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Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events[link]

Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

January[link]

US Army troops landing at Anzio during Operation Shingle, late January 1944.

• January 2 – WWII: Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in North Africa.
• January 4 – WWII: The Battle of Monte Cassino begins.
• January 5 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.
• January 8 – WWII: Philippine Commonwealth troops enter the province of Ilocos Sur in Northern Luzon and attack Japanese forces.
• January 11 – US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposes a Second Bill of Rights for social and economic security in his State of the Union address
• January 11 – Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp established.
• January 12 – Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle begin a 2-day wartime conference in Marrakech.
• January 14 – WWII: Soviet troops start the offensive at Leningrad and Novgorod.
• January 15
  • WWII: The 27th Polish Home Army Infantry Division is re-created, marking the start of Operation Tempest by the Polish Home Army.
  • An earthquake hits San Juan, Argentina, killing an estimated 10,000 people in the worst natural disaster in Argentina's history.
• January 17 – WWII:
  • British forces in Italy cross the Garigliano River.
  • Meat rationing ends in Australia.
  • The Soviet Union ceases production of the Mosin-Nagant 1891/30 sniper rifle.
• January 20 – WWII:
  • The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
  • The U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Rapido River.
• January 22 – WWII – Operation Shingle: The Allies begin the assault on Anzio, Italy. The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division stands their ground at Anzio against violent assaults for 4 months.
• January 27 – WWII: The 2-year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
• January 29 – WWII: The Battle of Cisterna takes place.
• January 29 – WWII: HMS Spartan (95)is sunk by a Henschel Hs 293 from a German aircraft off Anzio, western Italy.
• January 30 – WWII: United States troops invade Majuro, Marshall Islands.
• January 31 – WWII: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

February[link]

The Abbey of Monte Cassino in ruins after being destroyed by Allied bombing, February 1944.

Polish inmates hanged by Germans in Warsaw, February 11, 1944

• February 1 – WWII: United States troops land in the Marshall Islands.
• February 2 – The first issue of Human Events is published.
• February 3 – WWII: United States troops capture the Marshall Islands.
• February 7 – WWII: In Anzio, Italian forces launch a counteroffensive.
• February 14 – WWII:
  • SHAEF headquarters is established in Britain by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  • An anti-Japanese revolt breaks out on Java.
• February 15 – WWII – Battle of Monte Cassino: The monastery atop Monte Cassino is destroyed by Allied bombing.
• February 17 – WWII: The Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins; it ends in an American victory on February 22.
• February 20 – WWII:
  • The "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
  • The United States takes Eniwetok Island.
• February 22 – United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe organized from the Eighth Air Force's strategic planning staff; subsuming strategic planning for all US Army Air Forces in Europe and Africa.
• February 23 – WWII: The Chechens and Ingush are forcibly deported to Central Asia.
• February 26 – Shooting begins on the Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuehrer Gives a Village to the Jews" in Theresienstadt.
• February 26 – first US navy captain, Sue S. Dauser of nurse corps appointed.
• February 29 – WWII – Battle of Los Negros and Operation Brewer: The Admiralty Islands are invaded by U.S. forces.

March[link]

