World War II

**World War II** was a conflict involving all the great powers of Earth. It is also a period of history, part of modern times, that began in 1939 following the Great Depression and ended in 1945 with the start of the Atomic Age.

## Timeline

### 1939

Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne begins fighting crime under the guise of The Batman.

**March 17:** Sky Captain Joe Sullivan confronts a giant robot invasion--New York City

**April 7:** Italy invades Albania.

**August 23:** Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact, dividing up Eastern Europe between them.

**September 1:** Germany invades Poland.

**September 3:** Britain and France declare war on Germany.

**September 17:** The Soviet Union invades Poland.

**November 30:** The Soviet Union invades Finland.

### 1940

**April 9:** Germany invades Denmark and Norway.

**May 10:** Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain, offers blood, sweat and tears.

**May 26-June 3:** Dunkirk

**June 14:** Nazis invade France; Ilsa Lund stands up Rick Blaine during the evacuation.

Marshall Petain becomes head of Vichy France, Charles DeGaulle becomes leader of the Free French.

**July 10:** The Battle of Britain begins.

**August 3:** The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic States.

**August 20:** Leon Trotsky assassinated with an icepick--Mexico City

**September 7:** Germany begins The Blitz--Britain

Pevensie children discover a doorway to Narnia, where they help overthrow the White Witch.

**December 7:** Steve Rogers injected with the Super Soldier Serum that transforms him into Captain America.

### 1941

**January 12:** Reichminister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels advances the Big Lie theory.

**March 28:** Virginia Woolf commits suicide--Lewes, England.

Kilroy was there.

**April:** Death of publisher Charles Foster Kane (b. 1863); his last word is "rosebud."

Ilsa Koch, She-Wolf of the S.S., becomes a camp guard at Buchenwald.

**June 20:** Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

**September:** The Pevensie children are summoned back to Narnia to assist in the restoration of Prince Caspian--Britain.

**October 31:** Carving of Mount Rushmore completed.

**November 27:** Edmund and Lucy Pevensie

**December 2:** Ilsa Lund comes to Rick Blaine’s cafe--Casablanca, Morocco.

**December 7:** In a day that will live in infamy, the Empire of Japan attacks the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor.

### 1942

**February 1:** Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945) becomes the puppet President of Norway.

**January 20:** The Final Solution is ordered at the Wannsee Conference.

**March:** The Red Skull locates the Cosmic Cube--Tonsberg, Norway.

**March 12:** Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) retreats from the Philippines, vowing, "I will return."

Eichmann begins carrying out the Final Solution

**April 9:** Beginning of the Bataan Death March.

**June 4-7:** Battle of Midway turns the tide in Pacific.

**July 27:** British troops defeat Germans and Italians, led by General Erwin Rommel, at the Battle of El Alamein.

**August 6:** Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their cousin Eustace Scrubb, return to Narnia, where they join the voyage of the *Dawn Treader*.

**August 7:** The Battle of Guadalcanal, which halts the Japanese island-hopping toward Australia.

**August 23:** Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, which turns the tide in Europe.

**December 2:** Enrico Fermi produces the first nuclear chain reaction--University of Chicago.

### 1943

**March:** POWs begin work on a bridge over the River Kwai--Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

**April 14:** Founding of SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency whose name translates as “Death to Spies.”

**April 16:** Albert Hoffman accidentally absorbs LSD and has the first acid trip while riding home on his bicycle--Basel, Switzerland.

Josef Mengele becomes the Angel of Death at Auschwitz

Albert Camus joins the French Resistance

**May 12:** The Bridge on the River Kwai is completed.

**July 10:** U.S. and British troops land in Sicily, beginning the invasion of Europe.

**August 2:** Lt. John F. Kennedy saves his surviving crew members after his command, the PT 109, is sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

**November:** Tokyo Rose begins propaganda broadcasts from Japan.

**December:** The Colossus computer created to help break Germany's Enigma code.

### 1944

B.F. Skinner raises his second daughter in a Skinner box.

**March 24:** The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III.

**June 6:** D-Day

**June 6:** Forrest Gump born.

**June 13:** Private James Francis Ryan is saved--Ramelle, France.

**July 20:** Operation Valkyrie, a plot to assassinate Hitler, fails.

**August 1:** Warsaw Uprising

**August 4:** Anne Frank (1929-45) is arrested along with her family after living in hiding for two years.

**August 25:** The liberation of Paris

**September 8:** Wernher Von Braun invents the V-2.

**September 17:** Operation Market-Garden attempts to take a bridge too far.

**October 14:** General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, forced to commit suicide after plotting against Hitler.

**September 25:** Gordon Gecko born--New Brunswick, New Jersey.

**December 16:** The German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge begins--the bloodiest battle of the war for the Americans. Bill Pilgrim (b. 1922) is captured and becomes unstuck in time.

**December 23:** Incarnation of the demon known as Hellboy.

### 1945

**January 31:** U.S. Private Eddie Slovik executed for desertion.

**February 4-11:** Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin divide up the postwar world--Yalta, Soviet Union

**February 13:** Firebombing of Dresden; Billy Pilgrim is there, unstuck in time.

**April 12:** Harry Truman becomes president upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt.

**April 30:** Hitler, Eva Braun commit suicide in bunker; they save Hitler's brain and hide it in South America.

**June 26:** The Charter of the United Nations is signed--San Francisco

**May 7:** Tommy Walker, future pinball wizard, born.

**May 8:** V-E Day.

**July 16:** First atomic explosion at Trinity test site--Alamagordo, New Mexico

**August 6:** Atomic bombing of Hiroshima

**August 9:** Atomic bombing of Nagasaki