396 The Battle of Kursk

The Hamburg bombing forced the German government to rethink its defense policies. In Québec, Churchill and Roosevelt cut a deal on atom bomb research.

After two years of trying, RAF Bomber Command at last perfected the techniques to inflict mass casualties and devastation on an enemy city. Meanwhile, the US Eighth Air Force struggled to develop their own strategies.

As the war turned against them, the Japanese attempted to create allies among the nations it occupied, declaring the independence of Burma and the Philippines, while the US embraced China as a peer of the main Allied powers, alongside the US, UK, and USSR.

The Japanese come to the reluctant conclusion that they have to abandon Guadalcanal and northeastern New Guinea. US submarine warfare begins to take a toll, and Admiral Yamamoto is killed.

The German offenive failed. Then it was the Soviets' turn.

Adolf Hitler begins his long-delayed 1943 offensive against the USSR, which fizzles in a matter of days.

Warner Brothers was one of the minor studios until they introduced the first talking picture, which made the studio into one of the majors. In the Thirties, Warner Brothers, led by the irascible Jack L. Warner, was known for its glitzy musicals and crime dramas. In the early Forties, the studio released two films that are now regarded as among the best American films ever made: The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.

The Japanese claimed to be liberating their fellow Asians from Western oppression, but Japanese rule proved to be brutal and murderous.

In early 1943, the remaining residents of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the SS. Farther east, the German Army uncovers the mass grave where the Soviet NKVD buried thousands of murdered Polish Army officers.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the American atom bomb project kicked into high gear. Fearful that the Germans were already working on a bomb and had a head start, the US government built a huge program meant to approach the problem of building an atom bomb from several different angles all at once.