GDANSK, Poland (AP) _ At 4:45 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire with its 15-inch guns on the Polish fort at Westerplatte guarding Gdansk harbor. They were the first shots of World War II.
German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering World War II. In response to German aggression, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany.
On May 8, 1945, the British cruiser HMS Dido was en route to Copenhagen Denmark. At one point during the journey, a lone German aircraft approached the ship. The Dido's guns fired one shot and the plane flew away - it was VE day and that was the last shot fired in the Second World War in Europe.
The war in the Pacific may have ended on Sept. 2, 1945, for just about everyone, but for Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, the conflict persisted for nearly three decades.
Overall, the Germans, with much local assistance, deliberately murdered about 5.4 million Jews, roughly 2.6 million by shooting and 2.8 million by gassing (about a million at Auschwitz, 780,863 at Treblinka, 434,508 at Bełz˙ec, about 180,000 at Sobibór, 150,000 at Chełmno, 59,000 at Majdanek, and many of the rest in ...
An Australian gun crew on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria might have fired the British forces' first shot in the war. A German merchant ship SS Pfalz tried to escape from Port Phillip Bay just after Britain declared war on Germany. Australian troops fired a warning shot from a powerful coastal battery gun.
The honor of firing the first shot was offered to former Virginia congressman and Fire-Eater Roger Pryor. Pryor refused, and at 4:30 a.m. Captain George S. James ordered his battery to fire a 10-inch mortar shell, which soared over the harbor and exploded over Fort Sumter, announcing the start of the war.
The Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle to take place during the Second World War and is one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties.
World War II
Operation Meetinghouse, on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. Of central Tokyo 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.
The Soviet victory in the Battle of Berlin finished Nazi Germany. In May 1945, the Red Army barreled into Berlin and captured the city, the final step in defeating the Third Reich and ending World War II in Europe.
The Picture of the Last Man to Die is a black and white photograph taken by Robert Capa during the battle for Leipzig, representing an American soldier, Raymond J. Bowman, aged 21 years old, after being killed by a German sniper, on 18 April 1945, shortly before the end of World War II in Europe.
No! The USA had no intention of saving Australia, its objective was to constrain Japanese expansionism that threatened USA interests in Asia. The USA used north west Australia as an aircraft carrier to bomb Japanese positions in SE Asia, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and the Southern Philippines.
The ceremony took place Thursday at the New Irish Farm Commonwealth War Grave near Ypres. In total, 63 sets of World War I soldiers' remains were uncovered by archaeologists during the work between 2014 and 2016.
The last combat veteran was Claude Choules, who served in the British Royal Navy (and later the Royal Australian Navy) and died 5 May 2011, aged 110. The last veteran who served in the trenches was Harry Patch (British Army), who died on 25 July 2009, aged 111.
He was subsequently court-martialed for cowardice and given a death sentence. Farr was one of 306 soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth who were executed for cowardice during the Great War.
Introduction. Few countries made such a relatively heavy sacrifice as Australia during World War I. Some 330,000 Australians served in the war; 60,000 died, and 165,000 were wounded. This casualty rate was the highest of any country in the British Empire.
On 28 June 1915, young James Martin sailed from Melbourne aboard the troopship Berrima - bound, ultimately, for Gallipoli. He was just fourteen years old. "Soldier Boy" is Jim's extraordinary true story, the story of a young and enthusiastic school boy who became Australia's youngest known Anzac.
2009, Black Saturday
The Black Saturday bushfires were the worst in Australia's history, killing 173 people. Almost 80 communities and entire towns were left unrecognisable. The fires burned more than 2,000 properties and 61 businesses.
[1]Desmond Doss is credited with saving 75 soldiers during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific — and he did it without ever carrying a weapon. The battle at Hacksaw Ridge, on the island of Okinawa, was a close combat fight with heavy weaponry.
1st Class Johnson and his co-author write that he had 2,746 "confirmed" enemy kills during his time serving in Iraq, with 121 of those "confirmed sniper kills, the most ever publicly reported by a US Army soldier."
Officially, roughly 8.6 million Soviet soldiers died in the course of the war, including millions of POWs.