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In Warm Springs, Georgia, F.D. Roosevelt dies and is succeeded by his deputy, Harry Truman.

Warm Springs, Georgia. Franklin Delano Roosevelt poses for a portrait. He is relieved and smiling. He explains to those present that the war in Europe could end at any moment. Suddenly, his head tilts forward. They ask him if he dropped his cigarette. He explains

Netherlands. Flooding of agricultural land caused by the opening of dikes by fleeing Nazis leads to a terrible famine. The average daily ration drops to just 400 calories. Wehrmacht soldiers, though battered and exhausted, consume 1,412 calories, compared to 2,570 in September 1939. The famine

Under the auspices of London, which thus sought to regain its credibility in the Arab world, the Arab League was founded in Cairo, an alliance of recently independent Arab states: Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Transjordan. One of its main functions was

Patton’s III Army crosses the Rhine south of Mainz; contrary to Eisenhower’s orders and therefore without air and artillery support.

On March 19, 1945, faced with the advance of Allied forces into the heart of Germany, Adolf Hitler issued the Nero Decree. Evoking the specter of the burning of ancient Rome, traditionally attributed to the emperor’s will, Hitler’s document mandated the destruction of infrastructure and

Soviet Kurchatov reads crucial information about the Americans’ U-235 separation techniques; this information was received from Los Alamos spies Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother. It will save the Russians months, perhaps years, of research and development.

American General Curtiss Le May is satisfied with the results of the bombing of Tokyo: only 14 bombers lost out of 334 and with rare bad taste he exclaims: “We will bring Japan back to the Stone Age” (hence the term “stone-age-bombing”).

Romania. Petru Groza, installed by the Soviets as Prime Minister, officially takes power. Just six months after the coup, in which the communists had played a minor and marginal role, the latter managed to seize power in the country. For 46 years.

The Calutron Y-12 backup project in Oak Ridge, TN, is underway: Plant K-25 will separate U235 from U238 at a cost of $512 million (US$5.7 billion today) using 3,000 steps of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) diffusion.

United States. Ernest Lawrence visits the General Electric Research Labs in Schenectady, New York, and comes up with the idea of spinning electrons in a single orbit, rather than spiraling them. In 1944, Herb Pollock had led a team at the General Electric Research Labs

On the walls of the fortress of Verdun, an American GI adds a graffiti below the one he had left almost twenty years earlier: Austin White – Chicago, Ill – 1918, Austin White – Chicago, Ill – 1945, This is the last time I want

Gothic Line: The Giustizia e Liberta’ partisan brigade enters Gaggio Montano in the Province of Modena. Thanks to direct connections through OSS agents on site, the partisan brigades are deployed alongside the Allies in the Modena Armando Division. Relations with the Americans are complex, however,

Gothic Line: The Allied offensive halts at Vedriano, a few kilometers from the Via Emilia. On October 27, the order to halt the advance is given.

Poland. The Red Army, after the Polish popular uprising was inexorably defeated by the Wehrmacht, finally entered Poland. Thus, Stalin was able to present himself to the world as Poland’s sole liberator, without having to compromise with the Polish rebels, exterminated by the Germans, much

7:28 am: The first V-2 is launched on Paris without causing any casualties.

The Anglo-Americans liberate Brussels

Operation Olive: attack on the German Gothic Line defenses in the Apennines. Ten days earlier, the Allies had also landed in southern France.

Liberation of Paris by Patton’s Third Army; 75 days of Battle of Normandy ends: 209,672 Allied losses (39,976 dead), 450,000 German losses (250,000 dead); the Germans also lost 1,500 tanks, 3,500 artillery pieces, 20,000 vehicles.

Romania. King Michael attempts a coup against dictator Ion Antonescu, loyal to Hitler. Participants in the plot include the Peasant Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, and the Communist Party. The intent is to avoid the potential devastation wrought by the Red Army

France. The Falaise Pocket closes. The last escape corridor for the Germans is guarded by Polish and Canadian forces. The Poles fight ferociously and massacre thousands of German soldiers. The Battle of Normandy is officially over. Overall, in ten weeks, it cost the Wehrmacht 450,000

Provence, France. French troops arrive, gradually making their way all the way into Germany to capture Stuttgart.

Curtis E. LeMay, now transferred from Europe to the Pacific, orders the first firebombing of Tokyo. LeMay even chooses a mixture of magnesium, for its high temperatures, and napalm for its splatter effect, so as to ignite a firestorm. The goal is to annihilate Japanese

Finland. Continuation War. The Red Army, now relieved of its forces on the front against the Wehrmacht, concentrated on the Finns and managed to advance. Then the Finns managed to halt the front, as in 1941. They didn’t defeat the Russians, but they made their

First inaccurate V-1 launches on London (as a Vergeltungswaffe, a retaliatory weapon, for the Allied landings)

Normandy. British paratrooper William Scott, 27, pushes behind enemy lines and entrusts a carrier pigeon with his mission accomplished message. The coded message contains 27 groups of words and begins with “AOKN HVPKD FNFJW FNFJW… and so on.” The pigeon will die in the chimney

Had Roosevelt died a year earlier, the vice president who would have succeeded him would have been Henry Wallace (and not Harry Truman). In preparation for this eventuality, Henry Wallace had already selected his Secretary of State (Larry Druggan) and Secretary of the Treasury (Harry

Nagumo (the Japanese admiral at the Battle of Midway) commits harachiri at Saipam, shortly after the Marines landed in force.

