English contralto Kathleen Ferrier makes her London début in Handel's Messiah in Westminster Abbey

Pablo Picasso transforms a bicycle's handlebars and saddle into Head of a Bull

Jean-Paul Sartre begins a new career as a dramatist with his first play, The Flies ('Les Mouches')

Hitler appoints Karl Dönitz as commander of the German navy

With much of the German Sixth Army destroyed, the survivors led by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrender at Stalingrad

Martin Bormann, previously head of the party secretariat, becomes Hitler's personal secretary

New Allied successes against the German U-boats provide a turning point in the battle of the Atlantic

Jews in Warsaw resist a fierce German onslaught for a month before their ghetto is finally destroyed

The victory of the Allies in north Africa brings to an end the three-year siege of Malta

Two hydroelectric schemes in the Ruhr valley are destroyed by the RAF's Dam Busters and their bouncing bombs in Operation Chastise

British and American troops land in Sicily to begin the Italian campaign

Hitler's attempt to take Kursk (in response to Stalingrad) results in the German loss of 70,000 men and 1500 tanks

Belsen, used as a prisoner-of-war camp since 1940, is turned into a concentration camp

The king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, has Mussolini arrested and appoints in his place a field marshal, Pietro Badoglio

The Hamburg Fire Department coins the word Feuersturm ('firestorm') to describe the unprecedented effects of an RAF raid on the city

Italians signs a secret armistice with the Allies, as Allied troops land in Sicily

British general Harold Alexander is appointed commander-in-chief of all Allied forces in the Italian campaign

On Hitler's orders, the SS rescue Mussolini from house arrest in the mountains of central Italy

All German and Italian troops are by now driven out of Sicily or captured by the Allies

The RAF bomb the German V-2 rocket research station at Peenemünde

Allied bombers begin four months of night-time raids on Berlin

A strong Allied force lands at Salerno, south of Naples

Italy, abandoning her Axis partners, surrenders unconditionally to the Allies

A premature uprising against the Germans in Naples results in a massacre of the inhabitants

British admiral Louis Mountbatten is appointed to head the new Southeast Asia Command, with his headquarters in Delhi