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September, 1939 – Nazi Germany invades Poland
Germany invaded Poland to regain lost territory and ultimately rule their neighbor to the east. The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. -
May/June, 1940 – evacuation of Dunkirk
Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk, involved the rescue of more than 338,000 British and French soldiers from the French port of Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The evacuation, sometimes referred to as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was a big boost for British morale. -
4. July-September, 1940 – Battle of Britain and the ‘Blitz’ of British cities
Germany launched its bombing raids on British cities – the Blitz – on 7th September 1940 – 'Black Saturday', beginning with the London Docks. During this first phase of the Blitz, raids took place both day and night. German bombers attacked London every night but one between mid-September and mid-November. -
German ‘Blitzkrieg’ overwhelms Holland, Belgium and France
In May 1940 came Germany's invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands and France, during which the the Wehrmacht (German army) used the combined force of tanks, mobile infantry and artillery troops to drive through the Ardennes Forest and quickly penetrated the Allied defenses. -
June, 1941 – Operation Barbarossa begins
In this war On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation 'Barbarossa', the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of a campaign that would ultimately decide the Second World War. -
November, 1941 – the Allies take Tobruk
On 27 November, Tobruk was relieved by the Eighth Army (which controlled British and other Allied ground forces in the Western Desert from September 1941) in Operation Crusader. -
December, 1941 – Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Since early 1941 the U.S. had been supplying Great Britain in its fight against the Nazis. It had also been pressuring Japan to halt its military expansion in Asia and the Pacific. -
June, 1942 – The Battle of Midway
The U.S. Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank J. Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under -
February, 1942 – the fall of Singapore
The fall of Singapore was the final straw that brought about a paradigm shift in foreign policy for the Australian Government. The strategic alignment away from Britain had been considered since the Japanese naval victory over Russia in 1905. -
December, 1942 – first news of Nazi atrocities against Jewish people reaches the Allies
Nazi Germany’s antisemitism and persecution of Jews was not a secret in the years before World War II and the Holocaust. -
June, 1942 – The Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway, (June 3–6, 1942), 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. -
February, 1943 – German forces surrender at Stalingrad
After months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties, German forces (numbering now only about 91,000 surviving soldiers) surrender at Stalingrad on the Volga. Soviet forces launched a counteroffensive against the Germans arrayed at Stalingrad in mid-November 1942. -
June, 1944 – D-Day Landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. -
April, 1945 – the United States drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The first atomic bomb, named Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima from the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, at 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945. -
January, 1945 – Soviet liberation of Auschwitz
On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazi's "final solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.