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Paris Peace Conference
The "Big Four" came up with the Treaty of Versailles. -
Nine Power Treaty
The world’s largest naval powers gathered in Washington for a conference to discuss naval disarmament and ways to relieve growing tensions in East Asia. -
Mussolini takes over Italy's Government
Mussolini became Italy's leader and founded fascisim. -
Beer Hall Putsch
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempted coup d'état which came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement to outlaw war signed on August 27, 1928. Sometimes called the Pact of Paris for the city in which it was signed, the pact was one of many international efforts to prevent another World War, but it had little effect in stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II. -
U.S. Stock Market Crash
Also Known As The Great Wall Street Crash of 1929; Black Tuesday. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 devastated the economy and was a key factor in beginning the Great Depression. -
Japan Invades Manchuria
The Japanese were determined to extend their empire. They ruled in Korea, but they also controlled the Manchurian railway. In September 1931, they claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway, and attacked the Chinese army (which had just executed a Japanese spy). The Chinese army did not fight back because it knew that the Japanese were just wanting an excuse to invade Manchuria. -
Nazi's reach a political majority in Germany
This was mainly due to the fact that political opponents had been terrorised during the election campaign. -
Hitler becomes Germany's Chancellor
itler's meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people's frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty. A charismatic speaker, Hitler channeled popular discontent with the post-war Weimar government into support for his fledgling Nazi party -
Japan Withdraws from the League of Nations
The Japanese delegation, defying world opinion, withdrew from the League of Nations Assembly today after the assembly had adopted a report blaming Japan for events in Manchuria. -
First Anti-Semitic Law is passed in Germany
Antisemitism and the persecution of Jews were central tenets of Nazi ideology. In their 25-point party program published in 1920, Nazi party members publicly declared their intention to segregate Jews from “Aryan” society and to abrogate their political, legal, and civil rights. -
Hitler Purges Nazi opposition
Hitler had come to power in January 1933 and immediately started, piece by piece, tearing up the Weimar constitution, squashing opposition and ridding Germany of democracy. -
Hitler openly announces his defiance to the Treaty of Versailles
Adolf Hitler came to power with a fixed determination to extend Germany's borders to create Lebensraum (living space) for Germany. His immediate targets were Austria and Czechoslovakia, but his plans included conquest and occupation of Poland and the Soviet Union (now Russia). With these aims, and in breach of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler began in 1934 to build secretly a powerful war machine. -
Italy invades Ethiopia
An armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia’s subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers. Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was in 1934 one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. -
Hitler Militarizes the Rhineland
Hitler took what for him was a huge gamble - he ordered that his troops should openly re-enter the Rhineland thus breaking the terms of Versailles once again. He did order his generals that the military should retreat out of the Rhineland if the French showed the slightest hint of making a military stand against him. This did not occur. Over 32,000 soldiers and armed policemen crossed into the Rhineland -
Rome-Berlin Axis
The Italian invasion and annexation of Abyssinia had strained relations between Italy and its allies Britain and France, and Benito Mussolini finally repudiated Italy's alliance with them. Hitler then began planning to draw fascist Italy into an alliance with Nazi Germany. -
Germany Annexes Austria
German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. -
Hitler demands the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia
Leaders of Nazi Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy signed an agreement that allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia that was home to many ethnic Germans. -
Munich Conference
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Pact, which seals the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved "peace in our time." -
Soviet-Nazi Non-aggression pact
Representatives from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union met and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which guaranteed that the two countries would not attack each other. -
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Clloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union[1] and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939.[2] It was a non-aggression pact under which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany each pledged to remain neutral in the event that either nation were attacked by a third party. It remained in effect until 22 June 1 -
Nazi invasion of Poland
At 4:45 a.m., some 1.5 million German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with German-controlled territory. Simultaneously, the German Luftwaffe bombed Polish airfields, and German warships and U-boats attacked Polish naval forces in the Baltic Sea. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. On September 3, they declared war on Germany, initiating World War II. -
Battle of Britain
Churchill gave a rousing speech to the British people, announcing: "... the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin." Four days later, France surrendered to Germany and Hitler turned his attention to Britain. -
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.” -
Operation Barbarossa
Barbarossa the largest military attack of World War Two and was to have appalling consequences for the Russian people. Operation Barbarossa was based on a massive attack based on blitzkrieg. Hitler had said of such an attack that. -
Pearl Harbor Bombing
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. -
Doolittle Raid
The April 1942 air attack on Japan, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet and led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, was the most daring operation yet undertaken by the United States in the young Pacific War. Though conceived as a diversion that would also boost American and allied morale, the raid generated strategic benefits that far outweighed its limited goals. -
Battle of Midway
At 10.26am on 4 June 1942 the course of World War Two in the Pacific changed utterly. At that moment 37 Douglas Dauntless bombers from the USS Enterprise peeled off into a dive attack on two Japanese aircraft carriers. Within minutes both ships were ablaze, their death throes punctuated by the explosion of fuel lines, badly stowed ordnance and aircraft petrol tanks. Within six hours the other two carriers in their fleet had also been destroyed. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Russians consider it to be the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles in history. -
D-Day and Operation Overlord
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. Codenamed Operation Overlord, 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. -
Operation Valkyrie
On July 20, 1944, during World War II (1939-45), a plot by senior-level German military officials to murder Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and then take control of his government failed when a bomb planted in a briefcase went off but did not kill the Nazi leader. -
Battle of the Bulge
In late 1944, in the wake of the allied forces' successful D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, it seemed as if the Second World War was all but over. But on December 16, with the onset of winter, the German army launched a counteroffensive that was intended to cut through the Allied forces in a manner that would turn the tide of the war in Hitler's favor. The battle that ensued is known historically as The Battle of the Bulge. The courage and fortitude of the American Soldier was tested against -
Adolf Hitler commits suicide
, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a "1,000-year" Reich. -
V-E Day
On Mar. 7, 1945, the Western Allies—whose chief commanders in the field were Omar N. Bradley and Bernard Law Montgomery—crossed the Rhine after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line and overran West Germany. German collapse came after the meeting (Apr. 25) of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev. -
Little Boy Dropped
American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. -
Fat Man Dropped
On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. -
V-J Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. -
Nuremberg Trials
The Holocaust was an unprecedented crime—a crime composed of millions of murders, wrongful imprisonments, and tortures, of rape, theft, and destruction. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the world was faced with a challenge—how to seek justice for an almost unimaginable scale of criminal behavior. -
Japanese War Crime Trials
In Tokyo, Japan, the International Military Tribunals for the Far East begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II.
