Chronicle of a world at war
Thirty-one years that changed the world, from the shot in Sarajevo to the surrender in Tokyo Bay, with the films that tell each chapter.
105 events · 222 films and series
Chapter 1
1914–1918
Turning point
Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo. Vienna blamed Serbia, and the alliance system turned a regional crisis into a continental one.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
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Turning point
After a month of ultimatums known as the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within a week Russia, Germany, France and Britain were drawn in, and Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium brought Britain into the First World War.
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
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German forces under Hindenburg and Ludendorff encircled and destroyed the Russian Second Army in East Prussia. The victory ended Russia's early invasion of Germany and made both commanders national heroes.
Tannenberg (Olsztynek), East Prussia
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Turning point
French and British troops halted the German advance just east of Paris and pushed it back to the Aisne. Germany's plan for a quick victory in the west failed, and both sides dug the trenches that would define the Western Front for four years.
Marne River, near Meaux, France
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At Ypres the German army released chlorine gas on a large scale for the first time, opening a gap in the Allied line. Chemical weapons soon spread to every army and became a lasting symbol of the war's horror.
Ypres, Belgium
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British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula to open the Dardanelles and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Ottoman defenders held the heights, and after heavy losses the Allies evacuated in January 1916.
Gallipoli Peninsula, Ottoman Empire
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A German U-boat torpedoed the British liner RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, killing nearly 1,200 people, among them 128 Americans. The outrage turned opinion in the United States against Germany.
Off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland
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Germany attacked the fortress city of Verdun to bleed the French army dry. Ten months of shelling around the same few hills cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, and Verdun became France's symbol of endurance.
Verdun, France
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The British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet met in the largest naval battle of the war. Britain lost more ships, but the German fleet never again seriously challenged British control of the North Sea.
North Sea, off Jutland
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British and French armies attacked along the Somme to relieve Verdun. The British army suffered about 57,000 casualties on the first day alone, and after four and a half months the front had moved only a few kilometres.
Somme, France
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At Flers–Courcelette, during the Somme offensive, the British army sent tanks into combat for the first time. Few and unreliable, they still showed a way to cross trenches and barbed wire that would reshape warfare.
Flers, Somme, France
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British codebreakers intercepted a German proposal offering Mexico an alliance and the return of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if the United States entered the war. Its publication in the American press pushed the country toward war.
Mexico City, Mexico
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Turning point
Angered by unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram, the US Congress declared war on Germany. Fresh American troops and resources tipped the balance toward the Allies in 1918.
Washington, D.C., United States
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British and Commonwealth forces attacked east of Ypres toward the village of Passchendaele. Heavy rain turned the shell-torn ground into a sea of mud, and the small gains came at a terrible human cost.
Passchendaele, Belgium
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Turning point
Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, overthrowing the Provisional Government that had replaced the tsar months earlier. The revolution took Russia out of the war and led to the first communist state.
Petrograd, Russia
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The Bolshevik Red Army fought a coalition of anti-communist White forces, independence movements and foreign interventions. Millions died from fighting, terror and famine, and the Red victory led to the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922.
Moscow, Russia
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Soviet Russia signed a separate peace with the Central Powers, giving up Poland, the Baltic lands, Finland and Ukraine. Germany could now move divisions from the east to the Western Front for one last offensive.
Brest-Litovsk
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Germany launched a series of massive attacks to win the war before American troops arrived in strength. The offensives gained more ground than any attack since 1914 but exhausted the German army without breaking the Allies.
Saint-Quentin, France
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Starting at Amiens, Allied armies combined infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft in a series of attacks that broke the German lines. Germany's generals concluded the war was lost and pressed for an armistice.
Amiens, France
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Turning point
Germany signed an armistice in a railway carriage in the Compiègne forest, and the guns fell silent at 11 a.m. More than 15 million people had died in the war, and the German Empire had collapsed days earlier.
Compiègne Forest, France
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Chapter 2
1918–1939
Turning point
The victorious Allies imposed peace terms on Germany: loss of territory and colonies, disarmament, reparations and acceptance of responsibility for the war. Resentment of the treaty became a powerful tool for German nationalists, including Hitler.
Palace of Versailles, France
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The first international organization for collective security came into being with the Treaty of Versailles. Without the United States and unable to enforce its decisions, it failed to stop the aggressions of the 1930s.
