Existing comment:
WORLD WAR II MAJOR EVENTS
AUGUST 23 ’39 Germany-USSR Non-Aggression Pact, signed between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
SEPTEMBER 1 ’39 Germany invades Poland. Soviet army takes over eastern Poland. September 3 British Common wealth and France declare war on Germany.
SEPTEMBER 3 ’39 British Common wealth and France declare war on Germany.
MAY ’40 German Blitzkrieg invasion of Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
MAY 26-29 ’40 Dunkirk evacuation of British and French troops.
JUNE 10 ’40 Italy declares war on France and Britain.
JUNE 22 ’40 France surrenders and is occupied by Germany.
AUGUST ’40 German planes begins bombing London, in the Blitz.
SEPTEMBER ’40 Italy fights Britain in Libya and Egypt.
FEBRUARY ’41 German General Rommel’s Afrika Korps invade Libya. British General Montgomery commands in North Africa theater of war.
APRIL 6 ’41 Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.
JUNE 22 ’41 Germany invades Russia. 2,000-mile front. By fall, within 25 miles of Moscow.
DECEMBER 7 ’41 Japan attacks U.S. at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. U.S declares war against Axis powers.
JANUARY ’42 Twenty-six nations including U.S., UK, USSR allied against Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.
JULY-FEBRUARY ’43 Battle of Stalingrad (Volgograd). Georgi Anatolevich Zelma covers the extended siege as war correspondent for Izvestia. Also publishes in Ogonyak, Red Star and Pravda, all periodicals sanctioned by the Soviet government.
Estimates of casualties on both sides, including civilians, are between one and two million. Stalingrad is notable for entrenched urban warfare and as the psychological turning point of the war. Soviet army, commanded by General Zhukov, manages to encircle and defeat German Sixth Army, surrendered by General Paulus.
MAY ’43 Africa cleared of Axis forces.
JULY-AUGUST ’43 British, Americans and Canadians conquer Sicily.
FEBRUARY 13 ’44 Soviet forces re-take Budapest, Hungary. Zelma embedded with Soviet army, covers their advance through Eastern Europe.
JUNE 6 ’44 D-Day landing of Allied troops on Normandy coast in Operation Overlord.
JULY 15 ’44 Constance Stuart Larrabee departs Pretoria, South Africa for Cairo, Egypt as a war correspondent for Libertas magazine.
AUGUST 12 ’44 Transported to Rome. D-Day in Southern France.
AUGUST 21 ’44 Arrives in French Riviera. Embedded with U.S. Seventh Army, commanded by General Alexander Patch. Photographs some of the Free French of the Interior (FFI), underground resistance fighters.
AUGUST 23–25 ’44 Liberation of Paris by U.S. and Free French troops, led by General de Gaulle, ending four years of German occupation.
AUGUST 27 ’44 In St. Tropez, witnesses French women, accused of collaborating with the German Nazi troops during the occupation, being shaved and paraded through the streets in shame.
SEPTEMBER 23 ’44 Photographs General Charles De Gaulle in Besançon, France.
OCTOBER 1 ’44 Arrives in Paris to record the recent liberation.
OCTOBER 16 ’44 Accredited to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), takes a quick trip to London for a new uniform.
NOVEMBER 19 ’44 Back in France, travels to Alsace-Lorraine. Comes within miles of the Rhine River, border with Germany.
DECEMBER 7 ’44 Back in Rome, she gives a radio broadcast to South African audience.
DECEMBER 16 ’44 Reaches the Springbok, South Africa’s troops entrenched in Northern Italy. Photographs soldiers in Castiglione dei Pepoli, Termini, and Grezzana.
DECEMBER ’44 Battle of the Bulge, Ardennes, Belgium. Last major German counter-offensive against the Allies.
JANUARY 19 ’45 Becomes ill, returns to Florence.
FEBRUARY 4 ’45 Yalta Conference. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin agree on future divided occupation of Germany.
FEBRUARY 5 ’45 Embedded with the British Eighth Army in the Apennine region.
FEBRUARY 17 ’45 Decides to return to South Africa. Is deloused in Rome.
FEBRUARY 27 ’45 In Cairo on her return journey to South Africa.
APRIL 15 ’45 President Roosevelt dies. Vice President Harry S. Truman succeeds as U.S. President.
APRIL 28 ’45 Benito Mussolini and other fascists executed by Italian partisans. Italy surrenders.
APRIL 30 ’45 Hitler commits suicide.
MAY 2 ’45 Soviets occupy Berlin.
MAY 7 ’45 Germany unconditionally surrenders.
MAY 8 ’45 V-E Day. Victory in Europe.
AUGUST 6 & 9 ’45 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
SEPTEMBER 2 ’45 V-J Day. Japan surrenders. |