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Soft Underbelly
This was the ails plain to occupy Italy after the Germans had taken it over. -
Finland signs a peace treaty with Soviets
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Tobruk in North Africa falls to the British and Australians.
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British forces advance into Italian Somaliland in East Africa
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German attack on Tobruk is repulsed.
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Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess flies to Scotland.
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Period: to
Nazi SS-Einsatzgruppen begin mass murder.
Four men with SS-Einsatzgruppe A execute four Jews in the vicinity of Kovno, Lithuania, as spectators look on. Below: German soldiers, along with members of the Waffen-SS and the Reich Labor Service look on as a man with SS-Einsatzgruppe D prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling before a mass grave. On Right: Detail of this photo shows a young member of the Reich Labor Service, a product of the Hitler Youth system, casually watching. -
Germany attacks Soviet Union as Operation Barbarossa begins
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Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for the Final Solution.
To Gruppenführer Heydrich: Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation. -
Roosevelt and Churchill announce the Atlantic Charter.
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Nazis order Jews to wear yellow stars
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Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor; Hitler issues the Night and Fog decree.
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United States and Britain declare war on Japan.
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Hitler declares war on the United States.
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SS Leader Heydrich holds the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
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Nazis liquidate Lidice in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination.
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first all-American air attack in Europe.
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A German eyewitness observes SS mass murder.
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Operation Supercharge (Allies break Axis lines at El Alamein).
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Montgomery's Eighth Army takes Tripoli.
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Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Teheran.
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Waffen-SS attacks Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.
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Casablanca conference between Churchill and Roosevelt. During the conference, Roosevelt announces the war can end only with "unconditional German surrender."
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Sicily/Italy
Allied armada of 2,590 vessels launched one of the largest combined operations of World War II -
SS-Reichsführer Himmler gives speech at Posen
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First attack toward Cassino, Italy.
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Germans counter-attack against the Anzio beachhead.
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D-Day landings on the northern coast of France.
