• Discuss the emerging threats to global peace posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan in the late 1930s, as well as the United States’ initial esponse to these threats.

• Describe the sources of American isolationism in the 1930s and early 1940s, and show how this sentiment was reflected in specific U.S. policies.

• Explain how and why technology, particularly air power, reshaped America’s thinking about its role in the world.

• Describe and explain the U.S. response to the refugee crisis in Europe between 1933 and 1941.

•Trace the international developments and changes in U.S. policy that eventually led to U.S. involvement in World War II.

1922 Benito Mussolini comes to power in Italy.

1931 Japanese forces invade Manchuria.

1933 Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany.

The Montevideo Conference.

1934–36 Nye hearings investigate the munitions industry.

1935 Mussolini sends Italian troops into Ethiopia.

Spanish Civil War begins.

Nazis issue Nuremberg laws.

Neutrality Act of 1935.

1936 German Wehrmacht seizes the Rhineland.

Neutrality Act of 1936.

1937 Japan opens undeclared war on China.

FDR’s "quarantine" speech.

Neutrality Act of 1937.

1938 Kristallnacht.

Hitler annexes Austria.

Allies appease Hitler at the Munich Conference.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade goes to Spain to fight for the Loyalists.

Uranium fission is discovered in Berlin.

1939 Franco’s fascists defeat Loyalists in Spanish-American War.

Hitler invades the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact.

Hitler invades Poland, launching World War II.

Neutrality Act of 1939 allows sale of arms on "cash-and-carry" basis.

1940 Hitler invades Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and France.

The Battle of Britain.

FDR wins third presidential term.

FDR negotiates destroyers-for-bases swap with Britain.

Congress passes first peacetime conscription act.

America First Committee formed.

United States embargoes aviation-grade gasoline and metal scrap to Japan.

Japan joins Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact.

1941 Congress passes lend-lease bill.

Hitler invades the Soviet Union; United States makes USSR eligible for lend-lease.

Roosevelt and Churchill issue Atlantic Charter.

Roosevelt authorizes Navy escorts for British merchant shipping.

German U-boat attacks the Greer.

Congress repeals last vestiges of the Neutrality Acts.

Japan occupies French Indochina.

United States freezes Japanese assets in the United States.

Japan attacks U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

United States declares war on Japan.

Germany and Italy declare war on the United States