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Kristallnacht
Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the "Night of Broken Glass," some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps -
Germany Invades Poland
6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. -
Battle of Britain
A World War II veteran thought to have been the last of the Polish pilots who helped defeat the Nazis in the Battle of Britain died last week at 97, news sources reported yesterday. The death of Tadeusz Sawicz has called attention to an important but little-known aspect of the epic 1940 clash: the decisive role of 145 highly skilled airmen who had fled their native Poland after it fell to the Germans. -
pearl harbor
Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
Stalingrad
was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. -
battle of Mid-Way
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. -
D-Day
Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. -
Battle of Leyte Gulf
When Japan ordered its fleet into Philippine waters, these forces had to sail separately and for the most part operated independently in the battle that followed. -
Iwo Jima
Japan has vowed to locate the remains of an estimated 12,000 troops still missing since the Battle of Iwo Jima. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.
