President Roosevelt personally informed Dwight Eisenhower that he was being transferred to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London as its commander, stating "Well, Ike, you are going to command Overlord".
On the same day, Air Marshall Harris informed his superiors that he believed he could win the war through the RAF alone if the Battle of Berlin is continued and if he can deploy 15,000 Lancasters over the next few months. He in fact would send 14,500 Lancasters in the effort and be proven grossly in error.
The British 8th Army captured Poggiofiorito. The U.S. 5th Army secured the Mignano Gap.
At this point the last of the major Allies, the US, had been in the war for two years. In that time, the Germans and Italian had been pushed out of Africa, and the Western Allies had reentered the European continent through Italy. The Italian government had switched sides and joined the Allies. The French forces in Africa had joined the Allies in rebellion against Vichy. The naval battles in the Atlantic and Mediterranean continued, but the Axis was slowly losing them. A new air campaign over Germany itself had been launched by the Western Allies.
On the East, the fighting was bitter and ongoing, but the Axis had been pushed back from Stalingrad.
In Asia, the Australian and American forces had stemmed Japanese advances and were retaking lost ground in the Southern Pacific. The battle had just been extended into the Central Pacific. The Japanese had been pushed out of the Aleutians.
The war had obviously not been won, and the Axis was bitterly contesting the Allies everywhere, but they were nonetheless continually on the defensive for the most part. Huge numbers of Axis troops were tied up on the Eastern Front in a largely defensive effort with continual efforts to regain offensive initiative and in Asia massive amounts of Japanese forces were tied up in China where they were accordingly useless for anything else.
Chiara Lubich started the lay Catholic humanitarian organization Focolare Movement in Trento, Italy.
