12-22 January: British forces in North Africa invade Italian Libya and capture Tobruk

9 February: British suspend the Libyan offensive and send forces to Greece

19 January-28 November: British conquest of Italian Abyssinia

14 February: the German "Afrika Korps," led by Erwin Rommel, arrives In Libya

11 March: US initiates the "Lend-Lease" Act to provide war aid to Britain and later the Soviet Union

24 March: The Afrika Korps drives the British out of Libya into Egypt

3 April-31 May: anti-British rebellion in Iraq suppressed

6-12 April: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece, quickly capturing Belgrade, Yugoslavia's capital

24-29 April: British and Greek troops evacuate from Greece

20 May-1 June: German paratroopers attack and capture British/Greek-held Crete

18-27 May: German battleship Bismarck sinks H.M.S. Hood, but is then sunk by British fleet units with the aid of carrier-based torpedo planes

22 June: Operation "Barbarossa": Germany attacks the Soviet Union

25 June: Soviet forces are surrounded at Minsk pocket and eliminated

1 July: Riga captured

5 August: Smolensk pocket eliminated

25-29 August: British and Soviet forces invade Iran to "protect" the country's oil supply

4 September: US destroyer Greer attacked by a German submarine

15 September: Germans lay siege to Leningrad, located near the Finnish border

19 September: Germans capture Kiev

2 December: German troops reach the suburbs of Moscow

6 December: Soviet counter-offensive drives the Germans back from Moscow

7 December: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

10 December: Rommel driven back by the British; besieged British garrison at Tobruk relieved by the advancing British 8th Army

11 December: Germany and Italy declare war on the US. (Probably Hitler's single biggest mistake! It solved many thorny political problems for Roosevelt.)

31 December: German submarines sink 600,000 tons of British merchant shipping; Britain is receiving only 60% of the supplies needed for an effective war effort

The Second World War in Europe Crossing the Big Red Line by Joe Miranda

1939: The Struggle Begins
1940: Germany is Supreme
1941: Axis High Point
1942: Germany Bled White
1943: Beginning of the End
1944: The Final Struggle
1945: Allied Total Victory