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prime minister Winston Churchill
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's resignation in 1940, Churchill replaced him. -
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered approximately 6 million European Jews. -
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives, also called Operation Hummingbird or, in Germany, the Röhm Putsch, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany -
Germany attacks Poland
The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. -
attack on finland
It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II -
Germany attacks France
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. -
battle of britain
German and Britain air forces clashed in the skies over the UK in a bombing campaign -
Lend-Lease Act
Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. -
german blitzkrieg on soviet union
Under the codename Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. -
Japanese internment camps
President Roosevelt ultimately sided with Secretary Stimson and Secretary Knox and issued Executive Order 9066. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II which occurred between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea -
Guadalcanal
The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by American forces -
Battle of El Alamein
The Second Battle of El Alamein was a battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it was the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest confrontation of World War II in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia -
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. -
D-day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. -
Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference was the second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. -
F.D.R.'s death
F.D.R served as the president during WW2 until he died of Intracerebral Hemorrhage -
The death of Benito Mussolini
In the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by Italian partisans in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. -
hitler's suicide
On this day in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, in Potsdam, occupied Germany. -
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
American B-29 bomber dropped the world first atomic bomb and killed 90% of of the cities -
macarthur's plan for japan
The Allied occupation of Japan at the end of World War II was led by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, with support from the British Commonwealth. -
United Nations
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. -
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. -
Cold war
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. -
marshall plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies. -
hitler takes over balkans
Adolf Hitler gave the order for German forces - backed by Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian Axis allies - to invade Yugoslavia and Greece. He launched the assault in order to secure Germany's Balkan flank for Operation Barbarossa. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union -
Berlin wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.