Art and Culture/World War II
Pre-war
Germany
Hindenburg (Independent) defeated Hitler in 1932 elections.
Hitler was named chancellor in 1933.
Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe was found guilty and executed.
Following Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler merged the presidency with the office of Chancellor under the title of Leader and Chancellor, making himself Germany's Head of State and Head of government.
Horst Wessel was a German Nazi Party activist and an SA-Sturmfuhrer who was made a posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent death in 1930.
Schutzstaffel – SS. In 1932, Heinrich Himmler introduced the all-black SS uniform, designed by fashion designer Hugo Boss.
Ernst Rohm was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung (‘Storm Battalion’; SA; storm troopers; brownshirts) the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander. In 1934, as part of the Night of the Long Knives, he was executed on Hitler's orders as a potential rival. Himmler and Heydrich plotted downfall of Rohm. Murdered in Munich.
Germany signed non-aggression pact with Poland in 1934.
Federal Chancellor of Austria Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained his regime until Adolf Hitler's annexing of Austria in 1938.
Herman Goering – WWI fighter pilot, became chief of Luftwaffe in 1935.
German conscription introduced in 1935.
The Saar was occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France from 1920 to 1935 under a League of Nations mandate. After a plebiscite was held in 1935, it was restored to Germany.
In 1936, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, German troops marched into the Rhineland.
Kristallnacht – ‘Night of broken glass’, a pogrom organised by Goebbels in 1938. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew resident in Paris.
Anschluss was the 1938 de facto annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime.
Joachim Von Ribbentrop was German foreign minister from 1938 to 1945.
Georg Elser tried to assassinate Hitler in Munich, in 1939.
Thule Society was a German occultist group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party)
League of German Girls was the girls' wing of the Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth.
League of German Girls or League of German Maidens), was the girl's wing of the overall Nazi party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only female youth organization in Nazi Germany
Rudolf Hoss the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, from 1940 to 1943
Hans Frank became Nazi Germany's chief jurist and Governor-General of occupied Poland's 'General Government' territory. During his tenure (1939–1945), he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population and became directly involved in the mass murder of Polish Jews
Alfred Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to ‘degenerate’ modern art. He is also known for his rejection of Christianity
Sturmabteilung, abbreviated SA, (German for ‘storm detachment’, usually translated as ‘stormtroopers’), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the NSDAP – the German Nazi party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. SA men were often called ‘brownshirts’, for the colour of their uniforms; this distinguished them from the Schutzstaffel (SS, German for ‘protection squadron’), who wore black and brown uniforms.
Munich
Munich Pact was an agreement permitting Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September). The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Nazi Germany, France, Britain, and Italy. Chamberlain returned home declaring ‘peace in our time’. In return for Sudetenland, Hitler promised not to make further territorial demands.
Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Edouard Daladier (French PM) signed the Munich Agreement in 1938.
The Sudetenland became part of Germany between 1 October and 10 October 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939.
Poland
“Polish Corridor”: a territory located in the region of Pomerelia which provided the Second Republic of Poland (1920–39) with access to the Baltic Sea, thus dividing the bulk of Germany from the province of East Prussia. The Free City of Danzig (now the Polish city of Gdansk) was separate from both Poland and Germany.
1939
23 August: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact or Nazi-Soviet Pact was a non-aggression treaty between the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union. It was signed in Moscow in 1939, by the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Demarcation line was River Vistula. The mutual non-aggression treaty lasted until Operation Barbarossa in 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
1 September: Gleiwitz incident was a staged attack by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 31 August 1939, against a German radio station in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany. This provocation was the best-known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany SS project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.
The military assault at Danzig began with an artillery bombardment of Polish positions at the Westerplatte peninsula by the old German battleship Schleswig-Holstein and the landing of German infantry on the peninsula.
2 September: Danzig is annexed by Germany. Resistors entrenched in the city's Polish Post Office are overwhelmed.
6 September: Kraków captured; Polish army is in general retreat.
17 September: Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.
18: Polish President leaves Poland for Romania, where they are both interned; Russian forces reach Vilnius and Brest-Litovsk.
19 September: German and Soviet armies link up near Brest Litovsk.
28 September: German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty is signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop. The secret protocol specifies the details of partition of Poland originally defined in Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and adds Lithuania to the Soviet Union sphere of interest. The remaining Polish army and militia in the centre of Warsaw capitulate to the Germans.
6 October: Polish resistance in the Polish September Campaign comes to an end.
10 October: Poland's military surrenders to the Germans.
19 October: Portions of Poland are formally inducted into Germany; the first Jewish ghetto is established at Lublin.
1 November: Parts of Poland, including the Danzig Corridor, are annexed by Germany. Soviet Union annexes the eastern parts of occupied Poland to Ukraine and Belorussia.
14 November: Polish government-in-exile moves to London.
23 November: Polish Jews are ordered to wear Star of David armbands.
1940
April: 22,000 Polish officers, Policemen, and others are massacred by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyn massacre.
3 October: Warsaw's Jews are directed to move into the Warsaw ghetto.
15 November: Warsaw's Jewish ghetto is cordoned off from the rest of the city.
1941
15 February: deportation of Austrian Jews to ghettos in Poland begins.
4 July: mass murder of Polish scientists and writers in Lwów.
2 August: SS Commander Hans Krueger orders the registration of hundreds of Jewish and Polish intelligentsia in Stanisławów, who are subsequently tortured and murdered.
1942
22 July: systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins. Treblinka II, "a model" extermination camp, is opened in Poland.
1943
18 January: Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rise up for the first time, starting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
13 March: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.
16 March: first reports of the Katyn massacre in Poland seep to the West. NKVD blame the massacre on the Germans.
19 April: 19: Warsaw Ghetto uprising: On the Eve of Passover, Jews resist German attempts to deport the Jewish community.
16 May: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends with the ghetto destroyed. About 14,000 Jews killed and about another 40,000 sent to the death camp at Treblinka.
4 July: exiled Polish leader General Władysław Sikorski dies in an air crash in Gibraltar.
16 August: Polish Jews begin a resistance in Białystok but the leaders commit suicide when they run out of ammunition.
14 October: members of the Sobibor extermination camp covertly kill 11 German SS officers and a number of camp guards. About 300 out of the 600 prisoners in the camp escape into the forests.
1944
4 January: 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army enters Poland.
24 July: Majdanek Concentration Camp is liberated by Soviet forces. Soviets control several large cities in Poland, including Lublin.
1 August: Second Warsaw Uprising, this time by the Polish Home Army, begins: the Polish people rise up, expecting aid from the approaching Soviet Union armies, but it never comes.
6 August: Germans round up young men in Krakow to stop a potential Kraków Uprising.
5 September: Warsaw uprising continues; Red Army forces are available for relief and reinforcement, but are apparently unable to move without Stalin's order.
2 October: Warsaw Uprising crushed. The Soviet armies never moved to assist the Polish.
1939
22 September: Soviet Army captures Polish town of Wilno (now Vilnius).
28 September: Estonia submits to Soviet ultimatum, accepts military bases.
5 October: Latvia submits to Soviet ultimatum, accepts military bases.
10 October: Lithuania accepts Soviet bases. Soviet Union transfers Vilnius, previously Wilno of Poland, to Lithuania.
18 October: Red Army units enter Estonia.
26 November: Soviets stage the Shelling of Mainila, bombarding a Soviet village in order to obtain a pretext for war against Finland – known as the Winter War.
30 November: Helsinki bombed, and the Soviets troops cross Finnish border.
7 December: Soviets reach main line of Finnish resistance on the Karelian Isthmus.
14 December: Soviet Union expelled from League of Nations.
1940
1 February: Soviets start all-out offensive on the Karelian Isthmus.
5 February: Britain and France agree to intervene in Scandinavia.
11 February: Soviets score decisive breakthrough of Mannerheim Line.
12 February: Finns seek peace terms.
12 March: Moscow Peace Treaty signed in Moscow.
13 March: Cease-fire goes into effect.
9 April: Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
15 April: Allies send troops to Norway but the nation is ultimately conquered by Germany. Haakon VII, King of Norway, was the first king of Norway after the 1905 dissolution of the personal union with Sweden. He played a pivotal role in uniting the Norwegian nation in its resistance of the attack and five-year-long Nazi occupation during World War II
In a surprise dawn attack in April 1940, German forces attacked Oslo and the major Norwegian ports (Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansand and Narvik). The Norwegian Army, manning a fort in the Oslofjord, sank the German cruiser Blucher. This delayed the Nazi German invasion long enough for King Haakon, his government and the parliament to escape the city.
Iceland joined Denmark in asserting neutrality. After the German occupation of Denmark in 1940, the Althing replaced the King with a regent and declared that the Icelandic government should assume the control of foreign affairs and other matters previously handled by Denmark. A month later, British armed forces invaded and occupied the country, violating Icelandic neutrality. In 1941, the occupation was taken over by the United States, so that Britain could use its troops elsewhere.
June–August: The Soviet Union occupies and annexes the Baltic States.
14 June: Soviet Union begins air and naval blockade of Estonia.
15 June: Soviet Union occupies Lithuania.
17 June: Estonia and Latvia submit to Soviet demands and are occupied.
3 August: Soviet Union annexes Lithuania.
5 August: Soviet Union annexes Latvia.
6 August: Soviet Union annexes Estonia.
1941
14 June: First mass deportations from Estonia (10 000), Latvia (15 000) and Lithuania (18 000) to sparsely populated areas of Siberia.
15 June: The Finnish army begins mobilization in preparation for an attack on the Soviet Union in conjunction with Germany.
22 June: Germany launches an invasion of the Soviet Union, breaking its non-aggression treaty without warning. The Finnish occupy the Aland islands.
24/25 June: Soviet authorities massacre political prisoners in Rainiai, Lithuania.
25 June: Continuation War breaks out between Finland and Soviet Union – lasts until 19 September 1944.
7 July: German forces reach Southern Estonia.
28 August: Tallinn occupied by German troops.
31 August: mainland Baltic States fully occupied by German forces.
1942
1 February: Vidkun Quisling becomes the Nazi-aligned Minister-President of Norway
25 February: German law comes into force in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but only applies to ethnic Germans.
1943
16 November: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in Vemork, Norway.
1944
9 March: Soviets bomb Tallinn.
2 February - 26 July: Battle of Narva Bridgehead. This was a six-month long campaign around Narva in Estonia which stalled the Soviet advance in the Baltic region.
25 June: Battle of Tali-Ihantala between Finnish and Soviet troops. This is the largest battle ever to be fought in the Nordic countries.
13 July: Vilnius occupied by Soviet army.
27 July - 10 August: Battles on the Tannenberg Line. Soviet attacks halted.
1 September: Finland announced the cessation of military cooperation with Germany to sign an armistice with the Soviet Union.
22 September: Tallinn occupied by Soviet army.
13 October: Riga occupied by Soviet army.
12 November: Tirpitz sunk by RAF bombers from 617 Squadron in Tromso Fjord.
1945
4 March: Finland declares war on Germany, backdated to 15 September 1944.
Balkans
1939
April: Italian invasion of Albania was a result of the expansionist policies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Albania was rapidly overrun, its ruler, King Zog I, forced into exile, and the country made into an Italian protectorate.
21 September: Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated by the Iron Guard, an ultra-nationalistic group.
1940
6 September: King Carol abdicates the Romanian throne in favour of his son Michael.
7 October: Germany invades Romania.
28 October: Italy issues ultimatum to Greece. The Italian Royal Army launches attacks into Greece from Italian-held Albania and begins the Greco-Italian War. Hitler angered by unilateral action of Italians.
2 November: Italians advance into Greece and bomb Salonika.
16 November: Churchill orders some British troops in North Africa to be sent to Greece.
14-19 November: Greeks counter-attack and evict Italian troops from Greek soil.
