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Bob Dole, future US presidential candidate in 1996, second lieutenant of the American X Mountain Division, is wounded in Castel d’Aiano in the province of Bologna

Gothic Line: The arrival of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division allows for the planning of a new offensive against the Gothic Line. This time it will be the final push. The 10th Division consists of three regiments, for a total of 14,000 men, volunteer skiers

Battle of Canolo, in the lower Reggio Emilia area. During the night, partisan commanders Guerrino Cavazzoni (Ciro), Renato Bolondi (Maggi), Mario Saccani (Nero), Raul Incerti (Bobi), Vasco Guaitolini (Biavati), Abbo Panisi (Nelson), and Egidio Baraldi (Walter) gathered in a house in Canolo. Surrounded by Nazi

The Ardennes salient is driven back into Germany (80,000 US casualties, 100,000 German casualties)

Lieutenant Colonel Abrams of Patton’s 4th Armored Division enters Bastogne with his tanks to relieve the siege of the 101st Airborne commanded by General Mc Auliffe, who welcomes him by saying: “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Colonel.”

The partisans of the 28th Garibaldi Brigade “Mario Gordini”, approximately 800 men, commanded by “Bulow” Arrigo Boldrini, later a member of parliament for the PCI and national president of the ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans), fought alongside the First Canadian Army Corps to liberate

Aircraft carrier Shinano sunk

Operation Elster (“Magpie” in English) was a German espionage mission designed to gather intelligence on U.S. military and technological facilities during World War II. The mission began in September 1944 with two Nazi agents sailing from Kiel, Germany, on the U-1230 and landing in Maine

Gothic Line: The Allies take the town of Livergnano and continue their descent towards Bologna.

The Japanese, exploiting jet streams (strong air currents at 300km/h at 12,000m altitude from West to East), sent 9,000 balloons inflated with hydrogen and a 15kg explosive bomb towards the United States; approximately 300 landed on national territory but only a very few caused damage,

Marrice Ralph Hilleman, an American microbiologist, developed over 40 vaccines, eight of which are currently used in dozens of countries. These are vaccines against measles, mumps (a vaccine developed by Hilleman with material from his daughter Jeryl Lynn, who had contracted mumps), hepatitis A and

Bulgaria. The communists of the Patriotic Front seize power. Over the next three months, they fire 30,000 public employees: police officers, civil servants, priests, doctors, and teachers. 11,122 people are tried and 2,618 sentenced to death, of which 1,046 are actually executed. Unofficial executions range

Allies reach the Siegfried Line; Battle of Hurtgen Forest and Operation Market-Garden (partially unsuccessful) to take Nijmegen and Arnhem across the Rhine in Holland

A third nuclear pile is completed in Halford, Washington: it is the first true production reactor, built as a water-cooled natural uranium pile with graphite moderators; the reactor was built by the Du Pont Company.

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, convinced of imminent defeat, wants to save Germany by negotiating with the Allies and, if necessary, taking direct action (a coup d’état). While returning to Germany, his car is hit by British planes and he is wounded in the head. Following

In the Mariana Islands, the Marines conquer the island of Saipan at the cost of 30,000 Japanese and 14,000 American casualties; from this island, B-29s can launch to bomb Japan.

The first Nazi extermination camps discovered

Majdanek was the first extermination camp discovered by the Allies in Germany. It is located near the Polish city of Lublin.

Finland. The Continuation War, the third and final Finnish-Soviet conflict of the 20th century, resulted in 500,000 Soviet soldiers killed and 250,000 wounded. The dead included 5,000 Red Army soldiers captured by the Finnish army and returned at the end of the conflict, only to

At least 30,000 V-1 (Vergeltungswaffe-1) bombs are produced at a cost of less than one-twentieth (4%) of a V-2, which would have carried a similar amount of TNT. Ten thousand fall on England, including 2,419 on London, killing 6,184 and wounding 17,981. Antwerp, Belgium, is

Southern England is bombed by approximately 11,400 V-1s and V-2s (Vergeltungswaffe, retaliatory weapon) each with 1 ton of TNT; the 10,000 V-1s cause 6,184 deaths, the 1,402 V-2s on London cause 2,754 deaths; 1,847 V-1s are intercepted by fighter planes, 1,866 are shot down by

Aircraft carrier Hiyo sunk

Crimean Tatars were deported en masse and dispersed across Central Asia. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, 250,000 Tatars returned to Crimea.

Normandy. Montgomery makes an attempt to break the German front. He throws the British 7th Armored Division (the Desert Rats) into a right-handed attack on Tilly’s front. If the attempt succeeds, Caen would be bypassed. But a single Tiger tank destroys 27 Allied tanks (the

In the evening, Adolf Hitler agreed to Field Marshal Von Rundstedt’s request: to implement Case IIIA, that is, to mobilize all the armored forces deployed in the Pas-de-Calais to counterattack in Normandy; now the Allied secret services’ plan would be put into action: the Fortitude

4:00 pm: Hitler finally gives the order to advance with the tanks, but the sky was now clear and the Allied air supremacy kept them still until nightfall.

