Chronology of the Second World War

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This calendar overview represents an incomplete chronology of the Second World War . It is not an independent representation of the Second World War, but primarily serves to find Wikipedia articles on a date or event or its assignment to a period.

From the second half of 1941 onwards, the war in Europe and adjacent areas, or the war in Asia and the Pacific , are shown every six months separately according to theaters of war for better clarity . A detailed chronology of the entire Pacific War can be found under Chronology of the Pacific War .

At the end of the chronology of all events there is a separate brief overview of the important conferences during this time.

Animation of the course of the war from 1939 to 1945
  • Western Allies (Independent Countries)
  • Western allies ( colonies or occupied)
  • Eastern allies
  • Axis Powers (countries)
  • Axis Powers (colonies or occupied, including the Vichy regime )
  • neutral

    • prehistory

    The post-war years, 1919 to 1932

    1919

    1920

    1921

    1922

    1923

    1924

    • January 20-30: 1st National Congress of the Kuomintang
    • September 1: the Dawes Plan comes into force - the annual reparation payments are adjusted to the economic strength of the Weimar Republic

    1925

    1926

    • January 26th: Foundation of the Stega , the Reichswehr secretly plans to mobilize the armaments industry
    • September 30th: Foundation of the International Crude Steel Community , which is celebrated as an important element of European understanding and thus the preservation of peace
    • December 11th: the second volume of Hitler's “Mein Kampf” appears, in it he calls among other things for the conquest of the Soviet Union as a living space in the east

    1927

    • January 23: Foundation of the OSSOAWIACHIM , a defense organization for the military training of Soviet youth
    • August: in the Phoebus scandal (Lohmann affair), the Reichswehr's secret armament program is exposed

    1928

    1929

    1930

    1931

    1932

    Preparations, armament

    The years 1933 to 1937

    1933

    1934

    1935

    • January 7th: Laval-Mussolini Pact between France and Italy
    • January 13th: vote in Saarland ; 91 percent vote in favor of a return to the German Reich, and the Anschluss takes place on January 17th
    • March 16: General conscription is introduced in Germany, as a result Germany begins expanding the air force and building submarines
    • April 11-14 : Stresa Front
    • May 2nd: Franco-Soviet assistance pact , some historians argue that the introduction of conscription in Germany was a reaction to negotiations on a Franco-Soviet alliance
    • May 16: Czechoslovak- Soviet assistance pact
    • MAY 21: foreign policy speech to the Reichstag Hitler emphasized readiness for peace, while new Defense Act and a secret "Reich Defense Law," which the economy to arms production required to newly created Office "plenipotentiary for the war economy" is with bay occupied
    • June 18: German-British naval agreement - the strength of the German navy must not exceed 35 percent of the strength of the British navy
    • August 2: The World Congress of the Comintern referred to fascism as "shock troops of the international counter-revolution", which for a crusade against the Soviet Union enters and calls the Popular Front for the overthrow of Nazism from
    • August 31: 1st neutrality law in the USA forbids the export of weapons to opponents in the event of disputes
    • September: Foundation of the Anglo-German Fellowship
    • SEPTEMBER 15: Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg, Nuremberg Laws , Jews civil rights are revoked, the Nazi Party flag, the swastika is more Reichsflagge
    • October 3: Italian attack on Ethiopia , the League of Nations imposes an arms embargo and a credit and raw material freeze on Italy, the USA continues to supply fuel

    1936

    • January 15: Japan refuses to restrict its fleet and leaves the London Fleet Conference
    • February 4: Wilhelm Gustloff , national group leader of the NSDAP foreign organization in Switzerland, is shot dead by David Frankfurter in Davos, who wanted to protest against anti-Semitism in Germany.
    • February 6th: 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Summer Olympics will be held in Berlin from August 1st to 16th, 1936
    • February 27th: The French National Assembly approves the Franco-Soviet military pact with 353 votes to 164, approval in the Senate on March 12th
    • March 7th: The Wehrmacht invades the Rhineland, which was demilitarized after the First World War
    • May: Election victory of the Popular Front in France.
    • May 12: Foundation of the Reichskolonialbund (co-ordination of the German colonial movement ).
    • July 16: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War , also known as Spanish Civil War called; was fought between the democratically elected government of the Second Spanish Republic ("Republicans") and the right-wing putschists under General Francisco Franco ("Nationalists"). It ended in 1939 with the victory of the nationalists, especially with the help of the fascist allies from Italy and Germany. It was followed by the end of the Republic in Spain and the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1976), which lasted until Franco's death in 1975 .
    • July 21: on the fifth day of the uprising, the nationalists captured the Ferrol naval base in northwestern Spain with two brand new cruisers. In particular, Franco helped the first airlift in history to move troops from the Spanish colonies to the mainland with German help, thus circumventing the republican naval blockade in the Strait of Gibraltar and thus consolidating a bridgehead he controlled.

    1937

    1938

    1939, January to August

    • January 24th: Reinhard Heydrich takes over the contract from Göring to "solve the Jewish question"
    • January 27th: the Z-Plan to build up a large fleet by 1947/48 comes into force
    • January 30th: In a speech in the Reichstag, Hitler announces the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” in the event of a new world war
    • February 14th: The Bismarck was launched
    • February 27: France and England recognize Franco's government
    • March 10: the so-called “chestnut speech” of Stalin; it is generally understood as a signal that the Soviet Union is ready to come to an understanding with Germany
    • March 13th: Hitler puts pressure on the Slovak Prime Minister Jozef Tiso , who has already been deposed by the Czechs, to proclaim an independent First Slovak Republic (under German protection / pressure)
    • March 14th: the Slovak parliament, which emerged from elections, unanimously votes for independence
    • March 15: Destruction of the remaining Czech Republic contrary to the Munich Agreement (German troops march into the Czechoslovakian territories known as the remaining Czech Republic ), establishment of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
    • March 15: Understanding between German and British industry in the Düsseldorf Agreement
    • March 21st: the German Foreign Minister again talks to the Polish Ambassador in Berlin about the "annexation of Danzig" to the German Reich and calls for extraterritorial access to East Prussia
    • March 22nd: forced return of the Memelland from Lithuania to the German Reich
    • March 23: Slovakia becomes a state closely bound to Germany through the protection treaty
    • March 24th: a coup attempt by the National Socialists with the help of the Volksdeutsche movement in the Principality of Liechtenstein fails
    • March 26th: Poland finally rejects the German offers made since October on Danzig and the corridor and initiates a partial mobilization of the armed forces
    • March 27: Spain joins the Anti-Comintern Pact
    • March 28: Spanish general Franco's insurgent troops conquer Madrid
    • March 31: British-French guarantee for Poland
    • May 11th - August 30th: Japanese troops attack soldiers of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army , allied with the Soviet Union , in order to enforce territorial claims. The Japanese-Soviet border conflict begins, in which Japan also uses biological weapons . High Japanese casualties (Battles of Khalkhyn Gol - Battles of Nomonhan) ended with an armistice.
    • May 11: Poland rejects an offer of assistance from the Soviet Union
    • May 15 to May 17: Franco-Polish military meetings in Paris
    • May 19: Signing of the Franco-Polish military agreement by the French Chief of Staff Maurice Gamelin and the Polish Minister of War Tadeusz Kasprzycki , France undertook an offensive with the majority of its troops after 15 days in the event of a German attack on Poland or threat to its vital interests in Danzig to begin against Germany
    • May 22nd: Signing of the steel pact between Germany and Italy
    • May 23: Hitler announced in a speech to the Commander-in-Chief ( Schmundt Protocol ) that he had decided to attack Poland. He stated: "So the question of protecting Poland is omitted and the decision remains to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity."
    • May 26: With the "Military Training Act" Britain leads the military one
    • May 31: German-Danish non-aggression treaty
    • June 7th: With the "Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Pilling Act", the American Congress decides to buy up and stockpile essential raw materials worth 100 million dollars
    • June 7: Estonia and Latvia sign a non-aggression treaty with Germany
    • The National Socialist propaganda on the Polish Corridor that began, which had been suppressed until then, indicates that from now on Poland will be targeted, and the governments of Poland, Great Britain and France sign assistance agreements
    • the general staff planning for the war against Poland, code-named Fall Weiß , will be completed by June 15
    • August 6: Soviet ten-year plan to build a fleet of 15 battleships of the Soviet-Soyuz-class
    • August 11: British and French military missions arrive in Moscow to negotiate an alliance against Germany
    • August 17: the German-Soviet economic agreement on Soviet raw material deliveries enables Hitler to plan a war without fear of the effects of another naval blockade , which led to the German defeat in World War I and forced approval of the Versailles Treaty in 1919
    • August 19: Conclusion of the German-Soviet economic agreement as a preliminary stage to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the two foreign ministers.
    • August 21: from Wilhelmshaven : the battleship Admiral Graf Spee leaves for the Atlantic and the liner " SMS Schleswig-Holstein " (old name) for a "visit" to Gdansk - with landing troops hidden on board -
    • August 22nd: At Hitler's address to the commanders-in-chief on August 22nd, 1939 , Hitler announced the impending attack on Poland
    • August 24: German-Soviet non-aggression pact , Eastern Europe is divided into spheres of interest in a secret additional protocol (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement)
    • August 24: Roosevelt's message to Mr. Hitler, with the request in the interest of “world peace” to fully respect the “territorial integrity” of the other nations and to settle disputes in “direct negotiations”
    • August 25:
      • Offer from Hitler / the German Reich to Great Britain, for freedom of action in the East he wants to forego any border adjustments in the West and declares himself ready to defend the British Empire with the German army in the event of an attack by third parties
      • Signing of an assistance agreement between Poland and Great Britain in the event of a German attack on Poland
      • Japan announces the Anti-Comintern Pact
      • The beginning of the mediation efforts of Birger Dahlerus between Hitler and GB / Fr

    The course of the war from 1939 to 1945

    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1939

    Alliances, dependencies in September 1939

    Gdansk and Poland are occupied. The Red Army also invades Poland, Lithuania and Finland. Annexation of further areas and establishment of a German special zone of occupation, the Generalgouvernement, in Poland. Massive reprisals against the civilian population, in particular the massive kidnapping and murder of Jewish Poles, begins (as a special force for this: police task forces). A planned intervention by Great Britain and France against Germany and the Soviet Union no longer materializes.

    Events in 1939 just before the start of the war:

    The attack on Poland

    Joint German-Soviet victory parade
    • 27./28. September: Bombing of Warsaw by the air force and artillery
      • In Wejherowo (Neustadt), psychiatric patients are murdered by German SS troops. A German military hospital was then set up in the affected clinic.
    • September to December: Shortly after the start of the war in Poland, members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” murdered several thousand people in the woods around the village of Wielka Piaśnica near Danzig between September and December 1939. The Piaśnica massacre is considered to be the first systematically carried out mass murder by the National Socialists in German-occupied Europe. The victim groups were members of the Polish and Kashubian intelligentsia , Polish prisoners of war, patients in German and Polish psychiatric clinics and, as the largest group, Gestapo prisoners deported from the Reich.
    • September 28th:
    • September 29: Surrender of the Polish fortress of Modlin
    • October 4: Hitler's secret pardon for war crimes committed in Poland
    • October 6: The last Polish troops surrender after the Battle of Kock
    • October 8: the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Germany and the Soviet Union is taking the " fourth partition of Poland "
    Further acts of war


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1940

    In 1940 the German Reich attacks Denmark and Norway, which is then occupied by them. Invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and northern France (the so-called Western Campaign ) leading to the occupation of Paris. The evacuation of over 300,000 Allied soldiers near Dunkirk succeeds. German air raids on Great Britain. Hitler's military fail to achieve the main goal of keeping Britain out of the war or forcing it to surrender. The Soviet Union occupies the Baltic States and Romanian Bessarabia. Planning for the war against the Soviet Union. The conclusion of a three-power pact between Italy, Japan and the German Reich, which other states subsequently join, is a success for Hitler in foreign policy.

    First half of 1940
    Western campaign in 1940
    Photo of Rotterdam after the bombing of May 14, 1940 and subsequent clearing of the rubble (taken in 1942)
    • May 14th:
    • May 15: the British cabinet decides to wage a strategic aerial warfare against the German Reich
    • 17th of May:
    • May 19: the German 6th Army reaches the river Schelde and advances to Abbeville . The advance is so rapid that the British and French units in northern France are cut off; they withdraw to Dunkerque (Dunkirk)
    • May 20: The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, which calls for material and moral support for the Allies in the fight against Germany, announces its founding.
    • May 23: After the occupation of the Netherlands , SS leader Hanns Albin Rauter was appointed "General Commissioner for Security" and Higher SS and Police Leader "Northwest" at the Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands Seyß-Inquart. In his position as police commander and the highest-ranking SS leader in the Netherlands, Rauter was responsible for the deportations of around 110,000 Dutch Jews to the extermination camps (around 6,000 survived), the fight against the Dutch resistance and the harsh occupation conditions. Around 300,000 Dutch people were deported to the Reich for forced labor and their properties were confiscated. The general strike organized by the Dutch resistance in February 1941 was bloodily suppressed at Rauter's orders.
    • May 24th: Hitler's controversial stop order for the armored forces of Army Group A
    • May 26th - June 5th: the Battle of Dunkirk begins; on June 4th capture of Dunkerque
    • May 27: British Operation Dynamo (evacuation of over 300,000 Allied soldiers) starts near Dunkirk. Will be completed on June 4th.
      • France is preparing to defend. Fall Rot is the German code name for the second offensive in France
    • May 28: Belgian army surrenders
    • May 29: German-Romanian oil-weapons pact
    • May / June: Polish civilians are massacred in Poland as part of the AB action and the Palmiry massacre
    • June 1: A squadron of the Condor Legion flies over the border to Switzerland when attacking France . Swiss airmen shot down 11 of them German machines in the defensive position.
    • June 4: three Swiss aircraft are shot down in a subsequent German “punitive expedition”
    • June 5th: German offensive on the Aisne and Somme
    • June 6th: the Reich government protests against the Swiss "air raids" and asks the Swiss Federal Council to apologize (repeated on June 19th)
    • June 8th: Allied expedition forces, which had been successful up to then, withdrew from the Narvik area
    • June 9th: Soldiers of the 6th Infantry Division cross the Seine
    • June 10th:
      • the Norwegian military surrenders, King Håkon VII and the government go into exile in Britain
      • From this time: Shetland Bus , around 600 Norwegians fled to the British Shetland Islands in 1940 by fishing boats . From 1941 to 1945 373 refugees were saved in this way. Conversely, Norwegian resistance fighters and 192 agents were smuggled into Norway via this route (locations Lunna and Scalloway near Lerwick and Telavåg ; losses: 33 men and seven ships).
      • Mussolini decides to go to war against the two Western Allies
    • 10-13 June: Operation Cycle, approx. 11,000 British and other Allied soldiers evacuated from Le Havre
    • June 11th: First Italian air raids against British Malta (bombing), initially no attempt at invasion, blockade - British name: Second large siege of Malta (until November 1942)
    • 14th June:
    • Paris is occupied, previously partially evacuated by the French military ( Paris in WWII )
    • The German Army Group C breaks through the Maginot Line and the fortress of Verdun is taken
    • 15-25 June: Another British evacuation, Operation Aerial , of more than 215,000 Allied soldiers from Cherbourg , St. Malo and other ports to England
    • June 17th: ... the HMT Lancastria , used as a troop transport, is sunk by the German Air Force in front of the Loire estuary .
    • 17th of June:
      • Ex-Marshal Philippe Pétain , Prime Minister of the newly formed French government, explains France's defeat
      • The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov congratulates the German Reich on its victory over France
      • Soviet troops occupy the Baltic states on the same day
    • June 18: Charles de Gaulle , Military Secretary of State in exile in London, calls on the French (with Churchill's support) in his radio appeal later called Apell de Londre on BBC London (with the support of Churchill) to keep fighting - the appeal of London / June 18 . He then founds the Committee for Free France (France libre) and from the French participants in the Narvik expedition and from the 130,000 men who were disembarked from Dunkirk in time, the first volunteers as French units in the British Army ( Forces françaises libres ). As a result, various civil groups of the Resistance , but also partisan units , emerged in France .
    • June 19: Le Mans is captured and occupied
    • 20th June:
      • At the behest of the Federal Council, the Commander in Chief of the Swiss Army, General Henri Guisan , ordered the aircraft to be left on the ground with immediate effect.
      • The transfer of the 45th French Army Corps to internment in the Jura under General Marius Daille is granted by the Swiss Federal Council (around 43,000 French and Polish soldiers at Goumois . In the following period, the Swiss Army was partly in favor of interning them until the end of the war foreign military personnel.)
    • June 21: Hitler negotiates with the French government (État français , Vichy regime) in the forest of Compiègne
    • June 22nd: Signing of the Franco-German armistice (Compiègne) , French called Armistice de Rethondes ; ( to the place and the railway carriage )
    • June 25th: the German-French Armistice goes into effect at 1:35 a.m.
    • June 25: Public statements by the Federal Council (government) to the Swiss people on the ceasefire in the neighboring country via radio and in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and at the same time a secret, Rütli report , issued by Commander-in-Chief Henri Guisan on the Réduit plan in the event of an attack by the Axis powers . Two parts of a cautious policy of deterring the Axis powers. Named after the Rütliwiese on Lake Lucerne (place where orders were issued in central Switzerland).
    • June 26th: Dönitz visits Lorient . As a result, the decisions to expand this and the four other bases for submarines are made. The first two Koroman bunkers will be completed by December 1941. They were part of the "Atlantic Wall" and the " Atlantic Battle " (trade war with submarines; alongside Brest , Saint-Nazaire , La Rochelle and Bordeaux )
    • June 28 to July 4: Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina
    • June 30 and next days: the British Channel Islands near the French north-west coast are occupied by German troops, Guernsey surrenders on June 30, Jersey on July 1, Alderney on July 2 and Sark on July 4 after a partial evacuation of the civilian population
    • June: William Stephenson opens the British Security Coordination (BSC, British secret service network in the USA) in New York City


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1940

    • July 3: Operation Catapult , sinking of the French fleet in North Africa in Mers-el-Kébir by the British Force H (Admiral Somerville). 1297 French sailors died and 350 were wounded. Similar missions before Oran and on July 8th in Dakar .
    • July:
      • Division of France into a German-occupied part and the unoccupied southeast part of the Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain (État fr.)
      • General de Gaulle is from 1940 the organizer of the external military resistance with fled units: later called "Leader of Free France", from exile in London (see London appeal, radio address, June 18 )
      • the Resistance - the resistance within France is formed, supported by trade unions, the socialist and communist parties, but also by conservatives who do not want to collaborate with Pétain and the Germans
    • Mid-July: Creation of the British Special Operations Executive (covert military operations)
    • July: the Battle of Britain begins from the Channel coast of occupied France with attacks on shipping traffic in the English Channel (partial blockade)
    • July 19: USA, the Two-Ocean Navy Act provides for a 70 percent increase in the US Navy
    • July 25th:
      • Rütli report , orders issued by the Swiss Mayor Guisan (withdrawal of troops from the border, Réduit strategy)
      • Code name "Otto", a "preferred Wehrmacht program", the plan for the larger west-east railway lines through the Generalgouvernement, in particular the railway line from Radom via Demblin to Lublin , to be restored or expanded from October . Franz Halder , Chief of the General Staff of the Army since September 1938, commissioned his staff on June 19 or July 3, 1940 to prepare it . This plan was expanded after July 31, merged with other plans and, in December (see 18.), the war preparations of the OKW and OKH ( Barbarossa case ) were based.
    • July 31: Hitler decides to attack the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941 in order to eliminate it as England's mainland sword.
    • August 6: Estonia's forced accession to the Soviet Union, annexation
    • August 7: Churchill and de Gaulle agree on the Accord of Checkers ( Checkers treaties), after the United Kingdom respects the integrity of all French possessions and the "integral restoration and independence and greatness of France" and receives.
    • August 8: The detailed invasion plan against Ireland under the code name Enterprise Green is handed over to the German high command - General Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was in charge . The invasion was supposed to flank the Sea Lion Company (England) and was done with its task.
    • August 11: Operation Razzle begins to destroy the German harvest with fire chips
    • August 13: "Eagle Day" during the Battle of Britain: massive air raids on Royal Air Force bases in southern England
    • August 17th: Hitler imposes an import blockade on the British Isles
    • August 20: The Chinese Communists open the Hundred Regiments Offensive , which will last until December 5, towards the end of which there is a rift between Peng Dehuai , the military leader of the Communists, and Mao Zedong
    • August 21: The British Allied Forces Act 1940 gives certain governments in exile the right to own troops in the United States. To station kingdom as an expression of their sovereignty. In practice, they were then combatants in the British armed forces and integrated into their management structure.
    • 24./25. August: First (unplanned) dropping of German bombs on the British capital London , followed by the first British air raid on Berlin the following night
    • August 30th: Second Vienna arbitration award by Germany and Italy: Romania has to cede parts of Transylvania to Hungary
    • August: Use of the French naval port as a submarine base (German and Italian navy)
    • November 3rd: the Greek army successfully counterattacked, by November 14th the Italian units were on the defensive and were pushed back across the borders of Albania
    • November 8th to 12th: The campagne du Gabon or bataille de Libreville is the name given to the conquest of Gabon by Forces françaises libres (FFL, under De Gaulle )
    • November 11th: from the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis in the South Pacific the Engl. Freighter SS Automedon with a mailbag of extensive British secret material on board that could be made available to Japan. Automedon incident - the tea service; an assessment of the situation and strategy in the Far East (as of August 1940; Chiefs of Staff Appreciation of Far Eastern Strategy )
    • 11./12. November: British attack on the Italian naval base Taranto , three battleships are incapacitated , in particular by the first use of an aircraft carrier, the Illustrious , against an enemy fleet
    • November 12th to 13th: Visit of the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in Berlin, an extension of the three-power pact to form a continental bloc against England, on the Soviet Union does not take place - Hitler is already determined to go to war against the Soviet Union
    • November 14: German air raid on Coventry (568 people were killed in this attack)
    • Start of broadcasting of Germany Calling , German propaganda shortwave transmitter in around 30 languages, daily 147 hours of programming (until April 30, 1945) - identifier Germany calling! Here are the Reichssender Hamburg, station Bremen
    • December 8: Start of Operation Compass , during which the Allies in North Africa under the command of General Richard O'Connor were able to repel Italian troops 800 km south of Sidi Barrani in Libya as far as Bardia from December 8 to February 9, 1941 a sudden victory at Fort Capuzzo in July, this was the first Allied operation in North Africa
    • December 13th: In view of the defeats of the Axis partner, Hitler issues instructions for a German campaign in the Balkans with the Plan Marita
    • December 16: British air raid on Mannheim (Operation Abigail), considered the first British bombing raid with terrorist intent and experiment for later incendiary attacks, internally justified as retaliation for the air raids on Coventry and Southampton,
    • 16./17. 23rd and 23rd December: two accidental air raids by the Royal Air Force on Basel and Zurich , two dead, possibly a result of the Swiss blackout measures.
    • December 18: Hitler issues " Instruction No. 21 " to the OKW to prepare for war against the Soviet Union under the new code name Case Barbarossa , until then the code name "Otto" was in effect (see July).
    • December 29: German air raid on London leads to the second city fire ( Second Great Fire of London )


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1941

    In 1941 the war was widened again in many places. In order to support Italy in its invasion of Africa, Hitler orders the deployment of German troops in Libya. They succeed in advancing to Egypt (the port of Tobruk is initially held by British troops). The invasion of the Balkans leads to the invasion of Crete and Greece. The sinking of the battleship Bismarck represents Hitler's weak point in the Atlantic. In Asia, the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the communists in the war against Japan ended. The Battle of Britain, the German aerial warfare to conquer Great Britain, ended in favor of the Royal Air Force. With the withdrawal of German troops from France to the east, London is literally getting air again. On June 22nd, Hitler started the war against the temporary contracting party, the Soviet Union, with the company "Barbarossa". In mid-August, parts of the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht turned south-east towards Ukraine as far as Crimea and north towards Leningrad. The alliance between the United Kingdom / Great Britain and the USSR is established. Great Britain and the USA agree on the Atlantic Charter. By conquering southern Indochina to Malaysia, Japan can increase the pressure on China's supply routes. The Japanese advance in the Pacific comes to a halt in New Guinea. The German attack on the Soviet Union comes to a standstill in front of Moscow and Leningrad, and in the counter-offensive the Allied side has for the first time made major gains.

