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Japanese invasion of China
Japanese military demanded permission to enter the Chinese city of Wanping to search for a missing soldier. The Chinese refused. Later, a unit of Japanese infantry attempted to breach Wanping's walled defences and were repulsed. An ultimatum by the Japanese was issued before they would declare war. The Chinese still refused. And, although Private Shimura returned to his unit, by this point both sides were mobilizing. The conflict then escalated further into a full-scale war. -
The Rape of Nanking
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. -
German invasion of Poland
German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak forces advanced alongside the Germans in northern Slovakia. As the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. -
German Blitzkrieg
Germany's "Lightning War" what the Germans referred to their army as. -
Fall of Paris
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. ... German forces occupied Paris unopposed on 14 June after a chaotic period of flight of the French government that led to a collapse of the French army. -
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. -
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major confrontation of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia. Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, it's often regarded as the single largest and bloodiest It was an extremely costly defeat for German forces, and the Army High Command had to withdraw vast military forces from the West to replace their losses. -
Operation Gomorrah
The attack during the last week of July 1943, Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, killing 42,600 civilians and wounding 37,000 in Hamburg and virtually destroying most of the city. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining Ghetto population to Treblinka. The uprising started on 19 April when the Ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who then ordered the burning of the Ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. About 13,000 Jews died, many burnt alive. -
Operation Thunderclap
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. However on consideration it was decided that it was unlikely to work. -
D-Day Normandy Invasion
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. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. -
Liberation of Concentration Camps
When the Allies freed the Jews from the concentration camps. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, towards the end of World War II. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima 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 (IJA) during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the three Japanese-controlled airfields (including the South Field and the Central Field), to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. -
Battle of Okinawa
The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Marine and Army forces against the Imperial Japanese Army.[19] The initial invasion of Okinawa, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. -
VE Day
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was the public holiday celebrated to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. -
Potsdam Declaration
The Potsdam Declaration or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender is a statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. -
Dropping of 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
Victory over Japan Day is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war.
