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Mussolini and the Fascists come to power in Italy
Italy emerged from the war still a constitutional monarchy. And it emerged with inflation, a hige debt and unemployment aggravated by demobilization of thousands of soldiers. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
On SEPTEMBER 18, 1931 Japan launched an attack on Manchuria. Within a few days Japanese armed forces had occupied several strategic points in South Manchuria. -
Hitler and the Nazis come to power in Germany
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers's Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movemnent and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. -
Neutrality Acts passed in the USA
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 noninterventionism 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 -
Kristallnacht
On November 9 to November 10,1938, in an incident know as "Kristallnacht" Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized jewish homes,schools and businesses and killed close to 100 jews. -
Munich Conference
Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. After his success in absorbing Austria into Germany proper in March 1938, Adolf Hitler looked covetously at Czechoslovakia, where about three million people in the Sudeten area were of German origin. It became known in May 1938 that Hitler and his generals were drawing up a plan for the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Th -
Formation of the Axis Powers
The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany,Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of contiental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranen Sea;and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific. The Allied Powers were led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. -
Germany and the USSR sign the Non-Aggression 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. -
Germany invades Poland-Beginning of WWII
On this day in 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. This was characterized by extensive bombing early on to destroy the enemy’s air capacity, railroads, communication lines, and munitions dumps, followed by a massive land invasion with overwhelming numb -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Kriegsmarine begins its campaign against British merchant shipping with 17 U-boats putting to sea out of a total of about 57 operational boats, far fewer than the 300 Dönitz had felt he needed to succeed against Britain.
04/09/1939 The British liner SS Athenia (with several US citizens on board) is sunk by U-30 off Ireland.
10/09/1939 U-boats continue their successes in the Atlantic.
12/09/1939 Convoys for merchant shipping are established to counter the U-boats.
13/10/1939 HMAS Hobart a -
D-Day Invasion
On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which, “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe. The cost in lives on D-Day was high. More than 9,000 Allied Sold -
France falls to Germany
By May 1940, Europe had been at war for nine months. Yet Britain and France, despite having declared war on Germany in September 1939 following Hitler’s attack on Poland, had seen little real fighting. This tense period of anticipation – which came to be known as the ‘Phoney War’ – met an abrupt end on 10 May 1940, when Germany launched an invasion of France and the Low Countries. The German plan of attack, codenamed Case Yellow, entailed an armoured offensive through the Ardennes Forest, which -
Rescue at Dunkirk
By this period in the war, the heroic effort on the part of the Allies in defending against the tide of encroaching Axis armor was all but spent. Poland and Holland had already fallen to the Germans and Belgium was soon to follow. French and British forces began congregating at the French port city of Dunkirk with British soil sitting some ways across The Channel. Sensing total annihilation of the forces, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered a flotilla of civilian ships to help s -
Presidential election of 1940
The United States presidential election of 1940 was fought in the shadow of World War II as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a Democrat, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue. The surprise Republican candidate was maverick businessman Wendell Willkie, a dark horse who crusaded against Roosevelt's failure to end the Depression and eagerness for war. Roosevelt, aware of strong isolationist -
Congress passes the Lend Lease Act
In July 1940, after Britain had sustained the loss of 11 destroyers to the German Navy over a 10-day period, newly elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested help from President Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded by exchanging 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. As a result, a major foreign policy debate erupted over whether the United States should aid Great Britain or maintain strict neutrality. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Saturday, December 6 - Washington D.C. - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt makes a final appeal to the Emperor of Japan for peace. There is no reply. Late this same day, the U.S. code-breaking service begins intercepting a 14-part Japanese message and deciphers the first 13 parts, passing them on to the President and Secretary of State. The Americans believe a Japanese attack is imminent, most likely somewhere in Southeast Asia. Sunday, December 7 - Washington D.C. - The last part of the Japane -
Relocation of Japanese Americsns to camps
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, would live in infamy. The attack launched the United States fully into the two theaters of the world war. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the United States had been involved in the European war only by supplying England and other antifascist countries of Europe with the munitions of war. The attack on Pearl Harbor also launched a rash of fear about national security, especially on the Wes -
Bataan Death March
The war came to the Philippines the same day it came to Hawaii and in the same manner – a surprise air attack. In the case of the Philippines, however, this initial strike was followed by a full-scale invasion of the main island of Luzon three days later. By early January, the American and Filipino defenders were forced to retreat to a slim defensive position on the island's western Bataan Peninsula -
Battle of Midway Island
The Doolittle Raid on Japan in April 1942 demolished the Japanese military's perception that their homeland was immune from air attack. They realized that in order to protect Japan, their defensive perimeter had to be extended eastward. Midway, a tiny island a thousand miles from Hawaii became the target. The Japanese threw almost the entire Imperial Fleet into the battle - six aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, thirteen cruisers, forty-five destroyers, assorted submarines, transports and -
Rosie the Riveter campaign encourages women to get a job
American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during World War II, as widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home. “Rosie the Riveter,” star of a government campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for the munitions industry, became perhaps the most iconi -
Allied Invasion/ Victory in the Philippines
The Philippines campaign of 1944–45, (Operation Musketeer I, II, and III) the Battle of the Philippines 1944–45, or the Liberation of the Philippines was the American and Filipino campaign to defeat and expel the Imperial Japanese forces occupying the Philippines, during World War II. The Japanese Army had overrun all of the Philippines during the first half of 1942. The Liberation of the Philippines commenced with amphibious landings on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on October 20, 1944 -
Presidential Election of 1944
The United States presidential election of 1944 was the 40th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee, sought his fourth term in office; he defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the general election. The election was set against the backdrop of World War II, which was going well for the United States and its Allies. Roosevelt had already served longer than any other president, but remained popular. -
Battle of the Bulge
On this day, the Germans launch the last major offensive of the war, Operation Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a “bulge” around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front. -
Yalta Conference
The Allied leaders came to Yalta knowing that an Allied victory in Europe was practically inevitable but less convinced that the Pacific war was nearing an end. Recognizing that a victory over Japan might require a protracted fight, the United States and Great Britain saw a major strategic advantage to Soviet participation in the Pacific theater. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill discussed with Stalin the conditions under which the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan and all three agr -
V-E Day
On Mar. 7, 1945, the Western Allies—whose chief commanders in the field were Omar N. Bradley and Bernard Law Montgomery—crossed the Rhine after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line and overran West Germany. German collapse came after the meeting (Apr. 25) of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev. The unconditional surrender of Germany was sign -
Manhattan Project
Until the atomic bomb could be tested, doubt would remain about its effectiveness. The world had never seen a nuclear explosion before, and estimates varied widely on how much energy would be released. Some scientists at Los Alamos continued privately to have doubts that it would work at all. There was only enough weapons-grade uranium available for one bomb, and confidence in the gun-type design was high, so on July 14, 1945, most of the uranium bomb ("Little Boy") began its trip westward to -
Bomboing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to -
Surrender of Japan in 1945
By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic -
Formation of the United Nations
At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden agreed to draft a declaration that included a call for “a general international organization, based on the principle sovereign equality of all nations.” An agreed declaration was issued after a Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow in October 1943. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943, he proposed an internati
