Essential Events Between 1900 and 1945

Learn how two world wars and other critical developments reshaped global affairs in the first half of the
twentieth century.

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1898
Spanish-American War Signals Growing U.S.
Ambition on World Stage

A depiction of the naval Battle of Santiago de Cuba on July 3, 1898, during the Spanish-American
War.
Library of Congress

When the USS Maine exploded in Cuban waters on February 15, 1898, and killed 266 Americans, sensational
news reports blaming Spain whipped up public support for U.S. intervention in Cuba’s war for independence from
its Spanish colonizers. But what then-U.S. Secretary of State John Hay referred to as a “splendid little war” was
more than a simple matchup between two major powers over their interests in the Americas. Rather, the conflict
clearly signaled the United States’ growing ambitions on the world stage and closer to home—in the Caribbean
and its countries. Nearly three hundred thousand Americans, including Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders,
answered President William McKinley’s call for troops. After months of fighting, Cuba emerged with its
independence, and the United States emerged with much of Spain’s colonial empire in the Caribbean and Pacific,
including Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Additionally, the Platt Amendment, which the United States
insisted be part of the Cuban constitution, designated  Guantanamo Bay  as a permanent U.S. military base.
1905
Japan Gains International Reputation With
Victory in Russo-Japanese War

A woodcut illustration of the Japanese Second Army landing on the Liaodong Peninsula, causing
the Russian troops to flee during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904.
Universal Images Group via Getty Images

When the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904, Japan and Russia had already been tussling for decades over

control of Manchuria, a resource-rich region in Northeast Asia. The Japanese emerged victorious and proved the
country capable of trumping Western military might—a rarity in the nineteenth century. This milestone helped
cement Japan’s reputation as a growing military and colonial power, one that was treated as an equal—
diplomatically—by Western powers. It also weakened the prestige of czarist Russia and nearly led to revolution,
and dampened Russia’s imperial ambitions in East Asia. By the conflict’s close, Japan controlled much of
southern Manchuria and the region’s valuable mining and railroad interests; by 1910, the island nation had fulfilled
further imperial ambitions by annexing Korea.

1906
Launch of HMS Dreadnought Sparks Arms
Race
 The HMS Dreadnought in 1907.
Imperial War Museums

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods of rapid technological innovation. The automobile,
radio, and television—invented in 1886, 1901, and 1927 respectively—would all go on to change the course of
history. But it was the launch of the British warship HMS Dreadnought that brought together a series of new
technologies that sparked the first  arms race  of the twentieth century. The ship, a feat of naval engineering,
featured twelve-inch guns, submerged torpedo tubes, and steam turbine engines, which had never been brought
together before. A coinciding arms race on land produced long range weapons, chemical gas, and difficult-to-
reverse military mobilizations. This frenzied militarization among the world’s most powerful countries ultimately
helped provide the kindling for World War I.

Jun 28, 1914

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Ignites World War I

A drawing from the front page of an Italian paper on July 12, 1914, depicting Gavrilo Princip killing
Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo.
Achille Beltrame/Domenica del Corriere

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was assassinated, an event
that famously kicked off World War I. But why did the assassination of one man cause the whole world to dive into
conflict? The short version: it’s complicated. The longer version requires looking at the long-term forces that led to
mutual hostility and suspicion among European powers—including nationalism, competition for empires and
markets, an  arms race , mobilization plans, and values such as militarism.  Alliance  systems which were meant to
act as a deterrent to maintain a balance of power ended by dragging their members into conflicts. These forces
produced a war that would turn what most thought would be a quick “home by the holidays” military engagement
into a deadly four-year, continent-spanning conflict between the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and
the Ottoman Empire) and the Allied Powers (Britain, France, Russia, and eventually Italy and the United States,
and many more such as China and Japan) that ultimately killed approximately nine million soldiers.

