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The Japanese, promted by the need for raw materials and a impulse to take over Chinese territory, invaded the province of Manchuria and held the territory until the end WWI, when they were forced to give back. This invasion is considered the start of WWI.
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In 1935, Mussolini attacked Ethiopia with bombers and tanks, while natives were left to defend their country with spears and other outdated weapons. The blood shed could have been avoided if the Legue of Nations had declared an oil embargo on Italy.
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Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles by sending German military troops and equipment into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany, his troops remilitarize
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German troops invade Austria and incorporate Austria into the German Reich in what is known as the Anschluss. A wave of street violence against Jewish persons and property followed in Vienna and other cities throughout the German Reich during the spring, summer, and autumn, culminating in the Kristallnacht.
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In the early hours on this date, leaders of Nazi Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy signed an contract that allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia that was home to many Germans. Adolf Hitler had threatened to take the Sudetenland by force and the Allies gave up the land because they wanted to avoid war.
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On this date Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier and British Prime Minister signed the Munich Pact, which virtually handed Czechoslovakia over to Germany for peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazis 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its electrical power.
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On this day in an effort to mimic Hitler’s conquest of Prague, Benito Mussolini’s troops invaded and occupyed Albania. Although the invasion of Albania was intended as but a prelude to greater conquests in the Balkans, it proved a costly enterprise for Il Duce. Albania was already dependent on Italy’s economy, so had little to offer the invaders.
