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Germany Invades Poland
The invasion only took a few weeks before the Polish army was defeated. Germany used a tactic named blitzkrieg during this invasion, which turned out to be very successful throughout the war. This tactic involved a coordinated air and land attack on one spot of the defenses that hit hard and fast. -
Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu is assassinated by pro-Nazi members of the Iron Guard.
He began preparing himself for the confrontation with the Iron Guard. While organizing the early elections of March 1938, he took steps to limit the Guard's propaganda machine, and closed down all press linked to the Guard, causing violent clashes between the movement and representatives of state authorities. Călinescu remained in office during the authoritarian regime established by King Carol after that date. -
The Allies start their attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik which was occupied by Nazi Germany. (Also my birthday)
A few months into World War Two, in April 1940, Adolf Hitler made a huge strategic gamble. He and his strategists knew that Norwegian coastal waters were vital for the transport of Swedish iron ore via Narvik to German blast furnaces. And, more generally, recognised that German control of Norwegian waters would make breaking the Allied blockade of Germany a little easier. -
Hitler Commits Suicide
Adolf Hitler commited suicide by a gunshot and poison. When Hitler realized that Germany had lost the war, he asked his physician what was the best way to ensure suicide. Hitler was even more pushed towards suicide when he found out that his ally Benito Musslini was caught, hung, and publicly beaten to death. Hitler did not want to suffer the same fate. -
World War II: First attack of the Italian Airforce on the island of Malta.
Because of its strategic position between Gibraltar and Alexandria (and Suez Canal beyond that) as well as being between Italy and Libya, the island of Malta was critical for both sides of the conflict. It was immediately targeted by the Italian aircraft and Italian Navy efforts to disrupt British shipping. -
France Surrenders To Germany
Hitler's forces attacked France, conquering the Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium in the process. While Germany was taking over France, British forces escaped by sailing across the sea of Dunkirk. -
World War II: Mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense, sign an order creating the Civil Air Patrol.
CAP began operations to patrol the coasts of the United States shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor five days later. CAP pilots, flying modified civilian aircraft, were credited with saving lives at sea, radioing the position of German submarines to the U.S. Army and Navy, and attacking several submarines, sinking two. -
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
The Japanese first attacked with two waves of airplanes, the first hitting the Americans at 7:53 a.m and the second at 8:55 p.m. When it was all over, ,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. -
The Battle of Midway Begins
On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway,one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II, begins. The battle was four days long, and even though the U.S. fleet was outnumbered, they succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers, while only losing one of their own. -
World War II: The United States agrees to send Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.
As Nazi Germany began winning a long string of victories in Europe, the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt began seeking ways to aid Great Britain while remaining free of the conflict. Initially constrained by the Neutrality Acts which limited arms sales to "cash and carry" purchases by belligerents, Roosevelt declared large amounts of US weapons and ammunition "surplus" and authorized their shipment to Britain in mid-1940. -
The United States opens its Office of War Information, a center for production of propaganda.
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and, using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. -
The Battle of Stalingrad Begins
The Battle of Stalingrad is considered by many historians to have been the turning point in World War Two in Europe. After the Germans were defeated, they were sent back in full retreat. The Battle for Stalingrad was fought during the winter of 1942 to 1943. -
World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis powers capital to fall.
Although the Axis partners never developed institutions to coordinate foreign or military policy as the Allies did, the Axis partners had two common interests: 1) territorial expansion and foundation of empires based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post-World War I international order 2) the destruction or neutralization of Soviet Communism. -
D-Day
The largest invasion in military history started at 6:30 in the morning on June 6th, 1944 with the landing of thousands of troops on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. There were 160,000 troops involved in this attack along with 195,000 naval personnel assigned to 5000 ships. -
Allies Liberate Paris
The Liberation of Paris (also known as Battle for Paris) took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on the 25 of August 1944 and is accounted as the last battle in the Campaign for Normandy. When Germany occupied the north and west of France and when the Vichy regime was created in city of Vichy in central France. -
Allied forces land in southern France.
Mid-August Hitler orders evacuation of southern France Soviet forces enter Germany from the east -
The Battle of The Bulge Begins
The German counterattack out of the densely wooded Ardennes region of Belgium took the Allies entirely by surprise, and the experienced German troops wrought havoc on the American line, creating a triangular "bulge" 60 miles deep and 50 miles wide along the Allied front. -
World War II: Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific Theatre conflict against Japan.
In the Pacific, active fighting began in the early 1930s with Japan expanding its Korean possessions and establishing a foothold in China. -
Battle of Iwo Jima Begins
The US sent more Marines to Iwo than to any other battle, 110,000 Marines in 880 Ships. The convoy of 880 US Ships sailed from Hawaii to Iwo in 40 days. American air forces pounded Iwo in the longest sustained aerial offensive of the war. -
United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war.
The battle of Okinawa proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. Thirty-four allied ships and craft of all types had been sunk, mostly by kamikazes, and 368 ships and craft damaged. The fleet had lost 763 aircraft. Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed [including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead] and 36,000 wounded. -
FDR dies and Truman becomes President
Harry Truman inherited the presidency from Franklin D. Roosevelt just before the end of World War II (1939–45), and made the fateful decision, three months later, to use atomic bombs to end the war against Japan. He helped create the United States's superpower role in the Cold War and led the nation into the Korean War (1950–53), while maintaining the tradition of Roosevelt's New Deal in his domestic "Fair Deal" program. -
World War II: General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document will take effect the next day.
By signing this document, German forces all over Europe started surrendering. This was the end of the German conquest. -
VE Day
The United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union provided most of the Allied forces during World War II, but few people realize that the fourth-largest contributor was Poland.
After being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1939, Poland relocated its government to London, but it never surrendered. -
World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin discussed the postwar occupation of Germany, postwar assistance to the German people, German disarmament, war-crimes trials, the fate of the defeated or liberated states of eastern Europe, voting in the future United Nations Security Council, and German reparations. -
Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima
A B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan to drop an atmoic bomb on Hiroshima. Which was located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. -
The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States, and that nation becomes the third to join the new international organization.
This was a document that pledged their governments to continue fighting together against Nazi Germany and Japan during the Second World War. This declaration was followed by a conference of Foreign Ministers in Moscow, in October, 1943 where discussions took place concerning a replacement for the discredited League of Nations. -
Atomic Bomb Dropped on Nagasaki
The plutonium bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," was rushed into readiness to take advantage of this window. No further orders were required for the attack. -
Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan standard time).
The surrender of Japan in August 1945 brought World War II to a close. On August 10, 1945, after the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet Union and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's leaders at the Imperial conference decided, in principle, to accept the uncompromising terms the Allies had set down for ending the war in the Potsdam Declaration. -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, 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 "Victory over Japan Day." -
Flight 19, a United States Navy training flight was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
The disappearance of the five Avengers and the PBM sparked one of the largest air and seas searches in history as hundreds of ships and aircraft combed over 200,00 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, while, on land, search parties scoured the interior of Florida on the outside chance that the aircraft might have gone down there undetected.
