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Paris Peace Conference
The Allied powers met at the Palace of Versailles and created the Treaty of Versailles. -
nine tower treaty
The signers were China and the United States, Great Britain (for the British Empire), Japan, Italy, France, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands, who agreed to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial and administrative integrity of China. They committed themselves to the Open Door policy of equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations in China. Japan violated the treaty by invading Manchuria in 1931. -
mussolini takes over Italy
Mussolini took over the government under facisit power -
beer hall putsch
Hitler's attempt to overthrow the weimar government of ebert and establish a right wing nationalic one in its place. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
International agreement not to use war as an instrument of national policy. -
U.S. stock marketcrash
It left America in the Great depression. -
Japan invades Manchuria
Japan wanted to colonize Manchuria to have more room for their people and to use their natural resources. -
Nazi's reach a political majority in Germany
the government was anxious to avoid a presidential election in 1932, and hoped to secure the Nazis' agreement to an extension of President Paul von Hindenburg's term. -
Hitler becomes Germany 's chancellor
Hitler's emergence as chancellor on January 30, 1933, marked a crucial turning point for Germany and, ultimately, for the world. His plan, embraced by much of the German population, was to do away with politics and make Germany a powerful, unified one-party state. -
Japan withdraws from the League of Nations
Geneva, Feb. 24, 1933 — The Japanese delegation withdrew from the League of Nations Assembly today after the assembly had adopted an unanimous report (42-1, with only Japan opposing) blaming Japan for the Invasion of Manchuria. Japan’s delegation, led by Yosuke Matsuok walked from the hall amidst mingled hisses and applause.Japan’s formal resignation from the league was filed later. -
First anti-semitic law is passed in Germany
The Nazis established many new anti-Jewish laws. These were introduced slowly at first, so that the civilian population would not realise the extent of the Nazi party's anti-Semitism. Below is a chart showing a small selection of the 2,000 Nazi anti-Jewish decrees passed between 1933-1945. It is uncertain whether Hitler planned to murder the Jews when he came to power. -
Hitler purges Nazi opposition
The Night of the Long Knives was Adolf Hitler’s great purge, ridding the Nazi Party of those he distrusted, together with anti-Nazi figures within Germany and members of his paramilitary wing, the SA. Its most notorious victim was Ernst Rohm, once his loyal friend and devotee. Hitler had come to power in January 1933 and immediately started, piece by piece, tearing up the Weimar constitution, squashing opposition and ridding Germany of democracy. -
Hitler openly announces his defiance
Secretly expanding German forces since 1930 -
Italy invades Ethopia
The Ambassador reported that factories for the manufacture of trucks, tanks, and artillery at and around Milan were working day and night; that supplies and military forces were moving clandestinely; that concerted effort was being made to prevent any information getting out as to the size or general nature of shipments; that troop movements were at night; that embarkation was proceeding from several cities; that he had received reports that 30,000 troops had left Naples, and that the movement u -
Hitler militarizes the Rhineland
Under the terms of Versailles, the Rhineland had been made into a demilitarised zone. Germany had political control of this area, but she was not allowed to put any troops into it. Therefore, many Germans concluded that they did not actually fully control the area despite it being in Germany itself. In March 1936, Hitler took what for him was a huge gamble - he ordered that his troops should openly re-enter the Rhineland thus breaking the terms of Versailles once again. He did order his genera -
Rome-Berlin Axis
On this day in 1939, Italy and Germany agree to a military and political alliance, giving birth formally to the Axis powers, which will ultimately include Japan. Mussolini coined the nickname "Pact of Steel" (he had also come up with the metaphor of an "axis" binding Rome and Berlin) after reconsidering his first choice, "Pact of Blood," to describe this historic agreement with Germany. The Duce saw this partnership as not only a defensive alliance, protection from the Western democracies, wit -
Germany Annexes Austria
In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, learning of the conspiracy, met with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the hopes of reasserting his country's independence but was instead bullied into naming several top Austrian Nazis to his cabinet. -
Hitler demands the sudetenland from Czechoslovakia
Chamberlain met Hitler again at Godesberg. With the reluctant agreement of the Czechoslovakian government, Chamberlain offered Hitler control of the Sudetenland. Hitler demanded that the Czechoslovakian army leave the Sudetenland by 1 October. This was a demand designed to provoke the Czechs and provide an excuse for invasion of the whole country. -
Munich Confernence
It was Neville Chamberlain who would be best remembered as the champion of the Munich Pact, having met privately with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the dictator's mountaintop retreat, before the Munich conference. Chamberlain, convinced that Hitler's territorial demands were not unreasonable (and that Hitler was a "gentleman"), persuaded the French to join him in pressuring Czechoslovakia to submit to the Fuhrer's demands. -
Franco becomes Dictator of Spain
