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Hitler Becomes Dictator of Germany
Hitler's success owed a great deal to the weakness of democracy in Germany. It took the Great Depression to create the conditions in which Hitler could come to power. -
The Anschluss
The Anschluss, also known as the Anschluß Österreichs, was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an Anschluss arose after the 1871 unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire. -
Miracle of Dunkirk
Despite many ships being sunk and many lives lost, by the end of the operation on 4 June, Ramsay, his ships and staff had rescued 338,226 British and Allied troops and landed them in England. The rescue came to be regarded as a 'miracle', and remains the largest amphibious evacuation undertaken in wartime. -
"The Blitz" (London)
German bombers attacked London, leaving 430 dead and 1,600 injured. London was then bombed for 57 consecutive nights, and often during daytime too. -
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The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. -
Operation Barbarossa
On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation 'Barbarossa', the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of a campaign that would ultimately decide the Second World War. Hitler regarded the Soviet Union as his natural enemy. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor attack, surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. -
Battle of Midway Island
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place 4–7 June 1942, six months after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne 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 is the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
Dropping the Atomic Bombs
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.