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World War II

1939–1945 global conflict

54 dated entries naming World War II, drawn from 37 separate years between 652 CE and 2025 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

Also written as Second World War, WW II, WW2, WWII, World War 2, World War Two in the source articles; Wikipedia redirects those to the same subject, so their entries are on this page.

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7th century

  • 652The registers of population are prepared in Japan. Fifty houses are made a township, and for each township there is appointed an elder. The houses are all associated in groups of five for mutual protection, with one elder to supervise them one with another. This system prevails until the era of World War II.source

12th century

  • 1161The Cross of Saint Euphrosyne, commissioned by Euphrosyne of Polotsk in Belarus, is created by craftsman Lazar Bohsha. (It goes missing during World War II, and is not recovered subsequently).source

17th century

  • 1666May 21 – The Holy Roman Empire, ruled by Leopold I, repurchases the territory of the Duchy of Opole and Racibórz (Oppeln und Ratibor), which it had ceded to Poland in 1645, for the sum of 120,000 guldens and consolidates it with Upper Silesia. The territory will be ceded from Germany to Poland in 1945 at the end of World War II.source

19th century

  • 188520 May – Alexander Löhr, General Commander in the South East of the Wehrmacht in World War II (died 1947).source
  • 1885November 8 - Tomoyuki Yamashita (died 1946), World War II generalsource
  • 18981 June – HNoMS Storm is launched, one of the oldest ships still in front line service in the Second World Warsource

20th century

  • 1903May 26 – Românul de la Pind, the longest-running newspaper by and about Aromanians until World War II, is founded.source
  • 1922October 28 – In Italy, the March on Rome brings the National Fascist Party and Benito Mussolini to power. Italy begins a period of dictatorship that lasts until the end of the Second World War.source
  • 1924May 26 – The Asian Exclusion Act is enacted by the United States. Its broad discrimination against Asia is seen as the spark that spurred Japan down the path against their former allies into World War II.source
  • 1924May 26 – The Asian Exclusion Act is enacted, banning all Asian immigration to the United States. It was a slap in the face to Japan after their participation as a principal ally in WWI, and is seen as the spark that spurred Japan's alliance with Germany and down the path to World War II.source
  • 1937November 5 – World War II: In the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people (recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum).source
  • 1939September 1 – Opening shots of World War II and invasion of Poland: At 4:45 Central European Time, under cover of darkness, the German WWI-era battleship Schleswig-Holstein quietly slips her moorings at her wharf in Danzig Harbor, drifts into the center of the channel, and commences firing on a Polish military installation on Westerplatte at the northeastern mouth of the port of the internationalized Free City of Danzig, beginning the Battle of Westerplatte and Battle of Danzig Bay. Polish soldiers defend there for 7 days. Five minutes previously, the bombing of Wieluń in the western part of Poland had commenced, beginning the Battle of the Border. Shock-troops of the German Wehrmacht begin crossing the border into Poland.source
  • 194010 June – Count Ciano, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, relays Italy's declaration of war to André François-Poncet, the French Ambassador to Italy, declaring war on both the United Kingdom and France. This begins Italy's participation in World War II.source
  • 1940June 17 – WWII: Assets of all foreign nationals from France and Monaco are frozen.source
  • 19415 May – Belfast suffers its third bombing raid during World War II. The Dublin government authorises its emergency services to assist again.source
  • 19418 December – El Salvador declared war on the Axis powers in World War II following the Bombing of Pearl Harbor and joined the Allied Powers.source
  • 1942Argentina keeps a neutral stance in World War II, amid foreign pressure to join the warsource
  • 1942February 20 – Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.source
  • 1943Argentina keeps a neutral stance in World War II, amid foreign pressure to join the warsource
  • 1943July 12 — World War II: Battle of Prokhorovka, part of the Battle of Kursksource
  • 1943August 5 – WWII: John F. Kennedy and crew are found by Solomon Islanders coastwatchers Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana with their dugout canoe.source
  • 1943October 30 — World War II: The Moscow Declaration is signed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union during the Moscow Conference.source
  • 1943December 4 – The Great Depression officially ends in the United States: With unemployment figures falling fast due to World War II-related employment, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes the Works Progress Administration.source
  • 19442 July - Second World War: The first five thousand Brazilian Expeditionary Force soldiers, the 6th RCT, leave Brazil for Europe aboard the USNS General Mann.source
  • 1945World War II aftermaths: 282,000 dead people (about 1/4 of population of Estonia).source
  • 19451944–1945: World War II: Japan's Special Balloon Regiment launched 9,000 Fu-Go balloon bombs towards the Pacific Northwest, intended to cause panic, by starting forest fires. Six casualties, a woman and her five children in American state of Oregon, were reported. The ten metre-wide balloons contained 540 cubic metres of hydrogen and reached as far inland as Manitoba. The Japanese project was declared a failure and abandoned, after six months.source
  • 194515 August – Japan surrenders to the Allies, ending World War II. The day is known as V-P Day (Victory in the Pacific).source
  • 1947September 1 - Two Canadian National Railways (CNR) passenger trains collide head-on at Dugald, Manitoba, resulting in 31 people dead and 85 people injured. The disaster is exacerbated by the CNR's use of wooden passenger coaches, as strict rationing of steel during the Second World War impeded the shift to steel coaches.source
  • 1948August 1945 – 1948 – Due to Korea being under Japanese rule during World War II, Korea was considered an Axis belligerent against the Allies. The surrender of Japan led to the division of Korea into southern and northern occupation zones. The southern being administered by the United States and the area north of the 38th parallel being administered by the Soviet Union. The division was to be temporary and was meant to return a unified Korea back to its people after the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China could implement a single government for Korea. Due to differing opinions between the two parties on the implementation of Joint Trusteeship over Korea, two separate governments were established in 1948 with two opposing ideologies; the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the First Republic of Korea – both claiming to be the legitimate government of the entire Korean peninsula.source
  • 1948December 4 – Chinese liner SS Kiangya sinks after an explosion occurs at the stern, which is thought to have been caused by a Japanese mine from World War 2, killing up to 3920 people.source
  • 1949September 9 – Notorious World War II veteran Edwin Alonzo Boyd commits his first career bank robbery, in Toronto.source
  • 19508 February – Petrol rationing ends, nearly ten years after it was introduced during World War II.source
  • 1951July 23 – Marshal Philippe Pétain, former Prime Minister and Head of State of France, Chief of State of Vichy France during World War II, hero commander of World War I who led the French Army to victory at the nine-month-long Battle of Verdun, for which he was called "the Lion of Verdun", dies while serving a sentence of life-imprisonment on the island of Île-d'Yeu at 95 years old.source
  • 1954May 14 – Heinz Guderian, German World War II general (born 1888)source
  • 1954July 4 – Food rationing in Great Britain ends, with the lifting of restrictions on sale and purchase of meat, 14 years after it began early in World War II, and nearly a decade after the war's end.source
  • 19544 July – Fourteen years of rationing in the UK during and following World War II comes to an end, when meat officially comes off ration.source
  • 1959January 15 – The Soviet Union conducts its first census after World War II.source
  • 1965January 24 – Sir Winston Churchill, British politician and statesman, twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, World War II leader, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (born 1874)source
  • 1965September 19 – Pakistani Forces achieve a decisive victory at the Battle of Chawinda, ultimately halting the Indian advance and successfully stabilizing the Sialkot Front; it is the world's largest tank battle since the Battle of Kursk in the Second World War between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.source
  • 196631 January – Arthur E. Percival, known for surrendering to the Japanese on 15 February 1942 during World War II (born 1887).source
  • 1978January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary (also known as Stephen of Hungary Crown) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II.source
  • 1979November 15 – British art historian and former Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt's role as the "fourth man" of the 'Cambridge Five' double agents for the Soviet NKVD during World War II is revealed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom; she gives further details on November 21.source
  • 1981April 8 – Omar Bradley, 88, American military officer,in 1950, Bradley was serving as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early phase of the Korean War, he had to deploy a force that was a shadow of its World War II counterpart, in his second memoir, Bradley stated that not arguing more forcefully in 1948 and 1949 for a sufficient defense budget "was a mistake... perhaps the greatest mistake I made in my postwar years in Washington."source
  • 1981April 12 – Joe Louis, 66, American professional boxer, he was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 until 1949, he was a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II because of his historic rematch with the German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938, cardiac arrestsource
  • 1988February 29 – A Nazi document implicates Kurt Waldheim in World War II deportations.source
  • 1988June 21 – The Poole explosion of 1988 caused 3,500 people to be evacuated out of the town centre in the biggest peacetime evacuation the United Kingdom had seen since the World War II.source
  • 1992April 28 – The two remaining constituent republics of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – Serbia and Montenegro – form a new state, named the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (which in 2003 becomes Serbia and Montenegro), bringing to an end the official state union of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Bosniaks and Macedonians that has existed since 1918 (with the exception of a brief occupation period during World War II).source

