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Japan invades Manchuria
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Fascist Italy invades, conquers, and annexes Ethiopia
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Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sign a treaty of cooperation on October 25; on November 1, the Rome-Berlin Axis is announced
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Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement
Forces the Czechoslovak Republic to cede the Sudetenland, including the key Czechoslovak military defense positions, to Nazi Germany -
Under German pressure, the Slovaks declare their independence and form a Slovak Republic
The Germans occupy the rump Czech lands in violation of the Munich agreement, forming a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. -
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement and a secret codicil dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
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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. -
Nazi Germany and its Axis partners invade the Soviet Union
Finland, seeking redress for the territorial losses in the armistice concluding the Winter War, joins the Axis just before the invasion. The Germans quickly overrun the Baltic States and, joined by the Finns, lay siege to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by September. In the center, the Germans capture Smolensk in early August and drive on Moscow by October. In the south, German and Romanian troops capture Kiev (Kyiv) in September and capture Rostov on the Don River in November. -
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
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British and US navies halt the Japanese naval advance in the central Pacific at Midway.
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US troops halt the Japanese island-hopping advance towards Australia at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
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British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt, sending the Axis forces in chaotic retreat across Libya to the eastern border of Tunisia.
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Soviet troops liberate Kiev
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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
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The Germans launch a final offensive in the west, known as the Battle of the Bulge, in an attempt to re-conquer Belgium and split the Allied forces along the German border.
By January 1, 1945, the Germans are in retreat. -
Adolf Hitler kills himself
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Germany surrenders the soviets
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US drops and atomic bomb on Hiroshima
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The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria.
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US drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki
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Japan formally surrenders ending WW2
