Japan Invaded China

Japan invaded China in 1937, starting the second Sino-Japanese war. he Japanese methodically moved south, seizing control of most of eastern China and all of the major ports by the time war broke out in Europe. The Japanese moved up rivers and railroad lines into the interior of China. Resistance to the Japanese fell primarily on the Kuomintang because the Communists were in the remote areas of northwestern China. Also neither Chiang or Mao wanted to weaken their forced by fighting pitched battles with the Japanese. Despite continuing to occupy much of China's territory, Japan eventually surrender on september 2, 1945 to Allied forces following the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria.
-Germany invades Poland- September 1, 1939 German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939.
-The North African Campaign- June 10, 1940 The North African military campaigns of World War II were waged between September 13, 1940, and May 13, 1943.
They were strategically important for both the Western Allies and the Axis Powers. The Axis powers aimed to deprive the Allies of access to Middle Eastern oil supplies, to secure and increase Axis access to the oil, and to cut off Britain from the material and human resources of its empire in Asia and Africa. the North African campaign offered the Allies the opportunity to open up a new front against the Axis. In 1940 each of the five territories along the North African coast: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco had a colonial or semi-colonial status under a European
power.
-Franklin Roosevelt is reelected- November 5, 1940 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term. He led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. He spearheaded the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations.
-Operation Barbarossa- June 22, 1941 On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. Barbarossa was the crucial turning point in World War II, for its failure forced Nazi Germany to fight a two-front war against a coalition possessing immensely superior resources. The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany, and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been a core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s. From the beginning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union.
-Japan bombs Pearl Harbor- December 7, 1941
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The Pearl Harbor attack severely crippled U.S Naval and air strength in the Pacific.
-Battle of the Midway-June 3, 1942 Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. The United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll. The victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.
-Normandy invasion- June 6, 1944 The Battle of Normandy, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. D-Day was a huge gamble on the part of the Western powers; failure would mean an indefinite postponement of an invasion of France and a severe blow to morale. It would also leave Germany open to Soviet conquest. The invasion of Normandy and D-Day in general was the first step to end the war.
-Battle of the Bulge- December 16, 1944 In December 1944, Adolf Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp.
On this day, the Germans launch the last major offensive of the war. The battle raged for three weeks, resulting in a massive loss of American and civilian life. At the end of the Battle of the Bulge, German losses were greater than their army could take. The Battle of the Bulge is most significant in that it ruined the German army and in essence brought about the end of the war.
-The atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki- August 6, 1945. An American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel
bomb.”