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Great Britian & France declare war on Germany
The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on Sunday 3 September 1939, two days after Germany invaded Poland. France also declared war on Germany later the same day. -
The Invasion of Poland
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, War of Poland of 1939, and Polish Defensive War of 1939, was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union; which marked the beginning of World War II -
Selective Service and Training Act
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke–Wadsworth Act, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 76–783, 54 Stat. 885, enacted September 16, 1940, was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. -
Invasion of Belgium
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The Netherlands capitulated after 6 days, Belgium after 18. France, which along with Britain had sent troops to Belgium, had to lay down arms three weeks later. -
Battle & Great Escape at Dunkirk
From May 26 to June 4, over 338,000 British and French troops were safely evacuated from Dunkirk. Critical to this process was the British Royal Air Force, which intercepted German bombers above the beach. Together with the civilians who aided the Royal Navy, they saved countless -
Battle Of Britain
The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It was the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces -
Lend Lease Assistance Act
Passed on March 11, 1941, this act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." -
Attack On Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. -
America Enters WW2
The United States is generally considered to have entered the conflict with the 7 December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan and exited it with the 2 September 1945 surrender of Japan. -
Germany & Italy declare war on US
On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Hitler announced in Berlin that Germany, Italy […] On December 16, 1941, Congress approved legislation giving President Roosevelt virtually unlimited powers over defense contracts, the reorganization of government […] -
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, from 4 to 8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. -
Battle of Midway Island
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 -
Invasion of North Africa
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa -
Invasion of Sicily & italy
The Allied invasion of Sicily, also known as the Battle of Sicily and Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II in which the Allied forces invaded the island of Sicily in July 1943 and took it from the Axis powers. -
D-Day Invasion of France
The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The operation, given the code name OVERLORD, delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France. -
Nazi Concentration Camps Discovered
What they discovered instead would be seared into their memories for as long as they lived—piles of emaciated corpses, dozens of train cars filled with badly decomposed human remains, and perhaps most difficult to process, the thousands of “walking skeletons” who had managed to survive the horrors of Dachau, the Nazi’s first and longest-operating concentration camp. -
Atomic Bombs On Hiroshima
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was a major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg -
The Yalta Conference
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. -
V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945; it marked the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last known shots fired on 11 May. -
Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict -
V-J Day
Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) would officially be celebrated in the United States on the day formal surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay: September 2, 1945. But as welcome as victory over Japan was, the day was bittersweet in light of the war's destructiveness.