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Japanese Invasion of China
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The Japan's invasion of China was due essentially to Japan's desire to be an imperial power. There was both an economic and a militaristic element to this desire. -
Rape of Nanking
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode during the Second Sino-Japanese War of mass murder and mass rape by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing then capital of the Republic of China. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
Germany invaded Poland because Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action,he thought Poland would bring Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German people. -
Fall of Paris
The Battle of France began in 1940 and consisted of two operations. The first one was Case Yellow or Fall Gelb and is when the armored units of Germany cut off allied units which had advanced into the country of Belgium at the Ardennes.France signed an armistice with Germany. Hitler insisted that it be done in the same railway car in which Germany had surrendered to France. -
German Blitzkrieg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery. German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 before successfully employing the tactic with invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940. -
Operation Barbarossa
Was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the operation was driven by Adolf Hitler's ideological desire to conquer Soviet territory as outlined in his 1925 manifesto Mein Kampf. -
Pearl Harbor
Was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, in the Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. -
Bataan Death March
U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II, the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy 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
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. -
Operation Gomorrah
The Allied bombing of Hamburg during World War II included numerous strategic bombing missions and diversion/nuisance raids. -
D-Day Normandy Invasion
The Battle of Normandy resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. -
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. -
Operation Thunderclap
Operation Thunderclap was 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. The plan was reconsidered in early 1945, to be implemented in coordination with a Soviet advance. -
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. -
Battle of Okinawa
The 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
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as VE Day, was 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. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. The American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
VJ Day
On August 15, 1945, news of the surrender was announced to the world. This sparked spontaneous celebrations over the final ending of World War II. On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was held in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri. At the time, President Truman declared September 2 to be VJ Day.
