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Bolshevik Revolution
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was initiated by millions of people who would change the history of the world as we know it. When Czar Nicholas II dragged 11 million people into World War I, the Russians became discouraged with their injuries and the loss of life they sustained. -
Paris Peace Conference
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors, following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. -
Treaty of Versailles Signed
This was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. -
Washington Naval Conference
It was a military conference called by President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington from 12 November 1921 to February 1922. It was attended by nine nations, the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal in regards to the interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. -
French construction of the Maginot Line
Used from 1922 - 1930. It would halt an invasion long enough for the French to fully mobilise their own army, and then act as a solid base from which to repel the attack. Any battles would thus occur on the fringes of French territory, preventing internal damage and occupation. -
Rapallo Treaty
The treaty was an agreement signed at the Hotel Imperiale in the Italian town of Santa Margherita Ligure on 16 April, 1922 between Germany and Russia under which each renounced all territorial and financial claims against the other. -
Benito Mussolini comes to power in Italy
He was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 until 1943. In 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship known as Il Duce. Mussolini was one of the key figures in the creation of fascism while in power. -
England refuses to renew its alliance with Japan
The British themselves weren't particularly fond in continuing the Alliance with Japan. The Royal Navy, by 1920, had already identified the likelihood that Japan would be a rival. The Admiralty was becoming more reserved in what developments in naval aviation it passed onto the Japanese. -
Beer Hall Putsch
It was a failed attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler with Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders to seize power in Munich, Bavaria. -
Stalin comes to power in Russia
Stalin came to power in 1924 after out-manoeuvring his opposition in the Communist Party through political scheming and taking advantage of the mistakes they made. He stayed in power by getting rid of his opponents in brutal and unfair ways. It took Stalin 5 years to become completely established as Lenin's successor. -
Dawes Act
The Dawes Plan was an attempt following World War One for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. -
Mein Kampf Published
This is an autobiographical by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in which he outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. -
Stock Market Crash
The stock market crash began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout.The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. -
Japan invades Manchuria
In 1931, the Japanese Kwangtung Army attacked Chinese troops in Manchuria in an event commonly known as the Manchurian Incident. Essentially, this was an attempt by the Japanese Empire to gain control over the whole province, in order to eventually encompass all of East Asia. This proved to be one of the causes of World War 2. -
Ukrainian Famine
It was headed by Joseph Stalin during 1932-1933 and served to control and further oppress the Ukrainian people by denying them the basic vital essentials they needed to survive. The Ukrainian Famine is also known as Holodomor, meaning “death by hunger.” -
First concentration camps established
The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. -
Hitler made chancellor of Germany
This appointment was made in an effort to keep Hitler and the Nazi Party “in check”; however, it would have disastrous results for Germany and the entire European continent. In the year and seven months that followed, Hitler was able to exploit the death of Hindenburg and combine the positions of chancellor and president into the position of Führer, the supreme leader of Germany. -
Night of Long Knives
By 1934, Adolf Hitler appeared to have complete control over Germany but, like most dictators, he constantly feared that he might be ousted by others who wanted his power. To protect himself from a possible coup, Hitler used the tactic of "divide and rule" and encouraged other leaders, including Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Ernst Röhm, to compete with each other for senior positions. -
Hitler declares himself Vice Chancellor & Fuhrer of Germany
Hitler decided that he should succeed Hindenburg, but not as president, instead as Führer of the German people. Although he was already called Führer by members of the Nazi Party and popularly by the German public, Hitler's actual government title at this time was simply Reich Chancellor of Germany. -
US Neutrality Acts
Between 1935 and 1937, Congress passed three separate neutrality laws that clamped an embargo on arms sales to belligerents, forbade American ships from entering war zones and prohibited them from being armed, and barred Americans from traveling on belligerent ships. Clearly, Congress was determined not to repeat what it regarded as the mistakes that had plunged the United States into World War I. -
Military purges and the Great Terror
The Great Terror refers to the state-organized bloodshed that overwhelmed the Communist Party and Soviet society during the years 1936-38. -
Berlin Olympics
The Nazi administration spent 42 million Reichmarks building an impressive 325-acre Olympics sports complex located about five miles west of Berlin. This was the same site that had been chosen for the canceled 1916 Games. The Games had been awarded to Germany by the International Olympic Committee back in May 1931, before Hitler came to power. -
Rape of Nanking
On December 9, the Japanese troops launched a massive attack upon the city. In the following six weeks, the occupying forces engaged in an orgy of looting and mass execution which came to be known as the Nanking Massacre. Most experts agree that at least 300,000 Chinese died, and 20,000 women were raped. -
Hitler invades Austria
Hitlers very first victim was Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria, a country being torn apart from within by Nazi agitators and also feeling threatened from the outside by Germany's newfound military strength. Hoping for some sort of peaceful settlement with Hitler, Schuschnigg agreed to a face-to-face meeting at Berchtesgaden. -
Munich Conference
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, without the presence of Czechoslovakia. -
Hitler invades the Sudetenland
On September 15th, Chamberlain and Hitler met and agreed to the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. Hitler was not content with this and demanded the territories be put under German military occupation, so that Czechoslovakia would be given no time to protect itself. Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, agreed to this demand as well, after intervention by Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. -
