The following time line, prepared by Tom Belton, curator of military history at the North Carolina Museum of History, contains many of the decisive events of World War II and other happenings related to North Carolina's role in the conflict. Dates of items specific to North Carolina are marked with * and are in bold.
1939
| September 1 | Germany invades Poland. World War II begins. |
| September 3 | Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. |
1940
| April 9 | Germany invades Denmark and Norway. |
| May 10 | Germany invades France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. |
| *June 13 | The USS North Carolina is launched at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn. The daughter of North Carolina governor Clyde R. Hoey smashes a bottle of champagne against the bow as 55,000 people cheer. During the war the North Carolina sees service in numerous Pacific campaigns and battles, including Guadalcanal, Gilbert Islands, Marshall Islands, Marianas Islands, Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. |
| June 14 | The German army enters Paris. |
| June 22 | France surrenders to Germany. |
| July 10 | The Battle of Britain begins. |
| *September 7 | Germany begins large-scale air attacks on British cities. North Carolina native Edward R. Murrow of Polecat Creek in Guilford County electrifies the world with his radio broadcasts during German air raids on London. Murrow begins each broadcast with the familiar words “This is London.” |
| *September 16 | Military conscription begins in the United States. More than 450,000 North Carolina men register by mid-October. |
| November 5 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected for an unprecedented third term. |
1941
| February 12 | General Erwin Rommel assumes command of the German Afrika Korps. |
| March 11 | President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act to supply war goods to the Allied nations. |
| *March 31 | Lieutenant Colonel William C. Lee of Dunn, Harnett County, is transferred to the Provisional Parachute Group at Fort Benning, Georgia. Lee later becomes known as the father of the United States airborne. |
| June 22 | German chancellor Adolf Hitler launches a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. |
| August 12 | President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sign the Atlantic Charter. |
| *December 6 | The North Carolina Shipyard at Wilmington launches its first liberty ship, the Zebulon B. Vance. Liberty ships will carry much of the cargo essential for Allied victory. |
| *December 7 | Japan launches a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Hundreds of Americans, including servicemen from North Carolina, are killed or wounded. Mildred Irene Clark, a young army nurse from Bladen County, survives the assault. As a career army nurse, Clark rises to the rank of colonel and in the 1960s commands the Army Nurse Corps. |
| December 8 | President Franklin Roosevelt addresses Congress and asks for a declaration of war. Both the United States and Great Britain declare war on Japan. |
| December 11 | Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. |
| December 23 | Japan seizes the American base on Wake Island. |
1942
| *January 13 | German U-boats begin a massive attack on Allied ships along the east coast. From January to June, more than seventy ships are sunk off the coast of North Carolina. |
| January 20 | At the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin, Nazi officials plan the “Final Solution” of the Jews in Europe. |
| February 23 | A Japanese submarine fires on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California. |
| *March 7 | The explosion of an army munitions truck near Selma in Johnston County kills seven people and destroys or damages two-thirds of the town’s residential and business structures. |
| March 18 | The War Relocation Board is established. It will hold more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps. |
| April 10 | The Bataan Death March begins, resulting in the deaths of many Allied prisoners of war. |
| *April 18 | American bombers from the aircraft carrier Hornet led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle launch a surprise attack on Tokyo. Greensboro native Technical Sergeant Edwin “Red” Vance Bain Jr. serves as a tail gunner on aircraft no. 14 in the famous raid. He survives the mission but later dies in a 1943 Allied bombing attack over Rome. |
| May 6 | United States forces in the Philippines surrender. |
| *May 7 | With the surrender of Corregidor, army nurse Evelyn B. Whitlow of Leasburg in Caswell County becomes a prisoner of war and is interned in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. She and her fellow nurses, known as the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, remain imprisoned until 1945. |
| *May 9 | The Coast Guard ship Icarus sinks German U-boat 352 off Cape Lookout. More than thirty German sailors are rescued and taken as POWs. |
| *May 11 | German U-boat 558 sinks the HMS Bedfordshire between Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout. The bodies of four British seamen are buried on Ocracoke at a site that later becomes an official British cemetery. |
| June 7 | Japanese forces invade the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. |
| August 7 | General Bernard Montgomery assumes command of the British Eighth Army in North Africa. |
| August 7 | The U.S. Marines land on Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. |
| September 13 | Germany begins its attack on Stalingrad, Russia. |
| *September 15 | The USS North Carolina is damaged during a torpedo attack off Guadalcanal. |
| *October 23– November 3 |
British forces defeat the German Afrika Korps at El Alamein. With increasing Axis defeats, German and Italian POWs are shipped across the Atlantic to internment camps in the United States. In North Carolina POWS are interned at Camp Davis (Pender and Onslow Counties), Camp Butner (Durham, Granville, and Person Counties), Fort Bragg (Cumberland, Hoke, Moore, and Harnett Counties), Camp MacKall (Richmond and Scotland Counties), Camp Sutton (Union County), Wilmington (New Hanover County), and Williamston (Martin County). |
| November 8 | Allied forces including the United States invade North Africa in Operation Torch. |
| *November 26 | The United States Marine Corps war dog program is created at Camp Lejeune. The first trained dogs arrive in the Pacific on July 11, 1943, and later see service on Bougainville, Guam, Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa and in occupied Japan. |
| December 2 | Enrico Fermi creates the world’s first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. |
1943
| February 1 | Japanese forces begin evacuating Guadalcanal. |
| February 14–25 | German and American forces fight the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa. |
