WWII On This Day: January 27

A German Messerschmitt Bf 110 attacks B-17F Flying Fortresses of the 91st Bomb Group over Europe in January 1944. — U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives, NAID 204888701 · Public domain in the United States · Source

January 27, 1943 · 09:00 The Combined Bomber Offensive

The Eighth Air Force bombs Germany for the first time

Six days after Casablanca, the Eighth Air Force mounted its first heavy-bomber mission against a target in Germany proper. Ninety-one heavy bombers set out and fifty-three bombed the Wilhelmshaven area. The raid was still within relatively short reach of Britain. The deeper Pointblank targets that followed would expose the daylight force to a much harder problem: repeated fighter interception after escort protection ended.

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Order of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front announcing the complete liberation of Leningrad from the enemy blockade on 27 January 1944, reproduced in Leningradskaya Pravda the next day. Military Council of the Leningrad Front · Official Soviet document · Public domain Source

January 27, 1944 · 20:00 The Siege of Leningrad

Leningrad declares the blockade lifted

The Military Council of the Leningrad Front announced that German forces had been driven far enough from the city for the blockade to be declared completely lifted. At 20:00, twenty-four volleys from 324 guns marked the end of the 872-day siege.

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Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence. — USHMM

January 27, 1945 The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz camp complex

Red Army soldiers reached Auschwitz and found approximately 7,000 surviving prisoners, many of them seriously ill. The SS had destroyed the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau and removed most prisoners, but extensive documentary, material and human evidence remained.

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Soviet armour advancing across Poland, January 1945. — Soviet armour in Poland, January 1945 · RIA Novosti archive · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Photograph pending verification

January 27, 1945 · 12:00 The Vistula–Oder Offensive

Auschwitz is liberated

Soldiers of the 60th Army reached the Auschwitz complex and the city of Oświęcim. The 100th and 322nd Rifle Divisions were among the formations involved. About 7,000 prisoners remained in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz, with approximately 500 more liberated in nearby sub-camps before and soon after 27 January.

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January 27, 1945 · 18:00 The Vistula–Oder Offensive

The Silesian escape route is left open

Soviet armies nearly enclosed Upper Silesia but deliberately left the southern outlet open while armour moved behind the German flank. Seventeenth Army withdrew between 28 and 30 January. The manoeuvre brought the coal and industrial region under Soviet control without a destructive final battle inside every plant.

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