Geneva, Switzerland
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Thousands of Blackshirts converged on Rome, and King Victor Emmanuel III chose to appoint Benito Mussolini prime minister instead of resisting. Within a few years Mussolini had turned Italy into a Fascist dictatorship.
Rome, Italy
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Turning point
Panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange wiped out fortunes between Black Thursday and Black Tuesday. The crash helped trigger the Great Depression, and mass unemployment fueled extremist movements, above all in Germany.
New York City, United States
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Japanese officers blew up a section of railway near Mukden and blamed Chinese troops, using it as a pretext to occupy Manchuria. Japan set up the puppet state of Manchukuo and left the League of Nations when it was condemned.
Mukden, Manchuria (today Shenyang)
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Turning point
President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany, as conservatives believed they could control him. Within months the Nazis had abolished democracy, banned other parties and begun persecuting Jews and political opponents.
Berlin, Germany
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The German parliament building in Berlin burned, and the Nazis blamed a communist plot. The next day an emergency decree suspended civil liberties, giving Hitler the legal basis to arrest opponents without trial.
Reichstag, Berlin
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The Nazis opened one of their first concentration camps at Dachau, near Munich, first for political prisoners. It became the model for the SS camp system, and at least 32,000 deaths were recorded there before its liberation in 1945.
Dachau, Germany
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Hitler ordered the SS to murder the leadership of the SA, including Ernst Röhm, along with other rivals and critics. The purge won him the army's backing, and after Hindenburg's death that August he became Führer with absolute power.
Munich, Germany
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At a Nazi Party rally, the Reichstag passed laws that stripped German Jews of citizenship and banned marriage and relations with non-Jews. They gave legal form to racial persecution and paved the way for the Holocaust.
Nuremberg, Germany
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Mussolini's army invaded Ethiopia, using aircraft and poison gas against its forces, and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936. The League of Nations' weak sanctions exposed its failure and drew Italy closer to Nazi Germany.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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German troops marched into the demilitarized Rhineland in open breach of the Treaty of Versailles. France and Britain did nothing, and Hitler concluded that the democracies would not fight to stop him.
Cologne, Germany
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Turning point
A military uprising against the Spanish Republic split the country into two sides. Germany and Italy backed Franco's Nationalists and the Soviet Union aided the Republic, making Spain a testing ground for the next war; Franco won in 1939.
Madrid, Spain
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Stalin's regime staged show trials of old Bolsheviks and carried out mass arrests and executions across the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands were shot, and the purge of the officer corps weakened the Red Army before the war.
Moscow, Soviet Union
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Aircraft of Germany's Condor Legion and Italy's Aviazione Legionaria bombed the Basque town of Guernica on a market day. The attack on civilians shocked the world and inspired Picasso's painting Guernica.
Guernica, Spain
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German troops crossed into Austria unopposed, and the country was absorbed into the Third Reich. Austrian Jews immediately faced violent persecution, and the annexation left Czechoslovakia surrounded on three sides.
Vienna, Austria
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Turning point
Britain, France, Italy and Germany agreed, without Czechoslovakia at the table, to hand the Sudetenland to Hitler. Chamberlain promised 'peace for our time', but the appeasement only convinced Hitler that he could keep expanding.
Munich, Germany
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In a coordinated pogrom across Germany and Austria, Nazi mobs burned synagogues, smashed Jewish shops and homes and killed at least 91 Jews. About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps, marking a shift toward open, violent persecution.
Berlin, Germany
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Breaking the Munich Agreement, German troops occupied Bohemia and Moravia while Slovakia became a German satellite. The seizure of non-German lands ended appeasement, and Britain and France pledged to defend Poland.
Prague, Czechoslovakia
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Soviet and Mongolian forces under Georgy Zhukov defeated the Japanese army in a border war on the Mongolian steppe. The defeat turned Japan away from Siberia and toward Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Khalkhin Gol, Mongolia
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Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact whose secret protocol divided Poland, the Baltic states and Finland into spheres of influence. Freed from the risk of a two-front war, Hitler invaded Poland a week later.
Moscow, Soviet Union
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Chapter 3
1939–1945
Turning point
A night clash between Chinese and Japanese troops near Beijing escalated into full-scale war between China and Japan. The Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian front of the Second World War and lasted until 1945.
