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evacuation
The evacuation of some three million people to rural locations beyond the reach of German air attacks deeply affected the nation. This was the first time an official evacuation had ever been deemed necessary and the experience of mass evacuation - the biggest and most concentrated movement of people in British history - remains uppermost in the minds of those who lived through the war. The majority of people who were evacuated were children, and for that reason the operation was codenamed Pied P -
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world war 2
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Declaring war on germany
Britain and France were forced to declare war after Germany ignored their separate ultimatums, delivered on 3 September 1939, demanding the withdrawal of German troops from Poland. In the mid-1930s, Britain's response to the acceleration of Germany's rearmament and the threat of war was to appease rather than confront Hitler and his generals. By late 1938, Hitler was making speeches that furiously proclaimed Germany's right to annex the Sudetenland, a Czechoslovak territory with a significant -
HMS 'Royal Oak' Torpedoed
The British naval base to the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney, was penetrated - unbeknown to the British admiralty - on the night of 13/14 October 1939. A German submarine, U-47 commanded by Günther Prien, successfully launched a salvo of torpedoes. The British were so unprepared they at first assumed that the explosion was caused by a problem on board, not by an attack. When HMS Royal Oak was hit for a second time only 20 minutes later, it was still unclear that the cause was a surprise atta -
The fall of france
Although Hitler's armies were smaller than those of his opponents, the Germans had both air superiority and imagination. More than half of France's 800,000 troops were confined to manning the defensive Maginot Line, a line of fortifications facing Germany from the Swiss to the Belgian frontiers. The Germans simply sidestepped them. On 10 May 1940, German forces advanced into neutral Holland, with parachutists capturing strategic bridges and landing at airfields around The Hague. By 12 May, Germ -
Battle of Britan
Following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk, Hitler issued a directive on 16 July 1940 ordering the preparation and, if necessary, the execution of a plan for the invasion of Great Britain, codenamed Operation Sealion. Britain retained naval superiority and Hitler knew an amphibious invasion of the British Isles would only be possible if Germany could establish control of the air in the battle zone. The German High Command launched a campaign to gain air super -
Operation Brevity
Following the Allied withdrawal from the eastern Libyan province of Cyrenaica in April 1941, 13th Corps was reconstituted under Beresford-Peirse and refitted. On 12 May a convoy arrived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria with reinforcements including 220 tanks. General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, was under continual pressure from Churchill to engage Rommel and make amends for the defeat earlier that year. Operation Brevity was launched on 15 May 1941. The goal was to push -
Bismark Sunk
Commissioned in August 1940, the Bismarck, at 45,000 tons, was the largest battleship in the Kriegsmarine (German navy) and contravened the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 which limited German battleships to a maximum of 35,000 tons. The Bismarck spent the eight months following its commission in the eastern Baltic, and in mid-May 1941, under the command of Admiral Lutjens, the Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen broke out into the Atlantic. It was the ship's first operational mission. -
Declaration of War on Japan
For four years, Japan's designs on China had caused alarm to the Allies. By 1938 Japan occupied a vast area of the Chinese coastline. Japan's ambition was to establish Japanese primacy in Asia and incorporate China into the Empire, subduing any opposing Western nation. On 27 September 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, binding the three countries to mutual support. Japan now faced a war with Russia and Hitler's attack there in June 1941 came as a disturbing surprise -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
