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Japan at war with China
1937- The Chinese Government hereby formally declares war on Japan. The Chinese Government further declares that all treaties, conventions, agreements and contracts regarding relations between China and Japan are and remain null and void. -
Nanking
The invasion of Nanking. The Japanese went into Nanking with the intent of controlling the city and ensuing fear. More than 300,00 Chinese civilians/army were killed. 1937 -
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World War 2
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Czechoslovakia
1938 - On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudetenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s c -
The invasion of Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. -
Battle of Britian
1940 - The Battle of Britain is the name given to the Second World War defence of the United Kingdom by the Royal Air Force against an onslaught by the German Air Force which began at the end of June 1940. In Britain, the officially recognised dates are 10 July – 31 October 1940, overlapping with the period of large-scale night attacks known as The Blitz. German historians do not accept this subdivision, and regard the Luftschlacht um England as a campaign lasting from July 1940 to June 1 -
Germany
1940-Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, which became known as the Axis alliance. -
Pearl Harbor
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes -
Navajo Code Talkers
1941 - The Navajo code talkers were men that used their Native tongue to send messages back and forth without the fear of it being decoded. -
Operation Barbarossa
1941 - Operation Barbarossa was the codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which began on 22 June 1941. The operation was driven by Adolf Hitler's ideological desire to conquer the Soviet territories as outlined in his 1925 manifesto -
Japanese bombing
Americans used B-29s to bomb industrial, military and civilian targets. The goal was to simply destroy the Japanese will to resist. April 1942. -
Auschwitz
1942 - 1945 - Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish question". -
Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway. The turning point of the war in the Pacific. More than 5,000 Japanese soldiers died, 4 aircraft ships sank and 322 planes were shot down. 1942 -
Bataan death march
1942 - The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer from Saisai Pt. and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war which began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. -
Battle of Stalingrad
1942 - 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. -
Battle of El Alamein
1942 - The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October–11 November 1942) was a major battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. -
Wannsee Conference
1942 - The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of Nazi Germany, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by director of the Reich Main Security Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to P -
Battle of Normandy
1944 - The Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, 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. -
Tall Boy
1944 - Tallboy, or Bomb, Medium Capacity, 12,000 lb, was an earthquake bomb developed by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis and deployed by the RAF in 1944. At five long tons and carried by the Avro Lancaster, it was effective against hardened structures against which prior, smaller bombs had proven ineffective. -
Battle of the Bulge
1944 - The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. -
Battle of Anzio
1944 - The Battle of Anzio was an important battle of the Italian Campaign of World War II that began on January 22, 1944, with the Allied amphibious landing known as Operation Shingle against the German forces in the area of Anzio and Nettuno. The operation was commanded by U.S. Army Major General John P. Lucas commanding U.S. VI Corps, which initially included the U.S. 3rd and British 1st Infantry divisions, and was intended to outflank German forces at the Winter Line and enable an att -
Battle of Guam
1944 - The Second Battle of Guam was the American capture of the Japanese-held island of Guam, a United States territory during the Pacific campaign of World War II. -
Little Boy
1945 - Little Boy was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. -
Fat Man
1945 - "Fat Man" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945. -
Grand Slam
1945 - Known officially as the Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 lb, it was a scaled-up version of the Tallboy bomb and closer to the original size that the bombs' inventor, Barnes Wallis, had envisaged when he first developed his earthquake bomb idea. It was also nicknamed "Ten ton Tess". -
Battle of Iwo Jima
1945 - The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the three Japanese-controlled airfields, to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. This five-week battle comprised some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the War i
