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The Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944 were among
the most desperate undertakings in the history of war. Amphibious operations against an enemy in a strong defensive position
will almost always lead to heavy casualties.
In November 1943, the United States Marine Corps' capture of the
tiny atoll of Tarawa in the central Pacific had cost more than 3,000 casualties. American censors banned a public screening
of the US Navy film of this event, arguing that its shocking images of a lagoon red with soldiers' blood would undermine
the morale of US forces and the Home Front.
The British and Canadians had suffered their own disaster at Dieppe
on 18 August 1942. More than two thirds of a 6,000-man raiding force had been left behind on the shingle beach, dead, wounded
and prisoners.
'... by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed...'
On the eve of D-Day the Allied leadership was in a state of neurotic anxiety. Just after midnight on 6 June, a restless
Churchill, haunted by memories of the disastrous Allied landings at Gallipoli 29 years earlier, bade his wife goodnight with
the words, 'Do you realise that by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed?'
The same night, the chief of the imperial general staff, General Alan Brooke, confided to his diary that '...
it may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war. I wish to God it were safely over '.
At about 22.00
the supreme allied commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, had made an impromptu visit to paratroopers of the 101st Airborne
at Greenham Common airfield near Newbury. His driver, Kay Summersby, recorded that the general, overwhelmed by emotion, climbed
back into the car with his shoulders sagged.
Eisenhower had already written a letter accepting full responsibility
if D-Day turned out to be a disaster. Churchill had assured him that they would go together. The Allied high command anticipated
that a successful landing would cost 10,000 dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded, but were steeling themselves for much heavier
casualties.
The Invasion of Poland begins at 4:30 a.m. with
the German Luftwaffe attacking several targets in Poland. The United Kingdom and France demand Germany's immediate withdrawal.
The United Kingdom home front is opened as the government declares general mobilization of the British Army and begins
evacuation plans in preparation of German air attacks.
France, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and New Zealand
declare war on Germany after German refusal to withdraw from Poland.
Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command launches a
raid on the German battleship Admiral Scheer in the Heligoland Bight. Six of the 24 attacking aircraft are lost, and while
the German vessel is hit three times, all of the bombs fail to explode.
French patrols enter Germany near Saarbrücken.
Canada declares war on Germany. 
The German Luftwaffe was one of the most powerful,
doctrinally advanced, and battle-experienced air forces in the world when World War II started in Europe in September 1939.
Officially unveiled in 1935, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, its purpose was to support Hitler's Blitzkrieg
across Europe.
The aircraft that were to serve in the Luftwaffe were of a new age and far superior to that of
most other nations in the 1930s. Types like the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Messerschmitt Bf 109 came to symbolize German aerial
might.
The Luftwaffe became an essential component in the "Blitzkrieg" battle plan. Operating as a
tactical close support air force, it helped the German armies to conquer the bulk of the European continent in a series of
short and decisive campaigns in the first nine months of the war, experiencing its first defeat during the Battle of Britain
in 1940 as it could not adapt into a strategic role, lacking heavy bombers with which to conduct a strategic bombing campaign
against the British Isles.
Despite this setback the Luftwaffe remained formidable and in June 1941 embarked on
Adolf Hitler's quest for an empire in eastern Europe by invading the USSR, with much initial success. However, the Luftwaffe's
stunning victories in the Soviet Union were brought to a halt in the Russian winter of 1942-1943. From then on, it was forced
onto the strategic defensive contesting the ever increasing numbers of Soviet aircraft, whilst defending the German homeland
and occupied Europe from the growing Allied air forces pounding all aspects of German industry.
The Soviet Union begins talks with Finland to adjust
the border between the two countries.
Polish resistance in the Polish September Campaign comes to an end. Finland begins
mobilizing its army; Hitler speaks before the Reichstag, declaring a desire for a conference with Britain and France to restore
peace.
Hittler issues orders to prepare for the invasion of Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The
German navy suggests occupying Norway to Hitler.
