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Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the Nazi Party
Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. -
Benito Mussolini appointed Prime Minister of Italy
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) rose to power in the wake of World War I as a leading proponent of Facism. Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. -
Josef Stalin sole dictator of the Soviet Union (USSR)
Was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. -
Japan’s Army seizes Manchuria, China
he Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 18, 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident. The Japanese established a puppet state called Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II. -
Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. The supposed one thousand year Reich had started. -
Italian Army invades Ethiopia in Africa
In 1935, the League of Nations was faced with another crucial test. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader of Italy, had adopted Adolf Hitler's plans to expand German territories by acquiring all territories it considered German. Mussolini followed this policy when he invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) the African country situated on the horn of Africa. Mussolini claimed that his policies of expansion were not different from that of other colonial powers in Africa. -
Neutrality Acts passed by US Congress
On August 31, 1935, 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. -
Militarist take control of Japanese Government
Despite the seizure of so much Chinese territory, the militarist dominated Imperial government was still committed to further expansion of Japanese territory by military force. In pursuance of this aim, the Imperial government formulated the following major strategic objectives for Japan. -
Hitler sends troops into Rhineland of Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty
In May 1935 France signed a treaty of friendship and mutual support with the USSR. Germany claimed the treaty was hostile to them and Hitler used this as an excuse to send German troops into the Rhineland in March 1936, contrary to the terms of the treaties of Versailles and Locarno. -
Japan’s army pillages Nanjing, China; massacre a quarter of a million people.
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing , then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 -
Nazis begin rounding up Jews for labor camps
The German authorities used rail systems across the continent to transport, or deport, Jews from their homes, primarily to eastern Europe. Once they had begun to methodically kill Jews in specially constructed killing centers, German officials deported Jews to these facilities by train or, when trains were not available or the distances were short, by truck or on foot. -
Munich Pact signed giving the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany
a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. -
Nazi-Soviet Pact signed by Hitler and Stalin
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, while giving him time to build up the Soviet military. -
Nazis invade Poland; Britain and France declare war on Germany
The Declaration of war by France and the United Kingdom was given on 3 September 1939, after German forces invaded Poland. Despite the speech being the official announcement of both France and the United Kingdom, the speech was given by the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in Westminster, London. -
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World war 2
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Nazis invade Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium – take control
Hitler sent his troops into Belgium and the Netherlands without forewarning – although he had promised to respect their neutrality. His excuse was that the Belgians and Dutch had been conducting military talks with the Western powers and that Germany had to take power in these countries to protect their neutral status and to protect Germany's Ruhr region. And the German public bought their government's argument. -
Battle of Britain begins – Royal Air Force defeats German Air Force to prevent invasion of their island
was a combat of the Second World War, when the Royal Air Force (RAF) defended the United Kingdom (UK) against the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) attacks from the end of June 1940. It is described as the first major campaign fought entirely by air forces. -
Germany invades France and forces it to surrender
he Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 during the Second World War. In six weeks from 10 May 1940, German forces defeated Allied forces by mobile operations and conquered France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, bringing land operations on the Western Front to an end until 6 June 1944. Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 and attempted an invasion of France. -
First time Peacetime Draft in US
the Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed. Selective Service was born. -
Japanese invade French Indochina (Viet. Laos, Cambodia)
In September 1940, the Japanese invaded Vichy French Indochinato prevent the Republic of China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina along the Sino-Vietnamese Railway, from the port of Haiphong through Hanoi to Kunming in Yunnan.The fighting, which lasted several days before the French authorities reached an agreement with the Japanese, took place in the context of the ongoing Sino-Japanese War and World War II. -
Hitler breaks Pact with Stalin’s Russia and invades - USSR which now joins England in fighting the Germans
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler reached out to a bitter foe with a desperate plea. Time was running short on preparations for his planned invasion of Poland on September 1, and Hitler needed the Soviet Union to stay out of his war. In a telegrammed letter rushed to Joseph Stalin, Hitler asked the Soviet dictator to arrange for a meeting between German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, as soon as possible. -
Churchill and FDR issue the Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued on 14 August 1941, that defined the ... Roosevelt's attempts to tie Britain to concrete war aims and Churchill's desperation to bind the U.S. to the war effort helped provide motivations -
Pearl Harbor in Hawaii attacked by Japanese Naval and Air forces, US declares war on Japan,Germany and Italy declare war on the US
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December of nineteen forty-one was one of the most successful surprise attacks in the history of modern warfare. Japanese warships, including several aircraft carriers, crossed the western Pacific to Hawaii without being seen. They launched their planes on a quiet Sunday morning and attacked the huge American naval and air base at Pearl Harbor -
Japanese Americans interned in isolated camps
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. -
Russians stop Nazi advance at Stalingrad save Moscow
Desperation breeds optimism, so indeed Germany needed to end the War in the East soon. The newsreels of vast columns of bewildered Soviet prisoners may have conveyed an image of German invincibility, but for the Wehrmacht, Russia was Death by a Thousand Cuts. Germany and its allies had committed more than 3 million men to Barbarossa: by October, they had suffered more than 500,000 casualties, or 15 percent of the invasion force. -
Battle of Midway, turning point of war in the Pacific
The Battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific War. Before the Battle of the Coral Sea on 7-8 May 1942, the Imperial Navy of Japan had swept aside all of its enemies from the Pacific and Indian oceans. -
Philippines fall to Japanese – Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. -
Zoot Suit Riots – Los Angeles, CA
Zoot Suit Riots in 1943. The Zoot Suit Riots were fights between zoot suiters and sailors and marines in Los Angeles, California (Meier & Rivera, 193). Sailors and marines were constantly beating up Mexican American teenagers -
Italy surrenders, Mussolini dismissed as Prime Min.
as an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF), ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship. Known as Il Duce (The Leader), Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism -
British and US forces defeat German and Italian armies in North Africa
The North African Campaign, or Desert War, took place in the North African desert during World War II between 1940 and 1943. North Africa is a region generally considered to include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and the Western Sahara. -
D-Day invasion of France at Normandy by Allies
On this day in 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, code named D-Day, the Allied invasion of northern France. -
Paris retaken by Allies Forces
was a military action that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been ruled by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice on 22 June 1940, after which the Wehrmacht occupied northern and western France. -
Battle of the Bulge – last offensive of German Forces
was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, on the Western Front, towards the end of World War II, in the European theatre. -
US forces return to recapture the Philippines
United States and Philippine Commonwealth military forces were progressing in liberating territory and islands when the Japanese forces in the Philippines were ordered to surrender by Tokyo on August 15, 1945, after the dropping of the atomic bombs on mainland Japan. -
FDR dies, Harry S. Truman becomes President
On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
V-E Day, war ends in Europe
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe. -
First Atomic Bombs dropped
resident Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
V-J Day, Japan surrenders to Allied Forces
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. -
War Crimes Trials held in Nuremberg, Germany; Manila, Philippines and Tokyo, Japan.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trials or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of war crimes.
