1939 German Jews are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets.

1940 The design for the jeep is submitted to the US Army by Bantam, originally called the Pilot.

New rations announced in Vichy France as 350g of bread, 300g of sugar, 50g of cheese, 360g of meat per day and 100g of fat per week.

129 RAF bombers attack industrial targets in Berlin this night, but are mostly ineffectual.

A British/Free French attempt to capture Dakar in Vichy French West Africa fails when the staunchly pro Vichy garrison fights back, inflicting damage on the invasion fleet, causing it to abort.

1942 Field Marshal Rommel takes a medical leave and hands over command to General von Thoma. British troops occupy the capital of Madagascar.

Wendell Willkie, 1940 Republican presidential candidate, confers with Stalin and calls for a second front at the earliest possible moment.

Soviet counterattacks to dislodge German advance units near the Volga landing stage are unsuccessful.

1943 The Red Army captures Poltava.

1944 An RAF precision bombing raid using 12,000lb bombs, breach the crucial Dortmund-Ems Canal.

The Canadians win a bridgehead over the Escaut Canal.

Russian and Romanian troops enter Hungary at Arad.

Soviets reach Gulf of Riga on the Baltic.

1945 General Dwight Eisenhower decrees that any German citizen caught helping the Nazis or deliberately hindering the Allies will face the death penalty if convicted. Eisenhower also bans the Nazi Party and voids most Nazi laws throughout occupied Germany.

The first American dies in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon to French forces.

1939 Germany and Russia agree on partition of Poland. 217,000 Polish troops who are fighting against the Red Army surrender at Lvov. The NKVD begins rounding up thousands of Polish officers and deporting them to Russia where they will be executed a year later in the forest of Katyn near Smolensk. A Polish regiment repels attacks by forty Soviet tanks and infantry units at the Battle of Kodziowce. Soviet losses amount to hundreds killed and twenty tanks destroyed.

1940 Moscow Radio reports that RAF bombing has largely destroyed the German invasion fleet along the Channel.

Vichy regime accepts Japanese ultimatum: Japanese troops enter French Indo-China.

1941 Italian one-man submarines, sometimes called suicide subs because they seldom survive their mission, sneak into the harbor at Gibraltar and sink three British Ships.

1942 The 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army split the Soviet 62nd Army in two and capture nearly the entire southern part of the city, including the huge grain elevator which was successfully defended by 40 Soviet marines for over a week.

1943 Six British midget submarines attack and damage the Tirpitz in Alten Fjord, northern Norway.

The British 78th Division begins landings at Bari on the South East coast of Italy.

Troops of the 9th Australian Division land near Finschhafen in New Guinea.

1944 The British Second Army is now five miles North of Nijmegen, but still six miles from Arnhem. The U.S. First Army halts its offensive West of Aachen. German troops holding out in the port city of Boulogne finally surrender to Canadian forces.

The Russians occupy Tallinn and Reval in Estonia.

1945 President Truman accepts U.S. Secretary of War Stimson’s recommendation to designate the war World War II.

1939 60,000 Poles, all that remains of the Polish Southern Army surrender at Zamosz and Tomaszov.

Romanian premier Armand Calinescu assassinated by Fascist Iron Guard for supporting Poles.

Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the future “final goal.” He also orders a census and the establishment of Jewish administrative councils within the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.

1940 Over the past 17 days, British aircraft have sunk 12.5% of 1865 German transport vessels preparing for an invasion of England.

Wavell, orders planning to begin for a British counter-attack against the Italians, with the aim of driving them out of eastern Libya and capturing Tobruk.

1941 The German Army cuts off the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.

1942 RAF raids are conducted against Munich and the Saar valley.

The inter-allied information committee estimates that the Germans have so far, executed 207,373 people in occupied Europe.

British forces begin their first land counter-offensive against the Japanese in Arakan, Western Burma.

1943 The Red Army forces a crossing of the Dnieper at Dnepropetrovsk, thereby breaking into the German Panther line.

Molotov insists on the resumption of Arctic convoys.

1944 U.S. troops of the 7th Army, invading Southern France, cross the Meuse River.

In Operation Market Garden, Germans retake bridge in Arnhem from British paratroopers.

