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Japan invades Manchuria
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Fascist Italy invades Ethiopia
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Rome-Berlin Axis is announced
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Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact
Directed against the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement -
Japan invades China, initiating World War II in the Pacific
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Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss
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Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich Agreement
Forces the Czechoslovak Republic to cede the Sudetenland, including the key Czechoslovak military defense positions, to Nazi Germany. -
France and Great Britain guarantee the integrity of the borders of the Polish state
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Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement
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Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe
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Honoring their guarantee of Poland’s borders, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany
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The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east
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Germany attacks western Europe
France and the neutral Low Countries. Luxembourg is occupied on May 10; the Netherlands surrenders on May 14; and Belgium surrenders on May 28. On June 22, France signs an armistice agreement by which the Germans occupy the northern half of the country and the entire Atlantic coastline. In southern France, a collaborationist regime with its capital in Vichy is established -
Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact
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The air war known as the Battle of Britain ends in defeat for Nazi Germany
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The Germans send the Afrika Korps to North Africa to reinforce the faltering Italians
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Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (except Bulgaria) invade the Soviet Union
Finland, seeking redress for the territorial losses in the armistice concluding the Winter War, joins the Axis just before the invasion. The Germans quickly overrun the Baltic States and, joined by the Finns, lay siege to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by September. In the center, the Germans capture Smolensk in early August and drive on Moscow by October. In the south, German and Romanian troops capture Kiev (Kyiv) in September and capture Rostov on the Don River in November -
A Soviet counteroffensive drives the Germans from the Moscow suburbs in chaotic retreat
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Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
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The United States declares war on Japan, entering World War II
Japanese troops land in the Philippines, French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), and British Singapore. By April 1942, the Philippines, Indochina, and Singapore are under Japanese occupation -
Nazi Germany and its Axis partners declare war on the United States
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British and US navies halt the Japanese naval advance in the central Pacific at Midway.
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Germany and her Axis partners launch a new offensive in the Soviet Union
German troops fight their way into Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River by mid-September and penetrate deep into the Caucasus after securing the Crimean Peninsula -
British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt
Axis forces in chaotic retreat across Libya to the eastern border of Tunisia -
US troops halt the Japanese island-hopping advance towards Australia at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands
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Soviet troops counterattack trapping the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad
Forbidden by Hitler to retreat or try to break out of the Soviet ring, the survivors of the Sixth Army surrender on January 30 and February 2, 1943 -
Axis forces in Tunisia surrender to the Allies, ending the North African campaign
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US and British troops land on Sicily. By mid-August, the Allies control Sicily
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Soviet troops liberate Kiev
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Allied troops land successfully near Anzio, just south of Rome
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Allied troops liberate Rome
Within six weeks, Anglo-American bombers could hit targets in eastern Germany for the first time -
British and US troops successfully land on the Normandy beaches of France (D-Day)
Opened a “Second Front” against the Germans -
Anglo-American forces break out of the Normandy beachhead and race eastward towards Paris
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US troops land in the Philippines
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The Germans launch a final offensive in the west, known as the Battle of the Bulge
By January 1, 1945, the Germans are in retreat -
The Soviets launch their final offensive, encircling Berlin
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Hitler commits suicide
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Germany surrenders to the western Allies
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Allied troops conquer Okinawa
The last island stop before the Japanese islands -
The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
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The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki
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Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II
