1943
January 4th Operation Ring approved by STAVKA. It entailed the destruction of the VI Army at Stalingrad unit by unit.
January 8th STAVKA proposed to von Paulus, commander of the VI Army at Stalingrad, that he surrenders. Von Paulus refused the offer.
January 10th Operation Ring began at 08.00 with a massive artillery attack on the VI Army. The German troops in Stalingrad were hunted out unit by unit as laid down in Operation Ring.
January 12th Leningrad gained a rail line to link it to the outside.
January 13th The struggle for Kharkov started again. Two Russian armies attacked the Germans at Kharkov.
January 14th The start of the Casablanca conference. 
January 22nd The Germans evacuated Tripoli in North Africa.
January 31st Von Paulus  surrendered the southern group of the German VI Army at Stalingrad. Two days later, the northern group led by Schreck surrendered.
February 2nd The first Allied merchant ship unloaded its cargo in Tripoli, greatly improving Montgomery’s supply lines.
February 5th The Americans drove the Japanese out of Guadacanal. What is left of the XVII Army was taken off by the “Tokyo Express”.
February 8th The Russians retook the city of Kursk.
February 9th Guadacanal was taken by American forces.
February 14th Start of the first long-range penetration patrols by Wingate’s Chindits. 
February 16th The Russians retook Kharkov.
February 20th The Germans, led by Manstein, launched a counter-offensive against the Russians.
March 2nd The Germans destroyed the Russian 3rd Tank Army.
March 3rd Manstein massed four Panzer corps south-west of Kharkov to launch another massive attack on the Russians.
March 15th The Germans re-captured Kharkov
March 31st The weather (a spring thaw) prevented Manstein from making further gains but in five weeks, Manstein managed to push the Russians back 100 miles on the south-eastern Russian front.
April 13th First news of Katyn Wood massacre was broadcast by the Germans.
April 19th Start of the Warsaw Uprising.
May 7th The German army in North Africa surrendered to the British and Americans.
June 5th The start of Operation Citadel; the German attempt to cut off the Kursk salient.
July 10th Britain and America invaded Sicily.
July 12th The ‘greatest’ tank battle in history occurred at Kursk.
July 16th The start of the German withdrawal from the Kursk salient.
July 17th Rome received its first major bombing raid of the war.Mussolini met Hitler at Feltre.
July 24th The fascist Grand Council agreed that military power in Italy should rest with the king, Victor Emmanuel.
July 25th Mussolini was arrested.
July 28th A bombing raid on Hamburg resulted in a firestorm that killed more than 50,000 people. 
August 3rd Italy made her first move towards a peace settlement with the Allies.
August 6th German troops poured into Italy to stop any chance of a peace settlement taking Italy out of the war.
August 22nd The Germans began their withdrawal from Kharkov and the Russians entered the city the next day.
August 26th The Russians started their campaign to liberate eastern Ukraine. 
September 3rd Britain and America invaded Italy.
September 8th American/British forces land at Salerno.
September 25th Smolensk was liberated.
October 1st British troops entered Naples.
October 9th The liberation on the northern Caucasus was completed.
November 6th German troops were forced out of Kiev. 
November 20th Start of the Battle of Tarawa which resulted in the death of over 1,000 US Marines.
November 23rd The Japanese were driven out of the Gilbert Islands
November 28th Start of the Tehran conference.
December 26th ‘Scharnhorst’ was sunk north of Norway.

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