-
Japanese Invasion of China
China fought Japan, with some economic help from Germany see Sino-German cooperation until 1941 the war would merge into the greater conflict of World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It accounted for the majority of civilian and military casualties in the Pacific War, with anywhere between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians and over 4 million chinese japanese military died. -
Rape of Nanking
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode during the Second Sino-Japanese War of mass murder and mass rape by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then capital of the Republic of China. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. -
The Invasion of Poland
German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. As the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish-German border to more established lines of defense to the east.After the mid-september Polish defeat in the battle of the Bzura, the German gained an undisputed advantage. -
Fall of Paris
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. Beginning on 10 May 1940, German forces defeated Allied forces in a series of mobile operations, eventually leading to the conquest of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, bringing land operations on the Western Front to an end until 1944. -
German Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg German, "lightning war"About this sound listen is a method of warfare whereby an attacking force spearheaded by a dense concentration of armoured and motorised or mechanised infantry formations with close air support, breaks through the opponent's line of defence by short, fast, powerful attacks and then dislocates the defenders, using speed and surprise to encircle them. Through the employment of combined arms in manoeuvre warfare, blitzkrieg attempts to unbalance the enemy.
. -
Operation Barbarossa
In the two years leading up to the invasion, the two countries signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, on 18 December 1940, Hitler authorized an invasion of the Soviet Union, with a planned start date of 15 May 1941. The actual invasion began on 22 June 1941. Over the course of the operation, about four million soldiers of the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu,Hawaii, west of Honolulu.Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. The U.S. government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to maintain a repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887.The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941 was the immediate cause of the United States' entry into World War II. -
Wannsee Conference
The purpose of the conference, called by director of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and murdered. Conference attendees included representatives from several government ministries from the foreign office. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II.[7][8][9] 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 under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A.Inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable.Military historian John Keegan called it stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) 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 a turning point in the European theatre of World War II German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses. -
Operation Gomorrah
The Battle of Hamburg, codenamed Operation Gomorrah, was a campaign of air raids beginning 24 July 1943 and lasting for 8 days and 7 nights. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials.The initial attack on Hamburg included two new introductions to the British planning: they used "Window", otherwise known as chaff, to confuse the German radar, while the Pathfinder Force aircraft. -
Allied Invasion of Italy
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943 during the early stages of the Italian Campaign of World War II.The main invasion force landed around Salerno on 9 September on the western coast in Operation Avalanche. The operation was undertaken by 15th Army group. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
The Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted. -
Battle of the 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. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. United States forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties for any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted German armore. -
Operation Thunderclap
Operation Thunderclap was the code for a cancelled operation planned in August 1944 but shelved and never implemented. The plan envisaged a massive attack on Berlin in the belief that would cause 220,000 casualties with 110,000 killed, many of them key German personnel, which would shatter German morale. However, it was later decided that the plan was unlikely to work.