Marco Polo Bridge, near Beijing
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After capturing China's capital, Nanjing, Japanese troops murdered civilians and prisoners of war and committed mass rape over about six weeks. It remains one of the worst atrocities of the war and a lasting wound in relations between China and Japan.
Nanjing, China
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Turning point
Germany attacked Poland from the west, and on 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany, starting the Second World War in Europe. The Soviet Union invaded from the east on 17 September, and Poland was partitioned within five weeks.
Westerplatte, Danzig
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German U-boats hunted the convoys that carried food, fuel and weapons from the Americas to Britain. The longest continuous campaign of the war turned in the Allies' favour in 1943 thanks to radar, codebreaking and long-range aircraft.
North Atlantic Ocean
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The Soviet Union invaded Finland after it refused to cede territory. Outnumbered Finnish troops resisted fiercely in the snow, and although Finland lost part of Karelia, the Red Army's poor showing convinced Hitler it could be beaten.
Karelian Isthmus, Finland
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Three British cruisers engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of Uruguay in the first major naval battle of the war. Damaged, the Graf Spee took refuge in Montevideo and was scuttled by its own crew on 17 December.
Off the Río de la Plata, Uruguay
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Building on Polish breakthroughs, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman designed an electromechanical machine to find the daily Enigma settings, and the first was installed at Bletchley Park. The intelligence it produced, known as Ultra, helped the Allies in almost every theatre.
Bletchley Park, England
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Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure Swedish iron ore shipped through Narvik and bases on the Atlantic. Allied landings failed, and the fiasco led to Neville Chamberlain's replacement by Winston Churchill.
Narvik, Norway
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Turning point
Germany invaded the Low Countries and sent its armoured divisions through the Ardennes, breaking through at Sedan and racing to the Channel. In six weeks France was defeated, a shock that left Britain standing alone.
Sedan, France
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Trapped against the coast, more than 338,000 British and French soldiers were rescued by warships and hundreds of civilian 'little ships'. The army lost its equipment, but saving its men let Britain keep fighting.
Dunkirk, France
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Hitler made France sign the armistice in the same railway carriage used for Germany's surrender in 1918. Germany occupied the north and the Atlantic coast, while the Vichy regime governed the south and collaborated with the occupiers.
Compiègne Forest, France
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Turning point
The Luftwaffe tried to destroy the Royal Air Force as a prelude to invading Britain. Guided by the Chain Home radar network, RAF fighters inflicted losses Germany could not sustain, and the invasion was postponed indefinitely.
Southern England
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Germany switched to bombing British cities, above all London, which was bombed on 56 of 57 consecutive days and nights. More than 40,000 civilians were killed, but industry kept working and public morale held.
London, England
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A British scientific mission led by Henry Tizard brought the cavity magnetron and other secrets to Washington. The magnetron made compact, precise radar possible, and American mass production put it on Allied ships and aircraft.
Washington, D.C., United States
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The still-neutral United States authorized supplying weapons, food and fuel to Britain and later to the Soviet Union and China, with payment deferred. America became the 'arsenal of democracy' months before entering the war.
Washington, D.C., United States
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Turning point
Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union with more than three million troops along a front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The attack opened the largest and deadliest theatre of the war, and behind the front the mass murder of Soviet Jews began.
Brest Fortress, Soviet Union
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Meeting on warships off Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill set out shared goals for the postwar world, including self-determination and no territorial gains. The statement later became a basis for the United Nations.
Placentia Bay, Newfoundland
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German and Finnish forces cut Leningrad off from the rest of the Soviet Union for nearly 900 days. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died of starvation and cold, yet the city never surrendered.
Leningrad, Soviet Union
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In two days, German SS and police units shot 33,771 Jews from Kyiv at the Babi Yar ravine. It was one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust, part of the mass shootings that followed the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Kyiv, Soviet Union
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German armies drove on the Soviet capital and reached its outskirts in freezing weather. A Soviet counteroffensive in December, reinforced by troops from Siberia, pushed them back and ended hopes of a quick German victory.
Moscow, Soviet Union
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Turning point
Japanese carrier aircraft struck the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging eight battleships and killing more than 2,400 Americans. The United States declared war on Japan the next day, and Germany declared war on the US on 11 December.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
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Senior Nazi officials met in a villa near Berlin, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, to coordinate the 'Final Solution to the Jewish question'. The meeting organized the deportation of Europe's Jews to be murdered in the east.
