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Nazi Germany Invades Poland
Hitler demanded from Poland a return of the areas wrested from Germany after World War 1. Failing to secure satisfaction, he sent his mechanized divisions crashing into Poland. -
Sitzkrieg
Hitler shifted his victorious divisions from Poland for a knockout blow at France. Inaction during this anxious period was relieved by the Soviets, who wantonly attacked neighboring Finland in an effort to secure strategic buffer territory. -
France Fell to Germany
Hitler overran his weaker neighbors, Denmark and Norway, immediately after the "Phony War" or "Sitzkrieg." The next month he attacked the Netherlands and Belgium, with a paralyzing blow to France right afterwards. -
Battle of Britain
Britain stood between Hitler and his dream of domination, and the wisdom of neutrality seemed very questionable. Hitler launched air attacks against Britain, preparatory to an invasion scheduled for September. -
Destroyers-For-Bases Deal
Roosevelt agreed to transfer to Great Britain fifty old-model, four-funnel destroyers left over from WW 1. In return the British promised to hand over to the United States eitght valuable defensive Base sites, stretching from Newfoundland to South America. -
America First Committee Launched
The foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II. Peaking at 800,000 paid members in 450 chapters, it was one of the largest anti-war organizations in American history. -
Congress Institutes the Draft
The Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed. Selective Service is born. -
Four Freedoms
Goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech, he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. -
Lend-Lease
Patriotically numbered 1776, this was entitled "An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States." Sprung on the country after the election was safely over, it was praised by the administration as a device that would keep the nation out of the ar rather than drag it in. -
USS Kearny Attacked
In September, the U.S. desstroyer Greer provocatively trailed a German U-boat, and was attacked by the undersea craft, without damage to either side. Roosevelt then proclaimed a shoot-on-sight policy. The escorting destroyer Kearny, while engaged in a battle with U-boats, lost eleven men when it was crippled but not sent to the bottom. -
Reuben James Sunk
Two weeks after the attack on an escorting destroyer, Kearny, the destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk off southwestern Icelnd, with the loss of more than a hundred officers and enlisted men. -
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
The Japanese struck a paralyzing blow on Pearl Harbor while Tokyo was deliberately prolonging negotiations in Washington. Japanese bombers winging in from distant aircraft carriers, attacked without warning on The "Black Sunday morning. About three thousand casualties were inflicted on American personnel, many aircrafts were destroyed, the battleship fleet was wiped out when all eight of the craft were immobilized, and many small vessels were damaged or destroyed. -
Battle of Bataan
About twenty thousand American troops, supported by a much larger force of ill-trained Filipinos, held off violent Japanese attacks. -
Bataan Death March
After the battered remnants of his army had hoisted the white flag, they were treated with vicious cruelty in the infamous eighty mile Bataan Death March to prisoner-of-war camps -- the first in a series of atrocities committed by both sides in the unusually savage Pacific war. -
Battle of Coral Sea
The aggressive warrior from Japan, making hay while whil e the Rising Sun shone, pushed relentlessly southwar. Their onrush was finally checked by a crucial naval battle fought in the Coral Sea. An American carrier task force, with Australian support, inflicted heavy losses on the victory-flushed Japanese. -
Battle of Midway
After the naval battle at Coral Sea, Japan next undertook to seize Midway Island, more than a thousand miles northwest of Honolulu. From the strategic base, it could launch devastating assaults on Pearl Harbor and force the weakened American Pacific fleet into destructive combat - possibly even compel the United States to negotiate a cease-fire in the Pacific. -
D-Day
The Allies invade Western Europe in the largest amphibious attack in history. -
Battle of Stalingrad
A major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe -
Island Hopping Campaign Begins
The U.S. Navy, with marines and army divisions doing the meat-grinder fighting, had been "leapfrogging" the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. -
Manhattan Project Began
American know-how and industrial power were combined with the most advanced scientific knowledge. -
Battle of El Alamein
A major battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. -
Casablanca Conference
British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt meet in Morocco. -
Tehran Conference
A meeting between U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran -
MacArthur Returned to the Phillipines
After advancing island by island across the Pacific Ocean, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur wades ashore onto the Philippine island of Leyte, fulfilling his promise to return to the area he was forced to flee in 1942. -
FDR Elected to a 4th Term
Came most awkwardly as the awful conflict roared to its climax, but the normal electoral processes continental contine d to function, despite some loose talk of suspending them. -
Battle of the Bulge
Hitler staked everything on one last throw of his reserves. Secretly concentrating a powerful force, he hurled it against the thinly held American lines in the heavily befogged and snow-shrouded Ardennes Forest -
Yalta Conference
A meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt as World War II was winding down. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The island of Iwo Jima was needed as a haven for damaged American bombers returning from Japan. This cost the lives of over four thousand Americans. -
Battle of Okinawa
Okinawa was needed for closer bases from which to blast and burn enemy cities and industries. Japanese soldiers sold Okinawa for fifty thousand American casualties, while suffering larger losses themselves. -
FDR Died/Harry Truman Becomes President
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
VE Day
Victory in Europe dat, was a public holiday celebrated to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. -
Potsdam Conference
President Truman, met in a seventeen-day parley with Joseph Stalin and the British leaders to issue a stern ultimatum to Japan: surrender or be destroyed. -
Little Boy Dropped on Hiroshima
Japan had refused to surrender to the war, the Potsdam conference being fulfilled. A lone American bomber dropped one atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. 180,000 killed, wounded, or missing. -
Fat Man Dropped on Nagasaki
Fantastically resisting Japanese, though facing atomization, still did not surrender. American aviators dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. -
VJ Day
Spontaneous celebrations over the final ending of World War 2. -
Nuremberg Trials
Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany. -
Japanese War Crime Trials
Tried the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of war crimes.
