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1944 BCE
Battle of Bulge
On December 16, 1944, under cover of dense fog, eight
German tank divisions broke through weak American
defenses along an 80-mile front. Hitler hoped that a victory
would split American and British forces and break up Allied
supply lines. Tanks drove 60 miles into Allied territory,
creating a bulge in the lines that gave this desperate lastditch
offensive its name, the Battle of the Bulge. As the
Germans swept westward, they captured 120 American
GIs near Malmédy. Germany still surrendered. -
Adolf Hitler's Rise to Power
Asa jobless soldier in Germany, he joined the Socialist German Workers Party, and began to prove himself as a powerful speaker, and became the parties leader and soon called himself The Leader who will lead Germany out of chaos. -
Mein Kampf
A book where Hitler set forth his beliefs of Nazism that became part the plan of action for the Nazi Party. -
Mussolini's Fascist gov in Italy
Mussolini established a fascist government, which stresses nationalism and places the interests of the state above individuals. -
Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
Japanese officials seized control of a Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. -
Storm Troopers
Hitler's Private army that became huge due to The Great Depression hitting Germany's economy hard. -
Third Reich
Third German Empire, which would last for "A thousand years". -
Hitler's Military build up in Germany
Hitler began a buildup of military in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Invasion of Rhineland
A year after building a military, Hitler invaded Rhineland, a region bordering France and Belgium. -
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia
By May 1936, Ethiopia had fallen to Italy. -
Francisco Franco
A group of Spanish Officers led by a general Francisco Franco rebelled against Spanish Republic, which broke out a civil war. -
Hitler's Anschluss
Unification between Austria and Germany -
Stalin's Totalitarian Gov
In a totalitarian states, individuals have no rights, and the government suppresses all opposition. -
Rome-Berlin Axis
Relationship between German and Italian Dictators, and created an Alliance called Rome Berlin Axis -
Britain and France against Germany
Due to this lightning strategy, Germany began to take over more and more land. -
Non Aggression Pact
Stalin signed a peace pact with Hitler, and also divided Poland between the two -
Munich Agreement
Turned Sudetenland over to Germany without any shots fired -
Blitzkrieg
Lightning fast attack strategy, used fast tanks and stormed the land basically. German strategy. -
Phony war
A sitting ear between france and britain staring into Germany's territory. -
Netherlands invasion
Over ran by end of May by Germany -
Germany's and Italy's invasion of France
On June 22,
1940, at Compiègne, as William Shirer and the rest of the
world watched, Hitler handed French officers his terms of
surrender. Germans would occupy the northern part of
France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, headed
by Marshal Philippe Pétain, would be set up at Vichy,
in southern France.
After France fell, a French general named Charles
de Gaulle fled to England, where he set up a government-in-exile. -
Marshall of Philippe Petain
Controlled the Northern part of Occupied by France under Germany. -
Battle of Britain
In the summer of 1940, the Germans began to assemble an invasion fleet along the French coast. Because its naval power could not compete with that of Britain, Germany also launched an air war at the same time.plotted the flight paths of German planes, even in darkness.
On September 15, 1940 the RAF shot down over 185 German
planes; at the same time, they lost only 26 aircraft. Six
weeks later, Hitler called off the invasion of Britain indefinitely. -
Norway and Denmark Invasion
A surprise attack by Germany attacked Norway and Denmark -
Lend- Lease Act
Roosevelt compared his plan to lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire. He asserted that this was the only sensible thing to do to prevent the fire from spreading to your own property. Isolationists argued bitterly against the plan, but most Americans favored it, and Congress passed the Lend Lease Act in March 1941. -
Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps
The military’s work force needs were so great that Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall pushed for the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). “ -
Manhattan Project
In 1941, the committee reported that it would take from three
to five years to build an atomic bomb. Hoping to shorten that time, the OSRD set up an intensive program in 1942 to develop a bomb as quickly as possible. Because much of the early research was performed at Columbia University in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project became the code name for research work that extended across the country. -
War Production Board
The War Production Board (WPB) assumed that responsibility.
