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II Duce
Known as "Il Duce" -- the Leader -- Benito Mussolini was the Fascist dictator of Italy during World War II. Benito Mussolini grew active in Italian politics in the first decade of the 1900s. He then spent time in exile in Switzerland and Austria, where he worked writing and editing socialist newspapers. He returned to Italy after serving as a rifleman in World War I and gained power and notoriety as a revolutionary nationalist. Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in 1919, used force and intimida -
Third Reich
Nazi Germany or the Third Reich was the period in the history of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party -
italy's conquest of ethiopia
Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers -
Rone-Berlin Axis formed
An agreement formulated by Italy’s foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano informally linking the two fascist countries was reached on October 25, 1936. It was formalized by the Pact of Steel in 1939. The term Axis Powers came to include Japan as well. -
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Spanish Civil war
Military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. -
Annexing of austria
In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, learning of the conspiracy, met with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the hopes of reasserting his country’s independence but was instead bullied into naming several top Austrian Nazis to his cabinet. On March 9, Schuschnigg called a national vote to resolve the question of Anschluss, or “annexation,” on -
Kristallnacht
A German phrase that roughly translated means "Night of Broken Glass." It refers to 11 November 1938, the evening in which 7500 Jewish businesses were looted in Germany, 191 synagogues were set afire, nearly 100 Jews were killed, and tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps. -
Poland attacked
One of Adolf Hitler's first major foreign policy initiatives after coming to power was to sign a nonaggression pact with Poland in January 1934. This move was not popular with many Germans who supported Hitler but resented the fact that Poland had received the former German provinces of West Prussia, Poznan, and Upper Silesia under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. However, Hitler sought the nonaggression pact in order to neutralize the possibility of a French-Polish military alliance -
Nazi-Soviet noonaggression 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; 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 June 22, 1941. -
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Battle of britian
during World War II, the successful defense of Great Britain against unremitting and destructive air raids conducted by the German air force (Luftwaffe) from July through September 1940, after the fall of France. Victory for the Luftwaffe in the air battle would have exposed Great Britain to invasion by the German army, which was then in control of the ports of France only a few miles away across the English Channel. In the event, the battle was won by the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, -
Embargo
Embargo Act (oil and steel) August 1941: American Embargo Act because of their dependence on American exports causes an oil crisis in Japan. The United States was contacted by Konoe the prime minister of Japan but President Roosevelt refused to have a meeting over the Act until Japan left Chinese Territory. On October 16, 1941, Konoe resigned as the prime minister and was replaced by the pro-military General Hideki Tojo. The Japanese called for a preemptive strike against the US Pacific Fleet at -
Pearl Harbor
, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
Battle Of midday
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. -
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battle of stalingrad
was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Russians consider it to be the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles in history, with combined military and civilian casu -
Manhanttan project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. -
Battle of the bulge
, Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne -
Death of roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States -
V-E day
The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark—the German surrender was realized in a final cease -
Dropping of the atmoic bombs
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. -
Holocaust
To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland. -
Potsdam Conference
From 17 July to 2 August 1945, leaders of the major Allied powers—United States president Harry Truman, Soviet premier Josef Stalin, and British prime minister Clement Attlee—met in Potsdam, Germany to continue negotiations over plans for the post-war world that had begun several months earier in Yalta. -
Concentation camps
The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy. In Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime -
V-J Day
on which Japan ceased fighting in World War II, or the day (September 2) when Japan formally surrendered -
D-day
in World War II on which Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy.
