Chronology and key events
1935:
March: Hitler announces German rearmament in defiance of Versailles
September: Nuremberg Race Laws passed
October: Italy invades Ethiopia; Abyssinian Crisis opens.
1936:
Feb: first National Negro Congress held; A Philip Randolph
March: Invasion/remilitarization of the Rhineland
May: Italy annexes Ethiopia
July: Spanish Civil War opens
August: Opening World Jewish Congress in Geneva. 8 August 1936.
August: Berlin Olympics
Nov: US presidential election; FDR re-elected; Mussolini announces Rome-Berlin Axis;
Japan joins Anti-Comintern Pact
Dec: Abraham Lincoln Brigade sails for Spain
1937:
Feb: Addis Ababa Massacre (of Ethiopians by Italians; 20,000 killed).
April: Guernica bombed by German Luftwaffe
July: Sino-Japanese war breaks out
August: Great Purge in USSR (700,000 eventually killed)
Oct: FDR quarantine speech
Dec: Nanking massacre
1938:
March: Anschluss
July: Evian Conference on Jewish refugees
Sept: Czech crisis and Munich agreement
Nov.: Kristallnacht; Italy promulgates racial laws
1939:
Jan-April: Nationalists win war in Spain; Franco takes power
March: Germany occupies rest of Czechoslovakia
June: St Louis is turned away from US ports
August: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Sept: German invasion of Poland; European war begins
Sept: US passes revised neutrality act
1940:
May: German invasion of Low Countries and France
June 10: FDR speech at UVA Memorial Gym denounces isolationism
June: Fall of France
June: Republican convention; nominates Willkie
July: FDR nominated by Dems for 3rd term
Sept: Destroyers for bases deal
Nov 1940: FDR re-elected
Dec 1940: arsenal of democracy speech