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Japan’s invasion of China
Japanese expansion in East Asia began in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria and continued in 1937 with a brutal attack on China. After the Chinese surrendered, the Japanese still kept going; murdering, raping, etc. Event called The Rape of Nanjing. -
Germany Invades Poland
On this day, because there are many speaking people there, Hitler ordered German forces to invade Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Battle Of Britain
It was after the Battle of France that Winston Churchill rallied his people for preparation on their turn of being in a battle with Germany. Although Adolf Hitler was never really planning on attacking Great Britain until at last he ordered preparations for the invasion. This battle was a back and forth battle with constant winnings from both Great Britain and Germany both at different times. At last, Adolf Hitler permantly postponed a landing on the British Isles and suspended Battle of Britain -
Tripartite Pact
It pledged Germany, Italy, and Japan to assist one another with all political, economic and military means. -
Lend- Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, was an act for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” -
German Blitzkrieg on Soviet Union
Despite the continuing war with Great Britain, German forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. At first, the German Blitzkrieg seemed to succeed. Soviet forces were driven back more than 600 miles to the gates of Moscow, with staggering losses. In December 1941, Hitler unilaterally declared war on the United States. -
Leningrad blockade
The siege of Leningrad, also known as the 900-Day Siege though it lasted 72 days, resulted in the deaths of some one million of the city’s civilians and Red Army defenders. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,. -
Wannsee Conference
5 Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." -
Battle of Midway
Thanks to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position. -
D-Day
156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. -
The Yalta Conference
The February 1945 Yalta Conference was the second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the conference, the three leaders agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world. -
Iwo Jima/Okinawa
A battle between the US and Japanese. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting, and the battle earned a place in American lore with the publication of a photograph showing the U.S. flag being raised in victory. -
Hitler’s suicide
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pisto;. -
VE DAY
Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine. -
Potsdam Conference
A conference allies held including Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill, and Clement Attlee -
The Dropping of Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Harry S. Truman's decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to make them unconditionally surrender to the Allies once and for all. -
VJ day
News of the surrender was announced all over the world. On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was held in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri. -
Formation of the U.N.
The United Nations was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. -
The Truman Doctrine
With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Marshall Plan
U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive. -
NATO
It was primarily a security pact, with Article 5 stating that a military attack against any of the signatories would be considered an attack against them all. -
Mao Zedong &People’s Republic of China
Naming himself head of state, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong officially proclaims the existence of the People’s Republic of China. The proclamation was the climax of years of battle between Mao’s communist forces and the regime of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who had been supported with money and arms from the American government. -
Korean War
his invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. -
Stalin’s death; Khrushchev
The death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953 created a tremendous vacuum in Soviet leadership. Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union since the 1920s. After Stalin took control of the Soviet Union following Lenin’s death in 1924, Khrushchev became an absolutely loyal follower of the brutal dictator.This loyalty served him well. -
The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union. -
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The divisive war, increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. -
Sputnik
The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and uncertainty in the United States in the wake of the success of the Soviet Sputnik program and a perceived technological gap between the two superpowers. It was a key Cold War event beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 -
Bay of Pigs
The first mishap was on April 15, when the US planes were painted like Cuban's planes and attempted to bomb but missed Castro's (Cuba's dictator) air force in tact. Later, public found out the US were supporting the bombing and President John F Kennedy cancelled all the bombings. However, on April 17, On April 17, the Cuban-exile invasion force, known as Brigade 2506, landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and immediately came under heavy fire. -
Berlin Wall
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. -
Mikhail Gorbachev
Russia chose Gorbachev as its leader in 1985. His efforts to democratize his country’s political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. -
Fall of Soviet Union
A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics (Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Belarus, etc.) met in the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States.
