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British forces failed to break through Ottoman lines at Ctesiphon.
Sikh troops were deployed by the British to Matruah in response to Senussi attacks.
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British commander in Indonesia E. C. Mansergh ordered Indonesians to surrender their arms by 18:00 or face "all the naval, army and air forces under my command". Sukarno appealed to President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee to intervene.
Former Hungarian Prime Minister László Bárdossy was sentenced to death.
August von Mackensen, age 95, famous German Field Marshal, died, which seems somehow fitting, not only because of his advanced old age, but also because the Germanys he served had effectively died as well.
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A hurricane made landfall in Louisiana, killing 279 people. The destruction of the storm would not be surpassed for fifty years.
The Germans recaptured lost ground in the Second Battle of Champagne resulting in a French suspension of their campaign.
6,000 or more Ottoman troops were dispatched to break Armenian resistance at Urfa, Turkey.
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Imperial Russian general Nikolai Yudenich arrived in Van, Turkey and appointed Armenian resistance leader Aram Manukian Governor of the Armenian provisional government.
British and Ottoman troops fought in the marshes of the Tigris between the towns of Amara and Qurna, Mesopotamia (Iraq).
The Germans pushed the French back at Souchez.
British and French colonial troops laid siege to German forts around Garua, German Cameroon.
Zeppelin L38 bombed London.
Italian Ralph DePalma won the 5th Indianapolis 500 driving a Mercedes 18/100.
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Hitler fired Guderian as Chief of the OKH following an argument. His replacement was Hans Krebs.
Guderian, as we've noted before, would survive the war. He was released from being held as a POW in 1948, never prosecuted for war crimes, and died in 1954 at age 65.
Krebs killed himself on May 2, 1945.
Eisenhower telegrammed Stalin with his plans for advancing in Germany. The British, who were not consulted, protested.
The Red Army captured Balga.
The U.S. 80th Infantry Division captured Wiesbaden.
The 3d Corps took Marburg.
The USS Trigger was sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the East China Sea.
The Battle of Slater's Knoll began between Australian and Japanese forces on Bougainville.
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Hitler visited Hitler Youth members mobilized for combat in Berlin. The child whom he was famously photographed with, with Hitler pinching his cheek, would survive the Battle of Berlin and keep a framed copy of the scene in his house for the rest of his life.
This was Hitler's last public appearance.
The U.S. Seventh Army captured Saarbrücken.
German defensive specialist Gotthard Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula.
The Germans began to massacre forced workers in the Arnsberg Forest Massacre.
The Australian Army carried out Operation Platypus, in which troops from Z Special Unit were inserted into the Balikpapan area of Borneo to gather information and organize resistance against the Japanese.
France signed an economic pact with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The Navy endured heavy kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa.
The USS Midway was launched.
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The last major German stronghold in the Ardennes, St. Vith, fell to the US 4th Army.
German lawyer and nobleman Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was executed for his membership in hte Kreisau Circle. He was 37.
The 20th Indian Division in Burma took Myinmu.
The US 14th Corps took Bamban in the Philippines.
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The Red Army finally took a destroyed Warsaw. Hitler reacted by sacking generals Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz and Walter Fries.
Von Lüttwitz, who had seen combat in World War One and Two, went on to be a general in the Bundesherr. He died in 1975 at age 79.
Freis was subjected to a trial for his role in the city following in which Hitler requested a death sentence. Amazingly, the court refused and Fries survived the war as well and died in 1982 at age 88.
The SS marched prisoners out of Auschwitz.
Swedish businessman and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg disappeared after being detained by the Soviets in Budapeast. He likely died in a Soviet jail cell two years later.
The German SS Donau was sunk by the Norwegian resistancde in Oslofjord
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The Luftwaffe commenced Operation Bodenplatte, which had originally been planned for December 16, in an attempt to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries. The hope was to gain air superiority so that the stalled German advance in Wacht am Rhein could resume.
A tactical surprise resulting in the destruction of 500 Allied aircraft on the ground, it none the less failed to achieve its goal and actually destroyed the Luftwaffe as an offensive, or even defensive, force due to heavy losses. Allied losses were replaced within one week.
Soldiers of the 11th Armored Division murdered about 80 German POWs at Chenogne, Belgium, in reprisal for the Malmedy Massacre.
Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. I knew they were going to shoot them, and I hated this business.... They marched the prisoners back up the hill to murder them with the rest of the prisoners we had secured that morning.... As we were going up the hill out of town, I know some of our boys were lining up German prisoners in the fields on both sides of the road. There must have been 25 or 30 German boys in each group. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing.... Going back down the road into town I looked into the fields where the German boys had been shot. Dark lifeless forms lay in the snow.
Following the Malmedy Massacre some US units were issued orders not to take SS POWs, a clearly illegal order. The murdered POWs, however, were members of the Führerbegleitbrigade and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, German Army units, the latter of which had been associated with atrocities in Italy.
The killing of SS POWs became routine in some units.
The event was covered up and only really became known in detail in 2018. This was not the only such event that occurred, and some units began to routinely kill SS prisoners.
The UK refused to recognize the Soviet sponsored Polish government.
Hitler made a radio address which omitted the current German situation to such an extent that it provoked Allied debate on who made it, and when.
It's worth noting at this point that while October, 1944, was the bloodiest month of the war for the US, in larger terms, the killing and dying ramped up massively starting in January, 1945, as the Allies closed in on Germany.
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