AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
“Preliminary” Events
July 29, 1921: Adolf Hitler becomes leader of National Socialist 'Nazi' Party.
July 18, 1925: Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" published.
September 8, 1926: Germany admitted to League of Nations.
October 29, 1929: Stock Market on Wall Street crashes.
September 14, 1930: Germans elect Nazis, making them the 2nd largest political party in Germany.
September 18, 1931: Japanese army invades Manchuria. U.S. issues the Stimson doctrine in 1932.
November, 1932: Franklin Roosevelt elected president of U.S.
January 30, 1933: German President von Hindenburg offers Chancellorship to Adolf Hitler, who accepts.
March 1933: After rejecting League of Nations demand to withdraw from China, Japan instead withdraws from
League of Nations.
March 30, 1933: In Germany, a decree is signed by President von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and Interior
Minister Wilhelm Frick, abolishing the last of the Reichstag's powers, giving Hitler absolute power.
Summer, 1933: London Economic Conference - World Monetary and Economic Conference; objective: the
checking of the world depression by means of currency stabilization and economic agreements. Disagreements among
the participants and the attitude of the United States made the meeting a total failure.
October 14, 1933: Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
March 16, 1935: Hitler denounces the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty, and begins open rearmament.
September 5, 1935: Germany passes its first Nuremberg Laws that revoke the citizenship of Jews and prohibits them
from marrying non Jews.
October 3, 1935: Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
March 7, 1936: German troops march into the Rhineland.
July 18, 1936: Civil war erupts in Spain.
August 1, 1936:- Olympic Games begin in Berlin. African-American sprinter Jesse Owens embarrasses Germany
October, 1936: “Rome-Berlin axis” originates with an accord reached by Hitler and Mussolini. The Axis
is solidified by an Italy-Germany alliance in May 1939. This was extended in September, 1940 by a military
alliance among Germany, Italy, and Japan—the so-called Berlin Pact.
January 19, 1937: Japan withdraws from the Washington Conference Treaty.
July 7, 1937: Full-scale war begins between China and Japan.
March 13, 1938: German forces invade Austria.
May 30, 1938: Hitler issues a directive calling for the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
September 30, 1938: The Munich Agreement is signed, by Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, allowing
Germany to annex the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia.
October 3, 1938: German forces occupy the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia.
1939
March 14: German troops take the rest of Czechoslovakia.
April 1: Three-year old Spanish Civil War ends with Francisco Franco victorious.
April 7: Italy invades Albania.
May 22: Germany sign 'Pact of Steel' with Italy.
July 14: Roosevelt asks Congress to repeal an arms embargo so the U.S. can sell weapons to Britain and other
Non-Fascist nation
August 23: Germany and Soviet Union sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. (also known as the German-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact and the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact
September 1: Germany invades Poland. World War II “officially” begins.
September 3: Great Britain, France, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany.
September 5: United States proclaims neutrality.
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AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
September 17: USSR invades Poland from the east.
September 28: Germany and USSR partition Poland.
October 11: A letter written by Albert Einstein is delivered to Roosevelt, outlining what later becomes the atomic
bomb; Roosevelt orders secret military research to begin.
November 4: Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act, allowing U.S. to send aid to Britain and France.
1940
January: “Battle of the Atlantic” begins as German submarines attack Allied shipping.
March 18: Mussolini and Hitler announce Italy’s formal alliance with Germany; Mussolini calls this the “axis” on
which Europe will revolve.
April 9: Norway and Denmark are overrun by Germany.
May 10: Germany invades France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Netherlands.
May 10: Winston Churchill replaces Neville Chamberlain as Britain’s Prime Minister.
May 26-June 4: Evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk, France. Churchill says: “We shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and the streets. . . . We shall never surrender.
June 10: Italy declares war on France and Britain.
June 14: German troops enter Paris.
June 22: France surrenders and a pro-German government is installed in Vichy. A Free French government is
formed in London under the leadership of French General Charles de Gaulle.
June 28: The Alien Registration Act (Smith Act) is passed in the U.S., requiring all aliens to register and making it
illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
July: “The Battle of Britain” begins over the skies of England.
July 20: Congress authorizes $4 billion for the construction of a two-ocean war.
September 2: Roosevelt gives 50 American WWI-era destroyers to England in exchange for the right to construct
naval bases in British possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
September 13: Italy invades Egypt.
