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World War II
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Mussolini and the Facists come to power
In 1919, Mussolini organized his fascist movement in the northern city of Milan. He formed squads of street fighters who wore black shirts. His “Blackshirts” beat up socialists and communists and threw them out of local governments. -
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. -
Hitler and the Nazis come to power in Germany
In the early 1930s, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country especially hard, and millions of people were out of work. These conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi party for short. -
Neutrality acts passed in the US
In the 1930s, the United States Government enacted a series of laws designed to prevent the United States from being embroiled in a foreign war by clearly stating the terms of U.S. neutrality. Although many Americans had rallied to join President Woodrow Wilson’s crusade to make the world “safe for democracy” in 1917, by the 1930s critics argued that U.S. involvement in the First World War had been driven by bankers and munitions traders with business interests in Europe. These findings fueled a -
Munich Conference
The Munich Conference came as a result of a long series of negotiations. Adolf Hitler had demanded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia; British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried to talk him out of it. -
Kristallnacht
On November 9 to November 10, 1938, in an incident known as “Kristallnacht”, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany. However, prio -
Germany and USSR sign the Non-Aggression Act
On August 23, 1939–shortly before World War II (1939-45) broke out in Europe–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. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, while giving him time to build up the Soviet m -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from September 1939 until the defeat of Germany in 1945, was the war’s longest continuous military campaign. During six years of naval warfare, German U-boats and warships – and later Italian submarines – were pitted against Allied convoys transporting military equipment and supplies across the Atlantic to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. This battle to control the Atlantic shipping lanes involved thousands of ships and stretched across thousands of pe -
Germany invades Poland-Beginning of WWII
a joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Free City of Danzig, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent, that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while the Soviet invasion commenced on 17 September following the Molotov-Tōgō agreement that terminated the Russian and Japanese hostilities in the east on 16 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and -
France falls to Germany
By May 1940, Europe had been at war for nine months. Yet Britain and France, despite having declared war on Germany in September 1939 following Hitler’s attack on Poland, had seen little real fighting. This tense period of anticipation – which came to be known as the ‘Phoney War’ – met an abrupt end on 10 May 1940, when Germany launched an invasion of France and the Low Countries. -
Rescue at Dunkirk
Dunkirk evacuation, (1940) in World War II, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. -
Formation of the Axis Powers
The Axis powers (German: , Japan ,Italy ), also known as the Axis, were the nations that fought in the Second World War against the Allied forces. The Axis powers agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity. -
Presidential election of 1940
The United States presidential election of 1940 was the 39th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. The election was fought in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue. -
Congress passes the Lend Lease Act
a program under which the United States supplied Free France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China, and later the USSR and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. This included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941 and ended in September 1945. In general the aid was free, although some hardware (such as ships) were returned after the war. In return, the U.S. was given leases on army and naval bases -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor,Hawaii
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 United States Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. Japan intended the attack as a preventive -
Relocation of Japanese Americans to camps
Two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 ordering all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast. This resulted in the relocation of approximately 120,000 people, many of whom were American citizens, to one of 10 internment camps located across the country. Traditional family structure was upended within the camp, as American-born children were solely allowed to hold positions of authority. -
Bataan Death March
the forcible transfer from Saisaih Pt. and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war which began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II.About 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100–650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach their destination.The reported death tolls vary, especially among Filipino POWs. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a secret military project created in 1942 to produce the first US nuclear weapon. Fears that Nazi Germany would build and use a nuclear weapon during World War II triggered the start of the Manhattan Project, which was originally based in Manhattan, New York. -
Rosie and the Riveter campaign encourages women to get a job
Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. -
Battle of Midway Islands
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Between 3 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflic -
Allied Invasion/Victory in the Phillipines
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943 during the early stages of the Italian Campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group (comprising Lieutenant General Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army and General Bernard Montgomery's British Eighth Army) and followed the successful invasion of Sicily. -
D-Day Invasion
During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. -
Presidential election of 1944
The United States presidential election of 1944 was the 40th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee, sought his fourth term in office; he defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the general election. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt early in February 1945 as World War II was winding down. -
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. -
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in -
Surrender of Japan
A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead GIs, and, still, the Japanese leadership refused to surrender. But in early August 66 years ago, America unveiled a terrifying new weapon, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States immediately accepted Japan's surrender. President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. -
Formation of the United Nations
The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a majority of other signatories. United Nations Day is celebrated on 24 October each year.
