Social Club for Thursday June 6 WWII Day
With a partner, take only (2) minutes and list all of the countries that you can think of in this
space please! Let´s see who the winner is!
Okay, let´s see if as a group we can come up with three interesting facts that you already know
about World War II (La Segunda Guerra Mundial)
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Congratulations! You already know a lot about World War II! Today is a very important day in
history as some of you have already been told. Why is the social club on Thursday instead of
on Friday like usual? Well, today is the anniversary of a very important event that changed the
future of the world. Today, June 6, in the year 1944, started the end of half a century of war.
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What do you think has changed in the world since World War II? What is different?
What do you know already, or what do you think?
First, let´s quickly review the countries who were friends during World War II. With a
war, all countries like to make friends and sometimes they will make enemies, too.
Now that we know who were friends and who were enemies, let´s understand why
this day is so important.
We call today D-Day, which is what the militaries around the world use to refer to the
start of a major change in a war. There are many different D-Days throughout history,
but World War II´s D-Day is one of the most famous. On this day in 1944, the allied
forces invaded Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, to try to push back the axis powers
and take control again of Europe. It was because of the combined efforts of literally
millions of people that this was possible and the war has ended.
The war lasted from 1940 until 1945.
What are the sides of WWII? There are two main sides of countries which fought in this war:
The Allied Powers: France, Poland, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Soviet Union
(Russia), China, Belgium, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Mexico, Netherlands,
Norway and Yugoslavia. The United States did not immediately join into the war until it was
attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
The Axis Powers: It was very crazy for the axis powers as it changed a lot during the war. At
the start it was Germany, Hungary and Italy. Then, later, Japan joined because Japan did not
like Russia. Later, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria also joined this side.
Germany was everybody´s main enemy and the country, lead by Adolf Hitler, went against
international laws and invaded the country of Poland, then a peaceful country. It was this that
started the events of World War II. Every country started to invade other countries on the
other side, and this caused powerful countries like Germany to declare war against the US
when the US invaded Japan.
The end of the war started with D-Day, today´s date in 1944. The Allied Powers worked
together to invade France as a way into Germany to try to stop the Germans from taking
control of all of Europe.
So let´s do some math! Today is June 6, 2013. D-Day happened on June 6, 1944. How many
years ago was it¿