World War Two Timeline





1932

November 8 - Franklin Roosevelt elected President of the United States.


1933

January 30 - Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

March 12 - First concentration camp opened at Oranienburg outside Berlin.

March 23 - Enabling Act gives Hitler dictatorial power.

In June - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp.

1934

August 19 - Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.

1936

February 10 - The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

1938

September 30 - British Prime Minister Chamberlain appeases Hitler at Munich.

October 15 - German troops occupy the Sudetenland; Czech government resigns.

November 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass.

1939

January 30, 1939 - Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.

September 5, 1939 - United States proclaims its neutrality; German troops cross the Vistula River in Poland.

September 29, 1939 - Nazis and Soviets divide up Poland.

In October - Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany.

1940

April 9, 1940 - Nazis invade Denmark and Norway.

May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister.

June 14, 1940 - Germans enter Paris.

September 15, 1940 - Massive German air raids on London, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester.

November 5, 1940 - Roosevelt re-elected as U.S. president.

December 29/30 - Massive German air raid on London.

1941

May 10/11 - Heavy German bombing of London; British bomb Hamburg.

June 14, 1941 - United States freezes German and Italian assets in America.

August 14, 1941 - Roosevelt and Churchill announce the Atlantic Charter.

September 1, 1941 - Nazis order Jews to wear yellow stars.

December 7, 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor

December 8, 1941 - United States and Britain declare war on Japan.

December 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States.

January 1, 1942 - Declaration of the United Nations signed by 26 Allied nations.

In April - Japanese-Americans sent to relocation centers.

In June - Mass murder of Jews by gassing begins at Auschwitz.  Elie Wiesel and his family are imprisoned there. About Wiesel. 



August 12, 1942 - Stalin and Churchill meet in Moscow.

August 17, 1942 - First all-American air attack in Europe.

December 2, 1942 - Professor Enrico Fermi sets up an atomic reactor in Chicago.

1943

January 14-24 - Casablanca conference between Churchill and Roosevelt. During the conference, Roosevelt announces the war can end only with "unconditional German surrender."

February 2, 1943 - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.

June 11, 1943 - Himmler orders the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland.

July 24, 1943 - British bombing raid on Hamburg.

October 1, 1943 - Allies enter Naples, Italy.

November 18, 1943 - Large British air raid on Berlin.

November 28, 1943 - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Teheran.

1944

March 18, 1944 - British drop 3000 tons of bombs during an air raid on Hamburg, Germany.

June 6, 1944 - D-Day landings on the northern coast of France.

June 13, 1944 - First German V-1 rocket attack on Britain.

July 20, 1944 - Assassination attempt by German Army officers against Hitler fails.

July 24, 1944 - Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek.

August 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, Holland.

August 15, 1944 - Operation Dragoon begins (the Allied invasion of Southern France)

August 25, 1944 - Liberation of Paris.

October 21, 1944 - Massive German surrender at Aachen, Germany.

December 16-27 - Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

December 27, 1944 - Soviet troops besiege Budapest.

December 28, 1944 -  Corrie Ten Boon is released due to a clerical error from Ravensbrück concentration camp.

1945

January 16, 1945 - U.S. 1st and 3rd Armies link up after a month long separation during the Battle of the Bulge.

January 17 - 26, 1945 - Soviet troops capture Warsaw, Poland; liberate Auschwitz.

February 4-11 - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Yalta.

February 13/14 - Dresden is destroyed by a firestorm after Allied bombing raids.

April 12, 1945 - Allies liberate Buchenwald and Belsen concentration camps; President Roosevelt dies. Harry Truman becomes President.

April 16, 1945 - Soviet troops begin their final attack on Berlin; Americans enter Nuremberg.

April 18, 1945 - German forces in the Ruhr surrender.

April 21, 1945 - Soviets reach Berlin.

April 28, 1945 - Mussolini is captured and hanged by Italian partisans

April 29, 1945 - U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.

April 30, 1945 - Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

May 2, 1945 - German troops in Italy surrender.

May 7, 1945 - Unconditional surrender of all German forces to Allies.

May 8, 1945 - V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.

June 5, 1945 - Allies divide up Germany and Berlin and take over the government.

June 26, 1945 - United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco.

July 1, 1945 - American, British, and French troops move into Berlin.

July 16, 1945 - First U.S. atomic bomb test; Potsdam Conference begins.

July 26, 1945 - Atlee succeeds Churchill as British Prime Minister.

August 6, 1945 - First atomic bomb dropped, on Hiroshima, Japan.

August 9, 1945 - Second atomic bomb dropped, on Nagasaki, Japan.

August 14, 1945 - Japanese agree to unconditional surrender.

August 29, 1945 - General Douglas MacArthur is made Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers over Occupied Japan.

September 2, 1945 - Japanese sign the surrender agreement; V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.

October 24, 1945 - United Nations is born.

November 20, 1945 - Nuremberg war crimes trials begin.



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