1944 in France

Decades:	1920s ; 1930s ; 1940s ; 1950s ; 1960s ;
See also:	Other events of 1944 ; History of France • Timeline • Years

Last updated April 13, 2024

Incumbents

Chairman of the Provisional Government: Philippe Pétain (until 20 August), Charles de Gaulle (starting 20 August)
Vice-President of the Council of Ministers: Pierre Laval (until 20 August), Charles de Gaulle (starting 20 August)

Events

15 March – The National Council of the French Resistance approves the Resistance programme.
1 June – BBC transmits coded messages (including the first line of a poem by Paul Verlaine) to underground resistance fighters in France warning that the invasion of Europe is imminent.
2 June – The provisional French government is established.
5 June
- More than 1000 British bombers drop 5000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.
- At 10:15 p.m. local time, the BBC transmits coded messages including the second line of the Paul Verlaine poem to the underground resistance indicating that the invasion of Europe is about to begin.^[1]
6 June
- Battle of Normandy begins – Operation Overlord, code named D-Day, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy.
- Battle of Cherbourg begins.
7 June – Bayeux liberated by British troops.
9 June – Over 200 people are killed by 2nd SS Panzer Division ("Das Reich") in the Tulle massacre
10 June
- 642 people are killed by 2nd SS Panzer Division ("Das Reich") in the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre.
- Battle of Carentan begins.
13 June – Battle of Bloody Gulch, near Carentan, United States forces victory.
14 June – Battle of Carentan ends with Allied victory.
26 June – American troops enter Cherbourg.
30 June – Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.
9 July – British and Canadian forces capture Caen.
9 August – Ordonnance du 9 août 1944 relative au rétablissement de la légalité républicaine sur le territoire continental declares the Constitutional Law of 1940 issued by the Provisional Government void ab initio.
12 August – The world's first undersea oil pipeline is laid, between England and France in Operation Pluto.
15 August – Operation Dragoon lands Allies in southern France.
19 August – Liberation of Paris: The city rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.
20 August – American forces defeat German forces at Chambois. This victory closed the Falaise Gap.
24 August – Liberation of Paris: The Allies enter Paris, successfully completing Operation Overlord.
25 August
- German surrender of Paris: General Dietrich von Choltitz surrenders Paris to the Allies, in defiance of Hitler's orders to destroy it.
- Maillé massacre: 129 civilians (70% women and children) are massacred by the Gestapo at Maillé, Indre-et-Loire.
- The Red Ball Express convoy system begins operation, supplying tons of materiel to Allied forces in France.
26 August
- Toulon liberated in Battle of Toulon (1944).
- Ordonnance instituting Indignité nationale .
28 August – Marseille liberated in Battle of Marseille.
8 September – Menton is liberated from Germany.
11 September – Northern and Southern France invasion forces link up near Dijon.
24 September – The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division takes the strongly defended city of Epinal before crossing the Moselle River and entering the western foothills of the Vosges.
5 October – Royal Canadian Air Force pilots shoot down the first German jet fighter over France.
31 October – Mass murderer Marcel Petiot is apprehended in a Paris Métro station.
23 November – Liberation of Strasbourg.
19 December – Newspaper Le Monde first published in Paris.
Toymaker Jouef established.

Arts and literature

6 February – Première of Jean Anouilh's tragedy Antigone , at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Nazi-occupied Paris.
May – Première of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist drama Huis Clos , at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Births

January to June

17 January – Françoise Hardy, singer.
10 February – Jean-Daniel Cadinot, film director and producer (died 2008)
25 February – François Cevert, motor racing driver (died 1973)
7 April – Jean-Pierre Brucato, soccer player (died 1998)
22 May – Henri Guédon, percussionist (died 2006)
25 May – Pierre Bachelet, singer songwriter (died 2005)
26 May – Laurent-Michel Vacher, philosopher, writer and journalist (died 2005)
22 June
- Pierre Goldman, left-wing intellectual, convicted of several robberies and assassinated (died 1979)
- Gérard Mourou, electrical engineer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics
24 June – Ticky Holgado, actor (died 2004)

July to December

6 July – Claude-Michel Schönberg, composer
12 July – Jean-François Jenny-Clark, double bass player (died 1998)
9 August – Patrick Depailler, motor racing driver (died 1980)
14 August – Jean-François Bizot, journalist and writer (died 2007)
2 September – Gilles Marchal, songwriter and singer (died 2013)
6 September – Christian Boltanski, photographer, sculptor and installation artist (died 2021)

Full date unknown

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, urban violence victim (died 2005)

