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Mussolini’s March on Rome
The insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy.The March marked the beginning of fascist rule and meant the doom of the preceding parliamentary regimes of socialists and liberals. -
Stalin becomes dictator of USSR
Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, Stalin became the dictator of the Soviet Union. Socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's dogma. -
Hitler writes Mein Kampf
It was his only complete book, and the work became the bible of National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany's Third Reich. It was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1927, and an abridged edition appeared in 1930. -
1st “five year plan” in USSR
The first five year plan was created in order to initiate rapid and large-scale industrialization across the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). -
Japan invades Manchuria
Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace. -
Holodomor
Also known as the Terror-Famine, was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.The famine was caused by a combination of a severe drought, chaotic implementation of forced collectivization of farms, and the food requisition program carried out by the Soviet authorities. -
Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany
When Hindenburg died, Hitler declared himself jointly president, chancellor and head of the army. Members of the armed forces had to swear a personal oath of allegiance not to Germany, but to Hitler. This formally made Hitler the absolute ruler of Germany. -
“Night of the Long Knives” in Germany
The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his July 13 speech to the Reichstag. -
Nuremburg Laws enacted
The Reich Citizenship Law
The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
These laws informally became known as the Nuremberg Laws or Nuremberg Race Laws. This is because they were first announced at a Nazi Party rally held in the German city of Nuremberg. -
Italian invasion of Ethiopia
The aim of invading Ethiopia was to boost Italian national prestige, which was wounded by Ethiopia's defeat of Italian forces at the Battle of Adowa in the nineteenth century (1896), which saved Ethiopia from Italian colonisation. -
The Great Purge and gulags
The Great Purge or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovschina, was Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938. -
Spanish civil war
The Spanish Civil War was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic. -
The Rape of Nanking
An episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Imperial Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing, at that time the capital of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. -
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. -
Nazi Germany invades Poland
Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe. German forces broke through Polish defenses along the border and quickly advanced on Warsaw, the Polish capital. -
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii.