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The Great Depression
October 23rd, 1929- Decline of the stock market
October 29th, 1929- Stock Market Crash, Black Tuesday
Depression was throughout the 1930s. The rise and the fall of the dictator’s power were caused by the unresolved by WWI. Japan and Italy were not pleased with the treaties that followed the war, but Germany was most severely impacted. Benito Mussolini was the leader in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany, Joseph Stalin in Italy, and Hideki Tojo in Japan. Europeans turned to the new leaders to solve -
Japan Conquers Manchuria in Northern China
By the end of the year had occupied the whole of the province -
Roosevelt First Elected President
March 4th, 1933 was when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president. With help from congress, he set to work immediately.
November 8th was when he was first elected -
Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
He becomes chancellor of Germany in 1932, after the election. There was a power struggle, which ended by President Hindenburg asking Hitler to be chancellor. He then overthrew the constitution and took control of the government. -
Nuremberg Laws
September 15th, 1935, they were the laws that excluded German-Jews from Reich citizenship. It prohibited them from most political rights. -
Hitler & Mussolini form the Rome-Berlin Axis
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Japan invades China
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Germany invades Austria
March 12th, 1938- Austria was home to mostly German-speaking people; many Germany and Austria residents welcomed the unification. Germany took over Austria and moved on to a region in Czechoslovakia. -
Britain’s Appeasement of Germany
September 29th, 1938, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlin, met Hitler in Munich, Germany. The reached an agreement that Germany would gain control of the Sudetenland if Hitler stopped seeking more territory. This was to meet Germany’s demands in order to avoid war. Hitler ended up breaking his promise, just as Winston Churchill had warned Chamberlin. -
Kristallnacht
November 9-10th, 1938, refers to the wave of violent, anti-Jewish pogroms. This was throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in the areas of Sudetenland recently occupied by German troops. -
Germany & Soviet Union have a nonaggression pact
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Germany Invades Poland
September 1st, 1939, Germany invaded Poland after signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939. Two days after Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, which was the start of WWII. -
Germany invades Denmark, Norway
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Germany invades Belgium, and France (Vichy France)
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German air force (Luftwaffe) bombs London and other civilian targets in the Battle of Britain
summer and fall -
Japan Joins the Axis Powers
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Lend-Lease Act
January 10th, 1941, Roosevelt supported this act. It allowed the U.S. to lend or lease resources and equipment to the Allies. This led the United States to send about $50 billion worth of goods to Great Britain, the Soviet Union and other Allies. -
Germany invades the Soviet Union
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Manhattan Project
Set up project in 1941 and in 1942, the project was funding. a bomb was built as a top-secret program and the project team worked for three years to build this weapon. Tis was led by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. -
Pearl Harbor
December 7th, 1941, Japanese war planes bombed Pearl Harbor, a huge American naval base. It came as a surprise to the Americans, and about 2,400 servicemen and civilians died. Warplanes and ships were destroyed or damaged and it left the U.S. fleet devastated. This led FDR to ask congress to declare war on Japan. -
The Nazis implement the “Final Solution”
December 8th, 1941, Nazi leaders set out to murder every Jew under German rule. To accomplish this, the Germans built huge facilities known as concentration camps. There, the officials crammed the Jews into railroad boxcars and sent them to the camps. They forced able-bodied people to work, and all others were slaughtered. -
Tuskegee Airmen
December 27th, 1941, the African American served in segregated units because of racial prejudice, but the served with honor in North Africa and Europe. This date is when the 100th Pursuit Squadron was constituted. -
Japanese-American Incarceration
February 1942 is when President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order that allowed for the removal of Japanese and Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast. They were forced to sell their homes and possessions, leave their jobs and move to prison-like camps. -
Bataan Death March
April 10th, 1942, more than 70,000 Filipino and American troops surrendered to the Japanese on the Japanese Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. Then, the Japanese marched these soldiers marched the soldiers over 65 miles to a prison camp and about 10,000 prisoners dies from shootings, beatings and starvations along the way. -
Battle of Midway
