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The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "unworthy of life." During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). -
Haile attacks Ethiopia
In the 1930's the fassets dictator invaded land that doesn't belong gto them. Hitler felt he had a legitimate claim upon the area because he saw it as german land. -
Neutrality Act
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the 1937 Neutrality Act, which bans travel on belligerent ships, forbids the arming of American merchant ships trading with belligerents, and issues an arms embargo with warring nations. -
Japan invaded Nanking
For almost 7 weeks, the Japanese troops, who first entered on december 13, killed, destroyed, vandalized, and massacred the chinese and their property. They defeated the chinese the that were helpless and the civikian population a storm of violence and cruelty that has few parallels. -
Mussolini Joins Hitler
In a speech in Rome, Benito Mussolini, fascist leader of Italy, promises to fight the democracies alongside Adolf Hitler's should war break out. -
Germany Invades Poland
France and Britain declared war on Germany. After conquering Poland, Germany attacked France. France fell in June 1940, and soon the Nazis overran most of the rest of Europe and North Africa. Only Britain, led by Winston Churchill, was not defeated. -
The soviet Union invades Poland
The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east. Thousands of Polish troops were taken into captivity; some Poles simply surrendered to the Soviets to avoid being captured by the Germans. -
Congress Lifts Aid Embargo
Congress grants President Franklin D. Roosevelt's request to revise neutrality laws, to repeal an arms embargo so that munitions could be sold to Britain and France, and to prevent American ships from sailing into war zones. -
Germans went to Paris
The Germans went to Paris and took over. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried for days to convince the French government to hang on, not to sue for peace, that America would enter the war and come to its aid. -
The Sovievt Union Invades Finland
The Soviet Union invades Finland, initiating the so-called Winter War. The Finns sue for an armistice and have to cede the northern shores of Lake Lagoda and the small Finnish coastline on the Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union. -
Stalingrad
four million troops poured over the Russian border. Within one month, over two and half million Russians had been killed, wounded or captured. The Germans made tremendous advances into Russia – into portions of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad.And then winter hit. The Germans were caught in summer uniforms, and it was a bitter, cold winter that year. -
Battle of Midway
Japanese armies rolled over Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the East Indies. In a four day battle fought between aircraft based on giant aircraft carriers, the U.S. destroyed hundreds of Japanese planes and regained control of the Pacific. -
Italy Surrendered
Although Italy officially surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, the Allied invasion of Italy proceeded as planned, as there were still a lerge number of German forces stationed in the country. -
D-Day
General Dwight Eisenhower led U.S. and Allied troops in an invasion of Normandy, France. The armies fought their way through France and Belgium and into Germany while Russian troops fought from the east. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. -
The Soviets launch a massive offensive
The Soviets launch a massive offensive in eastern Byelorussia (Belarus), destroying the German Army Group Center and driving westward to the Vistula River across from Warsaw in central Poland by August 1. -
HItler commits suicide
Afraid of falling into the hands of enemy troops, Hitler and Braun committed suicide the day after their wedding, on April 30, 1945. Their bodies were carried to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were burned. Berlin fell on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. -
Benito Mussolini executed
The next day, Mussolini and Petacci were both summarily shot, along with most of the members of their 15-man train, primarily ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic. After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meat hooks from the roof of an Esso gas station -
The United Nations
In 1945, representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draw up the United Nations Charter. Those delegates deliberated on the basis of proposals worked out by the representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States at Dumbarton Oaks. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Japanese fought on even after the war in Europe ended. Truman decided to use the newly developed atomic bomb to end the war quickly and prevent more U.S. casualties. The Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, killing about 78,000 people and injuring 100,000 more. On August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing another 40,000 people. -
Nagasaki
A second atomic bomb is dropped in Nagasaki, killing 80,000 people. -
World War II Ends
A formal surrender ceremony is conducted in Tokyo Bay on the U.S. battleship Missouri. World War II officially ends.
