Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".

World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.

World War II: Battle between HMAS ''Sydney'' and HSK ''Kormoran''. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.

World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on Germany and Italy.

Holocaust: German troops execute over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

World War II: At the Wannsee Conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials decided on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", accelerating The Holocaust.

World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so were to be immediately executed.

Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.

World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan's agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.

World War II: Nazi Germany completes its occupation of France.

The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. Hans Finke arrives in Auschwitz with 963 other prisoners. 473 are put to death in the gas chambers. 491 are assigned to slave labor.

Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Berezhany, western Ukraine. 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.

Prisoners at the Nazi German Sobibor extermination camp in Poland revolted against the Germans, killing eleven SS troops who were guards there, and wounding many more. About 300 of the Sobibor Camp's 600 prisoners escaped from this Nazi extermination camp, and about 50 of these survived past the end of World War II (on May 8, 1945, European time).

Ardeatine Massacre: German troops kill 335 Italian civilians in Rome.

World War II: 270 inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans.

World War II: More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.

World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing 168 shoppers.

World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.

World War II: Hungary declares war on Nazi Germany.

World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army.

Lapland War: Finland declares war on Nazi Germany.

World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his "Nero Decree" ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.

German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen Germany.

The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin.

World War II: Soviet Union forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters.

The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini tries to escape. This day is taken as symbolic of the Liberation of Italy.

Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the ''Wehrmacht'' of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

World War II: The German Army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies.

Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.