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The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939. As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. -
Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland. The guarantees given to Poland by Britain and France marked the end of the policy of appeasement. -
On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. ... French there, with the aim of fighting the German occupation of France. -
As France fell to the German armies in May 1940, 400000 Allied troops were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. -
he Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy. -
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke–Wadsworth Act, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 76–783, 54 Stat. 885, enacted September 16, 1940, was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. -
Passed on March 11, 1941, this act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." -
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the American naval base. -
America's isolation from war ended on December 7, 1941, when Japan staged a surprise attack on American military installations in the Pacific. The most devastating strike came at Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian naval base where much of the US Pacific Fleet was moored.
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On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Hitler announced in Berlin that Germany, Italy […] On December 16, 1941, Congress approved legislation giving President Roosevelt virtually unlimited powers over defense contracts, the reorganization of government. -
Battle of the Coral Sea, (May 4–8, 1942) World War II naval and air engagement in which a U.S. fleet turned back a Japanese invasion force that had been heading for strategic Port Moresby in New Guinea. -
The Battle of Midway occurred when the U.S. Navy intercepted a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Midway Island, achieving an overwhelming victory and resulting in the turning point of the war in the Pacific. -
The combined operation in North Africa was dubbed Operation Torch, and it was agreed that the supreme command of the invasion should be given to an American. On July 26, 1942, Maj. Gen. Dwight D. -
The conquest of Sicily took a little more than a month and it led directly to the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the surrender of the Italian government to the Allies. -
The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. -
The wrenching images and first-hand testimonies of Dachau recorded by U.S. soldiers brought the horrors of the Holocaust home to America. -
he quick arrival of Allied reinforcements and the Americans' tenacious defence of the vital road junctions at Bastogne and St Vith slowed the German advance. The offensive also required men and resources that Germany did not have. Fuel shortages were made worse by bad weather, which disrupted German supply lines. -
The Yalta Conference took place in a Russian resort town in the Crimea from February 4–11, 1945, during World War Two. At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. -
On Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, Germany unconditionally surrendered its military forces to the Allies, including the United States. On May 8, 1945 - known as Victory in Europe Day or V-E Day - celebrations erupted around the world to mark the end of World War II in Europe. -
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, Fat Man (right) exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 percent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Nagasaki was an industrial center and major port on the western coast of Kyushu. -
Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) would officially be celebrated in the United States on the day formal surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay: September 2, 1945. But as welcome as victory over Japan was, the day was bittersweet in light of the war's destructiveness.