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The start of World War II was signaled by the invasion of Poland, a coordinated assault on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union. One week after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union gave its approval, the German invasion started on September 1, 1939. Poland was invaded by the Soviets on September 17th. -
In the Second World War, the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom from widespread attacks by the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany's air force, during the Battle of Britain. The conflict was officially recognized by the British as lasting from 10 July to 31 October 1940, which falls between the Blitz, a series of widespread nighttime raids that lasted from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. -
During the Second World War, on Sunday, June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. With over 10 million combatants participating, it was the greatest land offensive in human history. The operation, code-named Frederick Barbarossa after a German king and Holy Roman emperor who lived in the 12th century, carried out Nazi Germany's political objective of annexing western Soviet Union and populating it with Germans. -
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, just before 8:00 a.m., the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise military attack against the United States against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. The attack caused the United States, which was at the time a neutral nation, to formally enter World War II on the side of the Allies the next day. Months of discussions on the future of the Pacific Ocean between the United States and Japan came before the attack. -
The Holocaust was the World War II-era mass murder of Jews in Europe. Six million Jews, or roughly two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe, were methodically murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies between 1941 and 1945 while living under German occupation. The majority of the killings took place at extermination camps, particularly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chemno in occupied Poland, as well as mass shootings, gas chambers, and gas vans.