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The Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was a turning point in World War II; if the RAF had not held off the Luftwaffe, Hitler would have likely moved forward with his Operation Sea Lion land invasion of the British Isles. This would have been devastating to the British people and all efforts to stem Hitler's rise to power -
The Bombing of Pearl Harbor
Japan intended the attack as a preventive action. Its aim was to prevent the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and those of the United States. -
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the war. Japanese and American naval powers were roughly equalized. The war ended three years later, and today the battle is memorialized by such monuments as Chicago Midway International Airport and the Battle of Midway National Memorial -
The Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the most decisive battles on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. The Soviet Union inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the German Army in and around this strategically important city on the Volga river, which bore the name of the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin -
operation Torch
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. -
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program
The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies was established in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during and after World War II. -
The Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft. It marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and cleared the way for the great Soviet offensives of 1944–45. -
D-Day (June 6th, 1944)
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German military offensive in western Europe. The German offensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium was only temporarily successful in halting the Allied advance. During the fighting, captured American soldiers and Belgian prisoners were murdered by Waffen SS units -
The Battle of Iwo Jima
It had been one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history. After the battle, Iwo Jima served as an emergency landing site for more than 2,200 B-29 bombers, saving the lives of 24,000 U.S. airmen. Securing Iwo Jima prepared the way for the last and largest battle in the Pacific: the invasion of Okinawa. -
The Battle of Okinawa
Taking Okinawa would provide Allied forces an airbase from which bombers could strike Japan and an advanced anchorage for Allied fleets. From Okinawa, US forces could increase air strikes against Japan and blockade important logistical routes, denying the home islands of vital commodities -
The Death of FDR
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. -
The Death of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934 -
Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two aerial bombings together killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war.