The WPB decided which companies would convert from
peacetime to wartime production and allocated raw materials
to key industries. The WPB also organized drives to collect
scrap iron, tin cans, paper, rags, and cooking fat for
recycling into war goods. Across America, children scoured
attics, cellars, garages, vacant lots, and back alleys, looking
for useful junk. -
Pearl Harbor
Early the next morning, a Japanese dive-bomber swooped low over Pearl Harbor, the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The bomber was followed by more than 180 Japanese warplanes launched from six aircraft carriers. For an hour and a half, the Japanese planes were barely disturbed by U.S. antiaircraft guns and
blasted target after target. By the time the last plane soared off around 9:30 A.M., the devastation was appalling. -
Internment
However, General Emmons was eventually forced to order the internment, or confinement, of 1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of Hawaii’s Japanese-American population. -
Battle of Stalingrad
In the summer of 1942, the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. He also wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River. In defending Stalingrad, the Soviets lost a total of 1,100,000 soldiers—more than all American deaths during the entire war. From that point on, the Soviet army began to move westward toward Germany -
Office of Price Administration
Roosevelt responded to this threat by creating the
Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA fought inflation by freezing prices on most goods. Congress also raised income tax rates and extended the tax to millions of people who had never paid it before. The higher taxes reduced consumer demand on scarce goods by leaving workers with less to spend. -
Operation Torch
Instead, they launched Operation Torch, an invasion of Axis-controlled North Africa, commanded by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In November 1942, some 107,000 Allied troops, the great majority of them Americans, landed in Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers in North Africa. From there they sped eastward, chasing the Afrika Korps led by General Erwin Rommel, the legendary Desert Fox. After months of heavy fighting, the last of the Afrika Korps surrendered in May 1943. -
Battle of the Atlantic
The German aim in the Battle of the Atlantic was to prevent food and war materials from reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Britain depended on supplies from the sea. The 3,000-mile long shipping lanes from North America were her lifeline. Hitler knew that if he cut that lifeline, Britain would be starved into submission. America interfered, and won. -
Us Convoy system
The Allies responded by organizing their cargo ships into convoys. Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection, as they had done in the First World War. The convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater. They were also accompanied by airplanes that used radar to spot U-boats on the ocean’s surface. -
Unconditional Surrender
I think it means surrender by own country due to collapse. -
Korematsu v United States
In 1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. United States, that the government’s policy of evacuating Japanese Americans to camps was justified on the basis of “military necessity.” After the war, however, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) pushed the government to compensate those sent to the camps for their lost property. In 1965, Congress authorized the spending of $38 million for that purpose—less than a tenth of Japanese Americans’ actual losses. -
Bloody Anzio
One of the hardest battles the Allies encountered in Europe was fought less than 40 miles from Rome. This battle, “Bloody Anzio,” lasted four months—until the end of May 1944—and left about 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis casualties. During the year after Anzio, German armies continued to put up strong resistance. The effort to free Italy did not succeed until 1945, when Germany itself was close to collapse -
D-Day
D-Day—June 6, 1944, the first day
of the invasion. Shortly after midnight, three divisions
parachuted down behind German lines. They were followed
in the early morning hours by thousands upon
thousands of seaborne soldiers—the largest land-sea-air
operation in army history. -
Harry S. Truman
President Roosevelt did not live to see V-E Day. On
April 12, 1945, while posing for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president had a stroke and died. That night, Vice President Harry S. Truman became the nation’s 33rd president. -
Death of Hitler
The next day Hitler shot himself while his new wife swallowed poison. In accordance with Hitler’s orders, the two bodies
were carried outside, soaked with gasoline, and burned. -
V-E Day
On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day—Victory in
Europe Day. The war in Europe was finally over.
