The Battle of Crucifix Hill was fought at Haaren, Germany, with the hill taken by elements of the 1st Infantry Division.
A large statuary Crucifix was on top of the hill. In Sam Fuller's Big Red One his platoon takes a field with a large wooden Crucifix which is central to the story line, and which perhaps was inspired by the actual battle, if extremely loosely.
German resistance to Allied advances in the West was stiffening.
The nighttime Battle of Tehumardi was fought on the Estonian island of Saaremaa.
The Germans retreated at Tornio.
The German counteroffensive at Nijemegen failed.
The British occupied Corinth and Samos and landed commandos on Nauplion.
Savy to the Greek political situation, in some ways the British were fighting a prelude to the Cold War in Greece in their actions.
The Finns occupied Kemi on the Gulf of Bothnia.
Fr. Nicolò Cortese, age 37, was killed in Trieste by the Gestapo for his role in aiding Jews and Italian partisans.
SS Enterprise (CV 6) being refueled by tanker in rough seas, October 8, 1944.
Wendell Willkie, age 52, died of a heart attack.
Willkie had run for President in 1940 and had attempted to secure the GOP nomination in 1944. He had originally been a Democrat. Roosevelt thought highly of him and had considered his a potential Vice Presidential candidate. A heavy smoker and drinker, his health declined enormously in the summer and fall of 1944, and the heart attack that killed him was his third in three months, following a bout of pneumonia.
Willkie was a political liberal, authoring in 1943 the best seller One World, which espoused world federalism. There would be no place for him in the modern Republican Party.
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Labels: 1940s, 1944, 1944 World Series, Arctic, Auschwitz, baseball, Diplomacy, Finland, German Wehrmacht, MIddle East, Norway, Petsamo–Kirkenes Offensive, Red Army, The Holocaust, World War Two
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