1939 A German air attack damages the British cruisers HMS Southampton, HMS Edinburgh and the destroyer HMS Mohawk in the Firth of Forth, in Scotland.

Heavy German attack on Western Front halted.

German bombers attack Forth and Rosyth bridges.

1940 Benjamin O. Davis becomes the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.

U-124 torpedoes and sinks the merchant ship Trevisa of Convoy SC-7 south of Iceland, 7 are killed. Convoy SC-7 (30 ships) is on the final leg of its journey from Sydney to Aberdeen, and is attacked by 7 U-boats in the North Atlantic between the 16th and 19th October. Losses amount to 20 ships for 79,646 gross tons. No U-boats were lost.

1941 Moscow now considered in real jeopardy. Following the evacuation of the Soviet government and diplomatic corps from Moscow to Kuibyshev, panic begins to spread among the civilian population, with thousands fleeing the city to places further east, but Stalin decides to stay. Odessa falls to the Romanians after a Soviet evacuation by sea. During the 2 month siege, the Romanians have suffered 98,000 casualties.

The Japanese government falls. Prince Konoye is replaced by Hideki Tojo, Japan’s minister of war.

Admiral Harold R Stark, US chief of Naval Operations warns of potential hostilities between Japan and the USSR and possibly between Japan and the USA.

1942 The naval convoys assemble for Operation ‘Torch’, the Anglo-American landings in French North Africa.

The Japanese are forced back by Australians at Templeton Crossing, New Guinea. The shelling of Henderson Airfield continues.

1943 Vatutin launches a 4-day breakout attempt from the Bukrin bridgehead south of Kiev. Koniev launches an offensive to cut off the First Panzer Army on Dnieper River.

Jews in Rome rounded up, with over 1,000 sent to Auschwitz.

1944 The U.S. First Army surrounds Aachen.

The Red Army enters German territory near Goldap in East Prussia. Thousands of German civilians flee the area in panic.

U.S. Rangers land on islands in an approach to Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines.

1945 Peron returns to Argentine politics as a ‘strong man’.

1946 Ten Nazi war criminals are hanged in Nuremberg, Germany. These including the Fuhuer’s top military advisor, General Alfred Jodl. In a posthumous retrail in 1953, the courts rule that Jodl was involved only in regular military operations and clear his name of all charges.

1940 Bomb holes roof of Balham tube station: 64 killed.

Italian submarine Toti sinks British submarine Rainbow.

16 million Americans already registered for National Service.

Heavy Luftwaffe raid on London, Birmingham, and Bristol starts 900 fires.

Italy demobilizes 300,000 soldiers for the harvest, leaving only 100,000 for upcoming invasion of Greece.

1941 Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.

1942 Japanese bombard Henderson Field at night again from warships.

4,500 Japanese troops land as reinforcement for Guadalcanal as battle continues.

Japanese execute three American airmen captured after Doolittle raid.

US 92nd Infantry Division (“Buffalo Soldiers”) reactivated at Fort Huachuca AZ, composed of African-American troops.

US begins rationing of fuel oil for heating in the East and Midwest.

1943 General de Lattre de Tassigny escapes from Vichy France.

1944 The largest number of sorties on single night is made by the RAF, with 1,576 in all.

British forces liberate Greece,which then erupts in a cival war between monarchists and communists.

Russians secure Petsamo region of southern Finland. Germans troops fall back towards northern Norway in the face of strong Russian attacks.

The Hungarian chief of state, Admiral Horthy, shortly after announcing Hungary’s withdrawal from the war against the Russia, is taken prisoner by a commando unit led by SS major Otto Skorzeny. A new government under Ferenc Szalasi vows to continue the alliance with Germany.

Deportation of Jews from Hungary resumes after a temporarily halt due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.

The British and Chinese begin an offensive from Myitkyina to Bhamo in northern Burma.

1945 Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.

1946 Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.

1939 U47 (Kapitanleutnant Prien) sinks HMS Royal Oak at anchor in Scapa Flow, killing 883. U47 then escapes undetected and returns home to Germany.

The press in Germany declare Prien a hero.

Polish submarine Orzel arrives in Britain having escaped internment in Estonia.

1940 Luftwaffe bomb falls on Balham Tube station in London, killing 66.

1941 Army Group Centre wipes out the Russian pocket at Bryansk, but only capture about 50,000 prisoners. The rain and mud begins to impede the German advance, but German troops manage to capture Rzhev. Hitler orders that Moscow is to be enveloped, rather that assaulted directly.

Russian troops fall back in the southern Ukraine as the Germans make for the port of Rostov.

1942 Japanese bombard Henderson Field at night from warships then send troops ashore onto Guadalcanal in the morning as U.S. planes attack.

In the northern part of Stalingrad, units of the 6th Army advance in bitter fighting and surround the heavily defended Tractor Factory, following a series of devastating attacks (over 3,000 sorties) by bombers of Luftflotte 4.

Hitler orders halt in east except in Stalingrad and the Caucasus to prepare for winter defense.

Australians and Japanese battle for Templeton’s Crossing on Kokoda Trail, New Guinea.

Off Newfoundland, German sub U-69 sinks British railway ferry SS Caribou; 136 killed, mostly civilians, including Naval Nursing Sister Agnes Wilkie, the only Canadian nurse killed in action in WWII.

1943 The US 8th Air Force delivers a heavy attack against the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt. However, of the original force of 291 B-17’s, 198 are either shot down or damaged beyond repair, while the Luftwaffe has lost only about 40 fighter planes.

1943 German forces evacuate the Zaporozhe bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper river.

Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive.

Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted.

