Events, Verisoph

December 1925 Founding of IG Farben 0 cit. BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical firms merge into IG Farben, the largest chemical company in the world. Deeply complicit in Nazi crimes, including a factory at Auschwitz, it is broken up by the Allies after 1945. economy / politics / war ●●●

28 October 1925 Court-martial of Billy Mitchell 0 cit. US Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination after publicly accusing military leadership of incompetence and near treasonous neglect for failing to invest in air power. He was convicted and suspended from duty, resigning shortly after, but many of his warnings about air power's importance were vindicated within two decades. The case became a touchstone in debates over dissent and doctrine within a military hierarchy. politics / war ●●

25 September 1925 Sidney Reilly Captured via the Trust 0 cit. British intelligence agent Sidney Reilly, lured by the fake Trust organization run by Soviet secret police, crossed into the USSR believing he was meeting genuine anti-Bolshevik conspirators. He was arrested almost immediately and executed by the OGPU weeks later. His capture is documented as the culmination of the Operation Trust deception. politics / war ●

1925 IG Farben becomes the industrial engine of the Reich 5 cit. The chemical giant IG Farben, formed in 1925 from firms including BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst, grew into a pillar of the German war economy, producing synthetic fuel and rubber the military needed. It later built a plant at Auschwitz that used concentration-camp slave labor. After the war its executives were tried at Nuremberg and the combine was broken up. economy / technology / war ●●●●

1926 Northern Expedition 0 cit. The Nationalist army launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 to defeat the warlords and unify China. It brought much of the country under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. politics / war ●●●

1 August 1927 to 7 December 1949 Chinese Civil War 0 cit. no story Nationalists and Communists fight an on-and-off civil war spanning two decades, interrupted by the Japanese invasion. Communist victory in 1949 founds the People's Republic of China and drives the Nationalists to Taiwan. politics / war ●●●●●

1927 Start of the Chinese Civil War 0 cit. In 1927 the Nationalists violently purged their Communist allies, opening a long civil war. The two sides fought, paused, and fought again over the next two decades. politics / war ●●●●

27 August 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact 0 cit. Multilateral treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, eventually joined by most states. Though unable to prevent the Second World War, it underpinned later charges of waging aggressive war. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

29 March 1929 Ikhwan Revolt and the Battle of Sabilla 0 cit. Ibn Saud crushed a rebellion by Ikhwan factions who opposed his accommodation with Britain and modern technology. The battle broke the Ikhwan as an independent military force. religion / war ●●●

21 July 1930 Founding of the Veterans Administration 0 cit. Herbert Hoover's Executive Order 5398 consolidates the Veterans' Bureau, pension office, and soldiers' homes into a single Veterans Administration. It is elevated to the cabinet-level Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989. society / war ●●●

22 April 1930 London Naval Treaty signed 0 cit. The United States, Britain, and Japan extended naval arms limitation from the 1922 Washington treaty to cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, setting further tonnage ratios among the three powers. Japan's dissatisfaction with its allotted ratio fed resentment that contributed to its withdrawal from naval treaty limits later in the decade. The treaty marked the high point, and near end, of interwar naval arms control. diplomacy / war ●●

c. 1930 Italian Reconquest of Cyrenaica Begins 0 cit. General Rodolfo Graziani launched a renewed campaign to crush the Senussi resistance led by Omar Mukhtar in eastern Libya. Italian forces built a 270-kilometer barbed-wire fence along the Egyptian border to cut off supply routes and began forcibly deporting the civilian population of the Jebel Akhdar plateau. The campaign combined aerial bombing, including with poison gas against encampments, and mass internment of civilians. politics / war ●●

c. June 1930 Libyan Concentration Camps Established 1 cit. Italian authorities forcibly marched tens of thousands of Cyrenaican Bedouin, along with their surviving livestock, hundreds of kilometers to a string of concentration camps at El Agheila, Soluch, Sisi Ahmed el Magrun, and other sites. Conditions in the camps were severe, with little food, poor sanitation, and forced labor. Historians estimate that of a Cyrenaican population of around 225,000, roughly 40,000 to over 70,000 died in the camps and during the deportation marches, figures still debated by Italian and Libyan historians. society / war ●●●

