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Rape Of Nanking
The Japanese army marched into China's Nanking. They raped between 20,000 and 80,000 women and killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. The Japanese had just taken over Nanking as their empire, so that was their way of celebration. To this day, it has caused arguments about whether the casualties are inflated and whether the event even happened. -
Japanese invasion of China
At the time, China was divided. So, seeing their undeniable weakness, Japan invaded them. Japan also wanted natural resources and land After many years, the tone of the war was changed due to this conflict. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
Germany invaded Poland along the sea border. Germany bombed Polish airfields and navel forces in the Baltic Sea. Hitler claimed it was an act of defense, but Britain and France thought otherwise. As a result, they claimed war on Germany, starting World War One. -
Fall of Paris
On this day, Germans invaded Paris after an announcement was made that curfew would be at 8:00 that night. Though 2 million Parisians had left when forces came in, the remaining citizens were arrested and interrogated. So the cause for the fall was mostly these attacks from enemy countries. This caused the balance of power in Europe to become less evenly distributed. -
Operation Barbarossa.
This operation was the code name for Nazi Germany invading the Soviet Union. The plan was made to realize Hitler's goal of conquering the Soviets. Operation Barbarossa resulted in the capture of Ukraine and the imprisonment and starvation of millions of Soviets. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Before 8:00 in the morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes flew over Pearl Harbor, hidden from the radar by the mountains. They dropped bombs and killed more than 2,000 men, injuring about 1,000. Their intentions were to make us lift the economic sanctions we had on them. However, it forced us to join the worldwide conflict. -
Wannsee Conference
This was a conference that consisted of Nazi officials, its purpose to discuss the "Final Solution," which was how to get rid of the Jews. After conversing, they decided a way to do so would be transporting Jews to concentration camps and exterminating of them if they were still alive then. Hitler was the one who proposed this event and was the main reason it happened. The main cause of this was that they had come up with ways to quickly and/or painfully exterminate of the Jews. -
Bataan Death March
Soon after the surrender of the Bataan Peninsula, US and Filipino troops were forced to march 65 miles to prison camps. Soldiers had to endure extreme heat and terrible treatment Japanese forces. There is no specific cause of this event except the Japanese wanting to kind of show their superiority. This basically influenced the US to take action and recapture the peninsula along with capturing the island of Leyte. -
Allied invasion of Italy
The British and US invaded Italy by landing on the island of Sicily. They did this in hopes of overwhelming and weakening them. As a result, Italy surrendered to the Allied powers. -
Operation Gomorrah
Operation Gomorrah was a plan of the British bombing Germany by night, while US forces bombed Germany by day. This was done to take Germany by surprise. Nobody even thought about bombing during the day. The attacks killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 cities. Also, Hitler was bitterly realizing te end of the war was among him- and not with the outcome he had hoped for. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
American, British, and some Canadian fores landed on beaches of France and Norway across 50 miles. They did this to get back France's land. This resulted in Allied powers liberating, from Nazi Germany's control, western Europe. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The US invaded Iwo Jima due to the need of a base near the Japanese coast. To get this, they had complex navel and air strikes along with troops on the ground fighting with harsh conditions. So, the United States had victory. -
Battle of Okinawa
This was the biggest and final battle of the U.S. troops versus the Japanese troops in the Pacific Islands. Japanese soldiers used kamikaze tactics which were suicide attacks and many deaths occurred on both sides of the conflict. The battle lasted 82 days. The conflict involved control over the air bases which was the main goal of both sides to obtain. The result was about 100,000 civilian deaths as well as large death tolls on the soldiers. -
VE Day
Similar to VJ Day, Victory in Europe Day was a celebration of the United States and Great Britain over the surrender of the Germans. The German military had been defeated by the Soviet troops and ended the conflict between the allies and Germany. Because of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the war had finally ended. -
Operation Thunderclap
This was a planned attack on Berlin that was originally planned in 1944 and reconsidered in 1945. The goal of this plan was to shatter the German morale. Although it wasn't put into action, this operation would have caused 220,000 casualties and 110,000 deaths. It was turned down mainly because it was considered impractical and not very likely to work. -
VJ Day
VJ Day or Victory over Japan Day is fairly straight forward; it was a day celebrating the surrender of the Japanese military. The reason this day was greatly celebrated was because it brought six years of hostilities to an end. This was a long awaited day by U.S. citizens who were "waiting for {this} since Pearl Harbor." -
Battle of the Bulge
Germany had hopes to divide the Allied powers in Northwest Europe. To do this they surprised the allied troops starting fierce and huge battles. The US was caught off guard, but kept fighting. As a result, do to Germany's tiredness, the USA won. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
Opposite powers would drop atomic bombs on their enemy. They did that to throw their opponent off and destruct their opponents land. As a result, many innocent civilians lives were lost and a lot of damage was done. -
Liberation of concentration camps
The Soviet Union was the first to liberate a concentration camp. Germans tried their hardest to hide evidence of their doings but allied powers would find stacks of dead bodies. Allied powers liberated concentration camps to defend the victims from the enemies. In effect, many victims, that would have most likely died, survived. -
German Blitzkrieg
This strategy was used by the Germans, literally meaning "lightning war." They used mobile forces and firepower in fairly short battles which, although were devastating to the surroundings, caused less deaths just because the battles didn't last very long. The main reason this tactic was developed was to shock the enemy and keep the battles from dragging on too long. These battles resulted in less deaths and plenty of destroyed buildings.