Polish paratrooper’s land between Arnhem and Nijmegen as the British force at Arnhem bridge is overwhelmed. Autumn rains impede the allied advance as the U.S. 85th Division takes Firenzwold.

The Eighth Army’s Greek Mountain Brigade take Rimini on the Adriatic coast. German forces of Army Group E evacuates the Peloponnes peninsula in Greece.

U.S. planes hit Manila in the Philippines, sinking 40 ships, damaging 35 destroying 357 aircraft.

1945 Ghandi, Nehru, and the all-India Congress Party demands that all Southeast Asia should be free of imperialist domination.

1939 Prime Minister Chamberlain claims that at least 6 U-boats have been sunk in first fortnight of the war.

German troops in eastern Poland withdraw to the line agreed upon in the German-Soviet treaty.

The Red Army moves in behind them to occupy the formerly Russian territory.

Polish troops at Grodno manage to kill 800 Red Army soldiers and destroy ten tanks, whilst defending the city.

Germany announces Jews must surrender radios.

1940 The Canadian War Technical and Scientific Development Committee approves a request by Frederick Banting to begin bacterial warfare research.

1941 Martlet fighter plane from HMS Audacity in convoy OG-74 shoots down a German Fw 200 bomber, the first kill from an escort carrier.

Germans impose curfew in Paris from 9 pm to 5 am.

1942 Paulus declares that the 6th Army need substantial reinforcements if it is to continues its assault in Stalingrad. Paulus and von Weichs were also very concerned about their flank defense which consisted of Italian, Hungarian and Romanian troops. However, Hitler was determined to capture Stalingrad before reorganizing the flanks.

1943 The British 8th Army occupies Bari in southern Italy. The allies also bomb Venice.

Army Group South begins its withdrawal to the Melitopol-Zaporozhe line.

1944 In Operation Market Garden, British ground troops and US 82nd Airborne troops take Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

A British tank breakout attempt through the Gothic Line is defeated by the tenacious defense.

1945 British and US warships anchor at Shanghai, China.

German rocket engineers begin work in US rocket program.

1939 First British casualty list published.

The conclusion of the battle of the Vistula bend, with the Wehrmacht taking 170,000 prisoners. Germans suppress a Czech rebellion. Lavrenti Beria, chief of the Soviet NKVD, sets up a Directorate for Prisoners of War and establishes camps for the 240,000 Polish POWs in Soviet custody; about 37,000 will be used as forced-labour.

British traitor “Lord Haw-Haw” becomes radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin, broadcasting German propaganda to Allied troops.

1940 Heavy night raids continue on London; Brighton also suffers badly. RAF continues attacks on invasion fleet in French and Belgian Channel ports.

Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin announces that by the end of August 51,261 men had registered as conscientious objectors.

1941 Lord Woolton calls the black market in Britain ‘a thorn in our side’.

German forces take the ruins of Kiev, along with a massive haul of 600,000 prisoners, 2,500 tanks and 1,000 guns.

1943 British Air Ministry says that Hamburg now lies in absolute ruins and is ‘probably the most complete blotting out of a city that ever happened.’

Germans are reported to have been forced out of Sardinia by the Italian resistance.

1944 US Ninth Army clears Brittany region of France.

After several families who have returned to London are killed in V-1 rocket attacks, the British government orders women and children to remain in countryside evacuation centers.

The British advance from Belgium is now only two miles from the airborne forces at Nijmegen in Holland, but British paratroop forces dropped at Arnhem encounter unexpected heavy German resistance.

The Belgian Parliament meets formally in Parliament House, Brussels for first time since May 1940.

The Eighth Army occupies the Republic of San Marino, in Italy.

1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) is sentenced to be hanged for treason.

1939 German and Soviet troops link at Brest-Litovsk, Poland.

Polish cryptographers flee to Paris with vital information on German Enigma codes.

1941 Russians conscript all men aged 16 – 50. Units of Army Group South capture Poltava in the Ukraine. The Russians evacuate Kiev, but the ‘fight to the death’ continues in the area for a week.

1942 The RAF’s Pathfinder Force flies its first mission, which is against Flensburg.

Reduction of food rations for Jews in Germany.