23 November: Romania signs the Tripartite Pact.
1-8 December: Greek forces continue to drive the Italian armies back.
28 December: Italy requests military assistance from Germany against the Greeks.
1941
7 March: British troops land in Greece
27 March: Crown Prince Peter becomes Peter II of Yugoslavia after army overthrows the pro-German government. Hitler orders invasion of Yugoslavia, which results in delaying Operation Barbarossa.
6 April: Combined German, Hungarian and Italian forces move through Romania and Hungary to invade Yugoslavia and Greece.
7 April: Luftwaffe bombs Belgrade.
8 April: Germans occupy Salonika.
10 April: Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) is established under Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša.
12 April: Belgrade surrenders.
16 April: Greek army cut off in Albania.
17 April: Yugoslavia surrenders. A government in exile is formed in London. King Peter escapes to Greece.
18 April: Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis commits suicide. British plan evacuation of Greece.
22 April: The British, both military and civilian, begin to evacuate Greece.
23 April: Greek government is evacuated to Crete and then to Cairo after fall of Crete.
24 April: British and Australian forces evacuate from Greece to Crete and Egypt.
25 April: Axis forces defeat Commonwealth forces at Thermopylae.
27 April: Athens occupied by German troops. Greece surrenders.
13 May: Yugoslav Army Colonel Draža Mihailović summons up the "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland" which mostly consists of Serbs, but also includes Slovenes, Bosnians, and Croats (afterwards known as the Chetniks). Mihailović establishes HQ at Ravna Gora and issues an uprising call promising a struggle against the occupiers and the restoration of the Yugoslavian Monarchy. Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslav Partisans are aligned with the Soviet Union.
20 May: German paratroopers land on Crete.
28 May: British evacuate Crete.
22 June: Romania invades south-western borders of the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa.
8 July: Yugoslavia is dissolved by the Axis into its component parts.
27 September: The National Liberation Front (EAM) is founded in Greece.
12 December: Romania and Bulgaria declare war on US and UK.
1943
17 May: Germans launch major offensive against Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia.
1 August: Operation Tidal Wave. The Ploiești: oil refineries in Romania, are bombed by U.S. IX Bomber Command.
4 September: Soviet Union declares war on Bulgaria.
4 December: Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile.
1944
20 August: Red Army relaunches offensive into Romania.
23 August: Romania leaves Axis, surrenders to the Soviet Union, and joins the Allies. Prime Minister Ion Antonescu toppled and arrested by King Michael I.
31 August: Red Army enters Bucharest.
8 September: Soviet troops enter Bulgaria.
9 September: Fatherland Front of Bulgaria overthrows the national government and declares war on Germany.
16 September: Soviet troops enter Sofia.
1 October: Soviet troops enter Yugoslavia.
25 October: Romania “liberated” by Red Army.
1 November: British forces occupy Salonika.
1945
14–15 May: Battle of Poljana in Yugoslavia is the last major battle of World War II in Europe.
Italy
1939
22 May: Pact of Steel – known formally as the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy, was an agreement between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany signed on 22 May 1939, by the foreign ministers of each country, Count Galeazzo Ciano for Italy and Joachim von Ribbentrop for Germany.
7 December: Italy again declares its neutrality.
1940
18 March: Mussolini agrees with Hitler that Italy will enter the war "at an opportune moment".
10 June: Italy declares war on France and the UK.
24 June: Franco-Italian armistice signed.
20 August: Italy announces a blockade of British ports in the Mediterranean.
27 September: Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin by Germany, Italy, and Japan, promising mutual aid. Informally known as the "Axis".
11 November: British naval forces launch attack against Italian navy at Taranto. Fairy Swordfish bombers from HMS Illustrious damage three battleships, two cruisers and multiple auxiliary craft. The British success influences Japanese military preparing for an attack on Pearl Harbor.
1941
11 December: Italy declares war on the US.
1942
4 December: US bombs Naples.
1943
Operation Mincement helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted ‘top secret’ documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría (Spain). The corpse was a 34-year old Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael, although the documents identifed him falsely as Major Bill Martin.
10 July: Operation Husky (the Allied invasion of Sicily) begins. It opened the way to the Allied invasion of Italy. The Eastern Task Force was led by General Bernard Montgomery and consisted of the British Eighth Army (which included the 1st Canadian Infantry Division). The Western Task Force was commanded by Lieutenant General George S. Patton and consisted of the Seventh United States Army. Both task forces reported to General Harold Alexander.
22 July: U.S. forces under Patton capture Palermo.
24 July: Mussolini summons the Fascist Grand Council, which votes no confidence in Mussolini.
25 July: Mussolini is arrested and relieved of his offices. Pietro Badoglio forms a new government.
6 August: German troops enter Italy.
11 August: Axis forces begin to evacuate Sicily.
17 August: 17: All of Sicily under Allied control.
3 September: secret Italian Armistice is signed and Italy drops out of the war. Mainland Italy is invaded when the British XXIII Corps lands at Reggio Calabria.
8 September: The Germans begin disarmament of Italian armed forces.
9 September: The Allies land at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) whilst British troops take Taranto.
10 September: German troops occupy Rome. Italian fleet surrenders at Malta and other Mediterranean ports.
11 September: British troops enter Bari.
12 September: Mussolini is rescued from a mountaintop captivity by German SS troops led by Otto Skorzeny. Hitler appoints Mussolini head of the puppet "Italian Social Republic."
13 September: Germans counterattack at the Salerno beachhead.
16 September: British forces occupy Italian-held Greek islands in the Aegean.
16 September: Salerno Mutiny - 600 men of the British X Corps, who in1943 refused assignment to new units as replacements during the Allied invasion of Italy.
19 September: Germans evacuate Sardinia.
21 September: Massacre of the Acqui Division on the Greek island of Cephallonia begins: Germans execute over 4,500 Italians.
27 September: Germans occupy Corfu.
28 September: Naples expels German occupiers.
3 October: Germans occupy Kos.
5 October: Allies cross Italy's Volturno Line.
13 October: Italy declares war on Germany.
2 December: Germans bomb Bari, with one bomb hitting an allied cargo ship carrying mustard gas, releasing the chemical which killed 83 allied soldiers.
1944
22 January: Operation Shingle was an Allied amphibious landing in the area of Anzio and Nettuno, Italy. The operation was intended to outflank German forces of the Winter Line and enable an attack on Rome. The Allies were unable to break out of the beachhead and the line holds until late May.
The Winter Line was a series of German military fortifications in Italy, constructed during World War II by Organisation Todt. The primary Gustav Line ran across Italy from just north of where the Garigliano River flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west, through the Apennine Mountains to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic coast in the east. The centre of the line, where it crossed the main route north to Rome (Highway 6) which followed the Liri Valley, was anchored around the mountains behind the town of Cassino including Monte Cassino, a monastery founded by St Benedict.
18 May: Battle of Monte Cassino ends in Allied victory. Polish troops of the 2nd Polish Corps (who had a bear name Wojtek serving as a shell carrier) capture Monte Cassino. German troops in west Italy have withdrawn to the Hitler Line.
23 May: Allies start a new breakout from Anzio.
25 May: Allies at Anzio link up with Allies from south Italy. Though Harold Alexander wishes to trap the German Tenth Army, American Fifth Army commander Mark W. Clark orders Truscott to turn north toward Rome. The Germans in Italy form a new defensive position on the Caesar C line.
4 June: Allies enter Rome, one day after the Germans declared it an open city, with US General Mark Clark holding a press conference on the steps of the Town Hall on the Capitoline Hill German troops fall back to the Trasimene Line.
19 July: American forces take Leghorn (Livorno).
15 August: Allies reach the "Gothic Line", the last German strategic position in North Italy.
25 October: Albert Kesselring, the German commander in Italy is injured. His car collided with an artillery piece coming out of a side road. He suffered serious head and facial injuries and did not return to his command until January 1945.
1945
6 April: Spring offensive in Italy begins.
24 April: Allies encircle the last German armies near Bologna and the Italian war effectively ends.
28 April: Mussolini shot and hanged in Milan along with his mistress Clara Petacci.
29 April: all forces in Italy officially surrender and a ceasefire is declared.
Western Front
1939
3 September: Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. Churchill appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.
7-16 September: Saar Offensive was a French operation into Saarland on the German 1st Army defence sector. The only French offensive of WWII. The French commander is Maurice Gamelin.
30 September: French forces fall back to the Maginot Line in anticipation of a German invasion.
3 October: British forces move to the Belgian border, anticipating a German invasion of the West.
16 October: ships in the Firth of Forth are attacked in the first air attack on Britain.
20 October: The "Phoney War" begins. The French troops settle down on the Maginot line and the British build new fortifications along the "gap" between the Maginot line and the Channel.
27 October: Belgium announces its neutrality.
16 November: James Isbister is the first British civilian casualty when he is killed in an air raid on Orkney.
1940
21 March: Eduoard Daladier resigns as Prime Minister of and is replaced by Paul Reynaud.
28 March: Britain and France make a formal agreement that neither country will seek a separate peace with Germany.
10 May: Germany invades Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain resigns. Britain invades Iceland. Belgium declares a state of emergency. German paratroops capture the Belgian fort Eben Emael.
11 May: Germans occupy Luxembourg.
13 May: Dutch government-in-exile established in London. Heinz Guderian's Panzer corps breaks through at Sedan.
15 May: Dutch army capitulates. German troops cross over the Meuse River.
17 May: Germans enter Brussels and capture Antwerp. Paul Reynaud forms new French government, including 84-year old Marshal Pétain. Maxime Weygand replaces Maurice Gamelin as commander of the French armed forces.
25 May: Allied forces retreat to Dunkirk.
26 May: Calais surrenders to the Germans.
26 May: Operation Dynamo, the Allied evacuation of 340,000 troops from Dunkirk, begins and will last until 3 June.
28 May: Belgium surrenders and King Leopold III is interned.
11 June: French government moves to Tours.
13 June: Paris occupied and French government moves to Bordeaux.
16 June: Reynaud resigns and Philippe Pétain becomes premier of France.
17 June: RMS Lancastria, a British Cunard liner, was sunk off St Nazaire with the loss of an estimated 4000 plus lives. It is the worst single loss of life in British maritime history and the bloodiest single engagement for UK forces (in terms of lives lost) in the whole conflict.
21 June: Franco-German armistice negotiations begin at Compiègne.
22 June: Franco-German armistice signed. The French delegation was led by General Charles Huntziger. Hitler forced French to sign armistice in same railway carriage in Compiegne Forest that had been used for 1918 armistice.
24 June: Franco-Italian armistice signed.
25 June: France officially surrenders to Germany at 01:35.
28 June: General De Gaulle recognised by British as leader of Free French.
Following France's surrender and Armistice with Germany in 1940, Pierre Laval served twice in the Vichy Regime as head of government. He signed orders permitting the deportation of foreign Jews from French soil to the Nazi death camps. After Liberation (1944), Laval was arrested by the French government under General Charles de Gaulle, found guilty of high treason, and executed by firing squad.
The zone libre (‘free zone’) was a partition of the French metropolitan territory established at the Second Armistice. It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Marshall Petain based in Vichy, in a relatively unrestricted fashion. To the north lay the (‘occupied zone) in which the powers of the Vichy regime were severely limited
30 June/4 July: Germany invades and occupies the Channel Islands.
3 July: British attack and destroy the French navy at Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria, fearing that it would fall into German hands.
4 July: Vichy French government breaks of diplomatic relations with Britain.
16 July: Operation Sea Lion. Hitler submits plans for the invasion of Britain.
18: Vichy French Air Force bombs Gibraltar.