Wannsee, Berlin
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Japanese forces crossed from Malaya and captured Singapore, Britain's main base in Asia. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops surrendered, the largest British capitulation in history.
Singapore
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President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the forced removal of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent from the US West Coast. Most were American citizens held in camps for the rest of the war; the US government formally apologized in 1988.
Washington, D.C., United States
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In the first naval battle fought entirely by carrier aircraft, American and Australian forces turned back a Japanese invasion fleet headed for Port Moresby. It was the first check on Japan's expansion in the Pacific.
Coral Sea
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After German U-boats sank the Mexican tankers Potrero del Llano and Faja de Oro, Mexico declared war on the Axis. It supplied workers and raw materials to the Allies, and its Squadron 201 later flew combat missions in the Philippines.
Mexico City, Mexico
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Turning point
Forewarned by codebreakers, US carrier aircraft sank four Japanese fleet carriers near Midway Atoll. Japan never recovered the loss, and the initiative in the Pacific passed to the United States.
Midway Atoll, Pacific Ocean
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Turning point
German forces fought street by street for the city on the Volga, until a Soviet counteroffensive in November encircled the Sixth Army. Its surrender in February 1943 was Germany's first great defeat and a turning point of the war.
Stalingrad, Soviet Union
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The Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland began operating as part of Operation Reinhard, receiving deportation trains from the Warsaw Ghetto. At least 700,000 and possibly as many as 900,000 Jews were murdered there in gas chambers.
Treblinka, occupied Poland
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US Marines landed on Guadalcanal to seize a Japanese airfield under construction. Six months of fighting on land, at sea and in the air ended in Japan's withdrawal and began the Allied offensive in the Pacific.
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
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After German submarines sank dozens of Brazilian merchant ships, Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy. It was the only South American country to send ground troops to Europe, where its Expeditionary Force fought in Italy in 1944 and 1945.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Montgomery's Eighth Army broke through Rommel's German and Italian forces in the Egyptian desert. The victory removed the threat to the Suez Canal and began the Axis retreat from North Africa.
El Alamein, Egypt
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American and British troops landed in French Morocco and Algeria, the first large American ground operation against the Axis in the West. Together with El Alamein, it trapped Axis forces in Tunisia, where they surrendered in May 1943.
Casablanca, Morocco
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Under a stadium at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi's team achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the Chicago Pile-1 reactor. The experiment proved an atomic bomb was feasible and advanced the Manhattan Project.
University of Chicago, United States
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When the SS entered to deport the remaining Jews, fighters of the ghetto took up arms and held out for almost a month. The Germans burned the ghetto block by block; it was the largest Jewish revolt of the Holocaust.
Warsaw Ghetto, occupied Poland
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Turning point
Germany attacked the Kursk salient with massed tanks, but deep Soviet defences stopped the offensive within days. The Red Army then counterattacked, and after Kursk Germany never again launched a major offensive in the east.
Kursk, Soviet Union
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American and British forces landed in Sicily and took the island in five weeks. The invasion led to Mussolini's fall on 25 July and opened the way to the Italian mainland.
Gela, Sicily
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Italy secretly signed an armistice with the Allies at Cassibile, announced on 8 September. Germany immediately occupied most of the country and freed Mussolini, and Italy became a battlefield until 1945.
Cassibile, Sicily
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Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met together for the first time. They agreed that the Western Allies would open a second front in France in 1944, and Stalin promised to join the war against Japan after Germany's defeat.
Tehran, Iran
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Allied armies made four assaults on the Gustav Line around Monte Cassino, and the historic abbey on its summit was destroyed by bombing. Polish troops finally took the ruins in May, opening the road to Rome.
Monte Cassino, Italy
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Japan invaded northeast India, but British and Indian troops supplied by air held Imphal and Kohima. The Japanese army suffered its heaviest defeat to date, opening the way for the Allied reconquest of Burma.
Imphal, India
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Turning point
American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops landed on five Normandy beaches in the largest seaborne invasion in history. The long-awaited second front in the west began the liberation of Western Europe.
Normandy, France
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The Red Army launched a massive offensive in Belarus that destroyed German Army Group Centre. It was Germany's worst defeat of the war, and Soviet forces advanced to the gates of Warsaw.
