-
First demonstration in war
The German conquest of Poland -
The Baltic states and the Russo-Finnish War
the U.S.S.R. constrained Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to admit Soviet garrisons onto their territories. -
The Red Army
Launched 14 divisions into a major assault on the Mannerheim Line. -
Hitler
drew Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia successively into the Axis, or Tripartite, Pact that Germany, Italy, and Japan had concluded on September 27 -
Hitler
ordered plans for an invasion of Norway, for use if he could no longer respect Norway’s neutrality. -
Finland
sued for peace, and a week later the Soviet terms were accepted: the Finns had to cede the entire Karelian Isthmus, Viipuri, and their part of the Rybachy Peninsula to the Soviets. -
They were
surprised by Hitler’s long-debated stroke against them through the Low Countries. -
Italy
declared war against France and Great Britain. -
The Germans
entered Paris on June 14, 1940, and were driving still deeper southward along both the western and eastern edges of France. -
France was divided
into two zones: one to be under German military occupation and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty. -
The British
seized all French ships in British-controlled ports, encountering only nominal resistance. -
The intensive phase began
, when the Germans launched bombing raids involving up to nearly 1,500 aircraft a day and directed them against the British fighter airfields and radar stations. In four actions, on August 8, 11, 12, and 13, the Germans lost 145 aircraft as against the British loss of 88. -
The Germans
with 24 divisions and 1,200 tanks, invaded both Yugoslavia (which had 32 divisions) and Greece (which had 15 divisions). The operations were conducted in the same way as Germany’s previous blitzkrieg campaigns. -
Japan
also concluded a neutrality pact with the U.S.S.R. -
German airborne troops
began to land in Crete on May 20, 1941, at Máleme, in the Canea-Suda area, at Réthimnon, and at Iráklion. Fighting, on land and on the sea, with heavy losses on both sides, went on for a week before the Allied commander in chief, General Bernard Cyril Freyberg of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, was authorized to evacuate the island. The last defenders were overwhelmed at Réthimnon on May 31. -
The German
offensive was launched by three army groups under the same commanders as in the invasion of France in 1940: -
A total of about 360
aircraft, composed of dive-bombers, torpedo bombers, and a few fighters, was launched in two waves in the early morning at the giant U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The base at that time was accommodating 70 U.S. fighting ships, 24 auxiliaries, and some 300 planes. The Americans were taken completely by surprise, and all eight battleships in the harbour were hit -
Chiang Kai-shek’s government
formally declared war not only against Japan (a formality long overdue) but also, with political rather than military intent, against Germany and Italy. -
The critical situation
on the Eastern Front did not deter Hitler from declaring Germany to be at war with the United States -
During the Arcadia Conference
that the Declaration of the United Nations was signed in Washington, D.C., as a collective statement of the Allies’ war aims in sequel to the Atlantic Charter. -
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
ordered limited offensives in three stages to recapture the New Britain–New Ireland–Solomons–eastern New Guinea area -
Churchill
had to notify Stalin that convoys of Allied supplies to northern Russia must be suspended because of German submarine activity on the Arctic sea route -
After the successive disasters
sustained by the Axis in Africa, many of the Italian leaders were desperately anxious to make peace with the Allies. -
The Allies
sustained about 22,800 casualties in their conquest of Sicily. The Axis powers suffered about 165,000 casualties, of whom 30,000 were Germans.