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Invasion of Poland
On this day in 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Britain & France declare war on Germany
The Declaration of war by France and the United Kingdom was given on 3 September 1939, after German forces invaded Poland. Despite the speech being the official announcement of both France and the United Kingdom, the speech was given by the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in Westminster, London. -
Operation Sea Lion
Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion, was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War -
Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister following the latter’s resignation after losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. -
Evacuation of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo)
The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940 -
France signs armistice with Germany
The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on 25 June -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe -
Italy enters war on side of Axis powers
The "Axis powers" formally took the name after the Tripartite Pact was signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27 September 1940, in Berlin -
Tripartite Pact signed
The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano and Saburō Kurusu -
Siege of Tobruk
The Siege of Tobruk lasted for 241 days in 1941, after Axis forces advanced through Cyrenaica from El Agheila in Operation Sonnenblume against Allied forces in Libya, during the Western Desert Campaign (1940–1943) of the Second World War. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941 -
Britain and US declare war on Japan
On December 8, 1941, the United States Congress declared war (Public Law 77-328, 55 STAT 795) on the Empire of Japan in response to that country's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the prior day. It was formulated an hour after the Infamy Speech of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. -
Japan takes Singapore
Singapore, the “Gibraltar of the East” and a strategic British stronghold, falls to Japanese forces. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II which occurred between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
First Battle of El Alamein
The First Battle of El Alamein (1–27 July 1942) was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought in Egypt -
Second Battle of El Alamein
The Second Battle of El Alamein was a battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it was the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest confrontation of World War II in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia -
D-Day Landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II -
Mussolini captured and executed
The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945 -
Hitler commits suicide
Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He killed himself by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin -
German forces surrender
On May 7, 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to the European conflict in World War II. General Alfred Jodl, representing the German High Command, signed the unconditional surrender of both east and west forces in Reims, France, which would take effect the following day -
V.E. day
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, celebrated on May 8, 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
Soviet Union declares war on Japan
At 11 pm Trans-Baikal time on August 8, 1945, Soviet foreign minister Molotov informed Japanese ambassador Satō that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan, and that from August 9 the Soviet Government would consider itself to be at war with Japan. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. -
Japanese surrender – End of WWII
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. -
United Nations is born
On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced. The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II.