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Annexation of Sudetenland
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. -
The Philippines
The Philippines were a strategic objective of the Japanese forces. The island's resources and the elimination of General Douglas A. MacArthur's Far Eastern Air Force were the prime objectives, thus allowing their expansion in the area without the fears of aerial attacks. -
Japanese Internment Camps
The first internment camp in operation was Manzanar, located in California. Between 1942 and 1945 a total of 10 camps were opened, holding approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place 4–7 June 1942, six months after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Guadalcanal
The Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and code named Operation Watchtower by American forces, was a military campaign fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of World War II. -
Los Alamos
Led by scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the staff at this secret Manhattan Project location called Los Alamos was responsible for the development and testing of the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan -
Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad occurred on the Eastern Front of World War II, beginning when Nazi Germany and its Axis allies attacked and became locked in a protracted struggle with the Soviet Union for control over the Soviet city of Stalingrad in what is now southern Russia. -
Island-hopping
Leapfrogging, also known as island hopping, was an amphibious military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against the Empire of Japan during World War II -
D-Day
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. Commended Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
Meeting at Yalta
The Yalta Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. -
Death of Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. -
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
Hiroshima, a modern city on Japan’s Honshu Island, was largely destroyed by an atomic bomb during World War II. Today, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park commemorates the 1945 event. -
Fall of Berlin
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the first step towards German reunification. In 1989, political changes in Eastern Europe and civil unrest in Germany put pressure on the East German government to loosen some of its regulations on travel to West Germany.