Aktion Erntefest was the indiscriminate murder of 42,000 Jews in the Lublin district (Poland ) in only two days , on 3 and 4 November 1943 . A total of 18,400 were killed on day 3 in the Majdane... concentration camp in the largest execution in a single day in the history of the system of Nazi concentration camps . In late October , members of the SS ordered Jews prisoners to open three large ditches in a zig-zag way in the north end of campus, next to the crematorium. The decision worried prisoners but the answer was that war front approached Lublin and its was necessary to open trenches to defend the concentration camp. On November 3, after mourning roll call, jews were taken at a quick march to this final destination. They were undressed In a barracks and entered completely naked into the ditch, where they were executed. Various loudspeakers began playing various lively melodies while executioners began to execute innocent victims. Today, trenchs ara preserved and a monolith commemorates these tragic event. Operation Erntefest also imply murder of between 6,000 and 10,000 jews in Trawniki subcamp, located in an old sugar factory. The bodies were burned and the camp was liquidated. A monument in the center of town honors them. There were also massacres of Jjews within in Budzyn , Krasnik , Pulawy and Lipowa subcamps.

On September 30, 1938, the Führerbau hosted the signing of the Munich Agreement, which enabled the Nazis to take over the region Czechoslovak Sudeten German-speaking. The pact was signed by... French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the hope of meeting the nazis demands and avoid war. Besides being a first-rate diplomatic defeat and a surrender to the two dictatorial regimes, the agreement meant de facto defeat of the Spanish Republic, that was fighting a civil war against Franco's troops and it expected a belligerent position of the two Western powers against the great allies of Franco, the Third Reich and Mussolini's Italy. A year after agreement, Hitler would invade Poland and two years later he would attack France and England.

The September 21, 1942 was organized the last transport in Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. The convoy carrying 2,196 jews. The completion of the mass deportation of the ghetto... inhabitants to death (Grossaktion) coincided with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. From July 22 to September 21 were sent to death 253,742 people according nazis reports, a figure rising to 300,000 according jewish sources. The first months of 1943 were sent thousands more ghetto inhabitants to concentration and extermination camps.

At four o'clock in the morning of July 16, 1942, began the raid (rafle in French) against 27,000 jews who lived in Paris and its suburbs. The manhunt codename was Vent printanie (Wind spring... in which took part 5,000 french policemen and no german soldiers. A total of 900 groups, each with three police officers volunteer members, were the executors of the arrests. The operation continued the next day, on July 17. The total number of captured jews was 13,152, as many potential victims were hidden in the wake of persistent rumors about the purpose of the operation. Among those captured, single or married without children were transferred directly to the concentration camp of Drancy. The remaining 8160 people, men, women and children, were taken to the parisian Vélodrome d'Hiver (Vel d'Hiv). In Vel d'Hiv there was nothing prepared, no food, water, toilets or bedding of any kind. For three to six days, thousands of people received only one or two servings of soup a day. Two Jewish doctors and one of the Red Cross helped them. The temperature was always above 37 degrees. The Jews eventually were moved temporarily to the concentration camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. Later this year, 42,500 Jews in France were sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

The June 22, 1941 begins the largest military offensive in history known until then, Operation Barbarossa. Some 2.5 million Soviet soldiers are overwhelmed by more than three million soldiers of... the Third Reich and allies, 600,000 vehicles, 3.600 tanks, and 2.700 aircraft. The attack, of enormous range, is divided into three major fronts. To the north, an army group addresses to Leningrad. In the center, a second army group goes to Moscow and south a third group of armies to Ukraine and the Caucasus. The massive attack ignores the non-aggression pact signed by Hitler and Stalin only two years earlier.

The June 14, 1944, General de Gaulle sailed from Portsmouth on board the destroyer Le Combattante with a handful of prominent figures of the Free French. He came ashore on Normandy beaches in ea... ly hours of the afternoon, between Couseulles and Severe-sur-Mer. It was the first time he stepped on the floor of metropolitan France, four years after the invasion of their country by the Third Reich. After a meeting with Montgomery in his headquarters at Creully; de Gaulle wanted to reconnect with french people. At 15.30 hours arrived in the intact town of Bayeux, where he installed the first administration of French Republic, and he decided talk to neighbors in the castle square in historical discourse. Then, he visited Isigny sur-Mer, a largely destroyed town, where he delivered one second emotional speech and, finally, the coastal village of Grandcamp-les-Bains. In all the sites he visited that day, de Gaulle was cheered by the population, which allowed him to show to his allies that the French people recognized his legitimacy as leader of Free France.

On the morning of Thursday, June 4, 1942, died Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), governor of Bohemia and Moravia and head of the feared Central Office for Reich Security (RSHA), headed by the Gesta... o and the Criminal Police, among other agencies. Heydrich was mortally wounded on May 27 in an attack by two czechoslovak paratroopers Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, the author of the dropping of the bomb on the vehicle carrying Heydrich in Prague. The Nazi leader was taken to Bulovka Hospital, where he died. His body was taken to Prague Castle where a ceremony was held on June 7. His successor, Kurt Daluege, delivered a tribute to him. On June 9 was celebrated at the new Third Reich Chancellery in Berlin a state ceremony in his honor. His remains were buried in the Cemetery of Veterans.