16 September 1931 Execution of Omar Mukhtar 0 cit. Italian forces captured the Senussi resistance leader Omar Mukhtar after he was wounded in battle. He was tried in a summary military proceeding and publicly hanged at the Suluq concentration camp in front of thousands of interned Libyans as a deliberate act of intimidation. His death effectively ended organized armed resistance to Italian rule in Cyrenaica, though the camps remained in operation for two more years. politics / war ●●

18 September 1931 Mukden Incident 0 cit. Japanese army officers secretly detonated a small charge on the South Manchuria Railway near Mukden and blamed it on Chinese saboteurs. The Kwantung Army used the staged blast as the pretext to invade and occupy all of Manchuria within months. Japanese investigations and postwar tribunals confirmed the bombing was carried out by Japanese officers themselves. diplomacy / war ●●●

September 1931 The League fails the test of Manchuria and Abyssinia 0 cit. When Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the League condemned the aggressors but could not stop them. Sanctions were half-hearted and the great powers put their own interests first. These failures exposed the League as toothless and hastened the slide toward the Second World War. diplomacy / war ●●●

c. 1931 Ford and General Motors build vehicles inside Germany 2 cit. Ford ran a German subsidiary at Cologne, and General Motors owned Opel, the country's largest carmaker. Through the 1930s their German plants turned out cars and trucks, and after 1939 those factories produced vehicles for the German war effort. The parent firms' degree of control during the war has been argued over, but the production is documented. economy / technology / war ●●●

23 September 1932 Unification of Saudi Arabia 0 cit. no story Abdulaziz Ibn Saud proclaims the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, uniting Nejd and Hejaz after three decades of conquest. politics / war ●●●●

9 September 1932 to 12 June 1935 Chaco War 0 cit. no story Bolivia and Paraguay fight over the arid Chaco region, rumored to hold oil, in South America's bloodiest twentieth-century war. Paraguay wins most of the disputed territory at a cost of some 100,000 lives. war ●●●

13 March 1933 to 1945 Nazi Reich Ministry of Propaganda under Goebbels 2 cit. The Nazi government created the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels on 13 March 1933, giving the state control over press, radio, film, and the arts. It became a model of total propaganda by a modern dictatorship. politics / war ●●●●●

c. 1933 to c. 1945 Nazi persecution of Freemasons 1 cit. After 1933 the Nazi regime banned German lodges, seized their property, and treated Freemasons as enemies of the state. Thousands of Freemasons across occupied Europe were imprisoned or killed in the camps. politics / religion / war ●●●●

1933 Gustav Krupp backs Hitler and German rearmament 1 cit. After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 Gustav Krupp supported the regime and the firm profited from large-scale rearmament. Krupp became a pillar of the Nazi war economy. economy / politics / war ●●●●

1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany turns schools into indoctrination 1 cit. After 1933 the Nazis rewrote curricula to teach racial ideology and loyalty to Hitler and made the Hitler Youth central to raising children. Education became a direct tool of the regime's propaganda. politics / war ●●●

1933 Nazi regime and total dictatorship 0 cit. Hitler turned a democracy into a totalitarian state that controlled the courts, press, and daily life and crushed all opposition. It became the most extreme case of the modern total state. politics / war ●●●●●

14 July 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany's forced sterilization law 0 cit. The Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, enacted in 1933, led to the forced sterilization of roughly 400,000 people deemed genetically unfit. The program drew directly on American eugenic laws and preceded the regime's mass murder of disabled people. politics / war ●●●●●

c. September 1933 Libyan Concentration Camps Closed 0 cit. Italian authorities began closing the Cyrenaican concentration camps after the resistance had been crushed and much of the pre-war population had died from disease, starvation, and executions. Survivors were resettled under continued Italian control, and colonization by Italian settlers accelerated in the following years. The episode remained largely absent from Italian public memory for decades after the war. society / war ●

