Transcript Document

World War II
By Joseph Enge
A Fragile Peace
1922- Benito Mussolin becomes head of Italy's
government
November 1923- The "Beer Hall Putsch"

1924- While serving 9 months, out of a 5-year
sentence, Hitler dictates Mein Kampf
September 1931- Japan invades Manchuria
"SA and SS, Heil! The great time has now begun. Germany is
now awakened. We have won power in Germany. Now we must
win over the German people. I know, my comrades, it must have
been difficult at times, when you were desiring change which
didn't come, so time and time again the appeal has to be made
to continue the struggle - you mustn't act yourself, you must
obey, you must give in, you must submit to this overwhelming
need to obey."

January 30, 1933- Adolf Hitler is appointed
Chancellor of Germany
 February
27, 1933- Reichstag Fire
1933- Japan withdraws from the League of Nations
1935- Japan strengthens its fleet in contradiction to
the Washington Treaty
March 16, 1935- Hitler announces conscription and
plans a 36 division, 500,000
men army
October 1935- Italy invades Ethiopia
March 7, 1936- Hitler sends his troops into the
Rhineland
July 1936 to March 1939- Spanish Civil War
Fall 1936- The Rome-Berlin Axis is formed
December 1937- Japanese sink the U.S.S.
Panay, 2 Americans are killed
March 1938- Germany annexes Austria
"This land and this people does not come
to the Reich with hat in hand. I myself lead
you home."
September 1938- Munich Agreement,
German demands for the Sudetenland are
met = Appeasement
March 1939- Hitler seizes the rest of Czechoslovakia
April 1939- Italy seizes Albania
August 1939- Nazi- Soviet Pact or MolotovRibbentrop Pact Hitler and Stalin agree to split
Eastern Europe
The War Begins
September 1, 1939- Germany invades
Poland. The new concept of Blitzkrieg
warfare is introduced. Poland falls in 3
weeks.
September 17, 1939- Russia invades Eastern
Poland. 15,000 of the captured
Polish officers are slaughtered by Stalin's
NKVD (KGB) in 1940, Katyn Forest Massacre.
 September
& October, 1939- Soviet troops
occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Finland resists Stalin's demands.
 November
1939- The Soviet Union attacks
Finland. Finland holds out at first, but
outnumbered 5 to 1 they surrender in
March. Finland keeps its independence,
but gives up territory to Stalin.
April 1940- Hitler conquers Denmark and
Norway. 1/3 of the German surface fleet is
sunk or heavily damaged in invading Norway.
May 10, 1940- Winston Churchill replaces
Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister
 May
10, 1940 - The Sitzkrieg or Phony
War ends. Germany invades Holland,
Belgium, and Luxembourg.

June 4, 1940- The British evacuate the last of
340,000 troops from Dunkirk

June 10, 1940 - The French government
evacuates Paris. Italy declares war on France
 June
14, 1940- German troops enter Paris
June 17, 1940- Stalin overthrows the
governments in the Baltic States and
installs communist puppet governments
June 22, 1940- France surrenders in the
same rail car and the same town as
Germany had surrendered in 1918
 June
29, 1940- Stalin invades Eastern
Rumania
 July
1, 1940 - French Vichy government is
set up
 July-September,
1940 Battle of Britain
America Reacts
 May
1940- The U.S. Congress votes for
$17 billion for defense
 June 1940- Congress passes the Alien
Registration Act
 September 1940- America's first peace
time draft
 The 50 destroyer deal between the U.S.
and Britain

March 1940- Lend- Lease Act
 July
1941- American troops join British
troops in occupying Iceland, U.S. ships
escort freighters as far as Iceland
 August
1941- Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt
and Churchill pledge a statement of
postwar aims
 September
1941- a U.S. destroyer
engages a German submarine in combat
Japan on the Move

August 1940- Japan seizes French bases in northern
Indochina

September 1940- Japan signs Tripartite Pact with
Germany and Italy Roosevelt declares an embargo
against Japan, increases aid to China, and fortifies the
Philippines & Guam

July 1941- Japan occupies all of French Indochina
The U.S. freezes all Japanese funds in U.S. banks

November 1941- U.S.- Japanese Peace Talks
The U.S. demands Japan pulls out of China Japan
demands U.S. ends embargo and ends aid to China
Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941- Japan launches a sneak
attack against Pearl Harbor. They
also attack Midway, Wake, Guam, the
Philippines, Malaya, and Singapore. 150 U.S.
planes and 2400 U.S. soldiers and civilians are
killed in the Pearl Harbor attack. The bulk of the
U.S. battleships are sunk or heavily damaged.
Luckily, the U.S. carrier fleet was out at sea at
the time, Japan's main target
War in Europe

October 28, 1940- Greece rejects Italy's demands for the
use of Greek bases, Italy invades Greece
 December 1940- The Greeks break through the Italian
defenses and overrun ¼ of Albania . The Greeks take
28,000 Italian prisoners. Hitler has to come to
Mussolini's aid and send troops to Greece. Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia agree to let German
troops pass through their countries. A revolution in
Yugoslavia forces Hitler to invade Yugoslavia in order to
get to Greece
 April 1941- German troops pour into Yugoslavia and
Greece. Both fall quickly, but Hitler's planned invasion of
Russia is delayed a critical six weeks
"Brothers and sisters: the German invasion continues.
The German Army has taken Lithuania, a large part of
Latvia, part of Byelorussia and part of the Ukraine. A
great danger hangs over the nation."
 June
22, 1941- Hitler invades Russia with
3 million troops and reaches the suburbs
of Moscow.
 December
1941- Russian winter offensive
takes the pressure off of Moscow and
inflicts heavy German casualties. German
lack of preparedness for a long winter
campaign leads to over 1 million men
being lost by late March 1942
 June
1942 - German summer offensive
opens up in southern Russia
 August
22, 1942- The Germans start
assault on Stalingrad the turning point of
the war, see also Midway and El Alamein

November 19, 1942- Soviet counter-attack in pincer
drives begins. The German Sixth Army under General
von Paulus at Stalingrad is surrounded

January 1943- The German Sixth Army at Stalingrad
surrenders in 3 months, the Germans lost 500,000
troops in winter fighting
 July
1943- Battle of Kursk, last major
German offensive in the Eastern Front,
is stopped. The largest tank battle in
history.

