RAF fighter planes destroy 80 percent of incoming German rockets by August (De Havilland Mosquito planes are credited with downing more than 600 of the missiles), and the rocket attacks stop in early September, but they are succeeded September 8 by faster and deadlier V-2 rockets (buzz bombs with warheads of nearly one ton each); they also hit Antwerp, killing hundreds. These V-2 rockets take an increasing toll in Britain despite efforts by Allied bombers to destroy launching sites at Peenemünde and knock out the German factories producing the bombs. Designed, as were the V-1 rockets, by Wernher von Braun, the liquid-fueled missiles are called V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe Zwei, revenge weapon two) bombs and travel at more than three times the speed of sound, but they cannot pinpoint prime targets and will have little strategic effect. French scientist Henri Moureu, 45, has kept his country's stocks of heavy water (deuterium oxide) out of German hands and gives the Allies the location of the German's V-2 bases; U.S. bombers will destroy the bases over the next 6 months, but V-2 rockets will continue to fall until late March of next year, by which time some 12,000 will have landed in southern England, killing about 2,700, maiming and injuring another 6,500, and causing enormous property damage.

Hawker Aircraft ceases production of its Hurricane fighter plane, having produced more than 14,000 Hurricanes in some 20 variations (see 1940). The plane has been modified to carry bomb and rocket racks and heavier guns, including 40-millimeter cannon.

Idaho-born Marine aviator Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, 31, shoots down three Japanese planes January 3 but is himself shot down in Rabaul harbor, picked up by a Japanese submarine, and taken to a prison camp. A veteran of Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers who saw service in China, Boyington rejoined the Marines in 1942, organized the 212 (Black Sheep) Squadron, has shot down 28 enemy planes, and is awarded the Medal of Honor (it is not known whether or not he is alive, but he will be released next year).

Allied forces in the Pacific take Kwajalein Island February 6 and attack the main Japanese Central Pacific base at Truk February 16. Known as the Gibraltar of the Pacific, it has provided shelter for ships of the Imperial Navy since the start of the war, but carrier-based planes sink dozens of ships and ground forces land on Eniwetok in the Marshalls February 17.

Japanese forces in Burma launch a major offensive March 7 with the intent of invading India (see 1942). Gen. Orde C. Wingate dies in a crash of his B-25 Mitchell bomber March 24 at age 41; his specially trained jungle fighters—the Chindits, or Wingate's Raiders—have harried Japanese forces in northern Burma since 1942, thrusting far behind enemy lines with supplies dropped by air. The Japanese launch an attack March 29 in the Imphal Plain and April 5 on Kohima. Lieut. Gen. Sir William J. Slim, 52, directs the British 14th Army in a stout defense, Chindit forces harry the attackers, the Japanese withdraw from Kohima May 30, and by June 22 the Japanese have begun a retreat to the Chindwin River, having lost 53,000 men; the British and their Indian regiments have lost 4,000 (13,000 wounded have been evacuated by air). Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army has grown to number some 50,000 and fights the British not only in Burma but also within India's borders at Imphal (see 1943); keeping his forces free from Japanese involvement, Bose occupies Coxtown on the Indian border, and his men shout, "Delhi Chalo!" ("Let's march to Delhi!"). Gen. Slim repels a Japanese invasion of India, Gen. Stilwell continues work on the Lido-Burma Road, the Japanese communications line is broken by the end of August with help from 3,000 U.S. elite volunteer jungle fighters of the 5307th Composite division (led by Gen. Frank D. Merrill, 41, and known as Merrill's Marauders), but the Chindits are too exhausted to continue (see 1945).

Allied forces land at Hollandia in New Guinea April 22 and capture Salamaua as Gen. MacArthur advances toward the Philippines. The troops come ashore on assault craft built by Higgins Industries, whose boss Andrew Jackson Higgins has designed 12,964 (92 percent) of the U.S. Navy's 14,072 vessels and built 8,865 of them—high-speed PT boats, antisubmarine boats, dispatch boats, 170-foot freight supply ships, and specialized patrol craft as well as landing craft—at his own New Orleans plants, which are fully integrated and pay blacks and women the same wages as white males.

A U.S. Navy task force commanded by Chicago-born Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery, 43, of the carrier U.S.S. Guadalcanal seizes the German submarine U-505 June 4 off French West Africa in the first capture at sea of any foreign warship since 1815. The Americans obtain valuable military secrets that include a German radio code and a new type of torpedo, but the coup is kept secret so that the Germans will believe the submarine has sunk.