1 August: Operation Sea Lion set for 15 September.
3-14 September: Hitler postpones the invasion of Britain several times.
12 October: German invasion of Britain is postponed until Spring 1941 at the earliest.
1942
26 January: The first American forces arrive in Europe landing in Northern Ireland.
28 March: British commandos launch Operation Chariot, a raid on the port at Saint Nazaire. The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown commanded by Stephen Beattie and accompanied by 18 shallow draft boats, rammed the St. Nazaire lock gates and was blown up, ending use of the dock, which the British feared would be used by the Tirpitz. The port is completely destroyed and does not resume service till 1947; however, around two-thirds of the raiding forces are lost.
19 August: Operation Jubilee, a raid by British and Canadian forces on Dieppe ends in disaster. Most are killed or captured by the German defenders.
30 August: Luxembourg is formally annexed to the German Reich.
4 October: British Commandos raid Sark and capture one German soldier.
10 November: In violation of a 1940 armistice, Germany invades Vichy France; after French Admiral François Darlan signs an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.
27 November: The French fleet in Toulon was scuttled on 27 November 1942 on the order of the Admiralty of Vichy France to avoid capture by Nazi German forces. The French have declined another option – to join the Allied fleets in North African waters.
7 December: British commandos conduct Operation Frankton a raid on shipping in Bordeaux harbour. Soldiers became known as the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’.
1943
24 December: US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
27 December: Eisenhower is named head of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.
1944
8 February: Operation Overlord, is confirmed.
4 April: General Charles de Gaulle takes command of all Free French forces.
27 April: The Slapton Sands tragedy where US soldiers are killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.
8 May: D-Day for Operation Overlord set for June 5.
4 June: Operation Overlord is postponed 24 hours due to high seas.
5 June: Operation Overlord commences when more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day. The first Allied troops land in Normandy; paratroopers are scattered from Caen southward. The operation commenced with the Normandy landings (Operation Neptune).
6 June: D-Day begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history. Pegasus Bridge – first bridge to be captured by allies in Normandy.
Beaches: Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah.
Sword: easternmost landing site of the invasion allocated to the British 3rd Infantry Division.
Juno: 3rd Canadian Division.
Gold: British 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division.
Omaha: US 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division. The best defended beach and where the Allies suffered the most casualties.
Utah: westernmost landing site. US 4th Infantry Division, 82nd Airborne Division, 90th Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Division.
7 June: Bayeux is liberated.
10 June: village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed and 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, are massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site and the original has been maintained as a memorial.
26 June: Cherbourg is liberated. American troops isolated and captured the fortified port, which was considered vital to the campaign.
9 July: After heavy resistance Caen is liberated. Originally, the Allies aimed to take the city, one of the largest cities in Normandy, on D-Day.
Mulberry harbours – two prefabricated or artificial military harbours were taken across the English Channel from Britain with the invading army in sections and assembled off the coast of Normandy to offload cargo on to a beach. It was designed by Hugh Hughes.
17 July: Field Marshal Rommel is badly wounded when his car is strafed from the air.
24 July: Operation Cobra: the breakout by US troops at St. Lo. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley's intention was to take advantage of the German preoccupation with British and Canadian activity around the town of Caen, and immediately punch through the German defenses that were penning in his troops.
14 August: Allies fail to close the Falaise pocket with Germans troops escaping the pincer movement of the Allies. Taking its name from the pocket around the town of Falaise within which Army Group B, consisting of the German Seventh and Fifth Panzer Armies became encircled by the advancing Western Allies, the battle is also referred to as the Falaise Gap after the corridor which the Germans sought to maintain to allow their escape. The battle resulted in the destruction of the bulk of Germany's forces west of the River Seine and opened the way to Paris and the German border.
15 August: Operation Dragoon begins, marked by amphibious Allied landings in southern France. The invasion was initiated via a parachute drop by the 1st Airborne Task Force, followed by an amphibious assault by elements of the U.S. Seventh Army, followed a day later by a force made up primarily of the French First Army.
25 August: Paris is liberated. Dietrich von Choltitz was the German military governor of Paris during the closing days of the German occupation during World War II. He claimed to have disobeyed Hitler's order to leave Paris in rubble during this last stage of the war.
25 August: In Southern France Allies take Grenoble and Avignon.
3 September: Welsh Guards liberate Brussels.
4 September: Antwerp occupied.
10 September: Luxembourg is liberated. Allied forces meet at Dijon, cutting France in half. First Allied troops enter Germany at Aachen.
10 September: Dutch railway workers go on strike. The German response results in the Dutch famine of 1944/1945 (Hongerwinter) when bread rations were reduced to one slice a week.
17 September: Operation Market Garden, the attempted liberation of Arnhem and turning of the German flank begins. Allied forces failed to cross the bridge at Arnhem (“A Bridge Too Far”).
25 September: British troops pull out of Arnhem with the failure of Operation Market Garden. Over 6,000 paratroopers are captured.
30 September: German garrison in Calais surrenders.
21 October: Aachen is occupied.
Volksturm was a German national militia. It was founded on Adolf Hitler's orders in October 1944 and conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard
2 November: Belgium liberated.
16 December: The Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces attempt a breakthrough in the Ardennes region (known to the Germans as Operation Autumn Mist). The main object of Hitler's plan is the retaking of Antwerp.
17 December: Malmedy massacre, where SS troops led by Joachim Peiper execute 86 American prisoners in the Ardennes offensive.
18 December: Bastogne is surrounded.
20 December: General Anthony McAuliffe's sends his famous message of "Nuts" to German officers at Bastogne demanding surrender.
23 December: improving weather allows Allied aircraft to begin their attacks on the German offensive, a factor that Hitler feared in his planning.
26 December: siege of Bastogne is broken, and with it the Ardennes offensive proves a failure.
1945
25 January: Battle of the Bulge ends with German withdrawals.
9 February: “Colmar Pocket”, the last German foothold west of the Rhine, is eliminated.
7 March: Battle of Remagen as German troops fail to dynamite the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine. U.S. First Army captures the bridge and begins crossing the river. Cologne falls.
22-23 March: Allied forces cross the Rhine at Oppenheim.
24 March: British troops cross the Rhine at Wesel.
24 April: 24: Himmler makes a secret surrender offer to the Allies provided that the Red Army is not involved. The offer is rejected.
25 April: Elbe Day marks the first contact between Soviet and American troops at the river Elbe, near Torgau in Germany.
29 April: Hitler marries his companion Eva Braun.
30 April: Hitler and his wife commit suicide, he by a combination of poison and a gunshot. He also killed his dog Blondie. Before he dies, he dictates his last will and testament, whereby Goebbels is appointed Reich Chancellor and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz is appointed Reich President.
1 May: Goebbels and his wife Magda poison their six children and commit suicide.
4 May: German troops in Denmark, Northern Germany and The Netherlands surrender to Montgomery.
6 May: the last day of fighting for American troops in Europe.
7 May: Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies at the Western Allied Headquarters in Rheims at 2:41 a.m. General Alfred Jodl signs for Germany.
8 May: Victory in Europe Day (VE Day): The ceasefire takes effect at one minute past midnight.
9 May: German garrison in the Channel Islands surrenders. Jersey liberated.
Donitz held this position for about 20 days, until the final surrender to the Allies. After the war, Donitz was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and served 10 years in prison.
North and East Africa, and the Middle East
1940
28 June: Marshal Italo Balbo, C-in-C of Italian North Africa, is accidentally killed in a "friendly fire incident" at Tobruk, Libya. He is replaced by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.
1 July: Italian Air Force starts bombing the British Mandate of Palestine.
4 August: East Africa Campaign: Italian forces occupy British Somaliland.
19 August: Italian forces capture Berbera, the capital of British Somaliland and the British defenders flee to Aden.
9 September: Italian forces in Libya launch the invasion of Egypt. Italians bomb Tel Aviv in the British Mandate of Palestine.
13 September: Italian colonial forces cross the border and advance into Egypt.
16 September: Italian invasion of Egypt halted when approximately five Italian divisions set up defensively in a series of armed camps after advancing about 95 km to Sidi Barrani.
19/20 October: Italians bomb Bahrain and Cairo.
6-9 December: Operation Compass. British and Indian troops begin an offensive against Italian forces in Egypt. The Italians are overrun, General Pietro Maletti is killed and the Italians are forced to withdraw towards Libya.
1941
5 January: Operation Compass: Australian troops capture Italian-held Bardia and take 45,000 prisoners.
16 January: British forces begin counter attack in East African.
21 January: Operation Compass: British and Australian troops capture Tobruk.
7 February: Operation Compass: 130,000 Italians surrender near Benghazi.
11 February: Elements of the Afrika Korps start to arrive in Tripoli. British enter Italian Somaliland.
14 February: Rommel arrives in Tripoli and the Afrika Korps moves against the advanced British positions. Meanwhile, the British in North Africa have been weakened by the transfer of some troops to Greece.
20 February: German and British troops confront each other at El Agheila.
24 March: Defeated at El Agheila, the British retreat and within three weeks are driven back to Egypt.
3 April: British troops capture Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Rommel takes Benghazi.
April-December: 1st siege of Tobruk started on 11 April 1941, when it was attacked by an Italo–German force under Rommel and continued for 240 days up to 27 November 1941, when it was relieved by the Allied 8th Army during Operation Crusader.
25/26 April: Rommel victorious at Halfaya Pass and crosses into Egypt. Tobruk continues to hold.
2 May: Anglo-Iraqi War begins.
13 May: German "Flyer Command Iraq" arrives in Mosul to support the Iraqi government of Rashid Ali.
16 May: Rommel defeats a counter-attack at Halfaya Pass.
27 May: British forces advance on Baghdad.
29/30 May: German military mission, Rashid Ali and his supporters flee Iraq. End of the Anglo-Iraqi War.
8 June: Vichy French-controlled Syria and Lebanon are invaded by Allied forces.
10 June: Assab, the last Italian-held port in East Africa is taken.
15-17 June: Operation Battleaxe: failed Allied offensive aimed at clearing eastern Cyrenaica of German and Italian forces.
1 July: General Claude Auchinleck (known as ‘The Auk’) takes over from General Wavell. Wavell had mounted successful offensives into Libya (Operation Compass) in December 1940 and Eritrea and Ethiopia in January 1941. By February 1941, his Western Desert Force under Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor had defeated the Italian Tenth Army at Beda Fomm. However, in February Wavell had been ordered to halt his advance into Libya and send troops to Greece where the Germans and Italians were attacking. He disagreed with this decision but followed his orders. The result was a disaster.
1 July: British defeat Vichy French at Battle of Palmyra.
12 July: Vichy French surrender in Syria.
25 August: British and Soviet troops invade Iran to save the Abadan oilfields and the important railways and routes to Soviet Union.
22-26 November: Rommel starts a counter-offensive , and makes a 15-mile foray into Egypt before retreating to Bardia for refuelling. Tobruk is temporarily relieved when the 8th Army meets with the besieged.
16 December: Rommel withdraws all the way to El Agheila, where he had begun in March to await reinforcements of men and tanks.
25 December: Allied forces retake Benghazi.
The Special Air Service was a unit of the British Army during the Second World War, formed in July 1941 by David Stirling.
1942
6 January: British advance to El Agheila.
21 January: Afrika Korps begins a counter-offensive at El Agheila.
29 January: Afrika Korps recaptures Benghazi.
26 May: Rommel begins an offensive at the Gazala line (west of Tobruk). The offensive lasts well into June and ends with a total victory for Rommel.
5 June: British suffer further heavy tank losses fighting in “The Cauldron” at Gazala.
14 June: Auchinleck authorizes General Ritchie to make a concerted withdrawal from forward positions along the Gazala Line.
