A world-wide conflict is started by Hitler's Germany, whose army annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, then attacked Poland. A war with unsurpassed destruction and cruelty, including Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, of whom about 6 million were killed in a deliberate plan. Technology played an even greater role than in World War I, including long-range bombing raids, improved submarines, jet engines, radar and towards the end, large military rockets and nuclear bombs. Avery at the Rockefeller Institute in New York proves that DNA , a hitherto unexplained substance in all nuclei of living cells, carries the genetic information. Indonesia is established in 1949.
Contact is maintained for a year by a massive airlift.
Transistor invented, compact solid-state device that replaces the triode and is much more durable. In 1956 Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley are awarded the Nobel prize for this. A much larger event occurs in February 1956. It is later withdrawn because of structural faults, but by 1958 the French Caravelle and the larger Boeing 707 jets enter service. Gradually jets begin dominating air transport, while travel by ocean liners declines sharply.