Untitled

World War II

  • Munich Beer Hall Putsch

    On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempted coup d'état which came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller in the Bavarian city of Munich, aiming to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government.
  • Japenese Invasion Of Manchuria

    In the 1930s, the Japanese controlled the Manchurian railway. In September 1931, they claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway, and attacked the Chinese army.
  • Hitler Becomes Chancellor

    Hitler Becomes Chancellor
    On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed as the chancellor of Germany by President Paul Von Hindenburg. This appointment was made in an effort to keep Hitler and the Nazi Party “in check”; however, it would have disastrous results for Germany and the entire European continent. In the year and seven months that followed, Hitler was able to exploit the death of Hindenburg and combine the positions of chancellor and president into the position of Führer, the supreme leader of Germany.
  • Burning Of The Reichstag

    On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down due to arson. The government falsely portrayed the fire as part of a Communist effort to overthrow the state.
  • Night Of THe Long Knives

    The Night of the Long Knives, in June 1934, saw the wiping out of the SA's leadership and others who had angered Hitler in the recent past in Nazi Germany. After this date, the SS lead by Heinrich Himmler was to become far more powerful in Nazi Germany.
  • Nuremburg Laws

    On September 15, 1935, the Nazi government passed two new racial laws at their annual NSDAP Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg, Germany. These two laws (the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law to Protect German Blood and Honor) became collectively known as the Nuremberg Laws. These laws took German citizenship away from Jews and outlawed both marriage and sex between Jews and non-Jews. Unlike historical antisemitism, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jewishness by heredity (race) rather than by practice (
  • Reoccupation Of The Rhineland

    On 7 March 1936 German troops marched into the Rhineland. This action was directly against the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out the terms which the defeated Germany had accepted.
  • Rape Of Nanking

    Three of us committee members drive out to military hospitals that have been opened in the Foreign Ministry, the War Ministry, and the Railway Ministry, and are quickly convinced of the miserable conditions in these hospitals, whose doctors and nurses simply ran away when the shelling got too heavy, leaving the sick behind with nobody to care for them. . .
  • Annexation Of Austria

    German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany.
  • Sudetenland

    Hitler encourages Konrad Henlein, leader of the Sudeten Nazis, to rebel, and demands a union with Germany. When the Czech government declares martial law, Hitler threatens war. 15 September 1938: Chamberlain goes to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden.
  • Munich Conference

    In late 1938 a crisis developed in Europe. Adolf Hitler, the fascist dictator of Germany, had already annexed Austria the year before. Now he wanted to also take the "Sudetenland" region of Czechslovakia and make the territory a part of Germany. He claimed that the German speaking inhabitants of this land were being mistreated by the Czech government. On 29 September 1938 the Munich Conference was called. Here Hitler met with representatives of the heads of state from France, the United Kingdo
  • Invasion Of Poland

    Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, had decl
  • Conquest Of Denmark

    The German invasion of Denmark was the fighting that followed the German army crossing the Danish border on 9 April 1940 by land, sea and air. Lasting approximately six hours, the German ground campaign against Denmark was the briefest on record.[9]
  • Conquest Of France

    Hitler's ultimate plan was to expand east at the expense of the USSR. He attempted to establish a peace treaty with France and the UK to recognize German conquests and annexations in Central Europe, to enable Germany to recharge before invading the USSR. When the Allies refused, Hitler knew he would have to quickly conquer France, through the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg), to remove France as a combatant, isolating the UK to carry the Allied cause, and hopefully forcing a p
  • Conquest Of Belgium & Netherlands

    Germany attacked in the west on May 10, 1940. Initially, British and French commanders had believed that German forces would attack through central Belgium as they had in World War I, and rushed forces to the Franco-Belgian border to meet the German attack. Belgium and the Netherlands surrendered in May. More than 300,000 French and British troops were evacuated from the beaches near Dunkirk (Dunkerque) across the English Channel to Great Britain. Paris, the French capital, fell to the Germans.
  • Battle Of Britain

    The Battle of Britain was the German air force's attempt to gain air superiority over the RAF from July to September 1940. Their ultimate failure was one of the turning points of World War Two and prevented Germany from invading Britain.
  • Operation Barbarossa

    On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and its Axis allies began a massive invasion of the Soviet Union named Operation Barbarossa -- some 4.5 million troops launched a surprise attack deployed from German-controlled Poland, Finland, and Romania. Hitler had long had his eye on Soviet resources. Although Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1939, both sides remained suspicious of one another, and the agreement merely gave them more time to prepare for a probable war.
  • Seige Of Leningrad

    The Red Army was outflanked and on September 8 1941 the Germans had fully encircled Leningrad and the siege began. The siege lasted for a total of 900 days, from September 8 1941 until January 27 1944.
  • Battle OF Moscow

    Hitler still believed that the Wehrmacht had a chance to finish the war before winter by taking Moscow. On 2 October 1941, Army Group Center under Fedor von Bock launched its final offensive towards Moscow, code-named Operation Typhoon.
  • Pearl Harbor

    •A total of 2,335 U.S. servicemen were killed and 1,143 were wounded. Sixty-eight civilians were also killed and 35 were wounded.
    •The Japanese lost 65 men, with an additional soldier being captured.
    •Pearl Harbor is on the south side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu and is the home to a U.S. naval base.
    •The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II.
  • Bataan Death March

    the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II.
  • Battle Of Coral Sea

    The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia.
  • Battle Of Midway

    Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy (USN), under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), under Admirals ...
  • El Ameniin

    Two important World War II battles were fought in the area. At the First Battle of El Alamein (1 – 27 July 1942) the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria was blunted by the Allies, when the German Panzers tried to outflank the allied position.
  • Battle Of Guadalcanal

    The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by Allied forces, was a military campaign fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theatre of World War II.
  • Stalingrad

    The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the south-western Soviet Union.
  • Operation Torch

    Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast) was the British-American invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign of the Second World War which started on 8 November 1942.
  • Battle Of Kursk

    The Battle of Kursk was a World War II engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk (450 kilometres or 280 miles southwest of Moscow) in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943.
  • Invasion Of Sicily

    The Allies' Italian Campaign began with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. After 38 days of fighting, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully drove German and Italian troops from Sicily and prepared to assault the Italian mainland. The Allies Target Italy.
  • Tehran Conference

    The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka ) was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
  • D-Day

    In the military, D-Day is the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. The best known D-Day is June 6, 1944 — the day of the Normandy landings — initiating the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II.
  • Battle Of Bulge

    The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe.
  • Yalta Conference

    The Yalta Conference was a meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt early in February 1945 as World War II was winding down.
  • Battle Of Iwo Jima

    The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945
  • Crossing The Rhine

    Beginning on the night of 23 March 1945, Operation Plunder was the crossing of the River Rhine at Rees, Wesel, and south of the Lippe River by the British 2nd Army, under Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey, and the U.S. Ninth Army, under Lieutenant General William Simpson.
  • Battle Of Phillipines

    The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945.
  • Battle Of Okinawa

    The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945.
  • Battle Of Berlin

    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.
  • Potsdam Conference

    Joseph Stalin and Harry Truman meeting at the Potsdam Conference on 18 July 1945. From left to right, first row: Premier Joseph Stalin; President Harry S. Truman, Soviet Ambassador to the United States Andrei Gromyko, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
  • Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    Print Cite On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki,killing an estimated 40,000 people
  • Nuremburg Trials

    The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership ...
  • Invasion Of Czechoslovakia

    On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and its main allies in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalisation reforms.[3]