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France Falls to the Germans
On 11 November 1918, the French and British allies accepted Germany’s surrender and, between them, signed the armistice that ended the First World War. The signing took place in a railway carriage in the middle of the picturesque woods of Compiègne, fifty miles north-east of Paris. -
Japan attacks Manchuria
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 18, 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident. -
Germany and Japan leave League of Nations
On October 14, 1933, Germany renounced its role in the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, setting the stage for its complete withdrawal from the League of Nations a week later. The act freed Germany to rearm as it pleased, ostensibly because the rest of the world refused to come down to their level of military preparedness. -
US Neutrality Acts
By the mid-1930s, events in Europe and Asia indicated that a new world war might soon erupt and the U.S. Congress took action to enforce U.S. neutrality. -
Japan attacks China
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1945. It followed the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 -
Germany takes Austria
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. -
Munich Peace Conference
Hitler had previously started rearming Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 and annexed Austria in 1938. He was now determined to seize the Sudetenland, which was in Czechoslovakia but had a substantial German population and important industrial resources. - See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/munich-conference#sthash.8vC8HEkp.dpuf -
Germany takes Czechoslovakia
On this day, Hitler’s forces invade and occupy Czechoslovakia–a nation sacrificed on the altar of the Munich Pact, which was a vain attempt to prevent Germany’s imperial aims. -
Non-Aggression Pact
On August 23, 1939–shortly before World War II (1939-45) broke out in Europe–enemies Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years -
Germany Invades Poland
On this day in 1939, German forces bombard Poland on land and from the air, as Adolf Hitler seeks to regain lost territory and ultimately rule Poland. World War II had begun. -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the Second World War defence of the United Kingdom by the Royal Air Force against an onslaught by the German Air Force which began at the end of June 1940.
