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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 war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace. -
Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, betting on a brief war with the firmest of goals, a type of war that came to be known as blitzkrieg.
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The Battle of France, also known as the Western Campaign, the French Campaign and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France during the Second World War. France and the Low Countries were conquered, ending land operations on the Western Front until the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944.
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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941 -
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. -
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group (comprising General Mark W.
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The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest invasion force in human history. -
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted for five weeks from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in Europe.
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On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive. -
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
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The Battle of Okinawa was a victory for the US but resulted in massive casualties on both sides. Japanese forces fought with the same fanaticism the Americans had witnessed in battles such as Iwo Jima. Rather than be taken prisoner, defenders often chose suicide.
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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 official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last shots fired on the 11th. -
Potsdam Declaration, ultimatum issued by the United States, Great Britain, and China on July 26, 1945, calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan. The declaration was made at the Potsdam Conference near the end of World War II -
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The two aerial bombings together killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict
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V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the end of World War II, one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in history. When President Harry S. Truman announced on Aug. 14, 1945, that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, war-weary citizens around the world erupted in celebration.