Chronology of World War Two

1939

1 September
Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II

3 September
Great Britain and France declare war on Germany

17 September
The Red Army enters Western Belarus and Western Ukraine

28 September
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Treaty on Friendship and Borders

28 October
Western Belarus is incorporated into the USSR and the BSSR

30 November 1939 – 12 March 1940
The Soviet-Finnish War

1940

9 April
Germany invades Denmark

April – June
Germany invades Norway

10 May – 22 June
Large-scale Western Offensive of German troops

14 May
Netherlands surrender

28 May
Belgium surrenders

10 June
Italy declares war on France and Great Britain

22 June
France signs armistice with Nazi Germany

August
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are incorporated into the USSR

18 December
Adolf Hitler issues Operation Barbarossa directive

1941

22 June
Nazi Germany invades the USSR, beginning the Soviet-German War

22 June – 20 July
Defence of Brest Fortress

28 June
Minsk is captured

30 June
The State Committee for Defence is created in the USSR

7 July-26 September
Defence of Kiev

14 July
The Katyusha rockets first used against the Germans near Orsha in Belarus

3 July – 26 July
Defence of Mogilev

10 July – 10 September
Battle of Smolensk

14 August
USA President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain sign the Atlantic Charter

8 September 1941 – 18 January 1943
Siege of Leningrad

30 September 1941 – 20 April 1942
Battle of Moscow

30 October 1941 – 4 July 1942
Defence of Sevastopol

7 December
Japanese troops attack US naval base at Pearl Harbour. The US enters the war

1942

1 January
Declaration of the United Nations is signed in Washington

30 May
Central Headquarters of Partisan Movement is created in Moscow

17 July 1942 – 2 February1943
Battle of Stalingrad

9 September
Belarusian Headquarters of Partisan Movement is created

1943

January
The Casablanca Conference

5 July – 23 August
Battle of Kursk

August – September
First phase of the Rail War Operation aimed at extensive destruction of  the enemy’s railway communications 

5 August
Liberation of Orel and Belgorod. The first artillery salute in Moscow

Mid September – beginning November
Second phase of the Rail War

22 September
Minsk underground fighters kill General Commissar of Belarus Wilhelm Kube

23 September
Liberation of the first district center in Belarus – the town of Komarin

26 November
Liberation of the first regional center in Belarus – the city of Gomel

28 November – 1 December
The Teheran Conference

1944

6 June
Second Front opened with Allied landings in Normandy

20 June – 28 July
Third phase of the Rail War

23 June – 29 August
Belarusian Offensive Bagration

26 June
Liberation of Vitebsk

27 June
Liberation of Orsha

27 – 29 June
Encirclement and annihilation of German troops in the Bobruisk pocket

3 July
Liberation of the Belarusian capital Minsk

28 July
Brest is recaptured. Complete liberation of Belarus

23 – 24 August
Rumania surrenders

25 August
The French Army under General Charles de Gaulle enters Paris

4 September
Finland signs an armistice with the Soviet Union

1945

14 January
The Red Army enters East Prussia

4 – 11 February
Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt meet at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea

16 April – 8 May
Berlin Operation

6 -11 May
Prague Operation

8 May
Germany signs unconditional surrender to the Allies

9 May
Victory Day

17 July – 2 August
The senior leaders of the USSR, USA, and Great Britain hold the last wartime conference at Potsdam (Berlin)

6 August
Atomic bomb is dropped on the Japanese city Hiroshima

8 August
The USSR declares war on Japan

9 August
Atomic bomb is dropped on the Japanese city Nagasaki. Soviet Offensive in Manchuria

2 September
Japan signs unconditional surrender. The end of the Second World War

20 November 1945 – 1 October 1946
The trial of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg in Germany