In spite of intense pressure from U-boats and the Luftwaffe, convoy PQ-18 reaches Murmansk. Its losses amounted to 1 destroyer, 1 minesweeper and 13 merchant ships. In return for this the Germans lost 3 U-boats sunk and 5 damaged, along with 41 aircraft destroyed.

The Russians launch an offensive on the Voronezh front, 250 miles North west of Stalingrad.

British forces land on the east coast of Madagascar and occupy Tamatave.

1944 The U.S. Ninth Army finally takes Brest after a long struggle.

In Operation Market Garden, British ground troops link with US 101st Airborne in Eindhoven, Holland. US Ninth Army takes crucial port of Brest, France.

The Germans launch heavy counter-attack in Arnhem sector.

Donato Carreta, Mussolini’s director of prisons, is hauled from a courtroom in Rome by an angry mob. The crowd beats Carreta and throws him into the Tiber river, chases him down the river in rowboats and beats him to death with oars.

1939 American aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh makes his first anti-intervention radio speech. The U.S. non-intervention movement is supported not just by Lindbergh, but by former president Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Henry Ford and a number of senators and congressmen as well.

The Aircraft Carrier HMS Courageous is torpedoed by U29 (Kapitanleutnant Schuhart) south-west of Ireland, killing 515, but 687 sailors survive.

Kutno and Brest-Litovsk are captured by German troops.

The Red Army invades Poland from the East with a million troops on the pretext of “protecting Poland’s Byelorussian and Ukrainian population.” The Polish government seeks asylum in Romania, where it is interned.

The Polish Air Force scores its last kills during the battle for Poland, by shooting down a German Dornier bomber and a Soviet fighter.

1940 Churchill announces in the Commons that in first half of September 2,000 civilians have been killed and 8,000 seriously injured in air raids; the figure for service casualties, for the same period was 250.

Liner City of Benares, evacuating children to Canada, is sunk by U48; 77 out of 99 children lost, total killed 260.

Hitler postpones Operation Sealion, the plan to invade Britain, until further notice.

1941 The US allocates $100,000,000 to the Soviet Union for the purchase of war materials.

British and Russian troops occupy Teheran, after Iran failed to comply with their demand to expel all Axis nationals.

Beginning of general deportation of German Jews.

1942 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meets with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Moscow as the German Army rams into Stalingrad.

Bitter street fighting in the north west suburbs of Stalingrad.

Peace talks in Madagascar break down.

1943 Stalin announces the capture of Bryansk.

The Germans begin a withdrawal from Salerno as the British 8th Army joins forces with British and U.S. troops in the Salerno bridgehead.

1944 Operation ‘Market Garden’ begins with First Allied Airborne Army drops at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem to secure bridgeheads, as the British Second Army pushes north into Holland from Belgium, to link up. Canadians launch all-out assault on the Boulogne garrison.

Monte Altuzzo finally falls to the U.S. 85th Division.

Russian forces push towards Baltic through Estonia.

1939 Convoy OB-4, sailing from Liverpool to North America, is attacked by U-31 (Johannes Habekost), becoming the first “clear” convoy contact in British waters of the war. U-31 sinks 1 ship, the 4,060-ton British freighter Aviemore.

Germans take Brest-Litovsk and surround Warsaw.

1940 President Roosevelt signs the Selective Service Training and Service Act: men aged 20-36 are required to register for the draft.

First flight of Lockheed YP-38 Lightning fighter plane, in Burbank, CA.

Piccadilly, Park Lane, Bond St. hit in night raids.

Italian advance in Egypt continues with occupation of Sidi Barrani, 60 miles from frontier. At this point the Italians halt their offensive and begin to construct a number of fortified camps.

1941 The US announce that it will provide escort for ships carrying Lend-Lease material up to 26°W, which meant that clashes with U-boats would become more likely.

Guderian’s Panzer Group 2 and Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 meet east of Kiev, trapping five Red Armies.

The Shah of Iran abdicates and his son, Crown Prince ‘Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’ takes over.

1942 The Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) are established in the U.S.. The armed forces will be supplied with more than 1000 auxiliary pilots through this organization.

Stalingrad railway station changes hands several times.

