In 1941, Joe the Hero made his big speech. The Germans occupying Stalingrad surrender to the Russians. February 9 Japanese forces withdraw from Guadalcanal after six months of fighting the Americans there. The Yankees' Joe DiMaggio joins the army. Hitler's tanks are badly defeated at Kursk, Russia.
Allies go ashore in Italy.
November 24 American marines seize control of Gilbert Islands in the Tarawa Atoll. December 31 U.S. air onslaught against German factories in Berlin. In Casablanca , Humphrey Bogart is a cynical American nightclub owner who finds himself helping Czech rebels escape the Nazis. In Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt , a young woman wonders whether her Uncle Charlie is a murderer of widows. Books in 1943 Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is about a girl in a Brooklyn tenement searching for meaning.