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In 1935, Mussolini successfully invaded Ethiopia. When he spoke at a victory rally in front of 400,000 spectators in Rome’s Piazza Venetia, he proclaimed that the Ethiopian invasion marked the beginning of an Italian Empire and the rebirth of Roman glory.
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1936 to 1939: A military rising originating in Morocco, headed by General Francisco Franco, spreads rapidly all over the country, thus starting the Spanish Civil War. After a number of bloody battles in which fortunes changed from one side to the other, the 'nacionales' finally prevailed and made a victorious entry into Madrid (March 28th, 1939).
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between 250,000 and 300,000 people were killed, many of them women and children. The number of women raped was said by Westerners who were there to be 20,000, and there were widespread accounts of civilians being hacked to death.
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The successful annexation of Austria fueled Adolf Hitler's ambition, and he looked on to the German-populated regions of Czechoslovakia, collectively named Sudetenland. As early as 1933, Nazi Party members such as Konrad Henlein had already infiltrated the political scene in Czechoslovakia, stirring trouble
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When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees fled the advancing German army into eastern Poland, hoping that the Polish army would halt the German advance in the west. Many of the refugees fled without a specific destination in mind.
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On September 3, 1939 German troops swarmed across the Polish border and unleashed the first Blitzkrieg the world had seen. Hitler had been planning his attack since March - ever since German troops occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
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Although the aerial attack was very successful, the submarines failed to finish off any wounded ship inside the harbour. The attack's success surprised the Japanese as much as the Americans. The last part of the decoded Japanese message stated that U.S. relations were to be severed.
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El Alamein is 150 miles west of Cairo. By the summer of 1942, the Allies were in trouble throughout Europe. The attack on Russia - Operation Barbarossa - had pushed the Russians back; U-boats were having a major effect on Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic and western Europe seemed to be fully in the control of the Germans.
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