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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. -
The Attack on Pearl Harbour was a surprise military attack by the Japanese Naval Air force, focused on the entire pacific fleet of the U.S. Navy. -
The Commonwealth of the Philippines was attacked by the Empire of Japan on 8 December 1941, nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. -
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. -
The Battle of Guadalcanal was the first major offensive and a decisive victory for the Allies in the Pacific. With Japanese troops stationed in this section of the Solomon Islands, U.S. marines launched a surprise attack in August 1942 and took control of an air base under construction. -
Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066. From 1942 to 1945, it was the 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. -
The Battle of Midway was an epic clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. 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. -
Allied planes and ships would isolate and neutralize Rabaul from the air and sea while the bulk of MacArthur’s forces pushed westward to invade less-well-defended islands. This practice of skipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance, became known as island hopping. -
June 6, 1944, 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. -
Mussolini had been shot and publicly hung and Hitler was expecting the same end. In turn, Hitler took cyanide pills and shot himself in the head. -
The Yalta Conference was a meeting with the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The conference was located in the resort city of Yalta, located along the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. The “Big Three” Allied leaders discussed the post-war fate of defeated Germany and the rest of Europe, as well as many other countries concerns. -
A few years after the start of World War II, Los Alamos was made to design and build an atomic bomb. It took just 27 months. On July 16, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb was detonated 200 miles south of Los Alamos at Trinity Site. This test proved that scientists at the Laboratory had successfully weaponized the atom. -
Held near Berlin, the Potsdam Conference was the last of the World War II meetings held by the “Big Three” heads of state. American President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, the talks established a Council of Foreign Ministers and a central Allied Control Council for administration of Germany. The leaders arrived at various agreements on the German economy, punishment for war criminals, land boundaries and reparations. -
On August 6, 1945, the United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Around 80,000 people are killed instantly, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. -
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. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased.