WWII TImeline

  • Pogrom in Germany begins

    Pogrom is a Russian word designating an attack, accompanied by destruction, looting of property, murder, and rape.
  • Hitler named Chancellor of Germany

    When Adolf Hitler walked into the presidential office of Paul von Hindenburg to become chancellor, the Old Gentleman was so annoyed he would hardly look at him.
  • Dachau opened

    was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany, intended to hold political prisoners.
  • Hitler named Furher

    Hitler planned to use President Hindenburg's death as an opportunity to seize total power in Germany by elevating himself to the position of Führer.
  • US signs Neutrality Acts

    Prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war.
  • Germany passes the Nuremberg Laws

    The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German" or related blood.
  • Germany invades the Rhineland

    It was Hitler’s first illegal act in foreign relations since coming to power in 1933 and it threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion.
  • Nazi/Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

    Hitler made the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin - a promise not to go to war with each other and (secretly) a promise to invade Poland and split it between them.
  • Germany invades Poland

    The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention.
  • Germany invades France

    German forces defeated Allied forces in a series of mobile operations, eventually leading to the conquest of France, Belgium and the Netherlands and the end of land operations on what had been the Western Front.
  • Lend- Lease Act passed

    This act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States."
  • Hitler and Mussolini join forces

    In private, however, Mussolini was scornful of Hitler and his party. The Italian leader described Mein Kampf as “boring” and thought Hitler’s ideas and theories were “coarse” and “simplistic”.
  • Germany attacks Soviet Union

    Under the codename Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II.
  • Germans surrender at Stalingrad

    Georgii Zelma/German Federal Archive a Soviet soldier waving his country's flag over the central plaza of Stalingrad in January 1943.
  • D-Day

    Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy.
  • Liberation of Paris

    A military action that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944.
  • Battle of the Bulge

    A major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe.
  • Yalta Conference

    A meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt early in February 1945 as World War II was winding down.
  • F.D.R. Dies

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the President of the United States from 1933 to 1945.
  • Dachau Liberated

    The U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime.
  • Hitler Commits Suicide

    Adolf Hitler killed himself by gunshot in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva (née Braun) committed suicide with him by taking cyanide.
  • Last Allied troops leave Germany

    Commander of what was left of the once mighty Wehrmacht, marched into Supreme Allied Headquarters in Reims, France and signed the “German Instrument of Surrender” officially ending the war in Europe.