14 July 1933 Nazi Germany Passes Sterilization Law 0 cit. The Nazi government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, mandating compulsory sterilization of people with conditions including schizophrenia, epilepsy, and hereditary blindness or deafness. German eugenicists, including Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rudin, had studied American sterilization statutes and cited California's program in particular as proof such a law could be implemented at scale. The law took effect January 1, 1934, and roughly 400,000 people were sterilized under it. politics / science / war ●●●

27 February 1933 Reichstag Fire 0 cit. The German parliament building was set ablaze weeks after Hitler became chancellor, and the Nazi government blamed a lone Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who was tried and executed. The fire was used to suspend civil liberties and consolidate Nazi power. Whether the Nazis themselves secretly set the fire as a false-flag pretext, or opportunistically exploited a fire genuinely set by van der Lubbe acting alone, has been debated by historians for decades and remains formally unresolved; this event should be treated as contested, not settled. politics / war ●●●

15 June 1933 National Defense Act amendments create the dual-status Guard 0 cit. Amendments to the National Defense Act created the National Guard of the United States as a distinct federal reserve component, so that Guard members simultaneously held membership in their state militia and in a reserve of the United States Army. The change let the president order Guard units into federal active duty without going through the older, more cumbersome militia-draft process. It fixed the modern dual state-federal legal status that still governs the Guard. politics / war ●●●

1933 The Nazis weaponize the Jewish finance lie legendary 1 cit. Nazi propaganda made the myth of Jewish financial and world control a core message, casting Jews as the hidden power behind both banking and communism to justify persecution. This lie helped pave the road to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. The trope of international Jewish finance is not a harmless exaggeration; it was central to the deadliest genocide of the modern era and is false in every part. politics / war ●●●

October 1934 to 1935 The Long March 0 cit. Chinese communist forces retreat some 9,000 kilometers from Jiangxi to Shaanxi under Nationalist attack. The march secures Mao Zedong's leadership and becomes the founding legend of Chinese communism. politics / war ●●●

c. 1934 Schacht creates the Mefo bills to fund rearmament 0 cit. Schacht devised the Mefo bills, credit notes drawn on a dummy company and guaranteed by the Reichsbank, to hide the scale of German rearmament. The scheme let the state pay for weapons off the books until the bills came due. economy / war ●●●●

1934 Special Districts and the Neglect of the North 0 cit. The Special Districts Administration Ordinance of 1934 gave officials in the north sweeping powers of collective punishment, letting them seize the stock and restrict the movement of whole communities for the acts of a few. Combined with the closed-district system, it locked the region into policing and underdevelopment. The frontier's peoples entered independence far behind the rest of Kenya, and the unresolved anger helped drive the Shifta secession war of the 1960s, covered elsewhere. politics / war ●●

December 1934 The Walwal incident on the Somali border 0 cit. A clash between Ethiopian and Italian colonial troops at the Walwal wells, deep inside Ethiopian territory, left dozens dead and gave Mussolini the pretext he wanted. Italy demanded an apology and reparations for an incident on Ethiopia's own land. Ethiopia took the dispute to the League of Nations, which dithered while Italy prepared to invade. diplomacy / war ●

1934 Schacht engineers Nazi rearmament finance 0 cit. As Reichsbank president and economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht designed the financial machinery that funded German rearmament, including off-the-books credit instruments known as Mefo bills that hid the true scale of military spending. His skill kept the regime solvent while it rebuilt its forces. He was later tried at Nuremberg and acquitted. economy / politics / war ●●●

1 March 1935 Hitler publicly reveals the Luftwaffe 0 cit. Adolf Hitler publicly announced the existence of the Luftwaffe as an independent air force, openly violating the disarmament terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had secretly been training pilots and developing aircraft designs for years beforehand. The Luftwaffe was rapidly built into one of the most powerful air forces in the world and became central to Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg strategy. politics / war ●●

