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Japan invades Manchuria
Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria -
Hitler becomes Chancellor
On this day in 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany. -
The Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, -
Germans invade Poland
At 4:45 a.m., some 1.5 million German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with German-controlled territory. -
Germans invade Norway
after the capitulation of German forces in Europe. Throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht. -
Germans invade France
Germany brought war to western Europe on May 10, 1940, with the primary goal of conquering France. German bombers hit air bases in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands, destroying large numbers of Allied planes on the ground and crippling Allied air defenses. -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces,[17] and was also the largest and most sustained aerial bombing campaign to that date. -
Germans invade Soviet Union
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. -
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor[nb 4] was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, -
Battle of the 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
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere -
Battle of Guadalcanal
February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theatre of World War II. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in late summer 1942 using the 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble -
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
Following their disastrous defeat at Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-43, the German armed forces launched a climactic offensive in the East known as Operation Citadel on July 4,1943. -
Italy surrenders
With Mussolini deposed from power and the earlier collapse of the fascist government in July, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, the man who had assumed power in Mussolini's stead by request of King Victor Emanuel, began negotiating with Gen. Eisenhower for weeks. Weeks later, Badoglio finally approved a conditional surrender, allowing the Allies to land in southern Italy and begin beating the Germans back up the peninsula. Operation Avalanche, the Allied invasion of Italy, was given the go-ahead, and the ne -
D-Day
On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. -
Operation Market Garden
unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time.[e] -
Battle of the Bulge
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. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces fought for and captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Empire. -
Germany Surrenders (VE Day)
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day, or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.[1] It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe. -
Bombing of Hiroshima
The atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were conducted by the United States during the final stages of World War II in August 1945. The two bombings were the first and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare. -
Japan Surrenders (VJ Day)
is a name chosen for the day on which Japan surrendered, in effect ending World War II, and subsequent anniversaries of that event. The term has been applied to both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan’s surrender was made – to the afternoon of August 15, 1945, in Japan, and, because of time zone differences, to August 14, 1945 (when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands) – as well as to September 2, 1945, when the signi