Fearing that the liberal government would give way to Marxist revolution, army officers conspired to seize power. After a period of hesitation, Franco agreed to join the military rebellion, which began in Morocco on July 17, 1936, and spread to the Spanish mainland the next day. With Nationalist army forces from Morocco, Franco rapidly overran much of the Republican-controlled areas in Spain and marched on Madrid. Believing victory was imminent, Franco was made leader of the new Nationalist regi -
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
The German-Soviet Pact, also known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact after the two foreign ministers who negotiated the agreement, had two parts. An economic agreement, signed on August 19, 1939, provided that Germany would exchange manufactured goods for Soviet raw materials. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a ten-year nonaggression pact on August 23, 1939, in which each signatory promised not to attack the other. -
Nazi's invasion of Poland
One of Adolf Hitler's first major foreign policy initiatives after coming to power was to sign a nonaggression pact with Poland in January 1934. This move was not popular with many Germans who supported Hitler but resented the fact that Poland had received the former German provinces of West Prussia, Poznan, and Upper Silesia under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. -
Battle of Britian
The Battle of Britain was the German air force's attempt to gain air superiority over the RAF from July to September 1940. Their ultimate failure was one of the turning points of World War Two and prevented Germany from invading Britain. -
Lend lease Act
Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” By allowing the transfer of supplies without compensation to Britain, China, the Soviet Union and other countri -
operation Barbassa
On this day in 1941, over 3 million German troops invade Russia in three parallel offensives, in what is the most powerful invasion force in history. Nineteen panzer divisions, 3,000 tanks, 2,500 aircraft, and 7,000 artillery pieces pour across a thousand-mile front as Hitler goes to war on a second front. Despite the fact that Germany and Russia had signed a "pact" in 1939, each guaranteeing the other a specific region of influence without interference from the other, suspicion remained high. -
pearl harbor
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked -
Battle of Midway
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. -
Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. -
Doolittle raid
The April 1942 air attack on Japan, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet and led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, was the most daring operation yet undertaken by the United States in the young Pacific War. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad,it was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad .stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles in history, with combined military and civilian casualties of nearly 2 million. -
operation overlord
On this day in 1944, now known as D-Day, future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then supreme commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in World War II gives the go-ahead for a massive invasion of Europe called Operation Overlord. Back in America, President Franklin Roosevelt waited for word of the invasion's success. By the first week of June 1944, Nazi Germany controlled most of Western Europe. Allied forces, numbering 156,000, were poised to travel by ship or plane over the English Channel to -
Valkyrie
Operation Valkyrie is the title most associated with the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944. Ironically Operation Valkyrie was a plan approved by Hitler, which was to be put into operation if there was a breakdown in communication between Hitler and the High Command in Nazi Germany as a result of Allied bombing or an uprising. -
Battle of Bulge
As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle’s name. Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s successful maneuvering of the Third Army to Bastogne proved vital to the Allied defense, leading to the neutralization of the German counteroffensive despite heavy casualties. -
Adolf Hitler commits suicide
Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his "1,000-year" Reich collapses above him. -
VE Day
Tuesday 8 May 1945 was 'Victory in Europe' (VE) Day, and it marked the formal end of Hitler's war. With it came the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across the world. Individuals reacted in very different ways to the end of the nightmare: some celebrated by partying; others spent the day in quiet reflection; and there were those too busy carrying out tasks to do either. Ultimately nothing would be quite the same again. -
little boy dropped
U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a "conventional" bombing of Japan was underway, "Little Boy," (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. -
Fat man dropped
The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off f -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” 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. -
Noremberg Trials
Shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany in 1933, he and his Nazi government began implementing policies designed to persecute German-Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state. Over the next decade, these policies grew increasingly repressive and violent and resulted, by the end of World War II (1939-45), in the systematic, state-sponsored murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with an estimated 4 million to 6 million non-Jews). -
Japanese war trials
On November 4, 1948, the trial ended with 25 of 28 Japanese defendants being found guilty. Of the three other defendants, two had died during the lengthy trial, and one was declared insane. On November 12, the war crimes tribunal passed death sentences on seven of the men, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as Japanese premier during the war, and other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen o
