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Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany (called himself Der Führer—“the Leader)
He joined a struggling group called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi Party. Despite its name, this party had no ties to socialism. Hitler, who had been born in Austria, dreamed of uniting all German-speaking people in a great German empire. In his view, Germans blue-eyed, blond-haired “Aryans” formed a “master race” that was destined to rule the world. “Inferior races,” such as Jews, Slavs, and nonwhite. 1932, 6 million Germans were unemployed. -
Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy (made italy a totalitarian state)
Benito Mussolini was establishing a totalitarian regime in
Italy, where unemployment and inflation produced bitter strikes, some communist-led. Fascism- stressed nationalism and placed the interests of the state above those of individuals.Fascists argued, power must rest with a single strong leader and a small group of devoted party members. When important government officials, the army, and the police sided with the Fascists, the Italian king appointed Mussolini head of the gov't. -
Joseph Stalin's totalitarian government in the Soviet Union (totalitarian established in 1939)
After V. I. Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin, took control of the country. Stalin focused on creating a model communist state. he made both agricultural and industrial growth the prime economic goals of the Soviet Union. In 1928, the Soviet dictator outlined the first of several “five-year plans,” to direct the industrialization. All economic activity was placed under state management. In a totalitarian state, individuals have no rights, and the government suppresses all opposition. -
Mein Kampf
A third element of Nazism was national expansion. Hitler believed that for Germany to thrive, it needed more lebensraum, or living space. One of the Nazis’ aims, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, was “to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth,” even if this could be
accomplished only by “the might of a victorious sword.” -
Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
Ignoring to protest of more moderate Japanese officials the military is launched a surprise attack and seize control of Chinese province in a 1931. Within several months Japanese troops controlled the entire province a large region about twice the size of Texas, that was rich in resources. League of Nations representatives were sent to Manchuria to investigate the situation. Their report condemned japan, who quit the league. -
Storm troopers
The Great Depression helped the Nazis come to power. Because of war debts and dependence on American loans and investments, Germany’s economy was hit hard. By 1932, some 6 million Germans were unemployed. Many men who were out of work joined Hitler’s private army, the storm troopers (or Brown Shirts).
The German people were desperate and turned to Hitler as their last hope. -
Third Reich
By mid 1932, the Nazis had become the strongest political party in Germany. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor (prime minister). Once in power, Hitler quickly dismantled Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic. In its place he established the Third Reich, or Third German Empire. According to Hitler, the Third
Reich would be a “Thousand-Year Reich”—it would last for a thousand years. -
Hitler’s Military build-up in Germany
In 1933 Hitler Paul Germany out of the League. But in 1935 you be getting military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. One year later he sent troops to Rhineland (a German region bordering France and Belgium) -
Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia
By the fall of 1935 of thousands of Italian soldiers stood ready to advance on collective resistance. When they invasion began the league‘s response was ineffective economic boycott. By May 1936 Ethiopia has fallen. Haile Selasse the ousted Ethiopian empires appealed to the league for assistance. -
Hitler invades the Rhineland
One year later he sent troops to Rhineland (a German region bordering France and Belgium) -
Francisco Franco
In 1936, a group of Spanish army officers led by general Francisco Franco rebelled against the Spanish civil republic. 3,000 Americans formed the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and traveled to Spanish to fight against Franco. Among the volunteers were African Americans still bitter about the Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. -
Munich’s agreement
The füher declared that the annexation of the Sudetenland would be his “territorial demand.” On September 30, 1938, they signed the Munich agreement which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot fired. -
