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Japan invades 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. -
Italy invades Ethiopia
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war from 3 October 1935 to 1939 between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and those of the Ethiopian Empire. -
Olympic Games in Germany
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event that was held in 1936 in Berlin, Nazi Germany. -
Anschluss
Anschluss refers to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. -
Germany takes the Sudetenland
The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the Pan-Germanist demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany -
Germany invasion of Poland
The Invasion of Poland, known in Poland as the September Campaign or the 1939 Defensive War, and in Germany as the Poland Campaign or Fall Weiss, was a joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by the German Air Force. -
Tripartite Pact signed
The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Japan and Italy signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Saburō Kurusu and Galeazzo Ciano. -
Lend Lease Act
Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. -
Four Freedoms Speech
Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans' entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear. -
Germany attacks Soviet Union
Under the code-name Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II. -
Atlantic Charter
The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war -
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II which occurred between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Casablanca conference
The Casablanca Conference (code-named SYMBOL) was held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, French Morocco from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. -
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference (code-named Eureka) was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. -
Battle of Normandy
The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France, on 6 June 1944. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. -
Yalta conference
he Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea conference and code named the Argonaut Conference, held from February 4 to 11, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. -
Battle of Okinawa
The Battle of Okinawa, code-named Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Marine and Army forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. -
Germany surrenders
On May 7, 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to the European conflict in World War II. -
U.S. drops bomb on Hiroshima
President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
Bombing of Nagasaki
During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. -
Official Japanese Surrender
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close.
