Timeline - 1940 - 1949

1940

• 6th January - Mass execution of Poles, committed by Germans in the city of Pozna, Warthegau.
• 1st February - The Soviet Union began a new offensive against Finland.
• 17th February - The crew of the British destroyer "HMS Cossack" boarded the German tanker "Altmark", releasing 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlasses.
• 12th March - Finland signed the Moscow Peace Treaty, surrendering to Russia and ceding 11% of their pre-WWII territory, ending the "Winter War".
• 18th March - Italy declared war on Britain and France.
• 10th May - Winston Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister, on the latter's resignation.
• 12th May - Nazi blitzkrieg and conquest of France began with the crossing of the Muese River.
• 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".

  "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.

  Formation of the Local Defence Volunteers

• 17th May -  Germany occupied Brussels, Belgium and began the invasion of France.
• 26th May - Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo) started.
• 4th June - Operation Dynamo ended, the "Miracle of Dunkirk" resulted in the  evacuation of 338,226 allied troops from France a flotilla of over 800 vessels including private motor cruisers, Royal Navy destroyers, merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and even lifeboats.
• 10th June - Italy declared war on France and Great Britain as part of its Axis alliance with Nazi Germany.
• Norway surrendered to Germany after 62 days of fighting.
• 10th July - 31st October - Battle of Britain. For their part in the Battle, the Observer Corps became Royal.
• 16th July - Adolf Hitler ordered preparations for the invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion).
• 21st July - The Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
• 22nd September - Germany, Italy and Japan signed a Tripartite Pact.
• December - The British Army routed the Italians in N. Africa.

1941

• 7th January - Chinese Kuomintang forces under orders from Chiang Kai-shek opened fire on the surrounded Communist New Fourth Army at Maolin, Anhui Province, killing or capturing 7,000 troops
• 23rd February - Glenn T. Seaborg isolated and discovered plutonium.
• 1st March - Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact, thus joining the Axis powers.
• 3rd April - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that a German invasion was imminent. Stalin refused to accept this.
• 9th April - In recognition of their crucial role in the Blitz, the Observer Corps became Royal. Women were also recruited for the first time
• 13th April - The Soviet Union and Japan signed a non-aggression pact.
• 19th May - The Viet Minh is 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 will become the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
• 22nd June - Germany 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."
• 9th August - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on-board ship at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter setting goals for postwar international cooperation, was created as a result.
• 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.
• 7th December - The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
• 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.
• Japan declared war on the US and UK
• 11th December - Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The U.S. reciprocated.

1942

• 1st January - The USA & 25 other countries signed a united declaration against the Axis powers.
• 8th February - The Japanese took Singapore.
• 24th February - The Voice of America began broadcasting, it was to become a powerful propaganda tool during the Cold War.
• 23rd June - The experimental early type nuclear reactor L-IV was involved in an accident, becoming the first nuclear reactor accident in history and consisting of a steam explosion and reactor fire in Leipzig including four deaths.
• 1st - 27th July - First Battle of El Alamein -  British forces prevented a second advance by Axis forces into Egypt.
• 3rd October - The first A-4 (V2) rocket was successfully launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flew 147 kilometres wide and reached a height of 84.5 kilometres, becoming the first man-made object to reach space.
• 23rd October - The Second Battle of El Alamein.
• 8th November - Operation Torch -  United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.
• 19th November - The Battle of Stalingrad -  Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched the Operation Uranus counter-attacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favour.
• 2nd December - Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world" was then sent to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1943

• 13th January - The Casablanca Conference between Roosevelt and Churchill to finalize Allied military plans. The declared objective was the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
• 18th January -  The Soviets announced they had broken the long siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany by opening a narrow land corridor, though the siege would not be fully lifted until a year later.
• 19th January - The first Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, led by Mordechai Anielewicz
• 24th January - Adolf Hitler ordered German troops at Stalingrad to fight to the death.
• Jewish patients, nurses and doctors were incinerated at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
• 15th May - Joseph Stalin dissolved the Comintern (or Third International) to avoid upsetting his Western allies with claims he was trying to foment revolution globally.
• 16th May - SS General Jörgen Stroop ordered the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto, ending a month of Jewish resistance. 13,000 Jews died, about half burnt alive or suffocated.
• July - The Allies invaded Sicily - Operation Husky.
• 3rd September - An armistice was signed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces, and by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Head of the Italian Government.
• 9th September - US, British & French troops land in Salerno - Operation Avalanche.
• November - Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill (the Big Three) met in Tehran.
• 1st December - At the end of the Tehran Conference, the Big Three agreed that the invasion of Normandy should take place in May 1944.

