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German Blitzkrieg
The Germans used their Blitzkrieg against the Netherlands and Belgium. The attack sent the defending troops reeling. French and British troops rushing to the rescue were caught in the headlong retreat and pushed back. German dive-bombers strafing the retreating mix of civilians and soldiers with machine gun and bomb. The Allies fought valiantly but in vain - the German war machine advanced unperturbed. -
Pearl Harbor
pearl harbor The Japanese military proposed to sweep into Burma, Malaya, the East Indies, and the Philippines, in addition to establishing a defensive perimeter in the central and southwest Pacific. They expected the U.S. to declare war but not to be willing to fight long or hard enough to win. Their greatest concern was that the U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in Pearl Harbor could foil their plans. As insurance, the Japanese navy undertook to cripple the Pacific Fleet by a surprise air attack. The U.S. had broke -
Wannsee Conference
Wannsee Conference (1942)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." The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. Some still undetermined time in 1941, Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. -
D-Day Normandy Invasion
D-Day After World War II began, Germany invaded and occupied northwestern France beginning in May 1940. The Americans entered the war in December 1941, and by 1942 they and the British were considering the possibility of a major Allied invasion across the English Channel. Allied plans for a cross-Channel invasion began to ramp up. In November 1943, Adolf Hitler, who was aware of the threat of an invasion along France’s northern coast, -
Battle of the Bulge
The Germans threw 250,000 soldiers into the initial assault, 14 German infantry divisions guarded by five panzer divisions-against a mere 80,000 Americans. Their assault came in early morning at the weakest part of the Allied line, an 80-mile poorly protected stretch of hilly, woody forest between the vulnerability of the thin, isolated American units and the thick fog that prevented Allied air cover from discovering German movement, The Germans were able to push the Americans into retreat. -
VE Day
The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark–the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city’s 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before—only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima, Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, and it was attacked by three marine divisions after elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment. The battle was marked by changes in Japanese defense tactics troops no longer defended at the beach line but rather concentrated inland; consequently, the marines experienced initial success but then got bogged down in costly attritional warfare.