The British battleship HMS Royal Oak is sunk in Scapa Flow harbour
by U-47.
Portions of Poland are formally inducted into Germany; the first Jewish ghetto is established at Lublin.
November
The Soviet Union invades Finland in what would become known as the Winter War.
December
Jews
are forced to wear the emblem of the Star of David 
During World War II, ghettos were established by
the Nazis to confine Jews into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe. Starting in 1939, Adolf Eichmann, head
of the Final Solution program, began to systematically move Polish Jews into designated areas of large Polish cities. The
first large ghetto at Tuliszkow was established in December 1939 or January 1940, followed by the ód Ghetto in April
1940 and the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940, with many other ghettos established throughout 1940 and 1941. The Ghettos were
walled off, and any Jew found leaving them was shot. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of these Ghettos, with 380,000 people
and the ód Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000.
Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2
May 1892 21 April 1918) was a German fighter pilot known as "The Red Baron". He was the most successful flying ace
of World War I, being officially credited with 80 confirmed air combat victories.
By the mid-1950s musicians (Miles Davis and John
Coltrane among others) began to explore directions beyond the standard bebop vocabulary. Simultaneously, other players expanded
on the bold steps of bebop: "cool jazz" or "West Coast jazz", modal jazz, as well as free jazz and avant-garde
forms of development from the likes of George Russell.
Bebop style also influenced the Beat Generation whose
spoken-word style drew on jazz rhythms, and whose poets often employed jazz musicians to accompany them. The bebop influence
also shows in rock and roll, which contains solos employing a form similar to bop solos, and "hippies" of the 60s
and 70s, who, like the boppers had a unique, non-conformist style of dress, a vocabulary incoherent to outsiders, and a communion
through music. Fans of bebop were not restricted to the USA; the music gained cult status in France and Japan.
More recently, Hip-hop artists (A Tribe Called Quest, Guru) have cited bebop as an influence on their rapping and rhythmic
style. Bassist Ron Carter even collaborated with A Tribe Called Quest on 1991's The Low End Theory, and vibraphonist Roy
Ayers and trumpeter Donald Byrd were featured on Jazzmattazz, by Guru, in the same year. Bebop samples, especially bass lines,
ride cymbal swing clips, and horn and piano riffs are found throughout the hip-hop compendium.
Bebop jazz standards
are jazz tunes from the 1940s and 1930s that are widely known, performed, and recorded among jazz musicians. Bebop is a form
of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody, that was developed
in the early and mid-1940s. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music.
There is
no definitive list of Bebop jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be Bebop "jazz standards" changes over
time. Nevertheless, the songs commonly included in jazz fake books (books containing the melodies and chords to jazz songs)
and those that have been widely recorded are a rough guide to the list of Bebop jazz standards. The Supermarine Spitfire was a British single-seat
fighter, used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries during the Second World War, and into the 1950s.It was
produced in greater numbers than any other Allied design. The Spitfire was the only Allied fighter in production at the outbreak
of the Second World War that was still in production at the end of the war.
Produced by the Supermarine subsidiary
of Vickers-Armstrongs, the Spitfire was designed by the company's Chief Designer R. J. Mitchell, who continued to refine
the design until his death from cancer in 1937; the position of chief designer was then filled by his colleague, Joseph Smith.
Its elliptical wing had a thin cross-section, allowing a higher top speed than the Hawker Hurricane and many other contemporary
designs.
The distinctive silhouette imparted by the wing planform helped the Spitfire to achieve legendary status
during the Battle of Britain. There was, and still is, a public perception that it was the RAF fighter of the Battle, in spite
of the fact that the more numerous Hurricane shouldered a great deal of the burden against the potent Messerschmitt Bf 109.
Much loved by its pilots, the Spitfire saw service during the whole of the Second World War and subsequent years, in most
theatres of war, in several roles and in many different variants. 
The Cold War was the period of conflict, tension
and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s until the early
1990s. Throughout the period, the rivalry between the two superpowers was played out in multiple arenas: military coalitions;
ideology, psychology, and espionage; sports; military, industrial, and technological developments, including the space race;
costly defence spending; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race; and many proxy wars.