Jose P. Laurel, a distinguished pre-war Filipino statesman, takes office as “president” of the Philippines after being elected by a Japanese puppet “National Assembly” on Sept. 25. Surviving two assassination attempts by Filipino guerrillas, Laurel’s government enjoyed little popularity. A general amnesty after the war spared him a treason trial.

1944 The British liberate Athens and Piraeus and also land on Corfu.

Russian troops and Yugoslav Partisans force their way in to Belgrade.

German Field Marshal Rommel, suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, is visited at home by two of Hitler’s staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chooses suicide and it is announced that he died of wounds suffered earlier from a strafing attack.

Ann Baumgartner becomes first Wasp to fly an experimental jet aircraft.

1945 Indonesian People’s Army declares war on the Netherlands.

1939 In skirmishes along Maginot Line, French destroy 3 bridges over Rhine.

1940 14-year old Princess Elizabeth made her first public speech, a radio address to the children of the British Commonwealth. Her ten-year-old sister Princess Margaret joined in at the end.

1941 German forces of Army Group Centre capture Kalinin, just 100 miles to the West of Moscow.

1942 In the first of four attacks, two Japanese battleships sail down the slot and shell Henderson field on Guadalcanal, in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the American Cactus Air Force.

First US Army troops land on Guadalcanal, the 164thInfantry Regiment, joining the US Marines.

Japanese submarine I-30 struck a mine near Singapore and sank.

The Russians regain some ground in Stalingrad, but at heavy cost.

First flight of the North American Mustang X with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, in Hucknall, England; the engine transforms the Mustang into a high-altitude, long-distance fighter.

1943 The new Italian government of Marshal Badoglio declares war on Germany, with little effect. Nearly half a million Italian troops have been taken prisoner by the Germans, who predict the Italians will switch sides after their surrender.

The U.S. Fifth Army crosses the Volturno River.

The Russians reach Melitopol in southern Ukraine.

The whole of the New Georgia group of islands in the Solomon’s are reported in allied hands.

The American destroyer Bristol was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean Sea off Algiers by German submarine U-371.

The German submarine U-402 was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by an American Grumman TBF Avenger from the escort carrier USS Card.

1944 Russian troops capture Riga, the capital of Latvia as Army Group North withdraws in to the Kurland pocket.

The US secures Palau Islands in the Pacific.

The Australian Liberal Party is formed.

Allied forces liberated Athens from German occupation.

The Germans launched V-1 and V-2 flying bombs at Antwerp in an attempt to deny use of its crucial port to the Allies.

The Battle of Rovaniemi in Finland ended in German retreat.

1939 Hans Frank appointed Nazi Gauleiter (governor) of Poland.

Jews evacuate Vienna.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rejects Hitler’s “peace offer.”

1940 President Roosevelt in a fireside chat suggests the drafting of 18 and 19 year old men.

Night raids on London continue.

Hitler postpones invasion of Britain until the spring 1941.

U-101 torpedoes and sinks the merchant ship Saint-Malo south of Iceland. The ship was a former French vessel requisitioned by the Canadian government. 28 are killed.

A German military mission is set up in Bucharest, Romania, for the purpose of aiding in the training of the Romanian Army.

1941 Army Group Centre captures Kaluga and Bryansk. Women and children evacuated from Moscow.

1942 Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that Italian nationals in the United States would no longer be considered enemy aliens.

1943 The Heaviest RAF attack so far on northern Italy, with more than 1,000 tons dropped on Milan in under 30 minutes.

350 allied bombers hit the Japanese base at Rabaul in New Britain. The damage reported includes 120 planes destroyed and three destroyers sunk.

The U.S. Fifth Army begins an offensive along the Volturno river in Italy.

1944 The Germans fall back across the Lower Rhine, west of Arnhem.

The Germans evacuate Athens.

The Germans manage to hold line of the Niemen to cover East Prussia.

First B-29 Superfortress arrives in the Marianas, Joltin’ Josie, flown by 21st Bomber Command CO, General Haywood Hansell.

In Italy, Buffalo Soldiers of US 92nd Infantry Division breach Gothic Line, the only black unit to see combat in Europe.

Greek Resistance and British glider troops/paratroopers enter Athens, Greece.

Lt. Chuck Yeager (US 363rd Fighter Group) shoots down 5 German Me 109s in a single engagement over Holland.

1939 British Expeditionary Force on continent reaches strength of 158,000 in five weeks.

The Soviet Union and Finland begin negotiations concerning the establishment of Soviet air bases on Finnish soil. The Soviet Union also requires Finland to cede territory around lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland, plus the Petsamo area in northern Finland. In return the Soviet Union offers to give Finland a chunk of desolate land in central Karelia. The Finns reject the Soviet demands fearing that to accept will only encourage further Soviet demands.

1941 Rumours of an impending capture of Moscow by the German Army cause thousands of civilians to flee the city.

Erich Koch, Reich commisar in Ukraine, announces the closing of all schools there. According to Koch, “Ukraine children need no schools. What they’ll have to learn will be taught to them later by their German masters.”

1942 The first night raid on Britain by Luftwaffe for 15 days.

The US Navy surprises a Japanese naval squadron in the night ‘Battle of Cape Esperance’, off Savo Island in the Solomons. The Japanese lose one cruiser and a destroyer, while the US Navy loses just a single destroyer.

1944 The RAF complete the flooding of Walcheren with a 102-bomber raid near Veete.

US First Army begins battle for Aachen, Germany.

The Red Army captures Klausenburg in Romania as Hungary and the Soviet Union begin negotiations for a ceasefire.

U.S. air raids against Okinawa begin.

1945 Negotiations between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung break down.

Nationalist and Communist troops are soon engaged in a civil war.

US Marines land at Tsingtao, China to slow Communist advances; Japanese troops in Tsingtao surrender to US.