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Declarations of War
Germany declares war on Russia, France, and Belgium. Britain declares war on Germany. Austria declares war on Russia. Montenegro declares war on Austria. France declares war on Austria. Britain declares war on Austria. Montenegro declares war on Germany. Japan declares war on Germany. Austria declares war on Belgium. -
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WW1
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, are assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo.
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World War I begins when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.
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First Battle of the Marne begins.
The Germans had advanced to within 30 miles of Paris, but over the next two days, the French are reinforced by 6,000 infantrymen who are transported to the front by hundreds of taxis. The Germans dig in north of the Aisne River, and the trench warfare that is to typify the Western Front for the next four years begins. -
Britain and France declare war on the Ottoman Empire.
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The Second Battle of Ypres begins
The German army initiates the modern era of chemical warfare by launching a chlorine attack on Allied trenches. Some 5,000 French and Algerian troops are killed. By war’s end, both sides have used massive quantities of chemical weapons, causing an estimated 1,300,000 casualties, including 91,000 fatalities. -
Landings begin on the Gallipoli Peninsula at Cape Helles (British 29th and Royal Naval divisions) and at ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Cove
The attempt to force the Dardanelles and capture the Ottoman capital at Constantinople (now Istanbul) is a disaster almost from the outset. Altogether, the Allies suffered more than 200,000 casualties during the subsequent nine-month campaign. The failed offensive becomes the war’s signal event for Australian and New Zealand troops and eventually leads to the collapse of the British government. -
The British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed by a German U-boat
The British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed by a German U-boat off the southern coast of Ireland. It sinks in just 18 minutes, and nearly 1,200 people are killed, including 128 U.S. citizens. The ship had been carrying over 170 tons of rifle ammunition and artillery shells, and Germany felt fully justified in treating the Lusitania as a legitimate target in a declared war zone. -
The Battle of Verdun begins.
Over the next 10 months, the French and German armies at Verdun, France, suffer over 700,000 casualties, including some 300,000 killed. By the battle’s conclusion, entire French villages had been wiped from the map; they were subsequently memorialized as having “died for France.” More than a century after the battle’s conclusion, over 10 million shells remained in the soil around Verdun, and bomb-clearing units continued to remove some 40 tons of unexploded munitions from the area annually. -
The British and German fleets meet 60 miles off the coast of Jutland, Denmark
In the war’s only major encounter between the world’s two largest sea powers. Although a naval arms race between Britain and Germany had been one of the causes of World War I, the clash of the battleships is largely indecisive. -
The First Battle of the Somme begins.
The British offensive is intended to draw German attention from Verdun, and in that regard only could it be considered a success. The nearly 20,000 killed in action on July 1 marks the single bloodiest day in the history of the British army. By the time the Somme campaign ground to a halt some four and a half months later, the combined casualties of both sides topped -
Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne
After a week of riots in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne. The Russian Revolution saw the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and, ultimately, the rise to power of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. -
The United States declares war on Germany.
In his address to Congress four days earlier, U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson had cited Germany’s practice of unrestricted submarine warfare and the “Zimmermann Telegram” as key reasons behind the abandonment of his long-standing policy of neutrality. -
A British offensive at Cambrai, France
This marks the first large-scale use of tanks in combat. Attacking with complete surprise, the British tanks ripped through German defenses in depth and took some 7,500 prisoners at low cost in casualties. Bad weather intervened, however, and adequate infantry reinforcements were not available to capitalize on the breakthrough. Within two weeks the British had been driven back almost to their original positions. -
United Kingdom: Women granted the right to vote
The law said that women over the age of 30 who occupied a house (or were married to someone who did) could now vote. This meant 8.5 million women now had their say over who was in Parliament - about 2 in every 5 women in the UK.
