WWII Time Line: Significant Events

By vetouu
  • German Blitz Again Russian Begins

    German Blitz Again Russian Begins
    The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain and Northern Ireland by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The capital, London, was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, almost half of them in London
  • Period: to

    WWII Events

  • Hungary Joins The Axis Powers

    Hungary Joins The Axis Powers
    Hungary during World War II was a member of the Axis powers. In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression. By 1938, Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become increasingly pro-Fascist Italian and pro-Nazi German. Hungary benefitted territorially from its relationship with the Axis.
  • German Attack on Tobruk is Repulsed

    British forces under General Leslie Morshead repulsed German attacks on the fortress and Rommel decided to abandon the siege of Tobruk.
  • Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor

    Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor
    In Oahu, Hawaii, early on the morning of December 7, 1941, the War in the Pacific was already over an hour old. Nobody in Hawaii knew it yet, just like nobody yet knew that several flights of Japanese warplanes were already in the air and headed toward the island. The approaching Japanese aircraft were launched from Japan's six biggest and best aircraft carriers – part of a small task force that had brazenly steamed to within 200 miles of the American held Hawaiian Islands.
  • Hitler Declares War On The U.S.

    Things were desperate for the German army in the first week of December 1941. They had almost taken Moscow. However, Soviet counter attacks had destroyed any hope of taking the city and had put the whole of the German front in jeopardy. With Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, Hitler hoped that his declaration of war on the USA, would encourage the Japanese to attack the soviets.
  • Nazis liquidate Lidice in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination

     Nazis liquidate Lidice in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination
    Members of the German Army field police and SD (Sicherheitsdienst) surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding "Operation Anthropoid" team members.
  • Operation Torch begins (U.S. invasion of North Africa).

    In 1942, having been persuaded of the impracticality of launching an invasion of France as a second front, American commanders agreed to conduct landings in northwest Africa with the goal of clearing the continent of Axis troops and preparing the way for a future attack on southern Europe.
  • SS-Reichsführer Himmler gives speech at Posen

    "It is absolutely wrong to project our own harmless soul with its deep feelings, our kindheartedness, our idealism, upon alien peoples. This is true, beginning with Herder, who must have been drunk when he wrote the Voices Of The Peoples, thereby bringing such immeasurable suffering and misery upon us who came after him. This is true, beginning with the Czechs and Slovenes, to whom we brought their sense of nationhood. They themselves were incapable of it, but we invented it for them..."
  • Large British air raid on Berlin.

    Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, was subject to 363 air raids during the Second World War. It was bombed by the RAF Bomber Command between 1940 and 1945, and by the USAAF Eighth Air Force between 1943 and 1945, as part of the Allied campaign of strategic bombing of Germany. In 1945, it was also attacked by aircraft of the Red Air Force as Soviet forces closed on the city.
  • First attack toward Cassino, Italy.

    First attack toward Cassino, Italy.
    The Battle of Monte Cassino (also known as the Battle for Rome and the Battle for Cassino) was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome.
    In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans holding the Rapido, Liri and Garigliano valleys and certain surrounding peaks and ridges, together known as the Gustav Line.
  • Unconditional surrender of all German forces to Allies

    Unconditional surrender of all German forces to Allies
    On this day in 1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France.