Timeline

  • Mussolini takes power in italy

    Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party, ruling the country from 1922 to his ousting in 1943. Mussolini has been credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of fascism. Mussolini was Dictator of Italy from 1930 to 1943, having destroyed all political opposition through his secret police and having outlawed workers to go on strike.
  • US Stock Market Crash

    The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Black Tuesday and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries and did not end in the United States until the onset of American mobilization for World War II at
  • Japan Invades Manchuria

    The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 19, 1931, when Manchuria was invaded by the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan immediately following the Mukden Incident. The Japanese established a puppet state, called Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II.
  • FDR is elected president

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. A dominant leader of the Democratic Party and the only American president elected to more than two terms, he built a New Deal Coalition that realigned American politics after 1932, as his domestic policies defined American liberalism for the middle third of the 20th century.
  • Period: to

    US passes Neutrality Acts

    The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts.
  • italy invades ethiopia

    The Second Italo–Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo–Abyssinian War, was a colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire. The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa.
  • Germany remiliterizes the Rhineland

    The remilitarization of the Rhineland by the German Army took place on 7 March 1936 when German military forces entered the Rhineland. This was significant because it violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region.
  • Civil War erupts in Spain

    The Spanish Civil War broke out with a military uprising in Morocco on July 17, triggered by events in Madrid. Within days, Spain was divided in two: a "Republican" or "Loyalist" Spain consisting of the Second Spanish Republic and a "Nationalist" Spain under the insurgent generals, and, eventually, under the leadership of General Francisco Franco.
  • The munich Conference

    The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia's areas along the country's borders mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without the presence of Czechoslovakia. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 S
  • Germany occupies the Sudetenland

    In 1938, Nazi Germany formally took possession of the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia whose majority population was of German ancestry. This secession of territory came as a result of the Munich Agreement, a treaty signed by Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Intended to avert a war on the European continent, it ultimately emboldened Adolf Hitler and gave him time to strengthen his growing war machine.
  • The nazi Soviet Pact

    On August 23, 1939, 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; the Soviet Union was awarded land, including parts of Poland and the Baltic States. The pact was broken when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union less than two years later, on Ju
  • Germany invades Poland

    The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign or Fall Weiss in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while the Soviet invasion commenced on 17 September 1939 following the Molotov-Tōgō agreement which terminated t
  • the "Phony War"

    The Phony War was a phase early in World War II that was marked by a lack of major military operations by the Western Allies against the German Reich. The phase was in the months following Britain and France's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 and preceding the Battle of France in May 1940. War was declared by each side, but no Western power had committed to launching a significant land offensive, notwithstanding the terms of the Anglo-Polish military alliance and the Franco-Polish
  • churchill is elected prime minister of England

    Sir Winston Churchill was a British politician, best known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, he served as Prime Minister twice. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen
  • France surrenders

    In the Second World War, the Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the successful German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, defeating primarily French forces. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb, German armored units pushed through the Ardennes to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. When British and adjacent French forces were pushed back to the sea by the highly mobile and well
  • Miracle at Dunkirk

    The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, between 27 May and the early hours of 4 June 1940, because the British, French, and Belgian troops were cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk in the Second World War. The evacuation was ordered on 26 May.
  • The Battle of Britain

    The Battle of Britain is the name given to the Second World War air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940.
  • Japan Seizes French Indo-China

    The Japanese Invasion of French Indochina was a move by the Empire of Japan in September 1940, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, to prevent China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina, via the Sino-Vietnamese Railway from the port of Haiphong through Hanoi to Kunming in Yunnan. Japan occupied northern Indochina, which tightened the blockade of China, and made continuation of the drawn out Battle of South Guangxi unnecessary.
  • Stalin Comes To Power in Russia

    Joseph Stalin was the de facto leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922. He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through expanding the functions of his role, while eliminating any opposition. He held this nominal post until abolishing it in 1952, concurrent
  • The Lend Lease Act

    Lend-Lease was 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. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 but nine months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. Formally titled An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States, the Act effectively ended the United S
  • The Atlantic Charter

    The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement first issued in August 1941 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. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; free access to raw materials; reduction of trade restriction
  • Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor

    The attack on Pearl Harbor (called Hawaii Operation or Operation A by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the Unite