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Japanese invasion of Manchuria
Ignoring the protests of more moderate Japanese officials, the militarists launched a surprise attack and seized control of the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1913. Within several months, Japanese troops controlled the entire province, a large region about twice the size of Texas, that was rich in natural resources. -
Mein Kampf
This book means "My Struggle." Hitler set forth beliefs of Nazism based on extreme nationalism. He wanted to unite all German-speaking people in a great German empire. -
Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany
At the end of WWI, he was a jobless soldier drifting around Germany. In 1919, he joined National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party), which had no ties to socialism. He proved to be such a powerful public speaker and organizer that he quickly became the party'e leader. He promised to bring Germany out of chaos. Nazism, the German brand of fascism, was based on extreme nationalism. He dreamed of uniting all German-speaking people in a great German empire. -
Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy
Fascism stressed nationalism and placed the interests of the state above those of individuals. To strengthen the nation, Fascists argued, power must rest with a single strong leader and a small group of devoted party members. -
Joseph Stalin's totalitarian government in the Soviet
Stalin focused on creating a model communist state. He made both industrial and agricultural growth the prime economic goals of the Soviet Union. He abolished all privately owned farms and replaced them with collectives - large government-owned farms, each worked by hundreds of families. Stalin moved to transform the Soviet Union from a backward rural nation into a great industrial power. He outlined the first of several "five-year plans," to direct the industrialization. -
Francisco Franco
General Franco led a group of Spanish army officers in 1936, which rebelled against the Spanish republic. Revolts broke out all over Spain, and the Spanish Civil War began. -
Storm troopers
Many men who were out of work joined Hitler's private army, the storm troopers (or Brown Shirts). The German people were desperate and turned to Hitler as their last hope. -
Third Reich
Once Hitler was appointed chancellor (prime minister), he quickly dismantled Germany's democratic Weimar Republic. In its place he established the Third Reich, or Third German Empire. According to Hitler, it would be a "Thousand-Year Reich," meaning it would last a hundred years. -
Hitler's military build-up in Germany
The failure of the League of Nations to take action against Japan did to escape the notice of Europe's dictators. In 1933, Hitler pulled Germany out of the league. In 1935, he began a military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia
Ethiopia was one of Africa's few remaining independent countries. By the fall of 1935, tens of thousands of Italian soldiers stood ready to advance on Ethiopia. The League of Nations reacted with brave talk of "collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression." By May 1936, Ethiopia had fallen. -
Hitler invades the Rhineland
In 1936, he sent troops into the Rhineland, a German region bordering France and Belgium that was demilitarized as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Rome-Berlin Axis
The Spanish Civil War forged a close relationship between he German and Italian dictators, who signed a formal alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. -
Hitler's Anschluss
On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria unopposed. A day later, Germany announced that its Anschluss, or "union," with Austria was complete. -
Munich Agreement
French premier Edouard Dallier and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot being fired on September 30, 1938. -
Nonaggression pact
As tensions rose over Poland, Stalin surprised everyone by signing a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Once bitter enemies, on August 23, 1939 fascist Germany and communist Russia now committed never to attack each other. Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a second, secret pact, agreeing to divide Poland between them. -
Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg was Germany's newest military strategy, or lightning war. It made use of advances in military technology - such as fast tanks and more powerful aircraft - to take the enemy by surprise and then quickly crush all opposition with overwhelming force. -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
On September 3, 1939, two days following the terror in Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Major fighting was over in three weeks, long before France, Britain, and their allies could mount a defense. -
Phony war
The blitzkrieg had given way to what the Germans called the sitzkrieg ("sitting war"), also referred to as the phony war. For the next several months after the fall of Poland, French and British troops on the Maginot Line, a system of fortifications built along France's eastern border, sat staring into Germany, waiting for something to happen. On the siegfried Line a few miles away German troops stared back. -
Hitler's invasion of Denmark and Norway
Suddenly, on April 9, 1940, Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway in order "to protect [those countries'] freedom and independence." But in truth, Hitler planned to build bases along the coasts to strike at Great Britain. -
Hitler's invasion of the Netherlands
After invaded Denmark and Norway, Hitler turned against the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony war had ended. -
The Battle of Britain
In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe began making bombing runs over Britain. Its goal was to gain total control of the skies by destroying Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF). The battle raged on through the summer and fall. Six weeks later, Hitler called off the invasion of Britain indefinitely. -
Germany and Italy's invasion of France
Hitler's generals sent their tanks through the Ardennes, avoiding British and French troops who thought the Ardennes were impassible. The Germans continued to march toward Paris. They trapped almost 400,000 British and French soldiers as they fled to the beaches of Dunkirk on the French side of the English Channel. Italy entered the war on the side of Germany and invaded France from the south as the Germans closed in on Paris from the north. -