21 June: Afrika Korps recaptures Tobruk and capture 35,000 men.
1 July: Rommel assaults British defences at First Battle of El Alamein. Largely a stalemate and ends on 26 July.
13 August: General Bernard Montgomery appointed commander of British Eighth Army.
30 August: Rommel makes last attempt to break through the British lines at Battle of Alam Halfa.
23 September: Rommel leaves North Africa for medical treatment in Germany.
23 October -5 November: Second Battle of El Alamein begins with massive Allied bombardment of German positions. Then Australian forces, mainly, begin advance while offshore British naval forces support the right flank. This marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign. The Allied victory turned the tide in the North African Campaign.
25: Rommel returns from his sickbed in Germany.
‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’ – Churchill, after El Alamein
8 November: Operation Torch. Allies invade Vichy-controlled Morocco and Algeria.
10 November: French Admiral François Darlan signs an armistice with the Allies in North Africa. Oran is captured and there are more Allied landings near the Tunisian border. Montgomery begins a major offensive.
13 November: British recaptures Tobruk.
20 November: Allies take Benghazi with Afrika Corps in full retreat.
12 December: Germans abandon El Agheila and retreat to Tripoli.
24 December: Admiral Darlan, the former Vichy leader who had switched sides following the Torch landings, is assassinated in Algiers.
28 December: French Somaliland surrenders to British and Free French forces.
1943
15 January: British offensive aimed at taking Tripoli begins.
16 January: Iraq declares war on the Axis.
23 January: British capture Tripoli.
2 February: Germans retreat into Tunisia and Allies have all of Libya under control.
13 February: Rommel launches a counter-attack against the Americans in Tunisia. At the Battle of the Kasserine Pass inexperienced American troops are forced to retreat.
26 February: Rommel retreats from the Mareth Line in Tunisia.
6 March: the Battle of Medenine in Tunisia proves to be Rommel's last battle in Africa.
9 March: Rommel returns to Germany and command is handed over to General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim.
18-23 March: Allies make gains in Tunisia.
26 March: British finally take the key position of "Longstop Hill", which opens the road to Tunis.
7 May: British captures Tunis and the Americans take Bizerte.
13 May: Remaining German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allied forces, who take more than 250,000 prisoners.
Miscellaneous
Desert Rats – 7th Armoured Division in WW II, named after the jerboa
Afrika Korps was the German expeditionary force in Libya and Tunisia during the North African Campaign
Barbarossa and the Eastern Front
1941
22 June: Operation Barbarossa. Germany invades the Soviet Union ending the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. A three-pronged operation aimed at Leningrad, Moscow, and the southern oil fields of the Caucasus.
30 June: Stepan Bandera proclaimed an Independent Ukrainian State in Lviv assuming the Germans would aid them against the Soviet Union. Instead the German leadership arrested the newly formed government and sent them to concentration camps in Germany. Bandera was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis until 1944.
3 July: Stalin announces "scorched earth policy".
10 July: Germans take Minsk and advance deep into the Ukraine.
5/6 August: Germans capture Smolensk and 300,000 soldiers in the Smolensk pocket.
8 September: siege of Leningrad begins. It will last until January 1944 and was one of the longest and most destructive sieges of a large city in modern history. To sustain the defence of the city, the Red Army established a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad utilising Lake Lagoda by means of watercraft during the warmer months and land vehicles driven over thick ice in winter.
10-19 September: Germans surround and capture Kiev. The city was occupied until November 1943.
2 October – 7 January 1942: Operation Typhoon and Operation Wotan: German strategic offensive to conduct a pincer movement to the North and South of Moscow.
8 October: Germans reach the Sea of Azov.
10 October: German armies capture about 660,000 Soviet troops east of Smolensk.
15 October: German drive on Moscow stutters with the approach of winter but Muscovites build tank traps and other fortifications for the coming siege. Stalin remains in the city.
18 October: Red Army troop reinforcements arrive in Moscow from Siberia after Stalin is assured by a spy in Tokyo that the Japanese will not attack the USSR from the East.
24 October: Kharkov falls to the Germans.
27 October: German forces reach Sevastopol in the Crimea.
3 November: Germans take Kursk.
22 November: Rostov-on-Don falls to the Germans.
28 November: German Panzers reach the outskirts of Moscow.
5 December: in falling temperatures and blizzards the Germans get to 11 miles from Moscow before the Red Army counter-attacks.
1942
7 January: Soviet Winter counter-offensive forces Germans back from Moscow before grinding to a halt.
1 March: Soviets begin an offensive in the Crimea.
12 May: Red Army offensive to recapture Kharkov begins.
17-31 May: Soviet offensive around Kharkov is stopped by German counterattacks. A German pincer movement cuts off advancing Soviet troops.
26 May: Anglo-Soviet Treaty signed by Anthony Eden and by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov which established military and political alliance between the USSR and the British Empire during World War II, and for 20 years after it.
28 June: Case Blue (“Fall Blau”): the German plan to capture Stalingrad and the Soviet Union oil fields in the Caucasus, begins.
1 July: Sevastopol captured by Germans.
23 August – 2 February 1943: Battle of Stalingrad.
13 September: Stalingrad surrounded by the Germans, except for side facing the Volga. Vasily Chuikov is put in charge of the Soviet defence.
18 September: Battle of the "grain silo" in Stalingrad with the Germans beaten back. Soviet troops ferried across the Volga at night.
9 November: Hitler boasts that Stalingrad has been all but taken: “...I wanted to come to the Volga, to a specific place and a specific city. It happened to have Stalin's name....we have it now. Only a few small pockets of resistance are left.
19 November: Operation Uranus: Zhukov’s Red Army forces launch a massive counter-offensive aimed at encircling the Germans in the city.
22 November: German General Friedrich Paulus in Stalingrad sends Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army is surrounded as the Soviet forces. complete their encirclement at Kalach, west of the city.
23 November: the fighting at Stalingrad in "Der Kessel" (the Cauldron). Hitler orders Paulus not to retreat.
12 December: Operation Winter Storm: a failed German attempt to break through to forces trapped in Stalingrad.
25 December: German radio broadcasts a fake Christmas message from the troops in Stalingrad.
1943
1 January: German 1st Panzer Division withdraws from the Terek River area to prevent being encircled.
10 January: Soviet troops renew the offensive at Stalingrad.
21 January: the last airfield at Stalingrad is taken by the Red Army, which is also having more success in the Caucasus.
30 January: Hitler promotes Paulus to the rank of field marshal in order to encourage him to continue to fight until death or commit suicide – having [noted that no German or Prussian field marshal had ever been captured alive.
31 January: Paulus and his staff surrender in Stalingrad. Paulus says: "I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bavarian corporal”.
2 February: official surrender of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. Combined casualties estimated at more than 1.5 million.
14-16 February: Rostov-on-Don liberated and Kharkov (temporarily) recaptured.
14 March: Nazis recapture Kharkov.
5 July: Operation Citadel: the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history, begins. A German offensive to pinch out the Kursk salient turns into a massive attack and counter-attack by German and Russian armoured columns. It remains both the largest series of armoured clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka, and the costliest single day of aerial warfare. It was the final strategic offensive the Germans were able to mount in the east.
12-13 July: The Battle of Prokhorovka begins; the largest tank battle in human history. It is the pivotal battle of Operation Citadel. Hitler calls off the Kursk offensive but the Soviets continue the battle. With prior knowledge of the German attack the Soviets mount two counter-offensives: Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev and Operation Kutuzov.
23 August: Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev liberates Kharkov (finally).
25 August: Soviets retake Smolensk.
6 November: The Red Army liberates Kiev.
1944
1 January: Soviet troops enter Poland.
27 January: siege of Leningrad finally lifted, 872 days after it began.
28 January: Russians complete encirclement of two German Army corps at the Korsun pocket in the Ukraine.
2 February - 26 July: Battle of Narva Bridgehead. This was a six-month long campaign around Narva in Estonia which stalled the Soviet advance in the Baltic region.
19 March: Operation Margarethe. Germans occupy Hungary.
10 April: Red Army enters Odessa.
13 May: Crimea liberated.
22 June: Operation Bagration. Soviet offensive to clear the German forces from Belarus launched on the 3rd anniversary of Operation Barbarossa. This results in the destruction of the German Army Group Centre.
3 July: Minsk liberated.
28 July: Red Army take Brest-Litovsk, the site of the Russo-German peace treaty in World War I.
18 August: Red Army reaches the East Prussian border.
1945
13 January: East Prussian Offensive by Red Army begins.
17 January: Red Army troops enter Warsaw.
31 January: Red Army crosses the Oder River into Germany.
13 February: Budapest falls to the Soviets.
29 March: Red Army enters Austria.
30 March: Red Army captures Danzig.
4 April: Bratislava falls to Soviet forces.
16 April: The Battle of the Seelow Heights and the Battle of the Oder-Neisse begin. Soviet troops are now on the approaches to Berlin.
21 April: Battle of Berlin. Zhukov, Rokossovskiy and Konev launch assaults on the German capital with two Soviet fronts attacking from the east and south, while a third overruns German forces positioned north of Berlin.
27 April: encirclement of Berlin completed.
For death of Hitler etc. see details under “Western Front” above.
2 May: Red Army captures the Reichstag building and install the Soviet flag. Berlin surrenders.
8 May: Hilpert surrenders his troops in the Courland Pocket. Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Red Army with a ceremony hosted by the Soviet Union.
9 May: USSR officially pronounces May 9 as Victory Day. The Red Army enters Prague – the last European capital to be liberated.
Miscellaneous
The Amber Room – chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leafs and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg. Originally constructed in the 18th century in Prussia, the Amber Room disappeared during World War II and was recreated in 2003.
MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German ship which was sunk in 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilians, officials and military personnel from Poland, as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate 9400 people died, which would make it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.
Night Witches is the English translation of Nachthexen, a World War II German nickname of the female flyers of 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces. The regiment flew harassment and precision bombing missions against the Germans from 1942 to the end of the war.
Far East
1931
18 September: Mukden Incident, aka the "9.18 Incident": Japanese agents blow up part of the Japanese owned South Manchurian Railroad at Mukden in northeastern China, and label it sabotage by Chinese forces. The Japanese invade and occupy Manchuria.
1933
27 March: Japan leaves the League of Nations.
1937
7 July: Marco Polo Bridge Incident marks the start of the Sino-Japanese War.
December: rape of Nanking.
1939
July: US announces its withdrawal from its commercial treaty with Japan.
1940
22 September: Japan invades French Indochina. The newly created regime of Vichy France granted Japan's demands for military access to Tonkin. This allowed Japan better access to China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
27 September: The Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin by Germany, Italy, and Japan, promising mutual aid.
1941
27 March: Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa arrives in Hawaii and begins to send back information on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.
13 April: Japan and Soviet Union sign a neutrality pact.
26 July: after the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
August: US (supplier of 80% of Japanese oil imports) initiates a complete oil embargo which threatens to cripple both the Japanese economy and military strength once the strategic reserves run dry. Japan seeks alternative oil-sources.
18 October: General Hideki Tōjō becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
17 November: warning of possible attack on Pearl Harbor by Joseph Grew, the United States ambassador to Japan, is ignored.
26 November: the Japanese attack fleet of 33 warships and auxiliary craft, including six aircraft carriers, sails for the Hawaiian Islands.
7 December: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the home of the US Pacific Fleet. Nine warships were sunk but no aircraft carriers were in port. ‘Tora Tora Tora’ – Japanese signal for attack on Pearl Harbour (tora means ‘tiger’).
7 December: Japan declares war on the US and the UK. Japan invades Thailand and British Malaya and launches aerial attacks against Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Shanghai, Singapore and Wake Island.
