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Japan Invades China
Japan invades Manchuria,China for its resources. -
Germany invades Poland
German forces bomb Poland from air and land, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain old territory and rule it completely. This Causes WW II to begin. -
German Blitzkrieg
German forces use a new tatic called Blitzkrieg or "lightning war" which is used to cause disorganization among enemy forces. Was first used on Poland -
Operation Barbarossa
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, but failed due to change in the weather leaving the Germans at a disadvantage, After this , Germany noticed they started a war on both the east and west frontiers -
Pearl Harbor
In Dec. 7 , 1941, Hundreds of 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. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration. -
Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. -
Operation Gomorrah
British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own “Blitz Week.”British aircraft drop 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hours. The explosive power was the equivalent of what German bombers had dropped on London in their five most destructive raids. More than 1,500 German civilians were killed in that first British raid. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion) Begins
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D-Day (Normandy Invasion) ends
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Battle of the Bulge
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Operation Thunderclap
The plan of this operation was to bomb the eastern cities of Germany so it would disrupt the transport infrastructure behind what was becoming the Eastern front. Also to demonstrate to the German population, in even more devastating fashion, that the air defences of Germany were now of little substance and that the Nazi regime had failed them. -
Battle of Iwo Jima (Begins)
The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima, a key island in the Bonin chain roughly 575 miles from the Japanese coast, was sparked by the desire for a place where B-29 bombers damaged over Japan could land without returning all the way to the Marianas, and for a base for escort fighters that would assist in the bombing campaign -
battle of Iwo Jima (Ends)
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Battle of Okinawa (Begins)
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V.E. Day
the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France. -
Battle of Okinawa (Ends)
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Bombing of Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This bomb had the equivalent power of 15,000 tons of TNT. Once the bomb hit it immediately killed 80,000 people. Ten thousands more died in the following weeks from wounds and radiation poisoning. This bomb was suppose to end the war between the U.S. and Japan. -
Bombing of Nagasaki
Three days after the Bombing of Hiroshima , The U.S. drops a second Atomic Bomb in the city of Nagasaki. This bomb killed aprox. 40,000 people when it hit and 70,000 more from its radiation. This bomb was dropped because before the bombing of Hiroshima , President Truman and a few allied Leaders, Josef Stallin and Clement Attlee Issued the Potsdam Decleration which stated that Japan had to surrendor unconditionally or had to face destruction. Japan refused these terms which ended in the bombing -
Bombing of Nagasaki ( Continued )
of Hiroshima, but Japan still refused which ended in the drop of the second bomb in Nagasaki. This caused the unconditional surrendor of Japan , resulting in the end of WW 2 -
V.J. Day
On August 14, 1945 it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the allies, which meant the end of WW2.
