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Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. Later in 1934, he was the director of Nazi Germany and transformed Germany into a totalitarian state.
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After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he anointed himself Führer in 1934. He united the presidency and chancellorship under the Führer. He was able to do this because of the death of president Hindenburg on the very same day he became Führer.
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Spain collapsed into civil war and it drew other European powers into the fighting.
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Benito Mussolini declared on 1 November 1936 that all other European countries would from then on rotate on the Rome–Berlin axis, thus creating the term "Axis".
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The triggering of the full-scale war with China that lasted until 1945 began with an obscure clash involving a Japanese unit on night manoeuvres near the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Beijing on the night of 7–8 July 1937.
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German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the German annexation of Sudetenland as outlined by the Munich Agreement. Adolf Hitler justified the invasion by the purported suffering of the ethnic Germans living in these regions.
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German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany.
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United States declared its neutrality
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Hitler announced a nonaggression pact with his biggest enemy, Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator.
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On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.
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The Soviet Union invades Finland, initiating the so-called Winter War. The Finns sue for an armistice and have to cede the northern shores of Lake Lagoda and the small Finnish coastline on the Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union.
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German forces surprised the French and British by attacking through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, an area that was considered invasion proof.
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Hitler forced the French to sign the surrender documents. Hitler insisted on the armistice being signed in the Compiegne Forest, where, in a railroad dining car, 22 years earlier Germany had been forced to sign the armistice ending World War I
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This caused the Greco-Italian War
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The Lend-Lease Act stated that the U.S. government could lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed vital to the defense of the United States. The United States was able to supply military aid to its foreign allies during World War II while still remaining neutral in the conflict. Most importantly, passage of the Lend-Lease Act enabled a struggling Great Britain to continue fighting against Germany virtually on its own until the United States entered World War II late in 1941.
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Nazi Germany and its Axis partners invade the Soviet Union. Finland, seeking redress for the territorial losses in the armistice concluding the Winter War, joins the Axis just before the invasion. The Germans quickly overrun the Baltic States and, joined by the Finns, lay siege to Leningrad by September. The Germans capture Smolensk in early August and drive on Moscow by October. In the south, German and Romanian troops capture Kiev in September and capture Rostov in November.
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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, preemptive 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, just before 08:00, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.
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Italy declared war on the United States in response to the latter's declaration of war upon the Empire of Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor four days earlier. Germany also declared war on the U.S. the same day.
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The Battle of the Coral Sea was fought from 4 May – 8 May 1942. It was a major naval battle fought, about 500 miles northeast of Australia, between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States and Australia
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The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea
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President Roosevelt responded to reports of Jewish genocide by establishing the War Refugee Board
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The battle D-Day, was 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. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. By late August, all of northern France had been liberated, by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.
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Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin planned for the final stages of the war and for post-war Europe
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U.S. forces freed more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald.
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As Soviet forces stormed Berlin, Hitler made plans for his suicide, including testing SS-supplied cyanide pills on his Alsatian, Blondi, and dictating a final will and testament. Late on April 30, the bodies of Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, were found in the bunker, with a bullet hole in Hitler’s temple.
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The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms. Both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine.
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The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people.
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Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II.
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Ending all hostilities from the war. The Surrender of Japan became official when the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Second World War ended after six years and one day.
