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Stalin comes to power in Russia
Stalin supersedes Lenin rising to power in communist USSR, a future member of the Allied powers of the war. -
Mussolini takes power in Italy
Italy falls to Mussolini, ushering in new fascist state that will eventually team up with Hitler and Japan to form the Axis powers of the war. -
US Stock Market Crash
Known as Black Tuesday, the day of the US stock market crash will live in infamy as a precursor to the Great Depression setting the US economy back until the war in 1941. -
Japan invades Manchuria
Led to Japanese victory and establishment of puppet state that lasts until the beginning of the war. -
FDR elected President
FDR was elected in charge of a fragile US state overseeing the US in WWII until his death in 1945. -
Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany
On this day, Hitler was given control over Germany, officially beginning the reign of the world’s most infamous dictator and root of world war 2 conflict. -
US passes the Neutrality Act
Sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts after WWI. -
Italy invades Ethiopia
Mussolini adopts Hitler's policy of claiming all territories he considered "his" by invading this African country in 1935. -
Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland
This was significant because it violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region -
Civil war erupts in Spain
By the summer, lines were drawn and the Soviet Union intervened to help the Republican government and the committed support of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for the Nationalists. -
Anschluss
Occupied and annexed Austria to Nazi Germany displaying Hitler's ability to get what he wanted. -
The Munich Conference
Here Hitler met with representatives of the heads of state from France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. An agreement was reached that Hitler could annex the Sudetenland provided he promised not to invade anywhere else. -
Germany occupies the Sudetenland
This secession of territory came as a result of the Munich Agreement uultimately emboldening Adolf Hitler and giving him time to strengthen his growing war machine. -
Kristallnacht
Referred to as ‘the night of broken glass,’ Jewish shops and homes were ravaged in Nazi Germany these two nights contributing to the beginning to the Final Solution and the Holocaust. -
The Nazi-Soviet 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. -
Germany invades Poland
The campaign ended on 6 October 1939 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. -
The "Phony War"
A phase early in WWII that was marked by the lack of combat operations between the allies and axis powers. -
Churchill elected prime minister of England
With Churchill behing the reigns, this insured the 3rd member of the Allies. -
Miracle at Dunkirk
The evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk. -
France surrenders
The French government calls on the Germans for an armistice that will end the fighting at the same spot where twenty-two years earlier the Germans had signed the Armistice ending World War I. Hitler intends to disgrace the French and avenge the German defeat. -
The Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces and was also the largest and most sustained aerial bombing campaign to that date. -
Japan seizes French Indo-China
Was a move by Japan empire to prevent China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina. -
The Lend-Lease Act
The program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. -
The Atlantic Charter
The Charter was a pivotal policy statement that early in World War II defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by Britain and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies. -
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor officially provoked the entrance of the US into the war sided with the Allies.
