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To break the spirit of Chinese resistance, Japanese General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. The Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process. -
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The Dunkirk evacuation sometimes called Operation Dynamo or The Miracle of Dunkirk was a British mission to rescue Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk France, from 26 May to 4 June 1940. Over 300,000 Allied soldiers were trapped in Dunkirk by the German army after the Battle of Dunkirk. Germany captured Dunkirk, of course. But the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who escaped France that day lived to fight another day against Germany. -
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Bataan Death March, march in the Philippines of some 66 miles that 76,000 prisoners of war (66,000 Filipinos, 10,000 Americans) were forced by the Japanese military -
also known as the Tokyo raid, was the first US attack on the Japanese homeland on April 18, 1942, four months after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Named after its legendary leader, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle who led 80 volunteers, the "Doolittle Tokyo Raiders", on this dangerous mission. Sixteen B-25 bombers took off from the deck of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier in a spectacular low-level attack against Tokyo and other Japanese targets on Honshu island. -
The Battle of Midway was one of the most important battles of World War II. It was the turning point of the war in the Pacific between the United States and Japan. The U.S. Navy's decisive victory in the air-sea battle and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan's hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific. Battle of Midway was a naval battle. -
There were two battles of El Alamein, both during 1942. In Egypt, Allied (primarily Commonwealth) forces under a British General finally stopped the Germans. It was a turning point for World War II. It was the battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War -
The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II. Turned the tide of World War II in favor of the Allied forces. The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II. -
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The Soviet army enters Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberates around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom are ill and dying. The scouts were followed by troops who entered the camp. They were shocked by what they saw there: piles of ash that had once been human bodies. People living in barracks were encrusted with excrement. Emaciated patients who became ill when they ate the food they offered. -
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