married to Adolf Hitler
Pic. - Hitler (seated on right) and fellow soldiers during World War I. The dog had the name Fuchsl and was actually Hitler's pet during the war until it was stolen from him.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States
Pic. - Japanese troops in gas protection in Shanghai, 1937
Pic. - German troops cross into Austria in 1938
...which forces the Czechoslovak Republic to cede the Sudetenland, including the key Czechoslovak military defense positions, to Nazi Germany.
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Pic. - German troops occupy Prague. Czechoslovakia, March 15, 1939.
Jozef Tiso was a Roman Catholic priest and a famous Nazi collaborator as president of Slovakia during World War II.
Great Britain and France declared war on Germany
The Finns sue for an armistice and have to cede the northern shores of Lake Lagoda and the small Finnish coastline on the Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union.
The Battle of the River Plate was the first naval battle in the Second World War and the only episode of the war to take place in South America. The German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee had been located in the South Atlantic a long time before the war began, and had been commerce raiding after the war began in September 1939. One of the hunting groups sent by the British Admiralty to search for Graf Spee, comprising three Royal Navy (RN) cruisers, HMS Exeter, Ajax and Achilles (the latter from the New Zealand Division), found and engaged their quarry off the estuary of the River Plate close to the coast of Argentina and Uruguay in South America.
Pic. - Germany invades Norway
Pic. - Belgian soldiers under German guard following the fall of Fort Eben-Emael on 11 May 1940
The British and French plan to defend Belgium was to make a stand at a line of forts between the cities of Antwerp and Liege. Unaware that these forts had already been captured by German paratrooper units on the first night of the invasion, the British and French armies found themselves under assault on May 13. At the same time, the second, unexpected German offensive to the south emerged from the Ardennes Forest. Over the next few days, the main Allied armies were trapped between the two German forces, able neither to protect Paris nor to stop the Germans from advancing to the English Channel. Then, when the German troops to the south moved between the French and British forces, the Allies were divided and thus weakened further still. The Allied defense of Belgium was unequivocally a disaster.
During the first days of the attack, the Germans made slower progress toward Brussels and The Hague than expected, as the Dutch forces fought back formidably. In response, on May 14, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, unleashed a massive bombing attack on central Rotterdam, even while surrender negotiations with the Netherlands were under way. Although efforts were made to call off the attack at the last minute, only some of the German pilots got the message, so part of the attack was carried out. Over 800 civilians were killed, and the Netherlands surrendered that day.
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While the main French army was trapped between the two German armies, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was being pushed to the coast near the French port of Dunkirk. With the BEF cornered with its back to the sea, and with little hope of reuniting with French forces, the British government decided that the BEF had to be evacuated. The evacuation, called Operation Dynamo, began on May 27, 1940. It took a full week to accomplish, using more than 800 civilian and military sea vessels. In all, more than 300,000 men were brought back across the English Channel to British soil. The feat was heroic—it was done under nearly constant bombardment from the Luftwaffe—but it left France completely on its own.
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With the British out of the way, the Germans began their final push against France. By June 12, German tanks had broken through the main fronts along the Somme River and the fortified Maginot Line, moving ever closer to their goal, Paris. During this time, the British vigorously encouraged France to resist at all costs. The new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, even flew to Paris himself to offer his personal encouragement. At the same time, though, the British government denied French requests for military assistance, wanting to conserve strength for Britain’s own defense in the near future.By this time, the size of the French army had been reduced by roughly half, and French leaders became resigned to an inevitable surrender. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany. Hitler insisted that it be done in the same railway car in which Germany had surrendered to France in 1918, at the end of World War I. On June 23, Hitler flew to Paris for a brief sightseeing tour of the occupied city, during which a widely published photo was taken of Hitler standing against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.
engineering Communist coup d’états in each of them on July 14–15, and then annexing them as Soviet Republics on August 3–6.
The loss of northern Transylvania forces Romanian King Carol to abdicate in favor of his son, Michael, and brings to power a dictatorship under General Ion Antonescu.
Recognized immediately by Germany and Italy, the new state includes the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Finland, seeking redress for the territorial losses in the armistice concluding the Winter War, joins the Axis just before the invasion. The Germans quickly overrun the Baltic States and, joined by the Finns, lay siege to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by September. In the center, the Germans capture Smolensk in early August and drive on Moscow by October. In the south, German and Romanian troops capture Kiev (Kyiv) in September and capture Rostov on the Don River in November.
