Above title bar: events during
World War II (1939–1945): From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching
Omaha Beach on
D-Day;
Adolf Hitler visits
Paris, soon after the
Battle of France;
The Holocaust occurs as
Nazi Germany carries out a programme of systematic state-sponsored
genocide, during which approximately six million
European Jews are killed; The
Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor launches the
United States into the war; An
Observer Corps spotter scans the skies of
London during the
Battle of Britain; The
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the first uses of
nuclear weapons, killing over a quarter million people and leading to the
Japanese surrender; Japanese Foreign Minister
Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the
Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, on board
USS Missouri, effectively ending the war.
Below title bar: events after World War II: From left to right: The
Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948; The
Nuremberg trials are held after the war, in which the prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany are prosecuted; After the war, the United States carries out the
Marshall Plan, which aims at rebuilding Western Europe;
ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic
computer.
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