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Japan invades China
Economically, Japan needed more resources. It wanted to be an industrial and military power but lacked resources and space on its home islands. Militaristically, Japan was being controlled by hard-line military officers. They wanted war in part simply because part of their ideology extolled war. -
Rape of Nanking
The Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war. -
Germany Invades Poland
in 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II has begun. -
German Blitzkrieg
German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 before successfully employing the tactic with invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940. -
Pearl Harbor
The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan. Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. -
Bataan Death March
The U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II in (1939-45), approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
About 1,000 Jewish prisoners at Treblinka seized weapons from the camp’s armory and staged a revolt. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history. It required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. -
Liberation of Concentration Camps
they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. The Germans had been forced to leave these prisoners behind in their hasty retreat from the camp. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. -
VE Day
Great Britain and the United States celebrated Victory in Europe Day. The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers. -
Battle of Okinawa
Japanese forces changed their typical tactics of resisting at the water’s edge to a defense in depth, designed to gain time. In conjunction with this, the Japanese navy and army mounted mass air attacks by planes on one-way “suicide” missions. The Japanese also sent their last big battleship, the Yamato, on a similar mission with a few escorts. -
Dropping of the Atomic Bomb
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. Since 1940, the United States had been working on developing an atomic weapon, after having been warned by Albert Einstein that Nazi Germany was already conducting research into nuclear weapons. -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victory over Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” -
Battle of the Bulge
Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American forces fout again many rivals.
