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Rape of Nanking
No fewer than 369,366 Chinese men, women and children were killed by invading Japanese troops in Nanking and its vicinity during the 1937-38 massacre.The rape of Nanking began on December 13, 1937 when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Japanese soldiers ransacked city streets, randomly killing Chinese men, women and children... -
Rape of Nanking (Continued)
..Within hours, the streets and alleys of Nanking were littered with the bodies of civilians and prisoners of war The slaughter continued for several months. As many as 80,000 women of all ages were raped by Japenese invasion troops.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/12/world/at-the-rape-of-nanking-a-nazi-who-saved-lives.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/nanking -
German Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg, or “The Lightning War”, was an operating concept developed as a solution to the trench warfare of World War I. While American, Russian, British and other armies developed similar concepts, only the German generals received support for their operational plans prior to World War II. Germany's Blitzkrieg tactics overwhelmed Poland in September 1939, then, after a pause, crushed Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries in April-May 1940, and finally France in June 1940... -
German Blitzkrieg (Continued)
... While the word Blitzkrieg is well remembered, it only became popular from use by British and U.S. journalists, while German officers used the term "bewegungskrieg," meaning war of movement, to describe their operations. Blitzkrieg first appeared in the form of elite infantry units known as “Sturmtruppen”, or Storm Troops, designed to rapidly overrun enemy positions using momentum and speed. Later, Blitzkrieg evolved into modern mobile warfare...
http://books.google.com/books?id=65-v0wkrWYEC -
German Blitzkrieg
...Heavily armored tanks supported by infantry, motorized infantry, artillery and air power, would rapidly drive through enemy lines to capture strategic enemy positions or to encircle the enemy. -
Germany's Invasion of Poland
One of Adolf Hitler's first major foreign policy initiatives after coming to power was to sign a nonaggression pact with Poland in January 1934. This move was not popular with many Germans who supported Hitler but resented the fact that Poland had received the former German provinces of West Prussia, Poznan, and Upper Silesia under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. However, Hitler sought the nonaggression pact in order to neutralize the possibility of a French-Polish military... -
Germany's Invasion of Poland (Continued)
...alliance against Germany before Germany had a chance to rearm. In the mid and late 1930s, France and especially Britain followed a foreign policy of appeasement. The objective of this policy was to maintain peace in Europe by making limited concessions to German demands. In Britain, public opinion tended to favor some revision of the territorial and military provision of the Versailles treaty. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/06/world-war -
Fall of Paris (Continued)
to disrupt and disorientate the Allies. The attack began on May, 10 1940, with German air raids on Belgium and Holland, and parachute drops and attacks by ground. Another battle occurred and it took a heavy toll on the French. The end was the surrender of France on 22 June. Hitler insisted on signing the document of capitulation in the same railway carriage used when Germany had surrendered in 1918.
http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/fall-of-france.html -
Fall of Paris
After D-Day the fall of Paris was going to happen and people knew it was coming. The plan was to attack the French-Belgium-German boarder where the allies would not expect it and the main hit would be on France. The Germans we relying on a surprise attack and they would use surprise blitzkrieg or lightning war techniques. Manstein's plan and why they would attack france was to envisage the Panzer divisions in a semi independent role, this meant striking ahead of the main body of the army... -
Operation Barbarossa (Continued)
Three army groups attacked Russia on June 22nd 1941. Army Group North, led by von Leeb, Army Group Centre, commanded by von Bock and Army Group South commanded by von Rundstedt.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005164
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/07/world-war-ii-operation-barbarossa/100112/ -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the name given to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia on June 22nd 1941. Barbarossa the largest military attack of World War Two and was to have appalling consequences for the Russian people.NOperation Barbarossa was based on a massive attack based on blitzkrieg. Hitler had said of such an attack that when the attack on Russia starts the world will hold its breath. -
Pearl Harbor (Continued)
Americans ever since the German defeat of France left England alone in the fight against the Nazi terror. Approximately three hours later, Japanese planes began a day-long attack on American facilities in the Philippines.
http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/world/PearlHarbor.html
http://www.pearlharboroahu.com/ -
Pearl Harbor
December seventh, 1941: the surprise was complete. 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. In one stroke the Japanese action silenced the debate that had divided.. -
Wannsee Conference (Continued)
...a suburb of berlin. The agenda was simple and focused: to devise a plan that would render a "final solution to the Jewish question" in Europe.
