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Japan's invasion of China
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. Japan wanted to be an industrial and military power but lacked resources and space on its home islands. It needed more resources. It needed more resources. For this reason, Japan expanded into Korea and Taiwan and eventually into Manchuria. -
German Blitzkrieg
The German invasion of Poland was how Hitler intended to wage war, what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. This was characterized by extensive bombing early on to destroy the enemy’s air capacity, railroads, communication lines, and munitions dumps, followed by a massive land invasion with overwhelming numbers of troops, tanks, and artillery. The German forces had plowed their way through, devastating a swath of territory, infantry moved in, picking off any remaining resistance. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Operation Barbarossa
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. -
Pearl Harbor
Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. -
Wannsee Conference
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." -
Operation Gommorah
Britain had suffered the deaths of 167 civilians as a result of German bombing raids in July. Now the tables were going to turn. The evening of July 24 saw British aircraft drop 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hours. The explosive power was the equivalent of what German bombers had dropped on London in their five most destructive raids. More than 1,500 German civilians were killed in that first British raid. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion )
The Normandy landings (code named Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. -
Battle of the Bulge
The largest battle fought on the Western Front in Europe during World War II; it is also the largest battle ever fought by the United States Army. It was a German offensive intended to drive a wedge between the American and British armies in France. It fell far short of its goals but managed to create a bulge in the American lines 50 miles wide and 70 miles deep, which gave the struggle its alliterative name. -
Operation Thunderclap
Early in 1945, the Allies' political-military leadership started to consider how they might ..... Colin McKay Grierson told journalists that the aim of Operation Thunderclap had ..... U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War). -
Battle of Iwo Jima
was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. ... It was useless to the U.S. Army as a staging base and useless to the U.S. Navy as a fleet base. -
Battle of Okinawa
The battle of Okinawa, also known as Operation Iceberg, took place in April-June 1945. It was the largest amphibious landing in the Pacific theater of World War II. It also resulted in the largest casualties with over 100,000 Japanese casualties and 50,000 casualties for the Allies. -
VE Day
On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine. -
Dropping of the atomic bombs
On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. -
VJ Day
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, or simply V-J Day. The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.