September 16: First peace-time conscription begins with the enactment of the Selective Training and Service Act; it
requires men from 21 to 35 to register for military training.
September 26: In order to cut off supplies to Japan, Roosevelt announces an embargo on scrap metal.
September 27: Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.
November 5: Roosevelt wins an unprecedented third presidential term.
December 29: In a year-end “fireside chat,” Roosevelt says the U.S. will become the “arsenal of democracy.”
1941
March 11: The Lend-Lease Act is signed into law, narrowly passing Congress as isolationism remains strong.
May 27: A limited state of emergency is declared by Roosevelt after Greece and Yugoslavia fall to the Axis powers.
June 14: German and Italian assets in the U.S. are frozen under Roosevelt’s emergency powers. Two days later,
German consulates in U.S. are ordered close, and Italian consulates are ordered closed on June20.
June 22: Germany invades the USSR.
July 25: After the Japanese invade French Indochina (later called Vietnam), Roosevelt freezes Japanese assets in the
U.S., stopping trade between the two nations and cutting off Japanese oil supplies.
August 14: After meeting secretly on warships stationed near Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill announce the
Atlantic Charter.
November 17: Japanese envoys in Washington propose removing restrictions on trade with Japan. Secretary of State
Cordell Hull rejects the proposal, calling for Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina.
December 7 (Sunday): Japanese attack American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing 2,403 American
soldiers, sailors, and civilians. Japan makes simultaneous attacks on Guam, Midway, Hong Kong and Singapore.
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AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
December 8: Addressing Congress, Roosevelt asks for a declaration of war on Japan. The Senate vote is unanimous;
the House approves 388-1, with Jeanette Rankin, a pacifist and the first woman elected to the House, the lone
dissenting vote.
December 11: Germany and Italy, based on their alliance with Japan, declare war on the U.S.; U.S. reciprocates.
1942
January 2: Japan takes control of the Philippines as American forces withdraw to the island fortress of Corregidor.
February 20: Roosevelt approves a plan to remove Japanese-Americans from their homes and send them to
internment camps in Colorado, Utah, Arkansas and other interior states. Eventually, 100,000 Japanese-Americans
will be moved, losing their homes and possessions
March 11: General MacArthur leaves the Philippines for Australia, vowing “I shall return.”
April 9: Seventy-five thousand American and Philippine troops surrender in the Philippines. Captives are marched to
prison-of-war camps in the infamous “Bataan Death March.”
April 18: Doolittle raid on Japan.
May 4-8: Battle of Coral Sea. First time in naval history that ships never see each other in a sea battle as battle is
fought entirely by planes from carriers.
May 15: Gasoline rationing begins in U.S.
June 3-6: U.S. naval forces defeat Japanese naval forces in the Battle of Midway. The battle is considered a turning
point for the Allies in the Pacific War.
August 7: U.S. goes on the offensive in the Pacific as Marines land on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands
August 22: Germany begins an offensive in Russian in what will become known as The Battle of Stalingrad.
November 18: U.S. lowers draft age to 18.
November 25: German siege of Stalingrad bogs down. German army is eventually surrounded and forced to
surrender in February, 1943. Battle for Stalingrad is considered a turning point in the war on the Eastern Front.
1943
January 14-24: Roosevelt and Churchill meet at Casablanca Conference to map out strategy for the war. They
announce that the war can only end with an unconditional surrender of Germany.
January 31: German troops finally surrender in Stalingrad.
February 7: Shoe rationing is announced in U.S.; civilians limited to 3 pairs of leather shoes a year.
February 9: U.S. Marines finally take control of Guadalcanal.
February 14-25: Untried American troops defeated at the Kasserine Pass by German Afrika Corps under command
of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. American troops regroup under new commander George Patton and stop Rommel.
With British forces under the leadership of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, German and Italian forces are
defeated in North Africa by the end of May.
April 1: U.S. begins rationing meats, fats and cheese. Roosevelt freezes wages, salaries and prices.
May 13: German and Italian troops surrender in North Africa.
May 29: On the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, “Rosie the Riveter” illustration, drawn by Norman Rockwell,
appears for the first time. “Rosie” is an admiring tribute to the more than 6 million American women who enter the
work force during the war.
July 10: Allied invasion of Sicily begins, capturing the strategic Mediterranean island by August 17.
July 25: Mussolini is ousted by Fascist Council in Italy.
