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Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace.
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German chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) used the pact to make sure Germany was able to invade Poland unopposed. The pact also contained a secret agreement in which the Soviets and Germans agreed on how they would later divide up Eastern Europe.
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Blitzkrieg, meaning 'Lightning War', was the method of offensive warfare responsible for Nazi Germany's military successes in the early years of the Second World War. Radio communications were the key to effective Blitzkrieg operations, enabling commanders to coordinate the advance and keep the enemy off balance.
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Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10, 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14.
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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.
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Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans.
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The Battle of Midway was a significant 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.
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The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. They discussed starting the Holocaust. I'm disgusted that it was put into motion.
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Called “the greatest American battle of the war” by Winston Churchill, the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium was Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive in World War II against the Western Front. Hitler’s aim was to split the Allies in their drive toward Germany. The German troops’ failure to divide Britain, France, and America with the Ardennes offensive paved the way to victory for the allies.
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The Allies used over 5,000 ships and landing craft to land more than 150,000 troops on five beaches in Normandy. The landings marked the start of a long and costly campaign in north-west Europe, which ultimately convinced the German high command that defeat was inevitable.
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The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
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Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the end of World War II in Europe.
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The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 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
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Victory over Japan Day is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect bringing the war to an end.
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In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The Germans had dismantled these camps in 1943 after most of the Jews of Poland had already been killed. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945.