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World War II in Europe

1939 CE – 1945 CE

The European and Mediterranean theatre, 1939–1945 — from the invasion of Poland through the Eastern Front to the fall of Berlin.

1192 events · 1158 people

Key events

1. Gleiwitz incident1939 CE
   The Gleiwitz incident, or Gliwice incident, was a false flag attack on the radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz staged by Nazi Germany on the night of 31 August 1939. Along with some two dozen similar incidents, the attack was manufactured by Germany as a casus belli to justify the invasion of Poland. Despite the German government using the attack as a justification to go to war with Poland, the Gleiwitz assailants were not Polish but were German SS officers wearing Polish uniforms.
2. Dunkirk evacuation1940 CE
   In the Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, or just Dunkirk, more than 338,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated during the Second World War from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation began after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France.
3. Operation Weserübung1940 CE
   Operation Weserübung was the invasion of Denmark and Norway by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the opening operation of the Norwegian Campaign.
4. Battle of Dunkirk1940 CE
   The Battle of Dunkirk was fought around the French port of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) during the Second World War, between the Allies and Nazi Germany. As the Allies were losing the Battle of France on the Western Front, the Battle of Dunkirk was the defence and evacuation of British and other Allied forces to Britain from 26 May to 4 June 1940.
5. 1948 Palestine war1940 CE
   The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It began as a civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities following the United Nations Partition Plan and became an international conflict with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the termination of the British mandate, and the entry of the armies of neighbouring Arab states into Palestine. During the war, Zionist forces conquered about 78% of the former territory of the mandate, causing the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians. Transjordan took control of the territory west of the Jordan River and Egypt occupied the coastal territory around Gaza. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line de facto borders of the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
6. Moscow Peace Treaty1940 CE
   The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed by Finland and the Soviet Union on 12 March 1940, and the ratifications were exchanged on 21 March. It marked the end of the 105-day Winter War, upon which Finland ceded border areas to the Soviet Union. The treaty was signed by Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrei Zhdanov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky for the Soviet Union, and Risto Ryti, Juho Kusti Paasikivi, Rudolf Walden and Väinö Voionmaa for Finland. The terms of the treaty were not reversed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Karelian question refers to the debate within Finland over the possible reacquisition of this ceded territory.
7. Tripartite Pact1940 CE
   The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, and Saburō Kurusu and in the presence of Adolf Hitler. It was a defensive military alliance that was eventually joined by Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia's accession provoked a coup d'état in Belgrade two days later. Germany, Italy, and Hungary responded by invading Yugoslavia. The resulting Italo-German client state, known as the Independent State of Croatia, joined the pact on 15 June 1941.
8. Katyn massacre1940 CE
   The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Poles carried out by the Soviet Union between April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the NKVD prisons in Kalinin, Kharkiv and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943. Nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, intelligentsia, and prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD, on Joseph Stalin's orders.
9. North African campaign1940 CE
   The North African campaign of World War II took place in North Africa from 11 June 1940 to 13 May 1943, fought between the Allies and the Axis powers. It included campaigns in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts, in Morocco and Algeria, and in Tunisia. The Allied war effort was dominated by the British Commonwealth and exiles from German-occupied Europe. The United States entered the war in December 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa on 11 May 1942.
10. Armistice of 22 June 19401940 CE
    The Armistice of 22 June 1940, sometimes referred to as the Second Armistice at Compiègne, was an agreement signed at 18:36 on 22 June 1940 near Compiègne, France by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It became effective at midnight on 25 June. Signatories for Germany included Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, head of the German armed forces (OKW), while those on the French side held lower ranks, led by General Charles Huntziger.
11. Eastern Front1941 CE
    The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War, or the German–Soviet War, was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to the war, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II and is the main cause of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. Historian Geoffrey Roberts noted that "more than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".
12. Battle of Smolensk1941 CE
    The first Battle of Smolensk was a battle during the second phase of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, in World War II. It was fought around the city of Smolensk between 10 July and 10 September 1941, about 400 km (250 mi) west of Moscow. The Ostheer had advanced 500 km (310 mi) into the USSR in the 18 days after the invasion on 22 June 1941.

Notable people

• Adolf Hitler1889 CE – 1945 CE
• Joseph Stalin1878 CE – 1953 CE
• Winston Churchill1874 CE – 1965 CE
• Charles de Gaulle1890 CE – 1970 CE
• John Paul II1920 CE – 2005 CE
• Benito Mussolini1883 CE – 1945 CE
• Dwight D. Eisenhower1890 CE – 1969 CE
• David Ben-Gurion1886 CE – 1973 CE
• Josip Broz Tito1892 CE – 1980 CE
• Pius XII1876 CE – 1958 CE
• Heinrich Himmler1900 CE – 1945 CE
• Yizhak Rabin1922 CE – 1995 CE

Cultural works

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Events from Wikipedia/Wikidata (CC-BY-SA); base map © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); era boundaries are a hand-curated set in v1. Spotted a mistake? Email [email protected].