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Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking. 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.
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A German term that means “flash war”. The Blitzkrieg was a tactic where the Germans would perform a surprise attack that consisted mainly of speed and aggression. The German Blitzkrieg occurred to avoid a long war in the first phase of World War II in Europe, also to psychologically shock and cause disorganization in enemy forces.
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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. -
By early June 1940 Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands had fallen, the British had been driven into the sea, and the Germans had taken more than one million Allied prisoners in the space of three weeks. The French had lost 30 of their own divisions thus far, but Weygand mustered 49 divisions to cover the new front, leaving 17 to hold the Maginot Line. Eventually France fell out of confusion with Germany's war tactics.
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Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and most of its Axis allies, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation was named after Frederick Barbarossa, a 12th-century Holy Roman emperor and German king.
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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. -
A meeting held between Nazis and German government officials. The participants of the gathering focused their topic on the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, a.k.a the mass killing of the Jews. -
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, the prisoners being forced to march despite many dying on the journey. -
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy Landings.
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The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II.
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Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazi's "final solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive. -
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
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On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II. -
American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” -
Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. 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 hostilities to a final and highly anticipated close.