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Germany invaded Poland, setting off war in Europe. The Soviet Union also invaded Poland and the Baltic nations.
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. On September 3, they declared war on Germany, initiating World War II. To Hitler, the conquest of Poland would bring Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German people. Hitler attacked the USSR, breaking his nonaggression with the Soviet Union, and Germany seized all of Poland. During the German occupation, nearly three million Polish Jews were killed in the Nazi death camps -
Germany invaded France and captured Paris
Germany first began invading France on May 13, but did not acommplish this until June 14 and captured France along with it as well. -
Germany bombed London, and the Battle of Britain began
German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. Britain’s decisive victory saved the country from a ground invasion. -
Germany invades the Soviet Union
The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the Communist threat to Germany, and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s. Adolf Hitler had always regarded the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, signed on August 23, 1939, as a temporary maneuver.Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 -
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. its failure forced Nazi Germany to fight a two-front war against a coalition possessing immensely superior resources. -
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but Japan and the United States had been edging toward war for decades. But no one believed that the Japanese would start that war with an attack on American territory. For one thing, it would be terribly inconvenient: Hawaii and Japan were about 4,000 miles apart. The Japanese plan was simple: Destroy the Pacific Fleet. On December 7, after months of planning and practice, the Japanese launched their attack. It was December 7 1941 when they attacked. -
Germany declares war on U.S after Pearl Harbor
The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. The U.S. Navy was already attacking German U-boats,and Hitler despised Roosevelt for his repeated verbal attacks against his Nazi ideology.He also believed that Japan was much stronger than it was, that once it had defeated the United States, it would turn and help Germany defeat Russia. So at 3:30 p.m. (Berlin time) on December 11, the German charge in Washington handed American Secretary of State Cordell Hull a copy of the declaration of war. -
Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March -
U.S victorious over Japan in Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway, fought in World War II, took place on June 5, 1942 (June 4-June 7). The US Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific theatre. This fleet between U.S. and Japanese navies in the Pacific Ocean resulted from Japan’s desire to sink the American aircraft carriers that had escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, Japanese fleet commander, chose to invade a target relatively close to Pearl Harbor -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
From April 19 to May 16, 1943, during World War II (1939-45), residents of the Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland, staged an armed revolt against deportations to extermination camps. The Warsaw ghetto uprising inspired other revolts in extermination camps and ghettos throughout German-occupied Eastern Europe -
American and other allied troops land in Normandy France
By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on the ground. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches. At Omaha, the U.S. First Division battled high seas, mist, mines, burning vehicles—and German coastal batteries, including an elite infantry division, which spewed heavy fire. Many wounded Americans ultimately drowned in the high tide. -
Battle of the Bulge
Its objective was to split the Allied armies by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp, marking a repeat of what the Germans had done three times previously–in September 1870, August 1914, and May 1940. Despite Germany’s historical penchant for mounting counteroffensives when things looked darkest, the Allies’ leadership miscalculated and left the Ardennes lightly defended by only two inexperienced and two battered American divisions. -
Liberation of concentration camps
Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners -
Battle of iwo jima
The America invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following preparatory air and naval, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from a network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting. -
U.S drops 2 atomic bombs on Hiroshima
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective. -
U.S gave Britain war supplies and old naval ships for military bases
During World War II, the United States began to provide military supplies and other assistance to the Allies in Sep 1940, even though the U.S did not enter the war until Dec 1941. Much of this aid flowed to the UK and other nations already at war with Germany and Japan through a program known as Lend-Lease. Roosevelt made efforts to help nations in the struggle against Germany and wanted to extend a hand to those countries that lacked the supplies to fight against the Germans.