13th May - Winston
Churchill in his first speech as Prime Minister to
British House of Commons said; "I have nothing to offer but
blood, toil, tears and sweat".
14th May - Secretary of
State for War Anthony
Eden, gave a radio broadcast announcing the formation of the
Local Defence Volunteers and called for volunteers to join the force
- "You will not be paid, but you will receive a uniform
and will be armed".
19th May - The Viet
Minh was formed at Pác Bó in Vietnam, to overthrow French rule
of the nation, as an alliance between the Indochina Communist party,
led by Ho
Chi Minh, and the Nationalist party. It became known as
the Viet Cong during the Vietnam
War.
22nd June - Hitler
attacked Russia - Operation
Barbarossa - and by the end of the year occupied Belarus
and most of Ukraine and surrounded Leningrad (now called St
Petersburg).
31st July - Under
instructions from Adolf
Hitler, Nazi official Hermann
Göring ordered S.S.
General Reinhard Heydrich to "...submit to me as soon as
possible a general plan of the administrative material and
financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final
Solution of the Jewish question."
12th November - As the Battle
of Moscow began, temperatures around Moscow dropped to -12 °C,
and the Soviet Union launched ski troops for the first time, against
the freezing German forces near the city.
8th December - The Battle of
Hong Kong began shortly after 8 - 00 a.m. (local time), less
than 8 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Japanese forces
invaded Hong Kong, which was defended by British, Canadian and local
troops.
Over 1,000 members of the ROC
volunteered as observers for Operation Overlord, the Normandy
Invasion, to identify aircraft. they were known as Seaborne
Observers. They were given senior naval NCO rank. Two of them
(Chief Observer, Petty Officer, John B Bancroft and Observer, Petty
Officer, William John (Bill) Salter) were killed in action.
27th January - The Siege
of Leningrad was lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more
than 2 million Russians killed
28th April - Exercise
Tiger ended with 946 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after
their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton
Sands, Devon.
6th June - The
allies launched an attack on Germany's forces in Normandy, Western
France (D-Day)
13th June - Nazi Germany began V-1
(Fieseler Fi-103) flying bomb (doodle-bugs) attacks
1st August - Polish resistance fighters of the Home Army launched
the Warsaw Uprising,
the largest military effort undertaken by a resistance movement in
occupied Europe.
1945
16th January - The Battle
of the Bulge ended, afterwards the German Army was retreating
into Germany itself.
20th January - Franklin
D. Roosevelt was sworn-in for an unprecedented (and never to
be repeated) 4th term as US President.
February 4 -11th - The Yalta
Conference in Crimea, Russia, with President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin. Main attention was to decide the post-war
status of Germany. The Allies of World War II (the US, the USSR,
United Kingdom and also France) were to divide Germany into four
occupation zones. The Allied nations agreed that free elections were
to be held in Poland and all countries occupied by Nazi Germany. In
addition, the new United Nations were to replace the failed League
of Nations
March–April - Stalin
was outraged at inaccurate reports about Operation
Sunrise that American OSS in Switzerland negotiating a
surrender of German forces; he demanded a Russian general be present
at all negotiations. Roosevelt vehemently denied the allegation but
closed down the operation in Switzerland.
19th August - 1st September - The
Việt Minh seized
control of Hanoi after the surrender of the Japanese military. Its
leader Ho
Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of
Vietnam
2nd September - Japan
surrendered. Victory in Japan (VJ) Day was celebrated. U.S. General
Douglas MacArthur presided over the occupation of Japan, and
froze out Russian and other allied representatives.
5th September - Igor
Gouzenko, a Russian working in the Soviet embassy in Canada,
defected and provided proof to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of
a Soviet spy ring operating in Canada and the U.S. The revelations
helped change perceptions of the Soviet Union from an ally to a foe,
and in the opinion of some this was the start of the Cold War.
March 2: British soldiers
withdrew from their zone of occupation in southern Iran. Soviet
soldiers remained in their northern sector.
5th March - Winston
Churchill gave his "Iron
Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, popularizing the
term and drawing attention to the division of Europe. It is also
known as "The Sinews of Peace" speech.
28th March - The US State
Department released the Acheson-Lilienthal
Report, outlining a plan for the international control of
nuclear power.
26th
May - The Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia received 31.2 percent of the vote in
the 1946 parliamentary election, becoming the largest party in the
Constituent National Assembly.
