The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, and Germany was defeated in North Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union.

Italy was the first Axis partner to give up: it surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, six weeks after leaders of the Italian Fascist Party deposed Fascist leader and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

The Yalta Conference, a wartime meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin from February 4 to 11, 1945, is considered by many experts to mark the beginning of the Cold War. Among the issues discussed at the Yalta Conference were German war reparations, the division of Germany into zones of occupation, and the repatriation of all Soviet soldiers who had joined American and British troops whether they were willing to return or not. It is believed that many of these soldiers were put to death upon their return to Soviet control.

On 24 July 1943, soon after the start of the Allied invasion of Italy, the Grand Council of Fascism voted against Benito Mussolini, and King Victor Emmanuel III had him arrested the following day. On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.

From 1941 to 1945, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany systematically murdered about six million Jews. The victims included 1.5 million children and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe.

Operation Sea Lion, or Unternehmen Seelöwe, was Nazi Germany's code name for a provisionally proposed invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain.

After World War II began in 1939, the Nazis forced all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing so they could be easily recognized and targeted.

The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time.

The Battle of the Bulge was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties for any operation during the war.