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Nazi Germany Invaded Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. -
Sitzkrieg started
The Phoney War refers to an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there were no major military land operations on the Western Front. -
France Fell to Germany
On June 10th, Italy opportunistically entered the war on Germany’s side. Four days later, the French capital fell, provoking the flight of the French Government to Bordeaux. On June 17, 1940, the defeated French signed an armistice and quit World War II. The Government capitulated on June 25th, just seven weeks after the beginning of the invasion. -
Destroyers-for-Bases Deal
Britain had purchased US small arms in the summer of 1940, but needed an alternative to cash transactions. The Roosevelt administration came up with the straight trade concept, and in September 1940, Roosevelt signed the Destroyers-for-bases Agreement. -
Battle of Britain
For a time the advantage seemed to swing slightly in favor of the Germans, but a combination of bad intelligence and British attacks on Berlin led the Luftwaffe to change its operational approach to massive attacks on London. The first attack on London on September 7 was quite successful; the second, on September 15, failed not only with heavy losses, but also with a collapse of morale among German bomber crews when British fighters appeared in large numbers and shot down many of the Germans. -
America First Committee Launched
The America First Committee launched a petition aimed at enforcing the 1939 Neutrality Act and forcing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep his pledge to keep America out of the war. -
Congress Instituted the Draft
The Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed. Selective Service was born. -
The Four Freedoms
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: Freedom of speech. -
Lend-Lease bill
President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law on 11 March 1941. It permitted him to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article." -
USS Kearny Attacked
USS Kearny (DD 432) was torpedoed on her starboard side by a German U-boat while on patrol off Greenland but did not sink. The crew confined the flooding to the forward fire room enabling the ship to get out of the danger zone form power from the aft fire room. After regaining power in her forward fire room Kearny steamed to Iceland. Eleven men were killed and 22 other were injured in the explosion. -
Reuben James Sinking
Disaster struck in the early morning hours of October 31, 1941. While escorting convoy HX-156, the American destroyer U.S.S. Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of 115 of 160 crewmen, including all officers. -
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. The bombing killed more than 2,300 Americans. It completely destroyed the American battleship U.S.S. -
Battle of Bataan
The Battle of Bataan, fought 7 January – 9 April 1942, represented the most intense phase of Imperial Japan's invasion of the Philippines during World War II. -
Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. -
The Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during May 4-8th 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. -
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. -
The Manhattan District founded
In June 1942 the Corps of Engineers’ Manhattan District was initially assigned management of the construction work, and in September 1942 Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves was placed in charge of all Army activities (chiefly engineering activities) relating to the project. “Manhattan Project” became the code name for research work that would extend across the country. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Russians consider it to be the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. -
Island Hopping Campaign
After the Battle of Midway, the United States launched a counter-offensive strike known as "island-hopping," establishing a line of overlapping island bases, as well as air control. The idea was to capture certain key islands, one after another, until Japan came within range of American bombers. -
Battle of El Alamein
The Battle of El Alamein marked the culmination of the World War II North African campaign between the British Empire and the German-Italian army. Deploying a far larger contingent of soldiers and tanks than the opposition, British commander Bernard Law Montgomery launched an infantry attack at El Alamein on Oct. 23, 1942. -
Casablanca Conference
The Casablanca Conference was held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, French Morocco from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. -
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran. -
D-Day
During World War II, 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. -
MacArthur Returned to the Philippines
A few hours after his troops landed, MacArthur waded ashore onto the Philippine island of Leyte. That day, he made a radio broadcast in which he declared, “People of the Philippines, I have returned!” In January 1945, his forces invaded the main Philippine island of Luzon. -
FDR Elected to a 4th Term
The United States presidential election of 1944 was the 40th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee, sought his fourth term in office; he defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the general election. -
Battle of the Bulge
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. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference took place in a Russian resort town in the Crimea from February 4–11, 1945, during World War Two. At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions regarding the future progress of the war and the postwar world. -
The Battle of Iwo Jima
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. -
Battle of Okinawa
Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead. -
FDR Died & Harry Truman Became President
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
VE Day
The Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations… has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.” -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference, 1945. The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman met in Potsdam, Germany, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. -
Little Boy Dropped on Hiroshima
During World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. -
Fat Man Dropped on Nagasaki
More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles. -
VJ Day
Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostilities to a final and highly anticipated close. -
Nuremberg Trials
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Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers along with German industrialists, lawyers and doctors, were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. -
Japanese War Crime Trials
In Tokyo, Japan, the International Military Tribunals for the Far East begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II.
