On January 31, 1945, American prisoners of war from Stalag III-C were caught, tragically, in a firefight between German guards and Soviet troops.

Allied intelligence believed that most captured American officers were being held at the Hammelburg prisoner of war camp, Oflag XIII-B. This population likely included Patton’s son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel John Waters, but there was no way to be sure.

The largest of the ghettos where Eastern European Jews were first confined and, later, deported to extermination camps by the Nazis was set up in Warsaw, Poland.

As General Douglas MacArthur’s campaign on Luzon was underway, news of the Palawan massacre produced a call to action to save thousands of Allied POWs and civilian internees from a similar fate. With the extraordinary assistance of Filipino guerrillas, four daring raids were launched behind Japanese lines to liberate those camps.

Incredibly, a handful of American POWs managed to survive the Palawan massacre and with the aid of Filipino guerrillas reached safety.

As the Allied liberation of the Philippines was underway, Japanese commanders acted on orders to annihilate American POWs rather than allow them to assist enemy efforts, and in December 1944 cruelly executed 139 American POWs on Palawan.

Thanks to the escape of the “Davao Dozen” from Japanese captivity in April 1943, Americans learned of the Bataan Death March.

Lieutenant Alexander R. Nininger received the first Medal of Honor of World War II.