Aug 15, 1914

Panama Canal Transforms U.S. and Global
Economy

The SS Kentuckian (left) transits the Panama Canal some time between 1910 and 1920.
Library of Congress

After gold was discovered in California in 1848, Americans were desperate for a faster way to get from coast to
coast. This desire only increased when Hawaii and the Philippines became U.S. territories, highlighting the need
for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that would allow warships and commercial vessels to get
from one U.S. coast to another without rounding South America. By encouraging and supporting Panama’s push

for independence from Colombia, the United States ultimately succeeded in building the Panama Canal, which
opened to traffic in 1914. The United States could now sail far more easily and safely between its two shores,
allowing the country to integrate its domestic economy and continue on its path toward becoming a global
economic and military power.

Apr 1, 1915 - May 31, 1915

Second Battle of Ypres Introduces World to
Large-Scale Chemical Warfare

French troops wearing an early form of gas mask in the trenches during the Second Battle of
Ypres in 1915.
 Hulton Archive via Getty Images

From the use of tanks and submarines, to the widespread deployment of fighter pilots and new military uniforms
with steel helmets, World War I was truly a conflict of military firsts. Sadly, this also marked the first time chemical
weapons and machine guns were used on such a massive scale. Throughout the war, the machine gun resulted in
massive casualties without requiring soldiers to even aim at a specific target. During the Second Battle of Ypres,
the German army opened thousands of cylinders of chlorine gas in the trenches along its defensive perimeter in
Belgium. The results were immediate. A wall of gas killed more than six thousand Algerian and French soldiers
and harmed thousands more. The war marked the first time in modern warfare that an army used weapons of
mass destruction, a fateful milestone in the world’s military history.

May 16, 1916

Sykes-Picot Agreement Leads to Ottoman
Empire Break Up

A map from 1919 illustrating the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

British Library

Anticipating a victory, two senior diplomats—Britain’s Sir Mark Sykes and France’s Francois Georges Picot—met
in secret at the height of World War I to preemptively divvy up their countries’ spheres of influence within the
Ottoman Empire, which included present-day Turkey and most of the Arab Middle East. When Russia (post-
Bolshevik Revolution) leaked news of the meeting, outrage ensued due to Britain’s clear intention to withdraw its
promised support for an independent Arab kingdom if the Arab population rose against the Ottomans. Despite the
leak, the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which eventually included Italy and Russia, were largely codified
after the war with the Treaty of Sèvres. Both Britain and France went on to draw new borders that had less to do
with the people who lived in those areas and more to do with what the World War I victors needed to fuel their
empires: oil and access to Mediterranean seaports, respectively.

January 1917
Zimmerman Telegram Helps to Push United
States into World War I
States into World War I

The Zimmerman telegram.

U.S. National Archives

Despite its growing global power, the United States sought to stay out of World War I. Its resolve was tested in
1915 when German submarines attacked a British ocean liner, the RMS Lusitania, killing nearly 1,200 people,
including over 100 Americans. The ensuing outcry led Germany to cease its submarine activity against civilian
shipping, in a bid to keep the United States neutral and on the sidelines. However, in 1917, Britain intercepted a
note sent by Germany to Mexico proposing a military  alliance  possibly to include Japan as well should the United
States enter World War I—a proposal sweetened with a promise to help Mexico reclaim territory it had lost during
the Mexican-American War. The Zimmerman Telegram, coupled with past grievances and, above all, Germany's
decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, led a reluctant United States into the war. By July

1918, one million American troops had arrived in Europe to fight with the Allied forces; by November, Germany
was fatally weakened and the war was over.

Nov 7, 1917
Bolshevik Revolution Leads to Birth of
Soviet Union

Russian communist revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin giving a speech in the Red Square,
Moscow on May 25, 1919.
Keystone via Getty Images

After sustaining territorial losses in the early twentieth century and devastating loss of life during World War I, the
czarist regime in Russia was severely weakened. In early 1917, a revolution protesting food shortages—started by
working-class women and including factory workers and soldiers who deserted—overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and
established a provisional democratic government in the country. This kicked off a period of seismic change within
Russia that culminated in Vladimir Lenin leading a faction of  Communists  called the Bolsheviks in a second
revolution to overturn the just-installed government. Lenin created the Cheka, or secret police, with the authority to
execute those who didn’t comply with his new government’s rules, which included nationalizing private land and
factories. By 1918,  civil war  had engulfed the country and caused it to pull out of World War I as Lenin hoped to
consolidate power; five years later, Bolsheviks, now known as the Communist  Party  of the newly formed Soviet
Union, had defeated the so-called “Whites” and controlled most of the former Russian Empire.

