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Mussolini and the Fascists come to power in Italy
Elections brought a huge win for the Fascists, with Mussolini taking a seat as a deputy in Parliament. The party changed its name to Partito Nazionale Fascista. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on 18 September 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident. -
Hitler & the Nazis come to power in Germany
President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. -
Neutrality Acts passed in the US
The Neutrality Acts were laws passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 to limit U.S. involvement in future wars. They were based on the widespread disillusionment with World War I in the early 1930s and the belief that the United States had been drawn into the war through loans and trade with the Allies. -
munich conference
The Munich Agreement or Munich Betrayal was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic and the Kingdom of Italy. -
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. -
Germany and the USSR sign the Non-Aggression Pact
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. -
Germany invades Poland- Beginning of WW2
On September 1, 1939, German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. World War II had begun. -
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the struggle between the Allied and German forces for control of the Atlantic Ocean. To do this, German submarines, called U-boats, and other warships prowled the Atlantic Ocean sinking Allied transport ships. -
France falls to Germany
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. -
Rescue at Dunkirk
The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. -
Formation of the Axis Power
The major Axis Powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan. The alliance began to form in 1936. First, on October 15, 1936 Germany and Italy signed a friendship treaty that formed the Rome-German Axis. -
Presidential election of 1940
President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican businessman Wendell Willkie to be reelected for an unprecedented third term in office. -
Congress passes the Lend Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act, approved by Congress in March 1941, had given President Roosevelt virtually unlimited authority to direct material aid such as ammunition, tanks, airplanes, trucks, and food to the war effort in Europe without violating the nation's official position of neutrality. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December. -
Relocation of Japanese Americans to camps
The first internment camp in operation was Manzanar, located in southern California. Between 1942 and 1945 a total of 10 camps were opened, holding approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. -
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was when the Japanese forced 76,000 captured Allied soldiers (Filipinos and Americans) to march about 80 miles across the Bataan Peninsula. The march took place in April of 1942 during World War II. -
Battle of MIdway Island
The U.S. Navy's decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan's hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific. -
Rosie the Riveter campaign encourages women to get a job.
The iconic images of Rosie the Riveter explicitly aimed to change public opinion about women's work. Rosie encouraged women to apply for industrial jobs they may not have previously considered, and aimed to make women's industrial employment more acceptable to the public. -
D-Day Invasion
The largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. The statistics of D-Day, codenamed Operation Overlord, are staggering. The Allies used over 5,000 ships and landing craft to land more than 150,000 troops on five beaches in Normandy. -
Allied Invasion/Victory in the Philippines
The Japanese Army overran all of the Philippines during the first half of 1942. The liberation of the Philippines commenced with amphibious landings on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on October 20, 1944. -
Presidential election of 1944
The election took place during World War II. Incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey to win an unprecedented fourth term. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge took place in December 1944, after Adolf Hitler launched a surprise blitzkrieg against Allied Forces in northwest Europe. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a meeting of three World War II allies: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. -
V-E Day
On May 8, 1945 - known as Victory in Europe Day or V-E Day - celebrations erupted around the world to mark the end of World War II in Europe. The war had been raging for almost five years when U.S. and Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. -
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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 immediately killed an estimated 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. -
Surrender of Japan
The world learned Japan Surrendered ending world war 2. -
Formation of the united nations
The United Nations officially comes into existence. In 1945, representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draw up the United Nations Charter. The Charter was signed on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries.
