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1921, Jan. 30 Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the Nazi Party
Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi Party. At this time, hitler sent two truckloads of people to hold swastikas to spread the word about the Nazis. This was their first tactic to gain attention and to have people become supporters -
1922 Benito Mussolini appointed Prime Minister of Italy
Benito Mussolini was elected into power in 1922, The exact date of his elected is unclear -
1929 Josef Stalin sole dictator of the Soviet Union (USSR)
Josef Stalin Became the dictator of the Soviet Union (USSR) back in 1929 and turn the society in an industrial and military society while in power -
1931 Japanese Army seizes Manchuria, China
This started in the 18th of September of 1931 when the Kwantung Army of The Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria. -
1933, March 21 - Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany
On this day in 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. -
1935 Italian Army invaded Ethiopia in Africa
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war that started in October 1935, after a battle on 5 December 1934, and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known at the time as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia. -
1935 Neutrality Acts passed by US Congress
The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts. -
1935 Neutrality Acts passed by US Congress
On August 31, 1935, Congress passed the first Neutrality Act prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” from the United States to foreign nations at war and requiring arms manufacturers in the United States to apply for an export license. -
1936 Militarist take control of Japanese Government
While Japan was giving the appearance of being a good neighbour in the western Pacific during the 1920s by involvement in treaties designed to preserve peace, extremist elements in Japan's government, military and civilian population had privately never renounced the use of force to expand Japan's territory. Towards the end of the 1920s a combination of economic, social, and political factors played into the hands of the militarists. -
1936 Hitler sends troops into Rhineland of Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty
The remilitarization of the Rhineland by the German Army took place on 7 March 1936 when German military forces entered the Rhineland. This was significant because it violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region. -
1937 Japan’s army pillages Nanjing, China; massacre a quarter of a million people.
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 300,000 -
1938 Munich Pact signed giving the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany
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 signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. -
1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact signed by Hitler and Stalin
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi–Soviet Pact or the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact (officially: Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, respectively. -
1938 Nazis begin rounding up Jews for labor camps
In October 26, 1939, Jews are rounded up to be put in labor camps -
1940 May 10 Nazis invade Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium – take control
The campaign against the Low Countries and France lasted less than six weeks. Germany attacked in the west on May 10, 1940. Initially, British and French commanders had believed that German forces would attack through central Belgium as they had in World War I, and rushed forces to the Franco-Belgian border to meet the German attack. The main German attack however, went through the Ardennes Forest in southeastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. -
1940 June 14 - 22 Germany invades France and forces it to surrender
Belgium and the Netherlands surrendered in May. More than 300,000 French and British troops were evacuated from the beaches near Dunkirk (Dunkerque) across the English Channel to Great Britain. Paris, the French capital, fell to the Germans on June 14, 1940. -
1940 July 10 Battle of Britain begins – Royal Air Force defeats German Air Force to prevent invasion of their island
The Battle of Britain was a combat of the Second World War, when the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against the German Air Force attacks from the end of June 1940. It is described as the first major campaign fought entirely by air forces. The British officially recognise its duration as from 10 July until 31 October 1940, which overlaps with the period of large-scale night attacks known as the Blitz, while German historians do not accept this subdivision -
1940 Sept 16 - First time Peacetime Draft in US
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, enacted September 16, 1940, was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. This Selective Service Act required that men who had reached their 21st birthday but had not yet reached their 36th birthday register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men from their 18th birthday until the day before their 45th birthday were made subject to military service. -
1941 Hitler breaks Pact with Stalin’s Russia and invades - USSR which now joins England in fighting the Germans
German–Soviet Union relations date to the aftermath of the First World War. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by Germany ended hostilities between Russia and Germany; it was signed on March 3, 1918. A few months later, the German ambassador to Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach, was shot dead by Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in an attempt to incite a new war between Russia and Germany. The entire Soviet embassy under Adolph Joffe was deported from Germany on November 6, 1918. -
1941 Churchill and FDR issue the Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration released by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 following a meeting of the two heads of state in Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter provided a broad statement of U.S. and British war aims. -
1941 Japanese invade French Indochina (Viet. Laos, Cambodia)
In September 1940, the Japanese invaded Vichy French Indochina to prevent the Republic of China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina along the Sino-Vietnamese Railway, from the port of Haiphong through Hanoi to Kunming in Yunnan. The fighting, which lasted several days before the French authorities reached an agreement with the Japanese, took place in the context of the ongoing Sino-Japanese War and World War II. -
1941, Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor in Hawaii attacked by Japanese Naval and Air forces, US declares war on Japan, Germany and Italy declare war on the US - Dec. 9
The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
1942 Philippines fall to Japanese – Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. -
1942 Japanese Americans interned in isolated camps
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. -
1942, June 4-7 Battle of Midway, turning point of war in the Pacific
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll. -
1942 Russians stop Nazi advance at Stalingrad save Moscow
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of USSR and the largest Soviet city. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union. -
1943 British and US forces defeat German and Italian armies in North Africa
The North African Campaign of the Second World War took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940 to 13 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts (Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War) and in Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) and Tunisia (Tunisia Campaign). -
1943 Zoot Suit Riots – Los Angeles, CA
The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of racist attacks in June 1943 in Los Angeles, California, United States, between Mexican American youths and European American servicemen stationed in Southern California. -
1943 July - Italy surrenders, Mussolini dismissed as Prime Min.
On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. In late April 1945, He was captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian Communists. His body was then taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his demise. -
1944 June 6 - D-Day invasion of France at Normandy by Allies
The Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. -
1944 Aug. - Paris retaken by Allies Forces
The Liberation of Paris (also known as the Battle for Paris) was a military action that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been ruled by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice on 22 June 1940, after which the Wehrmacht occupied northern and western France. -
1944 Dec. Battle of the Bulge – last offensive of German Forces
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, on the Western Front, towards the end of World War II, in the European theatre. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. -
1945 Jan. – US forces return to recapture the Philippines
The Philippines campaign, the Battle of the Philippines or the Liberation of the Philippines (Filipino: Kampanya ng Pilipinas, Labanan sa Pilipinas & Pagpapalaya sa Pilipinas) (Operation Musketeer I, II, and III) (Filipino: Oplan Mosketero I, II, and III) was the American and Filipino campaign to defeat and expel the Imperial Japanese forces occupying the Philippines, during World War II. The Japanese Army overran all of the Philippines during the first half of 1942. -
1945 April 16th - FDR dies, Harry S. Truman becomes President
On this day in 1945, 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. -
1945 May 8th - V-E Day, war ends in Europe
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe. -
1945 Aug. - First Atomic Bombs dropped
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
1945 Aug. 14th – V-J Day, Japan surrenders to Allied Forces
On this day in 1945, an official announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is made public to the Japanese people. -
1946 War Crimes Trials held in Nuremberg, Germany; Manila, Philippines and Tokyo, Japan.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Trials or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of war crimes. "Class A" crimes were reserved for those who participated in a joint conspiracy to start and wage war, and were brought against those in the highest decision-making bodies; "Class B" crimes were reserved for those who committed "conventional" atrocities or crimes.
