October 2: Nazi troops end the Warsaw Uprising.

October 5: Royal Canadian Air Force pilots shoot down the first German jet fighter over Holland.

October 6: The Battle of Debrecen starts on the Eastern Front (it lasts until October 29).

October 7: Members of the Extermination camp Sonderkommando (Jewish work units) in Auschwitz stage a revolt, killing more than seventy SS men before being massacred themselves. - Dumbarton Oaks Conference concludes.

October 8: The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio show debuts in the United States.

October 9: Fourth Moscow Conference: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin begin a 9-day conference in Moscow to discuss the future of Europe.

October 10: The Holocaust/Porajmos: 800 Romani children are systematically murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

October 12: The Allies land in Athens. - Canadian Arctic explorer Henry Larsen returns to Vancouver, becoming the first person successfully to navigate the Northwest Passage in both directions, in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner St. Roch. His westbound voyage is the first completed in a single season and the first passage through the Prince of Wales Strait.

October 13: Riga, the capital of Latvia, is taken by the Red Army.

October 14: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

October 18: The Volkssturm Nazi militia is founded on Adolf Hitler's orders.

October 20: Belgrade is liberated by Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army. - American forces land on Red Beach in Palo, Leyte, as General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines with Philippine Commonwealth president Sergio Osmeña, and Armed Forces of the Philippines Generals Basilio J. Valdes and Carlos P. Romulo. - United States and Filipino troops with Filipino guerillas begin the Battle of Leyte. - American forces land on the beaches in Dulag, Leyte, the Philippines, accompanied by Filipino troops entering the town, and fiercely opposed by the Japanese occupation forces. The combined forces liberate Tacloban.

October 20: A liquefied natural gas explosion destroys a square mile (2.6 km) of Cleveland, Ohio.

October 21: Aachen, the first German city to fall, is captured by American troops.

October 23: The Naval Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines begins (lasts until October 26). - The Allies recognise Charles de Gaulle's cabinet as the provisional government of France.

October 25: The Red Army liberates Kirkenes, the first town in Norway to be liberated. - Medal of Honor-winning submarine ace Richard O'Kane becomes a prisoner of war when USS Tang (SS-306) is sunk in the Formosa Strait. - Florence Foster Jenkins gives a recital in Carnegie Hall.

October 30: Anne Frank and her sister Margot are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. - Appalachian Spring, a ballet by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland, debuts at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with Graham in the lead role.

October 31: Mass murderer Marcel Petiot is apprehended at a Paris Métro station. (source: Wikipedia)