1935 Ludendorff Publishes Der Totale Krieg 0 cit. Former World War I commander Erich Ludendorff published Der Totale Krieg (The Total War), arguing that modern war required mobilizing an entire nation's economy, population, and politics under military direction, with civilian leadership subordinated to the demands of war. The book argued explicitly against the idea of civilian control over military strategy, inverting the standard civil-military relationship. It became an influential statement of militarist ideology in the interwar period. politics / war ●●

3 October 1935 Second Italo-Ethiopian War Begins 0 cit. Italian forces under Marshal Pietro Badoglio invaded Ethiopia in a war of colonial conquest condemned by the League of Nations but met with only token sanctions. The campaign employed systematic aerial bombing of civilian targets alongside conventional military operations. It ended with the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa in May 1936 and the proclamation of Italian East Africa. diplomacy / war ●●

c. December 1935 Italy Uses Mustard Gas in Ethiopia 1 cit. Italian forces repeatedly used mustard gas, sprayed from aircraft, against Ethiopian troops and civilian populations in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which Italy had signed. Mussolini personally authorized the gas attacks, and Badoglio expanded their use through the following months. Historians estimate the gas killed thousands of Ethiopians and contaminated water sources and grazing land used by civilians long after the war. technology / war ●●●

3 October 1935 Fascist Italy invades Ethiopia 1 cit. Mussolini's forces crossed from Eritrea into Ethiopia without a declaration of war, seeking to avenge Adwa and build an Italian empire in East Africa. The League of Nations declared Italy the aggressor and voted economic sanctions, but left out oil and did not close the Suez Canal, so the measures failed to stop the war. The invasion became a test case for whether the League could deter aggression, and it failed that test. diplomacy / war ●●●

1935 Protesting Italy's invasion of Ethiopia 0 cit. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 galvanised Black activists in Britain, and Kenyatta joined the campaigns defending the one African state that had kept its independence. The cause bound the London Pan-Africanists together and sharpened their anti-colonial edge. It was a formative moment for the movement that met again in 1945. politics / war ●

7 March 1936 Remilitarization of the Rhineland 0 cit. German troops re-enter the demilitarized Rhineland in open breach of Versailles; Britain and France do nothing. politics / war ●●●

20 July 1936 Montreux Convention 0 cit. Convention giving Turkey control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles and regulating passage of warships in and out of the Black Sea. Its rules still govern the straits today. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939 Spanish Civil War 0 cit. no story Franco's Nationalists, backed by Germany and Italy, defeat the Republic, backed by the Soviet Union and international volunteers. Around half a million die and Franco rules Spain until 1975. politics / war ●●●●

1936 to 1939 The 1936-39 Arab Revolt 0 cit. Palestinian Arabs staged a widespread revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration from 1936 to 1939. Britain suppressed it and later curbed Jewish immigration. politics / war ●●●

c. 1 January 1936 Palestine Police CID expands during the Arab Revolt 0 cit. During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, the Palestine Police CID and its political intelligence branch greatly expanded surveillance, informant networks, and interrogation of Arab nationalist organizers. Zionist paramilitary and political groups were also monitored, and the CID's methods and personnel later influenced British colonial policing elsewhere, including Malaya. politics / war ●●

17 July 1936 Military uprising ignites the Spanish Civil War 0 cit. A group of generals launches a coup against the elected Republic, splitting Spain into war. Franco takes command of the Nationalist side, which absorbs the fascist Falange and receives troops and aircraft from Hitler and Mussolini. The war becomes a proving ground for the Axis powers. politics / war ●●●

1936 Italy folds Somaliland into Italian East Africa 0 cit. After Fascist Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936, it merged Italian Somaliland, Eritrea, and conquered Ethiopia into the colony of Italian East Africa. For a brief period much Somali-inhabited land, including the Ogaden, sat under one administration. Italian rule was harsh and short-lived, ended by British conquest during the Second World War. politics / war ●

31 March 1936 Italy uses poison gas at Maychew and beyond 0 cit. As Ethiopian resistance stiffened, Italy sprayed mustard gas from aircraft over troops, civilians, herds, and water sources, in breach of the Geneva Protocol it had signed. The decisive Battle of Maychew broke the emperor's main army and opened the road to the capital. The gas attacks were widely reported and condemned, yet no power moved to punish Italy for them. technology / war ●●

