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Washington Conference
The Washington Naval Conference also called the Washington Arms Conference, was a military conference called by the administration of President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington, D.C. from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922. Conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations having interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first disarmament conference in history. -
Good Neighbor Policy
The United States wished to have good relations with its neighbors, especially at a time when conflicts were beginning to rise once again, and this policy was more or less intended to solidify Latin American support. The Good Neighbor Policy meant that the United States would keep its eye on Latin America in a more peaceful tone. Avoiding military intervention, the United States shifted to other methods to maintain its influence in Latin America. -
Nye Committee Meets
The Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a committee in the United States Senate which studied the causes of United States' involvement in World War I. The Nye Committee documented the huge profits that arms factories had made during the war, documenting a possible connection between these businesses' interests and the United States' decision to go to war. -
Neutrality Acts of 1930's
The 1935 act, signed on August 31, 1935, imposed a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties in a war. It also declared that American citizens traveling on warring ships traveled at their own risk. The Neutrality Act of 1936, passed in February of that year, renewed the provisions of the 1935 act for another 14 months. It also forbade all loans or credits to belligerents. In January 1937, the Congress passed a joint resolution outlawing the arms trade with Spain. -
WW II Begins
On 1 September 1939, Germany and Slovakia — a client state in 1939 — attacked Poland. On 3 September 1939 after Germany failed to withdraw in accordance with French and British demands, France and Britain, followed by the countries of the Commonwealth, declared war on Germany but provided little military support to Poland other than a small French attack into the Saarland.[41] On 17 September 1939, after signing a nonaggression pact with Japan, the Soviets launched their own invasion of Poland. -
Formation of Axis Powers
The three major Axis powers—Germany, Japan, and Italy—were part of a military alliance on the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which officially founded the Axis powers. At their zenith, the Axis powers ruled empires that dominated large parts of Europe, Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, but World War II ended with their total defeat and dissolution. -
Election of 1940
Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a Democrat, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue. The surprise Republican candidate was maverick businessman Wendell Willkie, a dark horse who crusaded against Roosevelt's perceived failure to end the Depression and his supposed eagerness for war. Roosevelt, acutely aware of strong isolationist sentiment in the U.S., promised there would be no involvement in foreign wars if he were re-elected. -
Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11) was the name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on 11 March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, but before the U.S. entrance into the war in December 1941. -
Pearl Harbor
The Japanese hit American ships and military installations at 07:51. The first wave attacked military airfields of Ford Island. At 08:30, a second wave of 170 Japanese aircraft, mostly torpedo bombers, attacked the fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. Overall, nine ships of the U.S. fleet were sunk and 21 ships were severely damaged. Three of the 21 would be irreparable. The overall death toll reached 2,350, including 68 civilians, and 1,178 injured. -
America enters the war
On 7 December, 1941, Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific. These attacks led the U.S., Britain, Australia and other Allies to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attack against Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. -
Operation Torch begins.
Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast) was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started 8 November 1942. While the American commanders favored Operation Sledgehammer, landing in Occupied Europe as soon as possible, the British commanders believed that such a course would end in disaster. An attack on French North Africa was proposed instead, which would clear the Axis Powers from North Africa. -
Invasion of Sicily
A combined British-Canadian-American invasion of Sicily began on 10 July 1943 with both amphibious and airborne landings at the Gulf of Gela and north of Syracuse. The defending German and Italian forces were unable to prevent the Allied capture of the island, but succeeded in evacuating most of their troops to the mainland, the last leaving on 17 August 1943. -
Invasion of Italy
Forces of the British Eighth Army landed in the 'toe' of Italy on 3 September 1943 in Operation Baytown, the day the Italian government agreed to an armistice with the Allies. General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, who had taken command of Army Group C after Kesselring had been transferred to become Commander in Chief of the Western Front at the end of 1944, signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the German armies in Italy on 29 April, formally bringing hostilities to an end on 2 May, 1945. -
D-Day
The operation was the largest amphibious invasion of all time, with over 160,000 troops landing on 6 June 1944. 195,700 Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships were involved. The landings took place along a 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. -
Election of 1944
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had been in office longer than any other president, but remained popular. Unlike 1940, there was little doubt that Roosevelt would run for another term as the Democratic candidate. His Republican opponent in 1944 was New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey ran an energetic campaign, but there was little doubt, in the midst of a world war, that FDR would win a record fourth term. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the February 4–11, 1945 wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively—for the purpose of discussing Europe's postwar reorganization. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies
On the afternoon of April 12, Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). At 3:35 p.m. that day, Roosevelt died. -
Germany Surrenders
In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across Western Germany, while Soviet forces stormed Berlin in late April; the two forces linked up on Elbe river on 25 April. On 30 April 1945, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Third Reich. On May 7, 1945, Germany offically surrendered to the Ailleis. -
Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasakai
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945. By executive order of President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki on August 9. -
Japan Surrenders
When Japan continued to reject the Potsdam terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On 15 August 1945 Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.