A B-29 Superfortress attacks Japanese railyards at Bangkok June 5 in the first combat mission by the strategic bomber first tested in September 1942. More than a third of the 26,000 workers who have been working around the clock to assemble the huge planes are women, employed in factories at Wichita, Omaha, and Marietta, Ga., with parts built by General Motors and Chrysler from parts made by nearly 4,000 sub-assemblers all over the United States. B-29s attack the Yawata steelworks on Japan's home island of Kyushu June 15. The Battle of the Philippine Sea June 19 ends with a loss of 402 Japanese planes, while only 27 U.S. planes are downed. Admiral Soemu Toyoda has won appointment as commander in chief of Japan's combined fleet May 3 following the death March 31 of Admiral Mineichi Koga in a plane crash in the Philippines, but Toyoda has never commanded forces at sea, his subordinates have little confidence in him, and he has been unable to prevent the defeat of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, 58, who has been a leading advocate of aviation in the Imperial Navy.

The U.S. Army Air Corps has nearly 80,000 aircraft by July and employs more than 2.4 million men.

Saipan in the Marianas falls to U.S. troops July 9 after Lieut. Gen. Yoshitsugo Saito and 31,000 troops have fought to the death in a 23-day battle that has cost 3,500 U.S. lives. Navajo code talkers play a crucial role in the U.S. victory as they did earlier on Guadalcanal (see 1942; Iwo Jima, 1945). More than 2,000 Japanese civilians throw themselves and their children off cliffs at the island's northern tip; to be captured would be a disgrace, they have been told, and only 1,000 surrender July 9. Japan's 473 carrier-based planes are outmatched by 956 U.S. planes, and three of Japan's nine carriers are sunk. Losing more than 400 planes and nearly that many flyers effectively ends Japan's viability as an air power. New B-29 superfortresses—25 percent faster than B-17s or B-24s—can reach Tokyo from Saipan with 20,000-ton bombloads, and the island's conquest marks a turning point in the war. Former prime minister Fumimaro Konoye argues that the government should begin negotiations to end the war and leads a peace delegation to Moscow; Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov refuses to see him. The Tokyo government falls July 18, but a new government takes office and continues hostilities.

Thailand's dictator Luang Phibunsongkhram resigns under pressure in July, having gained some minor territorial concessions in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Malaya through its alliance with Japan (see 1942). Free Thai overseas resistance groups have helped their counterparts to conduct raids on Japanese facilities and infiltrate the government; a new civilian government takes power, controlled from behind the scenes by Phibunsongkhram's former colleague Pridi Phanomyong (see 1946).

Former Iranian leader Reza Shah Pahlevi dies at Johannesburg July 26 at age 66; former Egyptian khedive Abbas II at Geneva December 20 at age 70.

Antwerp falls to the Allies September 4, and Brussels is liberated September 5. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill meet at Quebec from September 11 to 16 (the Octagon Conference) and decide to advance against Germany on two western fronts rather than making a concerted drive on Berlin. The decision will later be criticized as having permitted Soviet troops to take the German capital (see 1945). British airborne troops landed September 17 at Eindhoven and Arnhem are unable to outflank the German Westwall defenses and sustain heavy losses before the survivors are withdrawn; by September, the U.S. 1st Army under Gen. Bradley has breached the Siegfried Line and is fighting on German soil—the first invasion of Germany from the west since Napoleon's time; the Allies retake Aachen in the Rhineland October 21.

Moscow declares war on Bulgaria September 5, Soviet columns enter Sofia September 16, and Belgrade falls to Soviet and Yugoslav partisan forces October 20.

British and Greek Partisan forces retake Athens October 13, other troops liberate Albania and establish communist leader Enver Hoxha, now 35, as prime minister. The Communist-controlled EAM-ELAS (Ethnikón Apeleftherotikón Métopon-Ethnikós Laikós Apeleftherotikós Strátos, or National Liberation Front-National Popular Liberation Army) has cooperated at times with the EDES (Ellinoos Dimokratikos Ethnikós Strátos, or Greek Democratic National Army) in actions against German occupation troops, but the EAM-ELAS has set up a provisional government in the mountains, and although the British bring the two groups together in an uneasy coalition, it breaks apart within a few weeks when the EAM-ELAS refuses to disband its guerrilla army, whose men overrun all of Greece except Athens and Salonika. Civil war breaks out at Athens December 3, and the British military is able to suppress it only with great difficulty (see 1945).

