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FDR declares Good Neighbor Policy
The policy's main principle was that of non-intervention and non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin America. It also reinforced the idea that the United States would be a “good neighbor” and engage in reciprocal exchanges with Latin American countries. -
FDR declines London Economic Conference
President Roosevelt, at first, agreed to send delegates to the conference, but had second thoughts after he realized that an international agreement to maintain the value of the dollar in terms of other currencies wouldn't allow him to inflate the value of the dollar. He declared that America wouldn't take place in the negotiations. Without support from the United States, the London Economic Conference fell apart. The collapse strengthened the global trend towards nationalism, while making int -
US recognizes the Soviet Union
FDR ended almost 16 years of American non-recognition of the Soviet Union following a series of negotiations in Washington, D.C. with the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov. -
Tydings-McDuffie Act
It was a United States federal law which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years. It also established strict limitations on Filipino immigration. -
Reciporical Trade Agreements
It granted the President its traditional power to levy tariffs. The act not only gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the authority to adjust tariff rates, but also the power to negotiate bilateral trade agreements without receiving prior congressional approval. -
US Neutrality Act of 1935
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Mussolini invades Ethiopia
The aim of invading Ethiopia was to boost Italian national prestige, which was wounded by Ethiopia's defeat of Italian forces at the Battle of Adowa in the nineteenth century (1896), which saved Ethiopia from Italian colonisation. -
US Neutrality Act of 1936
The Neutrality Act of 1936, passed in February of that year, renewed the provisions of the 1935 act for another 14 months. It also forbade all loans or credits to belligerents. -
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was fought from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939 between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratically elected Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. The Nationalists prevailed, and Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years, from 1939 until his death in 1975. -
US Neutrality Act of 1937
In January 1937, the Congress passed a joint resolution outlawing the arms trade with Spain. The Neutrality Act of 1937, passed in May, included the provisions of the earlier acts, this time without expiration date, and extended them to cover civil wars as well. Furthermore, U.S. ships were prohibited from transporting any passengers or articles to belligerents, and U.S. citizens were forbidden from traveling on ships of belligerent nations. -
Japan invades China
The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It also made up more than 50% of the casualties in the Pacific War if the 1937–1941 period is taken into account. -
Panay Incident
was a Japanese attack on the American gunboat Panay while she was anchored in the Yangtze River outside Nanking, China on 12 December 1937. Japan and the United States were not at war at the time. The Japanese claimed that they did not see the American flags painted on the deck of the gunboat, apologized, and paid an indemnity. Nevertheless, the attack and the subsequent Allison incident in Nanking caused U.S. opinion to turn against the Japanese. -
Hitler seizes Austria
German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, learning of the conspiracy, met with Adolf Hitler in the hopes of reasserting his country's independence but was instead bullied into naming several top Austrian Nazis to his cabinet. -
Munich Conference
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, without the presence of Czechoslovakia. -
Hitler seizes Czechoslovakia
The German occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945) began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by the ethnic German population living in those regions. New and extensive Czechoslovak border fortifications were also located in the same area. -
Nazi Soviet Pact
The pact's publicly stated intentions were a guarantee of non-belligerence by either party towards the other and a commitment that neither party would ally itself to or aid an enemy of the other party. This latter provision ensured that Germany would not support Japan in its undeclared war against the Soviet Union along the Manchurian-Mongolian border, ensuring that the Soviets won the Battles of Khalkhin Gol. -
WWII begins in Europe with Hitler's invasion of Poland
Initiated WWII and divided Poland amongst Germany, the Soviet Union, and Slovakia. This was Hitler's first move in his offesive plan to take control -
US Neutrality Act of 1939
Early in 1939, after Nazi Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, Roosevelt lobbied Congress to have the cash-and-carry provision renewed. He was rebuffed, the provision lapsed, and the mandatory arms embargo remained in place. He prevailed over the isolationists, and on November 4 the Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed, allowing for arms trade with belligerent nations (Great Britain and France) on a cash-and-carry basis, thus in effect ending the arms embargo. Furthermore, the Neutrality Acts of 19 -
Fall of France
It was the successful German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, defeating primarily French forces. The battle consisted of two main operations. -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces, and was also the largest and most sustained aerial bombing campaign to that date. -
Destroyer deal with Britain
In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on September 2, 1940, fifty destroyers were transferred to the United Kingdom from the United States Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions. -
US invokes first peacetime draft
