COLOR EDU TIMELINE

1941

Germany invades Soviut Union

1942

Executive Order 9066by Roosevelt

1944

D-Day landing Normany

1940

France surrender to Germany

1941

Japanese bomb pearlHarbor

1943

Germany surrenders at Stalingrad

1945

United States drop the first atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Germany Surrenders

1939 -1945 WWII

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

1939

Germany Invades Poland starting WWII

1939-invasion on poland As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany’s strategy of envelopment.

1940-Fall of France There were delays, as the Germans were now in no hurry, but on June 21, 1940, the surrender terms were dictated, in the presence of Hitler, in the same railway car at Compiègne where the armistice of November 11, 1918, had been signed. The following day the French accepted the terms, but they were required to conclude a separate armistice with the Italians before the German armistice became effective.

1941- Germany invades USSR On June 22, 1941, more than 3 million German and Axis troops invaded the Soviet Union along an 1,800-mile-long front, launching Operation Barbarossa. It was Germany’s largest invasion force of the war, representing some 80 percent of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, and one of the most powerful invasion forces in history.

1941- Japan bombs Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan.

1942- President Rosevelt passes executive act 9066 Executive Order 9066, (February 19, 1942), executive order issued by U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, which granted the secretary of war and his commanders the power “to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded.” While no specific group or location was mentioned in the order, it was quickly applied to virtually the entire Japanese American population on the West Coast.

1943- USSR defeats Germany The Battle of Stalingrad turned the tide in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. General Zhukov, who had played such an important role in the victory, later led the Soviet drive on Berlin. On May 1, 1945, he personally accepted the German surrender of Berlin. Von Paulus, meanwhile, agitated against Adolf Hitler among the German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and in 1946 provided testimony at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. After his release by the Soviets in 1953, he settled in East Germany.

1944- D-Day During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” By the end of 1943 at the latest, Germany’s defeat seemed certain to many of its own military leaders. The fact that the war continued for another 18 months, at terrible cost, was due to the refusal of Hitler to admit defeat and his determination to drag down Germany and half of Europe with him rather than repeat the capitulation of 1918.