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942.
The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. - The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but Japan and the United States had been edging toward war for decades.
By April 1942, the Philippines, Indochina, and Singapore are under Japanese occupation.
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The fall of Singapore to the Japanese Army on February 15th 1942 is considered one of the greatest defeats in the history of the British Army and probably Britain’s worst defeat in World War Two. The fall of Singapore in 1942 clearly illustrated the way Japan was to fight in the Far East
The Battle of Coral Sea took place in May 1942. If the Japanese had succeeded at Coral Sea, the way would have been open for the Japanese to have captured New Guinea and leave Australia isolated from Allied help and more open to a Japanese attack. The Battle of Coral Sea was fought entirely by planes – no ship on either side made any visual contact with any enemy ship.
The Battle of Gazala was fought during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, around the port of Tobruk in Libya. - It was a German victory.
Over the next three years Anglo-American bombing reduces urban Germany to rubble.
This fleet engagement between U.S. and Japanese navies in the north-central Pacific Ocean resulted from Japan’s desire to sink the American aircraft carriers that had escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, Japanese fleet commander, chose to invade a target relatively close to Pearl Harbor to draw out the American fleet, calculating that when the United States began its counterattack, the Japanese would be prepared to crush them. Instead, an American intelligence breakthrough–the solving of the Japanese fleet codes–enabled Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to understand the exact Japanese plans. Nimitz placed available U.S. carriers in position to surprise the Japanese moving up for their preparatory air strikes on Midway Island itself.
German troops fight their way into Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River by mid-September and penetrate deep into the Caucasus after securing the Crimean Peninsula.
British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt. sending the Axis forces in chaotic retreat across Libya to the eastern border of Tunisia.
The World War II Battle of Guadalcanal was the first major offensive and a decisive victory for the Allies in the Pacific theater. With Japanese troops stationed in this section of the Solomon Islands, U.S. marines launched a surprise attack in August 1942 and took control of an air base under construction. Reinforcements were funneled to the island as a series of land and sea clashes unfolded, and both sides endured heavy losses to their warship contingents. However, the Japanese suffered a far greater toll of casualties, forcing their withdrawal from Guadalcanal by February 1943.
The Battle of Guadalcanal took place in 1942 when the US Marines landed on August 7th. The landing at Guadalcanal was unopposed - but it took the Americans six months to defeat the Japanese in what was to turn into a classic battle of attrition.
Was an attack by the United States Marine Corps Raiders on Japanese military forces on Makin Island (now known as Butaritari Island) in the Pacific Ocean. The aim was to destroy Japanese installations, take prisoners, gain intelligence on the Gilbert Islands area, and divert Japanese attention and reinforcements from the Allied landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi.
The Second Battle of El Alamein took place near the Egyptian coastal city of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War.The Second Battle of El Alamein took place near the Egyptian coastal city of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War.
The failure of the Vichy French troops to defend against the invasion enables the Allies to move swiftly to the western border of Tunisia, and triggers the German occupation of southern France on November 11.
Forbidden by Hitler to retreat or try to break out of the Soviet ring, the survivors of the Sixth Army surrender on January 30 and February 2, 1943.
The Battle of Kursk was a World War II engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk in the Soviet Union during July and August 1943
Within six weeks, Anglo-American bombers could hit targets in eastern Germany for the first time.
The Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19–20, 1944) was a decisive naval battle of World War II which eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War. The battle was the last of five major "carrier-versus-carrier" engagements between American and Japanese naval forces, and involved elements of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet as well as ships and land-based aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy's Mobile Fleet and nearby island garrisons.
The battle was nicknamed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot by American aviators for the severely disproportional loss ratio inflicted upon Japanese aircraft by American pilots and anti-aircraft gunners. During a debriefing after the first two air battles a pilot from USS Lexington remarked "Why, hell, it was just like an old-time turkey shoot down home!" The outcome is generally attributed to American improvements in pilot and crew training and tactics, war technology (including the top-secret anti-aircraft proximity fuse), and ship and aircraft design. Although at the time the battle appeared to be a missed opportunity to destroy the Japanese fleet, the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost the bulk of its carrier air strength and would never recover. During the course of the battle, American submarines torpedoed and sank two of the largest Japanese fleet carriers taking part in the battle.