1917 - 1920
World War I Influences Suffrage Movement
Successes

Young women hold a sign that reads “Self Supporting Women” at a rally in Boston,
Massachusetts, in May 2, 1914.
Schlesinger Library

Before the turn of the twentieth century, only one country—New Zealand—gave women the right to vote, and it
wasn’t until World War I that meaningful strides were made toward granting women this right around the world.
The global scale of conflict made it necessary for women to enter the workforce in greater numbers, and the shift
highlighted a glaring injustice: that women could work and die for the war, yet they could not vote for it. In 1906,
Finnish women were the first Europeans to win the right to vote, followed in short order by Norweigan women
(1913), Russian women (1917), and then British women over thirty years old, Canadian women of some
ethnicities and races, and German women (1918). In the United States, the passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote, but for many American men and women, racist laws intended
to thwart their political participation would remain in place for decades to come.

Nov 11, 1918

Armistice Day Marks Close of ‘War to End
All Wars’
 Crowds celebrate the signing of the Armistice at the end of World War I on November 11, 1918.
Topical Press Agency via Getty Images

At 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, World War I came to a halt—a day that would come
to be known as Armistice Day. The Allies emerged victorious, though they had little to celebrate. During four years
of war,  over ten million civilians and roughly nine million soldiers died, and more than double that number were
left wounded, some injured for life. In the conflict’s final year, a deadly virus later known as the Spanish Flu
coursed through the world, ultimately infecting about one-third of the planet and taking upwards of fifty million
lives. World War I was unprecedented in many ways, but particularly in the death, carnage, and environmental
destruction it caused. Known at the time as the war to end all wars, World War I proved to be the opposite,
planting the seeds for another devastating conflict just two decades later.

Jan 12, 1919

Paris Peace Conference Leads to League of
Nations, Embittered Germany

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (right), U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (center), and
French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau attend the peace conference at the end of World
War I on June 1, 1919.
Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Two months after World War I ended, world leaders convened in Paris to discuss the terms of peace. The war’s
victors—led by the United States, Britain, and France—dominated conversations regarding terms of peace and
multiple treaties resulted, most notably the Treaty of Versailles, which forced major territorial concessions from
Germany and limited its army and navy. Most consequentially, it forced Germany to accept responsibility for the
war and to pay reparations for damages done to its enemies, which humiliated and infuriated the German people
and would fuel the rise of Adolf Hitler in the coming years. The Treaty of Versailles also established the League of
Nations to serve as an international forum based on the premise of collective security to avoid renewed conflict.
The organization’s effectiveness, however, was limited by several factors, including the United States’ ultimate
refusal to join.
1929 - 1939
Great Depression Creates Pre-Conditions
for World War II

A mother with three of her children at a pea-pickers' camp in Nipomo, California in March 1936.
Library of Congress

Before World War I, the global economy was booming. Technological advances such as the steamship and the
telegraph, trade and investment, and the relatively free movement of people without immigration limits—or
passports—brought the world closer together than ever before. The postwar world, however, was a different story:
countries grew protectionist, and trade and immigration restrictions followed. When the U.S. stock market crashed
on October 29, 1929, the Great Depression was already starting to affect countries around the globe. The
depression spread to Europe by 1931, pushing many governments toward authoritarian regimes. In Germany, the
country’s economy tanked and unemployment soared.  Germans were drawn toward radical anti-democratic
parties on both the right (Nazis and nationalists) and the left ( Communists ), which promised solutions. Adolf Hitler
would mix this economic desperation with his racist, toxic nationalism to gain and consolidate power and
ultimately lead the world into a war more deadly than the first.

