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Japanese invasion of China
o The Japan-China War started in July of 1937. The Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China using the conquered Manchuria as a launching base for their troops. Within 5 months, 1 million Chinese people were under Japanese control. All of the major cities in China were captured by the Japanese by the end of 1937. The war against China had led to 4 million Chinese casualties with 60 million made homeless. The surrender of the Japanese in August 1945, left 1 million Japanese troops in China -
Rape of Nanking
In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
Germany invaded Poland one week after they signed a non-aggression pact and World War II began on September 1, 1939. German aircraft bombarded the Polish town of Wielun, killing nearly 1,200. The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on a transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig and within days, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Polish forces surrendered in early October. -
German Blitzkrieg
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German Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg, a German term meaning “lightning war.” German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 and again by German commander Erwin Rommel during the North African campaign of World War II. First tested in Poland, the concept reached perihelion in France and the Low Countries in 1940, when in less than six weeks the German army crushed the combined forces of four nations. It was applied a year later against the Soviet Union. -
Fall of Paris
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Fall of Paris
On this day in 1940, Parisians awaken to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening-as German troops enter and occupy Paris. By the time German tanks rolled into Paris, 2 million Parisians had already fled, with good reason. In short order, the German Gestapo went to work: arrests, interrogations, and spying were the order of the day, as a gigantic swastika flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Parisians who remaine -
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and its Axis allies began a massive invasion of the Soviet Union named Operation Barbarossa. Germany and USSR were suspicious of one another even though they signed a non-aggression pact in 1939.The Soviets were unprepared for the sudden blitzkrieg attacks across a border that spanned nearly 1,800 miles, and they suffered horrible losses. Hitler's plan to conquer the Soviet Union before winter had failed and that failure would prove to be a turning point in the war -
Pearl Harbor
o On the morning of December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The U.S. forces were unprepared, waking to the sounds of explosions and scrambling to defend themselves. The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. After the attack, Japan officially declared war on the United States. -
Wannsee Conference
On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking 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." At the time of the Wannsee Conference, most participants were already aware that the National Socialist regime had engaged in mass murder of Jews. -
Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March. -
Battle of Stalingrad
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Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Russians consider it to be the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. -
Operation Gomorrah
On this day in 1943, British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own “Blitz Week.” Britain had suffered the deaths of 167 civilians as a result of German bombing raids in July. Now the tables were going to turn. The evening of July 24 saw British aircraft drop 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hours. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which, “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe. The cost in lives on D-Day was high. More than 9,000 Allied Sold -
Liberation of comcentration camps
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Liberation of concentration camps
In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The Germans had dismantled these camps in 1943, after most of the Jews of Poland had already been killed. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz and concentration camp, in January 1945. -
Operation Thunderclap
Two months after D-Day, Sir Charles Portal, chief of the Air Staff, had suggested that the moment Germany approached military collapse, a series of heavy air raids to be launched against East German population centers; these raids might even precipitate total surrender. The Joint Intelligence Committee -- a group of British intelligence experts -- was cool to "Thunderclap," since it was not likely "to achieve any worth-while degree of success," -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Battle of Iwo JimaBattle of Iwo Jima American soldiers make their first strike on the Japanese Home Islands at Iwo Jima. The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. 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. -
Battle of Okinawa
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Battle of Okinawa
Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projvasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead. -
VE Day
VE DayVictory in Europe (VE) Day. It marked the formal conclusion of Hitler’s war. With it came the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across the war. -
Dropping of the atomic bomb
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 a radio address on August 15. -
VJ Day
It was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostilities to a final and highly anticipated close. -
Battle of the Bulge
In December 1945, Adolf Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. On December 16, three German armies launched the deadliest and most desperate battle of the war in the west in the poorly roaded, rugged, heavily forested Ardennes.
