-
Period: to
World War II
-
Adolf Hitler became chancellor (head of state)
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Upon taking office Hitler immediately began accumulating power and changing the nature of the Chancellorship. -
Adolf Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty
From 1934-1937 Hitler did many things to violate the Versailles Treaty. The first thing he did to violate the treay was order the army to be tripled in size, from the 100,000 man Versailles Treaty limit, to 300,000 men. -
Munich Conference, Appeasement
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. -
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, was a series of coordinated deadly attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and non-Jewish civilians. -
Nazi-Soviet Pact
On August 23, 1939, Hitler made the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin - a promise not to go to war with each other and (secretly) a promise to invade Poland and split it between them. -
World War II begins
When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, other European countries felt they had to act. The result was six long years of World War II. -
Blitzkrieg
A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery. -
French Surrendered
On June 17 Marshall Petain announces in a broadcast to the French people that “It is with a heavy heart that I tell you today that we must stop fighting.” The French government calls on the Germans for an armistice that will end the fighting. -
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. -
Lend Lease Act
Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.”
Lend Lease - he material and services supplied by the U.S. to its allies during World War II -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the name given to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941. Barbarossa the largest military attack of World War Two and was to have appalling consequences for the Russian people. -
The "Final Solution"
The Nazis used the term “Final Solution” to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people. The genocide, or mass destruction, of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of increasingly severe discriminatory measures. -
Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued on August 14, 1941 that, early in World War II, defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by the leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies of World War II. -
The Japanese Attack 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, in the United States Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway, fought in June 1942, must be considered one of the most decisive battles of World War Two. The Battle of Midway effectively destroyed Japan’s naval strength when the Americans destroyed four of its aircraft carriers. Japan’s navy never recovered from its mauling at Midway and it was on the defensive after this battle.
Island Hopping - the phrase given to the strategy employed by the United States to gain military bases and secure the many small islands in the Pacific. -
Battle of 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 Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch was the name given to the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942. Operation Torch was the first time the British and Americans had jointly worked on an invasion plan together. -
D-Day
During World War II the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. The battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. -
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. -
Fall of Berlin (German Surrender)
Due to the failure of Nazi troops in Berlin and elsewhere, Dönitz and his fellow negotiators lost any leverage in asking for certain conditions in regard to the surrender. Dönitz therefore decided on May 7 to give in to Allied demands of unconditional surrender. -
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
United Nations
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization established October 24, 1945 to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was created following the Second World War to prevent another such conflict.
Big Three - Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin; U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
