1944
Konrad Morgen, a 34-year-old SS magistrate, brings 800 cases of corruption and murder in the concentration camps to trial. 200 will result in sentences and the commandants of camps at Buchenwald and Majdanek, among others, are executed.
1944
The black U.S. 99th Pursuit Squadron flies its 500th mission in the Mediterranean Theater. The 92nd Infantry Division enters combat in Italy.
1944
Restrictions of black seamen to shore duty are ended, as is exclusion of blacks from the Coast Guard and Marine Corps. The War Department officially ends segregation in all Army posts, but the order is widely ignored. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that "white primaries" violate the Fifteenth Amendment.
1944
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., is elected to the New York House of Representatives, becoming the first black congressman from the Northeast.
1944
The NAACP secures release of servicemen detained for protests of discrimination in Armed Forces in Guam, San Francisco, and New York.
1944
Pierre Laval is arrested by the retreating Germans in France, but will escape to Spain in 1945.
1944
British forces occupy Athens and intervene in the communist inspired civil war.
1944
The word "genocide" is coined (made up) by the Polish-American scholar Raphael Lemkin.
1944
As late as 1944, several members of the famous Fugger vom Reh family (Fuggers of the Doe, from their coat of arms) still reside in Warsaw. (Britannica)
1944
Frank Yerby wins the O. Henry short story award in New York City.
1944
Early in 1944, Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch and his private library of 40,000 anti-Jewish and conspiracy theory books, the heart of a proposed "institute for conspiracy study" are evacuated from Berlin to Schloss Gneisenau at Erdmannsdorf (Riesengebirge) in Silesia for safekeeping. Later in the year, Bostunitsch is promoted to
SS-Standartenfuehrer (colonel) upon the personal recommendation of Heinrich Himmler. (Roots)
1944 January
In Switzerland, Han Bernd Gisevius and his Abwehr associate Eduard Waetjen begin supplying Dulles with information about the German resistence's plans for a coup against Hitler. (Silence)
1944 January
General de Gaulle's visits with Churchill who has been recuperating in Marrakesh after returning from Tehran. After a review of French troops with de Gaulle the British party flies to Gibraltar where they board the battleship King George V for Plymouth. (Churchill Center)
1944 January 3
The Red Army reaches the former Polish border.
1944 January 22
The American VI Corps lands 50,000 troops at Anzio between the German Gustav Line to the south and Rome 33 miles to the north, but fails to break the stalemate. The assault troops consist of U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, U.S. Rangers, paratroops, and a British division.
1944 January 26
Himmler makes an address to more than 260
high-ranking army and navy officers in Posen. Himmler tells them that Hitler,
himself, had given him the mission to exterminate the Jews. "I can
assure you," Himmler told them, "the Jewish question has been solved.
Six million have been killed." According to an eyewitness, all, but five
officers, applauded enthusiastically. (Toland )
1944 January 27
The Soviet Army relieves Leningrad after the German
siege which has lasted 890 days. Since September 1941 the people of Leningrad
had withstood German artillery and air bombardment. More than 200,000 of them
had been killed in the siege; half a million more die from cold, starvation,
fatigue and exhaustion.
1944 January 29
Cardinal Bertram writes to the Government that he
has received reports that the ordinances enacted for the Jews are now to be
applied to the Mischlinge (half-Jews and quarter-Jews). These
Christians, he writes, have already been declared unworthy of military service,
could not attend institutions of higher learning, etc. Now one hears that they
are to be conscripted into special formations for labor service. "All these
measures," he continues, aim clearly at segregation which in the end
threatens extermination." The Mishlinge were German and Christians,
he says, and always rejected by the Jews. "The German Catholics indeed
numerous Christians in Germany," Bertram warns, "would be deeply hurt
if these fellow Christians now would have to meet a fate similar to that of the
Jews." (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Lewy)
1944 January 31
U.S. Marines begin amphibious landings on Kwajalein Atoll and other parts of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.
1944 January 31
Dr. Ritter mentions "23,822 conclusively 'clarified' Gypsy cases" in a report to the DFG (the German Association for Scientific Research). (Science)
1944 February
Hitler abolishes the Abwehr (German army intelligence). Its head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was later arrested and executed as a traitor. Some historians believe he was a double, possibly triple agent.
1944 February 1 The Times of Londons discloses that the last
will and testament of Austrian-born Sir Henry Strakosch had converted "interest
free" loans to Winston Churchill and Lord Simon into gifts. Simon had
received 10,000 pounds, and Churchill twice as much. Strakosch was a
multimillionaire who made his fortune in gold mining in South Africa. (Missing
Years)
1944 February 1
The first of 40,000 Americans land on Kwajaleinl.
Within a week the atoll is taken, and more than 8,000 Japanese troops are
killed.
1944 February 3
Another trainload of Jews leaves Paris for
Auschwitz. It is the 67th such deportation in almost two years. Of 1,214
deported only 26 survive the war. (Atlas)
1944 February 15
Allied troops unsuccessfully attack German forces at Monte Cassio.
