Inter-war period

  • End of WW1

    End of WW1
    An armistice was singed Germany and the Entente on this date, although the official end to the war came with The Treary of Versailles in 1919. The terms of the treaty and the effects it had on Germany eventually led to WW2.
  • The March on Rome

    The March on Rome
    The March on Rome was a march to Rome organized by Benito Mussolini, then leader of the National Fascist Party, between October 27 and 29, 1922, which brought him to Italian power.
  • The Beer Hall Putsch

    The Beer Hall Putsch
    The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 14 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.
  • Treaty of Locarno

    Treaty of Locarno
    The Locarno Treaties were seven agreement in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the Weimar Republic. The treaty guaranteed Germany's western frontier, which the bordering states of France, Germany, and Belgium pledged to treat as inviolable. It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries.
  • Wall Street Crash of 1929

    Wall Street Crash of 1929
    The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash or the Crash of '29, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929.
    It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.
  • Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany

    Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany
    On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or führer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany. The year 1932 had seen Hitler’s meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people’s frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty.
  • The Night of the Long Knives

    The Night of the Long Knives
    The Night of the Long Knives was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by Röhm.
  • Start of Spanish Civil War

    Start of Spanish Civil War
    On July 1936, troops under the leadership of General Francisco Franco began an uprising against the democratically elected government of Spain. This revolt quickly escalated into a civil war. The Spanish Civil War is sometimes called a prelude to World War II. Many foreign powers supported different sides of the Spanish Civil War.
  • Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

    Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
    The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with a secret protocol that partitioned Central and Eastern Europe between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
  • Start of WW2

    Start of WW2
    Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict took more lives and destroyed more land and property around the globe than any previous war.
  • Operation Barbarossa starts

    Operation Barbarossa starts
    Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies. It was an opening what would become the bloodiest front of World War II, massive German armies invaded the Soviet Union.
  • Attack on Pearl Harbor

    Attack on Pearl Harbor
    The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led the U.S. to formally enter World War II on the side of the Allies the following day.
  • Start of the Battle of Stalingrad

    Start of the Battle of Stalingrad
    The Battle of Stalingrad was an intense battle between the Red Army of the Soviet Union and the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany and its Axis allies, for control of the Soviet city of Stalingrad. The battle took place during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and it is considered the bloodiest in human history. The defeat of Nazi Germany in this city meant a key turning point in the final results of the war, since the Wehrmacht would never obtain more strategic victories on the Eastern Front.
  • The Battle of Normandy

    The Battle of Normandy
    The Battle of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord, was the military operation carried out by the Allies during World War II that culminated in the liberation of the Western European territories occupied by Nazi Germany.
  • The Yalta Conference

    The Yalta Conference
    It was the meeting of the heads of government of the US, the UK and the USSR to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. The aim was to shape a postwar peace that represented not only a collective security order, but also a plan to give self-determination to the peoples of Europe. It was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe.
  • End of WW2

    End of WW2
    President Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs against Japan in the hopes of bringing a swift end to the war. Then an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days after the United States detonated another bomb on Nagasaki. In addition to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan came under increasing pressure when the Soviet Union declared war and invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria. So on September 2, WWII ended when Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender.