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Rape of Nanking
In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking (or Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Nanking, then the capital of Nationalist China, was left in ruins, and it would take decades for the city and its citizens to recover from the savage attacks -
Japanese invasion of China
Japanese claimed that they were fired on by Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. Using this as an excuse, the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China using the conquered Manchuria as a launching base for their troops.
The war brought to Chinese society a universality of suffering. At its end so many people had been killed or deeply injured – soldiers, their families, the victims of bombing and of scorched earth actions, the survivors of the economic chaos, the forced l -
German Blitzkrieg
Germany wanted to build its empire and felt that other European powers were restricting them . They sought to avoid a long war.Germany's strategy was to defeat its opponents in a series of short campaigns.which in combination with Russian resistance and the fierce winter, brought about their defeat. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
1.5 million German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with German-controlled territory. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. In political culture, Poland remained pro-Western but dominated by being much closer to superpower Russia than it is to its Western allies. This is an issue today as Poland is very pro-American and wants, for instance, missile defence weapons form the US. -
Ribbentrop/Molotov Pacts
The German-Soviet Pact, also known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact after the two foreign ministers who negotiated the agreement, had two parts. An economic agreement, signed on August 19, 1939, provided that Germany would exchange manufactured goods for Soviet raw materials. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a ten-year nonaggression pact on August 23, 1939, in which each signatory promised not to attack the other. -
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.While Parisians who remained trapped in their capital despaired, French men and women in the west cheered-as Canadian troops rolled through their region, offering hope for a free France yetThe United States did not remain completely idle, though. On this day, President Roosevelt froze the America. -
Operation Barbarossa
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. -
Pearl Harbor
hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. It pushed Americans into the war that they were avoiding for so long -
Wannsee Conference
Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." he "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. For the German Jews the Wannsee Conference constituted a massive catastrophe. After the conference, they were deported in great numbers to the ghettos in the east and then murdered. -
Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March. -
Battle of Midway
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position. -
Operation Thunderclap
Consequently, "Thunderclap" was shelved until ten days after the great Soviet offensive on January 12, 1945, when the...Joint Intelligence Committee reported that a four-day, four-night series of bombing attacks could very well cause a heavy flow of German refugees that "would be bound to create great confusion, interfere with the orderly movement of troops to the front and hamper the German military and administrative machine" and "materially assist the Russians in the all-important battle now -
Operation Gomorrah
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.To make matters worse for Germany, the U.S. Eighth Air Force began a more comprehensive bombing run of northern Germany, which included two raids on Hamburg during daylight hours. -
Normandy Invasion
the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive plan -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting, and the battle earned a place in American lore with the publication of a photograph showing the U.S. flag being raised in victory. -
VE Day
On Mar. 7, 1945, the Western Allies—whose chief commanders in the field were Omar N. Bradley and Bernard Law Montgomery—crossed the Rhine after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line and overran West Germany. German collapse came after the meeting (Apr. 25) of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev. The unconditional surrender of Germany was sign -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostili -
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. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
