Curated category
Axis powers
- German–Soviet Axis talksIn November 1940, Vyacheslav Molotov stepped off a train in Berlin to what should have been an impossible scene: an orchestra inside Nazi Germany playing The…
- Pact of SteelThe Pact of Steel was signed on the 22nd of May 1939, binding Germany and Italy to go to war together. Foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo…
- Case AntonCase Anton, known in German as Unternehmen Anton, was the military occupation of Vichy France carried out by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in November 1942.
- Continuation WarThe Continuation War placed Finland in one of the strangest positions of the entire Second World War: a small Nordic democracy fighting alongside Nazi…
- Vichy FranceVichy France began on the 10th of July 1940, the day the French National Assembly voted by 569 votes to 80 to hand absolute power to an 84-year-old military…
- A–A lineThe A-A line was a line drawn across a map of the Soviet Union that Germany's military planners believed would end the war in the east.
- Soviet–Japanese Neutrality PactAfter Stalin signed the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, he did something almost no one had seen him do. He personally saw off Japan's Foreign Minister…
- Generalplan OstGeneralplan Ost, abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's blueprint for the permanent colonization of Central and Eastern Europe through mass murder, forced…
- Kingdom of RomaniaThe Kingdom of Romania was born on the 15th of March 1881, when the Romanian parliament raised the country to the status of a kingdom and crowned a German…
- Slovak Republic (1939–1945)On the 14th of March 1939, the Slovak parliament gathered in Bratislava and voted unanimously to break away from Czechoslovakia.
- Axis occupation of GreeceThe early morning hours of the 28th of October 1940 marked the beginning of a catastrophic chain of events for Greece. Italian ambassador Emanuele Grazzi…
- Fascist ItalyFascist Italy is the name given to the period from 1922 to 1943, when Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ruled the Kingdom of Italy.
- Thailand in World War IIThailand in World War II sits at one of history's stranger crossroads: a small nation that switched sides without quite surrendering, that declared war and…
- Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan lasted 79 years, beginning with the Meiji Restoration on the 3rd of January 1868 and ending with the ratification of the Constitution of…
- Anti-Comintern PactOn the 25th of November 1936, in the offices of a semi-official diplomatic bureau that operated outside Germany's formal foreign ministry, two ambassadors…
- Axis powersThe Axis powers launched the deadliest conflict in human history, and they did it with far less unity than their opponents ever imagined.
- Molotov–Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in Moscow on the 24th of August 1939, and within a week Germany had invaded Poland.
- Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)The Kingdom of Hungary, as it existed between 1920 and 1946, had no king. That was the paradox at the heart of this central European state.
- Kingdom of ItalyOn the 17th of March 1861, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy in Turin. This event marked the birth of a new state from decades of…
- Tripartite PactThe Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin on the 27th of September 1940. Adolf Hitler stood by as Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, and Saburō Kurusu…
- Yugoslav coup d'étatAt 2:15 in the morning on the 27th of March 1941, military officers fanned out across Belgrade and seized control of radio stations, bridges, barracks, and…
- Nazi GermanyNazi Germany lasted just twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, yet in that span it launched the deadliest war in human history and carried out the systematic…
- Japanese occupation of the PhilippinesThe Japanese occupation of the Philippines began on the 8th of December 1941, just ten hours after bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.
- ManchukuoManchukuo lasted just thirteen years, from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945, yet it carried the grand title of empire and the trappings of a brand new…
- Invasion of YugoslaviaThe invasion of Yugoslavia began on the 6th of April 1941. German-led Axis forces attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in what became known as the April War…
- Italian Social RepublicThe Italian Social Republic existed for just 19 months, yet its name carries a weight that still shapes Italian politics today.
- New Order (Nazism)On the 30th of January 1941, Adolf Hitler stood before his followers and proclaimed a "European New Order." The phrase sounded almost benign, like a…
- UntermenschUntermensch. The word itself sounds like a verdict. In German, it literally means 'underman' or 'sub-man', and when the Nazi regime printed nearly four…
- Italian EmpireThe Italian Empire, known in Italian as the Impero coloniale italiano, spanned nearly eight decades, from 1882 to 1960. At its height, between 1936 and 1941…
- Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity SphereThe Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was one of the most ambitious and cynical political projects of the twentieth century.
- Kingdom of HungaryThe Kingdom of Hungary endured for nearly a thousand years, from 1000 to 1946. That span covers crusades, Ottoman sieges, Habsburg wars, a communist…
- German military administration in occupied France during World War IIThe German military administration in France arrived in Paris in June 1940, and within weeks a swastika flag hung from the Hôtel de Ville while another flew…
- Hakkō ichiuHakkō ichiu is a Japanese political slogan that translates as the divine right of the Empire of Japan to unify the eight corners of the world.
- LebensraumLebensraum, the German word for "living space", began as a dry term in a biologist's book review and ended as the ideological engine behind the worst war of…
- German-occupied EuropeGerman-occupied Europe was, at its peak in 1941-1942, a continent where more than half the entire population lived under the direct rule or influence of Nazi…
- Spain during World War IISpain during World War II occupied one of the strangest positions of any nation in the conflict. Francisco Franco, the dictator who had won power with German…