The Governor General of Madagascar asks for an armistice.

The Japanese base at Kiska in the Aleutian Islands is raided by American bombers.

1943 The Dambuster squadron makes a disastrous first use of 12,000lb ‘Tall Boy’ bombs with a raid on the Dortmund-Ems canal.

In a sign of the increasing confidence and audacity of the French Resistance, Julius Ritter, an aide to Nazi Labour Minister Fritz Sauckel, is shot to death in broad daylight on the Etoile in Paris. Fifty Frenchmen are taken hostage and executed by the Nazis in reprisal.

British occupy Leros in Aegean. German counterattacks against the U.S. bridgehead at Salerno are halted.

Tito’s partisans are reported to have captured Split on Yugoslavia coast.

The Black Sea port of Novorossiysk is captured by the Russians after a week of amphibious and land operations.

1944 Conclusion of the Quebec meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill who sign off on the Morgenthau Plan for the treatment of post-war Germany.

Dr. Goebbels exhorts all Germans to resist with the utmost fanaticism.

Over objections from his top generals, Hitler decides to launch a counteroffensive through the Ardennes region of Belgium in an attempt to stop the Allied advance on the western front. The result will be the Battle of the Bulge.

The British make am unopposed landing on the Greek Island of Kythera off the Peloponnese. The Russians enter Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

1945 Japan surrenders Hong Kong to Britain.

1935 In Berlin, the Reich under Adolf Hitler adopts the swastika as the national flag.

1937 Prime Minister of England Neville Chamberlain flies to Germany to discuss the future of Czechoslovakia with Adolf Hitler.

1939 The Polish submarine Orzel arrives in Tallinn, Estonia, after escaping the German invasion of Poland.

Gdynia is captured by German forces. A Polish breakout attempt from the Kutno pocket fails.

The Australian Government announces the creation of a 20,000 strong defense force.

Aviator Charles Lindbergh makes his first radio broadcast opposing US involvement in the war.

1940 The climax of the Luftwaffe’s daylight raids against the London docks is reached with the Luftwaffe’s biggest raid on London so far. The British originally claim 185 Germans aircraft shot down, but later revise this to 56 German and 26 RAF planes lost.

In the mid-Atlantic, south-east of Iceland, the Canadian merchant ship Kenordoc is sunk en route to Bristol, England.

1941 The US Navy begins to take over the convoying of British ships as far as Iceland, which seen as an un-neutral act by the German government.

German soldiers attacked in the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Siege of Leningrad begins.

1942 Fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces erupts for possession of Mamayev Kurgan, the strategic hill overlooking Stalingrad.

A Japanese submarine torpedo attack near the Solomon Islands results in the sinking of the Carrier WASP, and damage to the Destroyer O’BRIEN and Battleship NORTH CAROLINA.

1943 Mussolini proclaims his return to power and re-establishes fascism in northern Italy. The Axis is resumed and the death penalty introduced for all Italians carrying arms in German occupied areas.

The Chinese government announces that the Japanese have offered to pull out of China, except for Manchuria and Formosa, but only if the Chinese will switch their support to the axis.

The Australian 7th and 9th Divisions capture Lae in New Guinea after very heavy fighting.

1944 Twenty-seven RAF Lancaster bombers from an airfield in Northern Russia pound the Battleship Tirpitz with 12,000lb Tall Boy’ bombs in Kaa Fjord, Norway, scoring a direct hit through the Tirpitz’s forecastle and burst deep in her hull.

The U.S. First Army reaches the Siegfried Line, to the East of Aachen and less than 40 miles west of Bonn. Maastricht and Eysden in southern Holland liberated. The US First Army occupies Nancy.

All the V bomb launch sites are neutralized is southern Holland.

The Germans start a new flying bomb campaign, launching them from aircraft over Holland.

The Red Army achieves a breakthrough at Narva.

US Marines land on Peleliu Island in the Pacific, but suffer 1,100 casualties trying to establish aÂ\ shallow beachhead.

Allied forces from Operation Dragoon (landings in southern France) transferred from Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) to European Theater of Operations (ETO).

1945 The fifth anniversary of the Battle of Britain, sees 300 RAF aircraft fly over London.