    First half of 1941 in Europe and the Mediterranean

    • January 10th: Planning for the Felix company , attack on the fortress of Gibraltar - cf. October 23, 1940, were discontinued
    • January 19: East Africa campaign : start of the British offensive against the colony of Italian East Africa
    • January 29th to March 27th: secret American-British staff talks in London lead to the ABC-1 war plan , in which the principle "Germany first" is established.
    • February 2 to March 27: Battle of Keren , Eritrea , British troops defeat the Italians
    • In February the German General Rommel received an order to support the unsuccessful ally Italy with the Africa Corps in its defense in North Africa
    • February 15: From this date, Cichociemni , Polish soldiers trained as parachutists after the invasion of Great Britain in 1939, supported the Home Army for the first time . They were also subordinate to her after landing. The first jump took place at Dębowiec . The last jump took place on December 28, 1944. Of the 316 soldiers who jumped off, 112 were killed. Nine of them were convicted after the war by the so-called communist people's courts during the Stalinist era . Of the 91 Cichociemni soldiers who took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 , 18 died during the fighting.
    • February 15 and 26: a deportation train each from Vienna-Aspang station with around 1,000 captured Jewish citizens from Vienna drives to a collection camp in the east of occupied Poland in Opole Lubelskie . (Those who still survived after one year in prison were murdered from there on March 31, 1942 in the Belzec extermination camp and in May and October 1942 in the Sobibor extermination camp . Only 28 of these two deportation transports are known.) On the 19th, another train leaves to camp Kielce .
    • FEBRUARY 18: the US lend-lease (English: "Lend-Lease Act") in the US Congress
    • February 22nd and 23rd: after a large-scale raid against Jews in the Netherlands, there was the “ February strike ” against the deportations , which was bloodily suppressed
    • February 28: The German army marches in from Romania near Giurgiu from south of Bucharest across the Danube and near Dobruja in Bulgaria (see History of Bulgaria )
      • Bulgaria later joins the Axis powers in the war against Yugoslavia and Greece
      • in December 1941 it declared war on Great Britain and the US - but not on the USSR
    • February 1941: manned German weather stations on Svalbard and NE Greenland (last cleared Ripfjorden on September 4, 1945) - on the other hand, a Danish Sirius patrol deployed in Greenland (Danish: Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje)
    • March 1: Heinrich Himmler and a delegation from IG Farben meet for a tour and joint planning at Auschwitz concentration camp
    • March 9: Italian major offensive in Albania turns into a disaster
    • March 11th: With the Lend & Lease Act, the US Congress creates the legal basis for the previously practiced support for Great Britain, the country, like the Soviet Union later , will be relieved of the country with arms and aid supplies on a large scale USA supplied
    • March 25: Yugoslavia joins the three-power pact, the result are demonstrations and a coup against the government of Prince Regent Paul, whereupon the accession is revoked 12 days later
    • March 27: “Instruction No. 25” on the destruction of Yugoslavia in connection with the planned campaign against Greece
    • March 28: Due to the defeat in the Battle of Cape Matapan against British units, the Italian fleet loses its effective operational capability in the Mediterranean
    • March 30th: Hitler announces war against the Soviet Union in a speech to 200–250 soldiers in the Reich Chancellery
    • June 6th: the commissar order of the Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht Keitel - official guidelines for the treatment of political commissars - is one of the well-documented violations of international law by the German Wehrmacht, issued with reference to an instruction from Hitler dated May 14, five weeks before the invasion the Soviet Union for the murder of prisoners of war from the Red Army
    • June 8th to July 14th: in the Syrian-Lebanese campaign , the British and the Free French take control of the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon
    • June 14: Hitler's speech to the commanders-in-chief on June 14, 1941 on the Eastern campaign
    • June 15-17: a British attempt to lift the siege of Tobruk ( Operation Battleaxe ) fails
    • June 18: the German Reich and Turkey sign a friendship and non-aggression treaty
    • June 22nd: Beginning of the German-Soviet War
      • Three Army Groups (North, Center, South) were ready for the attack, Army Group North (von Leeb) was supposed to conquer the Baltic states and advance to Leningrad , the main load was on Army Group Center (von Bock), it was supposed to advance to Moscow and was accordingly well armed, the Army Group South ( von Rundstedt ) was to conquer the Ukraine , units from allied or conquered countries of the Axis powers were also involved in the campaign, attacks against the Soviet Union are also being carried out from occupied Norway, they are aimed particularly at Murmansk and the local railway connection, the " Murman Railway ", and the port. For the organization of the forces, see Schematic war organization of the Wehrmacht on June 22, 1941 and Schematic war organization of the Red Army on June 22, 1941 .
      • General plan east , hunger plan (strategic basis)
      • the Molotov Line was a Soviet defense system that had been built along the border with the German Reich or the General Government established on the basis of the German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship of 1939
      • The Balkan campaign had postponed the time of attack on the Soviet Union by four weeks, so the attack did not take place until June 22nd, this delay and an unusually early onset of winter mean that the advance cannot proceed as planned and the operational goal of achieving it the Arkhangelsk - Astrakhan line , although it was calculated on the German side that supplies to the Wehrmacht could only be made possible up to a line running along Pskov , Kiev and the Crimea , Hitler demands the conquest of Moscow as part of a single line , uninterrupted campaign
      • In the early morning hours of June 22nd, the advance of 149 divisions across the Soviet border begins , two divisions are operating from Finnish territory , eight divisions were stationed in Norway, one division is ready in Denmark, 38 remain in the west, two divisions are fighting this time in North Africa and seven divisions stand in the Balkans
      • Despite many hints, the lower and middle leadership of the Soviet Union are not prepared for an attack, many of the Soviet soldiers on the border surrender without resistance, while the motorized German troops initially advance quickly
      • One consequence of the winter war in Finland was that Stalin began a comprehensive reorganization in the Red Army , in the course of which many officers who had been exiled to Siberia in the purges of 1936/37 are being rehabilitated; this contributes significantly to the Red Army has a greater combat strength than the German leadership expected
      • Soviet war production is relocated behind the Urals , where it is inaccessible to the German air force
      • as a direct reaction to the Soviet attack, Finland took part in the 1941 Continuation War in the German Russian campaign to recapture the lost territories
    • June 22nd: Romania and Italy declare war on the Soviet Union
    • June 23-29 : Tank battle near Dubno-Lutsk-Rivne
    • June 23: The Göring program envisages the quadrupling of the Luftwaffe
    • June 27: Hungary declares war on the Soviet Union
    • June 29th:


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1941 in Europe, Mediterranean

    • Mass killings in 1941 in Lviv (Lemberg), Ukraine, after the German occupation
    • July 1: Broniki case , Soviet massacre of German soldiers
    • July 3: Stalin's radio address . He now interprets the war as the “Great Patriotic War” or calls for the liberation of Europe from fascism. He names partisan warfare and scorched earth politics as weapons .
    • July to August 8th: Kessel battle near Uman
    • July 4th: about four weeks after the Wehrmacht took Pinsk , the 2nd SS cavalry regiment under the command of Franz Magill murdered about 9,000 Jewish men between August 5th and 13th around six kilometers outside the city.
    • July 10th - September 10th: Battle of the Smolensk Valley
    • July 12th: a mutual aid agreement between the Soviet Union and Great Britain is signed, both sides agree not to conclude a unilateral armistice with Germany
    • Between July 13, 1941 and August 19, 1944: long unsuccessful air raids on Ploieşti (oil production facilities in Romania) by the Allied powers
    • 21./22. July: Start of the German air raids on Moscow , which by a radar network of RUS-1 and RUS-2 is protected
    • July 26: the US and England declare a fuel embargo on Japan
    • July 29 to August 1: Harry Hopkins agrees to deliver American aid to the Soviet Union in Moscow
    • JULY 30: the Sikorski-Maisky agreement between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet Union is signed, it provides for the establishment of diplomatic relations and the establishment of a Polish army in the Soviet Union before
    • July 31 - August 21, 1941, planning of the Kamenets-Podolsk massacre (see below August 27 - 31)
    • August 7th: Stalin becomes Supreme Commander of the Red Army
    • August 8: first Soviet air raid on Berlin .
    • August 14: The Atlantic Charter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill specifies the ideas of a new world order after the war, it is considered one of the birth documents of the later United Nations
    • August 23 to September 26: Battle of Kiev
    • August 25 to September 17: Successful Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran (English: Operation Countenance - Russian: Sochuwstije ): the occupation of the formally neutral country serves to secure the Iranian oil fields and the establishment of a southern supply line for the Soviet Union
    • August 27 to 31: mass shooting of 23,600 deported Hungarian Jews by SS units and the 320 police battalion, the Kamenets-Podolsk massacre in Soviet territory ( Ukraine ); beforehand, the plan was agreed with the armed forces (from July 31 to August 21). For the first time in the Soviet Union, thousands of civilians were murdered indiscriminately, regardless of age or gender.
    • August 30: first successful Soviet offensive near Jelnja and at the same time the first withdrawal of German troops
    • September 4th: "Greer" incident, the American destroyer USS Greer reports the position of a German submarine to a British aircraft and pursues the submarine, the submarine shoots a torpedo at the American destroyer, the "Greer "Throws depth charges, which leads to the" Shoot on sight "order of the American President on September 11th
    • September 8: Beginning of the Leningrad blockade (today St. Petersburg ). It lasted over two years until January 18, 1944. The military capture of the city was forbidden to the Wehrmacht by Hitler. The civilian population of the metropolis is systematically starved by German troops .
    • September 10th: End of the battle near Smolensk
    • September 13th: on this day the Finnish Tarmo drove as part of the bogus company "Nordwind" - a German-Finnish company to cover the German occupation of the Estonian islands Hiiumaa and Saaremaa against the Red Army fleet
    • September 15: The OKW issues an order to take and shoot civilians hostage (in connection with attacks on members of the Wehrmacht behind the front) - atonement order
    • September 30: Mass murder in the Babyn Yar valley near Kiev of over 30,000 people from the city's Jewish population, after the 6th Army had occupied Kiev, mainly by Einsatzgruppe C of the SS , until November 1943, further mass shootings took place in the city a total of between 150,000 and 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war and civilians were murdered.
    Front line in the Soviet Union until December 1941
    • November 1st: Stationing of submarines for the " Atlantic Battle " ( trade war with submarines in La Rochelle (until August 1944))
    • November 6th: Stalin speaks on the radio for the second time to the entire Soviet population, he announces the imminent victory over Germany
    • November 7th:
      • Red Army military parade in Moscow's Red Square
      • Sinking of the Soviet passenger ship Armenija (1928) off Gurzuf (Crimea) in the Black Sea. Before this date it was used as a troop transport. It is unclear whether it was marked as a hospital ship when it was used to clear the Sevastopol hospitals. As a result of the attack by (at least) one German aircraft, 4,700 to 4,800 people died in the rapid sinking, and figures of over 7,000 are also mentioned.
    • November 14th: The British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is sunk by the German submarine U 81 east of Gibraltar
    • November 17th: so-called torchmen order
    • still in November:
      • The battle for Moscow begins with the new German offensive , and this attempt did not bring the Wehrmacht any resounding success either (October 2, 1941 to January 31, 1942)
      • The US is revising its neutrality laws , US merchant ships may be armed and deliver war material to warring states
      • November 17th to December 2nd: Battle of Rostov
    • November 18: British Operation Crusader offensive begins in North Africa
      • on November 26th a second attack followed, a successful breakout from Tobruk
      • On December 7, the Africa Corps withdrew to the Gazala Line, and the Africa Corps under Rommel attacked Tobruk again in January 1942
    • November 20: Around 1,000 people are deported on a first train from Munich to Lithuania and murdered there. In another 42 transports up to 1945, almost all Munich residents persecuted as Jews were deported to the east.
    • November 25: Extension of the Anti-Comintern Pact by 5 years, accession of Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Finland and Denmark
    • November 28: Italian colonial rule in East Africa ended with the lost Battle of Gondar (October 18 to November 28) against Commonwealth troops
    • December 1941: Creation of the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Waffen-SS , initially as an army organization from British-Ind. Prisoners of War in North Africa. Compare: Boses Azad Hind and StaLag Annaburg
    • December 5: at the Battle of Moscow , the Red Army begins its comprehensive counter-offensive with reserves brought in from Siberia under General Zhukov
    • December 11: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States after the start of the Pacific War (see below)
    • December 14th: Great Britain, USA and Bulgaria declare war on each other, Romania declares war on the USA; India declares it to Japan
    • December 16: Hitler gives the order to stop on the Eastern Front, but the Wehrmacht is pushed back further by the end of the year
    • December 22 to January 14, 1942: Allied Arcadia Conference in Washington (DC)


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1941 in Asia and the Pacific

    U.S. naval forces in Pearl Harbor on December 7th


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1942

    After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, the war year 1942 was followed by the first German deportations of Jews from France, the fighting over the Tobruk and El Alamein fortresses, increasingly massive air raids on German cities, but also on Tokyo, the conquest of the Philippines, the attack Heydrich marked in Prague; German troops reach the Don, followed by the German attack on Stalingrad and in a counterattack its encirclement; Beginning of the Manhattan Project, the Allied landing in Northwest Africa. After the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in January and the naval advance into the Indian Ocean, the year brings the first Australian and US successes against Japan in the Battle of Midway and New Guinea.

