The main dates of World War II: 1939-1945
A column of German infantry on a country road during the invasion of Poland in early September 1939 © Ullstein Bild via Getty
Text by: Nenad Tomic
11 mins
The Second World War pitted the Allies (United States, USSR, Great Britain, France and Poland, among others) against the Axis (Germany, Japan, Italy and their satellites) from 1939 to 1945. This planetary conflict made more than 60 million victims in six years.
Back to the main dates of the deadliest war in the history of mankind.
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In Germany, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933 by President Hindenburg.
But after the latter's death the following year, Hitler proclaimed himself
Reichsführer
and established a totalitarian regime in the country.
In 1935, he violated the Treaty of Versailles by starting to rearm the German army.
After the creation of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis in November 1936, a year and a half later Hitler annexed Austria and claimed the Sudetenland region in Czechoslovakia.
The whole of Europe trembles and finds itself powerless in the face of the
Führer's
desires for conquest
.
1939
September 1: The German army invades Poland using both armored vehicles and air force.
This rapid progression on the ground is known as the
Blitzkrieg
("lightning war").
In just 27 days, Warsaw was forced to surrender.
France and Great Britain issue an ultimatum to Hitler, calling on him to withdraw his troops from Poland.
September 3: Faced with Hitler's refusal to leave Poland, France and Great Britain have no choice but to declare war on Germany.
It is the official start of World War II.
September 17: Faced with the rapid advance of German troops in Poland, Russia in turn invades the eastern part of Poland to protect the Russian population.
November 30: Failure of talks between Finland and Russia.
The Red Army begins its attack on Finland, which resists and makes Stalin doubtful until February 13, 1940 when the two countries sign a peace treaty.
1940
April 9: Hitler launches Operation "Weser" and invades Denmark and Norway.
May 10: start of the attack on the western front.
Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, then advances towards France, bypassing the Maginot Line.
General Rommel crossed the Meuse north of Dinant;
on May 20, he reached Arras and cut the Allied army in two.
The fighting rages in the city of Dunkirk.
June 10: Italy declares war on France and Great Britain.
June 14:
The Germans enter Paris
, while the government has fled to Bordeaux.
President Lebrun appoints Marshal Pétain President of the Council in place of Paul Reynaud.
Two days later, General de Gaulle refused Pétain's idea of signing a pact with Hitler and left for London.
June 18: General de Gaulle prepares a speech in which he calls on the French to resist.
The speech is recorded and broadcast on the BBC.
This is the famous
call of June 18.
June 22: the armistice is signed in Rethondes, in the forest of Compiègne, between the Third Reich and the French government.
For the occasion, Hitler demanded that the signing ceremony be held in the same wagon as the one in which Germany had signed the armistice of 1918.
August 13: the German air force begins to bomb England, it is the beginning of the operation "Sea lion".
Hitler first wanted to destroy the Royal Air Force, the British air force, by destroying airfields and squadrons.
Then, in a second step, the German planes begin to bombard London from August 24, 1940. Very quickly, the English retaliate by bombarding Berlin, which will make Hitler retreat and delay the continuation of the operation "Sea lion", planned for. the following spring.
October 28: meeting between Hitler and Mussolini.
Hitler is furious because the
Duce
tells him that his troops have invaded Greece.
Hitler wanted the Italians to control the Mediterranean, but not beyond.
November 11: in Paris, on the Place de l'Étoile, citizens demonstrate against the armistice.
This gathering is considered to be one of the first public acts of the French resistance.
1941
April 6: at dawn, the Luftwaffe (the German Air Force) bombs the capital of Yugoslavia, Belgrade.
Then, the armored divisions entered by the west in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and finally Belgrade which signed the capitulation on April 17th.
It is the end of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The same day is proclaimed independent Croatia, which adheres to the Axis of Hitler.
At the same time, German troops continue south and invade Greece.
June 22: Germany launches
Operation "Barbarossa"
with the aim of invading the Soviet Union.
Hitler breaks the German-Soviet pact.
July 19: German troops surround Leningrad (Saint Petersburg).
It is the longest siege in the history of wars.
It will in fact last a total of eight hundred and seventy-two days.
November 3: “Citadel” operation, near Kursk.
The Battle of Kursk goes down in history as the greatest tank battle.
A month later, on December 5, the German divisions were a few kilometers from Moscow.
But the German soldiers are exhausted by the harsh Russian winter.
Reinforcements from the Red Army arrive from Siberia where the soldiers are equipped and trained for fighting in the dead of winter and in the snow.
The Germans are far from Moscow.
November 30: About 25,000 Jews were shot in Rumbula Forest, near Riga, Latvia.
December 7: Without declaration of war, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, located on the island of Oahu, in the American territory of Hawaii.
After this attack, the United States goes to war against Japan, Germany and Italy.
On December 11, the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, receives the official declaration of war from Germany and Italy.
War is spreading across the planet and becoming global.
In December, then at the beginning of 1942, the Japanese invaded the Philippines, Singapore, the Solomon Islands and Indonesia.
1942
June 3-6: the Battle of Midway.
The American fleet, under the command of Admiral Nimitz, launched the battles against the Japanese fleet in the North Pacific.
In this dazzling American victory, the Japanese fleet lost four aircraft carriers and remained very weak in armament.
The Japanese are no longer a military threat.
August 19: disembarkation at Dieppe (operation “Jubilee”).
Canadian forces attempt to capture the port of Dieppe.
This first Allied operation in occupied France ended in disaster for the Canadian forces.
1,500 soldiers are killed and more than 3,000 are taken prisoner by the Germans.
This raid, the aim of which was not to reconquer the occupied territory but to develop a strategy for a subsequent landing, cost the Allied forces dearly.