1944

• Over 1,000 members of the Royal Observer Corps volunteered as observers  for Operation Overlord, the Normandy Invasion, to identify aircraft. Two of whom, J. J. B. Bancroft  and W. V. Salte died, ten were mentioned in dispatches.
• 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 - Germany started the first V1, Fieseler Fl-3 flying bomb (aka doodlebug) 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.
• 27th January - Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland.
• 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
• 13th February - Allied planes began bombing Dresden, Germany; a firestorm resulted and over 22,000 died.
• 6th March - The Soviet Union installed a puppet government in Romania.
• March–April - US and Britain were outraged as Stalin excluded them from a role in Poland and turned Poland over to a Communist puppet government he controlled.
• March–April - Stalin was outraged at inaccurate reports about Operation Sunrise that American OSS in Switzerland  were 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.
• 7th March - Josip Broz Tito was installed as the head of state of the provisional government of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
• 27th March - The last German V2 rocket to hit the UK, killed one woman in Orpington, Kent.
• 29th March -  The last V1 to hit Britain landed in Woolmer Green, Hertfordshire. with no casualties.
• 12th April  -  After 12 years as US president, Franklin D Roosevelt died from a massive stroke. He was succeeded by Harry S. Truman.
• 30th April  -  With Soviet troops less than 500 metres from his Führerbunker, Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
• 2nd May  -  Berlin surrendered to the Russian Army.
• 7th May  -  The new German president, Admiral Karl Dönitz, authorised the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) at Reims, in northwestern France
• 8th May  -  Victory in Europe (VE) Day.
• 12th July  -  Clement Atlee (Labour) was elected as UK Prime Minister.
• 16th July  -  The first atomic bomb test was conducted in New Mexico, code-named Trinity. The detonation took place at 11:29:21UTC.
• 24th July - At the Potsdam Conference, Truman informed Stalin that the United States had nuclear weapons
• 6th August - The first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima It is estimated that a total of 200,000 people died as a result.
• 8th August - The USSR honoured its agreement to declare war on Japan within three months of the victory in Europe, and invaded Manchuria.
• 9th August - With no Japanese response to his ultimatums, the second atomic bomb "Fat Man" was dropped on the Japanese military port of Nagasaki, a further 200,000 deaths resulted.
• 12th August - Japanese forces in Korea surrendered to Soviet and American armies.
• 17th August - Indonesia declared its independence from Holland. This marked the beginning of the Indonesian National Revolution.
• 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.
  
• 11th October -  Chinese civil war began between the Kuomintang government led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's Communist Party.
• 24th October -The Charter of the United Nations came into effect.
• November -  Stalin refused to relinquish Soviet-occupied territory in Iran, beginning the Iran Crisis. Two short-lived pro-Soviet states, the Azerbaijan People's Government and the Republic of Mahabad, were formed.

1946

• January - The Chinese Civil War resumed between Communist and Nationalist forces.
• 7th January - The Republic of Austria was reconstituted, with its 1937 borders, but divided into four zones of control: American, British, French, and Soviet.
• 10th January - The UN General Assembly met for 1st time, in London.
• 11th January - Enver Hoxha declared the People's Republic of Albania, with himself as Prime Minister.
• 17th January - The United Nations Security Council held its 1st meeting.
• 2nd March -  Ho Chi Minh was elected President of North Vietnam
• 9th February - In his election speech Joseph Stalin  states that capitalism and imperialism make future wars inevitable.
• 22nd February - George F. Kennan wrote his Long Telegram, describing his interpretation of the objectives and intentions of the Soviet leadership.
• March - The Greek Civil War reignited between the communists and the Kingdom of Greece.
• March 2 - British soldiers withdrew from their zone of occupation in southern Iran. Soviet soldiers remain 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. 

