World War II Timeline and Key Events

Posted on Feb 28, 2024 in History

  • Sept. 1, 1939 – Date WWII began with German invasion of Poland
  • Dec. 7, 1941 – Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
  • June 6, 1944 – D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy France
  • May 8, 1945 – V-E Day; when Germany officially surrenders
  • September 2, 1945 – V-J Day; when Japan officially surrenders
  • Aug. 6, 1945 – Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
  • Aug. 9, 1945 – Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
  • Dec. 8, 1941 – US declares war on Japan and enters WWII
  • D-Day – Allied invasion of German-occupied France
  • Pearl Harbor – ‘A day that will live in infamy’
  • Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) – Unsuccessful German attack on the city of Stalingrad, the deadliest battle of all time. Germany’s defeat marked a turning point in the war
  • El Alamein – Combined German and Italian forces were beaten near Alexandria, leading to the Allied taking of Morocco and Algeria
  • Great Britain was never successfully invaded by land forces
  • Neville Chamberlain – Great British Prime Minister who advocated peace and a policy of appeasement prior to WWII
  • Winston Churchill – Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII
  • Blitzkrieg – ‘Lightning War’, a type of fast-moving warfare used by German forces against Poland in 1939
  • Island Hopping – A military strategy used during WWII that involved selectively attacking specific enemy-held islands and bypassing others
  • Genocide – Deliberate extermination of a racial or cultural group
  • Kristallnacht (1938) – The German term for ‘Night of Broken Glass’ marking the beginning of the Holocaust
  • Final Solution – Hitler’s program of systematically killing the entire Jewish people
  • Antisemitism – Extreme or irrational prejudice or discrimination against Jews
  • Auschwitz – Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there
  • Chelmno – First death camp (used a gas chamber)
  • Treblinka – Death camp in Poland. 850,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers in just one year. In 1943, the camp was blown up by an uprising of the remaining 600 prisoners, all but 40 died
  • Hitler’s path to war; countries he took over – Rhineland, Austria, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland
  • Rosie the Riveter represented working women in WWII
  • Adolf Hitler – German leader of Nazi Party. 1933-1945. Rose to power by promoting racist and national views
  • Hideki Tojo – Prime Minister of Japan during WWII
  • Franklin Roosevelt – Pres. of US during WWII
  • Harry Truman – Became Pres. when FDR died; gave the order to drop the atomic bomb
  • Fascism – A political system headed by a dictator that calls for extreme nationalism and racism and no tolerance of opposition
  • Internment – Temporary imprisonment of members of a specific group
  • Rationing – A limited portion or allowance of food or goods; limitation of use
  • Holocaust – A methodical plan orchestrated by Hitler to ensure German supremacy. It called for the elimination of Jews, nonconformists, homosexuals, non-Aryans, and mentally and physically disabled
  • Benito Mussolini promised to revise Italy’s economy and rebuild its armed forces; new Roman Empire


  • Schlieffen Plan – Hitler’s strategy for attacking first; involved using airplanes and tanks and striking fast
  • Dwight Eisenhower – US general who supervised the invasion of Normandy and the defeat of Nazi Germany
  • Hirohito – Emperor of Japan during WWII
  • Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 – The first peacetime draft that provided for all men 21-45 to register for the military
  • Nonaggression Pact – 1939; secret agreement between German leader Hitler and Soviet leader Stalin not to attack one another and to divide Poland
  • When Chamberlain returned to England from Munich, he boasted that the Munich Agreement meant ‘peace for our time’ by giving Hitler Czechoslovakia
  • 1931 Invasion of Manchuria – Japan invaded to acquire coal and oil
  • Hiroshima – City in Japan, the first to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, on Aug. 6, 1945. The bombing hastened the end of WWII
  • Kamikaze – Japanese suicidal pilots
  • Operation Overlord – The code name for the Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy on June 6, 1944 (D-Day)
  • Operation Barbarossa – Codename for Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII
  • Luftwaffe – German air force
  • Appeasement – Accepting demands in order to avoid conflict
  • Lebensraum – Hitler’s expansionist theory based on a drive to acquire ‘living space’ for the German people
  • Harry S. Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb
  • Mein Kampf – ‘My Struggle’ by Hitler, later became the basic book of Nazi goals and ideology, reflecting obsession
  • Benito Mussolini – Fascist dictator of Italy that at first used bullying to gain power, then never had full power
  • Joseph Stalin – Communist dictator of the Soviet Union, he used 5-year plans to industrialize his country before killing millions in the Great Purge
  • League of Nations – Weak international organization
  • Battle of Britain – A series of battles between German and British air forces, fought over Britain in 1940-1941
  • Enigma Machine – German code machine broken by the Allies and used to predict where the Germans would bomb
  • Stalingrad – Decisive battle in German invasion of Russia, the Germans were surrounded and systematically destroyed. More than 2 million casualties
  • Iwo Jima – A bloody and prolonged operation on the island of Iwo Jima in which American Marines landed and defeated Japanese defenders (Feb. and March 1945). American Marines placed a flag on this island close to Japan after taking the island