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WW2 begins when Adolf Hitler sends German troops to invade Poland.
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907 jewish passengers aboard the S.S St. Louis were desperate to flee from Germany and Canada was their last hope. Canada didn't let them dock in any ports and they were forced back to Europe. Many of the people aboard later died in concentration camps.
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Canada declares war a week after Britain and France. The week delay was a symbol of independence for Canada.
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Mackenzie King wanted to avoid conscription so instead of helping with the war by providing troops, he decided to create the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan to train pilots.
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Leaders of these groups were jailed.
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The NRMA allowed for conscription, but only for home defence.
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Oberleutnant Franz von Warrna escaped from Ontario and returned to Europe, making him the only German POW to make it back from Canada.
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Neil Diamond's birthday is January 24, 1941. He's a cool guy.
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Mackenzie King and F.D Roosevelt signed the Hyde Park declaration which united the economies for the war.
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The government passed legislation that allowed women to enlist. However, most were assigned jobs that were traditional female roles, such as cooking, laundry, etc.
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Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes surprise attacked an American naval base near Honolulu. More than 2000 Americans died in the attack.
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Canada declares war after the Pearl Harbour attacks.
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Over 20,000 men, women and children, most of them Canadian citizens, were taken from their homes into internment camps. They stayed in these camps for the rest of the war.
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The Conscription Act was amended to give the government power to conscript overseas.
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More than 900 Canadians were killed after being sent to Dieppe as a test and to gain knowledge and experience. It did not end well.
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After years of the Soviets being pushed back by Nazi forces, they won the battle of Stalingrad after Germany surrenders. This ended one of the bloodiest battles of the war and turned the tide of the war.
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These conferences were between Britain and America to discuss the course of the war. Mackenzie King didn't take part in these conferences, but instead hosted them.
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About 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of France’s Normandy region. This was one of the biggest invasions in history.
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The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan closes after training 130,000 pilots.
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Germany surrenders unconditionally, and surrenders to the Soviets the next day.
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Riots broke out in Halifax over VE-Day. About 10 000 servicemen looted and vandalized downtown. The war ends in Europe after Germany surrenders.
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An American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima. It immediately killed 80,000 people and destroyed most of the city and killed tens of thousands more from radiation exposure.
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The bomb destroyed about 30% of the city and those who survived suffered severe injuries or radiation sickness.
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This brought WW2 to a close.
