List of Famous people who died in 1944

Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam or Mandelshtam was a Soviet physicist of Belarusian-Jewish background.

Juan Zanelli (1906–1944) was a Chilean racecar driver. He was born in Iquique, Chile in 1906. He raced in Grand Prix motor racing and hillclimbs from 1929 to 1936. In a Bugatti he won the 1929 and 1930 Bugatti GP at Le Mans, finished 8th in Alessandria in 1929 and 2nd in 1930, 2nd at the 1929 Marne GP and 3rd at the 1930 French GP at Pau. He won the 1933 Penya Rhin Grand Prix in Barcelona, Spain in an Alfa Romeo.

Gerrit van der Veen was a Dutch sculptor. He was a member of the Dutch underground, which resisted the German occupation of Amsterdam during World War II. The historian Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote:

In 1940, after the German occupation, van der Veen was one of the few who re-fused to sign the so-called “Arierverklaring,” the Declaration of Aryan Ancestry. In the years that followed, he tried to help Jews both in practical and symbolic ways. Together with the musician Jan van Gilse and the artist, art historian, and critic Willem Arondeus, van der Veen established the underground organization De Vrije Kunstenaar. Van der Veen and the other artists published a newsletter calling for resistance against the occupation. When the Germans introduced identity documents (Persoonsbewijzen) that distinguished between Jews and non-Jews, van der Veen, Arondeus and the printer Frans Duwaer produced some 80,000 false identity papers.

Chūichi Nagumo was a Japanese admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II. Nagumo led Japan's main carrier battle group, the Kido Butai, in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Indian Ocean raid and the Battle of Midway. He committed suicide during the Battle of Saipan.

Charles Hope Kerr, a son of abolitionists, was a vegetarian and Unitarian in 1886 when he established Charles H. Kerr & Co. in Chicago. His publishing career is noted for his views' leftward progression toward socialism and support for the Industrial Workers of the World.

Antanas Smetona was one of the most important Lithuanian political figures between World War I and World War II. He served as the first President of Lithuania from 4 April 1919 to 19 June 1920. He again served as the last President of the country from 19 December 1926 to 15 June 1940, before its occupation by the Soviet Union. He was also one of the most prominent ideologists of nationalism in Lithuania.

Louis Renault was a French industrialist, one of the founders of Renault and a pioneer of the automobile industry.

Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin was a Soviet military commander during World War II. Vatutin was responsible for many Red Army operations in Ukraine as commander of the Southwestern Front, and the Voronezh Front during the Battle of Kursk. During the Soviet offensive to retake right-bank Ukraine, Vatutin led the 1st Ukrainian Front, responsible for the Red Army's offensives to the west and south-west of Kiev and the eventual liberation of the city.