It also said that all men over the age of 21 could vote - regardless of whether or not they owned property - and men in the armed forces could vote from the age of 19. The number of men who could now vote went from 8 million to 21 million. -
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League of Nations
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Origins of League of Nations
The League of Nations has its origins in the Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson, part of a presentation given in 1918 outlining of his ideas for peace after the carnage of World War I. Wilson envisioned an organization that was charged with resolving conflicts before they exploded into bloodshed and warfare. -
Soviet government concludes a separate peace with the Central Powers
After months of delays, the Soviet government concludes a separate peace with the Central Powers when it accepts the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia surrenders its claim to Ukraine, to its Polish and Baltic territories, and to Finland. -
Germany and the Allies conclude an armistice based largely on Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
the threat of revolution grips German industrial centers and Allied armies on the verge of flanking the entire German defensive line, the ability of Germany to continue the war seemed doubtful, group of hard-core militarists, led by Erich Ludendorff, would perpetuate the “stabbed in the back” myth, claiming that Germany had been betrayed by its politicians and that the German military had been unbeaten in the field. This sentiment would help the ascent of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933. -
League of Nations: Henry Cabot Lodge
Republican Congressman from Massachusetts Henry Cabot Lodge led a battle against the treaty. Lodge believed both the treaty and the League undercut U.S. autonomy in international matters.
In response, Wilson took the debate to the American people, embarking on a 27-day train journey to sell the treaty to live audiences but cut his tour short due to exhaustion and sickness. Upon arriving back in Washington, D.C., Wilson had a stroke. -
League of Nations: US Ratification
Congress did not ratify the treaty, and the United States refused to take part in the League of Nations. Isolationists in Congress feared it would draw the United Sates into international affairs unnecessarily. The League began organizational work in the fall of 1919, spending its first 10 months with a headquarters in London before moving to Geneva. -
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Treaty of Versailles
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Treaty was drafted
The treaty was drafted in the spring of 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference. The conference was dominated by the national leaders known as the “Big Four”—David Lloyd George, the prime minister of the United Kingdom; Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France; Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States; and Vittorio Orlando, the prime minister of Italy. -
Treaty of Versailles
The peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919 -
US: The 1920's: Triple the number of passenger cars
The decade saw the number of passenger cars more than triple, which in turn stimulated the expansion of transportation infrastructure and the oil and gas industries. -
Germany: Goldene Zwanziger Jahre
In Germany’s Weimar Republic, which produced an explosion of intellectual and artistic activity, they were the “Goldene Zwanziger Jahre” (“Golden Twenties”). -
Europe: Les Années Folles
Although postwar economic conditions were less robust in western Europe than in the United States, the social and cultural milieus were similarly dynamic. In France the 1920s were known as “Les Années Folles” (“The Crazy Years”). -
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The Roaring Twenties
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Treaty of Versailles takes effect.
It took force on January 10, 1920 -
League of Nations: The Covenant of the League of Nations
In 1919 the structure and process of the League were laid out in a covenant developed by all the countries taking part in the Paris Peace Conference. The League began organizational work in the fall of 1919, spending its first 10 months with a headquarters in London before moving to Geneva.
The Covenant of the League of Nations went into effect on January 10, 1920, formally instituting the League of Nations. By 1920, 48 countries had joined. -
US: The 1920's: White women granted the right to vote
Nineteenth Amendment, amendment (1920) to the Constitution of the United States that officially extended the right to vote to women. -
US: The 1920's: Jazz Music
In a rapidly modernizing world, young people guided creative movements that often defied convention. Jazz music, which had developed into an exciting style defined by improvisation and swinging rhythms, became the dominant sound of the new generation. -
US: The 1920's: Households with Electricity
The portion of U.S. households with electricity rose from 12 percent in 1916 to 63 percent in 1927, and its widening use in factories led to increased productivity. -
US: The 1920's: Movies as a passtime
As labour-saving technologies created more opportunities for leisure, a plethora of popular entertainment arose from new media. Moviegoing became an American pastime, especially after the emergence of “talkies.” By the decade’s end, 80 million people flocked to cinemas weekly, with radio and magazines boosting interest in the stars on the screen. -
United States: The Great Depression began in the United States
The Great Depression began in the United States as an ordinary recession in the summer of 1929 -
The Great Depression: German's decline
Germany’s economy slipped into a downturn early in 1928 and then stabilized before turning down again in the third quarter of 1929. The decline in German industrial production was roughly equal to that in the United States. -
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The Great Depression
It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. -
The Great Depression: the Great Crash of 1929
Panic selling began on “Black Thursday,” October 24, 1929. Many stocks had been purchased on margin—that is, using loans secured by only a small fraction of the stocks’ value. As a result, the price declines forced some investors to liquidate their holdings, thus exacerbating the fall in prices. Between their peak in September and their low in November, U.S. stock prices (measured by the Cowles Index) declined 33 percent. -
The Great Depression: Great Britain slips into severe depression
Great Britain struggled with low growth and recession during most of the second half of the 1920s. The country did not slip into severe depression, however, until early 1930, and its peak-to-trough decline in industrial production was roughly one-third that of the United States -
Japan invades Manchuria
The Great Depression added to the rise of Japanese militarism, economic hardship led to growing support for military/nationalists who wanted Japan to gain colonies for raw materials, export markets. Japan’s military soon had more power than its civilian government. The Japanese prime minister opposed an aggressive foreign policy in 1930, was shot by an extreme nationalist. In 1931 an explosion on the Japanese-owned South Manchurian railway line was the premise for an invasion of Manchuria. -
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WWII
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Australia's Height of the Great Depression
For families still recovering from the pain of the First World War, the Great Depression was a cruel blow that scarred people for decades to come. -
Australia's Height of the Great Depression
In the second half of the 1920s the Australian economy suffered from falling wheat and wool prices, and competition from other commodity-producing countries. Australia was also borrowing vast sums of money, which dried up as the economy slowed.
