World War II Chronicles

June of 1944 England has been assaulted by the V1 Buzz Bomb. But only did they know, the V2 was coming their way. This bomb was invulnerable to interception. Listen to find out what happened.

In 1944, The Battle of Transportation was on the western front. In order to get supplies to the troops, America created The Red Ball Express. 6,000 trucks on August 24th revved towards the combat. Listen to find out what happens.

With the successful invasion of France, it was apparent that the end of the war was in sight. Beginning on August 21, 1944, representatives from the US, USSR, Britain, and later China, met in Washington to discuss a system for preventing another war. Named the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, after the estate in Georgetown where the diplomats met, the Allies agreed to the creation of the United Nations.

By mid-August of 1944, the Allied Armies were thundering towards the Seine River and Paris. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, convinced General Eisenhower to allow French troops to liberate the city. French Armored Divisions entered Paris on August 25. After more than four years, Paris and France were liberated.

Ten weeks after D-Day on the beaches of Normandy, a mighty new force, poised for a landing in Southern France, assembled in the Mediterranean. Originally intended to take place simultaneously with the Overlord landings, Operation Dragoon began on August 15, 1944.

Since D-Day, the Allied forces had pounded the German Army, through brutal fighting in the Hedgerows of Normandy. But it was not until June 27 that U.S. troops captured the critical port city of Cherbourg.

Following the successful invasion of Saipan, U.S. forces readied themselves for an assault on two other islands in the Marianas in the same week. The site of the first attack was an American territory held by the Japanese since the beginning of the war: Guam.

German officers had plotted numerous attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler by the summer of 1944. Each time, the bombs had failed to explode. Their final attempt came on July 20, 1944, during a conference at Hitler's field headquarters in East Prussia.

The Roosevelt administration had been reluctant to recognize Charles de Gaulle's provisional government in France. On July 6, 1944, one month after he assumed authority in the liberated areas of France, de Gaulle came to Washington. For the US public, de Gaulle's visit was that of a popular hero.

On June 13, 1944, the German Air Force began launching one of the first guided missiles in history. In Britain, the bomb was commonly known as "the doodlebug" or the "buzz bomb," for the buzzing sound it made as it fell. The only way to combat the buzz bomb was to shoot it out of the sky with anti-aircraft guns or fighter planes.