8 December: FDR speech to a Joint Session of Congress: “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan”.
10 December: British battlecruiser HMS Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales are sunk in a Japanese air attack in the South China Sea.
11 December: Japanese invade Burma.
12 December: Japanese land on the southern Philippine Islands
16 December: Japan invades Borneo.
18 December: Japanese troops land on Hong Kong Island.
23 December: Japanese make a second and this time successful landing on Wake Island. The American garrison surrenders. Japanese also land on Sarawak (Borneo).
23 December: General MacArthur declares Manila an "Open City."
24 December: In the Philippines, American forces retreat into Bataan Peninsula. Japanese bomb Rangoon.
25 December: Hong Kong surrenders.
28 December: Japanese paratroopers land on Sumatra.
1942
11 January: Japan captures Kuala Lumpur and invades the Dutch East Indies.
25 January: Japan invades the Solomon Islands.
15 February: Singapore surrenders to Japanese forces and 80,000 Allied troops are made prisoners of war.
19 February: Japanese bomb Darwin.
19 February: exclusion zones introduced in the US. These zones affect the Japanese on the West Coast, and Germans and Italians primarily on the East Coast.
20 February: Japan invades Bali and Timor.
22 February: FDR orders MacArthur to evacuate the Philippines.
25 February: internment of Japanese-American citizens in the Western United States begins as fears of invasion increase.
27 February: Battle of the Java Sea
28 February: Japanese forces invade Java.
3 March: Japanese bomb Broome, Western Australia.
5 March: Japanese capture Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies.
8 March: Japanese land on New Guinea and advance on Port Moresby. The New Guinea campaign (1942 – 1945) was one of the major military campaigns of World War II. Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian and U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen died during the campaign. The two territories were combined into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea after the war.
9 March: Japan occupies Rangoon.
14 March: Japanese land in the Solomon Islands, and build an airfield on Guadalcanal.
20 March: MacArthur speech, made in Australia: "I came through and I shall return".
23 March: Japanese occupy The Andaman and Nicobar.
9 April: Bataan falls to the Japanese and the "Bataan Death March" begins, as 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war are taken off to detention camps in the north.
18 April: Doolittle Raid on Nagoya, Tokyo and Yokohama was the first air raid by the US to strike the Japanese home islands during World War II. Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers under the command of Jimmy Doolittle were launched from the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornet. This was the only time in U.S. military history that USAF bombers were launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on a combat mission. The plan called for the aircraft to carry out the mission over Japan and then to continue into China. All the aircraft involved in the bombing were lost. The raids are a great boost of morale for Americans whose diet has been mostly bad news.
29 April: Japanese cut the Burma Road.
4–8 May: Battle of the Coral Sea. This was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other. US Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17 makes the first carrier strike attacking Japanese naval targets near Tulagi. Planes from USS Lexington and USS Yorktown sink the carrier Shoho, leading to the first use in the American Navy of the signal, "Scratch one flattop”. USS Lexington is sunk and USS Yorktown damaged but the Japanese cancels the Port Moresby operation.
6 May: On Corregidor, Lt. General Wainwright surrenders the last U.S. forces (12,000 men) in the Philippines.
20 May: Japanese complete conquest of Burma.
31 May: Japanese midget subs sink a support ship in Sydney harbour.
3–6 June: Battle of Midway. Having deduced from signals that the Japanese intend to invade Midway Atoll, the US sends carriers Hornet, Yorktown (repaired since the Battle of the Coral Sea), and Enterprise to intercept the Japanese attack fleet. The Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu are all sunk and the invasion fleet turned back. The Yorktown was disabled and later sunk. The battle is viewed as a turning point in the Pacific war.
21 July-16 November: Kokoda Track campaign consisted of a series of battles fought after the Japanese invaded New Guinea.
7 August: Operation Watchtower. This is the US invasion of the Solomon Islands, including Gualdacanal.
20 August: first US planes arrive at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.
26 August: Battle of Milne Bay, where Japanese land near the eastern tip of New Guinea but are defeated – the first .
28 August: Japanese seaplane drops incendiary bombs in Oregon.
23-27 September: Japanese navy and land forces attack Henderson field but are driven back.
11 October: Battle of Cape Esperance. US navy defeats a Japanese fleet on its way to reinforce troops on Guadalcanal.
23–26 October: Battle of Henderson Field. Japanese attacks on the airfield repulsed with heavy losses. The battle was the last serious ground offensive conducted by Japanese forces on Guadalcanal.
12-15 November: Battle of Guadalcanal was a decisive naval battle during the campaign around the Solomon Islands. Five Sullivan brothers die when the USS Juneau is sunk with much of its crew. The US now controls the seas around the islands.
1943
30 January: Japanese evacuate Guadalcanal.
8 February: Chindits under British General Orde Wingate begin an incursion into Burma.
2-4 March: Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Japanese transports taking troops to New Guinea and sunk.
18 April: Admiral Yamamoto, chief architect of Japanese naval strategy, is killed when his plane is shot down.
11-30 May: Battle of Attu in the Aleutian Islands. This was the only land battle of World War II fought on territory that was incorporated territory of the US.
8 June: Japanese forces evacuate the Aleutians.
21 June: Operation Cartwheel begins. It is aimed at neutralising the major Japanese base at Rabaul.
August: Churchill appoints Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command (SEAC). During his time as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Theatre, Mountbatten oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese by General William Slim.
20 November: Battle of Tarawa begins when US Marines land on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands with heavy loss of life.
1944
30 January: US troops land on various of the Marshall Islands.
4 February: Kwajalein, a major Japanese naval base, is taken by US troops.
5-23 February: Battle of the Admin Box. Fought in the Arakan, in Burma, the battle takes its name from the "administration area" of the Indian Army's 7th Division, which became a makeshift, rectangular defensive position. The Japanese were defeated and suffered 5,000 killed. The new British and Indian army tactics would lead to further Allied victories over the following year.
28 February: US troops invade the Admiralty Islands, isolating Rabaul.
6 March: Wingate's Chindits make forays in Burma.
7 March: battle around Imphal begins as Japanese try to invade India.
22 March: Japanese cross the Indian border.
24 March: Orde Wingate is killed in a plane crash.
6 April: Japanese surround British forces at Imphal and Kohima.
17 April: Japanese launch Operation Ichi-Go in central China to target areas where American bombers are located.
22 April: US troops land in northern New Guinea.
31 May: Japanese retreat from Imphal, ending the invasion of India.
15 June: U.S. Marine and Army forces invade the island of Saipan. Battle of Saipan continues until 9 July.
19-20 June: The Battle of the Philippine Sea (aka “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”). This was the largest aircraft carrier battle in history which proved disastrous for the Japanese, who lost three aircraft carriers and some 600 aircraft.
20 June: siege of Imphal lifted.
22 June: British victorious at Battle of Kohima.
6 July: more than 4,000 Japanese soldiers are killed on Saipan in the largest “banzai” charge of the war. Japanese lose 30,000 men and Saipan is occupied.
10 July: Tokyo is bombed for the first time since the Doolittle raid.
18 July: Tojo resigns as chief minister of the Japanese government and is replaced by General Kuniaki Koiso.
21 July – 10 August: US Marines land on Guam in the Marianas and eventually take it.
24 July: Marines land on Tinian Island in the Marianas. It will eventually be a B-29 base and where the atomic bombers take-off from.
15 September: US Marines land on Peleliu in the Palau Islands. The Battle of Peleliu was fought from September to November as the US tried to capture an airstrip on the small coral island.
20 October: The Battle of Leyte: U.S. forces land on Leyte, Philippines. MacArthur says "I have returned" on arrival.
23-26 October: The Battle of Leyte Gulf (aka Second Battle of the Philippine Sea): US Third and Seventh Fleets win a decisive naval battle over the Imperial Japanese Navy. This was the largest naval battle in history and where the Japanese used Kamikaze attacks for the first time.
3 November: first Fugo attack where Japan uses balloons carrying antipersonnel or incendiary bombs taken by the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean to fall on American and Canadian cities, forests, and farmland.
24 November: first B-29 raid on Tokyo originating from Tinian.
1945
5 January: Japanese retreat across the Irrawaddy River in Burma pursued by General Slim's 14th Army.
31 January: Burma Road is opened.
3 February: Battle of Manila begins when US and Filipino forces enter Manila.
19 February: US Marines invade Iwo Jima.
23 February: Joe Rosenthal photographs six Marines raising the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
25 February: incendiary raids made on Japan. American and Filipino troops recapture Corregidor.
3 March: Manila liberated. Japanese defeat at the Battle of Meiktila clears the road to Rangoon.
9 March: The US firebombs a number of cities in Japan, including Tokyo. The Operation Meetinghouse incendiary air raid was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history.
20 March: Mandalay liberated.
1 April: Operation Iceberg - the Battle of Okinawa - begins. This was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War. The 82-day-long battle lasted until mid-June 1945. The Allies planned to use Okinawa as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall).
3 May: Rangoon liberated.
5 May: only lethal fugo (fire balloon) attack (see 3 Nov 1944) kills a pregnant woman and five children near Bly, Oregon.
8 May: the Allies divide Vietnam in half at the 16th parallel with Chinese Nationalists in the north and the British in the south. France’s request for the return of all French pre-war colonies in Indochina is granted.
10-13 June: Australian troops land and capture Brunei.
20 June: Schiermonnikoog, a Dutch island, is the last part of Europe freed by Allied troops.
21 June: completion of the conquest of Okinawa.
4 July: MacArthur announces the liberation of the Philippines.
26 July: Potsdam Declaration: Allied leaders agree to insist upon the unconditional surrender of Japan.
30 July: The USS Indianapolis is sunk after having delivered atomic bomb material to Tinian.
6 August: Enola Gay drops the first atomic bomb "Little Boy" (Uranium -235) bomb on Hiroshima.
B-29 SuperFortress Enola Gay captained by Paul Tibbetts took off from Tinian Island. The bomb exploded 53 seconds after being dropped
Great Artiste and Necessary Evil – photographic and scientific support planes to Enola Gay. Flying in the B-29 Superfortress The Great Artiste in formation with the Enola Gay, Luiz Alvarez measured the blast effect of the Little Boy bomb. A few days later, again flying in The Great Artiste, Johnston used the same equipment to measure the strength of the Nagasaki explosion.
9 August: Bockscar drops the second atomic bomb "Fat Man" (Plutonium-239) on Nagasaki.
U.S. B-29 SuperFortress Bockscar, flown by the crew of 393rd Squadron commander Major Charles Sweeney, carried the nuclear bomb, with Kokura as the primary target and Nagasaki the secondary target. Kokura was obscured by clouds, so Nagasaki was bombed. The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocentre.
Kyoto not bombed as it was considered an intellectual centre.
9 August: Soviet invasion of Manchuria begins. The Soviets conquered Manchukuo, Mengjiang (Inner Mongolia), northern Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.
14 August: coup by Japanese military and right-wingers to overthrow the government fails.
15 August: Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's surrender in a radio broadcast.
15 August: VJ Day.
16 August: Emperor Hirohito orders Japanese forces to cease fire.
17 August: Indonesia declares independence from Japan.
31 August: MacArthur takes over command of the Japanese government in Tokyo. He was referred to as the Proconsul of Japan after WWII.
2 September: the Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu. General MacArthur received the Japanese surrender.
Miscellaneous
Comfort women – Japanese women who were forced to serve as prostitutes in Asia in WWII.
Home Islands – term used at the end of World War II to define the area of Japan to which its sovereignty and the constitutional rule of the Emperor would be restricted.
Hideki Tojo was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II, from October 1941 to July 1944. Some historians hold him responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Tojo was sentenced to death for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed by hanging in 1948.