1937 Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre 0 cit. Full-scale war with Japan began in 1937 after a clash at the Marco Polo Bridge. Japanese forces committed atrocities including the mass killing and rape at Nanjing. war ●●●●●

c. 1937 Peenemuende rocket center established 0 cit. The German army opened a research center on the Baltic coast to develop long-range rockets under Wernher von Braun. It became the birthplace of the V-2 missile. science / technology / war ●●●

1937 Japan's Ministry of Education Publishes Kokutai no Hongi 0 cit. Japan's Ministry of Education issued Kokutai no Hongi (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity), a state-sponsored text promoting emperor worship, self-sacrifice, and military duty as the core of Japanese national identity. It was distributed widely in schools as part of a broader state effort to fuse Shinto ideology, imperial loyalty, and military expansion into official doctrine. The text is a documented example of state-driven militarist ideology in Imperial Japan during the lead-up to the Pacific War. religion / war ●●

19 February 1937 Yekatit 12 Massacre in Addis Ababa 0 cit. After an assassination attempt on Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, Italian forces and Blackshirt militia carried out three days of reprisal killings against the civilian population of Addis Ababa. Estimates of the dead range from about 3,000 in early Italian accounts to 19,000 or more according to Ethiopian government estimates presented after the war, with historian Ian Campbell's more recent research supporting a toll of around 19,000-30,000. The massacre was followed by further executions of educated Ethiopians and Orthodox clergy in the following weeks. politics / war ●●●

7 July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident 0 cit. A clash between Japanese and Chinese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge escalated into full-scale war between Japan and China. Unlike the Mukden Incident, most historians regard this clash as beginning from a genuine, unplanned skirmish, possibly triggered by a misfired shot or missing soldier, that was then deliberately escalated by Japanese commanders seeking pretext for wider war. Claims that it was a fully staged provocation from the outset, comparable to Mukden, are contested rather than established fact. diplomacy / war ●●

1938 Nazi seizure of the Austrian Rothschild bank 0 cit. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi regime seized the Vienna Rothschild bank and family assets. Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild was arrested and released only after a large ransom in property. economy / politics / war ●●●●

c. March 1938 Nazi Germany seizes control of Interpol 0 cit. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, the Vienna-based International Criminal Police Commission came under Nazi control along with the rest of the Austrian state apparatus. By 1940 the organization's presidency and headquarters had passed to senior SS and Reich Security Main Office officials, including Reinhard Heydrich and later Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and historians have documented that its files and networks were used to help track down political dissidents and Jews during the war. politics / war ●●●

1 September 1939 Invasion of Poland 0 cit. Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war two days later. The Second World War begins in Europe. war ●●●●●

22 May 1939 Pact of Steel 0 cit. Full military and political alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, committing each to join the other's wars. It bound Italy to Germany on the eve of the Second World War. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

28 September 1939 German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty 0 cit. Treaty dividing conquered Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union after their September invasions, with secret protocols adjusting spheres of influence and pledging suppression of Polish resistance. It supplemented the earlier Nazi-Soviet pact. diplomacy / politics / war ●●

1 April 1939 Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War 0 cit. Francisco Franco declares victory over the Spanish Republic after three years of civil war fought with German and Italian support. His authoritarian regime rules Spain until his death in 1975. politics / war ●●●●

1 September 1939 to 1945 The Second World War and the Empire 0 cit. The empire again mobilized on a vast scale, but the war drained Britain's wealth and strength. Victory came at the cost of the resources and prestige needed to hold the empire together. war ●●●●●

17 September 1939 Soviet Invasion of Poland 0 cit. Following the secret protocol, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland weeks after Germany attacked from the west. The Soviets annexed the territory, including western Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. politics / war ●●●

30 November 1939 to 1940 Winter War with Finland 0 cit. The Soviet Union attacked Finland after it refused territorial demands, meeting fierce resistance and heavy Soviet losses. Finland ceded land in the peace but kept its independence. war ●●●

