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Marshal Philippe Petain
Pétain was appointed Premier of France by President Lebrun at Bordeaux, and the Cabinet resolved to make peace with Germany. Was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France -
Harry S. Truman
Truman's presidency was a turning point in foreign affairs, as the United States engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. Truman helped found the United Nations in 1945, issued the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to contain Communism, and got the $13 billion Marshall Plan enacted to rebuild Western Europe. -
Francisco Franco
was a Spanish general and the Caudillo of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. Coming from a military family background, he became the youngest general in Spain and one of the youngest generals in Europe in the 1920s.[1] -
Joseph Stalin's totalitarian government in the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin's Rise to Power. In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. -
Storm Troopers
specialist soldiers of the German Army in World War I. In the last years of the war, Stoßtruppe were trained to fight with "infiltration tactics", part of the Germans' new method of attack on enemy trenches. -
U.S. convoy system
On this day in 1917, driven by the spectacular success of the German U-boat submarines and their attacks on Allied and neutral ships at sea, the British Royal Navy introduces a newly created convoy system, whereby all merchant ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean would travel in groups under the protection of the British -
Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy
In 1921, the Fascist Party was invited to join the coalition government. By October 1922, Italy seemed to be slipping into political chaos. The Black Shirts marched on Rome and Mussolini presented himself as the only man capable of restoring order. King Victor Emmanuel invited Mussolini to form a government. -
Mein Kampf
Hitler writes a book titled my struggle and about creating a pure race. -
Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany
Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The 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. -
Third Reich
Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are common English names for Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party -
Hitler's military build-up in Germany
he growth of the German military in contravention of the Versailles treaty (1930s) British re-armament, the modernisation of the British military in response to German re-armament (1930s) -
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia
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. -
Hitler invades the Rhineland
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. -
Rome Berlin Axis
Rome-Berlin Axis, Coalition formed in 1936 between Italy and Germany. 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. -
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was 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. -
Hitler's Anschluss
Austrian Anschluss, March 1938. Hitler wanted all German-speaking nations in Europe to be a part of Germany. To this end, he had designs on re-uniting Germany with his native homeland, Austria. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, however, Germany and Austria were forbidden to be unified. -
Nonaggression pact
enemies 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. -
Blitzkrieg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. -
Phony war
The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there were no major military land operations on the Western Front. -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Germany in 1945. Wikipedia -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
in response to Hitler's invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany. The first casualty of that declaration was not German—but the British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and -
Hitler's invasion of Denmark and Norway
German invasion of Denmark (1940) The German invasion of Denmark was the fighting that followed the German army crossing the Danish border on 9 April 1940 by land, sea and air. -
Hitler's invasion of the Netherlands
German troops invaded the Netherlands bringing war to ended five days later as Dutch forces surrendered and German occupation of the Netherlands officially began. Five years later, the Netherlands would be liberated. -
Germany and Italy's invasion of France
The Italian invasion of France, also called the Battle of the Alps [a] (10–25 June 1940), was the first major Italian engagement of World War II and the last major engagement of the Battle of France. -
The Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the Second World War defence of the United Kingdom by the Royal Air Force against an onslaught by the German Air Force which began at the end of June 1940 -
Lend Lease Act
Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. -
Pearl Harbor attack
The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, in the Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Office of Price Administration
was established within the Office for Emergency Management of the United States government by Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. The functions of the OPA were originally to control money (price controls) and rents after the outbreak of World War II. -
Internment
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 had lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign of the Second World War which started on 8 November 1942. -
Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps
The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC on 1 July 1943. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. -
War Productions Board
an agency of the United States government that supervised war production during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it on January 16, 1942, with Executive Order 9024. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. -
Korematsu v. United States
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship. -
Bloody Anzio
The Battle of Anzio was an important battle of the Italian Campaign of World War II that began on January 22, 1944, with the Allied amphibious landing known as Operation Shingle against the German forces in the area of Anzio and Nettuno. -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II -
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe -
Unconditional surrender
An unconditional surrender is a surrender in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party. In modern times, unconditional surrenders most often include guarantees provided by international law. -
Death of Hitler
Death of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler killed himself by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva committed suicide with him by taking cyanide. -
V-E Day
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 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.