-
Japan Invades Manchuria
The Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident. ( A staged event engineered by Japanese military personnel ) -
Italy Invades Ethiopia
Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader of Italy, decided to use Adolf Hitler's plans to expand German territories by acquiring all territories it considered German. -
Olympic Games in Germany
The 1936 Summer Olympics, was officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event that was held in 1936 in Berlin, Nazi Germany. -
Anschluss
The political union of Austria with Germany, achieved through annexation by Adolf Hitler. -
Germany Takes The Sudetenland
Following the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany, in March 1938, the conquest of Czechoslovakia became Hitler's next ambition. The incorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany that began on 1 October 1938 left the rest of Czechoslovakia weak, and it became powerless to resist subsequent occupation. -
German Invasion of Poland
Germany had invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, armed with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, had broken through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. -
Battle Of Britain
The Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against many large-scale attacks by the German Air Forces -
Tripartite Pact
The Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. -
Four Freedoms Speech
Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans' entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear. -
Lend Lease Act
A program by which the United States supplied Free France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China, and later the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. This included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry. -
Germany Attacks the Soviet Union
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. -
Atlantic Charter
A pivotal policy statement issued during World War II on 14 August 1941, which defined the Allied goals for the postwar world. -
Pearl Harbor
A surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base -
Battle Of Midway
Was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Casablanca Conference
Conference that was held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, French Morocco from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. -
Tehran Conference
A strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom). -
Battle Of Normandy
The Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. Commonly know as D-day -
Battle Of the Bulge
The last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany's armored forces, and they were largely unable to replace them -
Yalta Conference
The World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union for the purpose of discussing Germany and Europe's postwar reorganization. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. -
Battle Of Iwo Jima
Was a major battle where the United States Marine Corps landed on and then captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II -
The Battle of Okinawa
A major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Marine and Army forces against the Imperial Japanese Army -
Germany Surrenders
The Soviets were approaching the German capital of Berlin from the east and the Western Allies were approaching it from the west. Knowing that defeat was imminent, Hitler committed suicide, leaving Karl Dönitz to carry out the surrender of the Nazis. -
US Drops an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
President Harry S. Truman 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 Hiroshima -
Bombing Of Nagasaki
The US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. -
Official Japanese Surrender
With the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed by atomic weapons, the will of the Japanese was tested. Then news came that the Soviet Union declared had war on Japan, with troops crossing into northeastern China an hour later. These three reasons led to Emperor Showa's decision to break the deadlock at his council which debated whether or not to respond to the Allies' call for unconditional surrender.