• March
  • WWII: The Japanese launch an offensive in central and south China.
  • Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek publishes his book The Road to Serfdom (in London).
• March 1 – WWII:
  • The USS Tarawa and USS Kearsarge are laid down.
  • An anti-fascist strike begins in northern Italy.
• March 2
  • WWII: A train stalls inside a railway tunnel outside Salerno, Italy; 521 choke to death.
  • The 16th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• March 3 – WWII: The Order of Nakhimov and the Order of Ushakov are instituted in the USSR.
• March 4 – In Ossining, New York, Louis Buchalter, the leader of 1930s crime syndicate Murder, Inc., is executed at Sing Sing, along with Emanuel Weiss, and Louis Capone.
• March 6 – WWII: Soviet Army planes attack Narva, Estonia, destroying almost the entire old town.
• March 9 – WWII: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia.
• March 10 – WWII: In Britain the Education Act lifts the ban on women teachers marrying.
• March 11 – Dutch resistance fighter Joop Westerweel.
• March 12 – WWII: The Political Committee of National Liberation is created in Greece.
• March 15
  • WWII: Battle of Monte Cassino: Allied aircraft bomb German-held monastery and stage an assault.
  • WWII: The National Council of the French Resistance approves the Resistance programme.
  • In Sweden, the law of 1864 that criminalizes homosexuality is abolished.
• March 17 – WWII: The Nazis execute almost 400 prisoners, Soviet citizens and anti-fascist Romanians at Rîbniţa.
• March 19 – WWII: German forces occupy Hungary in Operation Margarethe.
• March 18 – The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 and causes thousands to flee their homes.
• March 20 – WWII: RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade's bomber is hit over Germany, and he has to bail out without a parachute from a height of over 4,000 meters. Tree branches interrupt his fall and he lands safely on deep snow.
• March 23 – WWII: Members of the Italian Resistance attack Nazis marching in Via Rasella, killing 33.
• March 24 – WWII:
  • Fosse Ardeatine massacre: 335 Italians are killed, including 75 Jews and over 200 members of the Italian Resistance from various groups, in Rome.
  • In the Polish village of Markowa, German police kill Józef and Wiktoria Ulm, their six children and eight Jews they were hiding.
  • The "Great Escape" – 76 Royal Air Force prisoners escape by tunnel "Harry" from Stalag Luft III this night. Only three return to the UK; of those recaptured, fifty are executed.

April[link]

• April 2 &ndash: WWII: Ascq massacre members of the 2th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend shoot 85 people. When a train approaches the Gare d'Ascq railyway station the railway line is blown apart.
• April 4 – WWII: An allied Surveillance aircraft photographs part of Auschwitz concentration camp.
• April 5 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz-Birkenhau.
• April 25 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
• April 26 – Kidnap of General Kreipe on Crete, Greece.
• April 28 – WWII: 749 American troops are killed in Exercise Tiger at Start Bay, Devon, England.

May[link]

The prime ministers of Britain and the four major dominions at the 1944 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, 1 May 1944.

• May – No Exit published by Jean-Paul Sartre.
• May 5 – WWII: Mohandas Gandhi is released in India.
• May 9 – WWII: In the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, Soviet troops completely drive out German forces, who had been ordered by Hitler to “fight to the last man.”^[1]
• May 12 – WWII: Soviet troops finalize the liberation of the Crimea.
• May 18 – WWII:
  • Battle of Monte Cassino: The Germans evacuate Monte Cassino and Allied forces take the stronghold after a struggle that claimed 20,000 lives.
  • The Crimean Tatars are deported by the Soviet Union.
• May 24 – WWII: Six LSTs are accidentally destroyed and 163 men killed in Pearl Harbor's West Loch Disaster.
• May 30 – Princess Charlotte Louise Juliette Louvet Grimaldi of Monaco, heir to the throne, resigns from her rights in favor of her son Prince Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, later reigning Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
• May 31 – WWII: Destroyer escort England sinks the 6th Japanese submarine in two weeks. This anti-submarine warfare performance remained unmatched through the twentieth century.

June[link]

Allied troops land on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day.

LVTs heading for shore on 15 June 1944 during the Battle of Saipan.