This was the largest carrier-to-carrier battle in history
The Battle for Brittany took place between August and October 1944. After breaking out of the Normandy beach head in June 1944, Brittany was targeted because of its naval bases at Lorient, St. Nazaire and Brest. U-boats and surface raiders had used these bases, despite a bombing campaign by the RAF, and the Germans had launched 'Operation Cerberus' from Brest in 1942. So their capture would have ended any concerns that the Allies might have had about their potential further use. They would also prove very useful to the Allies as they needed as many ports as they could to land the vast amount of supplies their men needed.
The Americans were given the task of liberating Brittany. The US 8th Corps, led by General Middleton, moved east to west across the north of Brittany with Brest as their major target. The US 20th Corps, led by General Walker, moved south the Nantes. The plan was for both units to link up at Lorient. Once Brittany had been liberated, the Allies had decided to build a new harbour at Quiberon, south-west of Lorient. They had concluded that the Germans would destroy all the harbours in Brittany before the Americans could liberate them and that Quiberon, sheltered as it was from the Atlantic Ocean, would be a perfect place to construct a new harbour. ... http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_for_brittany.htm
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Pic. - Battalion Zośka soldiers in Wola during the Warsaw Uprising.
The Soviet advance halts on the east bank of the Vistula. On October 5, the Germans accept the surrender of the remnants of the Home Army forces fighting in Warsaw.
By September, the Allies reach the German border; by December, virtually all of France, most of Belgium, and part of the southern Netherlands are liberated.
The new government concludes an armistice and immediately switches sides in the war. The Romanian turnaround compels Bulgaria to surrender on September 8, and the Germans to evacuate Greece, Albania, and southern Yugoslavia in October.
...underground Slovak resistance units rise against the Germans and the indigenous fascist Slovak regime In late October, the Germans capture Banská Bystrica, the headquarters of the uprising, and put an end to organized resistance.
The Battle of Leyte in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the amphibious invasion of the Gulf of Leyte in the Philippines by American forces and Filipino guerrillas under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita from 17 October 1944 – 1 July 1945. The operation code named King Two launched the Philippines campaign of 1944–45 for the recapture and liberation of the entire Philippine Archipelago and to end almost three years of Japanese occupation.
The Philippines campaign of 1944–1945, the Battle of the Philippines 1944–1945, or the Liberation of the Philippines was the American and Filipino campaign to defeat and expel the Imperial Japanese forces occupying the Philippines, during World War II. The Japanese Army had overrun all of the Philippines during the first half of 1942. The Liberation of the Philippines commenced with amphibious landings on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on October 20, 1944, and hostilities in a small part of the Philippines continued through the end of the war in August 1945.
It was fought in waters of the Leyte Gulf, near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar and Luzon, from 23–26 October 1944, between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 20 October, United States troops invaded the island of Leyte as part of a strategy aimed at isolating Japan from the countries it had occupied in Southeast Asia, and in particular depriving its forces and industry of vital oil supplies. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion but was repulsed by the U.S. Navy's 3rd and 7th Fleets. The IJN failed to achieve its objective, suffered very heavy losses, and never sailed to battle in comparable force thereafter. The majority of its surviving heavy ships, deprived of fuel, remained in their bases for the rest of the Pacific War.[6][7]
in an attempt to re-conquer Belgium and split the Allied forces along the German border. By January 1, 1945, the Germans are in retreat.
Harry S. Truman was born in Missouri on May 8, 1884. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president for just 82 days before Roosevelt died and Truman became the 33rd president. In his first months in office he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, ending World War II. His policy of communist containment started the Cold War, and he initiated U.S. involvement in the Korean War. Truman left office in 1953 and died in 1972.
capturing Budapest after a two-month siege on February 13, driving the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators out of Hungary in early April, forcing the surrender of Slovakia with the capture of Bratislava on April 4, and capturing Vienna on April 13.
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The battle Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces landed and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.
Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead.
The top Ustasa leaders flee to Italy and Austria.
After midnight on the night of 29 April,
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Pic. - Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov (centre) signs the Act of Military Surrender of Nazi Germany
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Pic. - National ArchivesA photograph of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, taken from one of the B-29 Superfortresses used in the attack.