-
Treaty of Versailles
Germany agreed to pay reparations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, but those plans were cancelled in 1932, and Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent actions rendered moot the remaining terms of the treaty.The treaty, negotiated between January and June 1919 in Paris, was written by the Allies with almost no participation by the Germans. The negotiations revealed a split between the French, who wanted to dismember Germany to make it impossible for it to renew war with France. -
Mussolini Assumes Power in Italy
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini rose to power in the wake of World War I as a leading proponent of Fascism. Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Mussolini’s military expenditures in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean region, though they exhausted his armed forces by the late 1930s. -
Stalin assumes power in the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union. After growing up in Georgia, Stalin conducted activities for the Bolshevik Party for twelve years before the Russian Revolution of 1917. -
Hitler Assumes Power in Germany
In the early 1930s, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country especially hard, and millions of people were out of work. Still fresh in the minds of many was Germany's humiliating defeat fifteen years earlier during World War I, and Germans lacked confidence in their weak government. These conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi party for short. -
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany. They were introduced on 15 September 1935 by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse. -
Rape of Nanking
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Japanese War. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks, the day that the Japanese captured Nanking. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000, and perpetrated widespread rape and looting. -
Munich Conference (Appeasement)
The Munich Agreement was an agreement between France, Italy, Nazi Germany and Britain. After Germany invaded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, the British and French prime ministers tried to get Hitler to agree not to use his military in the future in return for the land he had taken. Hitler agreed. -
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. -
Hitler and Stalin Sign a Non-Aggression Pact
Shortly before World War II broke out in Europe–enemies Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany. Adolf Hitler used the pact to make sure Germany was able to invade Poland unopposed. -
WWII Begins with the Invasion of Poland
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. On September 3, they declared war on Germany, initiating World War II. To Hitler, the conquest of Poland would bring Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German people. -
France surrendered to Germany
With Paris fallen and the German conquest of France reaching its conclusion, Marshal Henri Petain replaces Paul Reynaud as prime minister and announces his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. The next day, French General Charles de Gaulle, not very well known even to the French, made a broadcast to France from England, urging his countrymen to continue the fight against Germany. They surrendered in June 17 1940. -
Battle of Britain
In the summer and fall of 1940, German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. The Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. Britain’s decisive victory saved the country from a ground invasion and possible occupation. -
Tripartite Pact
The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Japan and Italy signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Saburō Kurusu and Galeazzo Ciano. It was a defensive military alliance that was eventually joined by Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, as well as by the German client state of Slovakia. The resulting Italo-German client state of Croatia joined the pact on 15 June 1941. -
Lend Lease Act
The lend-lease program provided for military aid to any country whose defense was vital to the security of the US. The plan thus gave Roosevelt the power to lend arms to Britain with the understanding that, after the war, America would be paid back in kind. Lend Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of WWII. During WWII, the United States began to provide significant military supplies and other assistance to the Allies, even though the United States did not enter the war. -
Pearl Harbor Attack
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. -
Executive Order #9066- Japanese Internment camps
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones. Also clearing the way for the internment of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian-Americans to concentration camps in the United States. -
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saisaih Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to Camp O'Donnell is variously reported by differing sources as between 60 mi and 69.6 mi. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of WWII. Only 6 months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and 1 month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. -
D-Day
More than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foothold in Continental Europe. More than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded, but their sacrifice allowed more than 100,000 Soldiers to begin the slow, hard slog across Europe, to defeat Adolf Hitler’s crack troops. -
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Battle of Leyte Gulf is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history. It was fought in waters near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar and Luzon, between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, on the Western Front, towards the end of World War II, in the European theatre. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the US Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the 3 Japanese-controlled 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 WWII. -
Battle of Okinawa
Battle of Okinwa was a series of battles fought in the Japanese Ryukyu Islands, centered on the island of Okinawa, and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War during World War II, invasion of Okinawa itself. The 82-day-long battle. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were planning to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations for the planned invasion of the Japanese home island. -
V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of WWII of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of WWII in Europe. The term VE Day existed as early as September 1944, in anticipation of victory. Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin. The act of military surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France and on 8 May in Berlin, Germany. -
Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. The Americans used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because the Japanese refused to surrender when facing conventional warfare. -
Atomic Bomb Dropped on Nagasaki
The United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, during the final stage of World War II. The United States had dropped the bombs with the consent of the United Kingdom as outlined in the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. -
V-J Day
It was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostilities to a final and highly anticipated close. -
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after WWII, which were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical international law and contemporary international law.
