May 30, 1942–May 1945 The British bomb Köln (Cologne), in the start of a bombing campaign that brings the war home to Germany. Over the next three years Anglo-American bombing reduces urban Germany to rubble.

June 1942 The US Navy halts the Japanese naval advance in the central Pacific at Midway.

June 28, 1942–September 1942 Germany and its Axis partners launch a new offensive in the Soviet Union. German troops fight their way into Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River by mid-September and penetrate deep into the Caucasus after securing the Crimean Peninsula. With German forces in North Africa having penetrated Egypt, Germany was at the height of its military success in World War II.

August 7, 1942–February 9, 1943 For the first time, Allied forces go on the offensive against Japanese forces by landing on and taking Tulagi, Florida, and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

October 23–24, 1942 British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt, sending the Axis forces in chaotic retreat across Libya to the eastern border of Tunisia.

November 8, 1942 US and British troops land at several points on the beaches of Algeria and Morocco in French North Africa. The failure of the Vichy French troops to defend against the invasion enables the Allies to move swiftly to the western border of Tunisia and triggers the German occupation of southern France on November 11.

November 23, 1942–February 2, 1943 Soviet troops counterattack, breaking through the Hungarian and Romanian lines northwest and southwest of Stalingrad and trapping the German Sixth Army in the city. Forbidden by Hitler to retreat or try to break out of the Soviet ring, the survivors of the Sixth Army surrender on January 30 and February 2, 1943.