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Hitler joined a small political group that became the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party.
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Mussolini had become such a powerful figure that when he threatened to march on Rome, the king panicked and appointed him prime minister.
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A faction of the Japanese army seizes Manchuria, setting up a puppet state as a base for further Japanese expansion in Asia.
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The Nazis ordered a one-day boycott of businesses owned by Jews.
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Mussolini invades the independent African kingdom of Ethiopia, and overpowers them using warplanes and poisonous gas.
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Hitler signed an alliance with the Italian dictator, Mussolini. Germany and Italy, joined later by Japan, became known as the Axis Powers.
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Japan invades China.
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Nazi thugs throughout Germany and Austria looted and destroyed Jewish synagogues.
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The Nationalist army finally took the Spanish capital of Madrid and ended the civil war.
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The Germans practiced a new form of attack that they unveiled in the invasion of Poland called a blitzkrieg.
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After Hitler invades Poland, Britain and France declare war on Germany.
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Japan announces a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, whose mission is to liberate Asia from European colonies.
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The phony war came to an end as Hitler began a successful attack on Denmark and Norway.
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German troops launched a blitzkrieg on the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Britain and France came and tried to defend their neighbor, but were too late.
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Hitler lanuched the greatest air assault the world had yet seen. Day after day until September, as many as 1,000 planes rained bombs on Britain.
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Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy through the Tripartite Pact.
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Congress authorized the first peacetime draft in the nation's history, called the Selective Training and Service Act.
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Roosevelt won reelection to a third term as President.
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Congress passed this act, which authorized the President to aid any nation whose defense he believed was vital to American security.
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Japan signs a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union.
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The Office of Price Administration was established to control inflation by limiting prices and rents.
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The President signed Executive Order 8802, opening jobs and job training programs in defense plans to all Americans without discrimination of any kind.
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Japanese planes bomb the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and nearby airfields. In less than two hours, some 2,400 Americans are killed.
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Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. He claims the previous day is a "date which will live in infamy."
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Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
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The government set up the WPB to direct the conversion of peacetime industries to industries that produced war goods.
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Nazis opened a gas chamber disguised as a shower room at the Auschwitz camp in Western Poland.
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President Roosevelt signed this order which authorized the Secretary of War to establish military zones on the West Coast and remove "any or all persons."
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Brutal march of American and Filipino prisoners by Japanese soldiers
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Roosevelt established the Office of War Information to work with advertising agencies to promote the war effort.
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This battle opened with a wave of Japanese bomber attacks on the island and a simultaneous, unsuccessful American strike on the Japanese fleet.
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An agreement between the US and Mexico provided for transportation, food, shelter, and medical care for thousands of braceros.
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The Red Army makes a stand at Stalingrad, then successfully launches a counterattack and begins pushing the Germans out of the Soviet Union.
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More than 90,000 surviving Germans surrendered after the Battle of Stalingrad.
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The President appointed James F. Byrnes to head the Office of War Mobilization.
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Allied armies had the Axis forces trapped in North Africa.
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Mexican American street fighting grew into full-scale riots. Amy and navy officials finally intervened by restricting GIs' off-duty access to Los Angeles.
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A race riot in Detroit killed 34 people and caused millions of dollars worth of damage.
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Rioting Jews damaged the Treblinka death camp so badly it had to be closed.
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Allies cross the English Channel and attack the German army with a massive shelling of the Normandy coast.
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General Patton engages the German army in France at this battle, which is the largest one ever fought.
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1945 World War II battle between the US and Japan, where American forces suffered an estimated 25,000 casualities.
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This battle was just as bloody as Iwo Jima, but the Uniited States suffered over 50,000 casualties.
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Manhattan Project scientists field-tested the world's first atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico.
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The Enola Gay dropped a single atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A blast of intense heat annihilated the city's center and its residents in an instant.
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Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France conducted the Nuremberg Trials.
