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Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini ordered the Italian army to invade Ethiopia in 1935
The first act of European aggression was not committed by Nazi Germany. The League of Nations refused to act, despite the desperate pleas from Ethiopia's leader Haile Selassie. -
The Neutrality Act
Prohibited the shipping of arms to nations at war, including the victims of aggression. This would reduce the possibility of maritime attacks on American vessels. -
Hitler marched troops into the Rhineland of Germany
Hitler directly breached the Treaty of Versailles -
The Neutrality Act
Renewed the law of the previous year with the additional restrictions — no loans could be made to belligerent nations. -
The Neutrality Act
limited the trade of even non-munitions to belligerent nations to a "cash and carry basis." -
Quarantine Speech
In Chicago for the first time, Roosevelt advocated collective action to stop the epidemic aggression. But his hopes of igniting American sensibilities failed. Even when a Japanese plane bombed the USS panay on December 12, there was no cry for a response. -
Skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops
Broke out at Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing.The cause of the fracas is unknown, but the Japanese government used it as a pretext to launch a full-scale invasion of China. Hoping to deliver a quick knockout punch, the Japanese furiously bombed Chinese cities and advanced with their better-equipped army. -
Nonaggression Pact
Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed to put their mutual hatred aside. Germany and the Soviet Union signed a ten-year Nonaggression Pact. Hitler was now free to seize the territory Germany had lost to Poland as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Nazi Troops
Nazi troops crossed into Poland from the west. -
WW2
France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.