Emperor Hirohito was not put on trial, but was forced to renounce his divinity in 1946.
General Yamashita was most famous for conquering the British colonies of Malaya and Singapore, earning the nickname ‘The Tiger of Malaya’.
Burma Railway was a 415 kilometres railway between Bangkok and Rangoon built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign. Forced labour was used in its construction.
Kantaro Suzuki was Prime Minister of Japan from 7 April to 17 August 1945.
1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, recruited under presidential authority.
Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz was the Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces for the United States and Allied forces during World War II. He was the United States' leading authority on submarines, as well as Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation in 1939. He was his country's last surviving Fleet Admiral.
Battle of Britain and air war in Europe
1939
4 September: Royal Air Force raid the German fleet in the Heligoland Bight. This was the first British offensive action of the War.
6 September: Battle of Barking Creek, a friendly fire incident, results in the first RAF fighter pilot fatalities of the War.
1940
10 July: Battle of Britain begins with Luftwaffe raids on channel shipping.
13 August: Adlertag (‘Eagle Day’) was the first day of ‘Operation Eagle Attack’, which was the codename of a German military operation by the Luftwaffe to destroy the RAF. Hermann Göring starts a two-week assault on British airfields in preparation for invasion. (an alternate date for the beginning of the Battle of Britain).
15 August: RAF gain some air superiority over the Luftwaffe in dog-fights along the East coast. British fighter aircraft production begins to accelerate. Churchill appointed Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production and later Minister of Supply.
18 August: ‘The Hardest Day’ saw the greatest number of casualties to both sides.
24 August: German aircraft mistakenly bomb a church in Cripplegate, accidentally dictating the future shape of the Battle of Britain with Churchill ordering a retaliatory strike against Berlin.
26 August: Both London and Berlin are bombed, Berlin for the first time.
30 August: beginning of the London Blitz.
31 August: Luftwaffe attacks on British airfields continue.
7 September: Luftwaffe shifts its focus to London, away from the RAF airfields, which proves to be a major misjudgement. Blitz will continue until May 1941.
15 September: RAF begins to claim victory in the Battle of Britain (Battle of Britain Day).
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’ – Churchill, after Battle of Britain.
Hugh ‘Stuffy’ Dowding was the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain.
Battle of Britain Memorial is sited on the White Cliffs at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone.
Big wing attack launched by Bader in Battle of Britain. The tactic involved meeting incoming Luftwaffe bombing raids in strength with a wing-sized formation of three to five squadrons.
From September 1940 Chiselhurst Caves were used as an air raid shelter. Within a short time, it became an underground city of some 15,000 inhabitants with electric lighting, a chapel and a hospital.
London was bombed for 56 consecutive nights in 1940.
14 November: A heavy night raid on Coventry destroys the Cathedral and the medieval centre of the city. Codename: ‘Moonlight Sonata’.
“Coventration” was term used by Germany for destroying a city by air raids.
End November: bombing raids on Southampton, Bristol, Birmingham and Liverpool.
16 December: first RAF night raid on Mannheim, Germany.
1941
2 January: German bombers bomb Irish Free State for the second night in a row.
3 January: RAF bombers attack the Kiel Canal, which suffers a direct hit.
11 January: German bomb lands outside the Bank of England, demolishing the Underground station below and leaving a 120-foot crater.
13 January: Luftwaffe raid on Plymouth.
14 January: Amy Johnson dies after her plane crashes in the Thames Estuary whilst she is working for the Air Transport Auxiliary.
Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a civilian organisation that ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between UK factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, scrap yards, and active service squadrons and airfields.
19 February: start of the "three nights Blitz" of Swansea.
13 March: Luftwaffe raid on Glasgow
31 May: Luftwaffe bomb Dublin.
1942
20 March: Operation Outward begins. This is a program to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. The balloons were filled with hydrogen and carried either a trailing steel wire intended to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit, or incendiary devices that were intended to start fires in open countryside and woodland.
28 March: RAF bombs Lübeck, destroying 80% of the medieval centre. Hitler is outraged and orders “Baedeker Raids”.
30 March: Professor Frederick Lindemann, the British government's leading scientific adviser, sent to Winston Churchill a memorandum which after it had become accepted by the Cabinet became known as the dehousing paper. It recommended strategic bombing of German cities.
23 April: Baedeker Raids by the Luftwaffe begin targetting on English provincial towns like Exeter, Bath, Norwich, and York. The attacks continue sporadically until 6 June.
30 May: first “Thousand Bomber Raid" on Cologne (Operation Millennium).
4 July: first air raids by American Air Force in Europe.
18 July: Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time.
6 October: Allies agree on a strategy whereby Americans will bomb in the daytime and the RAF at night.
4 December: 4: first US bombing of mainland Italy targets Naples.
1943
27 January: first all American air raid against Germany targets Wilhelmshaven.
16/17 May: Operation Chastise: The Dambuster Raids are carried out by RAF 617 Squadron on two German dams, Mohne and Eder using a specially developed ‘bouncing bomb’. Modified Avro Lancaster Mk IIIs were used in the raid. The Ruhr war industries lose electrical power.
24 July: Operation Gomorrah. Hamburg suffers the heaviest assault in the history of aviation at that time which created one of the greatest firestorms raised by the RAF and United States Army Air Force in WWII, killing 42,600 civilians in Hamburg and practically destroying the entire city.
17 August: Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission sees two large forces of USAF bombers attacking separate targets in order to disperse fighter reaction by the Luftwaffe. It resulted in a heavy loss of Allied bombers.
22/23 October: Kassel air raid causes a seven day firestorm. 569 bombers dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs (including 460,000 magnesium fire sticks) in a concentrated pattern.
1944
20 January: RAF drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
18 February: Operation Jericho. This was a low-level precision raid carried out by Mosquito bombers on Amiens Prison with the object of releasing French Resistance and political prisoners. 258 prisoners escaped but two were recaptured.
19-26 February: "Big Week" bombing campaign against German industrial cities with the long-range P-51 Mustang fighter protecting the bombers.
1 April: Schaffhausen in Switzerland suffered a bombing raid by United States Army Air Forces aircraft which strayed from German airspace into neutral Switzerland due to navigation errors. About a hundred civilians were killed.
13 June: Germany begins V-1 Flying Bomb attacks on England and especially London.
26 July: first aerial victory for a jet fighter when an Me 262 damages a Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft.
9 September: first V-2 rocket lands on London.
24 December: V-1 attack on Manchester.
1945
13-15 February: 1300 heavy bombers of the RAF and the USAAF drop more than 3900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroys 15 square miles of the city centre and causes thousands of civilian casualties.
14 February: Prague bombed in error.
3 March: Allies fail to destroy V-2s and launching equipment near The Hague.
21 March: British bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen.
29 April: 29: Operations Manna and Chowhound. Allied air forces provide food aid to the Netherlands under a truce made with occupying German forces.
Miscellaneous
Gee was the code name given to a radio navigation system used by the Royal Air Force. It was the first hyperbolic navigation system to be used operationally
Pathfinders were target marking squadrons in RAF Bomber Command. They located and marked targets with flares, which a main bomber force could aim at, increasing the accuracy of their bombing
Eighth Air Force carried out daylight bombing raids. It was the largest of the deployed combat Army Air Forces in numbers of personnel, aircraft and equipment
Lord George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, repeatedly condemned the Allied practice of area bombing
1940
3 July: British attack and destroy the French navy anchored at Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria to prevent it falling into German hands.
18 July: as a response to Mers-el-Kébir, the Vichy French Air Force bombs British-held Gibraltar.
19 July: Battle of Cape Spada - Allied ships clash with two Italian light cruisers, sinking one.
1-4 August: Operation Hurry, the first of the Malta Convoys. Legend has it that there were just three aircraft, obsolete Gloucester Gladiators nicknamed 'Faith', 'Hope' and 'Charity' defending Malta in 1940 but, in reality, at least six Gladiators and also Hawker Hurricanes were deployed.
20 August: Italy announces a blockade of British ports in the Mediterranean area.
1941
10 January: HMS Illustrious is damaged by German aircraft whilst on its way to for Malta.
16 January: Germans bomb Valetta.
10 March: Malta under daily attack.
27-29 March: Battle of Cape Matapan. A Royal Navy fleet under Admiral Andrew Cunningham, intercepts and sink or severely damages the ships of the Italian Regia Marina under Admiral Angelo Iachino.
27 April: Hurricane fighters delivered to besieged Malta.
23 May: HMS Kelly, captained by Mountbatten, is sunk during the evacuation of Crete.
11 August: relief convoy arrives at Malta.
12 October: HMS Ark Royal delivers more Hurricanes to Malta.
13/14 November: U-81 sinks the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.
25 November: U-331 sinks the British battleship HMS Barham while covering Mediterranean convoys.
1 December: 1,000th bombing raid on Malta. It is estimated that the bomb tonnage dropped on the island is twice that dropped on London.
1942
15 April: Malta is awarded the George Cross by King George VI for "heroism and devotion".
20 April: 47 Spitfires delivered to Malta but many are destroyed on the ground during an air raid.
8 May: a second consignment of Spitfires is delivered to Malta as part of Operation Bowery and it provides the RAF with air superiority over the island. The Axis is forced to abandon daylight bombing which is a major turning point in the siege.
21 May: Axis calls of a possible invasion of Malta (aka Operation Hercules).
11-16 June: two convoys head for Malta. One is severely damaged and the other never reaches the island.
15 August: Malta is supplied via Operation Pedestal. This was a British operation with the most crucial supply being fuel delivered by the SS Ohio. The arrival of the last ships of the convoy coincided with the Feast of the Assumption (Santa Marija) and the name Santa Marija Convoy is still used.
11 November: convoys reach Malta from Alexandria and the siege is deemed to be over.
November: Corsica occupied by Italian and German forces. After the Italian armistice in September 1943, Italian and Free French Forces pushed the Germans out of the island, making Corsica the first French Department to be freed
1943
8 September: German troops evacuate Sardinia.
10 September: Italian fleet surrenders at Malta and other Mediterranean ports.
September: after the Italian armistice Italian and Free French Forces force the Germans out of Corsica, making it the first French Department to be freed.
Battle of the Atlantic
1939
3 September: SS Athenia, a British cruise ship en route from Glasgow to Montreal is torpedoed by the German submarine U-30 250 miles northwest of Ireland.
20 September: U-27 is sunk with depth charges from HMS Fortune and HMS Forester.
30 September: German pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee begins its campaign in the Atlantic.
14 October: U-47, under the command of Günther Prien, sinks battleship HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow harbour.
13-17 December: The Battle of the River Plate. British naval squadron attacks and badly damages the Admiral Graf Spee, which limps into Montevideo harbour. After being told to leave harbour, the Graf Spee is scuttled just outside the harbour and its captain, Hans Langsdorff, is interned. The British ships involved were the Exeter, Ajax and Achilles.
1940
20 January: 20: U-44 sinks Greek steamer Ekatontarchos Dracoulis off Portugal.
21 January: U-22 sinks destroyer HMS Exmouth in the North Sea.
15 February: Hitler orders unrestricted submarine warfare.
16 February: The Altmark Incident. The British destroyer HMS Cossack forcibly removes 303 British POWs from the German transport Altmark (which had supplied the Admiral Graf Spee) in neutral Norwegian territorial waters. To date, it is the last major boarding action carried out by the Royal Navy.
7 June: German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sink the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and two destroyers off Norway
July to the end of October: 282 Allied ships sunk off the north-west approaches to Ireland for a loss of 1,489,795 tons of merchant shipping. Known as the “First Happy Time”.
1941
22 January: Operation Berlin. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau set sail from Kiel on a commerce raid in the Atlantic.