Then the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to a worldwide economic depression. The Australian economy collapsed and unemployment reached a peak of 32 per cent in 1932. -
Australia's Height of the Great Depression
The immediate effect was on individuals and families: children with not enough to eat; men, the traditional breadwinners, humiliated and powerless; women scrabbling to hold families together. -
Australia's Height of the Great Depression
National income declined by a third. More than 40,000 men moved around the country looking for work: setting up shantytowns on the edges of communities and camping in parks. The few jobs that did become available were cruelly fought over.
By 1932 more than 60,000 men, women and children were dependent on the susso, a state-based sustenance payment that enabled families to buy only the bare minimum of food. -
The Great Depression: France is impacted
France also experienced a relatively short downturn in the early 1930s. The French recovery in 1932 and 1933, however, was short-lived. French industrial production and prices both fell substantially between 1933 and 1936. -
Hitler becomes German Chancellor and withdraws Germany from the League of Nations
After a failed attempt to seize power in 1923, Hitler
focused on building support. The Hitler Youth was
founded in 1926 to indoctrinate young Germans. The
Nazis gained supporters through public spectacles such as Nuremberg rallies, the support of influential Alfred Hugenberg, who controlled 700 newspapers, through propaganda blaming Germany’s problems on communists and Jews. Goebbels head of Nazi propaganda unit in 1929, organised Nazi election campaigns, won many out of fear of communism. -
Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
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Germany announces rearmament and conscription
The Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 gave Hitler
dictatorial powers and gave his government the power
to make laws and change the Constitution as it wished.
In the Reichstag, only the SPD had the courage to vote
against the Act. -
German troops re-enter the Rhineland
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Italy and Germany support Franco in the Spanish Civil War
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Germany and Japan become allies
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Japan invades China
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German troops occupy Austria
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Czechoslovakia is weakened as the Sudetenland is ceded to Germany at the Munich Conference
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March–April: Germany occupies Czechoslovakia. Italy invades Albania
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August: The Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is signed
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September: Germany invades Poland.
Finally, at 12:40 PM on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning.
The invasion began as ordered. Hitler considered the Polish people inferior and only fit as a work force. In the last three months of 1939, the Nazis murdered 65,000 Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. While Poland was defending itself from the west, on 17 September, the soviet union attacked from the east. The attack overwhelmed Poland. On 6 October 1939, it surrendered. -
Britain and France declares war on Germany.
In response to the invasion of Poland, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 AM and at 5:00 PM, respectively. World War II had begun. -
Australia enters WW2
On 3 September 1939 Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies announced the beginning of Australia's involvement in the Second World War on every national and commercial radio station in Australia. -
League of Nations: The Dismantling
When World War II broke out, most members of the League were not involved and claimed neutrality, but members France and Germany were immediately impacted.
