-
-
Japan invades Manchuria
-
Fascist Italy invades, conquers, and annexes Ethiopia.
-
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, directed against the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement.
-
Japan invades China, initiating World War II in the Pacific.
-
Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss.
-
Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement which 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.
-
France and Great Britain guarantee the integrity of the borders of the Polish state.
-
Fascist Italy invades and annexes Albania.
-
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement and a secret codicil dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
-
Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe.
-
Honoring their guarantee of Poland’s borders, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.
-
The air war known as the Battle of Britain ends in defeat for Nazi Germany.
-
Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.
-
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.
-
The United States declares war on Japan, entering World War II. Japanese troops land in the Philippines, French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), and British Singapore. By April 1942, the Philippines, Indochina, and Singapore are under Japanese occupation.
-
British and US navies halt the Japanese naval advance in the central Pacific at Midway.
-
Germany and her Axis partners launch a new offensive in the Soviet Union. German troops fight their way into Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River by mid-September and penetrate deep into the Caucasus after securing the Crimean Peninsula.
-
The Badoglio government surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. The Germans immediately seize control of Rome and northern Italy, establishing a puppet Fascist regime under Mussolini, who is freed from imprisonment by German commandos on September 12.
-
British and US troops successfully land on the Normandy beaches of France, opening a “Second Front” against the Germans.
-
Allied troops reach Paris. On August 25, Free French forces, supported by Allied troops, enter the French capital. By September, the Allies reach the German border; by December, virtually all of France, most of Belgium, and part of the southern Netherlands are liberated.
-
Hitler commits suicide.
-
Germany surrenders to the western Allies.
-
The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
-
The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki
