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Rape of Nanking (1937)
The Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing Nanking then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. -
Japanese invasion of China (1937)
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from July 7, 1937, to September 2, 1945. It began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 in which a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops escalated into a battle. -
German Blitzkrieg (1939-1940)
The period between Germany's defeat of Poland in October 1939 and her invasion of Norway in April 1940 is often referred to as the "Phony War." Not much happened. The French stiffened their defenses while the British moved troops to the continent. -
Germany's invasion of Poland (1939)
after heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, had declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. -
Fall of Paris (1940)
Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10, 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. -
Pearl Harbor (1941)
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. It completely destroyed the American battleship U.S.S. -
Wannsee Conference (1942)
On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question''. -
Battle of Midway (1942)
On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway–one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II–begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy. -
Bataan Death March (1942)
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march -
Allied invasion of Italy (1943)
Troops and vehicles being landed under shell fire during the invasion of mainland Italy at Salerno, September 1943. The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943 during the early stages of the Italian Campaign of World War II. -
Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943)
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was a violent revolt that occurred from April 19 to May 16, 1943, during World War II. Residents of the Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland, staged the armed revolt to prevent deportations to Nazi-run extermination camps. The Warsaw uprising inspired other revolts in extermination camps and ghettos throughout German-occupied Eastern Europe. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/warsaw-ghetto-uprising -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion - 1944)
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
Battle of Iwo Jima (1945)
The Battle of Iwo Jima 19 February – 26 March 1945 was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. -
VE Day (1945)
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs (1945)
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. ... Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people -
VJ Day (1945)
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. ... The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan's formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. -
Operation Thunderclap (1945)
In August 1944 plans were drawn for an operation code named Thunderclap, but it was shelved and never implemented. The plan envisaged a massive attack on Berlin that would cause 220,000 casualties with 110,000 killed, many of them key German personnel, which would shatter German morale. -
Battle of the Bulge (1945)
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive, took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, and was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. -
Liberation of concentration camps (1945)
Liberation Of The Concentration Camps. As the Allies advanced across Europe at the end of the Second World War, they came across concentration camps filled with sick and starving prisoners. The first major camp to be liberated was Majdanek near Lublin, Poland in July 1944. -
Battle of Okinawa (1945
The battle of Okinawa, also known as Operation Iceberg, took place in April-June 1945. It was the largest amphibious landing in the Pacific theater of World War II. It also resulted in the largest casualties with over 100,000 Japanese casualties and 50,000 casualties for the Allies.