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide October 14 at age 52. Adolf Hitler has suspected him of disloyalty and ordered SS troops to surround his house; they provide him with the cyanide pill that he swallows.

Hungary's Admiral Horthy announces October 14 that he will seek an armistice with the Allies; the Germans that day send 40 Tiger tanks into Budapest with orders to overthrow Horthy, who capitulates October 16. Fascist Arrow Cross Party leader Ferenc Szálasi, 47, takes over as nominal head of the country and uses his thugs to root out Jews, leftists, and deserters.

RAF pilot G. (Geoffrey) Leonard Cheshire, 27, is awarded the Victoria Cross; he commanded the 617 Squadron that has destroyed key German dams on the Möhne and Eder dams, producing heavy floods in the Ruhr area and thereby slowing industrial production. The rotating, bouncing bombs dropped by the RAF have been invented by aeronautical designer and military engineer Barnes (Neville) Wallis, 56.

U.S. Army and Marine forces take the airstrip at Munda Point on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands August 5 after more than a month of combat in which 9,000 Japanese defenders in camouflaged pillboxes have held off 45,000 Americans. More than 1,100 U.S. lives have been lost and several thousand wounded have been evacuated in the fight to establish a base for Marine fighter planes.

Guam in the Pacific falls to U.S. Marine and Army forces August 10 after a 21-day battle; the U.S. forces take Pelelieu in the Palaus in October and begin carrier-based raids on Formosa (Taiwan), where 300 Japanese planes are destroyed October 12.

Philippines president-in-exile Manuel Quezon dies of tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, N.Y., August 1 at age 65 and is succeeded by Vice President Sergio Osmeña, 65, who founded the Nacionalista Party in 1907 and has remained in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. He will serve until the elections in 1946.

U.S. forces launch an amphibious invasion of the Philippines October 20, landing four divisions. President Roosevelt has given approval in late July to Gen. MacArthur's plan to make the Philippine Archipelago America's next objective in the Pacific, Lieut. Col. Henry A. Mucci, a Pearl Harbor survivor from Bridgeport, Conn., has led a small, preliminary Ranger assault force ashore on the central Philippine island of Leyte October 18 to clear the way, and Gen. MacArthur walks down the ramp of a landing craft October 20, wading ashore in an event carefully staged for photographers and newsreel cameramen. "People of the Philippines, I have returned," says MacArthur into a microphone. "The hour of your redemption is here . . . Rally to me." But the Japanese are intent on holding the Philippines lest their troops be cut off from oil supplies in the East Indies.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf from October 23 to 26 is the largest engagement in naval history and leaves the Imperial Navy crippled. A Japanese flotilla commanded by Vice-Admiral Shoji Nishimura has steamed north from Brunei to block the landing of U.S. troops. Another flotilla has steamed south from the Ryukus under the command of Vice-Admiral Kiyohide Shima. Their plan is to rendezvous in the Mindinao Sea and proceed through Surigao Strait into Leyte Gulf, where they are to join their forces with those of Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, 55, who is coming across the Palawan Passage and Sibuyan Sea from Lingga Roads, near Singapore. Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa has headed southward from Japan with his remaining aircraft carriers, but the high command has intended his 35-year-old converted battleships mainly as decoys, they carried only about 100 planes, and Ozawa has lost most of them in combat. Nishimura arrives in the Mindanao Sea October 24 with two battleships, a cruiser, and four destroyers, but California-born Rear Admiral Robert B. (Bostwick) Carney, 49, has devised a plan to stop the Imperial Navy. Torpedoes from five U.S. destroyers knock out one of Nishimura's battleships and all but one of his destroyers; when his surviving vessels reach the neck of Surigao Strait they are met by New Hampshire-born Admiral Thomas C. (Cassin) Kinkaid, 56, whose 7th Fleet has six battleships, five of them survivors of Pearl Harbor, plus four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and 18 escort carriers. Firing by radar direction from a distance of 12 miles, the six-, eight-, 14-, and 16-inch guns of Kinkaid's fleet sink Nishimura's other battleshi p, cripple his cruiser, and force his sole remaining destroyer to reverse course. Vice-Admiral Shima arrives, collides with Nishimura's foundering cruiser, and withdraws, but U.S. ships and planes sink three of his ships, including Nishimura's flagship. U.S. submarines have intercepted Kurita's 24-ship fleet in the Palawan Passage October 23, sinking two of his cruisers, including his flagship, and damaging a third; rescued from the sea, Kurita has transferred his flag to the Yamato which, like her sister ship the Musashi, has 18-inch guns that fire 3,000-pound projectiles (they are the world's largest battleships). Kurita's carrier planes lure Admiral Nimitz and his entire 3rd Fleet out of Pearl Harbor while Kurita steams unopposed through San Bernardino Strait and bears down on Kinkaid's escort carriers, taking them by surprise off Samar and inflicting heavy damage. Kinkaid and Nimitz signal Admiral Halsey for help, and he heads for Samar with his battleship group while part of Nimitz's 3rd Fleet sinks Kurita's carriers off Cape Engaño to the north. Kurita believes himself to be outnumbered and breaks off the engagement, retreating toward Lingga Roads while kamikaze suicide pilots flying converted Zero fighter planes make last-ditch efforts to inflict as much damage as possible on the Americans after a 3-day battle that has involved 282 ships and 200,000 seamen and aviators over an expanse of some 100,000 square miles of sea. The U.S. Navy loses only one light cruiser, two escort carriers, and three destroyers, the Imperial Navy three battleships, one large carrier, three light carriers, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and 11 destroyers, but Vice Admiral Ozawa acquits himself with honor and the Japanese succeed in landing reinforcements on the west coast of Leyte.

