-
After Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin outmaneuvered his political rivals to consolidate total power over the Soviet Union. He became the totalitarian leader who would transform the USSR into a major industrial and military power through brutal force and collectivization. -
Tens of thousands of Fascist Blackshirts marched on the Italian capital. King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war, asked Benito Mussolini to form a new government. Its outcome was the appointment of Mussolini as Prime Minister, effectively marking the beginning of Fascist rule and the end of parliamentary democracy in Italy. -
Adolf Hitler wrote his autobiography and political manifesto while imprisoned after the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It outlined his core political ideology: anti-Semitism, anti-communism, the concept of living space for the German master race, and his plan to achieve power. -
A centralized economic plan to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union and forcibly collectivize agriculture by setting ambitious production quotas. Its purpose was to transform the agrarian USSR into an industrial superpower capable of self-defense, though it came at the cost of immense human suffering and widespread famine. -
The Japanese Kwantung Army used a staged incident as a pretext to invade and seize the resource rich region of Manchuria in northeastern China. The why was driven by Japan's need for raw materials to fuel its industry and military, establishing a puppet state called Manchukuo. -
A man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine, resulting from Stalin's forced collectivization and grain seizures, which targeted Ukrainian peasants. It's viewed as a deliberate act of genocide by many, intended to break the spirit of the Ukrainian peasantry and eliminate resistance to Soviet rule. -
The aging President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler, the leader of the largest party (Nazis), as Chancellor in a failed attempt to control him. This appointment placed Hitler in a key position of power, allowing him to swiftly dismantle the Weimar Republic and establish a dictatorship. -
A campaign of political repression in the USSR where millions of "enemies of the people" were arrested, exiled, executed, or sent to forced-labor camps. The purpose was to eliminate all opposition to Stalin's rule within the party, the military, and the general population, establishing total fear and control. -
A purge carried out by Hitler and the SS against the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi paramilitary wing led by Ernst Röhm. Its purpose was to eliminate internal threats to Hitler's power and to appease the German Army leadership. -
Laws announced at the annual Nazi rally in Nuremberg. They were anti-Semitic laws that institutionalized racial theories, most notably stripping German Jews of their citizenship and forbidding marriage or sexual relations between Jews and "Aryan" Germans. -
Fascist Italy invaded the independent African nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as part of Mussolini's plan to build a new Roman Empire. It exposed the weakness of the League of Nations, which failed to enforce meaningful sanctions against a major aggressor, proving the organization ineffective at preventing war. -
A brutal conflict between the democratically elected Republican government and the Nationalist rebels led by General Francisco Franco, supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It served as a dress rehearsal for World War II, allowing Germany and Italy to test new weapons, tactics, and their alliance before the larger conflict. -
During the Sino-Japanese War, Japanese troops captured the Chinese capital of Nanking (Nanjing) and perpetrated mass killings, rape, and looting against soldiers and civilians. A horrifying example of Japanese wartime atrocities and brutality that remains a point of contention and historical trauma between China and Japan. -
The "Night of Broken Glass"—a coordinated, violent pogrom (riot) across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, carried out by the SA and civilian mobs. It was a massive escalation of violence and persecution against Jews, leading to the destruction of synagogues and businesses, and the mass arrest of thousands of Jewish men. -
German forces used the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) strategy to invade Poland after staging a false flag operation. This invasion led Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the generally accepted start of World War II in Europe. -
The Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack successfully crippled the fleet but infuriated the American public, leading the United States to declare war on Japan and formally enter World War II the next day.