World War II Time Line     |   home
Nov 11, 1918 - World War One ends with German defeat.   |   Sept 14, 1930 - Germans elect Nazis making them the 2nd largest political party in Germany.   |   Jan 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.   |   May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister.   |   June 22, 1941 - Germany attacks Soviet Union as Operation Barbarossa begins.   |   Dec 5, 1941 - German attack on Moscow is abandoned.   |   Dec 7, 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor   |   Dec 8, 1941 -   States and Britain declare war on Japan.   |   Dec 11, 1941 - Germany declares war on the United States.   |   Feb 2, 1943 - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.   |   May 13, 1943 - German and Italian troops surrender in North Africa   |   July 9/10, 1943 - Allies land in Sicily.   |   June 6, 1944 - D-Day landings.   |   Oct 11, 1944 - U.S. air raids against Okinawa.   |   Dec 16-27, 1944 - Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.   |   April 30, 1945 - Adolf Hitler commits suicide.   |   May 2, 1945 - German troops in Italy surrender.   |   Aug 6, 1945 - First Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima from a B-29 flown by Col. Paul Tibbets.   |   Aug 9, 1945 - Second atomic bomb dropped, on Nagasaki, Japan.   |   Sept 2, 1945 - Formal Japanese surrender ceremony on board the MISSOURI in Tokyo Bay as 1000 carrier-based planes fly overhead; President Truman declares VJ Day.
Dec 5, 1941 - German attack on Moscow is abandoned.

The drive on Moscow - dubbed Operation Typhoon - begins on October 2. Colonel General Heinz Guderian’s Second Panzer Group, along with the Second Army, turns back north to assist in the drive to Moscow. Guderian is already making good progress when Gen. Hermann Hoth’s and Gen. Erich Hoeppner’s panzer groups start hammering their way toward Moscow. However, the fall rains begin and turn the unpaved Soviet roads into a quagmire. German mobility begins to falter. By October 14, Kalinin is in German hands, but Soviet resistance begins to stiffen.

In Moscow, diplomats and government officials begin leaving the city on October 16. On the same day, Soviet forces are evacuated from Odessa. Three days later, Stalin announces that he will stay in Moscow. Work on the city’s defenses continues at a feverish pace.

The autumn rain has made movement by tanks and other vehicles nearly impossible; the approaches to Moscow are seas of mud. At night the severe frost disheartens German troops, who are inadequately equipped for the cold, and halts their vehicles. At the end of the month, the Germans suspend the offensive until the frozen ground of winter provides some semblance of mobility.