Hitler’s Anschluss
On March 12, 1938 German troops marched into Austria unopposed. A day later, Germany announced that its Anschluss, or “Union” with Austria was complete. The United States snd the rest of the world did nothing. -
Nonaggression Pact
As tensions rose over Poland, Stalin surprised everyone by signing a nonaggression pact with Hitler. On August 23, 1939 fascist Germany and Communist Russia now committed never to attack each other. And the Soviet union also signed a second packed agreeing to divide Poland between them. -
Blitzberg
Blitzberg made us of advances in military technology such as fast tanks and more powerful aircraft to take the enemy by surprise and then quickly crush all opposition with the overwhelming force. -
Rome-Berlin Axis (totalitarian government ruled in Spain)
The war forged a close relationship between the German and Italian dictators, who signed a formal alliance known as Rome/Berlin Acid. After a loss of almost 500,000 lives, France’s victory in 1939 established him as Spain/ fascist dictator(Neville chamberlain) -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
On September 3, two days following the terror in Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The blitzberg tactics worked perfectly the three week long fighting led to France and Britain and their allies mount a defense in the last week of fighting the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, grabbing some of its territory. -
Phony War
For the next several months after the fall of Poland, French and British troops on the Maginot Line, a system of fortifications built along France’s eastern border, sat staring into Germany, waiting for something to happen On the Siegfried Line a few miles away German troops stared back. The blitzkrieg had given way to what the Germans called the sitzkrieg (“sitting war”), and what some newspapers referred to as the phony war. -
Hitler's invasion of Denmark and Norway
Suddenly, on April 9, 1940, Hitler launched a surprise invasion
of Denmark and Norway in order “to protect [those countries’] freedom and independence.” But in truth, Hitler planned to build bases along the coasts to strike at Great Britain. Next, Hitler turned against the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony
war had ended. -
Germany and Italy's invasion of France
The Germans trapped 400,000 British and French soldiers as they fled to the beaches of Dunkirk on the French side of the English Channel. Less than a week, a makeshift fleet of fishing trawlers, tugboats, barges, pleasure craft more than 800 vessels ferried about 330,000 British, French, and Belgian troops to safety across the Channel. A few days later, Italy entered the war on the side of Germany and invaded France from the south as the Germans closed in on Paris from the north. -
Marshal Philippe Petatin
On June 22, 1940, at Compiègne, as William Shirer and the rest of the world watched, Hitler handed French officers his terms of
surrender. Germans would occupy the northern part of
France and a Nazi-controlled puppet government headed
by Marshal Philippe Pétain, would be set up at Vichy,
in southern France. -
Hitler's invasion of the Netherlands
Next, Hitler turned against the Netherlands,
Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony
war had ended. -
The Battle of Britain
In the summer of 1940, then Germany began to assemble an invasion fleet along the French coast. Because its naval power could not compete with that of Britain, Germany also launched an air war at the same time. Its goal was to gain total control of the
skies by destroying Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). Hitler
had 2,600 planes at his disposal. On a single day—August
15—approximately 2,000 German planes ranged over
Britain. Every night for two solid months, bombers pounded
London -
Manhattan Project
Roosevelt responded by creating an Advisory Committee on Uranium to study the new discovery. In 1941, the committee reported that it would take from three to five years to build an atomic bomb. Hoping to shorten that time, the OSRD set
up an intensive program in 1942 to develop a bomb as quickly as possible. Because much of the early research was performed at Columbia University in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project became the code name for research work that extended
across the country -
Lend-Lease Act
On 11th March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The legislation gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the powers to sell, transfer, exchange, lend equipment to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers.