Marshal Philippe Petain
Germans would occupy the northern part of France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, headed by Marshal Philippe Petain, would be set up at Vichy, in southern France. -
Lend-Lease Act
By late 1940, Britain had no more cash to spend in the arsenal of democracy. Roosevelt suggested a lend-lease policy, where the president would lend or lease arms and the supplies to any country whose defense was vital to the United States. Isolationists argued bitterly against the plan, but most Americans favored it, and Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. -
Pearl Harbor attack
The Japanese raided Pearl Harbor. These losses constitute grater damage than the U.S. Navy had suffered in all of WWI. By chance, three aircraft carriers at sea escaped the disaster. -
Battle of the Atlantic
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine raids against ships along America's east coast. The German aim in the Battle of the Atlantic was to prevent food and war materials from reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union. -
Battle of Stalingrad
In the summer of 1942, the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. He also wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River. By the end of September, they controlled nine-tenths of the city. The Soviets took winter as an opportunity and closed around Stalingrad, trapping the Germans. The Germans surrendered on Jan. 31, 1943. In defending Stalingrad, Soviets lost 1,100,000 soldiers. -
Manhattan Project
Because much of the research atomic bomb was performed at Columbia University in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project became the code name for research work that extended across the country. -
Office of Price Administration
Roosevelt responded to the threat of increases in prices by creating the Office of Price Administration (OPA). It fought inflation by freezing prices on most goods, and rationed foods, such as meat, butter, cheese vegetables, sugar, and coffee. -
Internment
General Delos Emmons forced to order the internment, or confinement, of 1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of Hawaii's Japanese-American population. -
Operation Torch
While the Battle of Stalingrad raged, Stalin pressured Britain and America to open a "second front" in Western Europe. Churchill and Roosevelt didn't think the Allies had enough troop to attempt an invasion on European soil. Instead, they launched Operation Torch, an invasion of Axis-controlled North Africa, commanded by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower. -
Women's Auxiliary Army Corps
The military's work force needs were so great that Army Chief of Staff General Marshall pushed for the formation of a Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). Under this bill, women volunteers would serve in noncombat positions. The law gave the WAACs an official status and salary but few of the benefits granted to male soldiers. The U.S. Army dropped the "auxiliary" status, and granted WACs full U.S. Army benefits. WACs worked as nurses, ambulance drivers, radio operators, electricians, and pilots. -
War Productions Board
Besides controlling the inflation, the government needed to ensure that the armed forces and war industries received the resources they needed to win the war. The War Production Board (WPB) assumed that responsibility. It decided which companies would convert from peacetime to wartime production and allocated raw materials to key industries. It also organized nationwide drives to collect scrap iron, tin cans, paper rags, and cooking fat for recycling into war goods. -
U.S. convoy system
The Allies responded by organizing there cargo ships into convoys. Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection, as they had done in WWI. They convoys we're escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater. They were also accompanied by airplanes that used radar to spot U-boats on the ocean's surface. -
Unconditional surrender
Even before the battle in North Africa was won, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their commanders met in Casablanca. At this meeting, the two leaders agreed to accept only the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. That is, enemy nations would have to accept whatever terms the peace the Allies dictated. -
Korematsu v. United States
In 1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. U.S., that the government's policy of evacuating Japanese Americans to camps was justified on the basis of "military necessity." -
Bloody Anzio
Bloody Anzio was one of the hardest battles the Allies encountered in Europe. It was fought less than 40 miles from Rome. It lasted four months and left 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis casualties. During the year after Anzio, German armies continued to put up strong resistance. The effort to free Italy did not succeed until 1945, when Germany itself was close to collapse. -
D-Day
The Allied invasion, code-named Operation Overlord, was originally set for June 5, but bad weather forced a delay. Banking on a forecast for clearing skies, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for D-Day - June 6, 1944, the first day of the invasion. -
The Battle of the Bulge
On December 16, 1944, under cover of dense fog, eight German take divisions broke through weak American defenses along an 80-mile front. Tanks drove 60 miles into Allied territory, creating a bulge in the lines that gave this desperate last-ditch offensive its name, the Battle of the Bulge. -
Harry S. Truman
Vice President Harry S. Truman became the nation's 33rd president after Roosevelt's death. -
Death of Hitler
On April 29, 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun, and he wrote out his last address to the German people. In it he blamed the Jews for starting the war and his generals for losing it. The next day Hitler shot himself while his new wife swallowed poison. The two bodies were carried outside, soaked with gasoline, and burned. -
V-E Day
A week later Hitler's death, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day - Victory in Europe Day. The war in Europe was finally over.
