THE PATH TO WAR'S END
1944
June 4: Rome falls to the Allies.
June 6: Allied troops land in Normandy, in northern France, on ''D-Day.''
June 19-20: United States forces defeat the Japanese in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
July 18: Japanese Premier Tojo resigns.
Dec. 16: Nazis launch their offensive in the Ardennes Forest, in what will be known as the Battle of the Bulge.
1945
Jan. 27: German concentration camp Auschwitz is liberated.
Feb. 4-11: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet for the Yalta Conference near the Black Sea in the Soviet Union.
March 16: US marines capture the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific.
April 12: President Roosevelt dies and is succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.
April 30: Hitler takes his life in Berlin.
May 7: In Reims, France, the Germans sign an unconditional surrender to the Allies.
May 8: The Allies proclaim Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day.
June 21: Allied forces capture the Pacific island of Okinawa.
July 17-Aug. 2: The Potsdam Conference, near Berlin, takes place. Truman, Churchill (succeeded by Clement Attlee), and Stalin discuss peace settlements.
July 26: The Potsdam Proclamation is sent to Japan, demanding unconditional surrender.
Aug. 6: The US drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Aug. 8: The Soviet Union joins the war against Japan.
Aug. 9: The US drops a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.
Aug. 14: Japan agrees to surrender unconditionally.
Sept. 2: Japan signs surrender terms aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. President Truman proclaims Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day.
