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June 1919
On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, France. The treaty was one of several that officially ended five years of conflict known as the Great War—World War I. The Treaty of Versailles outlined the conditions of peace between Germany and the victorious Allies, led by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Other Central Powers (significantly, Austria-Hungary) signed different treaties with the Allies -
August 1919
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s government from 1919 to 1933, the period after World War I until the rise of Nazi Germany. It was named after the town of Weimar where Germany’s new government was formed by a national assembly after Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. From its uncertain beginnings to a brief season of success and then a devastating depression, the Weimar Republic experienced enough chaos to position Germany for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. -
January 1920
The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving international disputes. Though first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, the United States never became a member. -
January 1923
In January 1923, French and Belgian troops crossed the border and took control of numerous places in Germany’s Ruhr Valley. The Ruhr occupation, as it became known, would last more than two and a half years and have a profound effect on both politics and the economy of the Weimar Republic. -
November 1923
On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempted coup d'état which came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller in the Bavarian city of Munich, aiming to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government. In its place, they sought to establish a new government to oversee the creation of a unified Greater German Reich where citizenship would be based on race. -
April 1924
The Dawes Plan was a plan in 1924 that successfully resolved the issue of World War I reparations that Germany had to pay. It ended a crisis in European diplomacy following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles.The plan provided for an end to the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, and a staggered payment plan for Germany's payment of war reparations.The Dawes Plan was put forward and was signed in Paris on August 16, 1924. -
June 1925
For several years, Benito Mussolini and his allies worked more or less within the confines of the Italian constitution to accrue power, eroding democratic institutions until the moment came for them to be done away with entirely. It is generally agreed that that moment came in speech Mussolini gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, 1925, in which he asserted his right to supreme power and effectively became the dictator of Italy. -
October 1925
The Locarno Pact of 1925 was an agreement signed on 1st December 1925 between Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany. Stresemann believed that through signing the Pact, it would increase confidence in Germany amongst her own people but also other European powers. It included thre parts. -
August 1928
August 27, 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed. The United States and France drafted the treaty, officially known as the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, in the decade following the end of World War I. This historic treaty pursued the lofty goal of ending war. While the treaty was ultimately unsuccessful in eliminating war, it set a global precedent for peace. -
October 1929
The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped. -
September 1931
The Empire of Japan's Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria on 18 September 1931, immediately following the Mukden Incident. At the war's end in February 1932, the Japanese established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Their occupation lasted until the success of the Soviet Union and Mongolia with the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation in mid-August 1945, towards the end of the Second World War. -
January 1933
On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg named 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. -
October 1935
Ethiopia, one of only two independent African nations at the time, was invaded on Oct. 3, 1935 by Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini. The Italians committed countless atrocities on the independent African state. Poisonous gas, aerial bombardment, flame throwers, and concentration camps were all employed. -
March 1936
On 7 March 1936 German troops re-occupied the Rhineland, a de-militarised zone according to the Treaty of Versailles. This action was directly against the terms which Germany had accepted after the First World War. This move, in terms of foreign relations, threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion -
October 1936
Rome-Berlin Axis, Coalition formed in 1936 between Italy and Germany. An agreement formulated by Italy's foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano informally linking the two fascist countries was reached on October 25, 1936. It was formalized by the Pact of Steel in 1939. The term Axis Powers came to include Japan as well. -
November 1936
The Anti-Comintern Pact was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, signed November 25, 1936. The pact cemented an agreement to mutually resist Communism and Communist states. Italy joined the Anti-Comintern pact in November, 1937. -
March 1938
March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria, and one day later, austria was incorporated into Germany. This union, known as the Anschluss, received the enthusiastic support of most of the Austrian population and was retroactively approved via a plebiscite in April 1938. -
September 1938
September 29–30, 1938: Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany. German troops occupy these regions between October 1 and 10, 1938. -
March 1939
On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechosovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslvakia’s coal. -
August 1939
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact signed in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shortly before World War II. In the pact, the two former enemies agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. -
September 1939
German forces broke through Polish defenses along the border and quickly advanced on Warsaw, the Polish capital. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish, fled the German advance hoping the Polish army could halt the German advance. -
September 1939
On September , 1939 German troops swarmed across the Polish border and unleashed the first Blitzkrieg the world had seen. Hitler had been planning his attack since March ever since German troops occupied the remainder of Czechslovakia. The Poles suspected as much and readied their defenses. Unfortunately the Poles based their defensive strategy on the experiences of World War I.
