Axis Powers
- Nazis take hold in Germany in 1933-1934
- Nazification, Enabling Act
- Saarland Plebiscite: Vast majority voted to rejoin Germany in 1935
- Remilitarization of Rhineland (1936)
- Gross Deutschland: Unification of the German-speaking peoples
- Anschluss: Political unification of Germany and Austria (1938)
- Violation of Treaty of Versailles
- Annexation of the Sudetenland (1938)
- Lebensraum Policy
- Invasion of Czechoslovakia
- Invasion of Poland
- Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin
- The two countries split Poland
- Happened in one day due to German Blitzkrieg military tactics
- Starts the war officially
- Fascist Italy
- Invasion of Albania
- Joins the Axis in 1936
- Other Axis Powers
- Nazi occupation of Denmark and Norway
- Strategic occupation to attack British naval supremacy
- Balkans’ Campaign
- Italy attempts to invade Greece
- Britain attempts to repel
- Germany occupies Yugoslavia, and pushes into Greece
- The Axis powers successfully gain control of Greece
- Britain wiped out in the Mediterranean in 1941
- Bombing of Pearl Harbor
- Axis Power Japan bombs the US in 1942
- US joins the war
- France completely absorbed into the Nazi government (late 1942)
- Battle of the Bulge
- Last ditch attempt by the Germans to retake territory in Belgium
- Complete failure, last time the Nazis gain ground in the war
Allied Powers
- France and Britain begin readying troops on the western border the Rhineland, in response to Nazi aggression in other areas
- Nazis occupy France after Operation Sickle Stroke
- Occupied this by June 17, 1940
- Occupied Vichy France
- Operation Dynamo
- Operation to rescue British soldiers trapped in the Dunkirk Pocket
- Battle of Britain (1940-1941)
- Original Axis plan to take out British recon off the coast
- Regular and persistent bombings of England, and particularly London
- Overall unsuccessful
- Operation Barbarossa (Invasion of USSR)
- Germany invades the Soviet Union via a 3-prong invasion
- Completely overtakes Poland
- Seizes Leningrad and Kiev, and attempts to take Moscow and Stalingrad
- Operation Torch
- American and British distract Axis forces by starting fights in North Africa
- Allied forces invade Italy
- Sicily captured in 1943, Fascist forces pushed into the peninsula
- Italy surrenders to the Allied powers
- September 1943: Allied forces make it to Naples, known as the Gustav Line where there is a short stalemate
- US forces make an amphibious landing on the Gustav Line, fails
- Allies take Rome in 1944
- Allies liberate more and more of Italy after D-Day
- Soviets push back the Germans almost entirely by September 1943
- Fully repelled in Ukraine and pushing into Poland and Romania
- Allies start using strategic bombing on Germany
- Takes out the Luftwaffe (German air force)
- Allied Liberation of France
- Operation Overlord (1944)
- Starts on June 6 (D-Day) by storming the beaches of Normandy
- Intentionally avoids ports, beaches chosen due to rough terrain for tanks
- US starts invading Nazi France to put pressure on Axis Powers
- August 25, 1944: Paris and France are Liberated
- Operation Market Garden (1944)
- Allies liberate a few Dutch cities but cannot fully liberate the Netherlands
- Red Army Liberations
- Red Army liberates Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, and Hungary
- Invasion of Germany
- By early 1945 the Soviets and US/UK forces start pushing into Germany proper
- The USSR liberates Germany on May 7, 1945.
![[Soviet Liberation.png]]
- Germany split into four pieces, between the UK, the US, the USSR, and France