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Japanese invasion of Chine
In 1937 skirmishing between Japanese and Chinese troops on the frontier led to what became known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.This fighting sparked a full-blown conflict, the Second Sino-Japanese War, Under the terms of the Sian Agreement, the Chinese Nationalists and the CCP now agreed to fight side by side against Japan. -
Rape of Nanking
In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people, between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. The city was left in ruins and would take decades to recover. -
Germany's invasion of Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. -
German Blitzkreg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower.Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery. -
Fall of Paris
By the time German tanks rolled into Paris, 2 million Parisians had already fled, with good reason. In short order, the German Gestapo went to work: arrests, interrogations, and spying were the order of the day, as a gigantic swastika flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, it was the largest military operation in history, involving more than 3 million Axis troops and 3,500 tanks. -
Pearl Harbor
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: 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 -
Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. -
Warsaw Ghetto uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's final effort to eliminate the Jewish race. -
Operation Gomorrah
On this day in 1943, British bombers raid Hamburg, Germany, by night in Operation Gomorrah, while Americans bomb it by day in its own “Blitz Week.” The evening of July 24th consisted of saw British aircrafts dropping 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg in just a few hour -
D-Day
The morning of June 6, thousands of paratroopers and glider troops were already on the ground behind enemy lines, securing bridges and exit roads. U.S. forces faced heavy resistance at Omaha Beach, where there were over 2,000 American casualties. However, by day’s end, approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.According to some estimates, more than 4,000 Allied troops lost their lives in the D-Day invasion, with thousands more wounded or missing. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe.. -
Liberation of concentration camps
Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945. The Nazis had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward. They found hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair. -
Operation Thunderclap
it was the code for a cancelled operation planned in August 1944 but shelved and never implemented. The plan envisaged a massive attack on Berlin in the belief that would cause 220,000 casualties with 110,000 killed, many of them key German personnel, which would shatter German morale. However, it was later decided that the plan was unlikely to work. -
Battle of Iwo JIma
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. -
Battle of Okinawa
The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a series of battles fought in the Ryukyu Islands, centered on the island of Okinawa, and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific -
VE Day
Is the public holiday that marks the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. -
Dropping of the Atomic Bomb
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II. -
VJ Day
news of the surrender was announced to the world. This sparked spontaneous celebrations over the final ending of World War II. On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was held in Tokyo. -
The Nuremburg trials of Nazis
Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. -
Sources
Pictures: Wikipedia
Info and dates:history.com