Ike Eisenhower takes command of Operation Overlord

8:00 a.m. Verona. Several condemned men, including Galeazzo Ciano, are executed at the shooting range. Precise orders to do so have arrived directly from Berlin.

The Porsche VK 4502P heavy tank project with mixed electric and internal combustion propulsion was selected by the Nazis for series production, the official designation was Panzerkampwagen VI Tiger Ausfuhrung B (Pz.Kpfw. VI Tiger Ausf.B); it would later become known as the Tiger II; 1500

The Wasserfall guided anti-aircraft missile project begins in Peenemunde; another project is the A-11 multistage rocket called Amerika for its ability to strike the United States.

The decryption of the Japanese messages allowed the Americans to shoot down Yamamoto’s plane. A heated argument then broke out with the British, who believed the Americans had thus risked revealing their identity. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese had also transmitted the information via

United States. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s book “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” is finally finished. 1,200 pages have been sent to the publisher for publication. It will be published in 1944. The book will change the social sciences forever and will profoundly

PVC is marketed in Germany and the USA

Stalingrad. The Soviet 64th, 57th, and 51st armies attack the city directly. But the Nazi commanders still don’t understand the scope of the Russian strategy and the possibility of trapping von Paulus’s Sixth Army in a pocket. They will only realize this the next day.

Aircraft carrier Hornet sunk

Second Battle of El Alamein. The British success, even before Stalingrad, marks the definitive turning point of the Second World War.

The Manhattan Project initially planned to build the pile at Argonne, far from Chicago, but Fermi then convinced Compton to assemble it beneath the West Curve of Stagg Stadium at the University of Chicago. Construction of the pile began immediately, under the direction of Zinn

Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project

Egypt. The Axis advances eastward: amid the notes of General von Bismarck’s Panzer Division’s brass band playing ancient Prussian marches, there are Nehring’s Afrika Korps, the Littorio and Ariete armored divisions, and the Folgore paratroopers with Ramcke’s Green Devils. But shortly after leaving their lines,

The Battle of Guadalcanal begins with the landing of the US Marines, it will last three months

The Russian front runs through the village where Mikhail Gorbachev is a boy: Privolnoye. The front is close enough for Mikhail to see the Katyusha bombers with their deafening hiss. After a few days, the Wehrmacht crowds the village, only to abandon it almost immediately,

Tobruk, Libya. 5:30 a.m. Italian artillery opens fire on the Australians, Scots, South Africans, and Indians besieged in the fortified city. Shrieking Stukas follow soon after, and then Italian sappers from the 31st Battalion intervene. The first to disband are the Indian troops.

Mauthausen, Austria. The gas chamber (Zyklon-B gas) played a key role in the extermination operations: it was put into operation in May 1942, with the elimination of 208 Soviet prisoners of war. Over the course of four years, approximately 5,000 people were killed there: political

234 RAF planes bomb Lübeck

United States. In just two years, the Norfolk and Virginia Beach region, for reasons related to the world conflict, grew from 393,000 to 576,000 people. Over the next two years, military personnel at the area’s bases would further increase tenfold, from 15,000 to 150,000.

The Germans added a fourth wheel to the Enigma machines used to encrypt messages. This would pose a problem only initially, later solved by Alan Turing’s team. However, the fourth wheel multiplied the number of combinations by 26 and made Bayesian probabilistic techniques impossible. The

6 a.m. (Hawaii time): Bratton (Far East code breaker) decrypts the message “We request the Ambassador to submit our reply at 1:00 Washington time [i.e., the breakdown of negotiations]”; he thought the Japanese were about to attack, called Washington, but no one was there at

5:55 a.m.: The first wave takes off for Pearl Harbor: 183 aircraft in 15 minutes, consisting of 43 fighters, 49 high-altitude bombers, 51 dive bombers, 40 torpedo bombers.

Before dawn on December 7, Hawaii time (December 8 local time), the first Japanese troops landed in Kota Bhary, northern Malaysia. The British had intercepted and decrypted Japanese messages at the embassy in London and were therefore expecting an attack on Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong,

No chain reaction has yet been achieved, no appreciable amount of Uranium 235 has been separated, and only minimal amounts of Plutonium 239 have been obtained.

