WWII Timeline

Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, forming the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, after Slovakia declared its independence on March 14th. This action, a direct violation of the Munich Agreement, marked the end of appeasement and a significant step towards World War II.

Germany launched a surprise attack on Poland at dawn on September 1, 1939, with a force of over 1.5 million soldiers, 2,000 tanks, and nearly 900 bombers.  Nazi propagandists falsely claimed that Poland was persecuting ethnic Germans and that Poland was planning to attack Germany with its allies, Great Britain and France. 

On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after Germany invaded Poland, marking the official start of World War II.  The immediate cause was Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Both Britain and France had previously guaranteed Poland’s borders and pledged to defend it against aggression.  

Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Winston Churchill, a vocal critic of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, became his successor, leading a national unity government during the Second World War. 

Operation Dynamo (the Dunkirk evacuation) was a WWII Allied military operation where over 338,000 British and Allied troops were rescued from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, between May 26 and June 4, 1940, after being trapped by German forces.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) successfully defended the United Kingdom against a series of German Luftwaffe (air force) , preventing a potential invasion.  

The “Blitz” is the sustained period of German bombing raids on British cities, starting in September 1940 and lasting until May 1941. The Luftwaffe focused on key cities and towns, including London, industrial centers, and portsin order to cripple Britain’s war effortand demoralize of the civilian population.  

Pearl Harbor (a U.S. Navy base in Hawaii) was  the site of a devastating surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy sinking or damaging nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and destroying over 300 aircraft.  The attack caused he deaths of over 2,400 Americans, including civilians, and over 1,000 were wounded.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, both the United States and the United Kingdom declared war on Japan, marking America’s entry into World War II.  

Between 23 October and 4 November 1942 the British Eighth Army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Axis armies of Italy and Germany at El Alemain (near the western frontier of Egypt) and was the turning point of the North African campaign

After Mussolini’s fall in July 1943, the new Italian government, led by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, began negotiating an armistice with the Allies which was kept secret until the Allied invasion of Italy was underway.  

A pivotal meeting where the leaders of the Allied Powers (US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin) convened to discuss military strategy and the post-war world order.  

D-Day arked the start of the Allied invasion of Normandy where 130,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe.  American forces landed at Utah and Omaha beaches, and  British and Canadian forces landed at Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches.

From August 19 to 25, 1944, the French Resistance forces and Allied troops drove out the remaining German garrison in Paris, ending four years of Nazi occupation of the French capital.  

Aka the Ardennes Offensive was the last major German offensive on the Western Front took place from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945, in the Ardennes Forest.  

Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Nazi Germany, committed suicide via a gunshot to the head in the Führerbunker in Berlin after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin.

The unconditional surrender of Germany at Reims, France, and ratified in Berlin on May 8/9, meant the German armed forces would cease all hostilities, effectively ending World War II in Europe.  

Victory in Europe Day marks the formal acceptance of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on and the end of all German military operations.

The United States dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, on the Hiroshima, Japan.  The bomb, a uranium gun-type fission bomb was dropped from a B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay”, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets. The US dropped a second atomic bomb “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, Japan. This bomb was a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon, the second and largest of the two nuclear weapons used in world war II and was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar”, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.  

The unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan  was announced by Emperor Hirohito which fulfilled the requirements put forward by the United Kingdom, China and the United States  in the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945.

The Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on  board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay which marked the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan to the Allied Powers; thereby ending World War II in the Pacific.