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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. -
The Empire of Japan's Kwantung Army invaded the Manchuria region of the Republic of China September 18, 1931, immediately following the Mukden incident, a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext to invade. -
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. -
The German remilitarization of the Rhineland was the act of March 7, 1936, when Adolf Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone in western Germany, in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles -
Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935 under Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, seeking to expand its colonial empire, avenge the earlier defeat at the Battle of Adwa, and assert Italy as a world power. -
The Battle of the Atlantic was a World War II campaign where 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. -
The Anschluss was the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, a key precursor to World War II. This event, meaning "joining" or "connection" in German, fulfilled Hitler's goal of uniting all ethnic Germans into one Greater German Reich, violating the Treaty of Versailles and destroying Austria's independence. -
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. -
The Munich Conference concluded that the Sudetenland territory would be ceded to Germany. In addition, Hitler would take over portions of Czechoslovakia provided he would not seek further expansion. The Czechoslovakian government was told that it could challenge Hitler to war, but it would do so without any support. -
The Wagner-Rogers Bill was a 1939 piece of proposed U.S. legislation that sought to admit 20,000 refugee children from the German Reich into the country over a two-year period, outside of existing immigration quotas -
The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner carrying over 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in 1939 who were denied entry to Cuba and the United States, forcing the ship to return to Europe where a quarter of the passengers later perished in the Holocaust. -
The Nazi-Soviet Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was a 1939 non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that included secret protocols to divide Eastern Europe. The pact allowed Germany to invade Poland without Soviet interference, thus starting World War II. -
Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," was a German military tactic in World War II that combined fast-moving armored tanks, air attacks, and mechanized infantry to achieve surprise, rapidly penetrate enemy lines, and overwhelm their forces before they could organize a defense. -
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939, was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of World War II. -
During World War II, the Cash and Carry policy was 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. Enacted in November 1939 as a revision to the Neutrality Acts, this policy aimed to support. -
The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It was the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces. -
The destroyers-for-bases deal was an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on 2 September 1940, according to which 50 Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson-class US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy from the US Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions. -
The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 was a United States program that allowed the President to provide military and economic aid, such as weapons, food, and supplies, to Allied nations vital to American defense during World War II. -
The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration of war aims issued by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August 1941, before the U.S. entered World War II. -
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. At the time, the U.S. was a neutral country in World War II. -
The Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 was 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. -
The Battle of Midway in June 1942 was a decisive U.S. naval victory that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific by destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers and crippling their offensive capabilities, while the U.S. lost only one carrier, the Yorktown. -
"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, by the Enola Gay B-29 bomber. As the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, it was a gun-type uranium bomb that created a nuclear chain reaction, causing an explosion equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT. -
The War Refugee Board (WRB) was a U.S. government agency created in January 1944 by President Roosevelt to rescue Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution during World War II. -
On June 6, 1944, in Operation Overlord, the Allied forces landed troops on Normandy beaches for the largest amphibious assault in history, beginning the march eastward to defeat Germany. -
The Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last major offensive on the Western Front during World War II, a surprise attack launched through the Ardennes Forest in December 1944 to split the Allied armies and force them to negotiate. -
The Battle of Okinawa was a brutal World War II battle from April to June 1945, featuring intense fighting, massive casualties for American, Japanese, and Okinawan forces (exceeding 250,000 total), and a heavy reliance on Japanese kamikaze suicide attacks. -
The liberation of Buchenwald refers to the takeover of the Nazi concentration camp by its own inmates on April 11, 1945, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of American troops. Located near Weimar, Germany, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps within German borders. -
he bomb used over Nagasaki was named "Fat Man" because of its round, bulbous shape, a design codenamed by Manhattan Project scientist Robert Serber. This implosion-type plutonium bomb was the second atomic bomb used in war and was dropped to demonstrate the United States' ability to deploy more atomic weapons, hoping to hasten Japan's surrender in World War II. -
On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender, which effectively ended World War II. This pivotal moment, known as V-J Day (Victory over Japan Day), was marked by Emperor Hirohito's historic radio broadcast to the Japanese people, informing them of the surrender after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
The term "United Nations" was first used for the Allied powers fighting the Axis in WWII, who formally established the United Nations as a peacekeeping organization at the end of the war to replace the failed League of Nations. The concept was formalized through the Declaration by United Nations in 1942 and the UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, which officially came into force on October 24, 1945. -
Nuremberg is a historic city in Bavaria, Germany, known for its medieval Imperial Castle and as the site of Nazi Party rallies before World War II. It is most famous for the Nuremberg Trials, where Allied judges held Nazi leaders accountable for war crimes after the war. Today, it's a cultural hub with attractions like the Germanic National Museum and the famous Nuremberg rostbratwurst, and recently, the film Nuremberg was released in the US. -
The Truman Doctrine was not part of World War II but was a U.S. foreign policy announced in March 1947 to combat the spread of communism, directly arising from the war's aftermath. It committed the United States to providing military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey, who were struggling with internal and external threats and were seen as vulnerable to Soviet influence. -
The Marshall Plan was a U.S. foreign aid program from 1948–1951 that provided over $13 billion to help Western European countries rebuild after World War II, aiming to stabilize economies, restore industries, and counter the spread of communism. -
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a landmark United Nations document adopted in 1948 that outlines fundamental rights and freedoms for all people, regardless of their background. It was created in response to the atrocities of World War II, establishing a universal standard for human dignity, equality, and justice. -
NATO did not exist during World War II, but was formed in April 1949, after the war, as a collective defense alliance to counter the threat of Soviet expansionism and the spread of communism in a devastated and divided post-war Europe. The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization marked a significant shift in US foreign policy, committing the United States to a long-term military role in Europe to ensure stability and prevent further conflict.