Off the western coast of Australia, the Nazi warship Kormoran, disguised as a cargo ship, attracted the attention of the Australian warship Sydney, which approached to within about a kilometer to request identification. The German ship responded with all its firepower, and the Sydney returned

Libya. As revealed by Italian intelligence, the British Operation Crusader begins. Rommel is taken by surprise, but rushes to the front lines in person. Cunningham has 724 tanks on the front line and another 250 in reserve, against only 260 German tanks and 160 Italian

Italian intelligence agent Colonel Frank B. Fellers, infiltrated into the American embassy in Rome, reports that the British Seventh Army’s offensive will begin the following day. This is valuable information for the Axis. However, General Gambara is unable to convince the Germans to put their

New York. The basement of Schermerhorn Hall. The first Fermi pile begins to take shape. Local Columbia football players are called in to move the graphite blocks and heavy tanks of uranium oxide. It is 2.5 meters long and 3.3 meters high, with 288 tanks

Excavation for the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., begins. Colonel Leslie Groves is in charge of the work.

Benito Mussolini travels by train to Wolfschanze, the so-called Wolf’s Lair, where he and Adolf Hitler continue by plane to Brest-Litovsk, the Soviet fortress city recently captured by the Nazis. Hitler wants to show his ally his recent successes in Russia. Mussolini is taciturn and

Finland. Incredibly, the Finnish army manages to push the Red Army out of the Finnish city of Viipuri and reaches the gates of Leningrad.

Belgrade. The Germans build a single radio broadcast station that can be heard by all soldiers at the front. It is built in Belgrade and inaugurated on August 18, 1941, at 9:50 PM. At the end of the news broadcast, an old 78 rpm record

Article in “Il Popolo d’Italia” founded by Benito Mussolini: “THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK AND ANTI-PLUTOCRATIC WAR bundles together the healthy European energies (…) Plutocracy and Bolshevism had divided the spoils: Europe to Bolshevism and the rest of the world to Plutocracy (…) Europe has woken up and

Battle of Kufra, Libya. The Free French army, advancing across 500 kilometers of desert from Chad to Kufra, an oasis in Italian Libya, achieves the Italian surrender after a 10-day siege.

Secret Soviet research allows for an exact estimate of the correct mass of uranium-235 (the Germans will never achieve this result during the war).

At Columbia University, two things are known: how much uranium-235 can be purified industrially and how much is needed to make a bomb.

Stolper-Samuelson Theorem: A free market increases GDP, circulating more money, which can be redistributed by taxing winners and distributing to losers. It was developed within international trade theory to study the effects of openness to international trade on income distribution within the Heckscher-Ohlin model.

Parker releases the “most perfect pen in history.” It’s the Parker 51. Kenneth Parker, who recently inherited his father’s company, is well-versed in the theories of Moholy-Nagy, who distinguished between inevitable and planned obsolescence, which he abhors as unnecessary, but which Parker, as a good

The United States produced only 8,000 tons of synthetic rubber, but production grew rapidly, reaching 800,000 tons annually by 1945. This undertaking would be described as the second-largest American engineering feat of the war, after the Manhattan Project. The feat was made possible by the

Bletchley Park. The two “bombs,” used by the British to decrypt Enigma, attack and solve approximately 180 messages a day. But almost all of them are from the Luftwaffe, as those from the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsmarine are more difficult to decipher. In 1943, this

Mussolini, already distressed by news from the Egyptian and Greek fronts, and the destruction of the fleet at Taranto, receives an incredible telegram from Graziani, who is in Libya, who despairs of being able to defend Libya, when in reality a good part of his

Italy. The Caproni Campini No. 1 was the first known jet-powered aircraft to fly at the time. Piloted by Mario De Bernardi, it flew near Milan. The compressor, unlike modern jet engines, was driven by a 900-hp piston engine made by Isotta Fraschini. The true

Italy. Youth March in the Ligurian Apennines. From a few hundred volunteers, they swell to 25,000 when they arrive in Padua. All are between the ages of 16 and 18, asking to be enlisted. The army will resist, preferring to arm trusted soldiers and snubbing

Baltic States. The first months of the Soviet occupation were marked by the mass deportation of a number of people, never precisely determined but varying between 30,000 and 100,000, deported to Siberia. This figure included the entire ruling political class, including a dozen current or

Germany invades the Netherlands and Belgium

The King summons Churchill to Buckingham Palace: Churchill to Downing Street

Chamberlain meets with Churchill and Halifax and asks them who he should advise the King after his resignation; after a long silence Halifax says he is not in a position to manage the war at the gates.

British interception of Japanese diplomatic messages (coded Purple in American terms) allowed cryptographers to glean details of the conversation between the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, Oshima Hiroshi, a close confidant of Hitler. Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler revealed to him, and thus to the British,

Finland. The Winter War ends. This time the Russians are demanding much more than in 1939: the entire province of Karelia, additional territories in the north, and the use of the ports of Hanko and Helsinki. The Finns have no choice but to accept. In

Only a handful of engineers worldwide were aware of the potential use of vacuum tubes as very fast switches to build a digital computer. One of these engineers was Tommy Flowers, who, in Cambridge, would go on to build the Colossus computer. Until the Second

Albert Einstein signs the letter to President Roosevelt warning him about the Nazi atomic bomb.

Albert Einstein signed the famous letter addressed to Roosevelt requesting the launch of a research program into the nuclear use of atomic fission.