World War II

Pictorial Chronology

Phase 1:

Invasion of Poland – Battle of Britain (September 1939 – October 1940)

Invasion of Poland (1939)

German Armies Invade Western Poland (1939)

Border Crossing

Junkers Ju 87 ‘Stuka’

Highly-effective dive bomber used in ‘Blitzkrieg’ warfare, attacking defensive positions and tanks

Invasion of Denmark & Norway (1940)

Germany Invades Netherlands & Belgium

(May – June 1940)

Invasion of France(June 1940)

Evacuation of Dunkirk‘Operation Dynamo’

300,000 British & French troops rescued by over 800 ships and pleasure craft

Fall of France(June 1940)

Vichy France(1940 – 1944)

Battle of Britain

Radar

Spitfire Mk IV

Messerschmitt Bf109

The ‘Blitz’(October 1940 – April 1941)

Phase II:Operation Barbarossa – North African

Campaign(June 1941 – May 1943)

Invasion of USSR - Operation Barbarossa

(June – October 1941)Hitler invades Russia with over 3 million men & 4,000 tanks, supported by the Luftwaffe

3 Army groups invade:Army Group North: Leningrad

Army Group Centre: Moscow

Army Group South: Stalingrad

Hitler’s target was the oil-rich region of the Caucasus

Pearl Harbour(7th December 1941)

Operation Uranus(19th – 22nd November 1942)

Operation Uranus

Soviet troops encircle Stalingrad

General Von Paulus in Stalingrad

Battle of the Kursk(4th – 20th July 1943)

Between 4th & 20th July, Hitler committed over 900,000 soldiers, 10,000 artillery guns, 2,700 tanks and 2,000 aircraft, hoping to counteract the Soviet offense that was pushing gradually westwards from 1943 on. It failed to surround the Soviet tanks and infantry which numbered 1.3 million soldiers, 20,000 artillery pieces, 3,600 tanks and 2,400 planes

Phase III:

D-Day – Fall of Berlin(6th June 1944 – 8th May 1945)

Nazi Europe(6th June 1944)

Field Marshall Rommel

General Erwin Rommel inspects the Atlantic Wall

defences(1944)

The Atlantic Wall

D-Day Landings: Operation Overlord

(6th June 1944)

D-Day Landing Sites

Liberation of France

General deGaulle & Free French partisans parade in Paris

following liberation by Allied troops

Liberation of France

Red Army advance on Berlin(1943 – 1945)

Battle of the Bulge

Germany Collapses

VE Day8th May 1945

War in the Pacific

Yalta Conference(4th – 11th February 1945)

Hiroshima & Nagasaki6th & 9th August 1945

Oppenheimer

Hiroshima: 1945(Before Atomic Bomb)

Hiroshima: 1945(After Atomic Bomb)

VJ Day15th August 1945

Casualties of WWII

The Holocaust

By the end of WWII, after the concentration & extermination camps

were liberated throughout occupied

Europe, it was estimated that over 6 million Jews had been murdered as part of

‘The Final Solution’; the plan to eradicate all Jews from Europe

between 1942 & 1945.