1944 - What happened in 1944 ?

January 1944

Tuesday 18:

The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

Thursday 20:

World War II: The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.

Saturday 22:

World War II: Allies begin Operation Shingle (an assault on Anzio, Italy).

Thursday 27:

World War II: The two year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.

Saturday 29:

World War II: About 300 men, women, and children die in the Massacre in Koniuchy in Poland.

February 1944

Monday 07:

World War II: In Anzio, Italy Nazi forces launch a counteroffensive.

Monday 14:

World War II: Anti-Japanese revolt on Java.

Thursday 17:

World War II: Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins. The battle ended in an American victory on February 22.

Saturday 26:

Shooting begins of the Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuhrer Gives a Village to the Jews" in Theresienstadt.

Tuesday 29:

World War II: The Admiralty Islands are invaded in the American General Douglas MacArthur-led Operation Brewer.

March 1944

Saturday 04:

In Ossining, New York, Louis Buchalter, the leader of 1930s crime syndicate Murder, Inc., is executed at Sing Sing.

Wednesday 15:

Allied aircraft bomb the Nazi-held monastery and stage an assault.

Sunday 19:

World War II: Nazi forces occupy Hungary.

April 1944

Friday 14:

Huge explosion rocks the Bombay harbour killing 300 and causing a loss of 20 million pounds at that time. See: Bombay Explosion (1944).

Friday 21:

Women in France receive the right to vote.

Saturday 22:

World War II: Operation Persecution initiated – Allied forces land in the Hollandia area of New Guinea.

Tuesday 25:

The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.

Saturday 29:

"Dancing Romeo," the last Our Gang film, premiers.

May 1944

Friday 05:

Mohandas Gandhi is freed from prison.

Thursday 11:

World War II: The Allies start a major offensive against the Axis Powers on the Gustav Line.

Wednesday 17:

Type IX U-boat: U-884 is launched.

Thursday 18:

World War II: SS troops burn down six villages in the Brkini hills in south western Slovenia.

June 1944

Sunday 04:

World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis powers capital to fall.

Tuesday 06:

World War II: Battle of Normandy begins. Operation Overlord, code named D-Day, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.

Friday 09:

World War II: The Soviet Union invades East Karelia and the previously Finnish part of Karelia, since 1941 occupied by Finland.

Saturday 17:

Iceland becomes independent from Denmark and forms a republic.

Thursday 22:

Opening day of the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration against Army Group Centre

July 1944

Thursday 06:

The Hartford Circus Fire, one of America's worst fire disasters, kills approximately 168 people and injures over 700 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Sunday 09:

Americans take Saipan

Tuesday 11:

Franklin D. Roosevelt says he will run for a fourth term as President of the United States.

Tuesday 18:

World War II: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.

Thursday 20:

The United States Democratic Party nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for a fourth term as president.

August 1944

Wednesday 02:

Beginning of the Treblinka uprising.

Wednesday 09:

The United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey the Bear for the first time.

Tuesday 15:

Allied forces land in southern France.

Tuesday 22:

1944 - World War II: Thirty-two Spaniards & four French Maquis tackle a German column (1,300 men in 60 lorries, with 6 tanks & 2 self-propelled guns), at La Madeiline, France. Three Maquis are wounded, with 110 Germans killed and 200 wounded.

Friday 25:

World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.

September 1944

Tuesday 12:

The liberation of Serbia from Nazi Germany and the Chetniks continues. Bajina Bašta in western Serbia is among those liberated cities.

Thursday 14:

United States Marines land on the island of Peleliu.

Sunday 17:

Airborne troops from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States parachute into Arnhem, as a part of Operation Market Garden.

Tuesday 19:

Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union signed. (End of the Continuation War)

Thursday 28:

Germans defeat British airborne at Arnhem, Netherlands.

October 1944

Sunday 08:

The radio show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet debuts

Tuesday 10:

Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are systematically murdered at Auschwitz death camp.

Saturday 14:

World War II: Given the choice between a public treason trial and a certain death by firing squad or suicide with honor, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel chooses the latter.

Wednesday 18:

Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia

Thursday 19:

United States forces land in the Philippines.

November 1944

Wednesday 01:

The British Army land at Walcheren in the Netherlands.

Tuesday 07:

U.S. presidential election, 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection over challenger Thomas E. Dewey, to become the only U.S. president to be elected to a fourth term.

Sunday 12:

World War II: The Royal Air Force launches one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz off the coast of Norway.

Tuesday 28:

Albania is liberated by the Albanian partisans. German Nazi troops recede from Albania.

Wednesday 29:

The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

December 1944

Friday 01:

Edward Stettinius Jr. becomes becomes the last United States Secretary of State of the Roosevelt administration.

Sunday 03:

Civil war breaks out in a newly-liberated Greece, between Communists and royalists.

Saturday 16:

World War II: A V-2 rocket hits the Rex Cinema in Antwerp killing 567 people.

Sunday 17:

In what became known as the Malmédy massacre, around 80 American POW are executed by Waffen-SS troops of Jochen Peiper’s Kampfgruppe.

Tuesday 26:

American troops repulse German forces at Bastogne