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It all happened so quickly. At 7.55am on Sunday 7 December
1941, the first of two waves of Japanese aircraft began their deadly attack on the US Pacific Fleet, moored at Pearl Harbor
on the Pacific island of Oahu. Within two hours, five battleships had been sunk, another 16 damaged, and 188 aircraft destroyed.
Only chance saved three US aircraft carriers, usually stationed at Pearl Harbor but assigned elsewhere on the day. The attacks
killed under 100 Japanese but over 2,400 Americans, with another 1,178 injured.
'... the attacks had been slowly
brewing for years.'
Although swift in execution, the attacks had been slowly brewing for years. The US had
once looked upon Japanese ambitions with a level of sympathy, even indulgence. Hit hard by the Great Depression of the early
1930s, however, Japanese disillusion with party government grew and moderates gave way to militants. In 1931 Japan occupied
Manchuria in northern China. Over the decade conflict intensified and in July 1937 war was declared. As Japanese aggression
increased, its relations with the US deteriorated.
Occupied Manchuria was rapidly exploited with the establishment
of heavy and light industries. This was a practical necessity for Japan. Lacking in natural resources itself, the search for
alternative supplies underpinned foreign and military policy throughout the decade and led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and
the Pacific War.
On top of practical economic considerations, early military success and an inherent sense of racial
superiority led Japan to believe that it deserved to dominate Asian politics. As with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, this
combination bred an aggressive and neo-colonial foreign policy, the 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere'. Higher
birth-rates and economic considerations required more land; the gene-pool justified it.
British anti-invasion preparations of World War
II entailed a large-scale division of military and civilian mobilization in response to the threat of invasion by German armed
forces in 1940 and 1941. The army needed to recover from the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and 1.5
million men were enrolled as part-time soldiers in the Home Guard. The rapid construction of field fortifications transformed
much of Britain, especially southern England, into a prepared battlefield. Short of heavy weapons and equipment, the British
had to make the best use of whatever was available.
The German invasion plan, Operation Sealion, was never taken
beyond the preliminary assembly of forces. Today, little remains of Britain's anti-invasion preparations. Only reinforced
concrete structures such as pillboxes are common, and until recently, even these have been unappreciated as historical monuments. 
Operation Sealion (German: Unternehmen Seelöwe)
was Nazi Germany's plan to invade the United Kingdom during World War II, beginning in 1940. The operation was postponed
indefinitely on 17 September 1940.
Following swift victory in the Battle of France, Germany believed the war in the
west was won, but sought direct measures to break British resistance. Under Großadmiral Erich Raeder of the Kriegsmarine,
numerous studies for a German naval assault across the English Channel were produced, identifying several conditions for invasion,
including the elimination of the Royal Navy and the air strength of the Royal Air Force, as well as destruction of British
coastal defences.
The Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) originally planned an invasion on a vast scale, extending
along most of the English Channel, from Dorset to Kent. This was far in excess of what the Navy could supply transportation
for and final plans were more modest, calling for nine divisions to land by sea with around 67,000 men in the first echelon
and an airborne division to support them.The chosen invasion sites ran from Rottingdean in the west to Hythe in the east.
The situation in the ghettos was brutal. In Warsaw,
30% of the population were forced to live in 2.4% of the city's area, a density of 9.2 people per room. In the ghetto
of Odrzywol, 700 people lived in an area previously occupied by 5 families, between 12 and 30 to each small room.
The Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto, so they had to rely on replenishments supplied by the Nazis: in Warsaw
this was 181 calories per Jew, compared to 669 calories per non-Jewish Pole and 2,613 calories per German. With crowded living
conditions, starvation diets, and little sanitation (in the ód Ghetto 95% of apartments had no sanitation, piped water
or sewers) hundreds of thousands of Jews died of disease and starvation.