6th September - In a speech
known as the "Restatement
of Policy on Germany" in Stuttgart, James
F. Byrne, United States Secretary of State repudiated the Morgenthau
Plan. He stated the US intention to keep troops in Europe
indefinitely and expressed US approval of the territorial annexation
of 29% of pre-war Germany, but did not condone further claims.
8th September - In a referendum,
Bulgaria voted for the establishment of a People's Republic,
deposing King
Simeon II. Western countries dismissed the vote as
fundamentally flawed.
24th September - President
Truman was presented with the Clifford-Elsey
Report, a document which lists Soviet violations of agreements
with the United States.
27th September - Nikolai
Vasilevich Novikov wrote a response to Kennan's Long Telegram,
known as the 'Novikov
Telegram', in which he stated that the United States were "striving
for world supremacy".
30th September - 22
Nazi leaders, including Joachim
von Ribbentrop and Hermann Goering, were found guilty of war
crimes and sentenced to death or prison at the Nuremberg
war trials
19th December - French landings
in Indochina began the First
Indochina War. They were resisted by the Viet Minh communists
who wanted national independence.
20th February - Earl
Mountbatten of Burma was appointed as last viceroy of India
to oversee the move to independenc
28th February - An
anti-government uprising in Taiwan was violently put down by Chiang
Kai-shek and his Kuomintang-led
Republic
of China government with the loss of 18,000-28,000 lives. This
marked the beginning of the White
Terror.
4th March - The Treaty
of Dunkirk was signed by France and the United Kingdom as a
Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance in the event of a possible
attack by Germany or the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War
II.
16th April - Bernard
Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait
in the South Carolina House of Representatives, spoke of a "Cold
War" to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet
Union. However the term had been used several times previously,
notably by Eduard Bernstein (1893), George Orwell, (1945) and
possibly earlier.
3rd May - Japan's
post-war constitution came into effect, granting universal
suffrage, stripping Emperor
Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan's right
to make war.
11th July - The US announced new
occupation policies in Germany. The occupation directive JCS
1067, whose economic section had prohibited "steps
looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany [or]
designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy", was
replaced by the new US occupation directive JCS
1779 which instead noted that "An orderly, prosperous
Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and
productive Germany."
September - The Soviet Union
formed the Communist
Information Bureau (COMINFORM) with which it dictated the
actions of leaders and communist parties across its spheres of
influence. This was in response to the Marshall Plan.
2'0th October - Stanisław
Mikołajczyk, leader of the non-communist Polish People's
Party, fled the country ahead of impending arrest. Organized, legal
political opposition to Polish communism was effectively at an end.
30th December - In Romania, King
Michael I of Romania was forced to abdicate by Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, the monarchy was abolished and the Popular
Republic of Romania was instituted instead. The Communist Party
would rule the country until December 1989.
3rd April - US
President Harry
Truman signed the Marshall
Plan. By the end of the programmes, the United States had
given $12.4 billion in economic assistance to Western European
countries.
10th May - A parliamentary vote
in southern Korea saw the confirmation of Syngman
Rhee as President of the Republic of Korea, after a left-wing
boycott.
24th June - Stalin ordered the Berlin
Blockade, closing all land routes from West Germany to Berlin,
in an attempt to starve out the French, British, and American forces
from the city. In response, the three Western powers launched the
Berlin Airlift to supply the citizens of Berlin by air.
24th June - The Berlin
Blockade began. The Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies'
railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under
Western control. In response the West launched the Berlin
Airlift.
20th July - Syngman
Rhee was elected as President of South Korea
18th September - In Indonesia,
the Madiun
Affair, an uprising carried out by the People's Democratic
Front (FDR), began led by Munawar
Musso, of the Communist Party of Indonesia. The uprising ended
after three months when the Indonesian army captured and killed most
of the rebels.
25th March - The Soviet
Union began Operation
Priboi, the mass deportation of 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and
Lithuanians to inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union
15th September - Konrad
Adenauer became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic
of Germany
1st October - Mao
Zedong declared the foundation of the People's
Republic of China – adding a quarter of the world's population
to the communist camp.
7th October -The Soviets
declared their zone of Germany to be the German
Democratic Republic, with its capital being East Berlin.
16th October - Nikos
Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, declared
an end to the armed uprising. The declaration brought to a close the
Greek Civil War, and the first successful containment of communism.
27th December - Sovereignty
of Indonesia was handed over to United States from the
Netherlands following the Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference
with Sukarno
as the first president of the newly formed federation.