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The Treaty of Versailles formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers when it was signed on June 28, 1919, though it went into effect on January 10, 1920. -
Japan invaded Manchuria starting on September 18, 1931, after a staged bombing on a Japanese-owned railway known as the Madden Incident served as a pretext. -
On October 3, 1935, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, also known as the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, to expand colonial territory and boost national pride. The invasion began after a border incident at Wal Wal in late 1934, but Mussolini used it to justify a full-scale war using modern weapons and chemical agents like mustard gas. -
Germany remilitarized the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, when Adolf Hitler sent German troops into the demilitarized zone along the Rhine River, violating the Treaty of Versailles. -
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Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudden region) to Nazi Germany. -
Blitzkrieg tactics were first effectively used by Germany in the invasion of Poland in September 1939 -
The Nazi-Soviet Pact, officially the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, signed in August 1939, paved the way for the joint invasion of Poland in September 1939