Goering orders Reinhard Heydrich to prepare plans for the 'final solution of the Jewish queston'

Nazi experiments are carried out on Jews and Soviet prisoners of war to find effective means of murder by gas

Roosevelt and Churchill publish a joint Atlantic Charter, foreseeing a future free from 'Nazi tyranny'

The first of the Arctic convoys leaves Scapa Flow, in the north of Scotland, taking Hurricane fighters and raw materials to the Soviet Union

De Gaulle forms in London the French National Committee, a government in exile in London for the Free French

A week or two after reaching Leningrad a Germany army establishes a siege that will last 900 days

The British aircraft carrier Ark Royal is sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean

Enigma is now being decoded fast enough at Bletchley to give the Allies advance warning of German plans

The German advance is held just short of Moscow as winter arrives

In three adapted vans at Chelmno, in western Poland, the Germans begin using poison gas to kill Jews

Bulgaria signs the Anti-Comintern Pact and joins the war on Germany's side

A report by UK economist William Beveridge proposes a wide-ranging social security programme for postwar Britain

Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, mainly written during the siege of Leningrad, has its premiere in Kuybishev

Leslie Howard directs and stars in The First of the Few, about the creator of the Spitfire, with music by William Walton

David Lean and Noel Coward create a classic wartime film, In Which We Serve about the crew of a naval destroyer

A Jewish girl in Amsterdam, Anne Frank, is given a diary for her thirteenth birthday

French author Albert Camus creates an early anti-hero in his novel The Outsider (L'Étranger)

French author Marguerite Duras makes her name with her partly autobiographical novel The Sea Wall

French music student Pierre Boulez joins a harmony class taught by Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire

Italian director Luchino Visconti's first film, Obsession, brings neorealism to the cinema

US poet Ezra Pound, in Italy during the war, broadcasts Fascist propaganda aimed at the United States

A rich hoard of Roman silver is unearthed near Mildenhall, in Suffolk

English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island

Reinhard Heydrich convenes a meeting at Wannsee to discuss the practical details of the 'final solution'

Arthur Harris is put in charge of British Bomber Command, and is later much criticized for his ruthless approach