On this day.....

[Potsdamerplatz]

7th August 1942

The Battle of Guadalcanal begins - US Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with a landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

[Potsdamerplatz]

8th August 1945

The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria.

[Potsdamerplatz]

9th August 1942

U.S. naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force in the Battle of Savo Island.

9th August 1945

An atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man is dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan killing an estimated 80,000 people.

[Potsdamerplatz]

10th August 1944

American forces defeat the last Japanese troops on Guam.

[Potsdamerplatz]

11th August 1943

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D.Roosevelt meet at the Quebec Conference.

[Potsdamerplatz]

13th August 1940

The Battle of Britain begins - The Luftwaffe launches a series of attacks on British fighter bases and radar installations.

[Potsdamerplatz]

14th August 1941

Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating post-war aims.

14th August 1945

Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender. It was the first time that Emperor Hirohito's voice had been heard by most Japanese when he personally announced the surrender on radio.

[Potsdamerplatz]

15th August 1942

Operation Pedestal - The SS Ohio reaches the island of Malta barely afloat carrying vital fuel supplies for the island defences.

15th August 1944

Operation Dragoon - Allied forces land in southern France.

15th August 1945

Victory over Japan Day - Japan officially surrenders marking the end of World War II after 6 long years of fighting.

[Kim Sung]

15th August 1945

Liberation Day (광복절, Kwang Bok Chol) for Korea which had been occupied for 35 years by Japan since 29th August 1910

[Potsdamerplatz]

16th August 1945

Lieutenant-General Jonathan Wainwright who was captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines, is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China.

Wainwright was given a hero's welcome upon returning to America, promoted to full general, and awarded the Medal of Honor.

[Potsdamerplatz]

17th August 1943

The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.

The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrive in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.

The first Quebec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King begins.

[Potsdamerplatz]

17th August 1987

Rudolf Hess, the last remaining Nazi leader detained at Spandau prison in Berlin dies.
By all accounts he was found in a "summer house" in a garden located in a secure area of the prison with an electrical cord wrapped around his neck. His death was ruled a suicide by self-asphyxiation, accomplished by tying the cord to a window latch in the summer house.

[Potsdamerplatz]

18th August 1941

Adolf Hitler orders that the systematic murder of the mentally ill and handicapped be brought to an end because of protests within Germany.

[Potsdamerplatz]

19th August 1942

Operation Jubilee - The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division leads an allied forces amphibious assault on Dieppe, France.

19th August 1944

Liberation of Paris. The French people rise against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.

[Benoit Douville]

-September 1 1939: Three German Armeegruppen begin the invasion of Poland at 4:45am CET, offically launching the world into what would be the most destructive and deadly war in all of history. Massive strikes by the Luftwaffe destroy vital communications and assembly areas, decimating the Polish air force on the ground. Panzer and motorized divisions make deep penetrations into the Polish defenses, using tactics soon to be known as the Blitzkrieg. Offically, the first shots of the war are fired from the 280mm deck guns of the vintage First World War Battleship Schleswig-Holstein. The ship had survived the ravages of WWI and entered service in the Kriegsmarine in 1935, serving initially as a cadet training ship. Under the guise of honoring the anniversary of the Battle of Tannenburg, the German Battleship, complete with a hidden cargo of Marine Assualt troops, was allowed by the Poles to anchor directly off the strategic island of Westerplatte, located at the mouth of the Vistula River in Danzig. At 4:47am, permission was given to the ship to open fire on the island, a strategic point on the Baltic Coast needed to support the troops advancing to the south. Shortly after 4:47am, the ship opened up its massive main guns, firing at near-pointblank range and zero elevation. Needless-to-say, the shells literally pounded the small island, but although the ships guns devestated the target, they inflicted minimal casualties on the Poles stationed within. When the Marinesturmkompanie hidden within the Battleship disembarked and launched its main assault on the island, it was repulsed after taking heavy casualties. Another assault was launched later in the morning, again by the Marinesturmkompanie, after more shelling from the Schleswig-Holstein, but this assault also ending in heavy German casualties. The Westerplatte would prove impossible to take on the first day of WWII.

-September 1 1942: Units of 1.Panzerarmee (von Kleist) form a bridgehead across the Terek river at Mozdok in the Caucasus.

-September 1 1944: The US Third Army (Patton) occupies Verdun. Start of an attack to capture the strategic port city of Brest which the Germans have turned into a fortress.

Source: Feldgrau