September 1: German troops, under the command of Von Paulus, arrive in the suburbs of Stalingrad, Russia.
One of the biggest battles of WWII will be fought around the city for six months.
October 23: start of
the Battle of El-Alamein
, Egypt.
The English general Montgomery pushes the German forces of Afrika Korps back to Tunisian territory.
November 3: The Allies win the Battle of El-Alamein, which marks a turning point in the war against Hitler.
Allied forces will no longer be defeated.
November 8: the allies land in North Africa, in Algiers, Oran and Casablanca.
General de Gaulle can install his provisional government in Algiers, pending the liberation of Paris.
German troops are definitively driven from African soil.
November 21: General Zhukov, in command of the troops defending Stalingrad, begins Operation Uranus to surround the 6th German Army under Von Paulus.
1943
February 2: the Germans capitulate at Stalingrad.
Large German losses in men and arms forced Von Paulus to retreat more than 600 kilometers.
The Battle of Stalingrad demonstrates that Hitler is no longer invincible and that his military strategy has many flaws.
May 27: Jean Moulin founds
the National Council of the Resistance.
July 5: “Citadel” operation.
German forces try to keep their positions in the Soviet Union and plan to seize Kursk.
But the Red Army, learning, thanks to intercepted messages, that the German army intends to use more than 2,700 Panther tanks, aligns more than 3,600 Russian tanks.
It is one of the biggest armored battles.
July 13: Faced with Russian resistance in Kursk, Hitler decides to withdraw his troops to Italy.
July 25: Mussolini is overthrown.
The King of Italy, Victor-Emmanuel III, forced him to leave power by telling him: "
I'm sorry, but you are the most hated man in Italy
".
The next day, Mussolini is arrested and Badoglio appointed Prime Minister.
He wishes to negotiate peace with the Allies.
October 5: liberation of Corsica.
It is the first liberated territory of metropolitan France.
November 28: start of the Tehran conference.
Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill plan the operations for the year 1944. They also decide that Germany must surrender unconditionally and foresee its dismemberment at the end of the war.
The idea of a Normandy landing was born during this meeting as well as the creation of the future United Nations organization.
1944
January 27: end of the siege of Leningrad, which lasted eight hundred and seventy-two days and left more than a million dead.
April 8: The Red Army arrives in Romania and Czechoslovakia.
June 6:
Normandy landings, "D-Day".
The Allies, mainly the Anglo-Americans and Canadians, land in Normandy. The operation, codenamed "Neptune", is led by US General Dwight David Eisenhower. Objective: to penetrate French territory and liberate France from the Germans.
August 15:
Landing in Provence
of the Allies. Two hundred and thirty thousand soldiers of the French forces disembark to participate in the liberation of France. Half of the workforce is from the Maghreb, a third black feet, ten percent come from sub-Saharan Africa. In two weeks, Provence was liberated. If the Allies were immobilized for a long time by the Battle of Cotentin in Normandy, the troops of Operation "Anvil Dragoon" will reach Lyon two months ahead of schedule. For the first time, Lightning War has changed sides.
August 25:
Liberation of Paris.
General Leclerc's 2nd armored division liberated the capital with the help of the Resistance.
Paris is liberated after four years of German occupation.
The next day, General de Gaulle descends the Champs-Élysées.
October 26: Battle of the Gulf of Leyte, off the Philippines.
Won by the United States and Australia, it is the greatest naval battle in history.
The Japanese Empire fleet is destroyed.
For the first time, Japan uses suicide planes: suicide bombers.
1945
January 25: Battle of the Bulge.
The Allies win yet another important victory against Germany.
A success which precipitates the fall of the Third Reich by exhausting the best German units and facilitates the ongoing Soviet offensive on the Eastern Front.
January 27: Soviet soldiers liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp.
There are only 7,000 survivors left, exhausted and in poor health, unable to move.
A few days earlier, on January 18, the German SS had killed nearly 60,000 people before leaving this death camp.
February 4:
Yalta Conference.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decide to divide Germany into four military zones of occupation.
April 12: death of US President Roosevelt.
April 28: Mussolini is hanged by Italian partisans.
April 30: Hitler's suicide in his Berlin bunker.
Two weeks earlier, on April 16, the Red Army launched the Battle of Berlin.
Soviet forces joined American troops on April 25, 1945 on the Elbe at Torgau.
Hitler now knows that the end of the war is approaching and that its fall is inevitable.
May 8: in the absence of the
Führer
, the Germans surrender unconditionally in Berlin.
It was
the end of the Second World War in Europe
which left between 50 and 60 million deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.
August 6: In Japan, the United States drops a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, killing more than 100,000 people.
August 9: The Americans drop a second atomic bomb on Japan, this time in Nagasaki, killing more than 60,000.
September 2: Japan capitulates and signs the surrender aboard the American battleship
USS Missouri
, off Tokyo.
It's the end of the Pacific War and the end of World War II.
October 24: creation of the United Nations (UN), with the main objective of maintaining peace and security in the world.
November 20: start of the Nuremberg trial.
The main leaders of the Third Reich are tried for war crimes by an international tribunal.
Our selection on the subject
To read :
→ Landing of Provence: the historical role of African skirmishers
→ Landing of Provence: August 15, 1944, an unexpected success
→ Auschwitz, camp symbol of the Nazi abomination
→ How to live after the Shoah?
A voice to the survivors
→ The history and journey of the second Oubangui-Chari Marching Battalion
To listen :
→ The children of June 18
→ Paulette Sarcey, Jewish communist and resistant to Auschwitz
→ What place for Africa in the Second World War?
→ Normandy landings: the voice of civilians
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Second World War