In early January 1944, engineers at Bletchley Park brought the first Colossus computer into use, accelerating Allied codebreaking against German ciphers.

Soviet forces fully broke the Nazi siege of Leningrad after 872 days, ending a blockade that had killed over a million civilians through starvation and shelling.

Mount Vesuvius erupted violently near Naples, destroying villages and damaging Allied bomber squadrons just months after the region's liberation.

General Dwight Eisenhower gave the final order to launch the D-Day invasion, sending Allied paratroopers into the night skies over Normandy hours before dawn.

156,000 Allied troops stormed five Normandy beaches, opening the Western Front and beginning the liberation of occupied France.

British and Canadian armored divisions launched a massive tank offensive southeast of Caen, hoping to break the German lines six weeks after D-Day.

An improved Colossus computer, faster and more capable than its predecessor, began operating at Bletchley Park, sharpening Britain's ability to break Nazi Lorenz ciphers.

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb exploded at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters, but a table leg shielded the dictator and he survived.

The Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation issued its founding manifesto in Chełm, laying groundwork for a communist Polish government as the Red Army pushed toward Warsaw.

American Marines and soldiers push deep into Guam's jungle interior, grinding down entrenched Japanese defenders in the battle's brutal final phase.

The Polish Home Army launches a desperate uprising against German occupation, timed for 5 p.m. as Soviet forces sit idle across the Vistula River.

American Marines and Army troops declared Guam secured after a three-week battle to recapture the island from Japanese occupiers.

Gestapo officers raided the Amsterdam hiding place of Anne Frank and seven others, ending two years in hiding and sending them to concentration camps.

Polish Home Army fighters battled German forces street by street in Warsaw as the uprising entered its second week, with Soviet troops halted just across the Vistula.

Allied invasion convoys departed for southern France as Operation Dragoon prepared to open a second front, drawing German troops away from Normandy.

Allied forces landed on the beaches of southern France near Saint-Tropez in Operation Dragoon, opening a second front to complement the Normandy invasion.

French Forces of the Interior and Free French troops liberated Marseille from German occupation after a week of fierce street fighting during Operation Dragoon.

As Allied forces pushed north through southern France, French resistance fighters and colonial troops accelerated the liberation of Marseille.

Free French and Allied forces liberated Paris from four years of Nazi occupation as General Charles de Gaulle entered the city to jubilant crowds.

General Charles de Gaulle led a jubilant liberation march down the Champs-Élysées a day after Paris was freed from four years of Nazi occupation.

Two days after the city's liberation, Charles de Gaulle worked to assert Free French authority over Paris, sidelining Communist resistance factions vying for power.

Charles de Gaulle's provisional government formally relocated to Paris, restoring French sovereignty weeks after the city's liberation from Nazi occupation.

Anne Frank and her family are transported on the last train from the Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau, three weeks after their arrest.

German forces began a major bombardment of the Warsaw district of Wola as Polish resistance fighters fought street by street to hold the crumbling city.

The Fatherland Front seized power in Sofia in a nearly bloodless coup, aligning Bulgaria with the advancing Soviet Red Army as the Axis crumbled.

Bulgaria's new government declared war on Nazi Germany, reversing its wartime alliance just days after a coup ousted the pro-Axis regime.

11,000 U.S. Marines waded ashore on the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu expecting a three-day fight; it became a two-month bloodbath.

Allied forces launched the largest airborne operation in history, dropping paratroopers into the Netherlands in a bold bid to seize Rhine bridges and end the war by Christmas.

RAF Lancaster bombers dropped massive 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs on the German battleship Tirpitz anchored in a Norwegian fjord, crippling her.

German officers implicated Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the July 20 plot against Hitler, and he took poison rather than face a public trial, dying under orders from Berlin.

The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines as American and Japanese fleets clash across four separate engagements over several days.

Canadian and Polish troops battled through flooded Dutch polders to clear German forces from the Scheldt estuary, opening the vital port of Antwerp.

Yugoslav Partisans and the Soviet Red Army completed the liberation of Belgrade from German occupation after fierce fighting, a major victory for Tito's resistance movement.

Japanese kamikaze aircraft struck US Navy ships off the Philippines as the brutal air-sea campaign for Leyte Gulf ground into its final phase.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, U.S. forces pressed their campaign to retake the Philippines, grinding through fierce Japanese resistance on Leyte island.

Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers, operating from forward bases in the Soviet Union, flew repeated raids targeting the German battleship Tirpitz anchored in Norwegian fjords.

Nazi Germany launched a surprise counteroffensive through the Ardennes Forest, catching Allied forces off guard in what became the largest battle fought by the U.S. Army in World War II.