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Treaty of Versailles signed
The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty made following the events of the First World War. The Treaty was made to determine what should become of Germany after the War, as one of the conditions of the Treaty was that Germany was to take full blame for causing the war, and all the damage that was done during it. -
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World War II
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Treaty of Rapallo
The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement between Germany and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) under which each renounced all territorial and financial claims against the other following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and World War I. -
Japan invades Manchuria
Japan claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway, and attacked the Chinese army (which had just executed a Japanese spy). The Chinese army did not fight back because it knew that the Japanese were just wanting an excuse to invade Manchuria -
Hitler's named Chancellor
President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany. -
Germany leaves League of Nations
Nine months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the German government announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations. The alleged reason was the refusal of the Western powers to acquiesce to Germany's demands for military parity -
U.S passes Neutrality Act
Congress passed the first Neutrality Act prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” from the United States to foreign nations at war and requiring arms manufacturers in the United States to apply for an export license -
Munich Agreement
British and French prime ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier sign the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The agreement averted the outbreak of war but gave Czechoslovakia away to German conquest. -
German Occupation of Czechoslovakia
German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. They took over Bohemia and established a protectorate over Slovakia. Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia was the end of appeasement: It proved that Hitler had been lying at Munich. -
USSR and Germany sign Nonagression Pact
In the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, each signatory promised not to attack the other. The German-Soviet Pact enabled Germany to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention -
Invasion of Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. -
Start of the ‘Phoney War’
The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front when French troops invaded Germany's Saar district. It was called the Phoney War because no military action seemed to occur. -
Operation Weserübung
Operation Weserübung was the code name for Germany's assault on Denmark and Norway during the Second World War and the opening operation of the Norwegian Campaign. -
Chamberlain Resigns
Chamberlain resigned the premiership on 10 May 1940 after the Allies were forced to retreat from Norway, as he believed that a government supported by all parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not join a government headed by him -
End of 'Phoney War'
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Dunkirk Evacuation
The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, in the north of France. On the first day only 7,669 Allied soldiers were evacuated, but by the end of the eighth day, 338,226 of them had been rescued by a hastily assembled fleet of over 800 boats. -
Franco-German Armistice
This armistice established a German occupation zone in Northern and Western France that encompassed all English Channel and Atlantic Ocean ports and left the remainder "free" to be governed by the French. Adolf Hitler deliberately chose Compiègne Forestas the site to sign the armistice due to its symbolic role as the site of the 1918 Armistice with Germany that signaled the end of World War I with Germany's surrender. -
Blitzkrieg
Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years by relying on a new military tactic called the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war). Blitzkrieg tactics required the concentration of offensive weapons (such as tanks, planes, and artillery) along a narrow front -
Tripartite Pact
The Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war -
Operation Barbarossa (June 22 - December 5, 1941)
Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler's intention was always to invade the Soviet Union. It was, along with the destruction of the Jews, fundamental to his core objectives: living-space in the east and the subjugation of the Slavic race. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US Naval Base Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, using bombers, torpedo bombers, and midget submarines. Within two hours, 18 US warships had been sunk or damaged, 188 aircraft destroyed and 2,403 American servicemen and women killed. -
Mass murder of the Jews at Auschwitz begins
Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. It initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. Eventually, it evolved into a series of camps where Jewish people were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to cruel medical experiments. More than 1 million people lost their lives at Auschwitz. -
Occupation of Singapore
The Japanese occupation of Singapore took place following the fall of the British colony. Military forces of the Empire of Japan occupied it after defeating the combined British, Indian, Australian, and Malayan garrison in the Battle of Singapore. -
Germany surrender at Stalingrad
In the Battle of Stalingrad after many attempts, the German forces could not break past the Soviet defense. The Soviets soon made their move, encircling the Germans. Surrender was their only hope for survival -
D-Day : The Normandy Landings
The Allied Forces of Britain, America, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of Normandy, France. With a huge force of over 150,000 soldiers, the Allies attacked and gained a victory that became the turning point for World War II in Europe. -
Auschwitz Liberated by Soviet Troops
The Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered. -
Truman Starts his Presidency
Truman's victory is considered to be one of the greatest election upsets in American history. Truman had acceded to the presidency in April 1945 after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. -
Russia Reaches Berlin
The Race to Berlin was a competition between two Soviet marshals, Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev, to be the first to enter Berlin during the final months of World War II. In early 1945, with Germany's defeat inevitable, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin set his two marshals in a race to capture Berlin. -
Hitler Commits Suicide
Hitler’s officers warned him that the Russians were on their way and that it would only take them a day or two to take the chancellery. They urged him to escape to the Bavarian Alps, to a small town in Berchtesgaden, but he chose suicide. One of the Nazi principles was that death was better than dishonor, which is why Hitler chose suicide rather than to be tried for his crimes. -
Germany Surrenders
Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to the European conflict in World War II. By the spring of 1945, the Soviets were approaching the German capital of Berlin from the east and the Western Allies were approaching it from the west. Knowing that defeat was inevitable, the Nazis surrendered. -
Japan Surrenders
An American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.
