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The Treaty of Versailles was the 1919 peace treaty ending World War I, imposing harsh terms on Germany, including territorial losses, heavy reparations, and military restrictions. While it aimed for peace and created the League of Nations, it also generated significant resentment and instability in Germany, which contributed to the rise of Nazism and the eventual outbreak of World War II. -
Japan's invasion of Manchuria was a pretextual military campaign starting September 18, 1931, with the "Mukden Incident," a staged bombing of a Japanese railway. Driven by imperial ambitions and the need for natural resources and living space, Japan's Kwantung Army swiftly occupied Manchuria, establishing the puppet state Manchukuo by early 1932 -
Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935 was a brutal act of aggression by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime to expand its colonial empire, avenge a past defeat, and assert Italy as a world power. -
The German remilitarization of the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, was Hitler's bold defiance of the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Locarno, where he sent German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland region, marking the first major step in violating the post-WWI agreements. -
The Battle of the Atlantic was a continuous operation beginning in September 1939 until Germany's surrender in May 1945. Germany's warships and submarines, U-boats, focused on sinking merchant shipping, thereby reducing the amount of supplies reaching the United Kingdom and other European Allies. -
Anschluss is a German word meaning "connection" or "union," but it most famously refers to the 1938 political union of Austria and Nazi Germany. This incorporation of Austria into the Third Reich was a key event in the lead-up to World War II, embodying Hitler's expansionist policy to unite German-speaking peoples -
The Evian Conference was an international meeting held in July 1938 in Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the escalating Jewish refugee crisis caused by rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. -
The Munich Conference of September 1938 was a meeting where the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany agreed to allow Germany to annex the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to prevent war -
During World War II, the "cash and carry" policy was a US program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that allowed belligerent nations to purchase U.S. military goods and supplies on the condition that they paid immediately in cash and transported the goods themselves -
The MS St. Louis was a German passenger ship launched in 1928, known primarily for its 1939 voyage where it carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany but was turned away by Cuba, the United States, and Canada, ultimately forcing its return to Europe. -
The pact included secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe, including Poland, into German and Soviet spheres of influence, giving the USSR permission to invade the eastern part of Poland while Germany invaded the west, thus extinguishing Poland as a nation and triggering World War II. -
The Invasion of Poland began on September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland using Blitzkrieg tactics, leading Britain and France to declare war on Germany, thus starting World War II. -
The Wagner-Rogers Bill was proposed in 1939 to allow 20,000 Jewish children from Nazi-controlled Europe to enter the United States outside existing immigration quotas, providing refuge from persecution. -
The Destroyers for Bases Agreement was a September 1940 deal where the U.S. transferred 50 World War I-era destroyers to the British Royal Navy in exchange for 99-year lease rights to several British military bases in the Atlantic and Caribbean, including Newfoundland, the Bahamas, and Trinidad. -
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England, lit. 'air battle for England') was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. -
Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war" in German, was a military tactic used by Nazi Germany in World War II that combined rapid, coordinated attacks of tanks, motorized infantry, artillery, and air power to overwhelm enemy defenses, break through lines, and cause confusion and disarray. -
The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration in August 1941 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, outlining a vision for the postwar world and the principles guiding the Allied nations, even before the U.S. entered World War II. -
The Lend-Lease Act was a 1941 U.S. law allowing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide crucial military and food supplies to Allied nations without violating official American neutrality. -
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, famous for the Japanese surprise attack on December 7, 1941, which brought the United States into World War II. -
The Battle of Midway was a decisive six-month naval battle from June 4–7, 1942, where the U.S. Navy, using intelligence from broken Japanese codes, ambushed and devastated the Japanese navy. -
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive on the Western Front in World War II, from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945, aimed at splitting Allied forces and capturing the port of Antwerp. -
The Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4–8, 1942) was a World War II naval engagement between the United States and Japan, notable as the first naval battle fought entirely by aircraft carriers without any ships firing shots at each other directly. -
Operation Overlord was the codename for the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, France, beginning with the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. This massive amphibious assault, supported by air and sea power, aimed to liberate Nazi-occupied Western Europe and opened a crucial second front against Germany. -
The War Refugee Board (WRB) was a U.S. government agency established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944 to rescue and provide relief to Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution. Operating from January 1944 to September 1945, the WRB worked with foreign governments, Jewish organizations, and resistance groups to establish safe havens, evacuate people from Nazi-occupied territories, and deliver relief supplies to concentration camps -
The Battle of Okinawa was the largest and bloodiest battle of the Pacific campaign in World War II, fought from April 1 to June 22, 1945, to secure the island as a staging ground for the invasion of Japan. -
V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the end of World War II, one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in history. When President Harry S. Truman announced on Aug. 14, 1945, that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, war-weary citizens around the world erupted in celebration. -
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. -
"Fat Man" was an implosion-type weapon using plutonium. A subcritical sphere of plutonium was placed in the center of a hollow sphere of high explosive (HE)Its design featured a hollow sphere of high explosives surrounding a subcritical plutonium core, which, upon detonation, imploded the core to a supercritical state, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. -
"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, by the Enola Gay B-29 bomber. As the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, it was a gun-type uranium bomb that created a nuclear chain reaction, causing an explosion equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT. -
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of international military courts held after World War II to prosecute major German Nazi leaders for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. -
The liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp by the United States Army in April 1945 uncovered the horrific conditions of forced labor, starvation, and deliberate executions that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of prisoners. Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the camp, witnessing firsthand the suffering and cruelty endured by the prisoners. -
The United Nations is an international organization with 193 member states, founded in 1945 after World War II to prevent future wars and promote peace, security, human rights, and social and economic development. -
In simple terms, the Truman Doctrine was a U.S. foreign policy commitment to provide military and economic aid to countries threatened by communist expansion, especially to counter Soviet influence. -
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a landmark United Nations document adopted in 1948 that outlines fundamental rights and freedoms for all people, regardless of their background. -
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a political and military alliance between 32 countries from North America and Europe that was founded in 1949 to provide collective security. -
the Marshall Plan was a U.S. program that provided over 15 billion in aid to help Western European countries rebuild their economies after World War II. Enacted in 1948, its goals were to restore economic stability, prevent the spread of communism, and create strong trading partners for the United States.