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Japanese invasion of China
Japanese invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria and established Manchukuo as a puppet state.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/china.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaDeB84WNjA -
Rape of Nanking
To break the spirit of Chinese resistance, Japanese General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. Much of the city was burned. In what became known as the “Rape of Nanking,” the Japanese butchered an estimated 200,000 people.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-rape-of-nanking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAYFxXBohA -
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German Blitzkrieg (1939-1940)
n May 1940 came Germany's invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, during which the Wehrmacht (German army) used the combined force of tanks, mobile infantry and artillery troops to drive through the Ardennes Forest and quickly penetrated the Allied defenses.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ha0qKquG2E -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor -
Wannsee Conference
Nazi officials meet to discuss the details of the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question.” In July 1941, Hermann Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler’s 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.”
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wannsee-conference -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Navy’s decisive victory in the air-sea battle and its defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan’s hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-midway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-au50GxIXw -
Bataan Death March
After April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II, the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march -
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.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/operation-gomorrah-is-launched -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
During World War II (1939-1945), 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.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day -
Battle of the Bulge
Called “the greatest American battle of the war” by Winston Churchill, the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium was Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive in World War II against the Western Front. Hitler’s aim was to split the Allies in their drive toward Germany. The German troops’ failure to divide Britain, France, and America with the Ardennes offensive paved the way to victory for the allies.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-the-bulge -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945. Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan, the island of Iwo Jima had three airfields that could serve as a staging facility for a potential invasion of mainland Japan. American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the ensuing Battle of Iwo Jima lasted for five weeks.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-iwo-jima -
VE Day
V-E Day was observed on May 8, 1945 in Great Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Australia, and on May 9 in the Soviet Union and New Zealand. V-E Day commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces in 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
https://www.historynet.com/v-e-day-1945-the-celebration-heard-round-the-world.htm -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), 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.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victory over Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” 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.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/v-j-day -
Liberation of concentration camps
Liberation Of The Concentration Camps. As the Allies advanced across Europe at the end of the Second World War, they came across concentration camps filled with sick and starving prisoners. The first major camp to be liberated was Majdanek near Lublin, Poland in July 1944.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/liberation-of-the-concentration-camps
