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Germany's invasion of Poland
The action by Germany that began World War II in 1939. Germany invaded Poland only days after signing the Nazi-Soviet, under which the Soviet Union agreed not to defend Poland from the east if Germany attacked it from the west. -
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German Blitzkrieg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic among enemy forces through forces and locally concentrated firepower. -
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Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941 hundreds of Japanese fighter planes invaded on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. -
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Battle of Stalingrad
It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. -
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Allied Invasion of Italy
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy, during the early stages of the Italian Campaign of World War II. -
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D-Day
Churchill, FDR, and Eisenhower planned a land invasion of France. Stalin promised to attack Germany at the same time for the east.
The invasion included 150,000 soldiers; 11,000 planes and gliders. D-day was also known as "operation overload" -
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Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium.It was also the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. -
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Battle of Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima was considered to have great tactical importance. There were two airfields on the island under Japan's control they could be used by Japanese fighter planes to attack American bombers on their flights to Japan. One-third of all Marine losses during World War II happened at Iwo Jima it was the only large engagement of the war in which Allied forces suffered more casualties than their Japanese counterparts. By 1945, the Allies were gaining ground in the Pacific -
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Battle of Okinawa
It also resulted in the largest casualties with over 100,000 Japanese casualties and 50,000 casualties for the Allies. From the Japanese view Okinawa was and could be no more than a delaying battle of attrition on a grand scale. -
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VE Day
May 8th 1945, the date the Allies celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Reich, formally recognizing the end of the Second World War in Europe. The Allies had begun to overrun Germany from the west during April as Russian forces advanced from the east. -
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Dropping of Atomic Bombs
On August 6, 1945, An American bomber dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. -
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VJ Day
It was announced on August 14, 1945 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,” or simply “V-J Day".