With German Sixth Army trapped and starving inside Stalingrad, Soviet commanders pressed their encirclement, rejecting surrender terms as the pocket's collapse neared.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill opened the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, where they agreed to demand the Axis powers' unconditional surrender.

Soviet forces tightened their encirclement of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, driving the Wehrmacht toward the catastrophic surrender weeks later.

Soviet forces cut the encircled German Sixth Army in half at Stalingrad, severing its last cohesion just days before its final surrender.

The remnants of Nazi Germany's Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad, marking the war's decisive turning point on the Eastern Front.

British engineer Tommy Flowers pressed forward with plans for Colossus, the electronic machine that would break Nazi Lorenz cipher traffic and is considered among the first programmable digital computers.

Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers, worked by the Imperial Japanese Army under brutal conditions, continued construction on the Thailand-Burma railway through early 1943.

No wait, this belongs on another date.

Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms against SS troops sent to deport the ghetto's remaining residents to death camps.

The last organized Axis resistance in North Africa collapses as roughly 275,000 German and Italian troops surrender to Allied forces in Tunisia.

Soviet and German forces continued grinding tank battles near Kursk, days after the largest tank engagement in history at Prokhorovka.

A Japanese destroyer rammed and split PT-109 in half near the Solomon Islands, and its young skipper, future president John F. Kennedy, led survivors to safety.

Soviet forces recaptured Kharkov, concluding the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history and a decisive turning point on the Eastern Front.

Free French authorities in Beirut cracked down after Lebanon's newly elected parliament moved to amend the constitution and strip away French mandate powers.

Under pressure from clergy, parliamentarians, and public protest, Bulgaria's government finalized its refusal to deport its roughly 48,000 native Jews to Nazi death camps.

Chinese Expeditionary Force troops fighting alongside Allied units pushed forward in the campaign to reopen the Burma Road and break the Japanese blockade.

German paratroopers under Otto Skorzeny rescued deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from mountaintop imprisonment at Gran Sasso.

Soviet forces continue their autumn offensive across southern Ukraine, pushing German troops back toward the Dnieper River as part of the broader liberation of the region.

The Kingdom of Italy formally declared war on its former Axis partner Germany, completing its dramatic wartime reversal after Mussolini's fall.

U.S. forces finalized preparations for the amphibious assault on Tarawa Atoll, a battle that would become a brutal lesson in Pacific island warfare.

Lebanon achieved independence from French mandatory rule, a milestone commemorated ever since as Lebanese Independence Day.

Wait—correcting date: Bernstein's famous last-minute substitution occurred November 14, 1943, not December 15; entry replaced.