1939 to 1945 Pius XII and the Church during the Second World War 0 cit. Pope Pius XII led the Church through the war and the Holocaust, avoiding open condemnation of Nazi genocide while the Vatican sheltered some refugees. His silence remains one of the most debated questions in modern Church history. politics / religion / war ●●●

21 March 1939 Transfer of Czechoslovak gold through the BIS 1 cit. After Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, the BIS acted on instructions to move gold held for the Czech National Bank into an account controlled by Germany's Reichsbank. The episode became the most documented controversy about the bank's wartime conduct. economy / politics / war ●●●●

c. 1939 German Rhodes Scholarships terminated 0 cit. The Rhodes Trust ended the German scholarships as the Second World War began, after the scheme had already been compromised by Nazi control over which German students were allowed to study abroad. The program was never revived after the war in its original form. Germany was only later reintegrated into the scholarship's list of eligible countries. diplomacy / war ●

1939 Duke of Kent becomes Grand Master, dies in wartime service 0 cit. Prince George, Duke of Kent, son of George V, became Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1939. He continued to hold the office through the early part of the Second World War until his death in an air crash in Scotland in August 1942 while on active RAF service. His death ended a continuous run of royal Grand Masters that had lasted, with brief gaps, since the 18th century. society / war ●●

31 August 1939 Gleiwitz Incident 0 cit. SS operatives dressed as Polish soldiers staged an attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz, leaving behind a murdered concentration camp prisoner dressed in a Polish uniform as fabricated evidence. Hitler cited the fake attack, along with a wider set of staged border incidents under Operation Himmler, as justification for invading Poland the next morning. The operation was confirmed by postwar testimony from SS officer Alfred Naujocks, who led it. diplomacy / war ●●●

26 November 1939 Mainila Shelling Incident 0 cit. Soviet artillery shelled the Soviet village of Mainila and the government publicly blamed Finland for the attack, despite Finnish forces having withdrawn their artillery out of range beforehand. The Soviet Union used the incident to renounce its non-aggression pact with Finland and launch the Winter War four days later. Soviet officials and archival records later confirmed the shelling was carried out by the Red Army itself. diplomacy / war ●●

1939 Hewlett-Packard is founded in a Palo Alto garage 0 cit. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, students of Stanford's Frederick Terman, started HP in a garage that is now treated as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Wartime and Cold War military contracts for electronics gave the young company its first steady business. economy / technology / war ●●

4 November 1939 Cash and carry replaces the arms embargo 0 cit. The United States revises its Neutrality Acts to let warring nations buy American arms, but only if they pay in cash and carry the goods away in their own ships. The rule keeps America formally neutral while opening its factories to buyers with hard currency. For Britain and France it means every rifle and aircraft must be paid for up front in dollars or gold. diplomacy / economy / war ●●●

10 May 1940 to 25 June 1940 Fall of France 0 cit. Germany conquers the Low Countries and France in six weeks; the British army escapes at Dunkirk without its equipment. war ●●●●

10 July 1940 to 31 October 1940 Battle of Britain 0 cit. The RAF denies the Luftwaffe air superiority; the planned invasion of Britain is shelved. war ●●●●

16 September 1940 First Peacetime Draft: The Selective Service System 0 cit. With war spreading in Europe and Asia, Congress passes the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime conscription law in American history. The Selective Service System registers tens of millions of men through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. society / war ●●

16 September 1940 First peacetime draft under the Selective Service Act 0 cit. Congress passed the first peacetime conscription law in US history as war spread in Europe and Asia. It built the mass army the country used in the Second World War. politics / war ●●

1940 to 1945 Krupp uses forced and slave labour in the Second World War 0 cit. During the Second World War Krupp used tens of thousands of prisoners of war, forced labourers and concentration camp inmates in its plants. Conditions were often brutal and many workers died. society / war ●●●●

2 September 1940 The destroyers-for-bases deal ties Britain to American support 0 cit. The United States gave Britain fifty aging destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on bases in British Atlantic and Caribbean territories. The deal traded imperial real estate for American aid as Britain stood nearly alone against Germany. politics / war ●

