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The Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement ending World War I, signed by Germany and the Allied powers on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles -
Japan invaded Manchuria primarily to secure vital natural resources like coal and iron for its industrial economy, to expand its imperial power, and to create a buffer against the Soviet Union -
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and murder of six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. During this period, the Nazis also targeted millions of other people, including Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. -
Italy invaded Ethiopia, beginning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, on October 3, 1935, under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini -
Adolf Hitler's violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, where German troops re-entered the demilitarized Rhineland, a strip of German land bordering France, Belgium, and the Netherlands -
Germany annexing Austria -
The Evian Conference was a 1938 international meeting convened by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the growing Jewish refugee crisis stemming from Nazi persecution
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a meeting where Germany, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom signed the Munich Agreement, agreeing to cede Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland region to Nazi Germany -
a U.S. law that allowed belligerent nations to buy U.S. goods, including military equipment, but only if they paid in cash upfront and transported the goods on their own ships -
was a military tactic characterized by concentrated, rapid, and deep attacks by armored (Panzer) units, supported by mobile infantry and tactical air power, to quickly defeat an enemy by dislocating and disrupting their lines of communication and command rather than through prolonged attrition -
a 1939 legislative proposal in the United States, championed by Senator Robert Wagner and Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers, to admit 20,000 German refugee children to the U.S. over two years, outside of existing immigration quotas -
a German ocean liner that, in 1939, carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. -
a 1939 non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that included secret protocols to divide Eastern Europe -
to expand German territory, secure resources for its "living space" (Lebensraum) in the East, and establish dominance in Eastern Europe, leading Britain and France to declare war on Germany and marking the start of World War II -
German U-boats tried to sink Allied merchant ships to starve Britain, but the Allies countered with convoys, radar, and code-breaking to secure their supply lines and project power across the ocean -
destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers and crippling their offensive capabilities, while the U.S. lost only one carrier, the Yorktown -
a pivotal air campaign during World War II, in which the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force (RAF) successfully defended the country against large-scale, daytime air attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe -
marked a major shift in U.S. foreign policy from neutrality toward supporting the Allies, provided crucial naval and air bases to the U.S. for defending the Western Hemisphere, and created a strong Anglo-American wartime partnership that led to further cooperation like the Lend-Lease Act -
The Lend-Lease Act was a US program signed into law on March 11, 1941, that allowed the President to provide military and other essential supplies to Allied nations deemed vital to the defense of the United States, enabling the US to support the Allied war effort while remaining officially neutral before its direct entry into World War II -
a joint declaration made by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941, during their first wartime conference in Newfoundland -
Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, decimating the US Pacific Fleet -
The first naval battle in history fought entirely by aircraft carriers, resulting in a strategic Allied victory by halting the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby, despite both sides suffering heavy losses, including the U.S. carrier USS Lexington -
a surprise attack launched through the Ardennes Forest in December 1944 to split the Allied armies and force them to negotiate -
a United States government agency, created in January 1944 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to rescue and aid victims of the Holocaust and other Axis-occupied territories. -
The Marshall Plan was a U.S. initiative to provide economic aid to help Western European countries rebuild after World War II -
codename for the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, during World War II -
The final major battle of the Pacific theater, a bloody and costly strategic victory for the Allies that influenced the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan to avoid a potentially devastating invasion -
The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated on April 11, 1945, by the U.S. Third Army -
"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, by the United States during World War II -
The atomic bomb known as "Fat Man" was a plutonium implosion-type weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, during World War II -
V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the formal end of World War II after Japan's surrender in 1945
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The United Nations originated during World War II as the Declaration by United Nations, a wartime alliance of 26 countries -
The Truman Doctrine was a U.S. foreign policy established in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman that committed the United States to support "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." -
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a landmark international document that outlines the fundamental rights and freedoms to which all human beings are entitled. -
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a political and military alliance of 32 member countries from North America and Europe. Founded in 1949 after World War II, its original purpose was to counter the expansion of the Soviet Union