August 15
Politics, Soviet Union
Moscow announces that the Polish Committee of National Liberation is the official body representing the Polish nation and that de facto all negotiations with the emigre government in London are at an end.

Western Front, France
Units from the US VI Corps and the French II Corps, together with paratrooper support, launch the Allied invasion of southern France, code-named Operation Anvil.

Eastern Front, Ukraine
The Soviet 4th Ukrainian Front, attacking to seize the passes across the Carpathian Mountains, makes some progress but fails to capture the passes themselves.

August 19
Western Front, France
Allied units have closed the Falaise pocket two weeks after the Canadian First Army launched Operation Totalize to cut off the encircled German troops. Some 30,000 German soldiers escape from the pocket across the Seine River, but an estimated 50,000 are captured and another 10,000 killed. In the pocket, which has been continually strafed and bombed by Allied aircraft, are hundreds of destroyed and abandoned German vehicles. Canadian, British, and Polish forces coming from the north link up with the US First Army driving from Argentan.

August 23
Politics, ROMANIA
King Michael orders his forces to cease fighting the Allies and has his pro-Axis premier, Marshal Ion Antonescu, dismissed. He announces that the armistice terms have been accepted.

Western Front, France
The US 36th Division takes Grenoble. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, overrules General Bernard Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, regarding the latter's plea for a concentrated thrust through the Low Countries into northern Germany. Eisenhower decides that after the capture of Antwerp - a port vital to the Allies - there will be an American assault toward the Saar by General George Patton's US Third Army.

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