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Mussolini Takes Power
In March 1919, Mussolini formed the Fascist Party, galvanising the support of many unemployed war veterans. He organised them into armed squads known as Black Shirts, who terrorised their political opponents. -
Joseph Stalin Rises in Russia
Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party -
Hitler publishes Mein Kampf
Hitler began composing his tome while sitting in Landsberg prison, convicted of treason for his role in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in which he and his minions attempted to stage a coup and grasp control of the government in Bavaria. -
FDR becomes president in the US
Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." -
Hitler leader of Germany
On this day in 1934, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, is also elected president of Germany in an unprecedented consolidation of power in the short history of the republic. -
Germany Invades Rhineland
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. -
Germany Invades Austria
Nineteen months would elapse from the day Hitler grabbed control of the German Army until the actual start of World War II. During those months, Hitler engaged in a kind of gangster diplomacy in which he bluffed, bullied, threatened, and lied to various European leaders in order to expand the borders of his Reich. -
Germany invades Poland
German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Great Britain/France declare war on Germany
In response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany. -
Battle of Britain
A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. -
Japan, Germany, Italy become the Axis
The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. -
Germany/Italy declare war on U.S.
US President Franklin Roosevelt announced America was at war with Japan, the third Axis power, following the surprise attack on its naval base at Pearl Harbor. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. -
U.S Declares war on Japan
As America’s Pacific fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt requests, and receives, a declaration of war against Japan. -
Internment of American Japanese
Many Americans worried that citizens of Japanese ancestry would act as spies or saboteurs for the Japanese government. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. -
Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in the south-western Soviet Union. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was the first time the British and Americans had jointly worked on an invasion plan together. -
North Africa Liberated
When Italy entered World War II in June 1940, the war quickly spread to North Africa, where her colony of Libya bordered the vital British protectorate of Egypt. -
Victory at guadalcanal
The landing at Guadalcanal was unopposed - but it took the Americans six months to defeat the Japanese in what was to turn into a classic battle of attrition. -
Battle of Tarawa
the U.S. began its Central Pacific Campaign against Japan by seizing the heavily fortified, Japanese-held island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. -
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord required the type of logistical issues that no army had ever had to cope with before and the plan was for the Allies to have landed a vast amount of both men and equipment by the end of D-Day itself. -
Battle of leyte Gulf
The Japanese sought to converge three naval forces on Leyte Gulf, and successfully diverted the U.S. Third Fleet with a decoy. -
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. -
Liberation of Auschwitz
Soldiers of the Soviet First Ukrainian Front fought their way to the gates of Auschwitz/Birkenau. They found just under 6,000 prisoners still alive in the camp. -
Iwo Jima captured
Even before ground operations to secure the Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian ended, U.S. Naval construction battalions were already clearing land for air bases suitable for the new B-29 “Superfortresses.” -
FDR Dies
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office -
Hitler Commits suicide
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his “1,000-year” Reich collapses above him. -
Germany Surrenders
This instrument of surrender was signed on May 7, 1945, at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims by Gen. Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German Army. -
V-E Day
German General Jodl signed the unconditional surrender document that formally ended war in Europe. -
Battle of Okinawa
Allied forces invade the island of Okinawa and engage the Japanese in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. -
Atomic Bomb: Hiroshima
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. -
Atomic Bomb: Nagasaki
a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan’s unconditional surrender. -
VJ
A video jockey is an announcer who introduces videos on commercial music television stations such as VH1 and MTV