• June – German V-2 rockets on test from Peenemünde become the first man-made objects to enter space.
• June 1 – WWII: The BBC transmits a coded message (the first line of the poem "Chanson d'automne" by Paul Verlaine) to the French Resistance, warning that the invasion of Europe is imminent.
• June 2 – WWII: The provisional French government is established.
• June 4 – WWII:
  • A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505, marking the first time a U.S. Navy vessel has captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
  • Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis capital to fall.
• June 5 – WWII:
  • More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.
  • At 10:15 p.m. local time, the BBC transmits the second line of the Paul Verlaine poem to the French Resistance, indicating that the invasion of Europe is about to begin.
  • The German navy's Enigma messages are decoded almost in real time.
  • US and British paratrooper divisions jump over Normandy, in preparation for D-Day. All including 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions of the United States.
• June 6 – WWII – Battle of Normandy: Operation Overlord, commonly known as 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. This operation helps liberate France from Germany, and also weakens the Nazi hold on Europe.
• June 7 – WWII:
  • The steamer Danae (Greek: Δανάη) carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretans on the first leg of their way to Auschwitz was sunk without survivors off the shore of Santorini.
  • Bayeux is liberated by British troops.
• June 9 – WWII: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin launches the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive against Finland, with the intent of defeating Finland before pushing for Berlin.
• June 10 – WWII: 642 men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.
• June 13 – WWII: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England.
• June 15 – WWII:
  • Battle of Saipan: The United States invades Saipan.
• June 17 – Iceland declares full independence from Denmark.
• June 19 – A severe storm badly damages the Mulberry harbours on the Normandy coast.
• June 22 – WWII:
  • Operation Bagration: A general attack by Soviet forces clears the German forces from Belarus, resulting in the destruction of German Army Group Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during WWII.
  • Burma Campaign: The Battle of Kohima ends in a British victory.
• June 25 – WWII: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala (the largest battle ever in the Nordic countries) begins between Finnish and Soviet troops. Finland is able to resist the attack and thus manages to stay as an independent nation.
• June 26 – WWII: American troops enter Cherbourg.
• June 29 – The Holocaust – The deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps begins.

July[link]

The aftermath of the failed 20 July plot to kill Hitler.

Soviet soldiers fights in the streets of Jelgava, summer 1944

American medics helping injured soldier in France, 1944

• July 1 – The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference begins at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
• July 3 – WWII:
  • Soviet troops liberate Minsk.
  • Battle of Imphal: Japanese forces call off their advance, ending the battle in a British victory.
• July 6
  • Hartford circus fire: More than 100 children die in one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the United States.
  • WWII: At Camp Hood, Texas, future baseball star and 1st Lt. Jackie Robinson is arrested and later court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a segregated U.S. Army bus. He is eventually acquitted.
• July 9 – WWII: British and Canadian forces capture Caen.
• July 10 – WWII: Soviet troops begin operations to occupy the Baltic countries.
• July 12 – Laurence Olivier's film Henry V, based on Shakespeare's play, opens in London. It is the most acclaimed and the most successful movie version of a Shakespeare play made up to that time, and the first in Technicolor. Olivier both stars and directs, as Kenneth Branagh was to do over forty years later in his successful remake.
• July 13 – WWII: Vilnius is occupied by USSR.
• July 16 – WWII: The first contingent of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force arrives in Italy.
• July 17 – WWII:
  • The largest convoy of the war embarks from Halifax, Nova Scotia under Royal Canadian Navy protection.
  • The SS E. A. Bryan, loaded with ammunition, explodes at the Port Chicago naval base; 320 are killed.
• July 18 – WWII: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.
  • American forces push back the Germans in St. Lo, capturing the city.
  • British forces launch Operation Goodwood, an armoured offensive aimed at driving the Germans from the high ground to the south of Caen. The offensive ends 2 days later with only minimal gains.
• July 20 – WWII: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg.
• July 21 – WWII:
  • Battle of Guam: American troops land on Guam (the battle ends August 10).
  • The Polish Committee of National Liberation is created.
• July 22 – The Bretton Woods Conference ends with various agreements signed.
• July 25 – WWII – Operation Spring: One of the bloodiest days for Canadians during the war results in 1,550 casualties, including 450 killed.
• July 26 – WWII: A Messerschmitt Me 262 becomes the first jet fighter aircraft to have an operational victory.^[2]