March: Germans lose of three prominent U-boat aces: Günther Prien, Joachim Schepke and Otto Kretschmer. Kretschmer (aka ‘Silent Otto’) sank 47 ships for a total of 274,333 tons from September 1939 until being captured in March 1941. For this he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.
11 April: "neutral" United States begins sea patrols in the North Atlantic.
8 May: U-110 is captured by the British navy and another copy of the "Enigma" machine is discovered and saved.
21 May: US merchantman SS Robin Moor is sunk by U-69. FDR announces an "unlimited national emergency”.
24-27 May: Sink the Bismarck! The British battlecruiser HMS Hood is sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Only three crew members out of 1418 survived. Royal Navy Fairey Swordfish aircraft from the carrier HMS Ark Royal fatally cripple the Bismarck in torpedo attack. The Bismarck is sunk by the Royal Navy, after a damaged steering system which forced it into an endless series of circular movements. The captain of the Bismarck was Ernst Lindemann.
27 August: U-570 is captured by the Royal Navy and is later put into combat service as HMS Graph.
4 September: USS Greer becomes the first United States warship fired upon by a German U-boat in the war after which the US commits to convoy duties between the Western Hemisphere and Europe.
26 September: US Naval Command orders an all-out war on Axis shipping in American waters.
17 October: U-568 damages USS Kearney, killing eleven sailors. They are the first American military casualties of the war.
31 October: U-552 sinks destroyer USS Reuben James, killing more than 100 sailors. It is the first loss of an American "neutral warship”.
30 December: 30: first "Liberty Ship", the SS Patrick Henry is launched.
1942
13 January: German U-boat offensive comes closer to the US shores starting the “Second Happy Time” (January-August).
14 April: USS Roper becomes the first American ship to sink a U-boat when it sinks U-85.
12 May: U-553 sinks British freighter Nicoya near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
19 July: Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their US East Coast positions as the US Navy introduces an effective convoy system.
12 September: Laconia Incident was an abortive naval rescue attempt in the Atlantic Ocean. RMS Laconia was sunk by U-156 off the coast of West Africa. The U-boat commander, Werner Hartenstein and his crew immediately commenced rescue operations and were joined by the crews of other U-boats in the area. The U-boats were attacked by a U.S. Army B-24 Liberator bomber. As a result the German fleet abandoned the practice of attempting rescue of civilian survivors under Donitz’s ‘Laconia Order’ which set the precedent for the subsequent unrestricted submarine warfare.
14 October: U-69 sinks the ferry SS Caribou in the Gulf of St Lawrence, killing 137.
1943
28 April: mid-Atlantic gap in the war against the U-boats is closed using long-range bombers.
24 May: "Black May". Dönitz withdraws most U-boats from the Atlantic because of heavy losses to new Allied anti-sub tactics. During May he loses 43 U-boats, compared to 34 Allied ships sunk.
28 October: Cruiser HMS Charybdis sunk by German torpedo boats off Brittany. The 21 sailors and marines washed up on Guernsey are buried with full military honours by the German Occupation authorities.
26 December: Battle of the North Cape. Scharnhorst is sunk off North Cape (in the Arctic).
1945
9 February: Operation Caesar. U-864 with cargo of jet engines and flasks of mercury bound for Japan was sunk by HMS Venturer in the only submerged submarine/submarine sinking in WWII (or before or since).
14 May: U-boat fleet surrenders in Londonderry.
Conferences
1941
22 December: Arcadia Conference in Washington. This was the first official meeting of British and American political and military leaders. Twenty-six Allied countries sign the Declaration by United Nations during the conference.
1943
14-24 January: Casablanca Conference. Churchill and FDR (Stalin invited but declined because of situation in Stalingrad) discuss the eventual invasion of mainland Europe, the impending invasion of Sicily and Italy, and the wisdom of the principle of "unconditional surrender".
General Charles de Gaulle had initially refused to come but changed his mind when Churchill threatened to recognize Henri Giraud as head of the Free French Forces in his place. Giraud was also present at Casablanca.
12 May: Trident Conference in Washington, D.C. with FDR and Churchill discuss future strategy.
17-24 August: Quebec Conference. Churchill, FDR and Mackenzie King discuss preparations for Operation Overlord.
22 November: Cairo Conference. FDR, Churchill and Chiang Kai-Shek meet to discuss an overall strategic plan against Japan.
28-30 November: Tehran Conference. FDR, Churchill and Stalin discuss war strategy; and agree to a June 1944 invasion of Europe codenamed Operation Overlord).
1944
21 August: Dumbarton Oaks Conference. The basic structure of the United Nations is outlined.
12 September: Second Quebec Conference. FDR and Churchill discuss military cooperation in the Pacific and the future of Germany.
21 September: Second Dumbarton Oaks Conference.
9 October: Moscow Conference. Churchill and Stalin outline spheres of influence in the Balkans after the war. Churchill jotted down some suggestions which he handed to Stalin saying: “This is rather a naughty document. The Americans would be shocked if they saw how crudely I have put this”.
1945
4 February: Yalta Conference. FDR, Churchill and Stalin discuss postwar spheres of influence.
17 July: Potsdam Conference. Churchill (who is later replaced by Attlee), Stalin and Truman agree to insist upon the unconditional surrender of Japan. Truman hints that the US has nuclear weapons.
British Home Front
Ministry of Home Security was established in 1939 to direct national civil defence (primarily air-raid defences) during WWII.
Air raid shelters: Anderson (outdoor) and Morrison (indoor). Anderson shelter named after former Home Secretary, John Anderson.
1939
September: Blackout begins; army officially mobilized; identity cards introduced.
4 September: Ministry of Information formed.
Operation Pied Piper: WWII evacuation of children from UK cities.
1940
January: food rationing introduced;
May: Anthony Eden calls for the creation of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) militia - renamed on 23 July the Home Guard.
23 May: Oswald Mosley, leader of the pre-war British fascists, is jailed; he and his wife will spend the duration in prison.
September: German bombing raid on South London; formal beginning of The Blitz.
Dover was known a ‘Hellfire Corner’.
1942
July: basic civilian petrol ration was abolished, making fuel unavailable to private car owners.
1943
July: Ernest Bevin announces that women from 19 to 50 will be called for work in plane and munitions plants. Men eligible for military service may choose work in coal mines. These recruits would become known as "Bevin Boys".
December: the villages of Imber in Wiltshire and Tyneham in Dorset were compulsorily evacuated to create a training area for the planned D-Day landings. The inhabitants have never been allowed to return.
1944
June: first V-1 flying bomb attack on London.
September: first V-2 rocket attack on London. The Blackout is replaced by a partial 'dim-out'.
December: Home Guard stood down.
1945
March: Last V-1 and V-2 attacks on London.
May: VE Day (8th)
July: Labour Party wins the general election with a historic landslide. Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister and forms a new government.
August: VJ Day (15th)
Weapons
V-WEAPONS
Peenemunde in Germany hosted an extensive rocket development and test site, established in 1937.
First V-2 rocket fell in Chiswick in September 1944.
The name Vergeltungswaffe, meaning ‘reprisal weapon’ was coined by propaganda minister Goebbels to signify reprisal against the Allies for the bombing of Germany.
The Vergeltungswaffe-1, V-1, known as the Flying bomb, Buzz bomb or Doodlebug, was the first guided missile used in war and the forerunner of today’s cruise missile.
10,000 V-1 buzz bombs launched.
The V-2 was an early ballistic missile used by the German Army against mostly Belgian and British targets during the later stages of World War II. The V2 rocket became the first man-made object launched into space during test flights.
Over 3000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, mostly London and later Antwerp, resulting in the death of an estimated 7250 military personnel and civilians.
First V-2 rocket fell in Chiswick in September 1944.
Peenemunde bombed in 1943. Production moved to Mittelwerk, a factory built underground using slave labour in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing.
La Coupole is a bunker complex in Pas-de-Calais. It was built between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England. Constructed in the side of a disused chalk quarry, the most prominent feature of the complex is an immense concrete dome, to which its modern name refers.
SS General Hans Kammler was in charge of the V-2 missile and jet programmes.
Crossbow was the code name of the campaign of Anglo-American ‘operations against all phases of the German long-range weapons programme – operations against research and development of the weapons, their manufacture, transport and their launching sites, and against missiles in flight’. When reconnaissance and intelligence information regarding the V-2 rocket became convincing, the War Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) directed the campaign's first planned raid (the Operation Hydra attack of Peenemunde in August 1943).
3 October 1942: First successful launch of A4-rocket at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flies 147 kilometres wide and reaches a height of 84.5 kilometres and is therefore the first man-made object reaching space.
NUCLEAR
1940
September: Tizard mission. Mission to the US headed by Henry Tizard which aimed at sharing technology, including Radar, details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum describing the feasibility of an atomic bomb.
1942
18 June: Manhattan Project begins with the aim of producing nuclear weapons.
2 December: Enrico Fermi initiates the first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago.
1943
28 February: Operation Gunnerside: six Norwegians led by Joachim Rønneberg successfully attack the heavy water plant Vemork.
16 November: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in Vemork.
Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a series of actions undertaken by saboteurs to prevent the German nuclear energy project from acquiring heavy water (deuterium oxide), which could be used to produce nuclear weapons. Raids were aimed at the Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark.
Oranienburg was the centre of Nazi Germany's nuclear energy project.
1945
16 July: The U.S. conducts the Trinity test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first test of a nuclear weapon.
MISCELLANEOUS
The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1941 to 1958. It is widely regarded to have been the world's best tank when the Soviet Union entered World War II.
The Kliment Voroshilov (KV) tanks were a series of WWII Soviet heavy tanks, named after the Soviet defense commissar.
Messerschmitt 109 was the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force.
Tiger tank was designed by Porsche.
Window – aluminium strips used by bombers to confuse German radar.
Ultra – the designation used by in World War II for signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications. Much of the German cipher traffic was encrypted on the Enigma machine.
Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a long-range fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAS) from 1940 to 1945.
The wooden logs driven into open fields along the Normandy coast were known as ‘Rommel's Asparagus’ (Rommelspargel) and were designed to damage gliders.
M18 Hellcat – US WWII tank, built by Buick.
Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a long range fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service from 1940 to 1945.
Schnellboot or S-Boot is the designation for Motor Torpedo Boats of the German Navy since 1932. In particular it applies to that type of Boat that saw service during World War II. The schnellboot was then called an E-boat by the Allies; it is commonly held that the E stood for ‘Enemy’.
ASDIC used on ships in WWII.
Hedgehog (also known as an ‘Anti-Submarine Projector’) was an anti-submarine weapon developed by the Royal Navy that was deployed on convoy escort warships such as destroyers to supplement the depth charge. The weapon worked by firing a number of small spigot mortar bombs from spiked fittings. Squid replaced the Hedgehog system, and was in turn replaced by the Limbo system.
Tallboy was a five ton bomb developed by Barnes Wallis.
British tanks: Matildas, Valentines and Churchills.
Defence lines
Mannerheim Line: defensive fortification line on the Karelian Isthmus built by Finland against the Soviet Union. The line was constructed in two phases: 1920 to 1924 and 1932 to 1939. The line ran from the coast of the Gulf of Finland in the west, through Summa to the Vuoksi River and ended at Taipale in the east.
Salpa Line: (aka “Finland's Bolt”): a bunker line on the eastern border of Finland. It was built during the Interim Peace between the Winter War and the Continuation War to defend Finland against a possible Soviet invasion. The line was 1200 km long, stretching from the Gulf of Finland to Petsamo in northern Finland but was never brought into action.
Maginot Line: a line of concrete and steel defences that stretched between Luxembourg and Switzerland along France's border with Germany. It was built by the French between 1930 and 1940 to stop the German invasion and was named after French MP Andre Maginot.
