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the same day that Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of the UK - Germany invaded France, Belgium and Holland, and western Europe encountered the Blitzkrieg 'lightning war'.
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The Battle of Britain, lasting from July to September, was the first to be fought solely in the air. Germany lacked planes but had many pilots .
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Hitler invaded Russia . Operation Barbarossa, as the invasion was called, began on 22 June. The initial advance was swift, with the fall of Sebastopol at the end of October, and Moscow coming under attack at the end of the year.
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The first Americans arrived in England in January - 'Over paid, over sexed and over here' as the gripe went - and in North Africa Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps began their counter-offensive
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The news of mass murders of Jewish people by the Nazis reached the Allies, and the US pledged to avenge these crimes.
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British and Indian troops began their guerrilla campaign in Burma. American progress continued in the Aleutian Islands, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
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Hitler invades Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later.
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By the end of the month Mussolini had fallen, and in September the Italians surrendered to the Allies, prompting a German invasion into northern Italy.
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The Normandy landings were the landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune, during World War II
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After atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders on 14 August.