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Annexation of Sudetenland
The Sudetenland was assigned to Germany. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Sudetenland -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor -
The Philippines
At the start of WW2, the Philippine Islands were United States territory as per the 1898 Treaty of Paris. The archipelago was home to 19 million people, and was at a strategic location between Japan and the South Pacific.
https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=46 -
Battle of Midway
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-midway -
Japanese Internment Camps
A policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent would be interred in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war, the Japanese internment camps are now considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation -
Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II. The battle is infamous as one of the largest, longest and bloodiest engagements in modern warfare.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-stalingrad -
Guadalcanal
A series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific.https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Guadalcanal -
Los Alamos
United States Department of Energy national laboratory initially organized during World War II for the design of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/location/los-alamos-nm -
Island Hopping
The United States launched a counter-offensive strike known as "island-hopping," establishing a line of overlapping island bases, as well as air control. The idea was to capture certain key islands, one after another, until Japan came within range of American bombers.
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1671.html -
D-day
Codenamed Operation Overlord, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day -
Meeting at Yalta
The second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the conference, the three leaders agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference -
Death of Hitler
Warned by officers that the Russians were only a day or so from overtaking the chancellery the dictator chose suicide. It is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his “beloved” dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/adolf-hitler-commits-suicide-in-his-underground-bunker -
Meeting at Potsdam
he last of the World War II meetings held by the “Big Three” heads of state. The talks established a Council of Foreign Ministers and a central Allied Control Council for administration of Germany.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/potsdam-conference -
Hiroshima
American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki -
Fall of Berlin
The Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall
