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a clash occurred between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peiping in North China.Conflict in Asia began well before the official start of World War II. Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace.
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In the first phase of World War II in Europe, Germany sought to avoid a long war. Germany's strategy was to defeat its opponents in a series of short campaigns. Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years by relying on a new military tactic called the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war).
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183 aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Within two hours, 18 US warships had been sunk or damaged, 188 aircraft destroyed and 2,403 American servicemen and women killed.
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meeting of Nazi officials on January 20, 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to plan the “final solution” (Endlösung) to the so-called “Jewish question” (Judenfrage).
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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
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The U.S. Navy's decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan's hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific
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Stalingrad was one of the most decisive battles on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. The Soviet Union inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the German Army in and around this strategically important city on the Volga river, which bore the name of the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The battle of Stalingrad began in August 1942, when German troops tried to take control of the city.
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the Allies began their invasion of Axis-controlled Europe with landings on the island of Sicily, off mainland Italy. On September 3, Montgomery's 8th Army began its invasion of the Italian mainland and the Italian government agreed to surrender to the Allies. Allied leaders decided to use their massive military resources in the Mediterranean to launch an invasion of Italy, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) called the “soft underbelly of Europe.”
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On June 6, 1944 the Allied Forces of Britain, America, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of Normandy, France. With a huge force of over 150,000 soldiers, the Allies attacked and gained a victory that became the turning point for World War II in Europe. The attack began when Allied planes and warships bombarded German positions along the coastline.
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In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The Germans had dismantled these camps in 1943, after most of the Jews of Poland had already been killed. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945.
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Hitler's aim was to split the Allies in their drive toward Germany. As the Germans drove into the Ardennes, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle's name. The battle proved to be the costliest ever fought by the U.S. Army, which suffered over 100,000 casualties.
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American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the ensuing Battle of Iwo Jima lasted for five weeks. In some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, it's believed that all but 200 or so of the 21,000 Japanese forces on the island were killed, as were almost 7,000 Marines.
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May 8th 1945 was the date the Allies celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Reich, formally recognizing the end of the Second World War in Europe. This became known as V.E (Victory in Europe) Day.
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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. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.
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V-J Day, or Victory Over Japan Day, is the day Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945. Japan's surrender, which formally occurred aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, came months after Nazi Germany surrendered, ending six years of war
