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Period: to
ROAD TO WORLD WAR II
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The Treaty of Versailles signed
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 -
The Global Depression begins
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; however, in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930 -
Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
The year 1932 had seen Hitler’s meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people’s frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty -
The Spanish Civil War
took place from 1936 to 1939 and was fought between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a falangist group led by General Francisco Franco. The Nationalists won, and Franco then ruled Spain for the next 36 years, from April 1939 until his death in November 1975. -
Rome Berlin Axis: Hitler-Mussolini Alliance
The Italian invasion and annexation of Abyssinia had strained relations between Italy and its allies Britain and France, and Benito Mussolini finally repudiated Italy's alliance with them. Hitler then began planning to draw fascist Italy into an alliance with Nazi Germany. -
Anschluss with Austria
After the First World War, when both the Austria-Hungary Empire and the German Empire were abolished, many hoped that the Republic of German Austria would be unified with the German Republic in hope for a Greater Germany, which was to include all Germans. -
The Munich Agreement
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, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined -
Nazis invade Czechoslovakia
On September 30, 1938, 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 -
The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
On August 23, 1939–shortly before World War II (1939-45) 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 -
Nazis invade Poland
German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. As the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east.
