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The March on Rome was a planned coup d'état by Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party. Though more of a threat than a military action, King Victor Emmanuel III gave in to the pressure and appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, establishing the path for his dictatorial rule in Italy. -
Adolf Hitler wrote this autobiographical manifesto while imprisoned after the failed Munich Putsch (1923). It outlines his extremist anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and pan-German ideology, forming the political blueprint for the Nazi Party's future actions and goals. -
Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, who held the powerful position of General Secretary, outmaneuvered his rivals (especially Leon Trotsky) in the Politburo through political scheming, control of party appointments, and manipulation of ideology, effectively consolidating all power and becoming the totalitarian dictator. -
This was a highly ambitious plan for the development of the national economy. Its primary purpose was to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union and collectivize agriculture to transform the agrarian country into a leading industrial power, often at the expense of consumer goods and immense human cost. -
This term refers to the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine (the word means "to kill by starvation"). While officially blamed on resistance to collectivization, it is widely considered a deliberate act by Stalin's regime to break the Ukrainian peasantry's resistance, suppress Ukrainian nationalism, and confiscate grain to fund Soviet industrialization. Millions died. -
The invasion, orchestrated by the Japanese Kwantung Army, was driven by a desire for natural resources (coal, iron, etc.) to fuel Japan's industrial and military growth, and to create a strategic buffer state (Manchukuo) against the Soviet Union. This marked the start of Japanese aggression in Asia. -
President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler to the position in a legal move, pressured by conservative politicians who thought they could control him. This event placed the Nazi Party in a position of government power, which they quickly exploited to dismantle the Weimar Republic and establish a totalitarian dictatorship. -
Purpose: This was a purge carried out by Hitler and the SS against the leadership of the SA (Sturmabteilung or "Brownshirts") and other political opponents. Its goal was to eliminate any perceived rivals to Hitler's power (especially SA leader Ernst Röhm) and secure the support of the German Army, solidifying Hitler's supreme authority. -
These two laws enacted by the Nazi regime were the first major legislative steps to formalize the persecution of Jews. They revoked the German citizenship of Jews and prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and "Germans or related blood," creating the legal framework for the Holocaust. -
Mussolini sought to expand the Italian empire and exact revenge for a previous defeat. Despite the League of Nations' condemnation, Italy invaded and occupied the independent African nation of Ethiopia, demonstrating the League's weakness and emboldening other aggressor nations like Germany. -
A brutal conflict between the democratically elected Republican government and the Nationalist rebels led by General Francisco Franco. It served as a testing ground for German and Italian military technology (who supported the Nationalists) and was a major ideological struggle between Fascism/Conservatism and Communism/Liberalism. -
The Great Purge (or Great Terror) was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union where Stalin had millions of people (Old Bolsheviks, military leaders, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens) arrested, imprisoned, or executed as "enemies of the people." Gulags were the Soviet system of forced-labor camps used to hold these victims, where millions died from overwork, starvation, and exposure. -
Following the capture of the city of Nanking (then the capital of China), the Japanese Imperial Army committed horrific atrocities against Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers, including mass murder and rape. It remains a deep source of tension and a symbol of Japanese wartime brutality. -
Meaning "Night of Broken Glass," this was a state-sponsored pogrom across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Nazi mobs and the SA destroyed Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, resulting in deaths and the rounding up of thousands of Jews for concentration camps. It was a major escalation of the Holocaust. -
The invasion, utilizing Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics, was the immediate catalyst that began World War II in Europe, as it led Britain and France to honor their treaties and declare war on Germany. -
The surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, brought about the United States' immediate entry into World War II the following day.