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March on Rome, the insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in late October 1922. The March marked the beginning of fascist rule and meant the doom of the preceding parliamentary regimes of socialists and liberals. -
On July 18, 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler’s philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. Basically his plan for the holocaust and genocide of Jewish people. -
In the Soviet Union, the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32), implemented by Joseph Stalin, concentrated on developing heavy industry and collectivizing agriculture, at the cost of a drastic fall in consumer goods. The first five year plan was created in order to initiate rapid and large-scale industrialization across the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). -
Stalin became dictator of USSR in 1929, and ruled until he died in 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into a military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. -
In 1931 Japan had invaded Manchuria without declarations of war, breaching the rules of the League of Nations. Japan had a highly developed industry, but the land was scarce of natural resources. Japan turned to Manchuria for oil, rubber and lumber in order to make up for the lack of resources in Japan. -
The Holodomo was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. Unlike other famines in history caused by blight/drought, this was caused when Stalin wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority. This famine wiped out 13% of the population. -
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. -
Night of the Long Knives was a purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization's leaders, including Ernst Röhm. The Night of the Long Knives helped Hitler and the Nazi Party to consolidate absolute power in Germany by removing their political opposition. -
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. The aim of invading Ethiopia was to boost Italian national prestige. -
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. -
The Great Purge was a political campaign led by Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he believed to be a threat. Although estimates vary, most experts say at least 750,000 people were executed during the Great Purge, which took place between about 1936 and 1938. More than a million other people were sent to forced labor camps, known as Gulags. -
The Spanish Civil War was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939. The war was a result of many factors, but the one primary causes of the Spanish Civil War was the failure of Spanish democracy. This failure resulted from the refusal of the Spanish political parties and groups to compromise and respect democratic norms. -
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan was ordered to destroy Nanking, China. In what became known as the “Rape of Nanking,” the Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process. -
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. -
The Invasion of Poland was an attack on the Second Polish Republic by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. Germany invaded Poland to regain lost territory and ultimately rule their neighbor to the east. The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. -
Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.