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During a speech in Milan, Benito Mussolini referred to the existence of a "German-Italian axis
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Japan and Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact
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eference to the Munich agreement of 1938, when the British and the French agreed to let Hitler have a section of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland in exchange for promising to go no further than that, is a cliché of modern politics, uttered most often in this country at least by politicians of the far right who always presume that they would have seen things clearly while sitting on the other side of the conference table from the Nazi leader
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Chamberlain has returned from Munich, completing his third round-trip to Germany by air in as many weeks
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On this day in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies
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At 4:45 a.m., some 1.5 million German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with German-controlled territory. Simultaneously, the German Luftwaffe bombed Polish airfields, and German warships and U-boats attacked Polish naval forces in the Baltic Sea.
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On this day in 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany.
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On this day in 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the “fine print” of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact—the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.
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On this day in 1940, German warships enter major Norwegian ports, from Narvik to Oslo, deploying thousands of German troops and occupying Norway. At the same time, German forces occupy Copenhagen, among other Danish cities
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On June 22, 1940, Germany and France signed an armistice in the forest of Compiègne. The treaty provided that hostilities between the two nations would end six hours after the signing of an armistice treaty between France and Italy, Germany’s axis partner
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On this day in 1940, the Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain, which will last three and a half months, begins
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On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory.
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At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
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On this day, as America’s Pacific fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt requests, and receives, a declaration of war against Japan