September 3: Allies land on the mainland of Italy.
September 8: Italy announces its surrender.
September 12: Mussolini liberated by German troops.
November 20: Battle of Tarawa, one of the equatorial Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.
November 28-December 1: Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet face-to-face for the first time at the Teheran
Conference.
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AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
1944
January 16: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Commander of the Allied Forces.
January 31: U.S. invades the Marshall Islands in the Pacific campaign.
May 3: Meat rationing ends in the U.S., except for certain select cuts.
June 6: D-Day. Allied invasion of Europe begins.
June 13: Germany launches world’s first “guided” missiles, the V-1, across the English Channel at London. By the
end of the summer, these missiles have killed 6,000 people.
June 15: Using bases in China, American B-29 “Superfortress” bombers begin to bomb Japan.
June 15: In the Pacific, U.S. forces attack Saipan, Guam, and Tinian.
June 22: Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (known as the G.I. Bill of Rights), which will provide
funds for housing and education for World War II veterans.
July 9-25: U.S. tank troops, under command of George S. Patton, break through German lines in France.
August 10: Pacific island of Guam falls to U.S. forces.
August 14: With war production requirements easing, production of vacuum cleaners/other domestic goods is
allowed
August 25: Led by Free French troops, Allied forces retake Paris, France.
September 12: Germany begins using the first modern rocket, the V-2, to launching attacks on England.
October 20: General Douglas MacArthur fulfills his promise when he wades ashore at Leyte Island in the
Philippines.
October 23: U.S. defeats Japanese forces in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Japanese begin to use kamikaze suicide attacks,
which will sink some 400 ships and kill nearly 10,000 U.S. sailors by the end of the war.
November 7: Roosevelt elected for an unprecedented and unequaled 4th term.
December 16: Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s last major counterattack, begins in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest. It
takes two weeks of the largest land battle of WW II in which the U.S. participated before the Germans are stopped.
1945
January 27: The Red Army liberates Auschwitz, a German concentration camp, finding convincing evidence of SS
atrocities of the Holocaust. Concentration camps were established in Germany shortly after Hitler's assumption of
power in 1933 as places for anyone out of step with Nazism to be detained. Socialists, communists, blacks, gypsies,
vagabonds, trade unionists, and Jews were amongst those seen as undesirable. The outbreak of war brought a radical
change in the camp system. New concentration camps were set up throughout occupied Europe to deal with the
millions of captive foreign opponents of German domination. In Poland extermination camps were established to
implement the “Final Solution,” the systematic killing of more than six million Jews. The concentration camps varied
in size and function but in each there was no regard for human life. Many were massive industrial complexes using
the inmates as slaves. Disease, starvation, neglect, and overwork added to the death toll of deliberate murders.
January 31: Roosevelt and Churchill meet at Malta.
February 4-11: Yalta Conference. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill (the Big Three) meet in the Crimea and discuss
plans for the final assault on Germany, and agree to create a peace organization that will meet in San Francisco on
April 25 and will become the United Nations.
February 13-16: Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany with incendiary bombs creates a firestorm. Estimates put
civilian loss of life between 135,000-175,000 (greater that Hiroshima).
February: A month-long siege in the Philippines ends with U.S. troops retaking Manila.
March 7: American forces cross the Rhine River at Remagen and enter Germany.
March 9: U.S. planes firebomb Tokyo, Japan, killing some 100,000 people.
March 16: U.S. marines in the Pacific land on Iwo Jima, beginning a month-long struggle to take the tiny island.
April 1: U.S forces invade the island of Okinawa, considered by the Japanese to be part of their home islands. The
three month struggle is the bloodiest of the Pacific campaign with 80,000 Americans killed or wounded (Japanese
losses, both military and civilian, are far higher). Such losses are said to have influence on the decision to use the
atomic bomb.
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AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
April 12: After suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at his retreat in Warm
Springs, Georgia. He is 63 years old and has been President for a little over 12 years, longer than any other.
Vice-President Harry S. Truman is sworn in as President.
April 24: President Truman is told of the Manhattan Project, which has developed the atom bomb.
April 25: U.S. forces meet Soviet troops at the Elbe River in Germany.
April 25: United Nations Conference opens in San Francisco.
April 28: Benito Mussolini and his mistress are captured by Italian partisans and hanged.
