World War II Major Events

1. D-Day

1.1. June 6, 1944

1.2. General Dwight Eisenhower led U.S. and Allied troops in an invasion of Normandy, France and continued from France into Belgium and Germany.

1.3. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered.

2. Hiroshima and Nagasaki

2.1. August 6, 1945: The Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan

2.2. 78,000 people were killed and 100,000 people were injured from the Hiroshima bomb.

2.3. August 9: a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing another 40,000 people

3. The Holocaust

3.1. the systematic persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime.

3.2. The Nazis came to power in January, 1933

3.3. believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "unworthy of life."

3.4. Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority"

3.5. Those targeted include: Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others)

3.6. By 1945, ~2/3 European Jews had been killed as part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.

4. Battle of Midway

4.1. June 1942

4.2. Turning point of the war

4.3. the U.S. destroyed hundreds of Japanese planes and regained control of the Pacific

4.4. four day battle fought between aircraft based on giant aircraft carriers

5. Battle of Stalingrad

5.1. June 22, 1941

5.2. Within one month, over 2.5 million Russians had been killed, wounded or captured

5.3. The German Sixth Army in Russia was almost completely destroyed

5.4. The Germans, who had advanced into Russia, were overwhelmed by the bitter and cold winter and the 2 million Russian soldiers.