    First half of 1942 in Europe, Mediterranean area

    • January 1st: In the White House in Washington, 26 nations sign the UN Declaration in which they commit themselves to a joint fight against the Axis powers . The 26 signatory states call themselves the United Nations . a. The Soviet Union, the USA, Great Britain, China, Belgium, Greece, the Czechoslovak Republic, India, Luxembourg and Holland count; seven more nations by October 1943, and ten more nations by the end of the World War, have joined this declaration.
    • January 2: 33 German spies from the Duquesne spy ring are convicted. The largest espionage case in United States history. They were arrested on June 29, 1941 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
    • January 8th: Beginning of the Demyansk Kessel Battle by the Red Army, Kessel until relief on April 21
    • From January 1942: the first " Eastern workers " ( forced labor ) are deported to the German Reich by train, from 1942 to 1944 a total of around three million people from the Soviet Union are transported to Germany to do forced labor
    • First counter-offensive to overcome the blockade of Leningrad: Ljubaner operation . She failed. After heavy attacks, the offensive was ended in April 1942.
    • January 8 to April 20: Fighting for Rzhev (Rzhev-Vyazma operation and its follow-up fights until December 1942)
    • January 14th: At the Arcadia Conference, the Americans and British decide to form a joint committee of their general staffs, the Combined Chiefs of Staff
    • January 14th ff: German submarines sink 23 merchant ships off the US coast at the company Paukenschlag
    • January 18: The battle for Cholm begins
    • February 1: Vidkun Quisling becomes Prime Minister in occupied Norway
    • in February: Introduction of the more strongly encrypted Enigma-M4 (Ultra) for the encryption of German submarine radio traffic leads to the so-called black-out of the decryption of enemy radio messages on the part of the Allies for 10 months (successful since January 1940)
    • After February 8 ( Fritz Todt's fatal plane crash ), Hitler appoints the architect Albert Speer as Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions and as General Inspector for German Roads, General Inspector for Fortifications, General Inspector for Water and Energy , (in addition in 1943 as Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production ) and Fritz Sauckel as General Representative for Labor Use (GBA)
    • February 11: Construction of the British Maunsell sea forts, "HM Forts" for air and coastal defense, especially the estuaries (Maunsell Sea Forts and Maunsell Army Forts, construction started August 1942), code name Uncle (U) and a number
    • 11th to 13th February: Cerberus company : Return of the warships Gneisenau , Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen lying in Brest through the English Channel to Germany
    • February 14: The British Bomber Command is instructed in the so-called Area Bombing Directive to use its forces without restrictions and with a focus on working-class quarters in German industrial cities
    • February 15: The Gestapo deported a group of Jews from Bytom (Beuthen) to Auschwitz main camp and murdered them immediately. The mass murder of Jews in this German concentration camp in occupied Poland begins.
    • February 16: German-Italian submarine attack on Aruba (part of the Caribbean battle )
    • February 25th: The 1st Polish Armored Division was established in eastern Scotland on the orders of General Sikorski .
    • 27./28. February: With Operation Biting near Bruneval near Le Havre, the British Army captured the main components of a German radar radio measuring device in an airborne company . Their evaluation yielded important information about the state of German radar technology .
    • March 6: The German counterintelligence succeeds in the Hague with the arrest of the "Gruppe RLS" (British code name: "Ebenezer"), the decryption of the recorded radio traffic of the espionage network and the long-term access to it: the England game , also known as Operation North Pole , led to the Many Dutch agents are arrested.
    • March 27: the first train with Jewish deportees leaves France from Compiègne from the Royallieu concentration camp in the direction of the extermination camps with 1112 deportees; Of these, only 19 people survived until 1945, followed by 78 more trains with 75,721 deportees, of which only 2,500 people experience 1945 in freedom again
    • 28/29 March: Heavy air raid on Lübeck , the militarily insignificant city was attacked because of its favorable location and the half-timbered construction of its old town to test new methods of attack, one month later German retaliatory attacks begin ( Baedeker Blitz )
    • In March: the Nazi deportations of Jews from the vassal state of Slovakia begin in consultation with the Jewish advisor D. Wisliceny , the so-called Aktion David (an easily understandable cover name). Around 60,000 prisoners were deported to the Auschwitz and Lublin concentration camps for murder.
    • April 3: About 1,000 people persecuted as Jews are deported on a second train from Munich “to the East” and murdered there; see. November 20, 1941
    • April 5: In instruction No. 41 on Operation Blau , Hitler set the goals of the three Army Groups in the Soviet Union for this summer, Army Group South to the Donets industrial area ; Capture the north wing of the Army Group with the 6th and 4th Panzer Army and the Romanian 4th Army, the Donbogen and Stalingrad, then further advance towards the Caucasus and Baku
    • April 11: Cowes ( Isle of Wight ), air strikes (also on the following days)
    • April 23rd and April 27th: Bombing of Rostock
    • April 26th - 30th: Destruction of the village Telavåg ( Norway ) as a so-called punitive action by the Gestapo against the so-called Shetland Bus escape route and the imprisonment of the population; 54 of the 268 deportees were killed, others later died as a result
    • April: The plans for Operation Roundup (later expanded as Operation Bolero ) and Operation Sledgehammer were presented to the Allied military command in April 1942. They contained the basics of the later Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune . The execution, which did not come about in this way, was planned for the first half of 1943. The rate for personnel and material was initially significantly lower than for the 1944 landing in Normandy.
    • May 4th: the Polish destroyer Błyskawica , lying in port, took part in the defense of the attacked Cowes (160 bombers). After the German air raids, the crew of the Błyskawica also took part in the fire fighting in the city. The warship escorted a total of 83 convoys during the war, damaged 3 submarines through fire and shot down four air force machines. Involved in Operation Torch .
    • May 4th and May 7th: bombing of Stuttgart
    • May 5th: Operation Ironclad , beginning of the English Occupation of the island of Madagascar, which was controlled by Vichy France until then (had no effect on the talk of the Madagascar plan by the Nazi leaders)
    • May 8th to 20th: In the Trappenjagd company , German associations expel the Red Army troops that had landed on the Kerch peninsula ; the Germans take 170,000 prisoners
    • May 12: Soviet offensive to capture Kharkov ( Battle of Kharkov ) begins
    • May 23: Parts of the Soviet attack troops are encircled near Kharkov and destroyed by the end of the month (240,000 prisoners)
    • May 26:
      • Great Britain and the Soviet Union sign a formal treaty of alliance in London, valid for 20 years after the end of the war
      • The start of the Theseus company , the German attack on the Gazala Front in Libya, at Bir Hakeim and Bir el Harmat , French (of the Forces françaises libres ) and Jewish troop units in the British army delay Rommel's attack to such an extent that the majority of the 8 British Army can withdraw in an orderly manner
    • May 27th: Operation Anthropoid : Attack on the head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and at the same time deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich , in Prague , Heydrich succumbs to the consequences of the attack on June 4th
    • May 22: Mexico declares war on Germany
    • May 29: American-Soviet discussion in Washington about a second European front in 1942 (participants: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry L. Hopkins, George C. Marshall , Ernest J. King and Cordell Hull, as well as the Soviet ambassador Maxim M. Litvinov)
    • May 30th: Operation Millennium : the British Bomber Command gathers over 1000 bombers for the largest air raid of the war to date, targeting Cologne ; by 1945, 262 air raids on the city followed
    • Against the Soviet offensive to overcome the blockade of Leningrad: Lyuban operation directed German counterattack (destruction of the Soviet 2nd shock army)
    • June 2: Battle of the Crimea for Sevastopol (June 7) ends on July 5
    • June 6: US declaration of war on Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary
    • June 9: Heydrich's largest funeral ceremony to date takes place in Berlin, the village of Lidice and the hamlet of Ležáky are destroyed as retaliatory measures, and there are around 1700 victims of the wave of terrorism following the Heydrich attack in the whole of the Czech Republic
    The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks , Alaska commemorates the delivery of US aircraft to the Soviet Union (via Northwest Staging Route and Siberia)
    • June 11: American-Soviet Treaty on the Principles of Mutual Assistance in Warfare in consideration of the American Congress Act of March 11, 1941 ( Lending and Lease Act )
    • June 13th to 27th: Operation Pastorius (German sabotage attempt in the USA)
    • June 19: The Military Intelligence Training Center is founded in Camp Ritchie , Maryland, a training camp in which, in the further course of the war, mainly young Germans who have fled are trained to become news specialists ( Ritchie Boys )
    • June 21: Tobruk's Allied Commander Major General Hendrik B. Klopper surrenders, Rommel is promoted to General Field Marshal
      • the further advance should take place through Egypt, the city of Alexandria should fall and the Suez Canal should be occupied; Shortly before El Alamein , British units built a 65-kilometer-wide defense belt
    • June 28: the German summer offensive ( blue case ) in the Soviet Union begins with the attack on Voronezh


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    First half of 1942 in Asia and the Pacific


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1942 in Europe, Mediterranean