In 1940, League members Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and France all fell to Hitler. Switzerland became nervous about hosting an organization perceived as an Allied one, and the League began to dismantle its offices. -
December: British and Australian forces defeat Italians in North Africa
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Italy enters the war
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August: The Battle of Britain prevents a German invasion of Britain
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The Invasion of the Low Countries ( Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and France
On the same day, the weakly held Peel Line, south of the westward-turning arc of the Maas, was penetrated by the German land forces; -
The Invasion of the Low Countries ( Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and France
On May 10, the German attack on the Netherlands began with the capture by parachutists of the bridges at Moerdijk, at Dordrecht, and at Rotterdam and with landings on the airfields around The Hague. On the same day, the weakly held Peel Line, south of the westward-turning arc of the Maas, was penetrated by the German land forces; -
The Invasion of the Low Countries ( Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and France
On May 11 the Dutch defenders fell back westward past Tilburg to Breda, with the consequence that the French 7th Army, under General Henri Giraud, whose leading forces had sped forward across Belgium over the 140 miles to Tilburg, fell back to Breda likewise. The German tanks thus had a clear road to Moerdijk, and by noon on May 12 they were in the outskirts of Rotterdam. -
The Invasion of the Low Countries ( Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and France
The German tanks thus had a clear road to Moerdijk, and by noon on May 12 they were in the outskirts of Rotterdam. North of the Maas, meanwhile, where the bulk of the Dutch defense was concentrated, the Germans achieved a narrow breach of the Geld Valley line on May 12, whereupon the Dutch, unable to counterattack, retreated to the “Fortress of Holland” Line protecting Utrecht and Amsterdam. Queen Wilhelmina and her government left the country for England on May 13. -
The Invasion of the Low Countries ( Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and France
May 14 the Dutch commander in chief, General Henri Gerard Winkelman, surrendered to the Germans, who had threatened to bomb Rotterdam and Utrecht, as places in the front line of the fighting, if resistance continued. In fact, Rotterdam was bombed, after the capitulation, by 30 planes through a mistake in the Germans’ signal communications. -
April–May: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
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June: Germany invades the USSR
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December: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and British Malaya
In accordance with Yamamoto’s plan, the aircraft carrier strike force commanded by Admiral Nagumo Chuichi sailed eastward undetected by any U.S. reconnaissance until it had reached a point 275 miles north of Hawaii. From there, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a total of about 360 aircraft, composed of dive-bombers, torpedo bombers, and a few fighters, was launched in two waves in the early morning at the giant U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. -
Mass gassings begin at Auschwitz
Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. -
Germans are defeated at El Alamein
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The Fall of Singapore
Meanwhile, on February 8 and 9, three Japanese divisions had landed on Singapore Island; and on February 15 they forced the 90,000-strong British, Australian, and Indian garrison there, under Lieutenant General A.E. Percival, to surrender. Singapore was the major British base in the Pacific and had been regarded as unassailable due to its strong seaward defenses. Some 15,000 Australians became Prisoners of War (POW) on Singapore -
Battle of Midway
World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan’s first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.
So prominent was Midway in Japanese war planning that it was included in the opening offensive of the Pacific War on December 7–8, 1941. -
Kokoda Trail Campaign
Raw, inexperienced Australian militiamen of the 39th Battalion, and Papuan soldiers from the Papuan Infantry Battalion, were the first to encounter the Japanese at Awala. They were forced to withdraw to the village of Kokoda, which became the scene of intense action when the Japanese attacked on 29 July. -
Operation Torch
Operation Torch, first major Allied amphibious assault during World War II. It involved about 65,000 troops who landed at Casablanca, Algiers, and Oran on the French North African coast. Operation Torch was the first time U.S. troops saw action against Nazi Germany, trapping Erwin Rommel’s army in a pincer as it fled from El-Alamein. -
Russians defeat Germans at Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad, (July 17, 1942–February 2, 1943), successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, U.S.S.R., during World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles 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 favour of the Allies. -
League of Nations: The United Nations
Soon the Allies endorsed the idea of the United Nations, which held its first planning conference in San Francisco in 1944, effectively ending any need for the League of Nations to make a post-war return. -
Japanese are forced back in the Pacific
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After the ‘D-Day’ landings, the Western Allies advance towards Germany while Soviet forces advance on the Eastern Front
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May: Germany surrenders
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Battle of Berlin
Battle of Berlin, one of the final battles of World War II. It took place from April 20 to May 2, 1945, and it ended with the fall of Berlin to the Soviet Red Army, which took revenge for the suffering of the Soviet people since 1941. -
Bombing of Hiroshima
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Tens of thousands were killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. -
Bombing of Nagasaki
Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, On August 10, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to accept the Allied surrender terms that had been dictated in the Potsdam Declaration. -
September: Japan surrenders following dropping of atomic bombs
The ceremonies began at about 9:00 AM on September 2, 1945. The nine members of the Japanese delegation, led by the foreign minister, Shigemitsu Mamoru, were brought to the Missouri from Yokohama in a U.S. destroyer. They stood facing the Allied commanders with two copies of the surrender document on a small table before them.