-
-
Germany and the Soviet Union attach Poland and split it.
-
Britain and France declare war on Germany honoring their commitment to Poland.President Franklin D. Roosevelt invokes the Neutrality Act but notes, "Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience."
-
German fighter planes and ground troops pummel France.
-
Adolf Hitler takes neutral Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg.
-
President Franklin D. Roosevelt moves the United States Pacific Fleet base from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
-
Congress appropriates $16 billion for defense needs, and enacts the first peacetime draft in American history.
-
The United States orders gasoline withheld from Japan sparking protest from the Japanese government.
-
resident Franklin D. Roosevelt makes a deal to give Great Britain 50 destroyers in exchange for naval bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and sites in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic.
-
Responding to the embargoes imposed by the United States, Japan joins the German-Italian coalition.
-
United States Naval Intelligence cryptographers crack Japan's secret communications code and learn that Japan intends to conquer China.
-
President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Coast Guard to seize German ships that sail into American ports. 65 Axis ships are held in "protective custody."
-
The Japanese government decides to attack Pearl Harbor if negotiations with the United States fail.
-
Japan attacks the United states and drage the Us into WW2.
-
Germany and Italy, Japan's axis partners, declare war on the United States. The United States declares war on Germany, Italy, and Japan.
-
In the first major Allied offensive, British and U.S. armies attack Germany's Africa Korps on the Mediterranean chasing forces back toward Libya.
-
The Russian Red Army traps and captures German armies that had invaded the Soviet Union.
-
-
RANGEEND_ITALY The Italian government officially surrenders to the Allied powers; still, German forces occupy much of Italy.
-
The Allies capture German holdings in Naples.
-
In England, the Allied powers assemble 2.9 million men, 2.5 million tons of supplies, 11,000 airplanes, and hundreds of ships in preparation for D-Day.
-
Rome falls to Allied forces.
-
-
U.S. forces, aided by a Free French division, liberate Paris from Nazi control.
-
President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.
-
Italian insurgents capture Mussolini, murder him, and mutilate his body.
-
Adolf Hitler commits suicide in Berlin.
-
The German army signs an unconditional surrender.
-
The American air force in Europe heads for the war in the Pacific.
-
May 8 marks the formal celebration of the Allies' victory in Europe during World War II
-
The United States drops an atomic bomb—the first to be used in warfare—on Hiroshima, killing 75,000 people instantly, and injuring more than 100,000.
-
With still no surrender from Japan, the Soviet Union enters the Pacific war as promised in Yalta, defeating Japanese forces in Manchuria.
-
A second atomic bomb is dropped in Nagasaki
-
A formal surrender ceremony is conducted in Tokyo Bay on the U.S. battleship Missouri. World War II officially ends.
