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Germany invades Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. -
Britain & France declare war on germany
Britain and France had sworn to defend Poland. Honoring these obligations, the two countries sent ultimatums to Hitler demanding his withdrawal from Poland. Hitler declined to respond. On September 3, Prime Minister Chamberlain went to the airwaves to announce to the British people that a state of war existed between their country and Germany. World War II had begun. -
Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain
10 May 1940 was one of the most important dates in the history of the United Kingdom, because two events of enormous significance occurred on this single day. The first was the launching of Plan Yellow, the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. The second was the appointment of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of Britain. -
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Evacuation of Dunkirk
The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 27 May and 4 June 1940, during World War II. -
Italy enters war on side of Axis powers
Italy entered World War II under the leadership of Mussolini on 11 June 1940. During the course of the war Italy sided with the axis powers at the side of Germany. The sole purpose for entering the World War II was not to aid Germany in becoming the next superpower of the world. -
France signs armistice with germany
On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany. Hitler insisted that it be done in the same railway car in which Germany had surrendered to France in 1918, at the end of World War I. -
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Battle of Britain
Germany needed to prepare for the invasion of Britain, so they first attacked towns and army defenses on the southern coast. However, they soon found that Britain's Royal Air Force was a formidable opponent. The Germans decided to focus their efforts on defeating the Royal Air Force. This meant they bombed airport runways and British radar. Although the German bombings continued, the British did not stop fighting back. Hitler began to get frustrated at how long it was taking to defeat Great B -
Tripartite Pact signed
The governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace that all nations of the world be given each its own proper place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one another in regard to their efforts in greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned. -
Operation Sea Lion
When France collapsed, in mid-June 1940, the German staff had not even considered, never mind studied, the possibility of an invasion of Britain. Troops had received precisely zero training for seaborne and landing operations, and nothing had been done to gather the means of getting troops across the Channel. -
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Siege of Tobruk
Tobruk, a small town on the Libyan coast, was central to much of the fighting that took place in the Western Desert during the Second World War. It had originally been developed by the Italians during their colonisation of eastern Libya during the early decades of the 20th century. With a sheltered deep water harbour it became a key naval outpost. It was fortified during the 1930s with both coastal defence batteries and a 50 kilometre-long perimeter of reinforced concrete platoon posts, and othe -
Operation Barbarossa
Although Adolf Hitler had congratulated himself on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 as a matter of expediency, anti-Bolshevism had remained his most profound emotional conviction as World War II entered its second year. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. The bombing killed more than 2,300 Americans. -
Britain and US declare war on Japan
On December 7, 1941, two hours after the Japanese attack on American military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japan declared war on the United States and Great Britain, marking America’s entry into World War II. The Japanese government had originally intended to deliver the declaration thirty minutes before the attack, but the Japanese embassy in Washington took too long to decode the 5,000-word document. -
Japan take Singapore
After being imposed a trade embargo due to its Chinese campaigns, Japan had to look for an alternative source of supplies for its war against the allies in the Pacific War. As a result Japan invaded Malaya. -
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Battle of Midway
World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan’s first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific. -
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First battle of El Alamein
El Alamein was a small railway town on the Egyptian coast that was chosen by British Commander-in-Chief Claude Auchinleck to be the main defensive position against the mid-1942 offensive conducted by Erwin Rommel. Auchinleck had chosen the location largely because of the Qattara Depression to the south, which made any attempt to out-flank the Allied defensive lines unfeasible as the Axis forces would have to venture far south into the Sahara Desert. -
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Battle of Stalingard
successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, U.S.S.R., during World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favour of the Allies. -
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Second Battle of El Alamein
At 2140 hours local time on 23 Oct 1942, British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery launched Operation Lightfoot by ordering a 20-minute general bombardment of the Axis front lines. At 2200 hours, infantrymen and engineers of the British XXX Corps led the way through the minefield (thus the name "Lightfoot", as they were too light to detonate many of the anti-tank mines) with the support of field guns. -
D-Day Landings
It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitlers dream of Nazi domination. Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men. After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied Forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run, and crawl to the cliffs. -
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Battle of the Bulge
In late 1944, in the wake of the allied forces' successful D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, it seemed as if the Second World War was all but over. But on December 16, with the onset of winter, the German army launched a counteroffensive that was intended to cut through the Allied forces in a manner that would turn the tide of the war in Hitler's favor. The battle that ensued is known historically as The Battle of the Bulge. -
Mussolini captured and executed
Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy until his downfall in 1943, has been killed by partisans along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, and some close associates. Their bodies were taken to Milan from the Lecco district near Lake Como where they were arrested and then killed yesterday. -
Hitler commits suicide
With the end of World War II imminent and the Russians nearing his underground bunker under the Chancellery building in Berlin, Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head with his pistol, likely after swallowing cyanide, ending his own life just before 3:30 pm on April 30, 1945. In the same room with Hitler was his new wife, Eva Braun, who ended her life by swallowing a cyanide capsule. -
German forces surrender
On May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Reims, France, to take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II. -
V.E. day
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
At approximately 8.15am on 6 August 1945 a US B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing around 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, causing the deaths of 40,000 more. -
Soviet Union declares war on Japan
Almost immediately following the end of World War II, Americans began to question the use of the atomic bomb and the circumstances surrounding the end of the Pacific War. More than half a century later, books and articles on the atomic bomb still provoke storms of debate among readers and the use of atomic weapons remains a sharply contested subject. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
The bombing of Nagasaki. Nagasaki suffered the same fate as Hiroshima in August 1945. The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th was the last major act of World War Two and within days the Japanese had surrendered. -
Japanese surrender- End of WW2
In the morning of 2 September 1945, more that two weeks after acceping the Allies terms, Japan formally surrendered. The ceremonies, less than half an hour long, took place on board the battleship USS Missouri, anchored with other United States' and British ships in Tokyo Bay. -
United Nations is born
On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced.
