A year of great progress, 1944 was for the Allied forces in all theatres of World War Two, a harbinger of the end of the Axis. As the Allies liberated Rome, stormed ashore in Normandy on D-Day, and roared west with Operation Bagration, they pierced the frontier of the Nazi Third Reich. The year also saw the Allies returning to the Philippines and occupying the Marianas in the Pacific to bring the devastation of war to the home islands of Japan. Enemy resistance was fanatical at times, but the end was coming into focus. Even as their soldiers, sailors, and airmen continued to fight and die on the battlefield, at sea, and in great aerial actions, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union eyed the future ? the look of the post-war world. In victory, there was diplomacy and pragmatic political manoeuvring.
