World War II & Cold War Timeline

  • Japan invades Manchuria

    On September 19 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded
  • Munich Pact

    The Munich Agreement was a settlement reached in western Czechoslovakia by Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy
  • Kristallnacht

    The Nazis torched synagogues in Germany, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and killed nearly 100 Jews
  • Germany invades Poland

    To reclaim lost territories and eventually rule their neighbor to the east, Germany invaded Poland.
  • Neutrality Acts of 1939

    Neutrality Act. This Act lifted the weapons embargo and brought under the terms of "cash-and-carry" all trade with belligerent nations.
  • Lend-Lease Act

    The Lend-Lease Act specified that the U.S. government could lend or lease war supplies to any country considered vital to the defense of the United States.
  • Atlantic Charter

    On August 14, 1941, the Atlantic Charter was a crucial policy document that established the Allied priorities for the post-war world, including self-determination of nations and economic and social harmony between nations.
  • Exec Order 8022

    Executive Order 8802, which bans unfair hiring discrimination by federal contractors and all war-related trade unions and corporations.
  • Atlantic Conference

    The Atlantic Charter was a joint document issued by U.S. President Franklin D. On June 22, 1941, when the Germans occupied the Soviet Union, few politicians in Washington or London
  • Attack on Pearl Harbor

    Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, precipitated the entry of the United States into the Second World War by the Japanese.
  • Exec Order 9066

    Executive Order 9066 Ending in Japanese Evacuation (1942)... This directive, issued on February 19, 1942, by President Franklin Roosevelt, ordered the evacuation of all persons considered
  • battle of midway

    The strong defense of the key base on Midway Island destroyed Japan's dreams of neutralizing the United States as a naval force and ultimately reversed the tide of the Second World War in the Pacific.
  • operation torch

    The Anglo-American conquest of French Morocco and Algeria after World War II's North African Campaign.
  • D-Day (invasion of Normandy)

    U.S., British, and Canadian troops in Normandy, France, on five different beachheads.
  • Korematsu v. United States

    The United Nations. On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a son of Japanese immigrants born in Oakland, California for violating an exclusion order forcing him after World War II
  • Battle of the Bulge

    The Battle of the Bulge, also referred to as the Battle of the Ardennes, was the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II
  • Yalta Conference

    The Yalta Conference was known as the Crimea Conference, and the Argonaut code, held on February 11, 1945, was the assembly of the heads of state of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
  • United Nations is created

    The United Nations is a multinational body established in 1945 by 51 nations dedicated to preserving international peace after the Second World War.
  • Nuremberg Trials

    An international tribunal made up of delegates from the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain held the Nuremberg trials.
  • Truman Doctrine

    Truman established that the United States would provide all democratic nations with political, military and economic assistance.
  • Marshall Plan

    Often known as the European Recovery Initiative, the Marshall Plan was a U.S. program that provided assistance to Western Europe after the destruction of World War II.
  • Israel is established

    The formation of the State of Israel. President Harry S. of the U.S. In 1945, Roosevelt had promised the Arabs that without consulting
  • Berlin Airlift

    The first battle of the Cold War may also be called the Berlin Airlift. This was when western countries supplied the city of Berlin with much needed food and supplies.
  • US establishes NATO

    In order to provide mutual defense against the Soviet Union the United States Canada and other western European nations NATO was the US's first peacetime military alliance.
  • Soviet Union tests Atomic Bomb

    The Atomic Soviet Bomb and the Cold War
    It will be only a matter of months until the U.S.S.R. blew up its own nuclear bomb. The Soviets tested their first nuclear successfully
  • Korean Conflict

    The Korean conflict is an unresolved conflict focused on North Korea's division of Korea.
  • Soviet Union launches Sputnik

    The launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik.The diameter of Sputnik was 22 inches,
  • National Defense Education Act

    The 1958 National Defense Education Act became one of higher education's most influential policy measures.
  • Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

    On the pretext of upholding the 1978 Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
  • Rise of the Berlin Wall

    A barbed wire and concrete Antifascistischer Schutzwall began to be built by the Communist Government of the German Democratic Republic
  • Fall of the Berlin Wall

    That the Berlin Wall, which divided communist East Germany from West Germany, had crumbled.