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Joseph Stalin became the leader of the USSR
He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by 1928. -
Benito Mussolini became the leader of Italy
Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Originally a revolutionary socialist and a newspaper journalist and editor, he forged Italy's violent paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and declared himself prime minister in 1922. -
European appeasement of Hitler began
Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain's policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. -
Japan invaded Manchuria
Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace. -
Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany
Following several backroom negotiations – which included industrialists, Hindenburg's son, the former chancellor Franz von Papen, and Hitler – Hindenburg acquiesced and on 30 January 1933, he formally appointed Adolf Hitler as Germany's new chancellor. -
FDR began his Good Neighbor Policy
In his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated: “In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.” -
Congress passed the Neutrality Acts
Between 1935 and 1937 Congress passed three "Neutrality Acts" that tried to keep the United States out of war, by making it illegal for Americans to sell or transport arms, or other war materials to belligerent nations. -
Italy invaded Ethiopia
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. -
Japan invaded China
The Second Sino-Japanese War or War of Resistance was a military conflict primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. -
kristallnacht
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary and Schutzstaffel paramilitary forces. -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II -
Germany and Russia signed a nonaggression pact
In the night of 23-24 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact., known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. -
Germany began the blitzkrieg into Poland
Germany launched the unprovoked attack at dawn on September 1, 1939, with an advance force consisting of more than 2,000 tanks supported by nearly 900 bombers and over 400 fighter planes. -
Cash and Carry
They had to pay cash for American-made supplies, and then transport the supplies on their own ships. -
The Tripartite Pact was signed
Tripartite Pact, agreement concluded by Germany, Italy, and Japan on September 27, 1940, one year after the start of World War II. It created a defense alliance between the countries and was largely intended to deter the United States from entering the conflict -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain, was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. -
Churchill became the Prime Minister of Great Britain
Winston Churchill is forever remembered for his contributions as Prime Minister (PM) during World War II. On May 10, 1940, with the Germans attacking western Europe, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and King George VI asked Churchill to become Prime Minister and form a government. -
Holocaust began
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. -
Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II. -
OPA created
The Office of Price Administration (OPA) 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. -
Four Freedoms
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. -
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. -
Nazis developed the Final Solution
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. -
Lend Lease Act
Passed on March 11, 1941, this act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." -
WAAC formed
In May 1941, U.S. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers proposed a bill for the creation of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps to help with the war effort. -
Battle of Stalingrad
Stalingrad was one of the most decisive battles on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. The Soviet Union inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the German Army in and around this strategically important city on the Volga river, which bore the name of the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. -
Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project, U.S. government research project (1942–45) that produced the first atomic bombs. -
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of between 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga. -
Doolittle Raids
The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first American air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place from 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Double V
In 1942 the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper, launched the Double Victory Campaign, which stood for “Victory Abroad and Victory at Home.” -
Development of Rosie the Riveter
J. Howard Miller from Westinghouse created the “We Can Do It” war campaign and in 1942 created the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter. -
Japanese put in internment camps in the U.S.
In February 1942, just two months later, President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans. -
Operation Torch
Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. -
Navajo Code Talkers used
The U.S. Marine Corps, in an effort to find quicker and more secure ways to send and receive code, enlisted Navajos as code talkers. -
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. It was held at the Soviet Union's embassy at Tehran in Iran -
Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act
The Act allowed the federal government to seize and operate industries threatened by or under strikes that would interfere with war production, and prohibited unions from making contributions in federal elections. -
Casablanca Conference
The Casablanca Conference or Anfa Conference was held in Casablanca, French Morocco, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. -
Battle of the Bulge
he Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. -
MacArthur “returned” to the Philippines
On October 20, 1944, a few hours after his troops landed, MacArthur waded ashore onto the Philippine island of Leyte. -
Battle of Okinawa
Taking Okinawa would provide Allied forces an airbase from which bombers could strike Japan and an advanced anchorage for Allied fleets. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. -
V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last shots fired on the 11th -
V-J DAY
V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the end of World War II, one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in history. When President Harry S. Truman announced on Aug. 14, 1945, that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, war-weary citizens around the world erupted in celebration. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. -
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. -
FDR died
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. -
Tuskegee Airmen
Tuskegee Airmen, black servicemen of the U.S. Army Air Forces who trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama during World War II.