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Lend Lease
Passed on March 11, 1941, this act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." -
Atlantic Charter
First, it publicly affirmed the sense of solidarity between the U.S. and Great Britain against Axis aggression. Second, it laid out President Roosevelt's Wilsonian-vision for the postwar world; one that would be characterized by freer exchanges of trade, self-determination, disarmament, and collective security. -
Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack by some 350 Japanese aircraft sunk or badly damaged eighteen US naval vessels, including eight battleships, destroyed or damaged 300 US aircraft, and killed 2,403 men. -
Japanese Internment Camps
There were a total of 10 prison camps, called "Relocation Centers." Typically the camps included some form of barracks with communal eating areas. Several families were housed together. Residents who were labeled as dissidents were forced to a special prison camp in Tule Lake, California. -
Bataan
The siege of Bataan was the first major land battle for the Americans in World War II and one of the most-devastating military defeats in American history. The force on Bataan, numbering some 76,000 Filipino and American troops, is the largest army under American command ever to surrender. -
Battle of Midway
World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. -
Guadacanal
Guadalcanal marked the decisive Allied transition from defensive operations to the strategic initiative in the Pacific theater, leading to offensive operations such as the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns that eventually resulted in Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was the Anglo-American invasion of French Morocco and Algeria during the North African Campaign of World War II. It began on November 8 and concluded on November 16, 1942 -
Island-Hopping
This practice—skipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance—became known as island hopping. As Japanese strongholds were isolated, defenders were left to weaken from starvation and disease. -
Los Alamos
Los Alamos is a fictional tale of murder and espionage set in the iconic location of America's WW 2 nuclear bomb laboratory. Real people rub shoulders with imaginary characters. New Mexico in the spring and summer of 1945 are vividly described, the day's heat as palpable as the evening's cool. -
The Italian Campaign
The Italian Campaign lasted from 1943 to 1945. It is estimated that between September 1943 and April 1945, 60,000–70,000 Allied and over 100,000 German soldiers died. The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 led to the collapse of the Fascist Italian regime and the fall of Mussolini who was incarcerated on July 25th, 1943. -
D-Day
The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The operation, given the codename OVERLORD, delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France. -
Meeting at Yalta
The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe, especially focusing on German reparations and post-war occupation as well as Poland. -
Fall of Berlin
It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East German leaders had tried to calm mounting protests by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East Germans. -
Meeting at Potsdam
In addition to settling matters related to Germany and Poland, the Potsdam negotiators approved the formation of a Council of Foreign Ministers that would act on behalf of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China to draft peace treaties with Germany's former allies. -
Hiroshima
The uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 had an explosive yield equal to 15,000 tonnes of TNT. It razed and burnt around 70 per cent of all buildings and caused an estimated 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945, along with increased rates of cancer and chronic disease among the survivors. -
Nagasaki
The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bockscar,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney.