July 10, 1940 – October 31, 1940
The Royal Air Force repels a large-scale air campaign by the Luftwaffe, forcing Hitler to postpone his planned invasion of Britain.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
Germany invades Poland, starting the deadliest conflict in human history, which ends with Japan's formal surrender on 2 September 1945.
Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murder some six million European Jews, along with millions of other victims.
Nazi Germany and its allies launch a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest theatre of the Second World War.
German and Finnish forces besiege Leningrad for nearly 900 days; around a million civilians die, mostly from starvation.
Britain, France, Italy and Germany agree to Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, the high point of the appeasement of Hitler.