A sum of $50 billion was appropriated by Congress for Lend-Lease. The money went to 38 different countries with Britain receiving over $31 billion. Over the next few years the British government repaid $650 million of this sum. -
Pearl Harbor Attack
Early the next morning, a Japanese dive-bomber swooped low over Pearl Harbor— the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The bomber was followed by more than 180 Japanese warplanes
launched from six aircraft carriers. In less than two hours, the Japanese had killed 2,403 Americans and wounded 1,178 more. The surprise raid had sunk or damaged 21 ships, including 8 battleships—nearly the whole U.S. Pacific fleet. -
Office of Price Administration
Instituted in 1942, this agency was in charge of stabilizing prices and rents and preventing speculation, profiteering, hoarding and price administration. The OPA froze wages and prices and initiated a rationing program for items such as gas, oil, butter, meat, sugar, coffee and shoes in order to support the war effort and prevent inflation. -
Battle of the Atlantic
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine raids against ships along America’s east coast. The German aim in the Battle of the Atlantic was to prevent food and war materials from
reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Britain depended on supplies from the sea. In the first four months of 1942, the
Germans sank 87 ships off the Atlantic shore. -
Operation Torch
begun Nov 1942, American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria, and pressing eastward trapped the German and Italian armies being driven westward by the British, forcing German and Italian troops to surrender, despite Hitler's orders to fight to the death. -
Internment
To remove them would have destroyed the islands’ economy
and hindered U.S. military operations there. However, he was eventually forced to order the internment, or confinement, of 1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of Hawaii’s Japanese-American population. In the following weeks, the army rounded up some 110,000 Japanese Americans and shipped them to ten
hastily constructed remote “relocation centers,” euphemisms for prison camps. -
Battle of Stalingrad
In the summer of 1942, the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. He also wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River. A furious Stalin ordered them to defend his namesake city no matter what the cost. By the end of September, they controlled nine-tenths of the city or what was left of it. -
War productions board
Board that allocated scarce materials, limited or stopped the production of civil goods, and distributed contracts among competing manufacturers. It provided the needed raw materials for the war effort. Rationed fuel and materials vital to the war effort, such as gasoline, heating oil, metals, rubber, and plastics -
Woman's Auxiliary Army Corps
The law gave the WAACs an official status and salary but few of the benefits granted to male soldiers. In July 1943, after thousands of women had enlisted, the U.S. Army dropped the “auxiliary” status, and granted WACs full U.S. Army benefits. WACs worked as nurses, ambulance drivers, radio operators, electricians, and
pilots—nearly every duty not involving direct combat.
than 300,000 Mexican Americans joined the armed forces and 1 million black. -
Bloody Anzio
One of the hardest battles the Allies encountered
in Europe was fought less than 40 miles from Rome. This battle, “Bloody Anzio,” lasted four months—until the end of May 1944—and left about 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis casualties. During the year after Anzio, German armies continued to put up strong resistance. The effort to free Italy did not succeed until
1945, when Germany itself was close to collapse -
D-Day
June 6, 1944: long promised invasion of France. Eisenhower commanded more than 1.5 million American, British, and Canadian soldiers across the channel. Helped to liberate Paris in August, had driven the Germans out of most of France and Belgium by September. -
The Battle of the Bulge
December 1944. Last German offensive. Ten days of heavy fighting, then Allies pushed Germans back across Rhine River and bombed Berlin. Hitler committed suicide on April 30. But, in fact, events had taken a decisive turn. The Germans had lost 120,000 troops, 600 tanks and assault guns, and 1,600 planes in the Battle of the Bulge— soldiers and weapons they could not replace. From that point on, the Nazis could do little but retreat -
Korematsu v. United States
In 1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. United States, that the government’s policy of evacuating Japanese
Americans to camps was justified on the basis of “military necessity.” Korematsu argued that this order was unconstitutional because it was based on race. Justice Frank Murphy, however, dissented—he opposed the majority. He believed that military necessity was merely an excuse that could not conceal the racism
at the heart of the restrictions. -
Unconditional Surrender
At this meeting, the two leaders agreed to accept only the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. That is, enemy nations would have to accept whatever terms of peace the Allies dictated. The two leaders also discussed where to strike next. The Americans argued that the best approach to victory was to assemble a massive invasion fleet in Britain and to launch it across the English Channel, through France, and into the heart of
Germany. -
Death of Hitler
The
the same day, he wrote out his last
address to the German people. In it, he blamed the Jews for
starting the war and his generals for losing it. “I die with a
happy heart aware of the immeasurable deeds of our
soldiers at the front. I myself and my wife choose to die in
order to escape the disgrace of
capitulation,” he said. The next day Hitler committed suicide
while his new wife swallowed
poison. -
Harry S. Truman
H President Roosevelt did not live to see V-E Day. On
April 12, 1945, while posing for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president had a stroke and died. That night, Vice President Harry S. Truman became the nation’s 33rd president. -
U.S Convoy System
Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection, as they had done in the First World War. The convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater. They were also
accompanied by airplanes that used radar to spot U-boats on the ocean’s surface. With this improved tracking, the Allies were able to find and destroy German U Boats Faster than the Germans could build them. -
V-e day
On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day—Victory in
Europe Day. The war in Europe was finally over.