    • June 28 to November: German summer offensive in southern Russia, planned as a " blue case ". Modified carried out as a company Braunschweig . The plan includes the advance to the Caucasus and the lower Volga.
    • July to November 1943: in Aktion Reinhardt , almost all Jews and Roma from occupied Poland, the Generalgouvernement , over two million Jews and around 50,000 Roma from five districts (Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, Krakow and Galicia) in the three extermination camps in Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka murdered
    • from June 29th: Conquest of Liepāja . Most of the more than 7,000 Jewish residents were murdered in the following massacres in Liepāja by Wehrmacht and SS troops in what the perpetrators called hostage shootings . Over 3000 of them from December 15 to 17, 1941 near Šķēde.
    • July: Destruction of the allied convoy PQ 17 in the North Sea
    • JULY 1: German troops take the Soviet-occupied Latvia's capital Riga a
    • From July 16: Paris - on the first and second day of the summer vacation, more than 4,000 French police officers arrested 13,000 Jewish people, children and adults, and interned them, among others, in a raid on the instigation of the Nazi authorities. a. eponymous for this first action on this scale in occupied France, in the sports palace for cycling races: Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver . About ten thousand people managed to escape capture on these days by escaping. In the following weeks, Pithiviers and Drancy are the most important collection camps for prisoners until they are transported to Auschwitz for the Nazi mass murder . Less than 2 percent of these prisoners from France experience the end of the war. In addition to the franz. Collaboration , the valuation as a war crime against the civilian population in an occupied country is important for these acts.
    • July 2nd - 13th: Operation Seydlitz (fighting by Soviet and German cavalry units near Rzhev)
    • July 4th: End of the battle for Sevastopol 1941–1942 , "Operation Störfang" ends with the conquest of the fortress and the capture of around 100,000 Red Army soldiers
    • July 1 to July 31: first battle of El Alamein ; German-Italian offensive with the aim of penetrating the Suez Canal gets stuck there
    • July 18: First flight of the Me 262
    • Skirmishes in the German summer offensive in southern Russia
    • July 21: A protest rally takes place in New York City against the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe
      • July 21st German forces cross the Don , first step for the advance on Stalingrad
      • July 23: Rostov is captured
      • July 23: in directive No. 45 , Hitler ordered that instead of attacking one after the other simultaneously into Stalingrad and into the Caucasus
      • August 4th: Stavropol is captured
      • August 9: Krasnodar and the Kuban are crossed
    • July 28th: Order 227 of the Soviet High Command (later Stawka) with the slogan: “Don't step back!”
    • July 30 to October 1: First Rzhev Sychovka operation (see Battle of Rzhev )
    Theater of war Europe / Soviet Union 1942
    • The Romanian allies of the German army succeed in rolling up the Soviet defense on the east coast of the Sea of Azov from the north and opening the Taman Peninsula from "backwards"
    • August 4: The Swiss Federal Council , aware of their persecution, confirms in a resolution the rejection at the borders, especially of Jewish Germans, even if the foreigners affected by this could face serious disadvantages (dangers to life and limb). (according to Federal Council protocol on August 4, 1942)
    • 8/9 August: Limited Soviet attack against the siege forces (Operation Stormwind) in preparation for the performance and radio broadcast of the Leningrad Symphony by D. Shostakovich in the city ( Leningrad Blockade ). The music was then also transmitted to the German positions via loudspeakers. (Compare 19 Aug.)
    • August 11: Beginning of the Wirbelwind company , a German tank offensive against the Soviet "Sukhinichi front arc "
    • August 15: After two unsuccessful Royal Navy operations since June, a third convoy with essential supplies arrives in the ports of Malta ( Operation Harpoon , Vigorous , Pedestal in August. This broke the blockade of the Mediterranean islands again.) This continued to ensure British air superiority across the Sicilian Strait ( Strait of Sicily before Africa).
    • August 16: Dt. Kriegsmarine - The armored ship Admiral Scheer leaves for Operation Wunderland against the Northeast Passage and the Soviet icebreakers there
    • August 19: Operation Jubilee (English: Dieppe Raid ), the landing operation / invasion near Dieppe at the mouth of the Arques in the English Channel (original plan: Operation Rutter ) is canceled after heavy Canadian and British losses. 6,000 Allied soldiers landed in Normandy. You should open a second front against Hitler's Germany. This first attempt at landing failed - the Allies had to withdraw with heavy losses.
    • August 19: Sinyavinsk Operation (First Ladoga Battle), start of the second Soviet counter-offensive to overcome the blockade of Leningrad (until October 10, stalemate, losses Wehrm / RA about 1: 2)
    • August 21st to September 21st: in the so-called General Commissioner of Belarus , mass murders of civilians are committed at the company mala fever (over 11,000 dead)
    • August 21: German mountain troops climb the Elbrus massif and hoist a swastika flag
    • August 22nd: Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy. Germany is thus losing an important rubber supplier. From September 1944: active participation with expeditionary force
    • August 23: around 1000 planes begin to drop incendiary bombs on Stalingrad, at the same time German tanks penetrate the outskirts for the first time
    • August 26th: the attack on Tuapse which had started is halted after two days
    • August 30th to September 6th: the continuation of the German offensive in North Africa fails in the Battle of Alam Halfa
    • September: Leslie Groves , is promoted to Brigadier General and takes over the management of the weapons project of the OSRD, now named after the location of George C. Marshall's headquarters in the Manhattan Constructions District ( Manhattan Project ) and begins in the highest secrecy in the desert of New Mexico with the construction of Site Y , a research town near Los Alamos - scientific. Direction: J. Robert Oppenheimer - on building the atomic bomb; This also included the espionage of the Alsos missions , based on Roosevelt's signature of June 28 under Executive Order 8807 for the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
    • August 31: the port city of Anapa is taken
    • September 6th: Novorossiysk , the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, is captured
    • In the high mountains, German troops occupy the most important pass crossings and temporarily move south on a broad front - they are in the Abkhazian mountain village of Pschu , 20 kilometers off the coast of the Black Sea near Gudauta , east of the Elbrus, the German and Romanian troops are standing on the river sections of the Baksan and des Terek to Naurskaja , north of it the front is lost on the Kuma , in the Nogaier steppe and in the Kalmyk steppe
    • Maikop with its oil reserves is captured and held until January 1943, Grozny , cf. Transcaucasus Front of the Red Army
    • September 13th: with the German attack on the inner defensive belt of Stalingrad , the five-month battle of Stalingrad begins (the German attempt to conquer the city is described under the attack on Stalingrad )
    • September 17: Laconia order to German submarines on how to behave in the recovery of survivors of an attack at sea
    • September: Completion of the " general settlement plan" by the RKF planning office. It describes the intended population shifts of around 12 million people in the Soviet Union if the war was won
    • September 24: Two agents from the British intelligence service Special Operations Executive (SOE), Lise de Baissac (1905–2004) and Andrée Borrel (1919–1944, murdered in the Natzweiler concentration camp ) are parachuted to northern France. They explore u. a. possible landing sites for the allied invasion. (L. Baissac can be highly decorated for this after the war)
    • September 30 (until Aug. 12, 1944): the German television station Paris , in French. Paris-Télévision, after the first test broadcasts in Paris from the converted “Magic City” dance palace, starts broadcasting an ongoing television program to look after the German troops, especially the injured in military hospitals (hospital television)
    • October 10: Beginning of the Battle of Bowmanville, a two-day prisoner-of-war revolt against the shackling of captured German officers in the Bowmanville prisoner of war camp ( Bowmanville (Clarington) prisoner of war camp 30, Ontario , Canada; connection with the Dieppe company on August 19 )
    • October 10: End of the Sinjawinsk Operation (First Ladoga Battle) in a stalemate situation (Wehrm / RA losses roughly like 1: 2)
    • 13./14. October 1942: mass shootings / murders of Polish civilians ( persecution of Jews ) occur in the so-called Misoch Ghetto
    • October 18: After illegal by the Hague Regulations command command of Hitler to the Wehrmacht were Allied commandos (Engl. Commandos ) killed immediately or the security service of the SS passed (SD). The order was kept top secret and generally obeyed.
    • October 23rd: the new British commander in Africa, FM  Bernard Montgomery , starts the counterattack with the second battle of El Alamein and wins on November 4th, the long retreat of the Axis powers to the west begins
    • 30th of October:
    • November 8th to 11th: Operation Torch , British-American troops land at Casablanca (Morocco) as well as Algiers and Oran (Algeria) and thus initiate the two-front war in North Africa, the German side reacts with Company Anton (see below) ): the Wehrmacht occupies southern France and Tunisia . The USS Texas provides effective artillery support.
    • November 9th to 12th: Operation Hubertus : German storm pioneers are to bring the decision in the battle for the Stalingrad industrial complexes
    • November 11th: Occupation of the south of France
    • November 13th:
      • Tobruk is back in British hands
      • the first fighting occurs between US and German troops
    • From November: Preparations for Army Group Africa - Italian / German battles for Tunisia until May 13, 1943
    • November 19-23: Operation Uranus : Counter-offensive by the Red Army near Stalingrad, breaking the Romanian lines in the north and south, a few days later these two wedges unite near Kalatsch on the Don , thus encircling the 6th Army in Stalingrad General Paulus feels bound by Hitler's order to halt and cannot bring himself to give the order to break out (retreat), which was still possible at the time
    • November 22nd: the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis under Captain B. Rogge is sunk by the British heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire between Brazil and West Africa. He was able to sink 19 merchant ships with almost 128,000 GRT and raise three ships with 18,253 GRT as prizes.
    • December 12th to 23rd: Operation Wintergewitter : Relief attack by the 4th Panzer Army under General Hoth, which brings up to 60 kilometers to the trapped troops in Stalingrad, fails
    • In “ Aktion Zamość ” (November 27, 1942 to August 15, 1943) the population was rounded up by SS / police commandos and transported to the Zamość assembly camp. By August 1943, 110,000 Poles were transferred from 300 villages to SS, police and Wehrmacht units expelled, 34 villages were dealt with, allegedly because of resistance and partisan activity, similar to Lidice , followed by the military anti-partisan actions "Aktion Werwolf I / II", a division of the Polish Home Army and the 3rd company "Grzmot" of the peasant battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie) , altogether about 400 men, fought against the 1900 strong German security troops, 7000 people were killed in the German retaliatory measures for the resistance, on June 30, 1943 Himmler declared the entire “ Generalgouvernement ” a gang fighting area , the action was stopped by O. Globocnik
    • December 2nd: first controlled chain reaction in the USA ( Manhattan Project )
    • December 4th: American bombing of Naples
    • December 12th: The British destroyer HMS Petard landed the German submarine U 559 in the Mediterranean on October 30, 1942 -> as a result, the German radio traffic encrypted with the Enigma-M4 was again successful


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1942 in Asia and the Pacific


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1943

    Field Marshal F. Paulus is taken prisoner of war in Stalingrad, January 31, 1943
    Key words for the war year 1943 are: Soviet armies achieve victory in Stalingrad - a first major German surrender. In March, German troops recaptured the area as far as the central Donets, but after several Soviet counter-offensives in the following months, the Wehrmacht had to retreat along the entire eastern front. The militarily insignificant uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was a lasting moral victory for the Jewish prisoners. The Atlantic battle is lost for the German submarines. Allied troops land in Sicily. Italy leaves the alliance with Hitler. The air sovereignty of the Allies in Europe is becoming more and more overwhelming. With the reconquest of the Solomon Islands, the American tactic of island jumping begins in the Pacific.

    First half of 1943 in Europe, Mediterranean area


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    First half of 1943 in Asia and the Pacific

    Pacific War 1937–1942

    Second half of 1943 in Europe

    on the western fronts:

    • July 10th: Operation Husky , Allied landing in Sicily
    • July 19: Rome / Feltre : After air raids on Genoa, Turin and Milan by the British Air Force, the first war attack on Rome took place , involving over 500 US bombers. Italy's dictator Mussolini found out about this during meetings with Hitler in Feltre (Veneto).
    • July 22nd: the Sicilian regional capital Palermo is occupied by the Allies
    • 24./25. July: Beginning of massive air raids on Hamburg (mainly by more than 700 RAF bombers each, also 2 attacks by US bombers; cover name in the planning phase was Operation Gomorrah ; lasted until August 3; on average, a major attack took place every other night. ) Min. 35,000 people, almost all civilians, die.
    • July 25th: the Great Fascist Council accuses its leader Mussolini of failure, the "Duce" is thereupon on the orders of the Italian King Victor Emanuel III. arrested. Pietro Badoglio is appointed as the new Prime Minister
    • from July: the internment of some 20,000 Italian military personnel in Switzerland , which flee across the border in Ticino
    • August 14th: Rome is repeatedly declared an open city. (At the beginning of June 1944, FM Kesselring declared Rome an “open city” and withdrew all troops except for a rearguard.)
    • August / September: Start of Operation Barclay , deception maneuvers with a fictitious British 12th Army, which is mainly stationed in Egypt through fictitious radio communications and regular exercises. The German enemy should be distracted from the goal of the next invasion.
    • August 17th:
    • 18 August Operation Hydra : Air raid by the Royal Air Force on the German rocket research facility in Peenemünde
    • September 3:
    • September 8th: after the Italian armistice with the Allies, the German Wehrmacht initiates the Axis case, in which all Italian troops are disarmed and Rome is occupied
    • September 9th: Operation Avalanche : Landing of the 5th US Army in the Gulf of Salerno
    • The Wehrmacht occupies the parts of Italy that have not yet been liberated by the Allies, including the capital Rome (not the Vatican State )
    • September 12th: German paratroopers in the company Eiche manage to free Mussolini from Italian captivity on Gran Sasso in Abruzzo . Mussolini was first brought to East Prussia , then to Hirschberg Castle , in order to lead a puppet government in northern Italy a little later ( Republic of Salò ) and thus only apparently to continue Italy's struggle as a German ally
    • 21./22. September: Massacre in Kefalonia : after the Italian soldiers stationed on the Greek island of Kefalonia oppose their disarmament, around 5000 captured Italians are shot by German mountain troops between September 18 and 23 (war crimes)
    • September 23 (until April 25, 1945): The Italian Social Republic (also Italian Repubblica Sociale Italiana - RSI, Republic of Salò) dependent on the Nazi state . The seat of government was Salò on Lake Garda and from 1944 Milan with the pro forma head of state B. Mussolini.
    • September 27th: Beginning of the uprising of the civilian population known as the Four Days of Naples until September 30th, in which they freed themselves from the occupation of German troops shortly before the approaching Allied troops.
    • September 29th: a second Allied-Italian armistice of Malta is signed on board the HMS Nelson by the generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Pietro Badoglio , also Italian Armistizio lungo. He extended the September 3rd.
    • The deception operation Fortitude (North / South) begins (separately for Norway and the Channel coast with General Patton as allied mayor ) from autumn 1943 up to the mock invasion on Pas de Calais on June 5, 1944
    • October 1st: capture of Naples (5th US Army)
      • thereafter: withdrawal of the German troops to the Gustav Line , about 100 kilometers south of Rome, via the Volturno, Barbara and Bernhardt Lines
    • October 5th: all of Corsica is liberated (from November 11th 1942 there was initially an Italian and later also a German occupation), so that the liberation of Europe from the south was approached to mainland France
    • October 13: Italy's declaration of war - the Badoglio government declares that a ceasefire condition fulfilled with it, war against the German Reich, a powerful partisan army of 256,000 women and men operated alongside the official Italian associations , which in 1944 took on about ten Wehrmacht- divisions bind
    • October 16: German troops (involvement of the Wehrmacht? Under the command of Theodor Dannecker ) capture over 1000 Jewish residents of Rome in a raid and deport them on the 18th to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (only 16 of these 1023 Italian prisoners Jews will see the end of the war)
    • October 26th: the Shetland bus , instead of fishing boats, the three converted American submarine hunters Hessa, Hitra and Vigra drive the route under Norwegian command for the first time
    • November 18, 1943: British air forces bomb Lund , Sweden
    • December 1943 to July / August 1944: Establishment of the Arras Defense Center (abwehr Arras or Ast Arras for short, also 430) of the German military defense in Arras, Pas-de-Calais, to secure the V1 bomb launch sites and for escort protection the missile parts there (V1 = Fieseler Fi 103; see also: retribution weapon )
    • In December, US President Roosevelt gives General Eisenhower the post of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe , SHAEF . He moved into Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park as quarters southwest of London for the period until May 1945. From March 1944, the HQ is close to Camp Griffiss in Bushy Park .
    • December 20th to 28th: Battle of Ortona , also known as "Italian Stalingrad", around the deep-water port on the east coast, which is important for supplies (German Paratrooper Reg. 3 of the 1st Division and Canadian 1st Infantry Division)


