1942

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• On 20 January, senior Nazis meet in Berlin at the Wannsee Conference to plan the 'Final Solution' – the extermination of European Jews.

• On 15 February, Japanese troops capture Singapore and over 70,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers and airmen.

• Between March and the autumn, the Germans establish six death camps to exterminate the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled and other 'unacceptable' groups. One of the camps, Auschwitz, daily sends up to 10,000 Jews to the gas chambers.

• On 4 June, American troops defeat the Japanese fleet in the battle of Midway, which turns the tide of war in the Pacific.

• In August, Mahatma Gandhi launches the 'Quit India' campaign, which calls on the British to leave India immediately.

• On 23 October, British troops beat the German army at El Alamein in north Africa.

• On 11 November, Adolf Hitler orders the German occupation of Vichy France (see 1940).

• On 19 November, Soviet troops begin a counteroffensive against German army at Stalingrad.

• In the United States, the Manhattan Project begins to develop an atom bomb, while German scientists build the V2 rocket bomb.

• French writer and philosopher Albert Camus publishes L'étranger (The Outsider), a novel that sums up his existential philosophy.

• Film-maker Michael Curtiz makes Casablanca, a wartime love story starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

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