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Germany invaded Poland setting off war in Europe. The Soviet Union also invaded Poland and the Baltic nations.
History.comIn 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany. -
Germany invaded France and captured Paris.
By May 1940, Europe had been at war for nine months. Yet Britain and France, despite having declared war on Germany in September 1939 following Hitler's attack on Poland, had seen little real fighting.Germany first began invading France on May 13, 1940; it fully invaded France on June 12 and captured Paris on June 13 of the same year. The German army was able to achieve this as it advanced into France via Belgium, which made it easier to bypass the country's fortifications. -
Germany bombed london and the battle of britain began.
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England, literally "Air battle for England") is the name given to the Second World War defence of the United Kingdom by the Royal Air Force (RAF) against an onslaught by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) which began at the end of June 1940. -
The United States gave Britain war supplies and old naval warships in return for military bases in Bermuda and the Caribbean. (Lend Lease)
Lend Lease: U.S., while remaining neutral, gave Britain war supplies and old naval warships in return for military bases in Bermuda and the Caribbean
“lending a garden hose to a next-door neighbor
whose house is on fire.” Franklin Roosevelt -
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
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After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States. The United States declared war on Japan and Germany.
On December 8, Japanese Ambassador Oshima went to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to nail the Germans down on a formal declaration of war against America.Hitler thought otherwise. He was convinced that the United States would soon beat him to the punch and declare war on Germany. Hitler despised Roosevelt for his repeated verbal attacks against his Nazi ideology. Germany went to war with U.S. as well; which triggered U.S. to declare war on Japan and Germany. -
The United States won the Battle of Midway against Japan.
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part 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. -
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Germany invaded the soviet Union. The Soviet Union defeated Germany at Stalingrad, marking the turning point of the war in Eastern Europe.
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. -
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American and other allied troops landed in Normandy, France on a D-Day to begin the liberation of Western Europe.
the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. -
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Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe -
Liberation of concentration camps
Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. -
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Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. -
United States dropped two bombs on Japan, forcing them to surrender.
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in
