August 12, 1944

1944Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., American lieutenant and pilot (born 1915)^[†]

Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. was an American naval aviator who was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He was a member of the Kennedy family and the eldest of the nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. During World War II, Kennedy was killed in action while serving as a land-based patrol bomber pilot, and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.

1944Jacques Pellegrin, French zoologist (born 1873)^[†]

Jacques Pellegrin was a French zoologist.

1944Waffen-SS troops massacre 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema.^[†]

The Waffen-SS was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both German-occupied Europe and unoccupied lands. With the start of World War II, tactical control was exercised by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, with some units being subordinated to the Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS directly under Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's control. It was disbanded in May 1945.

1944Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time at least 40,000 people are killed indiscriminately or in mass executions.^[†]

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.