1944
D-Day: Normandy landings
At dawn, one hundred and sixty thousand American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops stormed ashore on five Norman beaches through barbed wire, machine-gun fire, and concrete bunkers, in the largest amphibious invasion in history. By nightfall a beachhead was secured at a cost of ten thousand casualties. Eleven months later the Third Reich was rubble.
Bretton Woods builds postwar economy
Delegates from forty-four Allied nations gathered at a New Hampshire resort to design the financial system that would follow the war. John Maynard Keynes sparred with Harry Dexter White. They created the IMF, the World Bank, and a gold-pegged dollar. Free trade and American economic leadership were built into the furniture.
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The largest naval battle in history unfolded in the waters around the Philippines as the Americans returned to Leyte. Japan committed nearly its whole remaining fleet and introduced kamikaze attacks. When it was over, the Imperial Japanese Navy had ceased to exist as a strategic force. MacArthur had kept his promise.
Bretton Woods Conference begins
Delegates from forty-four Allied nations met at a New Hampshire resort to design the postwar global financial system. They created the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a gold-pegged dollar standard. Keynes sparred with the American Harry Dexter White. Capitalism had its postwar blueprint, and it would last for almost thirty years.
Valkyrie plot fails to kill Hitler
Count Claus von Stauffenberg slid a briefcase with a bomb under a map table at Hitler's East Prussian headquarters and left the room. The bomb went off; Hitler survived with singed trousers. By midnight Stauffenberg was shot in a Berlin courtyard. Five thousand more Germans were killed in the bloody purge that followed.
Warsaw Uprising
As the Red Army approached the Vistula, the Polish Home Army rose against the German occupiers of Warsaw, expecting Soviet help. Stalin halted his armies and let the Poles bleed. For sixty-three days they fought in sewers and ruins. Two hundred thousand died. Hitler ordered Warsaw leveled. The city was eighty-five percent rubble by the time the Soviets finally arrived.
Paris liberated
After four years of occupation, the first Allied troops, mostly Free French under Leclerc, rolled into Paris through cheering crowds. Hitler had ordered the city destroyed; the German commander disobeyed. De Gaulle walked down the Champs-Elysees the next day under sniper fire, head up, refusing to duck. France had its myth of liberation.