Caucasus. Hitler orders the Armies of Group A to withdraw from the Caucasus. Covering this retreat was the real reason he forbade Paulus’s Sixth Army from surrendering: he needed to keep as many Soviet armies as possible occupied. But even now the Führer won’t allow von Paulus to surrender: he demands total sacrifice, down to the last man. In Stalingrad, the situation is dramatic, beyond comprehension (fortunately for us).

Stalingrad. The Germans advance with Hoth, 200 tanks and two armored divisions, the 6th and 23rd, to break through the pocket of Paulus’s Sixth Army. In 24 hours, they cover 50 kilometers, cross the Aksay River, and arrive within 60 kilometers of the objective. From Stalingrad, comrades hear the booming cannon fire in the night, and word spreads: “They’re coming.” At this point, Paulus simply needs to move his tanks toward Hoth, but he has received different orders from Hitler. The T-34s of the 51st Soviet Armored Division stand in the way.

Stalingrad. The Soviets launch Operation Little Saturn: against 19 Italian battalions, they deploy 80 Soviet infantry battalions, 12 motorized battalions, 450 tanks, and air support.

Bletchley Park. Newman suggests using electronic counters, leveraging their high computing speed. Newman is immediately commissioned to draw up the specifications for such a machine. Tommy Flowers will build it. It’s the Colossus. The first electronic computer.

Chevalier Affair: An event that remains unclear to this day occurs at the home of Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty. The Oppenheimers have guests: Haakon Chevalier and his wife, Barbara. Chevalier asks Oppenheimer to periodically pass information to a Russian diplomat (Peter Ivanov) at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco (who will later be revealed to be a secret NKVD agent). At this point, the versions given by the four people present at the event diverge, but they agree that, one way or another, Oppenheimer refuses the proposal.

The Du Pont Company takes over the construction of a plutonium production plant, the actual reactor. Water is chosen for the cooling system.

First nuclear reaction. In an abandoned courtyard in the basement of the University of Chicago, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi demonstrated the first controlled nuclear fission reaction in history. Two years earlier, Fermi, along with Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard and German physicist Albert Einstein, had written to President Franklin Roosevelt to warn him of the danger that the Nazis were developing a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt thus launched the US atomic bomb program. Construction of the atomic bomb under the “Manhattan Project” began in 1942. With the demonstration of nuclear fission, Fermi, who had won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics, marked one of the program’s first triumphs. In July 1945, the US successfully tested the world’s first atomic bomb and in August dropped two similar devices on Japan. Fermi died in 1954. A year later, the element “fermium” was named in his honor.

3:25 PM local time: Fermi’s pile goes critical (it had almost gone critical a couple of hours earlier, but the imperturbable Enrico Fermi asks for his usual lunch break); the first test lasts 28 minutes with a power output of less than 0.5W to minimize the radioactivity produced. Richard Watts, a member of the instrumentation team, writes in the logbook: “We’re cooking!” Fermi remains calm (he was expecting the result). Leona Libby approaches him and asks, “When should we start worrying?” Fermi doesn’t respond: he’s focused on the instruments. After a full 28 minutes of criticality, Fermi orders “Zip!” to Zinn, who drops the safety rods. The pile shuts down immediately. It’s 3:53 PM. After turning off the pile, Wigner uncorks a flask of Chianti. Also present are Greenwalt (the future president of Du Pont) and Compton, who telephones Conant at Harvard to inform him that “the Italian navigator has landed in the New World” and that “he arrived earlier than expected.” “Are the natives friendly?” asks Conant: “Everybody landed safe and happy.” It is the first time that humans have induced nature to release, in a controlled and sustained way, the energy contained in the nucleus of the atom.

Forty people are present at the first ignition of a nuclear pile; to prevent an uncontrolled reaction, several safety measures have been taken: in addition to the cadmium rods, there are rods that are inserted by gravity by cutting a string, and volunteers stand on the pile with buckets filled with a solution of cadmium salts, ready to throw the contents into the pile in the event of an impending catastrophe.

The construction of Fermi’s atomic pile is proceeding steadily: it is now clear that the 57th layer, the one that will make the pile critical according to calculations, will be assembled during the following night; it will be Anderson’s turn, who however promises not to take back the cadmium rods and to wait until the following day.

Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman: The Manhattan Project begins in Los Alamos, New Mexico: 150,000 technicians, scientists and engineers will participate in the project

The first Panzerkampfwagen VIs, better known as the Tiger, arrive in Libya to support the Axis. But by then it’s too late. The American Shermans have made the difference for too many months. The Sherman weighs 30 tons, is 6 meters long, has 76mm armor, and a 76mm gun. The best of its time. Until the Tiger: 56 tons, is 9 meters long, has 120mm armor, and an 88mm gun. The American tank manual states that “to face a Tiger, you need to employ four Shermans with the prospect of losing three.”

