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Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. -
The Battle of the River Plate, the first naval battle of the war, is fought and ends with the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in flames after being scuttled in the River Plate Estuary off Montevideo, Uruguay. -
March 16, 1940 - Germans bomb Scapa Flow naval base near Scotland. April 9, 1940 - Nazis invade Denmark and Norway. May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. May 15, 1940 - Holland surrenders to the Nazis. -
On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000. On February 14, 1939, the 823-foot Bismarck was launched at Hamburg. -
On December 7, 1941, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan. Three days later, after Germany and Italy declared war on it, the United States became fully engaged in the Second World War. -
US forces defeat the Japanese in their attempt to capture Midway Island. -
Battle of Midway – The United States Navy defeats an Imperial Japanese Navy attack against Midway Atoll. -
Cut off and surrounded by an entire Soviet Army Group, Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German VI Army at Stalingrad, refuses a generous Russian offer to surrender his forces. Hitler orders his general to hold position “to the last man standing.” -
Mussolini is arrested. -
D-Day. Allied forces land in Normandy. -
Paris is liberated by the Allies. -
US Marines raise the US flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Of over 20,000 Japanese defenders, only 1,000 were taken prisoner. -
With Soviet troops less than 500 metres from his Führerbunker, Adolf Hitler commits suicide. He shoots himself with his own pistol. Alongside him is the body of his new wife Eva who has died after taking cyanide capsules. The capsules had already proved lethal after tests conducted on Hitler’s dog Blondi. -
A second atomic bomb ‘Fat Man’ is dropped on the Japanese military port of Nagasaki by US Superfortress ‘Bockscar’; a further 200,000 deaths result.