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Germany invades Poland
On the 1st of September 1939 Nazi Germany makes the decision to invade Poland as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy which was a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. -
Britain and France declare war on Germany.
Two days after the invasion of Poland on the 3rd of September 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany.The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced the British deadline for the withdrawal of German troops from Poland had expired. .Similarly, the French issued an ultimatum, which was presented in Berlin at 1230, saying France would be at war unless a 1700 deadline for the troops' withdrawal. -
Siege of Tobruk
The Siege of Tobruk was on April 10, 1940 when the German and Italian troops surrounded the fortified port of Tobruk where they surrounded a number of British and Commonwealth troops, which began the siege of Tobruk. -
Churchill becomes prime minister of Britain.
On May 10th 1940, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty is called to replace Neville Chamberlin as British prime minister following Neville Chamberlin resignation after losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. -
Evacuation of Dunkirk (operation dynamo)
Evacuation of Dunkirk was on May 27th – June 7 when the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved from the Nazi Army who captured them. -
Italy enters war on side of Axis powers.
The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, unleashed the European war. Italy entered World War II on the Axis side on June 10, 1940, as the defeat of France became apparent. Italy joined so they could also declare war on France and Britain with Nazi Germany. -
France signs armistice with Germany
After the spread the Nazi regime around Europe France slowly was crumbling under the force of the Nazi invasion, the Vice premier of France arranged 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. In July, Petain took office as chief of state at Vichy, Petain collaborated with the Nazis, and French citizens suffered on both sides of the divided nation. -
Battle of Britain
From July the 10th – October 31st German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom. An important 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. Britain’s victory saved the country from a ground invasion and possible occupation by German forces. -
Operation Sea Lion
Operation Sea Lion was a name given by Hitler for the planned invasion of Great Britain during September 1940. Operation Sea Lion never happened because Nazi Germany lost the Battle of Britain. Hitler hoped to destroy the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain before sending troops across the channel. -
Tripartite Pact signed
On the September 27th 1940 he Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for assistance if any of the axis power countries suffer an attack by any nation not already involved in the war. This validating of the alliance was aimed directly at “neutral” America–designed to force the United States to think twice before joining in on the side of the Allies. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was on the 22nd of June 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa, it was one of the largest military operations in history. with more than 3 million Axis troops and 3,500 tanks. Operation Barbarossa was completed because of Hitler’s belief that the Germans needed to seek living space with in the Soviet Union, at the expense of the native Slavic, who were to be exterminated or reduced to do force labour. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbour
President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. The bombing killed more than 2,300 Americans. It completely destroyed the American battleship U.S.S. Arizonaand capsized the U.S.S. Oklahoma. The attack sank a total of twelve ships and damaged nine others. 160 aircraft were destroyed and 150 others damaged. -
Britain and US declare war on Japan
On December 8, 1941, the United States Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan in response to its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the prior day. It was formulated an hour after the Infamy Speech of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Britain quickly declared war on Japan straight after the US since there were allies. -
Japan takes Singapore
The Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II took place from 1942 to 1945,following the fall of the British colony on 15 February 1942. Military forces of the Empire of Japan occupied it after defeating the combined British, Indian, Australian, and Malayan garrison in the Battle of Singapore. The occupation was to become a major turning point in the histories of several nations, including those of Japan, Britain, and the then-colonial state of Singapore. -
Battle of midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Navy. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved permanent. -
First battle of El Alamein
the First Battle of El Alamein (1–27 July 1942) was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought in Egypt between Axis forces of the Panzer Army Africa also known as the Afrika Korps commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel nicknamed "The Desert Fox" and Allied forces of the Eighth Army, commanded by General Claude Auchinleck. The British prevented a second advance by the Axis forces into Egypt. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was 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. -
Second battle of El Alamein
The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October–11 November 1942) was a decisive battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, The First Battle of El Alamein had prevented the Axis from advancing further into Egypt. In August 1942, The British victory in the North African Campaign and ended the Axis threat to Egypt, -
Battle of Bulge
On 16th of December 1942, the Germans launched the last major offensive of the war, Operation Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to north western Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a “bulge” around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front. -
D-Day Landings
D-Day was on the 6th of June 1944, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches of France’s Normandy region. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring, the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe. -
Mussolini captured and executed
On the 27th of April, 1945 Benito Mussolini was captured when trying to escape with his mistress Clara Petacci and a convoy of fellow fascists and German soldiers heading north toward Lake Como and the border with Switzerland by Partisans who saw through his disguise of German military wear. He and his mistress were executed in front of a stone wall at the entrance to Villa Belmonte where both were executed by machine gun fire. -
Hitler commits suicide
On the 30th of April 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a 1,000-year Reich. At his side were Eva Braun, whom he married only two days before their double suicide, and his dog, an Alsatian named Blondi. -
German forces surrender
May 7th,1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. -
V.E. day
On May 8th 1945, Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the 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. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. -
Soviet union declares war on Japan
the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan on the 8th of August 1945, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, north eastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
On the 9th of August 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. -
Japanese surrender- End of WWI
Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies on the 2nd of September 1945, bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. -
United Nations is born
On the 24th of October 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced. The growing Second World War became the real motivation for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original U.N. Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.