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In 1931, Japan had invaded Manchuria in China
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In Africa, Italy took possession of Ethiopia in 1935 as part of its mission to extend its colonial empire.
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In 1936, in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland.
In 1936, Germany entered into the Rome-Berlin Axis alliance with Italy. -
In November 1936, Germany entered into the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan.
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In 1937 Japan occupied Beijing. From then on, it continued to expand throughout the Pacific.
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In March 1938, Germany used military force to occupy Austria (Anschluss).
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In September 1938 Germany demanded Czechoslovakia hand over the Sudetenland, which was populated by a significant German
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The Munich Conference (1938) was convened by Hitler following protests by France, Great Britain and other powers over his policy of expansionism. It ended with the democracies accepting Hitler's promises to expand no further.
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Following the invasion of Poland (September 1939), Hitler launched Blitzkrieg ('lightning war'), which consisted of using armoured divisions (the Panzer divisions) and strong aerial support. This type of war made surprise attacks and quick advances possible. Poland collapsed after three weeks, and the country was divided between Germany and the USSR according to the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
The Rome-Berlin Axis alliance was renewed in 1939 under the name Pact of Steel. -
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In June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and attacked the USSR, quickly reaching the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. This was an extremely significant event as, in response, the USSR joined the Allied forces in the battle against the Axis powers.
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In December 1941, Japan destroyed the US fleet in Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war.
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After the USSR and the United States entered the conflict, the war took a decisive turn in June 1942. The Americans stopped Japanese advances in the Pacific (Battle of Midway).
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In North Africa, the British defeated the Germans at El Alamein. Shortly after, an Allied army under the control of General Eisenhower landed in French Africa and defeated the Germans in Tunisia (May 1943).
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The German assault on Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943) was Hitler's first major failure. The city withstood several months of siege, after which the German Field Marshal Paulus surrendered.
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The three major allies (Great Britain, the United States and the USSR) met for the first time at the Tehran Conference (November 1943), which was attended by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. There they took joint military measures to speed up the end of the war.
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The liberation of Europe was hastened by the Normandy landings by British and American troops (June 1944), which brought many soldiers and weapons into France. The British and American forces defeated the German resistance and began advancing from the west, liberating part of France and entering Germany. At the same time, the Russians moved in from the east, pushing the Germans out of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. To support these advances, German cities were subjected to heavy Allied bombings.
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The second conference took place in Yalta (February 1945). This meeting agreed denazification and partition of Germany and Austria into four occupied zones and the division of Berlin and Vienna; the organisation of democratic elections in the liberated countries; and the creation of an international peacekeeping body: the United Nations.
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The third peace conference was held in Potsdam (August 1945). The new leaders (Atlee, Truman and Stalin) reached an agreement to return all of
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To force Japan to surrender, US President Truman decided to use a new weapon: the atomic bomb, which was dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
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Faced with the nuclear horror of Hiroshima nad Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945.