8:00 a.m.: At Omaha, the first groups of American soldiers advance beyond the beach; at Utah, they are already inland; the Atlantic Wall, built over four years, held for no more than an hour and a half.

5:00 am: Ships set sail for Normandy: on D-Day, 175,000 men will be landed with 5,333 ships, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 aircraft will be used.

Modena. “Mulini Nuovi” area. Inside the newly constructed underground shelter, Ciro, a native of Modena, scans the sky through a crack and in a notebook records the number of formations of 24 B-17s each he sees in the sky, coming from the south and heading

Marines land in the Caroline Islands

The V-2 program passes from the control of the army to that of Himmler’s SS

In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the Calutron Y-12 is being launched for the separation of U235 from U238 using the electromagnetic isotope separation method proposed by the University of Berkeley. The Calutron is operated by the Tennessee Eastman Corporation with 22,000 employees.

Bletchey Park. With Colossus, the Anglo-Americans are able to automatically decipher Nazi Lorenz SZ 40/42 teleprinters encrypted with Tunny.

The P-51 long-range fighter with drop tanks enters service; with this aircraft, deep-bombing operations deep into German soil with fighter air cover are possible for the first time; the USAF will bomb practically every day by day and the RAF by night until the end

3:40 PM. Fosse Ardeatine, Rome. Hitler, informed of the attack on the SS, enraged, orders the execution of 10 Italians for every German. Thirty-three Germans had been killed the day before. At the same time the next day, 335 Italians were killed, first with machine

Battle of Val di Sangro. It was the first military intervention on the ground by the Polish Second Army Corps, veterans of the Soviet Gulags, who had passed through Iran, Palestine, and Egypt, arriving in Italy, complete with Wojtek the bear. In the battle, they

3:42 PM. Via Rasella, Rome. The South Tyrolean soldiers of the SS “Bozen” battalion march in a compact group. Suddenly, a huge explosion erupts right in their midst, and they explode into the air like disjointed puppets. The street is covered in blood. There are

514 bombers dropped 1,100 tons of bombs on the city of Cassino.

Wernher Von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo for declaring that he was more interested in interplanetary travel than in warfare; only the intervention of his friend Albert Speer allowed him to be released from prison within a few days.

Florence. A violent Allied bombing devastates the city. A bomb hits the ambulance carrying Red Cross volunteer painter Guido Spadolini. At home, his wife and children wait in vain for his return. One of the boys, Giovanni, will become a journalist after the war, and

Bletchey Park. To decrypt the Tunny code of the Nazi Lorenz SZ 40/42 teleprinters, Colossus, essentially the first electronic (tube) computer, was put into operation. It allowed for great flexibility thanks to its reprogrammability (actually through switches and rewiring).

Wernher von Braun is summoned by Himmler to his headquarters at Hochwald in East Prussia; Himmler woos him: “I can do much more for you, Wernher, than those worthless army generals.” von Braun politely declines the offer, and is arrested by the Gestapo the following

Cambridge, UK. Eight-year-old Tony Foulds was in a field when a heavily damaged B-17 (Flying Fortress) was returning from a bombing raid in Germany. The B-17 “Mi Amigo” of the 305th Bomb Group USAF dived into the field to attempt an emergency landing, then the

Norfolk, Virginia. The US Navy battleship USS Missouri is launched.

Second Battle of Cassino: A four-month battle of position on the Gustav Line; on one side, elite Nazi troops such as the 1st Parachute Division “Green Devils,” as well as conscripts experiencing their first wartime experience, faced American, British, Gurkha, Sikh, Polish, French, New Zealand,

Erwin Rommel takes command of the Atlantic Wall: 15,000 fortifications spread over 3,000 km of coastline

Mount Soratte bunker. Built on Mussolini’s orders in the mid-1930s, it was requisitioned and completed by the Nazis; it later became the headquarters of the Southern European Command. On January 6, 1944, partisans found the bunker’s water pipes and poisoned them. As soon as the

Signal Intelligence: At Bletchley Park, 70 rotor-powered “Bombes” are in operation, the electromechanical machines (designed by Alan Turing) to decrypt the Nazi Enigma code. There will be 140 in January 1945.

Schrodinger wrote the famous article “What is Life?” in which he explained that the rules of quantum mechanics underlie DNA-based inheritance.

Avery, McLeod, McCarty discover that genetic information is encoded in DNA

Luis Walter Alvarez invents the implosion device that triggers the nuclear fission reaction in a nuclear bomb; he also invents the bubble chamber for subatomic particles, the Ground-Controlled Approach radar for aircraft landing, a microwave early warning radar, and a precision high-altitude bombing radar, and

Harvard University and IBM collaborate to make an automatic sequence controlled calculator (ASCC, or Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator) called the Mark I, which uses an IBM punch card reader system.

