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Invasion of Poland
At 4.45 am on 1 September 1939 the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish garrison of the Westerplatte Fort in Danzig, which what was to become the first military engagement of World War Two. At the same time, 62 German divisions supported by 1,300 aircraft started the invasion of Poland. It took just a month to capture Poland. -
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Battle of Atlantic
Britain was an island and had to get its food and water from abroad, which meant ships coming from far away countries. The Germans realises how important it was to Britain and mounted an effort to sink the ships carrying supplies. At the start of the war they used a balanced attack, using planes mines warships and U-boats. But by 1941 the British had dealt with the mines around the coast, the German attack on the USSR took most of the German planes, the Germans were worried of the threat from a -
The events leading up to and the events of Dunkirk
In May 1940 Hitler turned his attention to the west and France. The French had strong defences around the German border but Hitler just went round them and invaded Holland then Belgium and then France. Then they headed for the channel, and this only took two months, this was part of a tactic called blitzkrieg which in German is lightening war. In fact the German advance was so quick that they caught the British and part of the French army by surprise and pushed them back to Dunkirk. The allied t -
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War in Africa
When Italy entered World War II in June 1940, the war quickly spread to North Africa, where its colony of Libya bordered the vital British country of Egypt. On 7 September 1940, Marshall Graziani’s troops began a land offensive. They won initial success. They captured the port of Sidi el-Barrini and built a chain of fortified camps. But the British counterattack, launched in December 1940 and led by General Wavell, quickly beat down the Italians. As British supplies grew daily, Italian supplies -
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The Battle of Britain
In May 1940 Hitler turned his attention to the west and France. The French had strong defences around the German border but Hitler just went round them and invaded Holland then Belgium and then France. Then they headed for the channel, and this only took two months, this was part of a tactic called blitzkrieg which in German is lightening war. In fact the German advance was so quick that they caught the British and part of the French army by surprise and pushed them back to Dunkirk. The allied t -
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Operation Barbarossa
In June 1941 Hitler and the Germans were doing well and at that time the invasion of the USSR seemed a reasonable gamble. The soviet army seemed much weaker than the French army, which had defeated in just six weeks. But there were also dangers if USSR could hold out then the Germans would be fighting on two fronts and the soviet army could also retreat into Russia forcing his troops to follow and make it hard to get supplies to them, e.g this happened to Napoleon, his army was wiped out by the -
The attack on Pearl Harbour
As the war was going on the USA were helping the allies more and more and they were worried about Japan trying to dominate south East Asia. Some of the causes for pearl harbour were japan wanted to build a strong empire in Asia, japan believed the Americans would not fight back and japan needed raw materials like oil which could only have by invading the oilfields in south east Asia. The attack was on the morning of the 7th December. Japanese aircraft carriers were on position on the ocean 2oo -
D-Day
Operation Neptune was a plan to attack the beaches of normandy firstly by air and then by sea, there were 5 beaches were called Juno,Gold,Utah,Omaha and sword. the divisions would land at those sites and use various methods to capture them. 132,000 allied troops would land on the beaches on total. Over the next week the allies expanded there beachead strength to 16 divisions. -
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The dropping of the atomic bombs.
On 6 August 1945 an American bomber called the Enola Gay dropped the worlds first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiromisa, anyone within a kilometre of the blast became ashes, Within minutes 70,000 people were dead and the people who didn't die had burns that gave them agony there was a blast wave which destroyed 70,000 of the city's 78,000 buildings. 3 days later the same thing was done in Nagasaki about 36,000 people died, on the 14th of August the Japanese surrendered, the war was over.