1 January 1940 to 1945 The BIS keeps operating under wartime pressure 1 cit. With American Thomas McKittrick as president, the BIS stayed open throughout World War II while much of its board and business were tied to Axis powers. Critics later charged that it handled looted gold and served German interests, while defenders said it preserved a neutral channel among central banks. economy / politics / war ●●●●

7 September 1940 The Blitz bombing campaign against Britain 0 cit. The Luftwaffe shifted from targeting RAF airfields to sustained night bombing of London and other British cities, killing over 40,000 civilians before the campaign wound down in mid-1941. The bombing was intended to break British morale and force surrender, but it failed to do so and instead hardened public resolve. The Blitz became a defining example of strategic bombing aimed at civilian populations. war ●●

c. 20 January 1940 Bletchley Park breaks Enigma traffic 0 cit. Codebreakers at the Government Code and Cypher School's wartime station, Bletchley Park, achieved their first sustained breaks into German Enigma-encrypted traffic, building on earlier Polish cryptanalytic work. The resulting decrypted intelligence, codenamed Ultra, gave Allied commanders access to German military communications for the rest of the war. Historians credit Ultra with shortening the war, though its full extent stayed classified until the 1970s. technology / war ●●●

16 September 1940 National Guard federalized before World War II 0 cit. As war spread in Europe and Asia, Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act, and President Roosevelt ordered the entire National Guard, about 300,000 soldiers, into a year of federal active duty starting that month. Guard divisions such as the 34th 'Red Bull' Division later fought in North Africa and Italy, and other Guard units fought across the Pacific. The 1940 mobilization gave the Regular Army a badly needed trained cadre well before Pearl Harbor. war ●●●

1940 Sengier ships Congolese uranium to New York 0 cit. Edgar Sengier, a director of Union Miniere, foresaw war and had roughly 1,200 tons of high-grade Shinkolobwe uranium ore shipped to New York, where it sat in a warehouse on Staten Island. In 1942 he sold it to the United States Army for the secret atomic bomb program. The ore was far richer than American or Canadian sources, and its origin in a Belgian colony was kept quiet. economy / technology / war ●●●

August 1940 Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille 0 cit. The Emergency Rescue Committee sends journalist Varian Fry to Vichy France, where he helps thousands of artists, writers and intellectuals escape the Nazis, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst. Fry worked with forged papers and secret mountain routes into Spain. The committee later merged with the International Relief Association. culture / politics / war ●●●

1940 Roosevelt's order builds a classification machine 0 cit. President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8381, the first presidential order to set rules for classifying government information. It gave the marking system a legal footing rooted in the president's own authority rather than an act of Congress. From here the American secrecy regime would grow through a chain of executive orders, each rewriting the last. politics / war ●●

14 May 1940 Britain forms the Local Defence Volunteers 0 cit. As German forces overran France and invasion loomed, War Secretary Anthony Eden called by radio for men not in the army to enrol as Local Defence Volunteers. Within weeks hundreds of thousands had signed up, many too old or too young for regular service. The force was meant to watch the coast and countryside and to slow any German landing until the army could respond. society / war ●●●

July 1940 The Local Defence Volunteers are renamed the Home Guard 0 cit. Churchill pressed for a stronger name, and the Local Defence Volunteers became the Home Guard. Membership passed a million men and later reached about 1.5 million. At first they were badly short of weapons, drilling with shotguns, pikes and improvised gear until arms arrived from Britain and the United States. society / war ●●