The Alpine Line or Little Maginot Line: the component of the Maginot Line that defended the southeastern portion of France.
Alpine Wall: Italian system of fortifications along the 1851 km of Italy's northern frontier facing France, Switzerland, Austria and Yugoslavia.
Rupnik Line: a line of fortifications and weapons installations that Yugoslavia constructed along its terrestrial western and northern border to counter the construction of Alpine Wall. It was largely unprepared and abandoned by the time Yugoslavia was invaded in April 1941.
The Siegfried Line (aka Hindenburg Line): a defence system stretching more than 630km with more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps. It went from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands; along the western border of the old German Empire as far as the town of Weil am Rhein on the border to Switzerland. Adolf Hitler planned the line from 1936 and had it built between 1938 and 1940. It was known to the Germans as Westwall.
Stalin Line: fortifications along the western border of the Soviet Union begun in the 1920s to protect the USSR against attacks from the West. It was abandoned in favour of the Molotov Line.
Molotov Line: a system of border fortified regions built by the Soviet Union in the years 1940–1941 along its new western borders. It was unfinished at the time of Operation Barbarossa.
Skåne Line (aka Per Albin Line after the PM): a 500 kilometer long line of light fortifications erected during World War II around the coast of southern Sweden to protect the country from a possible German or Soviet invasion.
Schuster Line: a line of fortifications erected in Luxembourg shortly before World War II but easily dealt with by German troops.
Metaxas Line: a chain of fortifications constructed along the line of the Greco-Bulgarian border, designed to protect Greece in case of a Bulgarian invasion. It was named after Greek PM Ioannis Metaxas.
Holocaust
Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.
Resettlement: term used by Germans for Jewish deportation.
Yellow badge was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism. The yellow badge that was compulsory in the Middle Ages was revived by the German Nazis.
Concentration camp badges [triangles]:
Red: political prisoners.
Green: convicts.
Blue: foreign forced laborers.
Purple: mainly Jehovah's Witnesses.
Pink: mainly homosexual men.
Black: anti-social and “work shy".
Brown: Roma.
Two superimposed yellow triangles or a six-pointed star, the "Yellow badge": a Jew.
Jews were ordered to sew the Yellow badge on their outer garments to mark them as Jews in public. Compulsory in the Middle Ages, it was revived by the Nazis.
Dachau – first Nazi concentration camp in Germany, opened in 1933. Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed.
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust.
Babi Yar is a ravine in Kiev. In the course of two days in September 1941, German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians there. The Babi Yar massacre is considered to be ‘the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust’
1942
15 January: Jews from the Lodz ghettos deported to the Chelmno Concentration Camp.
20 January: Nazis at the Wannsee conference in Berlin decide that the "final solution to the Jewish problem" is relocation, and later extermination. This event was presided over by Reinhard Heydrich and conducted by Adolf Eichmann.
9 June: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice as reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich. All male adults and children are killed, and all females are taken off to concentration camps.
1943
15 November: Himmler orders that Gypsies and "part-Gypsies" are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.
25-27 April: The Vrba-Wetzler, report on Auschwitz is dictated by Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, two Slovakian Jews who had escaped from the camp.
Auschwitz consisted of Auschwitz I (the base camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (the extermination camp), and Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labour camp).
The first transports of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began in May 1944.
1944
24 July: Majdanek Concentration Camp is liberated by Soviet forces.
1945
27 January: Soviet troops enter Auschwitz.
10 April: US troops liberate Buchenwald. After liberation the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as a Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD.
15 April: British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen.
29 April: US troops liberate Dachau.
4 May: Neuengamme concentration camp is liberated.
5 May: Mauthausen concentration camp is liberated.
Miscellaneous
Władysław Sikorski: Polish WWII Prime Minister in Exile who was killed on 4 July 1943 when his plane plunged into the sea immediately after takeoff from Gibraltar, killing all on board except the pilot.
Lend-Lease was the name of the program under which the USA supplied Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945. The supplies were given away with no repayment.
Organisation Todt was a Third Reich civil and military engineering group in Germany named after its founder, Fritz Todt. The organization was responsible for a huge range of engineering projects both in pre-World War II Germany, in Germany itself and occupied territories from France to the Soviet Union during the war. It became notorious for using forced labour. Todt was killed in a plane crash in February 1942. He was succeeded as Reichsminister by Albert Speer.
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies was established in 1943 to assist in the protection and restitution of cultural property in war areas during and following WWII.
Henning von Tresckow was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht who organized German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler in March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government.
As a propaganda and morale boosting exercise, in October 1943 workers at the Vickers Broughton factory gave up their weekend to build Wellington number LN514 against the clock. The bomber was assembled in new world record time of 23 hours 50 minutes, and took off after 24 hours 48 minutes, beating the previous record of 48 hours set by an American factory in California.
The SS Richard Montgomery was an American Liberty ship built during World War II, one of the 2710 used to carry cargo during the war. Montgomery was wrecked off the coast of Kent near Sheerness in 1944 with around 1500 tons of explosives on board, which continue to be a hazard to the area.
NKVD deported Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan in 1944.
Lavrentiy Beria was chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin.
Georgy Zhukov was a Soviet military commander who played an important role in leading the Red Army to liberate the Soviet Union from the Axis Powers' occupation, to advance through much of Eastern Europe, and to conquer Berlin.
Germans escaped from POW camp in Bridgend in 1945.
Hermann Goering – head of the Luftwaffe, condemned to death by Hitler in 1945, committed suicide in a Nuremberg cell in 1946.
Roosevelt died 12 April 1945
Cross of Lorraine (cross of Anjou) – double-barred red cross adopted by Free French in WWII.
Popski’s private army: a Special Forces unit in the western desert in WWII, commanded by Vladimir Peniakoff, who was nicknamed Popski.
Navajo Indians transmitted messages for US in WWII.
Chain home – radar system in Southern England in WWII.
Anderson (outdoor) and Morrison (indoor) – types of air raid shelters. Anderson shelter named after former Home Secretary, John Anderson.
Operation Pluto (Pipe-Lines under the Ocean) was a World War II operation by British scientists, oil companies and armed forces to construct undersea oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France. The scheme was developed by AC Hartley, chief engineer with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, after Admiral Louis Mountbatten initiated the concept.
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African American pilots who flew with distinction during World War II as the 332nd Fighter Group of the US Army Air Corps.
“Rosie the Riveter” is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the six million women who worked in the manufacturing plants which produced munitions and material during World War II while the men were off fighting the war. Slogan ‘We Can Do It!’.
Wing Commander Forest Yeo-Thomas was the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent codenamed ‘The White Rabbit’ during World War II.
Liverpool was bombed the most after London in WWII.
Albert Kesselring: tried by allies for the shooting of partisans by troops under his command. Found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1952.
Noor Inayat Khan was a British Special Operations Executive agent in World War II of Hyderabadi (Indian) origin and the first female radio operator to be sent into occupied France to aid the French Résistance.
“Shetland Bus” was the nickname of a clandestine special operations group that made a permanent link between Shetland and German-occupied Norway from 1941 until the German occupation ended on 8 May 1945.
Falcons killed in WWII because they killed carrier pigeons.
Lebensborn (‘Fount of Life’, in Old German) was a Nazi organization set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, which provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and which also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.
Lebensraum (German for ‘living space’) was one of the major genocidal political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population.
Aribert Heim: war criminal known as Dr. Death.
In 1947, the UN body Crowcas (Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects) drew up a list of 60,000 people wanted for war crimes.
Odessa: Organisation of Former SS Members
Rat-lines: escape routes for war criminals
Stalag Luft III: near Sagan, in Poland. Featured in ‘The Great Escape’.
Operation Exodus: repatriation of British POWs
Portugal was neutral in WWII
Tyneham is a ghost village in south Dorset, near Lulworth. The village and 7500 acres of surrounding land around the Purbeck Hills, were commandeered in 1943 by the then War Office for use as firing ranges for training troops. 252 people were displaced.
In the loop: term coined by Veener to help WWII gunners.
Q-ships: decoy armed merchant ships in WWII.
During the Second World War, double summer time (2 hours in advance of GMT) was introduced and was used for the period when, normally ordinary summer time would have been in force. During the winter clocks were kept one hour in advance of GMT.
The White Rose was a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich (especially Sophie and Hans Scholl) and their philosophy professor (Kurt Huber). The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, which called for active opposition to German dictator Adolf Hitler's regime. The six core members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo, convicted and executed by beheading in 1943.
During the closing months of World War II, Schloss Sigmaringen was briefly the seat of the Vichy French Government after France was liberated by the Allies.
95% of Danish Jews were smuggled across the sea to neutral Sweden in 1943.
Hans Frank was the Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories, controlling the area of Poland not directly incorporated into Germany.
America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into WWII. Its most prominent spokesman was Charles Lindbergh.
‘Iron Route’: Swedish iron ore shipped from Narvik in Norway to Germany.
From 1945 to 1952 the uninhabited Heligoland islands were used as a bombing range. On 18 April 1947, the Royal Navy detonated 6,800 tonnes of explosives, creating one of the biggest non-nuclear single detonations in history. While aiming at the fortifications, the island's total destruction would have been accepted. In 1952, the islands were restored to the German authorities.
Wehrmacht: the unified armed forces of Germany. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the SS (the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization), became the de facto fourth branch of the Wehrmacht.
Fortress Europe: a military propaganda term which referred to the areas of Continental Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, as opposed to the free United Kingdom across the Channel.
George Patton was known as ‘old blood and guts’.
Most devastated cities: 1st Warsaw, 2nd Manila.
Welthauptstadt (‘World Capital’) Germania was the name Adolf Hitler gave to the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin, part of his vision for the future of Germany after the planned victory in World War II. Albert Speer ‘the first architect of the Third Reich’, produced many of the plans for the rebuilt city, only a small portion of which was realized before World War II.
Merrill’s Maurauders was a United States long range penetration special operations unit in WWII which fought in the Burma Campaign. The unit became famous for its deep-penetration missions behind Japanese lines.
GHQ Auxiliary Units were specially trained, highly secret units created by the government during WWII, with the aim of resisting the expected occupation of the UK by Nazi Germany.
SS soldiers had their blood group tattooed on their arm.
Operation Ikarus – proposed German invasion of Iceland
Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was the pioneering organization of the civilian female pilots, employed to fly military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces.
Home Intelligence branch of Ministry of Information looked at morale of British people following bombing raids.
Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was the women's branch of the British Army.
National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) was a Dutch fascist and later national socialist political party. As a parliamentary party participating in legislative elections, the NSB had some success during the 1930s. It remained the only legal party in the Netherlands during most of the Second World War.
Total dead: 62 million. Most deaths: Russia (23 million). Poland lost 23% of its population.
RAF photographic interpretation unit (PIU) based at Danesfield House, Medmenham.
Colditz Cock was a glider built by British prisoners of war for an escape attempt from Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle).
Seenotdienst (sea rescue service) was a German military organization formed within the Luftwaffe to save downed airmen from emergency water landings. The Seenotdienst operated from 1935 to 1945 and was the first organized air-sea rescue service.
Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as “The Emergency”.
Morgenthau Plan, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, advocated that the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II include measures to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war and to destroy enough of its industrial capacity to reduce Germany to a mainly agricultural state.
Violette Szabo was a World War II French-British secret agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She was executed by SS firing squad in 1945.
Klaus Barbie was known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’.
Josef Mengele was known as the ‘Angel of Death’.
Operation Foxley was in 1944 a plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler, drafted by the British Special Operations Executive.
The 20 July plot of 1944 (Valkyrie) was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, inside his ‘Wolf's Lair’ field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. It was led by Count Claus von Stauffenberg.