Gen. Eisenhower delivers a Thanksgiving Day address to the nation, saying, "Let us thank God for Higgins Industries, management, and labor which has given us the landing boats with which to conduct our campaign." (Adolf Hitler has called boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins the "new Noah.")

Superfortress raids on Tokyo from Saipan begin November 24.

The "unsinkable" new Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano steams out of Tokyo Bay on her maiden voyage November 28 with an escort of three destroyers en route to Kure for final construction, radar aboard the U.S. submarine Archerfish under the command of Capt. Joseph F. Enright, 34, picks up what looks at first like an oil tanker 12 miles away, the Shinano's lookout spots the submarine, Capt. Toshio Abe tries to escape, but four of the six torpedoes fired by the Archerfish at 3:17 the next morning find their target, the 59,000-ton carrier goes down, the Archerfish dives to 400 feet to escape depth charges, none of her 81 crewmen are hurt, but the Japanese destroyers are able to pick up only about 1,000 of the 2,514 sailors and civilian workers who were aboard the Shinano.

U.S. forces on Leyte take Ormoc December 10, U.S. forces invade Mindoro Island December 15, but the Battle of Leyte rages until December 25, with U.S. generals Walter Krueger, Franklin Sibert, and John Hodge commanding about 150,000 men against Lieut. Gen. Sosaku Suzuki, who is heavily reinforced by Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita but has only 212 planes and cannot hold the island. Japanese ground forces sustain at least 74,000 casualties, most of them killed but many taken prisoner; the Americans lose 15,584 killed, wounded, and missing in action.

Former U.S. senator (R. Neb.) George W. Norris dies at McCook, Neb., September 2 at age 74; former New York governor and 1928 presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith (the "Happy Warrior" in President Roosevelt's phrase) dies at his native New York October 4 at age 70; Wendell L. Willkie has suffered a heart attack in August and dies at New York October 8 at age 52.

President Roosevelt wins reelection to a fourth term with 53 percent of the popular vote and 432 electoral votes. His Republican opponent is New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, now 42, who receives 46 percent of the popular vote but fails to carry his home state and winds up with only 99 electoral votes. Washington wit Alice Roosevelt Longworth has said of Gov. Dewey, a diminutive man with black hair, black moustache, and a faint smile, "How do you expect people to vote for a man who looks like a bridegroom on a wedding cake?" Party leaders have dumped Vice President Henry A. Wallace because he is considered too liberal for southern voters, they have rejected Sen. James F. Byrnes (S.C.) because his segregationist views are unacceptable to northern voters, so the vice president-elect is Sen. Harry S. Truman, 60 (Mo.), who has gained national recognition by chairing a special Senate "watchdog" committee to investigate possible profiteering on national defense projects.

Helen Gahagan Douglas wins election to Congress from Los Angeles's 14th Congressional District and is appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She will be reelected in 1946 and 1948, both times by wide margins (see 1939; 1950).

The U.S. Senate rises to its feet December 19 to pay tribute to Sen. Hattie Caraway (R. Ark.), who has been defeated by Congressman William Fulbright, 39, for the seat she has held since 1932.

RAF planes using bombs designed by Barnes Wallis attack the German battleship Tirpitz November 12 at her repair dock on the Norwegian coast (see 1942). Seriously damaged by previous air attacks, she is capsized and permanently disabled, ending her threat to Soviet-bound Allied convoys.