This Selective Service Act required that men between the ages of 21 and 35 register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made subject to military service, and all men aged 18 to 65 were required to register. -
Lend Lease Act
A program under which the United States supplied Great Britain, the USSR, Free France, the Republic of China, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and August 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 and nine months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. -
Hitler attacks Soviet Union
From the beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union, whom they characterized as forming the "racial basis" for the Soviet state. -
Fair employment practices commission established
The order banned racial discrimination in any defense industry receiving federal contracts by declaring "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." The order also empowered the FEPC to investigate complaints and take action against alleged employment discrimination. -
Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued in August 14, 1941 that, early in World War II, defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. No territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, -
Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor
The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. -
US declares war on Japan
On December 8, 1941 the United States Congress declared war upon the Empire of Japan in response to that country's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the prior day. It was formulated an hour after the Infamy Speech presidential address of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following the declaration, Japan's allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States, definitively bringing the United States into World War II -
Germany declares war on US
It brought the US into the European conflicts of WWII but did not officially enter the US into WWII. -
Japanese-American interned
"War Relocation Camps" of over 110,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the Pacific coast of the United States. The U.S. government ordered the internment in 1942, shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally as a geographic matter. -
Japan conquers the Philippines
Japan occupied the Philippines for over three years, until the surrender of Japan. A highly effective guerilla campaign by Philippine resistance forces controlled sixty percent of the islands, mostly jungle and mountain areas. MacArthur supplied them by submarine, and sent reinforcements and officers. Filipinos remained loyal to the United States, partly because of the American guarantee of independence, and also because the Japanese had pressed large numbers of Filipinos into work details -
battle of coral sea
The battle was the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. It inflicted irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863. -
US invades North Africa
The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers, many of whom had colonial interests in Africa dating from the late 19th century. The Allied war effort was dominated by the British Commonwealth and exiles from German-occupied Europe. The United States entered the war in 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa on 11 May 1942. -
Casablanca Conference
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. The conference agenda addressed the specifics of tactical procedure, allocation of resources and the broader issues of diplomatic policy. The debate and negotiations produced what was known as the “Casablanca Declaration,” and what is, perhaps, its most historically provocative statement of purpose, “unconditional surrender.” -
Japanese driven from Guadalcanal
was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles between Allied (primarily United States) and Imperial Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands during World War II. The action consisted of combined air and sea engagements over four days, most near Guadalcanal and all related to a Japanese effort to reinforce land forces on the island. The only two U.S. Navy admirals to be killed in a surface engagement in the war were lost in this battle. -
Allies invade Italy
The success of the 10th Army in inflicting heavy casualties, and Kesselring's strategic arguments, led Hitler to agree that the Allies should be kept away from German borders and prevented from gaining the oil resources of the Balkans. -
Teheran Conference
A strategy meeting held between Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was held in the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran and was the first of the World War II conferences held between all of the "Big Three" Allied leaders -
DDay invasion of France
The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied western Europe and led to an Allied victory in the war. -
Battle of Marianas
A decisive naval battle of World War II which eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War. -
Battle of the Bulge
A major German offensive campaign launched through the Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard and became the costliest battle in terms of casualties for the United States. -
Korematsu vs. US
United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of an executive order, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship. -
Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa
was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland. -
Roosevelt dies: Truman assumes presidency
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof. Truman had mentioned an unspecified "powerful new weapon" to Stalin during the conference. Towards the end of the conference, Japan was given an ultimatum to surrender or meet "prompt and utter destruction", which did not mention the new atomic bomb. -
Atomic Bomb dropped
Two bombs were dropped the first was dropped August 6th on Hiroshima and the second was dropped August 9th on Nagasaki -
Japan Surrenders
It brought an end to WWII. The state of war between the United States and Japan officially ended when the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952.