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Japanese invasion of China (1937)
The Second Sino-Japanese War or War of Resistance was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. -
Rape of Nanking (1937)
The Nanjing Massacre, also called the Rape of Nanjing, was the mass killing and the ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. -
Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact (1939)
The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those powers to partition Poland. -
Fall of Paris (1940)
The Battle of France, also known as the Western Campaign, the French Campaign, and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands during the Second World War. On 3 September 1939, France declared war on Germany following the German invasion of Poland. -
Pearl Harbor (1941)
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m., on Sunday, December 7, 1941 -
Battle of Midway(1942)
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. -
Bataan Death March (1942)
The Japanese began the Indian Ocean raid. The Battle of Christmas Island was fought. Japanese soldiers were able to occupy Christmas Island without resistance, although the American submarine Seawolf damaged the Japanese cruiser Naka. -
Wannsee Conference (1942)
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. -
Allied invasion of Italy (1943)
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group -
Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943)
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Majdanek and Treblinka death camps. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion - 1944)
The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest invasion force in human history. The operation, given the codename OVERLORD, delivered 5 naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France.
The Normandy invasion began to turn the tide against the Nazis. -
Battle of the Bulge (1945)
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in Europe. -
VJ Day (1945)
V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the end of World War II, one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in history. When President Harry S. Truman announced on Aug. 14, 1945, that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, war-weary citizens around the world erupted in celebration. -
Liberation of concentration camps (1945)
On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazi's "final solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive. -
Battle of Iwo Jima (1945)
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. -
VE Day (1945)
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last shots fired on the 11th. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs (1945)
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict