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Japanese Invasion of China
Chinese and Japanese troops battled eachother.
The troops first were exchanging fire in the vicinity of the Lugou bridge, a crucial access-route to Beijing, which began as confused, sporadic skirmishing soon escalated into a fullscale battle.
Beijing and its port city of Tianjin fell to Japanese forces. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
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. -
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German Blitzkrieg
Germany's Blitzkrieg tactics overwhelmed Poland in September 1939, then, after a pause, crushed Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries in April-May 1940, and finally France in June 1940. While the word Blitzkrieg is well remembered, it only became popular from use by British and U.S. journalists, while German officers used the term "bewegungskrieg," meaning war of movement, to describe their operations. -
Fall of Paris
On this day in 1940, Parisians awaken to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening-as German troops enter and occupy Paris. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried for days to convince the French government to hang on, not to sue for peace, that America would enter the war and come to its aid. -
Operation Barbarossa
Code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII. Driven by Adolf Hitler's ideological desire to conquer the Soviet territories as outlined in his 1925 maifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle). -
Wannsee Conference
Meeting senior officials of Nazi Germany, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942.The purpose of the conference, called by director of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and murdered. Conference attendees -
-Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II.[6][7][8] Between 3 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe -
Operation Gomorrah
On this day 1943, Britain had suffered the deaths of 167 civilians as a result of German bombing raids in July. Now the tables were going to turn. The evening of July 24 saw British aircraft drop 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hours. The explosive power was the equivalent of what German bombers had dropped on London in their five most destructive raids. More than 1,500 German civilians were killed in that first British raid. -
Allied invasion of Italy
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943 during World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control during World War II. Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed and the invasion force would be preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with So -
Operation Thunderclap
peration Thunderclap was the code for a cancelled operation planned in August 1944 but shelved and never implemented. The plan envisaged a massive attack on Berlin in the belief that would cause 220,000 casualties with 110,000 killed, many of them key German personnel, which would shatter German morale. However, it was later decided that the plan was unlikely to work. -
Battle of the Bulge
On the 16 of December, 1944, the Germans launch the last major offensive of the war, Operation Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to nothwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a "bulge" aroung the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front. -
Liberation of concentration camps
Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. -
Battle of Okinawa
Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign (April 1—June 22, 1945) involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead. -
VE 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. -
Dropping all the atomic bombs
President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
VJ Day
1945: Allied nations celebrate VJ Day. Japan has surrendered to the Allies after almost six years of war. There is joy and celebration around the world and 15 August has been declared Victory in Japan day