Kristallnacht
This was when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property. The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets afterwards. The violence continued during the day of November 10, and in some places acts of violence continued for several more days. -
Hitler conquers the rest of Czech
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of 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 Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia's coal. -
Enigma machine used in Britain
An Enigma machine was one of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used in the twentieth century for enciphering and deciphering secret messages. Enigma was invented by the German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. -
Einstein writes letter to FDR
The letter that launched the arms race. A warning to President Roosevelt of the possibility of constructing "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" with hints that the German government might be doing just that. -
Nazi Soviet Anti Aggression Pact
Representatives from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union met and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which guaranteed that the two countries would not attack each other. By signing this pact, Germany had protected itself from having to fight a two-front war in the soon-to-begin World War II; the Soviet Union was awarded land, including parts of Poland and the Baltic States. -
Hitler invades Poland
On this day in 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
The first casualty of that declaration was not German, but the British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent. There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom lost their lives. -
Winter War between Finland and Russia
It was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940. It began with Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 and ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939. -
Defeat of French army by the Nazis
It took only six weeks for France to capitulate to the German invaders. A stunning defeat particularly since before the war the French army was considered the most powerful in Europe. France's vaunted Maginot Line failed to hold back the Nazi onslaught and the German Blitzkrieg poured into France. -
Scandinavian Wars
After Hitler conquered Poland, and while still fine-tuning his plans against France, the British began to exert control of the coastline of neutral Norway, an action that threatened to cut off Germany's iron-ore conduit to Sweden and outflank from the start its hegemony on the Continent.The Germans quickly responded with a dizzying series of assaults, using every tool of modern warfare developed in the previous generation. -
Nazi occupation of Norway
After two months of desperate resistance, the last surviving Norwegian and British defenders of Norway are overwhelmed by the Germans, and the country is forced to capitulate to the Nazis. -
Winston Churchill comes to power in England
He was a British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. -
Desert campaigns in Africa begin
The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers, many of whom had colonial interests in Africa dating from the late 19th century. The Allied war effort was dominated by the British Commonwealth and exiles from German-occupied Europe. The United States entered the war in 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa on 11 May 1942. -
Battle of Britain
After the occupation of France by Germany, Britain knew it was only a matter of time before the Axis power turned its sights across the Channel. And on July 10, 120 German bombers and fighters struck a British shipping convoy in that very Channel, while 70 more bombers attacked dockyard installations in South Wales. -
Nazi Final Solution Developed
It was Nazi Germany's plan during World War II to exterminate the Jewish people in German-occupied Europe, which resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe. -
Hitler launches Operation barbarossa
This was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. Over four million soldiers of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km (1,800 mi) front, the largest invasion in the history of warfare. -
Pearl Harbor
It was a surprise military strike conducted by the Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and U.S. -
Manhattan Project Begins
The Manhattan Project was the project, conducted during World War II primarily by the United States, to develop the first atomic bomb. formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District. -
FDR signs executive order 9066
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas. -
Battle of Midway
Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. -
D-Day
The day in World War II on which Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy. -
Operation market garden
It was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard and became the costliest battle in terms of casualties for the United States, -
Nimitz and McArthur begin island hopping in the Pacific
After the Battle of Midway, the United States launched a counter-offensive strike known as "island-hopping," establishing a line of overlapping island bases, as well as air control. The idea was to capture certain key islands, one after another, until Japan came within range of American bombers. -
US Victory at Iwo Jima
It was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces fought for and captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Empire. The American invasion had the goal of capturing the entire island, including its three airfields, to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands.This five-week battle comprised some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the War in the Pacific of World War II. -
Death of FDR
President Franklin D Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
Hitler commits suicide
Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot in Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva committed suicide with him by ingesting cyanide. -
Surrender of Germany
On May 7, 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to the European conflict in World War II. -
First successful test of atomic bomb
On the morning of July 16, in the New Mexico desert 120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated. The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized. -
US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Together with the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, the United States called on Japan to surrender in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945, threatening "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum. -
Surrender of Japan
In the afternoon of August 14, Japanese radio announced that an Imperial Proclamation was soon to be made, accepting the terms of unconditional surrender drawn up at the Potsdam Conference.
