1943
German surrender at Stalingrad
Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus and the remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad after five months of the bloodiest urban battle in history. Ninety thousand Germans went into Soviet captivity; fewer than six thousand would return home after the war. The tide of the Eastern Front had turned and would not turn back.
Bengal famine kills three million
A combination of cyclone damage, war profiteering, Japanese occupation of Burmese rice fields, and British wartime policy left rural Bengal without food. Between two and three million people starved to death while rice was shipped out of Calcutta to feed the imperial war effort. Churchill dismissed the reports and blamed the Indians for breeding like rabbits.
Casablanca Conference demands unconditional surrender
Roosevelt and Churchill met in a French Moroccan hotel to coordinate strategy and agreed that only unconditional surrender would end the war with Germany, Italy, and Japan. The phrase would be criticized later for stiffening Axis resistance. At the time it was a promise to the Soviets that the Western Allies would not cut a deal.
Tehran Conference Big Three meet
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the first time in wartime Tehran. Stalin extracted a firm commitment for a cross-Channel invasion in 1944. The three men mapped the war's end over vodka and lamb. They did not love each other; they did not need to. They had agreed to crush Hitler between two enormous armies.
Warsaw Ghetto uprising
As the Nazis prepared to deport the last Warsaw Jews to Treblinka, a few hundred young fighters with smuggled pistols and homemade bombs rose up. They held out for nearly a month against tanks and flamethrowers. The Germans burned the ghetto block by block. At the end, a leader wrote, The dream of my life has become reality.
Allies invade Sicily
British and American forces stormed the beaches of southern Sicily in Operation Husky, the beginning of the liberation of Italy. Within a few weeks Mussolini had been voted out by his own Fascist Grand Council and arrested. The soft underbelly of Europe turned out to be plenty tough, but the Italian campaign was under way.
Tehran Conference
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the first time in Tehran to coordinate the final push against Germany. Stalin wrested a firm commitment for a second front in France. Roosevelt, charmed, began to think he could handle Uncle Joe. The three men shaped the postwar world in discussions largely hidden from their own publics.