1939: Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.

1941: Australian troops capture Derna as the Italians begin to withdraw towards Benghazi.

1942: The British withdraw to Singapore Island with the Japanese only 8 miles away.

1943: Fieldmarshal Friedrich von Paulus surrenders himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.

1944: British attacks on the ‘Golden Fortress’ in the Arakan, Burma cease.

1944: A U.S. Ranger battalion is wiped out at Anzio.

1944: The Russians attack towards Nikopol on the southern Dnieper.

1945: The Wilhelm Gustloff, an ex-Kraft Durch Freude ship (Strength Through Joy) in the service of the German Kriegsmarine, is sunk in the Baltic Sea by a Russian submarine with the loss of over 6,000 lives, making the incident the largest single naval disaster in history.

1945: On the twelfth anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler, calls for fanatical resistance by soldiers and civilians and predicts that "...in this struggle for survival it will not be inner Asia that will conquer, but the people that has defended Europe for centuries against the onslaughts from the East, the German nation..."

1945: The Allies launch a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.

*1933: Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor by President Paul Hindenburg.

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