World War II: Key Events and Figures

• Hitler saw Jews as an inferior race. He wanted to destroy them as part of a conspiracy to take over the world.
• He ordered the boycott of many Jewish shops and passed a range of laws which were against the Jews.

• The Holocaust was the murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators.
• Other than Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally or physically disabled people were also killed in the Holocaust.

• The decision to drop the bomb on Japan was made by US President Harry Truman.
• He argued that the bombing would shorten the war, remove any need to invade Japan and so save the lives of thousands of American servicemen as well as Japanese civilians.

• The Japanese city of Tokyo was bombed on 9th March 1945. American bombers dropped fire bombs without a specific target on the Japanese city of Tokyo.
• These fire bombs created a huge firestorm destroying 16 square miles of the city and causing 100000 civilian casualties.

• The Victory in Europe (VE) day was commemorated on 8 May 1945 in Britain.
• It was the date when the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces.

• Czech Memorial fountain stands in Jephson Gardens in Royal Leamington Spa where Czech forces were stationed in the war.
• It was unveiled on the 26 October 1968, as a memorial to all the Czechs and Slovaks who died in the war and particularly to the seven Czech patriots who assassinated Heydrich.

• On 29 December 1941 two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, were parachuted into Czechoslovakia by the Royal Air Force.
• They met up with the local resistance and planned the attack on Reinhard Heydrich.

• On 27 May 1942 in Prague, in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, seven men attacked a vehicle with grenades.
• The passenger, Reinhard Heydrich, was severely wounded and died several days later.

• A fortnight after the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, the German soldiers entered the village of Lidice, six miles from Prague.
• The village was completely destroyed along with its residents.

D-Day refers to the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, which took place on June 6, 1944.

• On 7 December 1940, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
• The attack was a military success. This attack by the Japanese brought the USA into the world war.

• Even after the Victory in Europe (VE) day, fighting still continued against the Japanese in the east.
• The day after VE day the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane.

• Reconnaissance means exploring an area to gather military information. Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, to find out what the enemy was doing.
• Later these aircraft were armed so that they could defend themselves and attack enemy reconnaissance aircraft.

• The trails against the Nazi leaders took place in Nuremberg.
• Nuremberg was the site of the annual Nazi party rallies and so was considered a good place to bring Nazism to an end.

• Poland was invaded both by Nazi Germany and by the Soviet Union in 1939.
• Due to the series of invasions, post-war Poland was smaller and its borders had been moved westwards.

• The intelligence system that was introduced to crack Enigma was code-named Ultra.
• It was only made available to a few British commanders in order to prevent the Germans from realising that it had been broken.

• Werner Von Braun worked on developing the V2 rockets that were used to attack Britain in 1944. Over 5000 rockets were launched at London, killing 2700 people and injuring many lives.
• At the end of the war, Braun surrendered to the US forces.

• During the World War 2, aircraft became increasingly important. Methods like reconnaissance and strafing were adopted.
• Strafing means to attack targets on the ground from low-flying aircraft.

Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945, marking the end of the war in Europe during World War II.

• The Germans intention was to demoralize civilian popualtion basically located in the cities.
• For this, they adopted the tactic of first using zeppelins, a type of rigid airship for bombing and later Gotha bombers for long range heavy bombing.