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Germany and Soviet Union invaded Poland (Baltic Nations also)
German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air.
Adolf Hitler seek to rule Poland and regain lost territory.
Great Britain responded with bombing raids over Germany three days later. -
Germany invaded France and captured Paris
French army thought that Germans would come trough central Belgium, but the German attack went through Ardennes forest.
Hitler desired to knock out France before it could be fully revitalized by the British fully and mobilized.
The French asked for peace terms. -
The Battle of Britain began
The Royal air force defended the United Kingdom against the German air force attacks.
German leaders felt it was essential to destroy the British air force to stop it sinking the ships that would carry German soldiers across the Channel.
Germans decided to concentrate on bombing London and other British cities. -
Lend Lease
The U.S. gave Britain war supplies and old naval warships in return for military bases in Bermuda and Caribbean.
Churchill suggested the concept of lend-lease to Roosevelt.
By retooling U.S. industrial output to the demands of war, Lend-lease formally eliminated any semblance of neutrality. -
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
Japanese warplanes descended the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault.
The attack was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
It ignited the fury of the United States entrance into WWII. -
Bataan Death March
U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II, the approximately Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make a march to prison camps. The U.S. and Filipino defenders of Luzon were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. He was held responsible for the death march, a war crime, and was executed. -
Germany declared war on U.S. The U.S. declared war on Japan and Germany.
Japanese Ambassador went to German Foreign Minister to nail the Germans down on formal declaration of war against America.
Hitler believed it was an opportunity to be seized.
United States declared war on Germany and Japan. -
The U.S. was victorious over Japan in the Battle of Midway
The Americans sank four fleet carriers- the entire strength of the task force, with 322 aircraft and over five thousand sailors.
It showed the importance of aircraft carriers as the key to the pacific theater of -
Warsaw Ghetto uprising
The Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. Many Jews in ghettos across eastern Europe tried to organize resistance against the Germans and to arm themselves with smuggled and homemade weapons. 56,065 Jews was captured; of those 7,000 deported to the killing center, and the remainder sent to forced-labor camps and the Majdanek camp -
The Liberation of Western Europe, D-Day
The Allied Powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control. The Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. The Allies were able to land only fractions of the supplies and vehicles they had intended in France–D-Day was a decided success -
D-Day
The Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control. The Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. The Allies were able to land only fractions of the supplies and vehicles they had intended in France–D-Day was a decided success. -
Operation Barbarossa
Was a code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler named it Operation Barbarossa, after Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who sought to establish German predominance in Europe. Its failure was patent when the Soviet counteroffensive started. -
Germany invaded the Soviet Union
Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The German troops failed to defeat Soviet forces. Hitler believed that German forces could use Blitzkrieg with the same level of success, as they had against Poland and other countries. Inability of German forces to defeat the Soviet Union marked a significant setback for the German military effort. -
Battle of the bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. Its objective was to split the Allied armies by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. A crucial German shortage of fuel and the gallantry of American troops fighting in the frozen forests of the Ardennes proved fatal to Hitler’s ambition to snatch, if not victory, at least a draw with the Allies in the west. -
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. Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. -
The battle of Iwo jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army. The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. The battle was marked by changes in Japanese defense tactics–troops no longer defended at the beach line but rather concentrated inland. -
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan
forcing Japan to surrender and ending World War II. President Harry S. Truman ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. Five days after that, Japan unconditionally surrendered to the United States, bringing an end to World War II.
