17 March — World War II: The Nazis execute almost 400 prisoners, Soviet citizens and anti-fascist Romanians at Rîbniţa.
19 March — World War II: Germany's Panzerfaust occupy Hungary.
23 March — World War II: Members of the Italian Resistance attack Nazis marching in Via Rasella, killing 33.
9 May — World War II: In the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, Soviet troops completely drive out German forces, who had been ordered by Hitler to “fight to the last man.”[1]
12 May — World War II: Soviet troops finalize the liberation of the Crimea.
15 May — Holocaust: Deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins.
June — German V-2rockets on test from Peenemünde become the first man-made objects to enter space. By the end of the month, more than 380,000 Hungarian Jews have been transferred to concentration camps - around half of the country's Jewish population.
4 June — World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505, marking the first time a U.S. Navy vessel has captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
5 June — World War II: More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.
5 June — The German Navy's Enigma messages are decoded almost in real time.
6 June — World War II: Battle of Normandy: Operation Overlord, commonly known as D-Day, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The Allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland, in the largest amphibious military operation in history. This operation helps liberate France from Germany, and also weakens the Nazi hold on Europe.
22 June — World War II: Operation Bagration: A general attack by Soviet forces clears the German forces from Belarus, resulting in the destruction of German Army Group Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during World War II.
3 July — World War II: Soviet troops liberate Minsk.
7 July — Holocaust: Hungarian Regent Horthy orders Jewish transports to Auschwitz halted; 437,000 Jews have already been deported, mostly to their deaths.
10 July — World War II: Soviet troops begin operations to occupy the Baltic countries.
2 August — World War II: Turkey ends diplomatic and economic relations with Germany.
4 August — Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.
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