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< imagemap > File: 1940s decade montage. png | Above title bar: events during World War II ( 1939 – 1945 ): From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching " Omaha " Beach on " D-Day "; Adolf Hitler visits Paris, soon after the Battle of France ; The Holocaust occurred during the war as Nazi Germany carried out a programme of systematic state-sponsored genocide, during which approximately six million European Jews were killed ; The Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor launches the United States into the war ; An Observer Corps spotter scans the skies of London during the Battle of Britain ; The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the first uses of nuclear weapons, killing over a quarter million people and leading to the Japanese surrender ; Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, on board USS Missouri, effectively ending the war.

Below title bar: events after World War II: From left to right: The Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 ; The Nuremberg Trials were held after the war, in which the prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany were prosecuted ; After the war, the United States carried out the Marshall Plan, which aimed at rebuilding Western Europe ; ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer .| 420px | thumb