April 30: With Russian troops closing in on his bombproof shelter, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time mistress Eva
Braun. He then shoots himself as she takes poison. The bodies are carried outside and burned. Russian troops later
recover and identify the charred remains, but do not release this information for many years, leading to all kinds of
rumors about Hitler escaping to Argentina.
May 7: Germany formally surrenders to General Eisenhower in Rheims, France, and to the Soviets in Berlin.
May 8: V-E Day. Victory in Europe is declared
May 25: American invasion plan for Japan decided: November 1, 1945: landing on Kyoesjoe; Summer 1946: landing
on the plains around Tokyo.
June 5: The U.S., Russia, Britain, and France agree to split occupied Germany into eastern and western halves, and to
divide Berlin as well, which is deep in the Russian zone.
June 21: Okinawa falls.
July 5: Philippines completely under U.S. control.
July 16: First atomic device exploded in a test at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
July 17-August 2: Potsdam Conference. The "Big Three" (with Truman replacing Roosevelt) leaders meet at
Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin to discuss plans for after the war.
July 26: Potsdam Declaration issued by U.S. to Japan, giving the terms for surrender. It ended with an ultimatum:
Japan must immediately agree to unconditionally surrender, or face "prompt and utter destruction".
July 26: Clement Atlee replaces Winston Churchill as British Prime Minister.
August 6: U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay drops atom bomb on Japanese city of Hiroshima., killing some 80,000
people immediately and leveling 98% of the city.
August 8: Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
August 9: Second atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
August 14: Japan surrenders unconditionally.
August 15: V-J Day declared; Victory over Japan.
August 18: Allies divide Korea along the 38th parallel; Soviet troops occupying the north and U.S. troops the south.
August 29: Allies name 24 Nazi officers to face war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany.
September 2: General Douglas MacArthur, named Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan, accepts the
formal surrender of Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
November 20: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials begin in Germany. The victorious Allies (the U.S., France, Great Britain and
the Soviet Union) set up the so-called International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the end of World War II. Prosecutors from those
four countries indicted 22 Nazi German officials on three basic charges - conspiring and ultimately launching an "aggressive
war," committing war crimes and committing "crimes against humanity." Among the atrocities that the Nazis were responsible for
over the previous 10 years were the murder of six million Jews throughout Europe and the destruction of thousands of cities and
towns. All those indicted pleaded not guilty. Some claimed that they were merely following orders when they helped oversee the
transport and murder of Jews and other minorities. Others argued that the court had no jurisdiction. But the lead prosecutor,
Robert Jackson, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, disagreed, noting, "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been
so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their
being repeated." The trials lasted 11 months. Of the 21 defendants in custody (one indicted Nazi, Martin Bormann, was indicted
in absentia and was never found), 11 were sentenced to death, three were acquitted and the rest received prison terms. Ten men
were hanged in November 1946; one of those sentenced to death, Hermann Göring, committed suicide hours before his scheduled
execution.
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AP US History- Unit 12: Chronology of World War II
World War 2 Death Toll
Although the precise numbers of deaths is impossible to determine and different sources believe in the accuracy of different
numbers, these numbers are one set of figures for the number of deaths that occurred in World War Two. Figures for military and
civilian deaths are provided where these were available.
Country
Military
Civilian
Deaths
USSR
13,600,000
7,700,000
21,300,000
China
1,324,000
10,000,000
11,324,000
Germany
3,250,000
3,810,000
7,060,000
850,000
6,000,000
6,850,000
-
2,000,000
Poland
Japan
-
Yugoslavia
300,000
1,400,000
1,706,000
Rumania
520,000
465,000
985,000
France
340,000
470,000
810,000
Hungary
Austria
Greece
-
-
380,000
-
United States
500,000
Italy
330,000
Czechoslovakia
-
145,000
750,000
525,000
-
520,000
-
500,000
80,000
-
410,000
400,000
Great Britain
326,000
62,000
388,000
Netherlands
198,000
12,000
210,000
76,000
12,000
88,000
Belgium
Finland
-
-
84,000
Canada
39,000
-
39,000
India
36,000
-
36,000
Australia
29,000
-
29,000
-
28,000
Albania
-
Spain
12,000
10,000
22,000
Bulgaria
19,000
2,000
21,000
New Zealand
12,000
-
12,000
Norway
-
-
10,262
South Africa
9,000
-
9,000
Luxembourg
-
-
5,000
Denmark
4,000
-
4,000
Total
-
-
56,125,262
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