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Shoah
Shoah is the term preferred by the Jewish for the Holocaust - the German systematic slaughter of European Jews. 1933: the rights of Jews start getting taken away. Germans began constructing concentration, or death camps, in 1941. Jewish people would be round up and sent to the camps and killed. in 1939, the cmaps became death camps (at first they were just isolation camps) -
WWII Begins
Germany invades Poland with Blitzkrieg to begin the war. -
Maginot Line
German troops attacked around the Maginot Line, which was a line of defenses along the French border with Germany. -
Italy Declares War
Italy declared war on France and Britain -
Germany fights Britain
Germany started bombing Britain, and the British RAF (royal air force) fought back. -
Battle of Staligrad
Russian winter took out many of German's troops. Scroched earth policy: by destroying cropland and all other usable land so that the Germans would have to bring in their own supplies. -
Germany Betrays SU
Breaking their nonagression pact, Germany caught the Soviet Union off guard and invaded. Soviet troops didn't do very well. -
Atlantic Charter
Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to not expand their territories. They promised free international trade and to pursue peace after the war -
Pearl Harbor
Japan bombed the US naval base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor. This brought America into the war. -
Manhatten Project
Secretly, scientists in the US worked on creating an atomic bomb. -
Japanese American Relocation
Due to strong anti-Japanese feelings, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast were sent to internment, or detention camps. -
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Fighting in the Pacific--turning the tides
A major turning point in the Pacific Theater was the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal. The US defeated the Japanese in these battles, turning the war to the Allie's favor. -
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Stalingrad
In the European Theater, the Allies had been losing. With the battle of Stalingrad, Russian winter wore out the Germans and the Axis surrendered. This started the Allies momentum. -
Operation Torch
After winning, the Allies could come at Europe from the south. (African Theater) -
D-Day
Operation Overlord, the Allied-invasion of France, began on D-Day. After using false clues to trick the Germans, the Allies took back France. Beginning in Normandy, the Allies drove through France for months, coming from different sides of the border to make the Axis powers fight on multiple fronts, thus enlarging the European theater. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Germans tried to keep the Allies out of Germany, so they were pushing the Allies out. In France, the Germans tried to create and attack a bulge in the Allied lines. Hitler put a lot into the battle, but he lost. So that sealed Germany's fate. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
6 week battle close to Tokyo. Parallels the battle of the bulge as far as it depleted the Japanese forces. Over 20,000 Japanese soldiers died. A rare land battle. -
V-E Day
The day after Germany surrendered, Victory in Europe Day marked the formal end to the war in Europe. The European Theater was closed. -
Hitler's Suicide
Hitler committed suicide as the Allied forcer drew nearer and nearer to Berlin. -
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US Drops the Atomic Bomb
"Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, and "Fat Man" was the second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki. The two atomic bombs destroyed the two cities. -
The United Nations is established
The UN was a postwar international organization, whose headquarters were established in NYC. The goal was to settle international disputes peacefully in order to achieve world peace. -
Nuremburg Trials
Starting in November, German war crime trials took place. They were charged for planning the war, committing the war crimes, committing other crimes against humanity, and conspiring to committ the crimes. -
The Creation of Israel
When the British Forces withdrew from Palestine, Jewish leaders claimed the new state of Israel, despite the hostile reaction of the Arabians. By creating a homeland for the Jewish, zionism had won.