1944

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1910s  1920s  1930s  – 1940s –  1950s  1960s  1970s
Years:	1941 1942 1943 – 1944 – 1945 1946 1947

Events

• January 4 – The Battle of Monte Cassino begins.
• January 5 – Murder of Danish playwright Kaj Munk
• January 17 – British forces, in Italy, cross the Garigliano River.
• January 17 – Meat Rationing ends in Australia
• January 20 – The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin; the U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Rapido River.
• January 22 – Allies begin Operation Shingle, the assault on Anzio, Italy. The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division stand their ground at Anzio against violent assaults for 4 months.
• January 27 – The two year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
• January 29 – The Battle of Cisterna takes place.
• January 30 – United States troops invade Majuro, Marshall Islands.
• January 31 – American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

Births

• February 23 – Johnny Winter
• March 28 – Ken Howard (d. 2016)
• April 7 – Gerhard Schröder
• April 9 – Leila Khaled
• May 8 – Gary Glitter
• May 14 – George Lucas
• May 19 – Peter Mayhew (d. 2019)
• July 13 – Ernő Rubik
• June 29 – Gary Busey
• September 10 – Judit Pogány, Hungarian actress
• October 24 – Ray Downs
• November 25 – Ben Stein

Deaths

• January 7 – Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States
• July 21 – Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, German army officer
• October 14 – Erwin Rommel, German army officer

New books

• An American Dilemma – Gunnar Myrdal
• Au rendez-vous allemand – (To the German Rendezvous) – Paul Éluard
• A Bell for Adano – John Hersey
• Beyond the Palisade (poetry) – James K. Baxter
• The Book of Imaginary Beings – Jorge Luis Borges
• Book of Naturalists – Charles William Beebe
• The Case of Mrs. Wingate – Oscar Micheaux
• Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
• The Dawn Appears – Annie Greene Nelson
• Friday's Child – Georgette Heyer
• The Golden Fleece – Robert von Ranke Graves
• The Horse's Mouth – Joyce Cary
• Johnny Tremain – Esther Forbes
• The Lost Weekend – Charles R. Jackson
• Our Lady of the Flowers – Jean Genet
• The Razor's Edge – W. Somerset Maugham
• The Tall Book of Nursery Tales – Feodor Rojankovsky
• Terras do Sem Fim (The Violent Land) – Jorge Amado
• Thou That Dwellest in the Gardens – Hayyim Hazaz
• Two Frontiers (poetry) – Edwin James Bradley

Nobel prizes

• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Joseph Erlanger, American doctor, (1874-1965), and Herbert Gasser, American doctor (1888-1963)