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1943 in Asia and the Pacific


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1944

    The war year 1944 is characterized above all by important successes of the Allies: In January the siege ring around Leningrad is broken. In the west the invasion of Normandy succeeds; Paris is set free. In the east, the Red Army succeeds in throwing back the Army Groups Central and South decisively. Only in East Prussia does the offensive stop temporarily in October. In Italy the Allies advance north of a line between Rimini and Rome. In Asia alone, a Japanese offensive in China leads to a land connection to Indochina and thus to a partial success of the Axis powers. But in October the Philippines are liberated and the Imperial Japanese Navy is destroyed.
    (For this year an additional subdivision has been made for the theaters of war in Eastern and Western Europe).

    First half of 1944 in Eastern Europe

    • January 14: Start of the successful Soviet attack on the German siege ring around Leningrad , the Leningrad-Novgorod Operation , (until March 1; sub-operations: Krasnoseljsk - Ropschaer, Novgorod - Lugaer, Kingissepp - Gdower and the Staraya Russa - Novorschewer operation)
      • the Soviet Union adds: their spring offensive has further territorial gains and the Wehrmacht runs until Peipussee back
    • February 7-27: a series of Soviet air raids on Helsinki with over 2000 bombers (February 6/7, 16/17, 26/27 February). They were answered with attacks on airfields near Leningrad.
    • February 22: Soviet bombing of Stockholm (approx. 30 bombs, reason remained unknown)
    • March 2nd: OKW bullet decree , secret order to shoot (war crimes) officers who escaped from German prisoner-of-war camps ( Stalag , Oflag ) by the SD / SS (not generally for officers of the British and American armed forces who have been captured)
    • In March: Start of the hay campaign, which continued until the summer of 1944 . 30,000 to 50,000 ten to fifteen year old children were deported from Eastern Europe to Germany to be used as slave labor.
    • March 12th to 19th: In the Osaritschi Wehrmacht concentration camp for 40,000 so-called disabled civilians (south of the Belarusian city of Bobrujsk ), at least 9,000 people are murdered by the 9th Army in just one week with the participation of Sonderkommando 7a of Einsatzgruppe B. Not only during the transport, but also after internment, the guards of the 35th Infantry Division often shot at children for the slightest reason or without any reason, including children. According to Belarusian sources, there may have been a total of 20,000 deaths there.
    • March 19: Operation Margarethe , occupation of the hitherto allied Hungary by German troops
    • April 8: The Battle of the Crimea begins
    • April 25th: Start of the Braunschweig offensive of the SS units in Croatia
    • 12th of May:
    • June 9th: the offensive on the Finnish front on the Karelian isthmus , the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation , begins (until August 9th), at the end of June this attack comes to a halt at the old 1940 border
    • June 22nd: Operation Bagration , also a major offensive in the Vitebsk- Orsha area - start of the break-up of Army Group Center , whereby the Red Army reaches shortly before Warsaw and East Prussia, on July 3rd Minsk is recaptured by the Soviet Army, 100,000 German soldiers are guessed in prison
    • June 25th: Battle of Tali-Ihantala between armed forces of the Soviet Union and German-backed Finnish troops
    • June 26: Ryti-Ribbentrop declaration of consent , military alliance between the Republic of Finland and the German Reich


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep
    Photo title: Into the Jaws of Death on D-Day , the Normandy landing

    First half of 1944 in Western Europe
    • May 12th: Allied troops advance into Rome in Italy
    • May 18: the 2nd Polish Corps under the leadership of General Władysław Anders takes Monte Cassino after massive Allied losses,
      • the further advance on Rome from the south begins
    • MAY 25: unite the allied forces her two fronts in Italy and pushing the German troops to the "Green Line" between La Spezia and Rimini back
    • January 21 to May 29: Operation Steinbock , the bombing of London and engl. Ports, is set according to loss rates of up to 10 percent. Also referred to as Baby Blitz by the British .
    • June 4th: Rome is left / liberated without resistance, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring , Commander in Chief of the German Army Units in Italy, refuses to fight in the “Eternal City”. He declares it an open city. Withdraw all troops except for a rearguard. Troops of the 5th US Army march in.
    • June 5th: the Tonga airborne operation is part of the preparation for the invasion of northern France. a. The Pegasus Bridge (Bénouville Bridge until 1944) and the Horsa Bridge south of the Sword beach section near Ranville / Caen are taken
    • June 6: D-Day for Operation Overlord ( code name for the Allied liberation of northern France), the Western Allies land in Normandy (the landing itself is code-named Operation Neptune ) and build a rapidly widening beachhead around the next Weeks of fierce fighting, the operation is based on invasion plans drawn up from 1941 onwards , which were drawn up in concrete form from 1943 by the British General Frederick E. Morgan
    • June 8th to 15th: Battle of Carentan to connect the American. Beach Heads Utah Beach and Omaha Beach
    • the battles in the British-Canadian sector ( Sword - (GB), Juno - (Ca), Gold Beach (GB)) are known as the Battle of Caen or Engl.
      • Battle for Caen ; individual operation names in the addition. thus (June – August 1944) are: Operation Perch (June 9th to 14th, see below); Epsom June 25-30, Windsor July 4-5, Charnwood July 7-9, Jupiter July 10-11, Goodwood July 18-20, Spring (July 25th to 27th), Bluecoat (July 30th to August 7th), the German company Liège (counterattack, August 6th to 8th), Totalize (August 7th to 10th), Tractable (August 14th to 7th). to 15 August) and the final fights in the Falaise Pocket, the pocket of Falaise (16 to 20 August, see below).
    • June 9: Resistance fighters cordon off an area near Grenoble east of the Rhone , which will be the first liberated zone within France from July 3 - (partisan) République du Vercors . Recaptured by the Wehrmacht from July 21st (action Bettina, see there).
    • June 10th:
      • Oradour massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane near Limoges, the 3rd company of SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 4 "Der Führer" murdered almost all the inhabitants (642 people) of the village, allegedly as reprisal, and destroyed the entire village
      • Distomo massacre (218 victims of the 4th SS Police Panzer Grenadier Division) near Delphi, Greece
    • June 12: The German Air Force fires V 1 missiles at London for the first time (Fi 103)
    • June 13th: the tank battle near Villers-Bocage resulted in losses of the British tank forces advancing as part of Operation Perch and attacking SS Tiger tanks
    • 17th of June:
      • Beginning of the Battle of Cherbourg with air raids and bombardment of the city and the fortress. On the 21st, the USS Texas begins artillery support.
      • The Danish territory of Iceland , which has been occupied by British troops since May 10, 1940 and US troops since 1941, declares itself to be an independent Democratic Republic ( Icelandic Lýðveldið Ísland ). Denmark is still under German occupation at this time .
    • June 25: Opération Zebra, in support of the Résistance intérieure française with weapons, the Allies flew parachute containers with weapons from Italy to four bases of the Maquis with around 200 bombers during the day. Similar again on July 14th.
    • June 26th: Capture of the port of Cherbourg after a German partial capitulation


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    First half of 1944 in Asia and the Pacific


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1944 in Eastern Europe
    • August 16-20: In Operation Doppelkopf , the German 3rd Panzer Army succeeds in temporarily reestablishing the land connection between Army Groups Center and North
    • August 18: the Red Army reaches the East Prussian border
    • August 20: Operation Jassy-Kishinev : the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts of the Red Army begin a summer offensive with around 900,000 soldiers against the Army Group of Southern Ukraine in Romania
    • August 23: King Michael of Romania declares an armistice with the Soviet Union ( royal coup d'état in Romania 1944 ), a little later Romania enters the war against Germany after the air force bombed Bucharest on the 23rd and 24th , this change of front had already taken place several months earlier in negotiations with the Allied powers. The Soviet Union occupies the country.
    • Withdrawal of the German armed forces from Greece
    • 26./27. August: First bomb attack on Königsberg by British bombers
    • 29./30. August: The city center is almost completely destroyed in the second night attack on Königsberg
    • August 29th: the Slovak national uprising breaks out. On October 27th he was bloodily suppressed
    • September 2nd: Finland demands that Germany evacuate its territory, the so-called Lapland War begins on September 19th. In the armistice with Moscow, Finland was obliged to expel the previously allied German troops by military means within 14 days. Since this deadline could not be met, a sham war arose. The city of Rovaniemi burned down completely in a fire triggered by the explosion of an ammunition train . The fighting dragged on until the spring of 1945. The German troops retreated north to escape to Norway. The last occupied place in Finland was evacuated on April 27, the village of Kilpisjärvi.
    • September 3: The 20th Mountain Army initiates Operation Birke , the disengagement movement in Finland
    • September 5th: the Red Army takes Bulgaria ; Bulgaria declares war on Germany, which is followed by a communist coup d'état there on September 9th
    • 14./15. September: The Wehrmacht tries in vain in Operation Tanne Ost to occupy the Finnish island of Hogland
    • September 16 to November 24: In the Baltic operation of the Red Army, the Baltic region comes largely under the control of the Soviet Union again, the German Army Group North is cut off in the Kurland basin and has to be supplied via the Baltic Sea
    • September 19: Finland had to cede the Petsamo area to the Soviet Union in an armistice
    • October 1: Red Army troops enter Yugoslav territory for the first time
    • October 2nd: the Warsaw Uprising ends with the surrender of the Polish Home Army , which submitted to the London government in exile, and the Germans almost completely destroyed the city
    • October 6: Beginning of the Debrecen operation of the allied Soviet and Romanian troops against the German-Hungarian Army Group South
    • October 7th: In the German concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau there is an uprising of the Jewish Sonderkommando (the prisoners who had to operate the gas chambers and crematoria), female prisoners smuggled in explosives from their forced labor in an arms factory and crematorium IV was partially destroyed
    • October 10: The Red Army reaches the German border in East Prussia
    • 7th to 29th October: in the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation , the Red Army conquers the German bases in northern Finland
    • October 13th:
    • 15th October:
    • October 19: the destruction of Warsaw ordered by Adolf Hitler begins
    • October 20: Soviet units and Yugoslav partisans under Josip Broz Tito conquer the capital Belgrade in the course of the Belgrade operation
    • October 21: Nemmersdorf massacre : the Red Army conquers the village of Nemmersdorf for a few hours and shoots at least 23 civilians there, the majority of them women and children, this is considered the first documented crime of the Red Army on German soil
    • November 24th: The unarmed Swedish passenger ship Hansa is sunk in the Baltic Sea off the island of Gotland by a Soviet submarine without warning, 84 civilians die
    • December 25th: Battle of Budapest , completely enclosed by the Red Army


