-
On 15 March 1939, German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. They took over Bohemia, and established a protectorate over Slovakia. Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia was the end of appeasement: It proved that Hitler had been lying at Munich.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/endofappeasementrev1.shtml -
Signed by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini on May 22, 1939, it formalized the 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis agreement, linking the two countries politically and militarily.
http://www.britannica.com/event/Pact-of-Steel -
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, (also known as the Nazi–Soviet Pact), named after the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, officially the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,[a] was a non-aggression pact signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Moscow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact -
A week after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, German forces invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Hitler used the blitzkreig strategy
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-invade-poland -
On this day in 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany.
-
The first combat attack by RAF Bomber Command is carried out against German warships in the Heligoland Bight with 29 Bristol Blenheim and Vickers Wellington medium bombers in a daylight raid. The pocket battleship Admiral Scheer was hit three times but the bombs did not explode. The bow of the cruiser Emden was damaged by the wreckage of a shot-down Blenheim. Of the attacking aircraft, five Wellingtons of No. 9 Squadron were shot down.
-
Rotterdam and other Dutch cities are attacked from the air. By the end of the month, the Dutch armies will have surrendered, Belgium will have surrendered, and the evacuation of British and French troops from Dunkirk will be underway.
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg -
after withholding formal allegiance to either side in the battle between Germany and the Allies, Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, declares war on France and Great Britain.
-
On this day in 1940, Parisians awaken to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening-as German troops enter and occupy Paris.
-
Germany, Italy and Japan enter into a 10-year military and economic alliance that comes to be known as the "Axis". Hungary and Romania will join the Axis in November
-
the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.”
-
Under the codename Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II.
-
A Soviet counteroffensive drives the Germans from the Moscow suburbs in chaotic retreat.
-
The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, in the Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.
-
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. It was one of the bloodiest battles in world history.
-
British and US troops successfully land on the Normandy beaches of France, opening a “Second Front” against the Germans.
-
Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his “1,000-year” Reich collapses above him.
-
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II.
-
On this day in 1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France.
-
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War.
