On September 1st, 1939, Germany invaded Poland; on September 3rd, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and World War II had begun. Germany defeated Poland in less than a month, and in the spring of 1940, quickly overran the rest of Western Europe. In May 1941, German forces were fighting in the Balkans and had sent the vaunted Afrika Korps to North Africa. Unable to achieve air superiority over the Royal Air Force, a necessary prelude to invading Britain, Germany turned against her one time ally, the Soviet Union in June 1941, immediately killing or capturing large numbers of Russian troops and swallowing vast expanses of territory.
The United States was officially neutral, and remained so even after the German U-boat U-552 sank the destroyer USS Rueben James on October 31st, 1941, with a loss of 115 of 160 of her crew. However, on a peaceful Sunday morning five weeks later, America's neutrality would come to an end.
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