Key Historical Events: 1931-1945 Timeline

History24 Apr 20263.28 KB

1931–1933: The Rise of Global Instability

1931: Spain proclaims the Second Republic; Germany suspends compensation payments; Japan annexes Manchuria; El Salvador experiences a coup.
1932: Engelbert Dollfuss forms the Austrian government; Commonwealth meeting in Canada; Oliveira Salazar becomes Prime Minister of Portugal; Gandhi begins a hunger strike in India.
1933: Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany; the League of Nations warns Japan regarding aggression in China; Greece and Turkey sign a Non-Aggression Pact; a coup occurs in Cuba.

1934: France forms a left-wing coalition against fascism; the USSR joins the League of Nations; China experiences the Long March; Lázaro Cárdenas becomes President of Mexico.
1935: Military coup in Greece; Persia is renamed Iran; Germany enacts the Nuremberg Laws; Italy invades Abyssinia.
1936: Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland; military uprising in Spain; Egypt gains full independence; Roosevelt is reelected U.S. President.

1937: Congress Party wins elections in India; Neville Chamberlain becomes British Prime Minister; Japan invades China; Buchenwald concentration camp is established in Germany.
1938: Brazil establishes the fascist Estado Novo; Germany annexes Austria; Munich Conference; Japan occupies Canton, China.
1939: Spanish Civil War ends; USSR and Japan clash in Mongolia; Germany invades Poland; the U.S. declares neutrality in the European conflict.

1940: Germany invades Denmark and Norway; Germans enter Paris; Italians invade Somalia; Battle of Dakar; Romania joins the Axis; Roosevelt is reelected U.S. President.
1941: Axis troops invade Yugoslavia and Greece; Germany invades the Soviet Union; Japan invades Indochina; Syria and Lebanon gain independence; Red Army counteroffensive at Moscow; Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

1942: U.S. bombs Tokyo; British bomb Cologne; Battle of Midway; Battle of Stalingrad begins; U.S. offensive in New Guinea; German and Italian forces occupy Vichy France.
1943: British arrive in Tripoli, Libya; German army defeated in Stalingrad; Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Poland; Allies enter Tunisia; Allies land in Sicily; Americans land in New Guinea; Germans enter Rome; Allies demand the surrender of Japan.

1944: Siege of Leningrad ends; U.S. troops in the Marshall Islands; Allied offensive in Burma; Allies land in Normandy; Bretton Woods Conference; Germans surrender in Paris; British arrive in Athens; MacArthur begins the conquest of the Philippines.
1945: Red Army enters Warsaw; Americans land on Iwo Jima; Allied bombing of Dresden; San Francisco Conference begins; Germany signs the surrender; Potsdam Conference; U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders.