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World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. -
Warsaw surrenders to German troops. Poland holds out for another 9 days before capitulating. -
British cruisers defeat a German pocket battleship at the Battle of the River Plate, the first major naval engagement of World War II The Duchess was cut in half and only 23 of its 160 crew members survived. But the Royal Navy recorded a spirit-lifting victory just days later, after British ships cornered the imposing German warship Graf Spee off the coast of South America, defeating it in the first major naval battle of World War II. -
Germany invades Norway, ending a 6-month period of limited land operations called the “Phony War." Germany invaded Norway for several reasons: strategically, to secure ice-free harbors from which its naval forces could seek to control the North Atlantic. -
Dunkirk evacuation, was the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved.
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Paris fell to Nazi Germany on June 14, 1940, one month after the German Wehrmacht stormed into France. Eight days later, France signed an armistice with the Germans, and a puppet French state was set up with its capital at Vichy. -
The Battle of Britain was an important battle in World War II. The Battle of Britain was when Germany bombed Great Britain in order to try and destroy their air force and prepare for invasion.
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Barbarossa was the crucial turning point in World War II, for its failure forced Nazi Germany to fight a two-front war against a coalition possessing immensely superior resources. The Germans had serious deficiencies.
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The United States came into the war because of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. -
The Battle of Bataan was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Japan during World War II.The Battle of Bataan ended on April 9, 1942, when Army Major General Edward P. King surrendered to Japanese General Masaharu Homma. About 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos became prisoners of war.
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The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942. The Japanese victory was decisive, resulting in the Japanese capture of Singapore and the largest British surrender in history. -
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific theatre.
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The First Battle of El Alamein (July 01,1942-July 27,1942) was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought in Egypt between Axis forces of the Panzer Army Africa and Allied forces of the Eighth Army. The British prevented a second advance by the Axis forces into Egypt. -
In the Battle of Stalingrad, Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia.Battle of Stalingrad marked the end of Germany's advances into eastern Europe and Russia. This battle also was the first major German loss during World War II.
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The Allied invasion of Sicily (July 09,1943-August 17,1943), code named Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II, in which the Allies took the island of Sicily from the Axis powers. It began with a large amphibious and airborne operation, followed by a six-week land campaign, and initiated the Italian Campaign. -
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies.Weeks later, Badoglio finally approved a conditional surrender, allowing the Allies to land in southern Italy and begin beating the Germans back up the peninsula. -
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. A separate protocol signed at the conference pledged the Big Three to recognize Iran's independence. -
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Code named Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
The Battle of the Bulge marked the last German offense on the Western Front. The catastrophic losses on the German side prevented Germany from resisting the advance of Allied forces following the Normandy Invasion.
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The Allied crossings of the Rhine River allowed US and British troops to advance rapidly into the interior of Germany, helping to bring about the defeat of the Third Reich. -
The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. -
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich. -
The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. -
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. -
Truman announced Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. The news spread quickly and celebrations erupted across the United States. On September 2, 1945, formal surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri, designating the day as the official Victory over Japan Day .
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