Deaths

14 January – Eugène Louis Bouvier, entomologist and carcinologist (born 1856)
31 January – Jean Giraudoux, novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright (born 1882)
4 February – Yvette Guilbert, singer and actress (born 1865)
24 February – Fanny Clar, journalist and writer (born 1875)
5 March – Max Jacob, poet, painter, writer and critic (born 1876)
22 March – Pierre Brossolette, journalist and Resistance fighter (born 1903)
30 April – Paul Poiret, fashion designer (born 1879)
20 May – Fraser Barron, New Zealand bomber pilot at Le Mans (born 1921 in Dunedin)
6 July
- Andrée Borrel, French World War II heroine (executed) (born 1919)
- Sonia Olschanezky, German-born French Jewish World War II heroine (executed) (born 1923)
7 July – Georges Mandel, politician and Resistance leader (executed) (born 1885)
15 July – Joseph Sadi-Lecointe, aviator (born 1891)
31 July – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, pilot and writer (born 1900)
9 September – Robert Benoist, motor racing driver and war hero (executed) (born 1895)
11 September – Yolande Beekman, World War II heroine (executed) (born 1911)
13 September – Madeleine Damerment, World War II heroine (executed) (born 1917)
1 November – Lucien Cayeux, sedimentary petrographer (born 1864)
5 November – Alexis Carrel, surgeon and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (born 1873)
13 December- Wassily Kandinsky, artist (born 1866)
30 December – Romain Rolland, writer, Nobel Prize in Literature (born 1866)

Related Research Articles

1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1944th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 944th year of the 2nd millennium, the 44th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1940s decade.

Carentan is a small rural town near the north-eastern base of the French Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy in north-western France, with a population of about 6,000. It is a former commune in the Manche department. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Carentan-les-Marais. The town was a strategic early goal of the World War II landings as capturing the town was necessary to link the lodgements at Utah and Omaha beaches which were divided by the Douve river estuary. The town was also needed as an intermediate staging position for the capture of the cities of Cherbourg and Octeville, with the critically important port facilities in Cherbourg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle for Caen</span> Battle during the Normandy campaign

The Battle for Caen is the name given to fighting between the British Second Army and the German Panzergruppe West in the Second World War for control of the city of Caen and its vicinity during the larger Battle of Normandy. The battles followed Operation Neptune, the Allied landings on the French coast on 6 June 1944 (D-Day).

The following events occurred in June 1944:

The Military Administration in France was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zone in areas of northern and western France. This so-called zone occupée was established in June 1940, and renamed zone nord in November 1942, when the previously unoccupied zone in the south known as zone libre was also occupied and renamed zone sud.

Liberty Road is the commemorative way marking the route of the Allied forces from D-Day in June 1944. It starts in Sainte-Mère-Église, in the Manche département in Normandy, France, travels across Northern France to Metz and then northwards to end in Bastogne in Belgium, on the border of Luxembourg. At each of the 1,146 kilometres, there is a stone marker or 'Borne'. The first lies outside the town hall in Sainte-Mère-Église.

The Battle of Carentan was an engagement in World War II between airborne forces of the United States Army and the German Wehrmacht during the Battle of Normandy. The battle took place between 6 and 13 June 1944, on the approaches to and within the town of Carentan, France.

The Battle for Brest was fought in August and September 1944 on the Western Front during World War II. Part of the overall Battle for Brittany and the Allied plan for the invasion of mainland Europe called for the capture of port facilities, in order to ensure the timely delivery of the enormous amount of war materiel required to supply the invading Allied forces. It was estimated that the 37 Allied divisions to be on the continent by September 1944 would need 26,000 tons of supplies each day. The main port the Allied forces hoped to seize and put into their service was Brest, in northwestern France.

The following events occurred in August 1944:

Events from the year 1914 in France.

Events from the year 1941 in France.

Events from the year 1945 in France.

Events from the year 1919 in France.

Events from the year 1942 in France.

This is a timeline of events that occurred during 1944 in World War II.

Events from the year 1940 in France.

Events in the year 1944 in Germany.

U.S. soldiers committed rape against French women during and after the liberation of France in the later stages of World War II. The sociologist J. Robert Lilly of Northern Kentucky University estimates that U.S. servicemen committed around 4,500 rapes in France between June 1944 and the end of the war in May 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation of France</span> Successful attempt to liberate France from Nazi occupation

The liberation of France in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance.

The liberation of Rennes, along with its surrounding settlements, took place on 4 August 1944 by the joint action of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) and the 8th Infantry Division of the United States Army led by General Georges S. Patton, ending four years of capture of the city by the Nazi Germans as part of the liberation of Brittany.

References

↑ Stourton, Edward (2017). Auntie's War: the BBC during the Second World War. London: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-857-52332-7.

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[1] Stourton, Edward (2017). Auntie's War: the BBC during the Second World War. London: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-857-52332-7.

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