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Allied invasion of Italy
Though American leaders, such as General George Marshall favored moving forward with an invasion of France, his British counterparts desired a strike against southern Europe . Landing in July, American and British forces commenced a successful campaign which resulted in the overthrow of Italian leader Benito Mussolini. -
Rape of Nanking
On December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soilders in the city. The actual military invasion of Nanking was preceded by a tough battle at Shanghai that began in the summer of 1937. After defeating the Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000 Japanese soilders then marched on toward Nanking. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. On September 1st 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Germany directly annexed former polish territories along Germany's eastern border. Nazi Germany occupied the remainder of Poland when it invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Poland remained under German occupation until January 1945. -
German Blitzkreig
Blitzkrieg means "lightning war" . It was an innovative military technique first used by the Germans in World War || and was a tactic based on speed and surprise. Blitzkreig relied on a military force based around light tank units supported by planes and infantry (foot soilders). Germany successfully used the Blitzkreig tactic against Poland. Despite the continuing war with Great Britain , German forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the name given to Nazi Germany's invasion of Russia on June 22nd 1941.Barbarossa was the largest military attack of World War Two and was to have appaling consequences for the Russian people. Operation Barbarossa was based on a massive attack based on Blitzkreig . Russia was defended by four army units . Though Russia had a huge army, the purges had wiped out a considerable part of the army's senior commanders. Plans for the attack on Russia had been around since 1940. -
Pearl Harbor
On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the US bombing warships and military targets in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 350 Japanese aircraft attacked the naval base in two waves, strafing targets,dropping armor
-piercing bombs,and launching torpedoes toward US battleships and cruisers. The Japanese sunk four battleships and two destroyers,pummeled 188 aircraft, and damaged even more buildings, ships, and airplanes .2400 Americans were killed. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The capture of Iwo Jima was part of a three - point plan the Americans had for winning the war in the Far East. In the west the Japanese were being turned back In Burma. Despite the size of Iwo Jima , it was considered to have tactical importance. There were two airfields on the island- under Japan's control; they could be used by Japanese fighter planes to attack American bombers .What the battle did show the Americans was how far the Japanese would go to defend their country. -
VE Day
Victrory in Europe Day was on May 8, 1945. The main concern of many German soilders was to elude the grasp of soviet forces, to keep from being taken prisoner. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soilders in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. VE Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself. -
D day
In the months and weeks before D-Day , the Allies carried out a massive deception operation to make the Germans think the main invasion target was Pas- De-Calais rather than Normandy . They led the Germans to believe that Norway and other locations were also potential invasion targets. Many tactics was used to carry out the deception, including fake equipment. The allies landed 11 divisions on the French coast. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
Since 1940, the United States had been working on developing an atomic weapon, after having been warned by Albert Einstein that Nazi Germany was already conducting research into nuclear weapons . By the time the United States conducted the first successful test (an atomic bomb was exploded in the desert in New Mexico in July 1945) , Germany had already been defeated . The war against Japan in the pacific , however continued to rage. -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the allies, effectively ending world war || . Many VJ Day celebrations fell out of favor over the years due to concerns about their being offensive to Japan. On the morning of September 2,1945 the allied and Japanese delegations met aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the formal signing of the surrender documents. -
Battle of the Bulge
During the Battle of Bulge, the Germans suffered more than 100,000 casualties, the Amerivans approximately 81,000. US troops and some British troops counterattacked to eliminate the Bulge, with the U.S. First Army attacking from the North and General George Patton's Third Army from the south. The Germans began to withdraw from the Bulge on January 8,1945. Hundreds of German tanks and several hundred thousand German troops broke through the thinly held American lines.