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1944 in Western Europe

    • July 19th: Caen is completely occupied - see above from June 8th Battle of Caen
    • July 20: The attack on Hitler by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20 and the associated military coup (" Operation Valkyrie ") fail completely (attack on Hitler in the Wolfsschanze headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia)
      • 200 people from the circle of conspirators will therefore be executed in the next few days and weeks (including 20 generals, 26 colonels, diplomats, a minister, the head of the Reich Criminal Police Office; chief presidents, police presidents and regional presidents)
    • July 25: Operation Cobra : in Normandy the Americans in the room to take Saint-Lô an attempt to break out of their bridgehead sector, which in the following days in the west to the constriction of the Cotentin -Halbinsel until after Avranches leads
    • July 31: After the tank battle of Avranches , they break through the German western front
    • August 6th: Operation Liège : the Germans under the leading OB West , Field Marshal Günther von Kluge , start a counterattack at Mortain , the operation is stopped again after two days - see above under Battle of Caen
    • August 12-21: a large part of the German troops in Normandy is wiped out in the Falaise pocket
    • August 12: four Waffen SS companies shoot almost all residents of the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema after partisan attacks ; 560 victims, most of them women and 116 children
    • August 12: With Operation PLUTO (Pipe-Lines Under The Ocean), the allies succeed in laying a 130-kilometer-long submarine fuel pipeline between the Isle of Wight and Cherbourg . In October 1944 a pipeline from Dungeness to Cherbourg followed, and still later one through the Dover Strait .
    • Allied air war plans: Operation Thunderclap (not implemented)
    • August 15: Operation Dragoon begins a second invasion of southern France on the Côte d'Azur between Toulon and Cannes . The French and Americans can quickly advance into the interior of the country without decisive resistance
    • August 17th: after heavy bombing of Saint-Malo , the city commander Colonel Aulock surrenders
    • August 22nd:
      • Grenoble is evacuated by the German troops and jointly by the Maquis de l'Oisans and American. Troops freed
      • the wave of arrests at Aktion lattice is started by the Gestapo throughout the Reich; many former political opponents are arrested and interned
    • August 25: The battle for Paris begins
      • the German city commandant General Dietrich von Choltitz refuses Hitler's order to destroy the city and surrenders with his troops without a fight
      • the Allies overstretch in their rapid advance to the German Siegfried Line their supply lines, the development of new supply routes is achieved by the Red Ball Express . From August 25th to November 16th the code name for the supply trips for the military. Replenishment (ammunition, fuel, food - on average far more than 3 million liters of petrol were used per day!) With around 6,000 trucks over a cordoned off route from Cherbourg to behind the front, which is further away every day, beyond Paris. This organization and its importance also shows the historical change to the first great motorized war - at the same time a further development of the overlord planning - replaced by the possible use. of the port of Antwerp . The route was u. a. Supplemented by workshops and rest areas for drivers.
      • Until September 1, German air raid on Paris and with rockets ( V1 , V2 ) on northern France and London
    • August 28: In Marseilles , after a week of fighting, the Wehrmacht units surrender to French troops
    • August 29: French and American troops hold a victory parade in Paris
    Sept. 1944: Allied armies advance to the German and Dutch borders after the fall of Paris
    • the southern part of the Netherlands was liberated from the advancing Allies in the second half of 1944; the north of the country only at the end of the war
    • September 1st / 2nd: 107 imprisoned members of the French espionage network (Réseau, SR) Alliance are murdered by SS members in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp .
    • September 1st: The Canadian 2nd Infantry Division (two years earlier involved in the Dieppe raid) marches into the abandoned Dieppe without a fight. The Allied supply ships landed in the port of Dieppe on September 7th.
    • September 3: Brussels is liberated
    • September 4th: Antwerp is liberated / British troops occupy it (other places in the NL are not initially liberated - Dolle Dinsdag )
    • from September 6: approx. 3200 German air raids with V2 rockets on cities, especially on London (1358) and Antwerp (Belgium, 1610) by March 1945
    • September 6th: Bomb units destroy around 80 percent of the city center of Emden , the submarine construction there is hardly affected
    • From September 10th: Partisan Republic of Ossola (Italian Repubblica dell'Ossola) a partisan republics or "liberated zones", zona liberata , founded by partisans for 44 days (one of approx. 20 temporarily asserting itself) , in northern Italy around Domodossola (until 19 October 1944; part of the resistance in Italy against fascism )
    • September 11th: American units cross the German border northwest of Trier
    • 11./12. September:
    • September 12th: Roetgen is the first municipality on German soil to be occupied by Allied forces
    • 12./13. September: there were a total of 53 nights with air raids on Stuttgart , during which the British RAF dropped 75 heavy air mines , 4,300 high-explosive bombs and 180,000 incendiary bombs. More than 1,000 people fell victim to the subsequent firestorm
    • September 14th: Maastricht (NL) is liberated by US troops
    • September 16: Major General Elster surrenders with 19,600 men on the Loire Bridge from Beaugency to American troops, Elster commanded the rearguard when German troops withdrew from France, most of them were on foot and barely able to fight, his unprecedented surrender leads to a conviction a German military court
    • September 17th: The 1st Polish Armored Division liberated the city of Ghent together with Belgian resistance fighters .
    • September 17th to 27th: at the Market Garden airborne operation fights u. a. the II. SS Panzer Corps against British and American units around Arnhem . Crossing the Rhine does not succeed.
    • after losing the Atlantic ports on the English Channel ( Battle for Brest ), the German navy is continuing its submarine warfare of Norway from continuing
    • September 20: The British government issued a communiqué announcing the formation of the Jewish Brigade within the British 8th Army from volunteers from the Mandate area in Palestine
    • September 25: Hitler orders the paramilitary " Volkssturm " to be set up, made up of older people, young people and UK employees aged 16 to 60
    • September 29th: The 1st Polish Armored Division liberates the Dutch city of Breda after two days of hard fighting with no civilian casualties. All soldiers in the division were made honorary citizens of the city.
    • On the orders of Prince Bernhard and the Dutch government-in-exile in London, many Dutch railway workers went on strike in September 1944 and went underground in order to paralyze German supplies.
    • September to April 1945: Hongerwinter (Eng. Hungerwinter) towards the end of the German occupation of the Netherlands , especially during the months of October 1944 to April 1945. The densely populated area of Holland in the Netherlands was mainly affected . From September 1944, a German blockade prevented this region from being supplied with food and fuel from the more rural regions ( war crimes ). The famine that began in October 1944 affected 4.5 million people whose food supplies had already been rationed in the previous years of the war. The aforementioned rail strike is viewed indirectly as a trigger. The number of people who died from this famine is now estimated at 18,000 to 22,000.


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    Second half of 1944 in Asia and the Pacific

    Pacific War 1943–1945


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    1945

    The last year of the war was initially marked by a conference of foreseeable victors: the Yalta conference. In the weeks that followed, the liberation of the concentration camps was associated with terrible observations for the Allied soldiers. In the Pacific, the Philippines, Indochina, Burma and China are liberated. The victory in the battle for the Seelower heights opens the way to Berlin. The Rhine is crossed in March. On April 30th, the Red Army hoisted a flag on the Reichstag. After the capitulation on May 7, Europe was liberated from the Nazi regime. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th. After the surrender of the emperor, the Japanese army was ordered to cease all fighting on August 16 and the signature ceremony on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay ended the Second World War on September 2.

