on 12 February, which the US Congress agreed to on 18 March. Allied troops landed on Sicily on 7 July 1943 and successfully invaded the Italian mainland on the 3 September, and after the Italian armistice on 8 September, gradually advanced northward. On 1 October, Naples was freed from German occupation. German hopes of regaining the military initiative on the Eastern front were dashed by the failure of the Battle of Kursk in early July, and the resultant massive Soviet counter offensive ushered in permanent German retreats for the remainder of the war. In the week 27 July – 3 August 1943, Allied air raids attacked Hamburg in Operation Gomorrah, and the armament centre of Peenemünde was heavily damaged by Operation Hydra on the night of 17–18 August, critically disrupting V-weapons development. At the same time resistance against German forces in the Western occupied territories grew, and a state of emergency was declared in Norway (17 August) and Denmark (29 August). German dissidents planned Germany's reorganisation (the Kreisau Circle) and assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler (which led to "Operation Walküre", 20 July 1944). A scorched earth policy was brought in on 4 September for retreats on the Eastern Front, and martial law against those in the armed forces who refused to follow orders, initially introduced by the General Government on 2 October. In the same period, the destruction of the Jews became the most important goal. In the spring of 1943, Sonderaktion 1005 was in full operation, the exhumation and incineration of those murdered by the Einsatzgruppen across the whole Eastern Front, whose death toll had so far reached 1.8 million Jews. Himmler ordered the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland on 11 June, and all Soviet ones on 21 June. As of 25 June, four new crematoria and gas chamber installations were completed in Auschwitz-II Birkenau at Auschwitz concentration camp. On 1 July all Jews in the Reich were placed under police law. On 24 August Himmler was appointed as minister of the interior, and thus all police forces in the Reich and occupied territories were subordinated to him. By 19 October, Operation Reinhard was to be terminated and the affiliated extermination camps dismantled. Nonetheless, acts of resistance against the destruction of the Jews occurred. There were prisoner rebellions in Treblinka (2 August 1943) and Sobibor (14 October 1943). Jews of the Białystok ghetto mounted an insurrection