21st century

  • 2010May 12 – Following the 6 May United Kingdom general election, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agree to form a coalition government, the UK's first since the Second World War.source
  • 201121–22 July – New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visits Washington, D.C. in the United States to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. During their meeting at the White House, Prime Minister John Key and U.S. President Obama send their condolences to the people of Norway following the tragic terrorist attacks in Oslo, and are a reminder that the entire world must work together to prevent future attacks since World War II.source
  • 2017November 22 – The International Court of Justice finds Ratko Mladić guilty of genocide committed in Srebrenica during the 1990s Bosnian War, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. He is sentenced to life in prison.source
  • 2019July 18 – 36 people are killed and more than 30 others injured after an arson attack at an animation company in Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the deadliest massacres in the country's history since the end of World War II and the deadliest building fire in the country in 18 years, since the Myojo 56 building fire in 2001.source
  • 2022April 14 – 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: The Russian flagship Moskva becomes the largest warship to be sunk in action since World War II. Ukraine claims to have struck it with Neptune anti-ship missiles, while Russia claims it sank during stormy weather after an onboard fire.source
  • 2024September 29 – 2024 Austrian legislative election: Far-right Freedom Party secures a historical victory, but does not reach a majority in the National Council. The results are deemed the first far-right win since World War II.source
  • 2025May 6 – 2025 German federal election: Friedrich Merz is elected Chancellor of Germany in the second round of parliamentary voting, hours after being defeated in the first round, a first in post-WWII German history.source

Named in the same entries