http://www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/auschwitz/html/Wannsee.html
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477 -
Wannsee Conference
In July 1941, Herman Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler's number-two man, to submit "as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative, material, and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question." Heydrich met with Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Central Office of Jewish Emigration, and 15 other from various Nazi ministries and organizations at Wannsee... -
Battle of Midway (Continued)
..Pacific Fleet. Because of communication intelligence successes, the U.S. Pacific Fleet surprised the Japanese forces, sinking the four Japanese carriers, that had attacked Pearl Harbor only six months before, while only losing of one carrier. After Midway, the Americans and their Allies took the offensive in the Pacific.
http://www.cv6.org/1942/midway/default.htm
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/midway/midway.htm -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway, fought near the Central Pacific island of Midway, is considered the decisive battle of the war in the Pacific. Before this battle the Japanese were on the offensive, capturing territory throughout Asia and the Pacific. By their attack, the Japanese had planned to capture Midway to use as an advance base, as well as to entrap and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Because of communication intelligence successes, the U.S... -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
April 19, 1993 the uprising started. More people were brought to the ghetto each week and death from starvation and a typhoid epidemic broke out because of bad sanitary conditions. April 1941 the death rate in the ghetto was aprox. six thousand people per month. Funeral carts would show up between 4-5 am and collect the bodies each day. Most the corpses were dumped naked on the streets, the families had to strip their loved ones in order to sell the clothes to make some money and they... -
Warsawr Ghetto Uprising (Continued)
were left on the street because they could not keep them inside due to all disease and illness it could cause. The Jews in the ghetto got fed up finally and began to rebel because they had heard that the death camps were real, so they fought back armed.
http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/warsaw%20ghetto.html
http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007745 -
Operation Gomorrah (Continued)
....The explosive power was the equivalent of what German bombers had dropped on London in their five most destructive raids. More than 1,500 German civilians were killed in that first British raid. Britain lost only 12 aircraft in this raid (791 flew) -
Operation Gomorrah
On this day in 1943, British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own "Blitz Week." Britain had suffered the deaths of 167 civilians as a result of German bombing raids in July. Now the tables were going to turn. The evening of July 24 saw British aircraft drop 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hours. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
On 6 June 1944 the Western Allies landed in northern France, opening the long-awaited "Second Front" against Adolf Hitler's Germany. Though they had been fighting in mainland Italy for some nine months, the Normandy invasion was in a strategically more important region, setting the stage to drive the Germans from France and ultimately destroy the National Socialist regime.
It had been four long years since France had been overrun and the British compelled to leave continental Europe... -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion) (Continued)
...three since Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union and two and a half since the United States had formally entered the struggle. After an often seemingly hopeless fight, beginning in late 1942 the Germans had been stopped and forced into slow retreat in eastern Europe, defeated in North Africa and confronted in Italy.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1749.html
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm -
Liberation of Concentration Caps (Continued)
...General Eisenhower insisted on photographing and documenting the horror so that future generations would not ignore history and repeat its mistakes. Eisenhower also forced villagers neighboring the death and concentration camps to view what had occurred in their own backyards, and even properly bury all of the dead.
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/Liberation.html http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131 -
Liberation of Concentration Camps
The first concentration at Majdanek cap was liberated July 24, 1944 by Russian troops. Allied troops entered Nazi territories, the final rescues and liberation transpired in 1945. Allied troops who came across the concentration camps were shocked at what they found. There were huge ditches filled with bodies of the exterminated. They found rooms of baby shoes and rooms of clothes and belongings. The gas chambers had fingernail marks on the walls all testified to Nazi brutality... -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima is a very small Pacific island just over 4.5 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. Iwo Jima was supposed to have tactical importance. The Battle of Iwo Jima took place in February 1945. The capture of Iwo Jima was part of a three-point plan the Americans had for winning the war in the Far East. America’s desire was to finally destroy Japan’s merchant fleet so that the Japanese mainland could not be supplied from the food rich sectors of South East Asia which Japan still controlled. -
Battle of Iwo Jima (Continued)
The Americans also caused the destruction of Japan’s remaining industrial base by the bombing of it by the Americans Air Force. If the Americans could get the island they would have two airfields on the island. Under Japan’s control they as in the could be used by Japanese fighter planes to attack American bombers on their flights to Japan.
