World War II – 18 Important Dates to Know

World War II – Important Dates to Know covers 18 dates we find especially interesting.

There are literally thousands of important dates to learn about as we study the events of World War II. We will be covering many of them in soon-to-come blog posts.

For now, we’ve selected 18 dates that are particularly interesting to our staff.

18 Important Dates to Know About WWII

• January 30, 1933 – Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany
• March 20, 1933 – The German SS opens Dachua Concentration Camp outside of Munich.
  • SS Chief Heinrich Himmler announced the opening.
  • Two days later, roughly 200 prisoners arrived at the camp.
• June 28, 1935 – The Nazis Regime toughens the laws against homosexuality.
  • The Nazis considered homosexuality a crime because it hindered the preservation of the German nation, e.g. Germans having babies to increase the German Aryan population.
• September 1, 1939 – World War II begins
• 3rd of September, 1939 – Britain and France declared war on Germany because they invaded Poland.
• September 17, 1939 – Soviet Union invades Poland
• January 25, 1940 – The German SS puts into plans to construct Auschwitz Concentration Camp

• May 10, 1940 – Winston Churchill is appointed British Prime Minister, replacing Neville Chamberlain.

• June 14, 1940 – Nazis invade Paris
• August 12, 1940 – Battle of Britain begins
• December 7, 1941 – Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
  • The United States joins the way against Germany.
• January 20, 1942 – The Wannsee Conference took place in Berlin.
  • During the conference, the final solution was introduced to non-Nazi leaders.
  • They would end up helping to transport Jews to extermination camps
• May 21, 1942 – The I.G. Farben plant opens their manufacturing plant near Auschwitz.
  • I.G. Farben used Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz to work in their plant, looking for cheap labor.
  • The plant would go on to provide the means to murder over one million people, mostly Jews, using a cyanide-based pesticide, Zyklon B.
• August 25, 1944 – Paris is liberated from German occupation.

• January 18, 1945 – The “Death Marches” began
  • The German SS forced nearly 60,000 exhausted, scared, sick, innocent prisoners to march through the cold and snow to satellite camps.
• April 30, 1945 – Adolf Hitler dies, by suicide.

• May 7, 1945 – The Germans unconditionally surrender, ending the war in Europe.
• September 2, 1945 – The Japanese surrender, ending the war in the Pacific.
• November 20, 1945 – The Nuremberg Trials begin.
  • The trials would last almost a year, until October 1, 1946.

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