| *May 17 | Asheville native Robert K. Morgan pilots the B-17 Memphis Belle on her twenty-fifth bombing run at the seaport of Wilhelmshaven in Germany. The bomber is the first to complete twenty-five combat missions, and it does so without losing a man. |
| July 9–10 | Allied forces land on Sicily. |
| July 25–26 | Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party are overthrown. |
| September 9 | Allied forces land on the beaches at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. |
| October 1 | Allied forces occupy Naples, Italy. |
| *November 2 | For heroic action on this day during a bombing raid against Japanese shipping near Rabaul, New Britain, Major Raymond H. Wilkins, Army Air Corps, a native of Columbia, Tyrell County, later receives the Medal of Honor posthumously. |
| November 20 | The U. S. Marines land on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. |
| November 28 | President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran. |
1944
| January 22 | Allied forces land at Anzio, Italy. |
| January 31 | American forces invade Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. |
| *June 6 | The invasion of Europe begins with the Allied landing at Normandy in France. The Eighty-second Airborne, trained at Fort Bragg, takes part in this campaign known as D-Day. During the war, Terry Sanford becomes a decorated paratrooper with the Eighty-second Airborne. He later serves as North Carolina's governor and senator and Duke University's president. |
| *June 10 | Units from the Thirtieth Infantry Division (a former North Carolina National Guard division) arrive at Normandy. |
| June 15 | The U. S. Marines land on Saipan. |
| July 19 | American forces land on Japanese-held Guam. |
| *July 23 | For heroic action on this day during hand-to-hand combat on Noemfoor Island, Dutch New Guinea, Sergeant Ray E. Eubanks, United States Army, a native of LaGrange, Lenoir County, later receives the Medal of Honor posthumously. |
| *August 7–12 | Units of the Thirtieth Infantry Division (a former North Carolina National Guard division) defeat elements of the German army during the Battle of Mortain in France. |
| August 25 | Allied forces liberate France from German occupation. |
| September 13 | American troops reach the Siegfried Line in Germany. |
| *September 17–23 |
Airborne and aviation units trained in North Carolina participate in Operation Market Garden in Holland. |
| October 23–26 | The U.S. Navy defeats the Japanese at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, the largest naval engagement in history. |
| *October 18 | Sergeant Max Thompson, United States Army, a native of Canton, Haywood County, single-handedly stops a German breakthrough near Haaren, Germany. For this he later receives the Medal of Honor. |
| October 25 | The first Japanese suicide air attack (kamikaze) on American ships in the Pacific occurs. |
| November 7 | President Franklin Roosevelt is elected to a fourth term. |
| December 16 | The German army launches the Battle of the Bulge against Allied forces in Belgium. |
| *December 16 | For heroic action on this day during an attack by German forces near Kayersberg, France, First Lieutenant Charles P. Murray Jr., United States Army, of Wilmington, later receives the Medal of Honor. |
| *December 20–21 |
For heroic action as an antitank gunner near Dom Butgenbach, Belgium, on this day during the Battle of the Bulge, Corporal Henry F. Warner, United States Army, a native of Troy, Montgomery County, later receives the Medal of Honor posthumously. |
1945
| January 16 | The Battle of the Bulge ends in German defeat. |
| February 4–11 | President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin meet at the Yalta conference. |
| *February 17 | For heroic action off Iwo Jima on this day while serving on an LST (landing ship tank) under Japanese attack, Lieutenant Rufus Geddie Herring, United States Naval Reserve, a native of Roseboro, Sampson County, later receives the Medal of Honor. |
| February 19 | The U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima. |
| *February 20 | In an attempt to save the lives of his fellow marines on Iwo Jima, Private First Class Jacklyn H. Lucas, United States Marine Corps, a native of Plymouth, Washington County, dives on two Japanese grenades. Lucas survives the explosions and later receives the Medal of Honor. |
| March 3 | American forces liberate Manila. |
| *March 24 | Airborne and aviation units trained in North Carolina participate in Operation Varsity, landing behind enemy lines east of Germany’s Rhine River. |
| April 12 | President Franklin Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia. |
| April 30 | Chancellor Adolph Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker. |
| May 2 | German forces in Italy surrender. |
| May 7 | All German forces surrender unconditionally. |
| May 8 | V-E Day (Victory in Europe) is declared. |
| *May 10 | For heroic service on Okinawa on this day, Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class William David Halyburton Jr., United States Navy Reserve, a native of Canton, Haywood County, and resident of Wilmington, later receives the Medal of Honor posthumously. |
| June 26 | The United Nations charter is signed in San Francisco. |
| *July 13 | Rocky Mount native Colonel Westray Battle Boyce becomes staff director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Boyce enlisted in 1942 and served in North Africa, Europe, the southwest Pacific, and Japan. |
| July 16 | The United States tests the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. |
| July 16 | Allied leaders including Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry Truman, attend the Potsdam Conference. |
| *August 6 | The American B-29 Enola Gay drops the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bombardier, Major Thomas W. Ferebee, grew up on a farm outside Mocksville in Davie County. |
| August 9 | The United States drops the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. |
| August 15 | V-J Day (Victory over Japan) is declared. |
| September 2 | Japanese leaders sign the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri. |
| *September 5 | The USS North Carolina arrives in Tokyo Bay, and thousands of North Carolinians land on the Japanese mainland as part of the occupation of Japan. Master Sergeant William S. Powell is sent to Yokohama, where he remains until late 1945. Powell later becomes an eminent North Carolina historian. |
| *October 30 | North Carolina celebrates Thirtieth Division Day. |
| November 20 | The Nuremberg war crime trials begin. |
1946
| January 7 | The United Nations meets for the first time in London. |
| October 16 | Eleven Nazi war criminals are hanged. Nazi leader Hermann Goering commits suicide shortly before his scheduled execution. |