A knocked-out Joseph Stalin tank at Drebrecan,
the site of a massive tank battle and a German defeat

October 11-19
Balkans, Yugoslavia
The Red Army joins with the Yugoslavian First Army in the drive to Belgrade, which is abandoned by the Germans on the 19th.

October 14
Politics, Germany
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide with poison. Implicated in the July assassination plot against Hitler, he has killed himself, under pressure, to save his family from arrest. He is to be given a state funeral as part of the charade to maintain the illusion that he was an uncompromising Nazi.

October 20
Balkans, Yugoslavia
The 1st Proletarian Division of Marshal Tito's Army of Liberation captures Belgrade.

Pacific, Philippines
As the US Sixth Army lands on Leyte Island, General Douglas MacArthur wades ashore and keeps a promise he made two years earlier: 'I shall return.' By the evening 10,000 US troops are dug in around Leyte's capital, Tacloban, and Dulag to the south.

October 21
Western Front, Germany
The city of Aachen surrenders to US forces following a 10-day siege.

October 23-26
Pacific, Philippines
Following the US landings on Leyte, the Japanese put in motion their Sho Plan, in which a part of the Combined Fleet is used to decoy the US carrier force while the remainder concentrates against the landing area and attempts to destroy the amphibious armada. The resulting naval battle of Leyte Gulf has four phases: the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of the Surigao Strait, the Battle of Samar, and the Battle of Cape Engano. The result is that the Japanese Combined Fleet is finished as a fighting force, not least because its losses in trained pilots are irreplaceable. It loses 500 aircraft, four carriers, three battleships, six heavy and four light cruisers, 11 destroyers, and a submarine, while every other ship engaged is damaged. US losses are 200 aircraft, one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, and one destroyer-escort.

October 31
Eastern Front, Baltic
The Soviet 1st Baltic Front isolates the remnants of Army Group North in the Courland Peninsula.

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