    January to May 1945 in Europe and the Atlantic

    • 1st - 25th January: German company Nordwind , last offensive on the western front
    • 11 January: the Gotthard line (railway) is bombed by the Allies near Chiasso, an SBB train driver dies
    • January 12th: The Red Army's Vistula-Oder operation begins
    • January 13 to April 25, 1945: East Prussian operation by the Red Army. It advances north, cutting East Prussia off from the rest of the empire; the German population is fleeing (permission from their own government comes very late), some of them across the frozen Baltic Sea or by ship .
    • January 14th to January 26th: Operation Blackcock (Rur Triangle). This will against the 15th Army (in fact it was the 25th ), the front towards the Rhine ahead
    • January 16: devastating air raid on Magdeburg ; this causes a firestorm
    • January 17th: Warsaw is liberated
    • January 20th ff .: La poche de Colmar - between January 20th and February 9th, the bridgehead in Alsace is taken by Allied troops
    • January 27th: first Soviet units reach Küstrin
    • January 27: Liberation of the concentration camps in and around Auschwitz , which the SS had largely evacuated from prisoners by means of death marches, by the Red Army
    • January 30th:
      • The troop transport Wilhelm Gustloff , which is not marked as a hospital ship, is sunk by a submarine off the coast of Pomerania (several thousand drowned)
      • Start of the Malta Conference between the Combined Chiefs of Staff (Chiefs of Staff of the USA and Great Britain) and the Foreign Ministers of both countries in preparation for the Yalta conference with Stalin (see 4.2.). The meeting ended on February 2 aboard the cruiser USS Quincy in the port of Malta. It was only on the last day of the conference that President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met there .
    • 31 January:
      • the fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen , also Ostwall, is broken through by the Red Army after three days of fighting
      • After the successful Soviet winter offensive, the Red Army stood at the end of January 1945 along the Oder and Neisse rivers from Stettin to Görlitz almost 80 kilometers from Berlin
    • 2. February :
      • Mauthausen concentration camp : Mühlviertel hare hunt (so titled breakout of Soviet prisoners of war)
      • During the battle for Küstrin , the Soviet troops passed north and south of the old town on an island in the Oder and the Küstrin fortress. The two bridgeheads were fiercely contested in the second half of March 1945. However, the Wehrmacht succeeded neither in removing the bridgeheads nor in holding the fortress. From here the advance on Berlin began on April 16, 1945.
    • February 4-11: Allied Yalta Conference on the Crimean Peninsula (Black Sea)
    • February 7: US Operation Veritable in the Kleve area, known in German as the Battle of the Reichswald , until February 22.
    • February 9th: the Swiss Federal Council forbids further coal transit from Germany to northern Italy
    • February 9th: the first refugees arrived in occupied Copenhagen on a refugee ship . Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly from Eastern Pomerania , Danzig, and West and East Prussia , were evacuated across the Baltic Sea before the approaching Soviet troops. Schools, hotels and sports facilities were requisitioned by German authorities for their reception. Around 6,580 refugees had died in the country by the end of the war. After the Wehrmacht troops withdrew from Denmark in May 1945, around 250,000 refugees were housed / imprisoned in Denmark in barracks and camps previously used by the Wehrmacht. The last refugees were only brought to Germany from there in February 1949.
    • February 10 to April 4: Battle of East Pomerania
    • February 11th: The Hungarian capital is captured by the Red Army in the Battle of Budapest
    • February 12: Varkiza Agreement , disarmament and demobilization of the Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS
    • 13th February:
    • February 14th to 14th: the British Army's Operation Columba , which uses carrier pigeons to transport information essential to the war effort from the occupied countries of Western Europe, is suspended. In three and a half years, 17,000 birds were caged there. Ten percent made it back and delivered about 1,000 messages.
    • February 23, 1945: US troops ( 9th US Army ) cross the Rur near Linnich, Jülich and Düren at the start of Operation Grenade . Your goal is to advance between Neuss and Rheinberg to the Rhine and to conquer an intact Rhine bridge. (until March 11th)
    • February 23 to March 3: Second phase of Operation Veritable , now as Operation Blockbuster
    • 22./23. February: Operation Clarion : 3500 bombers and around 3000 warplanes from the USA-AF and the RAF attack numerous railway hubs and stations in smaller cities as well as marshalling yards, trains, river transport ships, ports, bridges and other traffic facilities in daytime attacks.
    • February 27th: Switzerland bans all transit traffic (especially on the Gotthard Railway ) between Germany and Italy
    Course of the front in Germany on May 1, 1945
    • April 28th:
      • Failure of the relief attempt of the 12th Army under General Wenck for Berlin
      • (April 25-28) The Halbe pocket , southeast of Berlin, can be closed by the Red Army
      • US troops, coming from Kempten im Allgäu , enter Austrian territory near Vils ( Tyrol )
      • French troops reach Austrian territory at Lochau in Vorarlberg near Bregenz
      • Italian partisans shoot the fascist "Duce" Mussolini, who fled government troops , on Lake Como
    • April 29th:
      • Hitler wrote his “ political testament ”.
      • under the new chancellor Karl Renner that occurs in Vienna Provisional Government of Austria together
      • Liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by US troops
      • Operations Manna and Chowhound begin; Humanitarian military operations of the Allied Air Forces under the tolerance of the German occupation forces to rescue the starving Dutch population, the Royal Air Force supported by Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Polish forces has from April 29th to May 7th food from heavy bombers over parts of the Netherlands thrown off who suffered from the Hongerwinter . The United States Army Air Forces flew similar missions May 1 through May 8, Operation Chowhound . Since the supply flights alone would not be sufficient, the Allies and the German side also agreed to supply food with trucks in the Rhenen area (Operation Faust) and on the waterway to Rotterdam as part of an armistice.
    • April, 30th:
    • May 1 : After Hitler's death, Admiral Dönitz becomes, in accordance with Hitler's testamentary decree, de facto "President of the Reich" without a designated election; he calls on the radio to continue the war in the East.
    • 2.May:
    • May 3rd:
      • At 8:00 a.m., a delegation led by the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral General von Friedeburg , arrives at the British headquarters and reads a letter from Keitel offering the surrender of the Wehrmacht units operating in the area between Berlin and Rostock
    • May 4th:
      • the Reichssender Hamburg begins with the announcement "This is Radio Hamburg, a station of the allied military government" under British management
      • von Friedeburg signs the partial surrender of the troops of the Commander-in-Chief Northwest to the British Field Marshal Montgomery on behalf of Dönitz. This comes into force on the morning of May 5th in northwest Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark
      • According to the rainbow order , which had existed for a long time, but was canceled by Dönitz on the evening of May 4, 1945 , many submarines lying in the harbors were sunk themselves ; the submarines that were still in service call at British or American ports after May 8th
      • At the Brenner Pass , US troops advancing south meet units of the 5th US Army , which had occupied Northern Italy from the south, including the remaining fascist state that calls itself the Italian Social Republic
      • Salzburg is taken by US troops without a fight
      • In the Altaussee salt mine of Nazi looted art , miners and the salt works managed to remove the explosives from the mine and to temporarily close the tunnel entrances by blasting them. The art treasures housed there were saved from destruction and a few weeks later the Americans were able to salvage them and restore them for the most part.
    • 5th of May:
    • May 6th:
      • Berlin is taken as a whole by the Red Army
      • a German delegation ( Jodl , von Friedeburg, Oxenius ) arrives at the headquarters of the SHAEF in Reims , where they are authorized by Dönitz by telephone to sign an unconditional surrender
    Montreal Daily Star : "Germany Quit", May 7, 1945
    • May 7th:
    • May 8: VE-Day (for English Victory in Europe Day , day of victory in Europe, often translated as Liberation Day . This means the victory over Nazi Germany or the liberation from National Socialism), people celebrating in photos of these often the V-sign is shown from the index and middle fingers
      • Admiral Karl Dönitz , as Hitler's successor, announced the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht between 12:30 and 12:40 p.m. on the Flensburg radio station
      • Soviet troops occupy Dresden
      • British troops and Yugoslav partisans reach Klagenfurt ( Carinthia ), resolution of the prohibition law by the new provisional government of the Republic of Austria
      • In the west, on May 8th, the Channel Islands and the cities of Lorient , St. Nazaire and La Rochelle are still under the control of German troops , to the south the Alpine region and islands of the Aegean Sea and in the north Schleswig-Holstein and Norway
      • May 8th and 9th: almost two million German soldiers flee from the Soviet sphere of influence to the areas controlled by the Western Allies, especially from Bohemia ( Czechoslovakia ), which was not initially occupied
      • seven German submarines in action at the Atlantic, U-190 , U-234 , U-805 , U-858 , U-873 , U-889 , and U-1228 are heading for the American coast and surrendering there until 19 May 1945. The boats U-530 and U-977 flee to Argentina and arrive there months later
      • For most people in Europe the end of the war was a happy day - in Germany it was " liberation " initially for many prisoners, people in hiding, forced laborers and opponents of the defeated regime, but a large part of the population experienced the day with mixed feelings: on the one hand, an expected military one Defeat and a moral “collapse” (which triggered the suicides of “convinced” or prominent National Socialist activists and functionaries), on the other hand, the budding hope of a new beginning
    • May 9:
      • Repetition of the signing of the unconditional surrender in Berlin-Karlshorst to the Soviet Union, on the German side Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signs
      • the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht comes into effect on all fronts in Europe
      • Soviet troops enter Graz ( Styria ) without a fight
    • May 22nd: on this date the war diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht ends


    year Europe and Western Hemisphere Asia and Pacific
    1939
    1940 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1941 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jul – Dec
    1942 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1943 Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1944 Eastern Europe Western Europe
    Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec Jan – Jun • Jul – Dec
    1945 Jan – May Jan – Sep

    January to September 1945 in Asia and the Pacific
    Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima
    Japan's Secretary of State Shigemitsu signs the deed of surrender on the     Missouri ; opposite him on the left General MacArthur

    Post-war events

    • Founding of the United Nations (UN; the Charter was signed in San Francisco on June 26, 1945)

    Europe 1945
    International Military Tribunal for the Far East 1946, Presiding Judge: William F. Webb

    War crimes and war crimes trials

    1947

    • March 11-29, 1947: Höss trial in Warsaw , Poland; against the former concentration camp commandant Höß (Auschwitz)
    • 24 November to 22 December 1947 Auschwitz Trial , Kraków , Poland
    • January 2, 1947 Start of a four-week war crimes trial against Professor Solms Wilhelm Wittig (Director General of DASAG) and others before the British Military Court in Braunschweig because of their participation in the mineral oil security plan , also known as the Geilenberg program , to implement 350,000 people, including 100,000 concentration camp prisoners , work and thousands died

    1948

    1955

    • the last German soldiers and SS members return from Soviet captivity

    1963 and later

    2002

    The armed forces justice overturned convictions for desertion

    economy and politics

    • June 10, 1945: Marshal Zhukov orders in his order No. 2 in the Soviet occupation zone , "to allow the formation and activity of anti-fascist parties"
    • November 23: in the American zone of occupation in Germany, parties at the state level are admitted
    • December 27: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is founded

    Asia and Pacific

    Post-war era 1945 to 1949 Consequences and effects

    Memorial stones and graves of the Unknown Soldier were soon erected in the theaters of war and in the capitals . They became the location of annual thanksgiving and commemoration ceremonies. Peace memorials and museums about the Second World War followed a little later .

    Europe

    1946
    • January 11, 1946: Abolition of the monarchy, proclamation of the People's Republic of Albania by Enver Hoxha
    • The deportation / expulsion of over 2 million Germans from Czechoslovakia (expatriation) in 1945 and 1946 officially begins in January (see Beneš decrees )
    • May 25, 1946: independence of Jordan
    • Paris Peace Conference (July 29 to October 15), also known as the Conference of the 21 Nations , the winners negotiate the terms of peace with the “smaller” war losers Italy , Romania , Hungary , Bulgaria and Finland at this conference
      • It was not until 1990 that the two-plus-four treaty (complete: treaty on the final regulation with regard to Germany), a state treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic as well as France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States of America, came into being on the peace settlement of the Allies with Germany . It came into force on March 15, 1991. Germany has finally been freed from restrictions under occupation law.
    • September 6, 1946: the American Secretary of State announces that he wants to unite the economy of the zones of occupation in Germany, only Great Britain agrees to do so
    • Mass construction of Nissen huts (Nissen-Huts or Quonset huts) to accommodate the bombed-out population and refugees in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg in the following winter
    • October 20, 1946: last free state election in the Soviet occupation zone
    • The Operation Black Tulip , the expulsion of about 3,700 German descent from the Netherlands, started in 1946 and was discontinued late 1948 (legalization of related expropriations 1967)
    1947
    1948
    from 1949
    • GG of the Federal Republic of Germany on May 23, 1949, on October 7, 1949, the Second German People's Council , which had already been elected in the Soviet Zone by the Third People's Congress , met as the Provisional People's Chamber and declared the "Constitution of the German Democratic Republic" to be the law applicable there)
    • Economic miracle - around 1948–1965
    • 1990: Two plus four treaty (complete: treaty on the final settlement with regard to Germany), a state treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic as well as France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States of America on the peace settlement of the Allies with Germany. It came into force on March 15, 1991. Germany has finally been freed from restrictions under occupation law.

    America

    After the Second World War, liberal American business circles feared the loss of important sales markets and trading partners because of the economic decline in Europe. The economic strengthening of Europe also benefits American exports.

    From 1947 the USA followed a so-called containment policy , formulated as the Truman Doctrine against the USSR. The governments and economies of European countries including Turkey are also to be tied to the USA. They form a protective zone against Soviet expansion to the west.

    Asia and the Pacific

    1948
    1951 / 1952
    • September 8: The San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the United States is signed, along with the Treaty on Mutual Security .
      • Both treaties come into force in April 1952.
      • The Republic of China (Taiwan), the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union and India were missing from the 50 countries that signed them. A separate peace treaty (Treaty of Taipei) was signed in 1952 with representatives of the Republic of China who had fled to the island of Taiwan. A peace treaty was concluded with the People's Republic of China in 1978. Peace negotiations with the Soviet Union (and from 1992 with the Russian Federation) have repeatedly failed.
    1974
    • Lieutenant Onoda Hirō (1922-2014) was a Japanese officer who, after the end of the World War, waited until 1974 on the Philippine island of Lubang , which was captured by American troops in February 1945, in a small group of holdouts for orders to fight and only many years later could be convinced by his former superior of the end of the war. He had killed around 30 people and wounded around 100 others and was pardoned by Philippine President Marcos . Compare with Nakamura Teruo (discovered December 1974 in Indonesia ; 1919–1979).
    • 1978 : Conclusion of the peace treaty between the People's Republic of China and Japan
    Yalta, 1945; front from left: Winston Churchill , Franklin D. Roosevelt , Josef Stalin

    Overview of important conferences

    Data from conferences on / during the war in the period 1936–1945

    See also

    literature

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka , Documents, 1999, p. 112.
    2. ^ Hermann Graml: Europe's way to war . Munich 1990, p. 105.
    3. ↑ Jutta Sywottek: Mobilization for total war. The propaganda preparation of the German population for the Second World War . Opladen 1976, p. 166.
    4. ^ Text of the agreement printed by: Walther Hofer : The Entfesselung des Second World War. A study of international relations in the summer of 1939 . Frankfurt a. M. 1960, p. 172 f.
    5. ↑ Klaus Larres: Churchill's Cold War. The Politics of Personal Diplomacy. New Haven 2002, p. 31 f.
    6. ↑ Hubert Fischer: Der deutsche Sanitätsdienst 1921–1945, Vol. 1; Osnabrück 1982; P. 236.
    7. ↑ Alexander Kranz (Military History Research Office, ed.): Reichsstatthalter Arthur Grieser and the "civil administration" in Wartheland 1939/40. Population policy in the first phase of German occupation in Poland. ISBN 3-941571-05-2 , p. 19 .
    8. ↑ OKŚZpNP w Lublinie poszukuje osób mających wiedzę dot. zbrodni popełnionych we wrześniu 1939 przez żołnierzy 29 Dywizji Wehrmachtu na terenie Lipska, Ciepielowa i okolic . Instytut Pamięci Narodowej . Retrieved February 24, 2019.
    9. ^ Tanner, 2015
    10. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber, 2007, p. 36; July 3: Jürgen Förster, 1983, p. 9 f.
    11. ↑ The exact delivery date for him, not before December 7, 1941 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, of the last part of a note to the USA already prepared for the embassy as a telegram had been deciphered by the US secret services on December 6, 1941 - Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (Final report issued: Jun 20, 1946)
    12. ↑ Quoting from Götz Aly : He reported: “It was written on Monday, April 23, 1945. When it was 3 pm, the first Soviet soldier passed through the gate of our cemetery! His walk was upright and straight. I had the feeling that every step of the way he stepped on a piece of the wicked swastika. We hugged this messenger of freedom, we kissed him - and we cried! "