Sep 18, 1931

Invasion of Manchuria Signals Japanese
Expansion
 Japanese troops enter Manchuria on horseback during their 1931 invasion of the Chinese
province.
Corbis via Getty Images

The worldwide embrace of post-war protectionism and its ruinous effects on global trade put the island nation of
Japan in a particular bind. In response to a growing need for food and oil and other raw materials plus markets,
the Japanese invaded Manchuria, the start of an aggressive expansion campaign across East Asia and the
Pacific. Though the Japanese promoted the invasion as “independence” for Manchuria, the League of Nations
rejected this view and urged Japan to withdraw from the region; it withdrew from the League instead. After Japan
went on to invade further parts of China in 1937, war crimes became common. One of the most horrific instances
was the Rape of Nanjing, where between one hundred and three hundred thousand people were killed and
between twenty and eighty thousand women sexually assaulted.

Jan 30, 1933

Hitler Named Chancellor as German
Economic Situation Worsens

A parade of Nazi troops marches past Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1935.
U.S. National Archives

By 1932, six million people out of a labor force of approximately twenty five million people in Germany were
unemployed. As the Great Depression caused economic pain for many Germans, the ideas of Adolf Hitler and his
Nazi  party —which promised to fix Germany’s broken economic system and make Germany a great power again
—began to resonate. The party initially downplayed Hitler’s extreme views on race and used people’s fears
of  communism  to drum up electoral support, and by 1933, Hitler was named chancellor of Germany by
conservatives in the parliament who thought they could use him. He almost immediately passed legislation
allowing himself to centralize power in Germany's government, and by 1934, he had become the supreme leader
of the country. By the next year, Hitler had eliminated all other political parties, passed the Nuremberg Laws
ending civil liberties for Jewish people in Germany, and begun building up the country’s military in clear violation of
the Treaty of Versailles. These actions would culminate as Hitler began his campaign of European expansion and
aggression. 

Oct 3 1935
Oct 3, 1935
Second Italo-Ethiopian War Demonstrates
League of Nations’ Ineffectiveness

A group of Italian soldiers in Ethiopia in 1935 during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
Mondadori via Getty Images

For decades, Ethiopia remained independent while European powers colonized its neighbors. However, in 1935,
an emboldened Italy led by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, a member of the League of Nations.
The League protested the invasion, but took little action, declining to even close the Suez Canal to Italian ships.

Even Italy using mustard gas against both Ethiopian military forces and civilians did little to change the League's
hands-off approach. Once again, the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations was on display. By 1936, Italy had
annexed Ethiopia and merged the country with Eritrea and Somaliland into a single country known as Italian East
Africa. Mussolini then signed on to the Rome-Berlin Axis, formalizing cooperation with Hitler; in 1939, this
relationship was strengthened by the signing of the Pact of Steel, which formalized a full military  alliance  between
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. 

1936
Spanish Civil War Provides Dress Rehearsal
for World War II

Republicans fight in a street of an unidentified town against nationalist rebels in 1936 during the
 Spanish Civil War.
AFP via Getty Images

As authoritarian or far-right governments came to power across Europe, a coup in Spain pitted the country’s liberal
and leftist Republican government against the Nationalists, a group of fascist rebels led by General Francisco
Franco. Britain and France declined to get involved in the resulting  civil war , although the Soviet Union supported
the Republicans. Franco turned to Germany and Italy for aid, and Italy supplied seventy-five thousand troops, plus
pilots and planes. Meanwhile Germany used the conflict to test-run blitzkrieg, or lightning war, a military strategy
meant to overwhelm its opponents with coordinated attacks by air and on the ground. Thousands of foreign
fighters traveled to Spain to fight against the advance of fascism, yet after three years of bloodshed, the fascists
emerged victorious and Franco established himself as dictator. Though Spain did not join the Axis powers
(Germany, Italy, and Japan) in World War II, many historians consider the Spanish Civil War as practice for the
war.