October to November 1942- Battle of El Alamein Rommel is
defeated in Egypt by Montgomery's British Eighth Army

November 8, 1942- Operation Torch, the U.S. forces land in North
Africa and put the squeeze on Rommel

May 1943- The last German position in Africa, Tunisia falls
 July
1943- The American and British
forces invade Sicily, Mussolini falls from
power
Italy Surrenders

October 1943Salerno Invasion,
American and British
forces invade
southern Italy

January 1944- Anzio,
American forces try to
outflank the Cassino
Line and take Rome

June 4, 1944- Rome
falls
 June
6, 1944- Operation Overlord, The
Normandy Invasion. The biggest naval
invasion in history American and British
forces land in France
 August
1944- Paris is taken by the Allies
 December
1944 to January 1945- The
Battle of the Bulge. Hitler's last gamble
and offensive of the war

March 7, 1945- American forces cross the
Rhine River at Remagen

April 12, 1945- President Roosevelt dies, Harry
Truman is sworn in as the new president

April 25 1945American and
Russian forces meet
at Torgau
 April
30, 1945- Adolf Hitler and his new
bride Eva commit suicide

May 2, 1945- Russians take Berlin
 May
7, 1945- V.E. Day Germany
surrenders to the Allies
Campaign in the Pacific
 December
8, 1941- The U.S. declares war
on Japan after their sneak attack at
Pearl Harbor

April 18, 1942- Colonel James Doolittle with 16
B-25 medium bombers raids
Tokyo

May 7, 1942- Battle of Coral Sea

June 4 to 7, 1942- Battle of Midway
The U.S. Navy heavily damages the superior
numbered Japanese Imperial Fleet. The
Japanese lose 4 aircraft carriers to our 1. The
turning point of the war in the Pacific
 August 1942- American forces invade
Guadalcanal
 July 1943- The start of the South Pacific
offensive
 February 1944- American forces invade the
Marshall Islands

October 1944- The
liberation of the
Philippines and the
last major naval
action
for the Japanese
 February
Jima
to March 1945- Invasion of Iwo

April to June 1945Invasion of Okinawa
110,000 Japanese
soldiers killed
12,600 American
soldiers and sailors
killed

March to August 1945- Greatest air offensive in
history. One raid on Tokyo on March 10 killed
100,000 and wounded 125,000 with 300 B-29
Superfortress
heavy bombers

July 16, 1945- The first atomic bomb is
detonated at Los Alamos New Mexico
 August
6, 1945- The Superfortress Enola
Gay drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
80,000 killed and as many wounded
 August
9, 1945- A second atomic bomb is
dropped on Nagasaki
10,000 killed
120,000 wounded
 August
10, 1945- Japanese offer
surrender
 September
2, 1945-The formal Japanese
surrender ceremony is held in Tokyo
harbor on the U.S.S. Missouri

From September 1939 to September
1945 55 million people killed
Atrocities

1939-1945 Hitler's Final Solution, Holocaust 12 million
civilians from occupied European nations and from
Germany itself are killed in Nazi concentration camps, 6
million are Jewish. 1/3 of the Jewish population of
Europe is killed.

1941-1945 Japanese
treatment of prisoners of war
Of the 95,000 American,
British, Canadian, Australian,
and New Zealanders captured,
28 percent die (27,000) from
starvation diets, brutal hard
work, and physical abuse.
Bataan Death March- 650
Americans and between 5,000
to 10,000 Filipinos died during
the march- many of them
clubbed, bayoneted, or shot
by Japanese guards
 1941-1945
- German treatment of Russian
prisoners
The Germans captured 5.8 million Russian
soldiers. 473,000 Russian POW's die in
German care during the war; 20% of
Russian soldiers who survive the German
captivity are either executed or worked to
death in the gulags by Stalin when
they return home after the war.

April 1940- 15,000
Polish prisoners are
executed at Katyn
Forest outside
Smolensk by Stalin.
 1941-1945-
Russian treatment of German
prisoners
Of the estimated 3.5 million German
soldiers captured by the Russians,
1.5 million did not survive. Of those who
survive, many do not return to
Germany until the 1950's.

August to October 1944- Warsaw Uprising
200,000 Poles and Jew are killed in an uprising
against the Germans Stalin urged them to revolt
against the Germans as his troops approached
the outskirts of Warsaw. Stalin then halted his
army outside of Warsaw and let the Germans
destroy the uprising in order to eliminate Polish
resistance for his planned communist takeover
of Poland.
 May
1945- Slaughter of Germans at
Prague
30,000 Germans killed by Czech civilians,
mostly women and children. German
women were publicly raped, Achilles
tendons cut, bound together with barbed
wire and drowned in the river. Children
were taken out of school to be drowned
in horse troughs or shot.
 May
1945- Russian troops rape and
pillage. An estimated 110,000 German
women raped in Berlin alone.