3:30 AM. Don River, 40 km west of Stalingrad. Soviet engineers use TNT to blow up the arches of the Lucinskiy Bridge over the Don River. The German Sixth Army is left virtually stranded on a 40 km-wide island between the Volga and the Don.

Rommel’s retreat reached El Agheila after 1,500 kilometers of forced march. He organized his defense with a bluff to frighten Montgomery, who remained trapped there for three weeks, despite having 120 tanks against only a few German tanks. Tripoli fell to enemy hands on January 23, 1943.

France, During the final approach to the docks and train station at Saint-Nazaire, about twenty B-17s commanded by Curtis E. LeMay adopted a new tactic he had pioneered: instead of zigzagging to displace enemy anti-aircraft fire, they proceeded straight to the target, struck, and returned. The raid resulted in no aircraft casualties, while previous attacks had caused catastrophic American losses. From this point on, bombing techniques would be dictated by Curtis E. LeMay.

Stalingrad. Evening. General Stanescu, commanding the two Romanian armored armies under heavy Soviet fire, accepts the surrender terms: the Soviets take 27,000 prisoners.

Stalingrad. Seydlitz, Paulus’ subordinate, disobeying his (and the Führer’s) precise orders, makes the right move and moves the 94th Motorized Division southward to extricate itself from the Soviet pincer movement. But the Soviets, alerted by the enormous bonfires used to destroy documents, attack at night and defeat the entire division. The Führer demands an explanation from Paulus, who is covering for Seydlitz. Hitler, furious with Paulus, incredibly promotes Seydlitz himself and assigns him the northern part of the pocket. Even more incredibly, when Paulus asks Seydlitz what he wants to do, he replies that he will obey the Führer!

The Soviets launched a desperate counteroffensive in Stalingrad: more than a million soldiers were involved in the assault, along with 17,000 artillery pieces, 1,200 tanks, and 1,200 aircraft. This was Operation Uranus, which allowed the Russians to annihilate the Romanian support battalions and outflank Von Paulus’s Sixth Army, which thus remained besieged in Stalingrad.

The situation of the Soviet troops in Stalingrad is desperate; the dead are counted in the hundreds of thousands, entire battalions are captured or exterminated; the city is completely reduced to rubble by the Luftwaffe; this, however, will constitute an advantage for the Russians.

Stalingrad. Von Paulus launches what the OKW believes is the final offensive to take the city. Lyudnikov’s Soviet division is shattered, the rubble of the Red October factory is captured, and the Volga is reached for the third time. Tchuikov is on the brink of collapse but cannot retreat under Stalin’s strict orders. The eastern bank of the Volga does not exist for him.

Hitler orders his troops to occupy the part of France under the Vichy government. Italian troops cross the border into Tunisia, and Mussolini, not to be outdone by Hitler, has Provence and Corsica occupied.

Allied landing in Algeria

Operation Torch: The Allies land in Algeria and Morocco.

El Alamein: Rommel begins his retreat. He suffers 9,000 dead or missing, 15,000 wounded, and 400 tanks destroyed. The British Eighth Army suffers 5,000 dead or missing, 9,000 wounded, and 500 tanks destroyed. The Second El Alamein is over. Despite the great confusion, Rommel manages to save 70,000 of the army’s 90,000 men in a fighting retreat.

El Alamein: 2:00 PM. The remnants of the Folgore, huddled together, fire their last seven .47-caliber shells and exhaust the last 20-caliber magazine. Colonel Luigi Camosso decides to surrender. Major Zanninovich, standing at attention, presents his forces to the colonel: “32 officers, 272 troops.” Five thousand had departed from Italy. After the surrender, the enemy salutes the 306 Italian prisoners. It is 4:35 PM on November 6, 1942.

El Alamein: 2:00 PM. The British armored cars, with powerful loudspeakers, praise the courage and valor of the Folgore and offer to surrender with honors. The paratroopers respond, “Folgore!” and fire.

El-Alamein: Montgomery launches the decisive attack. The German commander of the Afrika Korps declares, “I’m going, but the Führer’s order is the product of a sick mind; we can’t continue like this.” The general surrenders to a British officer, followed by 300 other German soldiers.

At El-Alamein Hitler orders resistance at all costs: victory or death (the Germans have only 24 tanks)

El Alamein, Egypt. Montgomery unleashes the great “Supercharge” attack with 800 tanks and 360 guns simultaneously. These include Sherman, Grant, Valentine, Crusader, and Matilda tanks. The fighting continues throughout the night. The Panzer and Ariete divisions are now exhausted, but most of the tanks remaining on the battlefield are British. The Italian-German situation is far from rosy, and Rommel orders a retreat.

Port Said. The second edition of the book “Wetterkurzsclussel” is captured aboard U-559, before it sinks, by Anthony Fasson, Colin Grazier, and sixteen-year-old mess attendant Tommy Brown (all from HMS Petard). Knowledge of the meteorological messages will allow Bletchley Park to regain access to the Nazi codes, through so-called cribs, or small sequences of known characters.

El Alamein, Egypt. After two days of relative calm, the British Eighth Army returns to the attack. The Australians break through the German defenses and break through the front, continuing along the coast. Further south, the Bersaglieri attack with melee weapons and hand grenades. The Italian Folgore, Trieste, and Ariete divisions suffer heavy losses, costing 300 British tanks.

Erwin Rommel takes command again but the entire Italian-German front is routed at El-Alamein; only the Folgore resists the British.

Stalingrad. The German 14th Armored Division captures the bread factory.

El Alamein, Egypt. On the second day of battle, the Panzer Army wins the first round: the British fail to break through and remain pinned down in the “devil’s gardens.”

Georg Stumme dies in battle at El-Alamein

Stalingrad. The German 14th Armored Division captures the Red Barricade weapons factory.

Bombing of Genoa

General von Paulus’s second Nazi offensive at Stalingrad

Stalingrad. The tractor factory is also attacked by the Wehrmacht. Elements of the 16th Panzer Division settle in the northern suburbs.

Stalingrad. Von Paulus launches three divisions against the Red Barricade cannon factory and the Red October foundry.

At Peenemunde base, Von Braun achieved the first successful launch of a V-2 (third attempt, called “Cucumber”); the previous two attempts had failed; the experimental A-4 prototype, however, traveled 190.5 km at 1.34 km/s, reaching an altitude of 85 km.

Greece. The health and medical situation is so critical that the British resort to an unprecedented measure: they lift the naval blockade of Nazi-occupied Greece to allow relief supplies to arrive. Thanks to an agreement between the Germans and the British, relief supplies flow throughout the chaotic period that follows.

The first Loran system, at 1.95 MHz, goes into operation on the East Coast of the USA to guide aircraft on Nazi U-boats

Ziegler and Nichols publish the famous PID tuning paper, “Optimum Settings for Automatic Controllers,” in the journal Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Pollard, automotive engineer, patents the first parallel tripod robot

General Groves purchases land in Argonne Forest in Chicago, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington.

Oppenheimer’s name begins to be discussed in high military circles as head of the atomic bomb project

MetLab (Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago). Enrico Fermi gives a series of lectures on the theory behind the pile. When asked what to do if the pile starts an out-of-control chain reaction, he replies, “Just run, like, behind a hill quite far away.” Fermi, in the Manhattan Project, took the (not particularly imaginative) name of Henry Farmer. His bodyguard was John Baudino, with whom he would become friends. Niels Bohr was codenamed Nicholas Baker. They proceeded along parallel tracks. Berkeley, Hanford, and Oak Ridge worked on the hypothesis that the Fermi pile, with slow neutrons, would work. But Oppenheimer led the work with fast neutrons. The new pile in Chicago was assembled under the west stands of Stagg Field, the now-disused football stadium. Goodyear was commissioned to build a giant balloon to contain the pile, to create a vacuum inside (it was eventually built but never actually used).

The Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers (MED) is formed, named, as is Army tradition, for the location where the decision was made. General Leslie R. Groves is appointed commander of the Manhattan District. Groves had previously overseen other major Army projects, including the construction of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

The Army takes over the fission project (Manhattan).

Aircraft carrier Wasp sunk

Stalingrad. The central station is in the hands of the Wehrmacht. In just a few days, it has changed sides 15 times. The Univermag department store on Red Square and the granary silo also fall.

Stalingrad. Four infantry divisions and the 24th Panzer advance on the central station, the granary silo.

Iran. 110,000 Polish prisoners from the Gulags arrive on the shores of the Caspian Sea. They are the Second Polish Army Corps, formed when Polish General Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile, convinces Stalin to free all Polish prisoners in the Gulags to contribute to the Allied war effort. In Iran, they will receive training from the British, then move first to Palestine and then Egypt, and finally fight in Italy. Ultimately, they will not be able to return to Sovietized Poland, and almost all will end up in Great Britain, with some in the United States, Italy, and so on.

The Nazi offensive at Stalingrad begins

Aircraft carrier Ryujo sunk

Stalingrad. Waves of Junkers 88s, Stukas, and Heinkel 111s from General Wolfram von Richthofen’s (cousin of the Red Baron) Fourth Air Fleet dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on the city.

In London’s most exclusive circles, the sensational news spreads that Erwin Rommel is ill. The source, which has remained secret, is actually an Enigma interception by Ultra. The British will blame the leak on the Italians, the Germans will believe it (especially Rommel), and this story will be written in the history books… until the declassification of Ultra, starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 1990s, will bring the truth to light (but the history books will not be rewritten).

9:42 a.m.: Allied raid on Dieppe in northern Normandy, repelled by the Germans; of the 6,000 Allied soldiers who attempted to land, 3,000 were killed or taken prisoner, only 3,000 managed to return, having been practically thrown back into the sea.