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Period: to
WWII
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Germany invade Poland
Also known as the September Campaign, or the 1939 Defensive War in Poland and alternatively the Poland Campaign or Fall Weiss in Germany, was a joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Free City of Danzig, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent -
Fall of Paris
Also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. German forces defeated Allied forces in a series of mobile operations, eventually leading to the conquest of France, Belgium and the Netherlands and the end of land operations on what had been the Western Front. -
Operation Barbarossa
The code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which began on 22 June 1941. The operation was driven by Adolf Hitler's ideological desire to conquer Soviet territory as outlined in his 1925 manifesto -
Pearl Harbor
The Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, in the United States Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. -
Bataan Death March
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Battle of Midway
The United States Navy defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." -
Battle of Stalingrad
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 (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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Operation Gomorrah
Numerous strategic bombing missions and diversion/nuisance raids. As a large port and industrial centre, Hamburg's shipyards, U-boat pens, and the Hamburg-Harburg area oil refineries were attacked throughout the war -
D-Day
The landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. -
Liberation of Concentration Camps
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Battle of the Bulge
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 -
Operation Thunderclap
The code for a cancelled operation planned in August 1944 but shelved and never implemented. The plan envisaged a massive attack on Berlin in the belief that would cause 220,000 casualties with 110,000 killed, many of them key German personnel, which would shatter German morale. However, it was later decided that the plan was unlikely to work. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
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. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the three Japanese-controlled airfields, to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. -
Battle of Okinawa
Codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a series of battles fought in the Ryukyu Islands, centered on the island of Okinawa, and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War during World War II, -
VE Day
The public holiday to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe. -
Potsdam Declaration
A statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. On july 26, 1945 issued the document, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. This ultimatum stated that, if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction." -
Hiroshima
On Monday, August 6, 1945, the nuclear bomb "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay,directly killied an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought the total number of deaths to 90,000–166,000 -
Nagasaki
That day, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar, departed from Tinian's North Field just before dawn, this time carrying a plutonium bomb code named "Fat Man". The primary target for the bomb was Kokura, with the secondary target, Nagasaki. -
VJ Day
The day on which Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war.
