-
Capture of Paris
People in Paris were woken by a German voice on the loudspeaker saying that a curfew will be given at 8 p.m. and that German troops would seize Paris. Winston Churchill tried to persuade Frances government to not sue for peace. By the time the Germans entered Paris, 2 million Parisians fled paris. -
German Blitzkrieg
1.5 million German troops invaded Poland along the boarder. The German Luftwaffe bombed polish airfields, and German airships and U-Boats attack Polish naval forces in the Baltic Sea. Hitler believed that the invasion of Poland would bring "Lebensraum" or Living Space for the German people. His plan was the "racially superior" Germans would colonize the territory and the native Slavs would be enslaved -
Germany Bombs London
1,000 German aircraft-over 300 bombers escorted by 600 fighters. Convinced that the German invasion of Britain was imminent, the country was put on high alert. Signals of impending invasion went-out- the code word "Cromell" was sent to military units and church bells rang some of the bombs didn't land on their intended targets of the docks, but many landed on peoples home. -
Lend Lease
The Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries received weapons under this law. -
Germany Invades Soviet Union
Adolf Hitler had always regarded the German Soviet nonaggression pact, signed on August 23,1939,as a temporary tactical maneuver. In July 1940, just weeks after the German conquest of France and the Low Countries, Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 code-named Operation "Barbarossa" the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. -
Pearl Harbor
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
War with Japan
On December 8, Congress approved Roosevelt's declaration of war. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy declared war against the United States. For the second time, Congress reciprocated. More than two years after the start of the conflict, the United States had entered World War II. -
Bataan Death March
Within a month, the Japanese had captured Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and the American and Filipino defenders of Luzon were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. For the next three months, the combined U.S.-Filipino army held out despite a lack of naval and air support. Finally, on April 9, with his forces crippled by starvation and disease, U.S. General Edward King Jr. (1884-1958), surrendered his approximately 75,000 troops at Bataan. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
An estimated 55,000 to 60,000 Jews remained in the Warsaw ghetto, and small groups of these survivors formed underground self-defense units such as the Jewish Combat Organization, or ZOB, which managed to smuggle in a limited supply of weapons from anti-Nazi Poles. On January 18, 1943, when the Nazis entered the ghetto to prepare a group for transfer to a camp, a ZOB unit ambushed them. -
D-Day
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. -
Battle of the Bulge
On December 16, three German armies (more than a quarter-million troops) launched the deadliest and most desperate battle of the war in the west in the poorly roaded, rugged, heavily forested Ardennes. The once-quiet region became bedlam as American units were caught flat-footed and fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and, later, Bastogne, which was defended by the 101st Airborne Division. -
Liberation 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
Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, and it was attacked by three marine divisions after elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment.The battle was marked by changes in Japanese defense tactics–troops no longer defended at the beach line but rather concentrated inland; consequently, the marines experienced initial success but then got bogged down in costly attritional warfare.
