- CLASS SET -V-E Day, May 8, 1945 V-J Day, September 2, 1945

° August 1942- February 1943- Battle of Stalingrad Soviet victory over Nazis Losses: Soviets- over 1 million men Nazis- 240,000 men

° May 1943- Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps were defeated

° June 6, 1944- D-Day Allies’ successful invasion of occupied France Extremely heavy casualties Led to liberation of France, Belgium, Luxemburg

° April 1945- Germans retreat from northern Italy April 29- Mussolini shot and hanged for trying to escape

° April 1945- Allies surrounded Berlin Hitler and his mistress commit suicide in bunker

° May 8, 1945- Unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany signed in Berlin

° August 1939- Scientist Albert Einstein warned FDR that the Axis Powers may be developing an atomic weapon

° Fall 1944- Kamikazes (Japanese suicide pilots) were the only thing standing between the Allies and Japan

° March 1945- American Marines captured Iwo Jima

° April 12, 1945- FDR died; Harry S. Truman the new president (had to make decision about the American atomic bomb)

° August 6, 1945- Atomic bomb dropped on Japanese city of Hiroshima Around 73,000 people are killed

° August 9, 1945- Atomic bomb dropped on Japanese city of Nagasaki Around 37,500 people were killed

° September 2, 1945- Japanese officially surrendered to American General Douglas MacArthur

Mussolini’s body (second from left)

Soviet soldier raising flag on Berlin’s Reichstag building

Mushroom cloud from atomic bombing of Nagasaki

Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J day in Times Square