Former French prime minister Joseph Caillaux dies at Mamers November 22 at age 81.

Strasbourg falls to the Allies November 24, but the Battle of the Bulge that begins December 16 takes a heavy toll of U.S. troops as the German 5th Panzer Army commanded by Gen. von Runstedt launches an offensive along an 80-mile front in Belgium's Ardennes Forest that will continue through January of next year. German war production has reached new highs despite U.S. bombings, von Runstedt has massed 250,000 troops on the Belgian border beginning in October, and Hitler has ordered a cessation of all radio signals to keep the Allies unaware of his intentions to sweep through the Ardennes, recapture Antwerp, and so embarrass the Americans that they will sue for peace. The surprise attack catches the Americans unprepared and begins the largest, costliest battle in U.S. history. Temperatures drop below zero in the worst winter that anyone in the area can remember, the frozen ground makes it hard to dig foxholes, snow begins falling December 21, and many soldiers on both sides freeze to death or lose frost-bitten extremities, although most of the casualties are caused by artillery shells as heavy clouds help the Germans by denying air cover to the Americans.

The Manhattan Project proceeds apace on developing a nuclear weapon at Los Alamos (see 1942). Ted Hall and his former Harvard College roommate Saville Sax approach a Soviet trading company at New York late in the year and begin supplying critical information about the project (see 1945). German-born British physicist Klaus (Emil Julius) Fuchs, 33, is a member of the British mission working at Alamogordo, N.M., and also passes along knowledge to Soviet agents of the "implosion principle" for producing the pressure needed to set off a nuclear chain reaction using plutonium, knowledge that will prove essential to Soviet bomb-making efforts (see 1949; Fuchs, 1946). Captured papers found at Strasbourg in December by Dutch-born U.S. physicist Samuel A. Goudsmit and E. I. du Pont executive Frederic A. C. Wardenburg, 3rd, 39, show that German scientists under the direction of Nobel physicist Werner Heisenberg have been trying to develop a nuclear weapon but gone off in a wrong direction. Some European scientists leave the Manhattan Project when it becomes clear that a nuclear bomb will not be needed to defeat Hitler, some oppose any deployment of such a bomb, others worry that the bomb will not be powerful enough to make it clear that world powers must find peaceful ways to settle their differences or face global obliteration.

"Nuts," says Gen. Anthony C. (Clement) McAuliffe, 46, December 22 to German demands that he surrender his 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, which he has held against overwhelming odds; the weather clears December 23, and McAuliffe is relieved December 26 by units of Gen. Patton's 3rd Army headed by Col. Wendell Blanchard, 41, whose tanks, led by Col. Creighton (Williams) Abrams, 30, have come 150 miles in 19 hours, but the fighting continues with heavy losses on both sides (see 1945).

German occupation forces in Hungary capture patriot Hannah Senesh, 23, who has volunteered with five young men to parachute behind enemy lines on a suicidal rescue mission. A native Hungarian who emigrated to Palestine in 1939 to fulfill her Zionist dreams, she has kept a diary since age 13. She is executed along with her comrades. Soviet forces surround Budapest December 27.

Liberian Supreme Court Justice William V. S. (Vanarat Shadrach) Tubman, 48, is inaugurated as president January 3 and promptly declares war on Germany and Japan. He will hold office until his death in 1971, encouraging foreign capital investment, expanding revenues, encouraging tribal peoples to participate in the government, encouraging immigration from the United States, the West Indies, and Britain's West African colonies, and granting the franchise to women (see 1955).

Cuban president Fulgencio Batista steps down after 11 years in which he has built a strong, efficient government (see 1933; 1952).

El Salvador's fascist-style government survives a coup attempt in April, but university students foment a general strike in May, bringing the nation to a standstill and forcing the resignation of Maximiliano Hernández Martinez, who has ruled since December 1931 (see human rights, 1932). Another military dictator succeeds him and continues his repressive regime (see 1948).

Guatemalan dictator Gen. Jorge Ubico suspends freedom of speech June 22 and shuts down the nation's press, a general strike June 23 cripples the country, and Ubico, now 65, resigns July 1 after 13 years in power; he flees to New Orleans and a coup d'état October 20 ends the nation's military dictatorship. Former minister of education Juan José Arévalo (Bermejo), 40, wins 85 percent of the popular vote in the ensuing presidential election, with organized labor playing a major role for the first time. Arévalo will take office next year and rule until 1951.