-
Period: to
WW2
-
INVASION OF POLAND
Germany invaded Poland. After heavy bombardment and shelling, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. Britain and France, defending the border with Poland, declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Finally, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern Poland. -
GERMANY ATTACKS FRANCE
It was the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. In just over six weeks, German armed forces overran Belgium and the Netherlands, drove the British Expeditionary Force from the Continent, captured Paris, and forced the surrender of the French government. -
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain, which will last three and a half months, begins.
Britain's victory in this battle and allowed people to remain free from Nazi occupation. It also enabled the Americans to establish a base of operations in England to invade Normandy on D-Day. -
AFRIKA KORPS TO NORTH AFRICA
The German general Erwin Rommel arrives in Tripoli, Libya, with the newly formed Afrika Korps, to reinforce the position of the besieged Italians. Later on, Adolf Hitler established Afrika Korps with the explicit purpose of helping his Italian axis partner maintain territorial gains in North Africa. -
OPERATION BARBAROSSA
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three large groups of armies with more than three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks crossed the border into Soviet territory. -
BATTLE OF MIDWAY
Surprise military offensive carried out by the Japanese Imperial Navy against the United States naval base (on Pearl Harbor). The attack was intended to be a preventive action.
This fact slowed Japanese expansionism in the central Pacific. Japan lost 4 of its aircraft carriers in addition to numerous and irreplaceable naval pilots. -
OPERATION TORCH
The United States and United Kingdom military forces land on the beaches of Algeria and Morocco and launched an amphibious operation against French North Africa, in particular the French controlled territories of Algeria and Morocco. -
ALLIED TROPS LAND ON SALERNO
Allied troops landed near the port of Salerno, executed as part of the Allied invasion of Italy. The Italians withdrew from the war the day before the invasion, but the Allies landed in an area defended by German troops. -
D-DAY
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and airborne operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II.
It marked the turn of the tide for the control maintained by Nazi Germany; less than a year after the invasion, the Allies formally accepted Nazi Germany's surrender. -
LIBERATION OF PARIS
In the Liberation of Paris, Street Battles are heard on a live broadcast when American troops enter Paris, joining the Allied fight to liberate the city from German control. On this date, after many days of fighting, Germany turned Paris over to the Allied forces, ending four years of occupation. -
HITLER'S SUICIDE
Locked in a bunker below his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a "1,000-year" Reich. -
FIRST ATOMIC BOMB ON HIROSHIMA
during World War II, 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. -
JAPAN SURRENDERS
On this date, the Japanese representatives signed the official Instrument of Surrender, prepared by the War Department and approved by President Truman. Later, the United States led the Allies in the occupation and rehabilitation of the Japanese state. Between 1945 and 1952, the US occupation forces. In the US, they enacted extensive military, political, economic, and social reforms.
