World War II
7 Jul 1937 – 2 Sep 194586 items
civilianswarFrom the Marco Polo Bridge to Tokyo Bay
The Second World War was two wars that ran into each other. In Asia, Japan’s war with China began at a bridge outside Beijing on 7 July 1937; in Europe, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Pearl Harbor joined them in December 1941, and the last fighting stopped only with Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. This timeline follows both, from 1937 to 1945.
By the numbers
about 60 million dead, 15 million of them in battle and 45 million civilians, by the National WWII Museum’s count, which warns that estimates vary widely
six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, by the count of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
about 24 million Soviet and 14 to 20 million Chinese dead, the two heaviest national losses: the Museum’s figures, with Rana Mitter’s lower estimate for China
Reading it
Three long bands run side by side: the war in China from 7 July 1937, the war in Europe from 1 September 1939 to 8 May 1945 and the Pacific War from 7 December 1941. This timeline dates Japan’s war from 1937, as Chinese historians do, and draws the Pacific War as a band of its own. Inside them sit the theatres (the Battle of the Atlantic, the Eastern Front, North Africa, Italy and Burma), then the battles as bands of their own. Open the map to see the Eastern Front at its deepest and the road from Rangoon to Kohima.
Filter by holocaust for the murder of Europe’s Jews, civilians for the war on cities and the famine in Bengal, diplomacy for the pacts, conferences and surrenders, maritime for the war at sea, nuclear for the atomic bomb, and uprising for the revolts in Warsaw and Sobibór. D-Day has a single item here; the catalogue’s D-Day timeline tells that day hour by hour.
When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today. — the Kohima Epitaph, on the memorial of the 2nd British Division at Kohima
Times are UTC, so the bomb that fell on Hiroshima at 08:15 on 6 August, local time, sits late on 5 August here.
Items
Shots at the Marco Polo Bridge
The Munich Agreement
The Nazi–Soviet Pact
Germany invades Poland
Britain and France declare war on Germany
The Soviet Union invades Poland
France signs an armistice at Compiègne
The Tripartite Pact
Roosevelt signs Lend-Lease
Operation Barbarossa: Germany invades the Soviet Union
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
Killing begins at Chełmno
The United States declares war on Japan
Germany declares war on the United States
The Wannsee Conference
Singapore surrenders
Deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka begin
Operation Torch: the Allies land in Morocco and Algeria
Operation Uranus closes the ring at Stalingrad
Paulus surrenders at Stalingrad
The Axis armies in Tunisia surrender
“Black May” in the Atlantic
Tank battle at Prokhorovka
Italy’s armistice is announced
Revolt at Sobibór
Hungary’s Jews deported to Auschwitz
D-Day: the Allies land in Normandy
Paris is liberated
The first kamikaze attacks
Soviet troops reach Auschwitz
The flag is raised on Mount Suribachi
The Yamato is sunk
Roosevelt dies
Hitler kills himself in the Führerbunker
Germany surrenders at Reims
VE Day, and a second signing in Berlin
Trinity: the first atomic explosion
The Potsdam Declaration
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima
The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria
The atomic bombing of Nagasaki
The Emperor’s surrender broadcast
Japan signs the Instrument of Surrender