In 1942, the Nazis began Operation Reinhard,
the systematic deportation to extermination camps during the Holocaust. The authorities deported Jews from everywhere in Europe
to the ghettos of the East, or directly to the extermination camps -- almost 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw
Ghetto alone to Treblinka over the course of 52 days. In some of the Ghettos the local resistance organizations started Ghetto
uprisings, none were successful, and all the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed.
The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo
by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, between May 26 and June 4, 1940,
when British and French troops were cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk in the Second World War. Winston
Churchill called it the greatest military defeat for many centuries, warning that "the whole root, the core, and brain
of the British Army" was stranded in Dunkirk. He hailed their subsequent rescue as a "miracle of deliverance.
In nine days, 331,226 soldiers 192,226 British and 139,000 French were rescued by a hastily assembled fleet of 860
boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbour's protective mole onto 42 British destroyers and other
large ships, while others had to wade toward the ships, waiting for hours to board, shoulder deep in water. Others were ferried
from the beaches to the larger ships, and thousands were carried back to England, by the famous "little ships of Dunkirk,"
a flotilla of around 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and RNLI lifeboats the smallest of which was
the 15-foot fishing boat, Tamzine, now in the Imperial War Museum whose civilian crews were called into service for the emergency.
The "miracle of the little ships" remains a prominent folk memory in Britain.
Many musical styles flourished and combined in the
1940s and 1950s, most likely because of the influence of radio had in creating a mass market for music. World War II caused
great social upheaval, and the music of this period shows the effects of that upheaval.
In the 1940s, the major
strands of American music combined to form what would eventually be coined as rock and roll. Based most strongly off an electric
guitar-based version of the Chicago blues, rock also incorporated jazz, country, folk, swing, and other types of music; in
particular, bebop jazz and boogie woogie blues were in vogue and greatly influenced the music style. The style had developed
by 1949, and quickly became popular among blacks nationwide (see 1949 in music). Mainstream success was slow to develop, though
(in spite of early success with Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock"), and didn't begin
in earnest until Elvis Presley ("Hound Dog") began singing rock, R&B and rockabilly songs in a devoted black
style. He quickly became the most famous and best-selling artist in American history, and a watershed point in the development
of music. 
Arthur Neville Chamberlain (18 March 1869 9 November
1940) was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940.
Chamberlain's
legacy is marked by his policy regarding the appeasement of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany with his signing of the Munich Agreement
in 1938, conceding Czechoslovakia to Hitler. In the same year he also gave up the Irish Free State Royal Navy ports.
After working in business and local government and a short spell as Director of National Service in 1916 and 1917, Chamberlain
followed his father and older half-brother in becoming a Member of Parliament in the 1918 general election at age 49. He declined
a junior ministerial position, remaining a backbencher until he was appointed Postmaster General after the 1922 general election.
He was rapidly promoted in 1923 to Minister of Health and then Chancellor of the Exchequer but presented no budget before
the government fell in 1924.
He returned as Minister of Health, introducing a range of reform
measures from 1924 to 1929. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the coalition National Government in 1931 and
spent six years reducing the war debt and the tax burden. When Stanley Baldwin retired after the abdication of Edward VIII
and the coronation of George VI, Chamberlain took his place as Prime Minister in 1937.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH,
TD, FRS, PC, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 24 January 1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of Great
Britain during World War II. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also known as an officer in the British Army, a historical writer, and an artist.
During his army career Churchill saw combat on the Northwest Frontier, in the Sudan and during the Second Boer
War, during which he also gained fame and notoriety, as a war correspondent. He also served in the British Army on the Western
Front and commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. At the forefront of the political scene for almost sixty
years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade
and Home Secretary during the Liberal governments. In the First World War he served as First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister
of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air and during the interwar years, he served as Chancellor
of the Exchequer.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.
Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led Britain
to victory against the Axis powers. His speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled Allied forces. After losing the
1945 election, he became the leader of the opposition. In 1951, he again became Prime Minister before finally retiring in
1955. Upon his death the Queen granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen
in the world.
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