The morning of May 7, 1945, seven days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler, General Jodl signed on behalf of Admiral Dönitz, successor named by the Führer, and of the high command of the... Wehrmacht , a document of surrender in General Eisenhower headquarters, located in Reims. General Susloparov signed on behalf of the Soviet high command. Stalin was furious because he wanted that the surrender was to take place in Berlin, led by the Red Army. But the Western Allies wanted to announce victory in Europe the day after all the media. Stalin considered premature this decision. Despite the surrender, several Wehrmacht armies were still fighting in Czechoslovakia or Courland (Estonia). Next day, at night between 8th and 9th, it would be signed the unconditional surrender of the German forces, accepted by the representatives of the four allies. It took place at the headquarters of Marshal Zhukov, located in Karlshorst Palace, on the outskirts of Berlin. On the German side, capitulation was signed by commanders in chief of the Wehrmacht and of the three branches of the armed forces, represented by Marshal Keitel. With this signature, World War II in Europe was finished.

On April 19, 1943, the eve of Easter, SS troops began the operation to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw and to deport residents that could work in labor camps in the General Government. Whe... units of the SS and police entered the ghetto in the morning, the streets were deserted. Almost all ghetto residents had taken refuge in hideouts and bunkers built for themselves. The resumption of deportations was the signal for carrying out the armed uprising in the ghetto. The head of the Jewish Fighting Organization ((Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB), Mordecaj Anielewicz, ordered his fighters to start the attack. Armed with guns, grenades (many homemade) and few automatic weapons and rifles, the ZOB fighters surprised the Germans and their auxiliaries, forcing Nazis to retreat. Commander of the troops, the SS Jürgen Stroop, reported that it had lost 12 men, between killed and wounded during the first day of fighting. The third day of fighting , Stroop forces started to razing entire ghetto, building by building, to force the jews out of hiding. Resistance fighters made sporadic attacks from the bunkers but nazis systematically reduced the ghetto to rubble. On May 8, 1943 , the bunker where they were hiding ZOB commanders was discovered by German divisions. Most present fighters, led by Mordechai Anielewicz group leader (1919-1943) and Arie Wilner (1917 -1943), committed suicide. Though German forces broke within days the organized military resistance at the beginning of the revolt, individuals and small groups hid or fought against the Germans for nearly a month. To symbolize the German victory, Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue Street Tlomacki on May 16, 1943. The whole ghetto was in ruins. Stroop reported that had captured 56,065 Jews and destroyed a total of 631 bunkers. Their units estimated that 7,000 Jews killed during the uprising. The German authorities deported approximately another 7,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka extermination camp, where most were killed in the gas chambers to arrive. The germans deported almost all remaining Jews, about 42,000, to the concentration camp Lublin / Majdanek and to forced labor camps of Poniatowa, Trawniki, Budzyn, and Krasnik. Except for a few thousand forced laborers of Krasnik and Budzyn, the SS murdered almost all jews deported from Warsaw. The nazis had planned to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto in three days, but the fighters resisted for more than a month. Even after the end of the revolt on 16 May 1943, some jews hid in the guetto ruins and patrols continued to attack the Germans and their auxiliaries. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the and symbolic largest Jewish uprising in occupied Europe by Nazi Germany. Resistance in Warsaw inspired other uprisings in ghettos (eg, Bialystok and Minsk) and killing centers (Treblinka and Sobibor).

On 13 and 14 March 1943, Nazis decided to liquidated the Krakow ghetto. The action was supervised by SS-Sturmbannführer Willi Haase. Around 6,000 jews capable of work were... transferred to Plaszow concentration camp. About 1,000 people were murdered in the streets of the ghetto. On March 13, a transport of about 2,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After selection, 484 men and 24 women were enrolled in the concentration camp. The remaining group, about 1,492 people, were murdered in gas chamber number II.

On the morning of February 15, 1942, the Japanese Army General Yamashita had broken the last line of defense and the Western Allied were running out of food, water and ammunition. The flak also ... an out of ammunition and could not, therefore, repel Japanese air attacks that had provoked many casualties in the city center. The looting and neglect of allied troops joined to the chaos of the city center. At 0930 hours, Percival held a conference in the bunker of Fort Canning (Battle Box) with his officers. Proposed two options, launch an immediate counterattack to regain the water tanks and food in Bukit Timah region and force the enemy artillery elevations outside of town, or capitulate. All present agreed that a backlash was not possible. Percival decided, therefore, an unconditional surrender. A three-person delegation was selected to go to the Japanese headquarters. They crossed enemy lines in a vehicle equipped with the British flag and a second flag of truce. The Japanese army insisted that was Percival himself that had to go to the old Ford Motor factory in Bukit Timah to negotiate a surrender, an image that went down in history as a symbol of capitulation. After a brief disagreement, when Percival insisted that the British should keep to 1,000 armed men in Singapore to preserve order, request that ultimately granted Yamashita, Percival signed the surrender at 17.15. The cessation of hostilities came into effect at 2030 hours. The loss of the colony of Malaysia's economic value, with its important naval base in Singapore, led more than 100,000 British soldiers, India and Australia into captivity and also destroyed the prestige of the British Empire in the Far East. Churchill defined the fall of Singapore as the "worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history '.

On February 13, 1945, shortly before 22:00 pm, several hundred bombers - mostly of them British- came flying over the sky of Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony. It only took them 15 min... tes to convert almost three quarters of the city center to a rubble area. That bombing was followed by another, a little later, when a second wave of attacks unleashed a hurricane of fire, a hell that caused more than 20,000 victims.
Historians have debated to this day the military sense of the destruction of Dresden, also called the "Florence on the Elbe" for its baroque architecture. The destruction of the capital of Saxony was undoubtedly a blow to Nazi Germany. Just three months later, the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler declared his unconditional surrender.

The Empire of Japan attacked on January 11, 1942 the small island of Tarakan, northeast of Borneo, Dutch territory. The island available to 700 oil wells, one refinery and an airport, becoming o... e of the main objectives in the Japanese Pacific War. A day earlier, on January 10, Japan had declared war on the Kingdom of the Netherlands. That day, advocates warned the invader fleet and decided to destroy all the oil fields of the island. At noon on January 11, Japanese troops landed. After a brief but fierce defense, the Dutch garrison (Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger) surrendered to the japanese the morning of January 12. All prisoners were executed in retaliation for the destruction of oil installations. Tarakan remained under Japanese control until May 1945 when it was liberated by Australian troops.

The Japanese empire landed its first troops in the Philippines on December 10, 1941. It was the first of many landings elsewhere in the islands during that month. The high point of that attack t... ok place on December 22, 1941 with the landing of 43,000 troops on the island of Luzon.

The Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht in German) is the night of 9 to November 10, 1938 when broke a wave of violence against Jews in Germany and Austria. However, this term metaphorically ev... king the broken glass of the countless broken windows does not accurately reflect the degree of violence and destruction and the number of murders. This explosion of violence as a pretext was the murder of a secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynzpan young German-born Polish Jew. Orchestrated by Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, the instructions to the various organs of the party were clear: looting, fire and destruction of Jewish institutions and private ownership of the community as if were a spontaneous movement of the population. In two days, more than 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish shops were vandalized and looted, dozens of Jews were murdered, and cemeteries, hospitals, schools and Jewish homes were looted while police and fire crews remained at margin. The morning after the pogroms, 30,000 German Jews were arrested for the "crime" of being Jewish and were sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them died.

On 28 October 1940, at 04.00 am, the Italian ambassador in Greece, Emanuele Grazzi, woke up to the Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas, to deliver him an ultimatum. He demanded the entry of the... Italian forces in the country and occupation of strategic points. Metaxas rejected the demand with a laconic word 'Oxi!' (No!), although other sources suggest that the real answer was 'Alors, c'est la guerre' (So is war). At 05: 30 hours, the Italian army attacked the Greek border from Albania, an Italian protectorate. The Greek-Italian war had begun. During World War II, on October 28 was commemorated each year by Greek communities around the world and in Greece and Cyprus. After the war it became a holiday in Greece and Cyprus.

On September 2, 1945, USS Missouri battleship hosted the official ceremony of Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. The foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed it on behalf of the civil government ... hile General Umezu did it on behalf of the japanese army, in the presence of the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific, Douglas MacArthur, and Admiral of the U.S. Navy, Chester Nimitz. At 09:30 am, the japanese emissaries left the battleship, World War II was officially over. U.S. President Harry Truman declared September 2 was the VJ Day (Victory over Japan) or (Victory in Japan).

At 4:45 pm on September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein started shelling against established Polish garrison in Westerplatte Peninsula, seven kilometers from Gdansk. At 4:50 pm... the officer in charge of the garrison, Henry Sucharski establishes telephone communication with the command of the Navy in Gdynia to report the attack. The Second World War had begun.

Commander Admiral of Japan, Isoroku Yamamoto, was murdered when he was travelling to visit the Solomon Islands by plane. It was shot down by American fighters USA P-38 Lighting.

On July 4th, 1941, the volunteers of the Arajs Commando, created by the Nazis, gathered 300 lithuanian jews, mostly women ... nd children, and focused them on the Great Choral Synagogue of Riga, located on Gogol Street. Then threw grenades through the windows and the whole building was devastated by fire. There were no survivors.

In late 1944, at the approach of the Red Army offensive, the concentration camp authorities were put to work to erase the traces of their crimes. Documents were destroyed, some buildings were de... olished and others were burned or were blown up. Prisoners capable of marching were evacuated between 17 and 21 January 1945 into the Third Reich, at the time that Soviet soldiers were just 60 miles apart, liberating the city of Krakow. Around 7,000 prisoners who were abandoned by the Germans in the death camp were liberated by Red Army troops on January 27, 1945. Between 300 and 400 were children.