Minsk, Belarus
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The Polish Home Army rose against the German occupiers to liberate Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Without outside help, it was crushed after 63 days; between 150,000 and 200,000 civilians died and the Germans razed the city.
Warsaw, occupied Poland
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The French Resistance rose in Paris, and French and American troops entered the city six days later. The German commander surrendered on 25 August, and Charles de Gaulle returned to lead France.
Paris, France
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Germany fired the V-2, the world's first long-range ballistic missile, at Paris and London. Thousands of civilians died in the attacks, and thousands of forced laborers died building the rockets; after the war the technology led to the space race.
Chiswick, London
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Allied airborne divisions dropped into the Netherlands to seize bridges ahead of a ground advance into Germany. The final bridge at Arnhem proved 'a bridge too far', and hopes of ending the war by Christmas faded.
Arnhem, Netherlands
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In what is often considered the largest naval battle in history, the US Navy defeated the Japanese fleet trying to stop the landings in the Philippines. Japan's navy never fought as a fleet again, and the first organized kamikaze attacks appeared.
Leyte Gulf, Philippines
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Germany launched a surprise winter offensive through the Ardennes to split the Allies and retake Antwerp. American troops held key points such as Bastogne, and the failure used up Germany's last reserves in the west.
Bastogne, Belgium
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Turning point
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi camp, where about 1.1 million people were murdered, most of them Jews. The date is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Oświęcim, occupied Poland
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Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in Crimea to plan Germany's defeat and the postwar order. They agreed to divide Germany into occupation zones and found the United Nations, while Soviet influence in Eastern Europe foreshadowed the Cold War.
Livadia Palace, Yalta
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British and American bombers struck Dresden in four raids, creating a firestorm that destroyed the historic city centre. About 25,000 people were killed, and the raids remain among the most debated of the war.
Dresden, Germany
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US Marines fought for five weeks to take the small volcanic island from Japanese defenders dug into tunnels. Nearly all of the roughly 21,000 defenders died, and the flag raising on Mount Suribachi became an iconic image.
Iwo Jima, Japan
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The largest amphibious assault in the Pacific brought US forces to Okinawa, on Japan's doorstep. Nearly three months of fighting and kamikaze attacks made it the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War, with heavy losses among Okinawan civilians, and shaped American plans for invading Japan.
Okinawa, Japan
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Soviet armies crossed the Oder and encircled Berlin, then fought street by street toward the city centre. The garrison surrendered on 2 May, and the Soviet flag over the Reichstag marked the end of Nazi Germany.
Berlin, Germany
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With Soviet troops a few hundred metres away, Adolf Hitler killed himself in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. Admiral Dönitz succeeded him and within a week Germany surrendered.
Führerbunker, Berlin
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Turning point
Germany's unconditional surrender came into effect, ending the war in Europe after almost six years. Crowds celebrated across Allied countries, while the war against Japan continued in the Pacific and Asia.
Karlshorst, Berlin
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Delegates of 50 nations signed the Charter of the United Nations in San Francisco. The new organization, meant to prevent another world war, came into existence that October.
San Francisco, United States
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The Manhattan Project detonated the first nuclear weapon in the New Mexico desert. Its success, reported to Truman at Potsdam, opened the nuclear age and made the atomic bombing of Japan possible weeks later.
Trinity Site, New Mexico
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Truman, Stalin and Churchill, replaced midway by Clement Attlee, decided the occupation of Germany and its new borders. Their Potsdam Declaration called on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction'.
Cecilienhof, Potsdam
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Turning point
The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the first nuclear weapon used in war. Much of the city was destroyed instantly, and by the end of 1945 tens of thousands more had died of burns and radiation.
Hiroshima, Japan
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Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb destroyed much of Nagasaki. It remains the last use of a nuclear weapon in war, and together with the Soviet entry into the war it pushed Japan's leaders toward surrender.
Nagasaki, Japan
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Keeping the promise made at Yalta, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on three fronts. The Kwantung Army collapsed within days, and the loss of hope for Soviet mediation weighed on Japan's decision to surrender.
Manchuria, China
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Turning point
Japanese representatives signed the instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, weeks after Emperor Hirohito announced it by radio. The ceremony formally ended the Second World War.
USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay
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