Von Neumann and Mongenstern develop a theory of utility (Utility Theory) in which they show that, yes, utility grows logarithmically with the wealth at stake, both positively and negatively (loss of wealth, as already indicated by Bernoulli two centuries earlier), but that we also have

Chicago, United States. Chicago Convention. Aviation authorities from around the world meet and decide to adopt common rules for reporting aircraft accidents (the famous Annex 13). It is one of the most effective agreements ever. Deaths from aircraft accidents drop from 2,100 per 10 billion

Bohr met with high-ranking officials in Washington, including General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. They discussed Germany’s war capabilities.

The Polish Second Army Corps, veterans of the Soviet Gulag and having passed through Iran, Palestine, and Egypt, arrives in Italy, complete with Wojtek the bear. They will fight the Battle of Monte Cassino, capture the port of Ancona, and finally Bologna. Ultimately, they refuse

The Colossus electronic computer undergoes its first functional tests. The first computer in history was built by telephone engineer Tommy Flowers, based on specifications by mathematician Max Newman. The details remained a military secret for several decades. The maximum speed for reading punched cards was

Meeting in Cairo between Chang Kai Shek – Roosevelt – Churchill

Teller and Konopinsky estimate, with a good safety factor, that a nuclear explosion like the one being prepared for the Manhattan Project could not ignite the Earth’s entire atmosphere. They also conclude that even a bomb with 1,000 cubic meters of fissile fuel (Trinity would

Northern Italy. Allied night fighters conduct solo raids over Northern Italy. The “Pippos,” unlike large bombers that strike from high altitude, fly low to avoid anti-aircraft fire, dropping bombs or strafing in the darkness. These operations were made possible by the first radar installations on

Montenegro. Some Italian units are still fighting the Germans, two months after September 8th and the Italian change of front. Abandoned by everyone. The information reaches the British via Enigma intercepts.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The first reactor to generate plutonium goes into operation. It is similar to the Fermi pile, but modified to make it easier to remove the uranium rods and immerse them in acid baths to begin plutonium extraction. It also has a cooling

Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca (Spanish secret agents communicated the meeting location to Hitler, who had long wanted to bomb it, but from Spanish to German Casablanca was translated as White House).

Beginning of the 4 battles of Monte Cassino: 350,000 people will die

Hanford, Washington State. The site’s first reactor (designated “B”) reaches criticality. Fermi is present. But the next morning it begins to lose power until it shuts down. Panic. $7 million ($95 million today) has been spent, and the government was spending another $350 million on

Further executions carried out by the Wehrmacht in Cephalonia; in total 8,400 Italian officers and soldiers were killed; their remains were abandoned unburied on the island.

4,500 Italian officers and soldiers are shot by the Wehrmacht in Cephalonia

Italian armed resistance against the Wehrmacht offensive in Greece and in particular in Cephalonia

At Campo Imperatore, on the Gran Sasso d’Italia, a daring Nazi operation is carried out to free the hostage Benito Mussolini, held by the Italian Army and Carabinieri. The Italian soldiers’ orders are to kill the hostage if he risks being captured by the enemy.

Allied landing at Salerno

The Royal Navy ship Roma (47,000 tons, 2,000 people), along with her sister ships Italia and Vittorio Veneto, set sail from La Spezia for Sardinia; Admiral Carlo Bergamini had not received clear orders and did not intend to surrender and hand over the ships to

Rhodes. The thousands of Italian soldiers remaining on the island begin transmitting in clear, abandoning Enigma, hoping the British can come to their aid. The last message says only five of them remain, the rest captured by the Germans. Then nothing more.

Italy changes sides and joins the allies

Bohr flees Copenhagen because he is wanted by the Germans

Wolf’s Lair. 11:30 a.m. Four days after the heavy bombing of the Peenemünde site, Himmler tells Speer that he can guarantee the safety and secrecy of the V-1 and V-2 programs with forced labor. Speer agrees, and the two programs are moved to an underground

361 American B-17 bombers depart from British bases for the heart of Germany; their escort of short-range P-47 fighters (long-range fighters did not yet exist) leaves them over Brussels, then the Nazi fighters unleash themselves: in the first wave, 20 bombers are shot down, the

On a full moon night, a formation of 579 British four-engined Bomber Command planes bombs the Nazi base at Peenemünde, where the V-1s are being tested and built. 753 people die, but only two scientists or engineers die, and Wernher von Braun’s entire team remains

The US Army Chief of Engineers establishes the Manhattan District (or the Manhattan Project) with headquarters in New York City

The Anglo-American SOE (Special Operation Executives) special forces, using parachute units, blow up power plants in France that supplied Nazi weapons factories.

Quebec. The Allies decide there will be no landing on the Balkan Peninsula.