1940 The Kikuyu Central Association Is Banned at the Outbreak of War 3 cit. In 1940, as the Second World War began, the colonial government banned the Kikuyu Central Association along with the Ukamba Members Association and the Taita Hills Association, citing security fears, and detained several of its leaders. With Kenyatta away in Britain and its main African political vehicle outlawed, organized Kikuyu politics was pushed underground for the duration of the war. The ban left the government chiefs and the mission-aligned elite as the recognized African voices, strengthening the loyalist establishment just as grievances over land and labour were sharpening. politics / society / war ●●

c. 1940 Kenyans Fight in the King's African Rifles 0 cit. Tens of thousands of Kenyan Africans served in the King's African Rifles during the Second World War, first in the East African campaign that drove the Italians from Somaliland and Ethiopia, then in the brutal jungle fighting against Japan in Burma. They fought alongside white soldiers, saw the wider world, and learned that colonial rule was neither universal nor invincible. The estimated hundred thousand or so Kenyans who served came home with new skills, expectations, and a sharpened sense of the injustice they had left behind. society / war ●●●

c. 1940 The 1940 age-set and wartime conscription 0 cit. The name Anake a 40, the Young Men of 40, points to the year 1940. Among the Kikuyu, men initiated in the same period shared an age-set identity, and many of this cohort were drafted into the British colonial forces from 1940 as the Second World War spread. The shared year of service and initiation gave the group its name and a strong sense of common generation. society / war ●●

January 1940 Mao Zedong publishes On New Democracy 0 cit. Mao set out a model of revolution led by a communist party but rooted in the peasantry and aimed first at foreign domination and landlordism. His stress on rural guerrilla struggle in a poor, mostly agrarian country spoke to conditions across the colonized world more directly than Soviet industrial doctrine. Historians credit the Maoist model with shaping liberation movements from Asia to Africa. politics / war ●●

25 July 1940 General Guisan's Rütli Report and the National Redoubt 0 cit. After the fall of France left Switzerland fully surrounded by the Axis, General Henri Guisan gathered his officers at the Rütli meadow, the Confederation's founding site, and set out a plan to withdraw the army into an Alpine fortress and fight on if invaded. The National Redoubt aimed to make conquering Switzerland more costly than it was worth. The stance is often cited as armed neutrality, though the country's survival also owed much to its economic usefulness to Germany. war ●●

c. 1940 Britain ships its gold across the Atlantic 0 cit. To meet the cash-and-carry rule, Britain sends gold and dollar securities across the Atlantic to pay for American supplies. Some shipments travel by warship under guard. The purchases keep the war going but steadily drain the reserves the country needs to buy anything from abroad. economy / war ●●●

December 1940 Britain's reserves near exhaustion 0 cit. By late 1940 Britain's gold and dollar reserves are close to running out. The Treasury warns that the country can no longer pay cash for the American arms it depends on. Churchill puts the problem directly to President Roosevelt, saying Britain will soon be unable to pay in full for shipping and supplies. diplomacy / economy / war ●●●

c. 1940 Britain liquidates its American investments 0 cit. Through 1940 and 1941 the British government requisitions and sells off British-owned direct investments in the United States to raise dollars. Company after company held by British owners is cashed in to pay for the war. The policy strips Britain of the overseas holdings that had underpinned its financial strength for decades. economy / war ●●●

c. 1940 More gold leaves the country 0 cit. Alongside the sale of companies, Britain keeps shipping gold abroad to settle its bills. Reserves that took generations to build are handed over in a matter of months. The critic Andrew Boyle and others later called this stretch the selling of the family silver, the disposal of the nation's accumulated wealth to stay in the fight. economy / war ●●

22 June 1941 Operation Barbarossa 0 cit. Germany invades the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometre front, the largest invasion in history. war ●●●●●

7 December 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor 0 cit. Japan strikes the US Pacific Fleet; the United States enters the war, and Germany declares war on America four days later. war ●●●●●

14 August 1941 Atlantic Charter 0 cit. Joint declaration by Roosevelt and Churchill setting out principles for the postwar world, including self-determination and freer trade. It became a founding reference for the United Nations. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

8 September 1941 to 1944 Siege of Leningrad 0 cit. German and Finnish forces encircled Leningrad for nearly 900 days, cutting off food and fuel. Hundreds of thousands of residents died, most from starvation, before the blockade was broken. society / war ●●●●

1941 to 1945 The Holocaust 1 cit. Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered about six million European Jews during the Second World War. The genocide became a central argument for Jewish statehood. society / war ●●●●●