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Pearl Harbor Attack
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese killed 2,403 Americans and wounded 1.178 more. The raid had sunk or damaged 21 ships, including 8 battleships. After the attack, America reached its full potential and went on a building spree. -
Battle of the Atlantic
Hitler ordered submarine raids against ships along America's east coast. The German aim in the Battle of the Atlantic was to prevent food and war materials from reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Germans had been fighting in the Soviet Union since June 1941. In November 1914, the bitter cold had stopped them in their tracks outside the Soviet cities of Moscow and Leningrad. In 1942 the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. -
Internment
General Delos Emmons forced to order the Internment, or confinement, of 1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of Hawaii's Japanese-American population. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an order requiring the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. -
U.S. convoy system
The Allies responded by organizing their cargo ships into conveys. Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection. -
Korematsu v. United States
In 1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. United States, that the government's policy of evacuating Japanese Americans to camps was justified on the basis of "military necessity." -
Bloody Anzio
The battle "Bloody Anzio" lasted four months-until the end of May 1944-and left about 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis casualties. During the year after Anzio, German armies continued to put up strong resistance. The effort to free italy did not succeed until 1945, when Germany itself was close to collapse. -
D-Day
June 6, 1944, the first day of the invasion. Shortly after midnight, three divisions parachuted down behind German Lines. They were followed in the early morning hours by thousands upon thousands of seaborne soldiers-the largest land-sea-air operation in army history. -
Battle of the Bulge
October 1944, Americans responded with a desperate last-gasp offensive. He ordered troops to break through the allied lines and to recapture the Belgian port of Antwerp. Battle went for a month. When it was over, the Germans had been pushed back, and little seemed to have changed.