June 4th, 1942, the U.S. navy and the Japanese clashed for a second time off the island of Midway in the central Pacific. There were at least 250 planes and 4 Japanese carriers destroyed by the U.S., but the Japanese only destroyed about 150 planes and one carrier from the U.S. This was the turning point of the war. -
Guadalcanal
August 7th, 1942, the American troops made their first major land victory on the island of Guadalcanal. There was bitter fighting for 6 months and the Americans finally won in February, 1942. -
British forces stop the German advance at El Alamein
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German forces surrender at Stalingrad
September 1942, German forces attacked the Russian city of Stalingrad. The Soviet army defended the city. The weather got very cold as winter came, and a German commander begged Hitler to retreat, but he refused. They fought through the winter, and then the soviet troops drove tanks and launched a massive counterattack. That trapped the Germans and cut off their food and supplies. This caused many of the Germans to freeze and starve to death. On February 1st, 1943, the remaining German troops su -
Rosie the Riveter
May 29th, 1943, Rosie the Riveter was an image of a strong woman working at an arms factory, and it was a symbol for the women that were now a new group of wage earners. By 1945, the number of woman working grew to more than 19 million, and around 30 percent of that was of the work force. Also, more than 300,000 women served in the U.S. armed forces. -
D-Day
June 6th, 1944, the allies were planning to invade France. Allied paratroopers and glider-borne forces landed behind the German lines In Normandy which is a region in France. In early morning, more than 5,000 ships and landing craft carried more than 150,000 American, British and Canadian soldiers across the Channel to Normandy. This was the largest land-sea-air operation in history. The size and location surprised the German forces, but more than 10,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded -
Battle of the Bulge
December 16th, 1944, Hitler launched a final assault. The German troops pushed back allied forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg before U.S. forces regrouped and defeated them. There were about 120,000 German casualties and about 80,000 American casualties. -
Yalta Conference
February 4th, 1945, The “Big Three” met in the Soviet resort in Yalta. This was Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. These leaders made plans for the end of the war and the future of Europe. They also agreed to establish a postwar international peace-keeping organization, and they discussed the type of governments that would be set up in Eastern Europe after the war. -
Iwo Jima
February 19th, 1945, U.S. marines invaded Iwo Jima. The American soldiers planted the U.S. flag at the top of Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, signaling their victory, even while they continued to fight several days afterward. -
Okinawa
April 1st, 1945, The U.S. troops invaded Okinawa. In the several months it took the U.S. Marines to conquer both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, more than 18,000 U.S. men died and over 120,000 Japanese men died. -
Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes president
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Formation of United Nations
April 25, 1945- 50 nations met in San Francisco to discuss a new peacekeeping organization to replace the weak and ineffective League of Nations
June 26, 1945- all 50 nations ratifies the charter, creating a new international peacekeeping body known as the United Nations
President Roosevelt had urged Americans not to turn their backs on the world again
Unlike the League of Nations, the United States is a member of the United Nations -
Allied forces advance on Berlin, Germany surrenders
On April 30th, Adolf Hitler committed suicide inside his air-raid bunker. May 2nd, 1945, the Soviet Army captured Berlin. Five days later, the German leaders officially signed an unconditional surrender. The next day was considered V-E Day, or victory in Europe day. The war in Europe was over. -
Potsdam Conference
July 17th- August 2nd, 1945
Allies held the Potsdam Conference to plan the war's end, decision was made to put Nazi war criminals on trial -
Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki
August 6th, 1945 is when the atomic bomb was dropped on the industrial city of Hiroshima. The explosion killed more than 75,000 people and turned five square miles into a wasteland. The Japanese did not surrender, so the U.S. dropped another bomb on August 9th in Nagasaki, killing another 40,000. -
Japanese officials sign an official letter of surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri, ending World War II
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Nuremberg Trials
Nov 20th 1945- October 1st, 1946
24 defendants, including some of Hitler's top officials
Hermann Goering-creator and head of Gestapo (secret police)
Charged with crimes against humanity
19 found guilty, 12 sentenced to death
People are responsible for their actions, even in wartime -
Marshall Plan
Congress approved Secretary of State George Matshall's plan to help boost European economies
The U.S. gave more than $13 billion to help the nations of Europe get back on their feet
