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Japanese Invasion of China
Japan attacked China in the name of containing communism, preventing its export from the USSR in to China. The attack was not a shock, but what was a shock waste scale of the attack. The fighting was fiercer than to be expected. The devastation of the bombing came to be a surprise too. The Japanese invasion made most Chinese into nationalists. The chaos of war was breaking down families and putting everyone into panic. People lost their homes, jobs, investments, and futures. -
Rape of Nanking
The Japanese forces take over Nanking, the capitol of China, during the Sino-Japanese War. Japanese General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. The Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process. -
German Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg is a German word for "Lightning War". It is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 before successfully employing the tactic with invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940. it was also used by German commander Erwin Rommel during the North African campaign of World War II. -
Germany's Invasion of Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939 enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. Germany invaded Poland and the Polish army was defeated within weeks. More than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive attack. Poland was then taken over by Germany and remained under German occupation until January 1945. -
Fall of Paris
German troops enter and occupy Paris and when German tanks finally got to Paris, 2 million Parisians had already left. United States was willing to help and send aid, but none was made public and formal. Canadian troops went to the region, offering help for to free France. The United States did not remain completely out of this because President Roosevelt eventually froze the American assets of the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. -
Pearl Harbor
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. In just two hours the Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which was granted. -
Bataan Death March
After Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began. U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II, approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on were forced to make a 65-mile march to prison camps. America got their revenge in the Philippines with the invasion of the island of Leyte in October 1944. In February 1945, U.S.-Filipino forces recaptured the Bataan Peninsula. -
Battle of Midway
Prior to the battle, the Japanese triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific. The start of the battle was an idea to smash U.S. resistance to Japan’s imperial designs. When the U.S. arrived at Midway in response to the invasion, it was destroyed by the Japanese waiting unseen to the west. Japan lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 casualties. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
After the German invasion of Poland more than 400,000 Jews in Warsaw were confined to an area of the city that was little more than 1 square mile. This ghetto was then sealed off by brick walls, barbed wire and armed guards. Anyone caught leaving was shot on sight. Two months later, about 265,000 Jews had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. More than 20,000 others were sent to a forced-labor camp or killed during the deportation process. -
Operation Gomorrah
Britain suffered 167civillian deaths as a result of German bombing raids in July, so British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany. The bombing continued until November. In the end, 17,000 bombers dropped more than 9,000 tons of explosives, killing more than 30,000 people and destroying 280,000 buildings, including industrial and munitions plants. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
More than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany. More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft were involved in the D-Day invasion. More than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded. -
Operation Thunderclap
The thought was to bomb the eastern-most cities of Germany in order to disrupt the transport infrastructure behind what was becoming the Eastern front. The priority of Operation Thunderclap was moved up and put in to play. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island which was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. After a month of fighting, the marines wiped out the defending forces ending in a win for the US. -
Battle of Okinawa
The last battle involved 287,000 troops of the U.S. Army and 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Army. 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. Both sides of the battle lost their commanders. New war tactics were brought about in this battle by the Japanese. -
VE Day
VE Day is the celebration of the US and Great Britain on Victory in Europe Day. In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviets , after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans had lost many more. -
Liberation of concentration camps
Allied troops went across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they started to come across tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Soviet forces were the first ones to reach a major Nazi camp. Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp and setting fire to the large crematorium, used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners. All of the camps were eventually destroyed and all the remaining prisoners were set free. -
Dropping the atomic bombs
American B-29 bomber drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. About 80,000 people were killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 were injured. At least another 60,000 died by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. -
VJ day
Japan had surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II. Both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victory over Japan Day." VJ Day has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s surrender took place on the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostilities to a final close. -
Battle of Bulge
Germans launched the last major offensive of the war, Operation Mist, also known as Battle of the Bulge, was an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge was the largest fought on the Western front. The battle went on for three weeks, resulting in a huge loss of American and civilian life.