http://www.awwar.com/war-video-footage/wwii-battle-of-iwo-jima-photos-gallery/
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/battleiwojima.htm -
Operation Thunderclap (Continued)
Dresden,
Berlin, Chemnitz, and Leipzig. Bombs were dropped on these cities intensively and were dropped to disrupt the German Eastern Front lines to help the Soviet advance. Americans were supposed to start the first raid on Dresden, but because of bad weather across Europe it stopped any American Air crafts from flying across. Bomber command carried out the first raid on Dresden on Feburary 13. 796 Lancasters and 9 Mosquitos were dispatched in two seperate raids and dropped... -
Operation Thunderclap (Continued)
...1,478 tons of high explosives and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs. There were different groups that had different marking methods. A band of clouds still remain in the area and this raid was 244 Lancasters dropped which is more then 800 tons of bombs. The second raid was 3 hours later, and was an all-Lancaster attack, the weather was now clear and 529 Lancasters
dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs with great accuracy.
http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/bombing%20of% -
Operation Thunderclap
Operation Thunderclap was an operation that was brought up In August 1944 there was a plan to attack the city of Berlin which would cause 220,000 casualties and 110,000 killed, a lot of them were to be german. The plan was not used. There was a meeting held in which Russia and the Americans were asked to help bomb raid vital cities and they agreed. They made up a plan that they still going to bomb vital cities in the communications zone of the Eastern Front Germany, these cities were... -
Battle of Okinowa
The Battle of Okinawa started in April 1945. The capture of Okinawa was part of a three-point plan the Americans had for winning the war in the Far East. Okinawa was one of the major battles of World War Two. The Americans wanted to destroy what was left of Japan’s merchant fleet and use airstrips in the region to launch bombing raids on Japan’s industrial land. It had strategic importance. There were four airfields on the island that America needed to control in order to help defeat the... -
Battle of Okinowa
...Japanese. America also had a problem because they did not have much intelligence information about Okinawa. There were over 130,000 Japanese troops on the island with more than 450,000 civilians. The Japanese troops on the island were commanded by Lieutenant, General Ushijima who had been ordered to hold onto the island at all costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-okinawa-ends -
V-E Day
V-E Day is on May 8, 1945. V-E Day is a day of celebration to mark the day the world war 2 allies accepted that the armed forces of the nazi group had surrendered. This meant the end of World War 2. On April 30 Hitler committed suicide during the Battles of Berlin, so the surrender was by German successor, the President of Germany Karl Dönitz, also the Flensburg government. The military surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/histo -
Dropping of Atomic Bombs (Continued)
blast that was equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more died in the following weeks from wounds and radiation poisoning.
http://www.pajamadeen.com/tag/atomic-bomb
http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/lesson_95_notes.htm -
Dropping of Atomic Bombs
Germany was already defeated. But the war against Japan in the Pacific, continued to rage and did not end. President Harry S. Truman, was warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to an end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.. -
V-J Day
Victory over Japan Day or Victory in the Pacific Day. This was made when the Japanese surrendered ending world war 2. V-J day is on two of the days when the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made . Its August 15, 1945, in Japan, and, because of time zone differences, its August 14, 1945, as well as to September 2, 1945, when the signing of the surrender document occurred, officially ending World War 2.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=vj+day&um=1&hl=en&safe=active&client=firefox-a&s -
Battle of Bulge (Continued)
...he land his troops passed through stretched from southern Belgium into Luxembourg. In deadly cold winter weather the German troops advanced about 50 miles into the Allied lines, creating a deadly "bulge" pushing into Allied defenses, that is how the name came to be. Hitler thought of this as he would split the allies and they would not be able to defend for themselves. Hitler’s plan was to launch a massive attack using three armies on the Allies.
http://www.google.com/search?q=battle+of+bul -
Battle of Bulge
The Battle of Bugle began in December 1945 and did not come to and end until Janurary 1945. Hitler wanted to do this so that he could weaken or break the alliances so himself and his army would not be defeated. The battle started with a two hour bombardment of the Allies lines that was followed by a huge armoured attack with the majority of the German armoured might based at the Schnee Eifel. Hitler decided to send a quarter of a million troops across an 85 mile stretch of the Allied front...
