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Germany invades Poland
【Europe】German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. -
Britain & France declare war on Germany
The United Kingdom was given on 3 September 1939, after German forces invaded Poland. Britain and France had sworn to defend Poland. Honoring these obligations, the two countries sent ultimatums to Hitler demanding his withdrawal from Poland. Hitler declined to respond. On September 3, Prime Minister Chamberlain went to the airwaves to announce to the British people that a state of war existed between their country and Germany. World War II had begun. -
Operation sea lion
[Europe(German, British)]Following the Fall of France, Adolf Hitler, the German Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, hoped the British government would seek a peace agreement and he reluctantly considered invasion only as a last resort if all other options failed. As a precondition, he specified the achievement of both air and naval superiority over the English Channel and the proposed landing sites, but the plan was shelved as the conditions could not be met. -
Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain
When after Chamberlain formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons. Churchill, was known for his military leadership ability, he was appointed British prime minister in his place. Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” They never did. -
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Evacuation of Dunkirk
【Europe(French, Britain)】The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British. The context of the Dunkirk evacuation was Germany's invasion of the Low Countries and northern France in May 1940. The evacuation of the BEF and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. When it ended on June 4, over 330,000 Allied troops were rescued. It has become the biggest evacuation in military history. -
Italy enters war on side of axis power
Italy entered World War II on the Axis side on June 10, 1940, as the defeat of France became apparent. Because of territorial expansion and foundation of empires based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post-World War I international order and the destruction or neutralization of Soviet Communism. -
France signs armistice with Germany
With Paris fallen and the German conquest of France reaching its conclusion, Marshal Henri Petain replaces Paul Reynaud as prime minister and announces his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. The armistice, signed by the French on June 22, went into effect on June 25, and more than half of France was occupied by the Germans. -
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Battle of Britain
【Europe(German, Britain)】The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by the German Air Force. A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. -
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Siege of Tobruk
【Africa】The siege of Tobruk was the first occasion in the war that German Panzer units had been stopped. The Rats of Tobruk was the name given to the soldiers of the garrison who held the Libyan port of Tobruk against the Afrika Corps. The Germans attempted to win it back by reinforcing Italian troops with the Afrika Korps of Erwin Rommel, who continually charged the British Eighth Army in battles around Tobruk, finally forcing the Brits to retreat into Egypt. -
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Operation Barbarossa
【Europe to Asian(Pacific)】On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.It was The effort to carry out a quick invasion failed which led to Germany fighting both on the East of their territory (across Russia) and to the West (in France and Belgium). Which led directly to the downfall of Adolf Hitler’s murderous regime. Together with the Holocaust that followed it. -
Bombing Of Pearl Harbor
[Pacific]The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions they planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. This bombing led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Britain and US declare war on Japan
On December 8, 1941, the United States Congress declared war the Empire of Japan in response to that country's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the prior day. It was formulated an hour after the Infamy Speech of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Japan declared war against the Allies on 7 December 1941, and Britain announced the war the following day. This decision was reached at a Cabinet meeting and was announced in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill). -
Japan takes Singapore
【Pacific ocean (Asian)】Singapore to the Japanese Army on February 15th, 1942 is considered one of the greatest defeats in the history of the British Army and probably Britain’s worst defeat in World War Two. Singapore, an island at the southern end of the Malay Peninsula, was considered a vital part of the British Empire and supposedly impregnable as a fortress. The British saw it as the “Gibraltar in the Far East”. The fall of Singapore was a humiliation for the British government. -
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The Battle Of Midway
【Pacific】 The US was a growing threat, and Japan plans to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack. The outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.The Battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific War. -
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First Battle Of El Alamein
[Africa]The First Battle of El Alamein was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought in Egypt between Axis forces (Germany and Italy) of the Panzer Army Africa (Panzerarmee Afrika. The Battle of El Alamein marked the culmination of the North African campaign between the forces of the British Empire and the German-Italian army commanded in the field by Erwin Rommel in World War II. -
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Battle of Stalingrad
[Altantic]The German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus and to do this, Paulus was ordered by Hitler to take Stalingrad. This battle was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad in the U.S.S.R. during WW2. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. -
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Second Battle of El Alamein
[Afria]This battle was primarily fought between two of the outstanding commanders of World War Two, Montgomery, who succeeded the dismissed Auchinleck, and Rommel. This victory leads to the retreat of the Afrika Korps and the German surrender in North Africa in May 1943. And was the only great land battle won by the British and Commonwealth forces without direct American participation this fought in the deserts of North Africa, is seen as one of the decisive victories of WW2 -
D-Day landings(Normandy Landings)
[Europe]On this day Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. Codenamed Operation 'Overlord', the Allied landings on the Normandy beaches marked the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation. 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. It resulted in the freedom of France. -
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Battle of the Bulge
[Europe]The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during WW2. The Battle of the Bulge was last major Nazi offensive against the Allies in WW2. The battle was a last-ditch attempt by Hitler to split the Allies in two in their drive towards Germany and destroy their ability to supply themselves. An attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. It is the largest battle ever fought by the US Army. -
Mussolini captured and executed
The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by Italian partisans in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. -
Hitler commits suicide
On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife, Eva in his bunker in Berlin.Hitler’s officers warned him that the Russians were on their way and that it would only take them a day or two to take the chancellery. They urged him to escape to the Bavarian Alps, to a small town in Berchtesgarden, but he chose suicide. Their remains were burnt in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. All his reasons for committing suicide were known only to Hitler himself. -
German forces surrender
On this day in 1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France Which would take effect the following day. At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. Bringing an end to the European conflict in World War IIWhich would take effect the following day. -
V.E day
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day. V-E Day was observed on May 8, 1945 in Great Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Australia, and on May 9 in the Soviet Union and New Zealand. V-E Day commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
President Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon is used to bring the war to a speedy end. On this day the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima were shortly followed by the surrender of Japan and the end of WW2. It was the first and only time that atomic bombs have been used in a war. -
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Soviet Union declared war on Japan
[Pacific]At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan three months after Germany's surrender. On this day, the Soviet Union pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies. On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. -
Japanese surrender-end of WW2
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on this day bringing the hostilities of WW2 to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. The defeat of Japan was a foregone
conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. -
Tripartite pact signed
On this day in 1940, the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. This formalizing of the alliance was aimed directly at “neutral” America–designed to force the United States to think twice before venturing in on the side of the Allies. -
United Nations is born
A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced. The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.