  Churchill's "Iron Curtain 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.
• 2nd June - Following a referendum, the Italian Republic was born.
• 4th July - The Philippines gained independence from the United States, and began fighting communist Huk rebels (Hukbalahap Rebellion).
• 6th September - In a speech known as the Restatement of Policy on Germany in Stuttgart, James F. Byrnes, 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 Harry S. 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
• 11th December - UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) was established.
• 15th December -The Soviet Union withdrew from Iran. Both the Azerbaijan People's Government and the Republic of Mahabad were dissolved.
• 19th December - French landings in Indochina began the First Indochina War. They were resisted by the Viet Minh communists who wanted national independence.

1947

• 1st January - The American and British zones of control in Germany were united to form the Bizone also known as Bizonia.
• 10th February - The neutral state of the  Free Territory of Trieste was established.
• 20th February - Earl Mountbatten of Burma was appointed as last viceroy of India to oversee the move to independence
• 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.
• 7th March - The Paraguayan Civil War began.
• 12th March - US President Harry S. Truman introduced the Truman-doctrine to fight communism.
• 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.
• 22nd May - US extended $400 million of military aid to Greece and Turkey, signalling its intent to contain communism in the Mediterranean.
• 31st May - Communists seized power in Hungary
• 5th June - US Secretary of State George C. Marshall outlined the "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Western Europe
• 9th July - Spain voted for Franco monarchy
• 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."
• 26th July - President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act (1947), establishing the Department of Defense, CIA, National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• 14th August - Pakistan gained independence from the United Kingdom.
• 15th August - India gained independence from the United Kingdom.
• 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.
• 20th 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.
• 20th October - House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood.
• 26th October - The British military occupation ended in Iraq.
• 29th October - Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands formed the Benelux Union
• 14th November - The United Nations passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Korea, free elections in each of the two administrations, and the creation of a UN commission dedicated to the unification of the peninsula.
• 29th November - The United Nations Partitioned Palestine.
• 30th November - Outbreak of civil war in Palestine.
• 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 wass instituted instead. The Communist Party would rule the country until December 1989.
  

1948

• 5th January - Burma (today Myanmar) became independent from the UK through the Burma Independence Act 1947.
• 30th January - Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse
• 25th February - The Communist Party took control in the Czechoslovak coup d'état.
• 10th March - Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk  committed suicide.
• 3rd April -  US President Harry S. 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.
• 7th April - The World Health Organization was formed by the United Nations
• 9th April - La Violencia began in Colombia between the Colombian Conservative Party and the Colombian Liberal Party.
• 16th April - The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (EEC) was formed in Paris.
• 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.
• 14th May -  Israel declared independence from British administration, with David Ben-Gurion as its first Prime Minister.
• 12th June - Mátyás Rákosi became General Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party and became the de facto leader of Communist Hungary.
• 18th June - A communist insurgency in Malaya began against British and Commonwealth forces.
• 21st June - In Germany, the British zone and the French zone launched a common currency, the Deutsche Mark.
• 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.
• 28th June - The Soviet Union expelled Yugoslavia from the Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM) for the latter's position on the Greek civil war.
• 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
• 15th August - The United States declared the Republic of Korea to be the legitimate government of the Korean Peninsula, with Syngman Rhee installed as the leader.
• 1st September - Communists formed the North China People's Republic.
• 9th September - The Soviet Union declared the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to be the legitimate government of all of the Korean Peninsula, with Kim Il-sung installed as the leader.
• September 11 - Muhammad Ali Jinnah died.
• 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.
• 2nd November - US President Harry Truman was re-elected.
• 20th November - The American consul and his staff in Mukden, China, were made virtual hostages by communist forces in China. The crisis did not end until a year later, by which time U.S. relations with the new communist government in China had been seriously damaged.
• 10th December - The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1949

• 5th January  US President Harry Truman  labeled his administration the "Fair Deal".
• 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
• 4th April - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty was signed in Washington, D.C.
• 11th May - The Soviet blockade of Berlin ended with the re-opening of access routes to Berlin. The airlift continued until September, in case the Soviets re-established the blockade.
• 23rd May - The Federal Republic of [West] Germany was created out of the American, British and French occupation zones
• 29th July - Moscow ended the blockade of West Berlin
• 29th August - The USSR performed its first nuclear test (RDS-1 "First Lightning", or "Joe-1) at Semipalatinsk.
• 13th September - The USSR vetoed the United Nations membership of Ceylon, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Jordan, and Portugal.
• 15th September  -  Konrad Adenauer became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 21st September - Chinese Communist leaders proclaimed the People's Republic of China.
• 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.