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Mussolini and the Facists come to power in Germany
In 1918, he began to deliver emotional speeches, calling for a dictator to head the country. In 1921, Mussolini formed the National Fascist Party. In a speech before thousands of his supporters in October 1922, Mussolini declared, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome.” So as a result King Victor Emmanuel gave in and appointed Mussolini as the new prime minister -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
On September 18, 1931 Japan launched an attack on Manchuria. Within a few days Japanese armed forces had occupied several strategic points in South Manchuria.The Japanese established a puppet state called Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II. -
Hitler and the Nazi come to power in Germany
Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class.So in the 1932 elections, the Nazis won 33 percent of the votes, and in January 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor, the head of the German government, and many Germans believed that they had found a hero for their nation -
Neutrality Acts passed in U.S.
in the 1930s, the United States Government enacted a series of laws designed to prevent the United States from being caught in a foreign war by clearly stating the terms of U.S. neutrality. -
Germany and the USSR sign the Non-Aggression Pact
This Pact stated that the two countries agreed not to attack each other, not to support any third power that might attack the other party to the pact; and not to join any group of powers directly or indirectly threatening one of the two parties -
Munich Conference
Was a long series of negotiations between Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany -
Beginning of the Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass, started on the night of November 9, 1938 in which the German Riech planned a massive coordinate attack on Jews -
The end of the Kristallnacht
Nearly 100 Jews were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. -
Germany invades Poland - Beginning WWII
German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war–what would become the “blitzkrieg” strategy. So as a result WWII had begun -
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Battle of Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Germany in 1945.This battle to control the Atlantic shipping lanes involved thousands of ships and stretched across thousands of perilous square miles of ocean. -
France falls to Germany
On 5 June, the Germans swung southwards and French resistance finally collapsed, although not without heavy fighting. On 10 June, Italy opportunistically entered the war on Germany’s side. Four days later, the French capital fell, provoking the flight of the French Government to Bordeaux. The Government capitulated on 25 June, just seven weeks after the beginning of the invasion. -
Rescue at Dunkirk
On May 20 the British began formulating Operation Dynamo, led by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. Initially it was estimated that just 45,000 men could be evacuated in 48 hours. Instead the operation was to become the biggest evacuation in military history.
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End of the Rescue at Dunkirk
The evacuation began on May 27. Just 8,000 soldierswere rescued. But over the next eight days a total of 338,226 Allied soldiers were successfully brought back across the English Channel while under attack on all sides -
Formation of the Axis Powers
The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of continental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranean Sea; and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific. The Allied Powers were led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union -
Presidential election of 1940
the 39th U.S. presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. The election was fought in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue.Roosevelt, acutely aware of strong isolationist and non-interventionism sentiment, promised there would be no involvement in foreign wars if he were re-elected -
Congress passes the Lend Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act 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.” Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries received weapons under this law. -
Bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
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.Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the battleship USS Arizona and landed in her forward ammunition magazine. The ship exploded and sank with more than 1,000 men trapped inside. https://youtu.be/bxIsVYdB0lA -
Relocation of Japenese Americans to camps
Two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 ordering all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast -
Bataan Death March
The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan, and the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. -
Battle of Midway Island
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Between 3 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea -
End of Bataan Death March
the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. -
Rosie the Riveter campaign encourages women to get a job
Rosie the Riveter” is the name of a fictional character who came to symbolize the millions of real women who filled America’s factories, munitions plants, and shipyards during World War II. In later years, Rosie also became an iconic American image in the fight to broaden women’s civil rights. -
D-Day invasion
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. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning.
https://youtu.be/lDZs442oqxA -
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Allied Invasion/Victory in the Philippines
On this day in 1944, in what would become known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.The security of the Marianas Islands would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable.But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack, In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war -
Presidential election of 1944
The United States presidential election of 1944 took place while the United States was preoccupied with fighting World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had been in office longer than any other president, but remained popular. -
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Battle of Bulge
In December 1944, Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne -
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Yalta Conference
During the conference, the three leaders, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world. Although most of these agreements were initially kept secret, the revelations of the conference particulars became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperati -
V-E
On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. The Nazi surrendered and thus meaning end of WWll. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a secret military project created in 1942 to produce the first US nuclear weapon. Fears that Nazi Germany would build and use a nuclear weapon during World War II triggered the start of the Manhattan Project, which was originally based in Manhattan, New York. -
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
Japan surrender
By the summer of 1945, the Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic -
Formation of the United Nations
Was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. -
Ending of the Relocation of Japenese Americans to camps
The relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history. According to the census of 1940, 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in the United States, the majority on the West Coast.
