TLR story as is known

1943

January 1:
German 1st Panzer Division withdraws from the Terek River area in southern Russia to prevent encirclement.

January 2:
Americans and Australians recapture Buna, New Guinea.

January 20:
USS Silversides attacks a Japanese convoy 286 miles from Truk, Caroline Islands en route to the Solomon Islands, sinking transport Meiu Maru and damaging Surabaya Maru.

January 21:
Last airfield at Stalingrad is taken by Red Army forces, ensuring that the Luftwaffe will be unable to supply German troops any further; Hitler demands that Friedrich Paulus continue fighting and promotes Paulus to Field Marshal in order to bolster morale. Shortly after, Paulus and his forces surrender to Soviet forces, the first time a German Field Marshal is lost to surrender and thus captured by the enemy.

January 29:
The naval battle of Rennell Island, near Guadalcanal, begins. The Japanese beat the Americans and the USS Chicago is lost.

February 13:
Rommel launches a counter-attack against the Americans in western Tunisia. He takes Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa. The Battle of the Kasserine Pass begins: inexperienced American troops are soon forced to retreat.

February 22:
Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose movement are executed. Japanese POWs refuse to work at Featherston prisoner of war camp; this escalates into a deadly clash between the inmates and the guards.

February 26:
Rommel retreats northward from the Mareth Line in Tunisia.

February 28:
Operation Gunnerside: six Norwegians led by Joachim Rønneberg successfully attack the heavy water plant Vemork.

March 2:
Battle of the Bismarck Sea. U.S. and Australian naval forces, over the course of three days, sink eight Japanese troop transports near New Guinea.

March 18:
General George S. Patton leads his tanks of II Corps into Gafsa, Tunisia.

March 20:
Montgomery's forces begin a breakthrough in Tunisia, striking at the Mareth line.

March 23:
American tanks defeat the Germans at El Guettar, Tunisia.

March 26:
The British break through the Mareth line in southern Tunisia, threatening the whole German army. The Germans move north. Battle of the Komandorski Islands. In the Aleutian Islands United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska. Poor leadership on both sides leads to a stalemate of sorts, and the Japanese withdraw without achieving their goal.

April 4:
The only large-scale escape of Allied prisoners-of-war from the Japanese in the Pacific takes place when ten American POWs and two Filipino convicts break out of the Davao Penal Colony on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The escaped POWs were the first to break the news of the infamous Bataan Death March and other atrocities committed by the Japanese to the world.

April 13:
Radio Berlin announces the discovery by Wehrmacht of mass graves of Poles purportedly killed by Soviets in the Katyn massacre.

April 15:
Finland officially rejects Soviet terms for peace.

April 30:
Operation Mincemeat: Lt. Jewell's crew release a body bearing false documents near the Spanish coast. Later, the body washes up on the Spanish coast and is discovered by a local fisherman. They will go on to mislead the Germans about the site and timing of the Allied invasion of France.

May 11:
American troops invade Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces.

May 24:
Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the majority of U-boats to withdraw from the Atlantic because of heavy losses to new Allied anti-sub tactics. By the end of the month, 43 U-boats are lost, compared to 34 Allied ships sunk. This is referred to as "Black May". Josef Mengele becomes Chief Medical Officer in Auschwitz. This would mark the point of the last of the creatures being made as he focused on trying to get humans to be able to do the same things as the creatures.

July 4:
Exiled Polish leader General Władysław Sikorski dies in an air crash in Gibraltar.

July 5:
Operation Citadel (the Battle of Kursk) begins. Conclusion of the National Bands Agreement in occupied Greece, which is to coordinate the actions of the Resistance movement in Greece.

July 6:
U.S. and Japanese ships fight the Battle of Kula Gulf in the Solomons. One US warships is sunk by one of the creatures white a suicide vest.

July 7:
Walter Dornberger briefs the V-2 rocket to Hitler, who approves the project for top priority.

July 12:
The Battle of Prokhorovka begins, the largest tank battle in human history and part of the Battle of Kursk, it is the pivotal battle of Operation Citadel.

July 13:
Hitler calls off the Kursk offensive, but the Soviets continue the battle.

July 22:
U.S. forces under Patton capture Palermo, Sicily.

July 23:
The USAAF orders the first 100 examples of the planned Convair B-36 six-engined intercontinental strategic bomber.

July 24:
Hamburg, Germany, is heavily bombed in Operation Gomorrah, which at the time is the heaviest assault in the history of aviation.

July 25:
Mussolini is arrested and relieved of his offices after a meeting with Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, who chooses Marshal Pietro Badoglio to form a new government.

August 2:
2,897 Romani are gassed when their camp at Auschwitz is liquidated. John F. Kennedy's PT-109 is rammed in two and sunk off the Solomon Islands.

August 15:
The Land Battle of Vella Lavella island in the Solomons begins. US and Canadian troops invade Kiska Island in the Aleutians, not knowing the Japanese have already evacuated.

September 21: The battle of the Solomons can now be considered at an unofficial end. The Massacre of the Acqui Division begins: After resisting for a week, the Italian Acqui division on the Greek island of Cephallonia surrenders to the Germans. During the next days, over 4,500 Italians are executed and a further 3,000 are lost during transport at sea.

September 22:
Australian forces land at Finschhafen, a small port in New Guinea. The Japanese continue the battle well into October. British midget submarines attack the German battleship Tirpitz, at anchor in a Norwegian fjord, crippling her for six months.

October 14:
229 of 292 B-17s reached the target in the Second Raid on Schweinfurt. Losses are so heavy that the long range daylight bombing campaign is suspended until the bombers can be escorted by P-51 fighters.

November 1:
In Operation Goodtime, United States Marines land on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. The fighting on this island will continue to the end of the war.

November 2:
In the early morning hours, American and Japanese ships fight the inconclusive Battle of Empress Augusta Bay off Bougainville, but the Japanese are unable to land reinforcements.

November 22:
The Cairo Conference: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.

November 23:
Heavy damage from Allied bombing of Berlin. Notably, the Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg is destroyed.

November 24:
Heavy bombing of Berlin continues.

November 25:
Americans and Japanese fight the naval Battle of Cape St. George between Buka and New Ireland. Admiral Arleigh Burke's destroyers distinguish themselves. Rangoon is bombed by American heavy bombers.

December 13:
German soldiers carry out the Massacre of Kalavryta in southern Greece. United States VIII Corps arrives in European Theater.

December 14:
United States XV Corps arrives in European Theater.

December 24:
US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

December 26:
German battleship Scharnhorst is sunk off North Cape (in the Arctic) by a British force led by the battleship HMS Duke of York.

December 27:
General Eisenhower is officially named head of Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.