1940: Death of Hector Bywater, author of 1925 Great Pacific War.

1940: Luftwaffe again raids southern England.

1941: Stalin acknowledges UK and US aid plan and agrees to the ‘apportionment of our joint resources’. Anglo-Soviet exchange agreement signed. LVI Panzerkorps of Panzergruppe 4 takes Novgorod on the road to Leningrad. German and Rumanian forces of Heeresgruppe Süd capture Nikolaev, an important Soviet naval base on the Black Sea.

1943: U.S. troops enter Messina in North eastern Sicily in a final push to clear the island. Axis evacuation of 100,000 troops has been completed.

1943: The Red Army launches an offensive against the Mius line toward Stalino.

1944: General de Lattre de Tassigny’s French First Army begins to land in force in southern France. Hitler orders the withdrawal of all German forces in southern France.

1944: Japanese resistance in Northeast India ends.

1945: Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, is released from a POW camp in Manchuria by U.S. troops.

This Day in WWI

1914: Liege, Belgium, falls to the German army.

--------------------