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In 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader ofthe Nazis, became chancellor of Germany.
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In 1936, Hitler sent troops to the Rhineland, an old section of Germany along the Rhine River, where they were not allowed, according to the Treaty of Versailles.
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Germany hosted the summer Olympics in Berlin. Hitler had ordered a huge propaganda campaign claiming that Aryan superiority could win the games for the Nordic countries.
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One year earlier, Japan had joined Germany and Italy in the “Anti-Comintern Pact,” supposedly to fight communism, creating what became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis–the Axis Powers.
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On the night of November 9, 1938, violence aimed specifically at the Jews broke out in the streets of the Third Reich. Police and many German civilians stood by while Nazi mobs destroyed thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes. This night came to be called Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” for the shattered glass from the store windows that
littered the streets. -
But on September 1, 1939, German tanks rolled into Poland.
Prompted by the invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. -
France had fallen to Nazis
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When Hitler began the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, more Americans recognized the threat that the Nazis posed to their country.
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On Sunday morning, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
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Another Allied victory against Hitler’s forces on Germany’s western border at the Battle of the Bulge, in December 1944, ended serious German resistance in the west.
