World War II-Events.
Ideintifying major events throughout the war.
Rob Erskine.

	Battle of the Bulge On December 16th 1944, the Germans started their Ardennes offensive. Fighting took place in Ardennes, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany with the result of an allied win. The German Offensive on the western front became known in the U.S. Forces journals as The Battle of the Bulge, named after the local Sawmill. The overall point of the offensive was that Germany was no longer defending Western Europe, and action needed to be taken.
	Carrier The U.S. Navy fleet carriers and nine small aircraft carriers were served in World War II. Eight ships were built before the war started and the rest were built during the war. (Most of the carriers were named after American battles and famous former Navy ships.)
	Iwo-Jima Iwo Jima clashed between the United States and the Japanese Empire in February and March of 1945. This invasion was known as Operation Detachment, the mission: to capture the remaining airfields on Iwo Jima. The imperial Japanese army was well prepared, equipped with heavily fortified bunkers, hidden artillery, and 11 miles of tunnels. The Japanese defended their home island as the American’s launched the first attack on the home islands. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoners. Joe Rosenthal photographed the famous and iconic picture of five mariners and a U.S Navy Corpsman raising the U.S. Flag on top of the 546 foot Mount Suribachi located on the island of Iwo Jima (picture behind the links atop of this page as well). The photograph was actually the second flag-raising on the mountain.
	Normandy The Allied forces landed on the islands of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. The invasion was captioned as Operation Overlord, and the allied forces would be there until the breakout in mid-July. Classified as the largest seaborne invasion, involving over 156,000 troops transported from the English Channel from the United Kingdom to Normandy. Forces from the Allied side came from Canada, France, United Kingdom and the United States. The weeks following the initial landing, Polish, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece and the Netherlands, also participated. The invasion began with glider and parachute landings, followed by massive air attacks, naval bombardments, and an early morning seaborne movement.
	D-Day The assault landing one of the first waves at Omaha Beach as photographed by Robert F. Sergeant, The U.S. Coast Guard caption identifies the unit as Company E, sixteenth Infantry, and first Infantry Division.
	Okinawa The battle of Okinawa was fought on the Japanese island of Okinawa and lasted from late March through June 1945. The battle is often called the “Typhoon of Steel” by allied forces, and tetsu no ame “Rain of Steel”, in Japanese. The tension of the battle was intense. The amount of gunfire, or the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island deserve a nickname such as “Typhoon of Steel”. The prewar civilian population Okinawa was 435,000, of whom an estimated 140,000 died during the battle. The allies were planning to use Okinawa as a station for Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese Mainland. However such events as the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan interfered and Japan surrendered.
	Pearl Harbor General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. In some ways, Stalin was responsible for the USSR’s severe losses at the beginning of World War II, as he failed to head the warnings of his advisors and did not allow the Russian military to prepare a proper defense. At the same time, he did succeed in holding the country together and inspiring among his people an awesome resistance against Germany, which ultimately forced a German retreat. Stalin’s own regime in the USSR was just as brutal as the Nazi regime in many ways, and the alliance between Stalin and the Western Allies always remained rather tenuous because of mutual distrust.
	Stalingrad A U.S. Army general who held the position of supreme Allied commander in Europe, among many others. Eisenhower was perhaps best known for his work in planning Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe. After the war, he was a very popular figure in the United States and was elected to two terms as U.S. president, taking office in 1953.