1. Just How Did WWII Get Started?

2. Italy
Suffered greatly under the worldwide depression after WWI

3. Benito Mussolini
Mussolini captures Rome with his Blackshirt Party in 1922
Fascism - Single person leads the country
Totalitarianism - Govt. controls every facet of your life

4. Germany Germany was destroyed after WWI
Were blamed by the World for the war and following depression
Treaty of Versailles had them paying $33 billion, which they do not have
Very angry as a people

5. Adolf Hitler
Dad sent Hitler to Vienna, Austria at 12 to study - Learns to hate Jews
Fails as an artist, joins the military to fight in WWI
While in jail after WWI, he writes Mein Kampf (My Struggle) - blamed communists, intellectuals, and Jews for Germany’s defeat

6. Hitler and the Nazi Party
Hitler’s Nazi Party gets 32% of vote in elections in 1932
Hitler is elected Chancellor
Takes dictatorial power and forms a fascist, totalitarian state
Rebuilds army to show power and pride in Germany

7. Japan Suffers greatly during the Depression Lack of natural resources
Attacks mineral-rich Manchuria (North of China)
League of Nations condemns attack, but can do nothing
Japan invades China
Japan joins Germany and Italy in Axis Alliance

9. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
Communist country
Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin wins a power struggle to become leader
Stalin’s Purges - In the 1930s, Stalin creates a personal police force of kill millions and send others to force labor camps in Siberia

12. United States US is stuck in the Great Depression
FDR and most Americans are concerned about Germany, Italy, and Japan, but choose to be isolated
Neutrality Acts (1935 and 1937) - Banned weapons sales with countries who are at war

13. Germany on the Move
Lebensraum - Hitler wants living space for Germans, free Germanic people in other countries
Creates the Axis Powers (a military alliance) with Italy
Rhineland Recaptured - in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany takes land between it and France
Austria (3/1938) - Hitler claims Germans in Austria should be part of Germany, so he takes it
Sudetenland (9/1938) - This area in Czechoslovakia was home to German speakers and Hitler said they were being mistreated.

14. Reaction to German Expansion
Munich Conference - France and Great Britain meet with Germany and agree to give Hitler the Sudetenland as long as he promises to stop expanding
Appeasement - giving in to the aggressor to keep peace - BAD IDEA
Hitler takes over Czechoslovakia anyway in March 1939
Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact (8/1939) - Germany and USSR agree not to fight one another
Hitler now free to take Poland

16. “The government had to choose between shame and war
“The government had to choose between shame and war. They have chosen shame and they will get war.” -Winston Churchill, a British official and soon to be Prime Minister of the Munich Conference

17. Anti-Semitism
Nazi Party bans Jews from govt. and takes away citizenship
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) 11/9/1938-
91 Jews killed
Hundreds seriously wounded
7500 Jewish businesses destroyed
200 synagogues destroyed
Took place in Germany and Austria

19. The burned-out synagogue of Aachen, Germany,one of nearly 200 synagogues destroyed during Kristallnacht.

20. The Fighting Begins
9/1/ Germany attacks Poland with a new style of fighting - Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
Poland was conquered in three weeks
Poland was spilt up between the USSR and Germany by the end of the month

24. Britain and France begin to Move
Begin to mobilize their forces
Maginot Line - Defensive structure along France’s border with Germany

25. Germany Kicks into High Gear
April Denmark and Norway fall
May, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fall
Allows German troops to avoid the Maginot Line
330,000 Allied troops escape to Great Britain
June France falls to Germany
June, Germany attacks USSR, violating the Non-Aggression Pact
Germany takes 500,000 Soviet troops captive
Soviet citizens burn and destroy everything so that Germany cannot use it

27. Battle of Britain
With most of Europe under his control, Hitler looks to the island of Great Britain
Luftwaffe attacks Royal Air Force (RAF) and Britain for 2.5 months
British repel the attack with the help of radar and blackouts

30. US Begins to Notice Trouble
Most Americans oppose Hitler, but still believe in isolationism
FDR re-elected in 1940 and promises not “send our boys to foreign wars”
FDR decides to prepare for war just in case
Selective Service and Training Act - first peacetime draft in US history, called on men from 21 to 35
Lend-Lease Act - Allows FDR to loan $7 billion in war supplies to Great Britain as long as they come and get the goods

32. Pearl Harbor
12/7/1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and US naval bases in the Philippines, Guam, Midway, and Wake Islands
12/8/ FDR asks Congress to declare war, calling 12/7 “a day that will live in infamy.”