The Swiss commanders wired the infrastructure leading into the country, and threatening to destroy bridges, railway tunnels and passes in the event of a Nazi invasion, and then they retreated to the heart of the mountain peaks where conditions were harsher and a military invasion would involve difficult and protracted battles.

* 1941 – World War II: Nazi Germany launches Operation 25 ( the invasion of Kingdom of Yugoslavia ) and Operation Marita ( the invasion of Greece ).

As World War II loomed after 1938, with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggressions of Nazi Germany, FDR gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and the United Kingdom, while remaining officially neutral.

The German Nazi invasion of 1939 put an end to it.

Following the German invasion of 1939, Greater Poland was incorporated into Nazi Germany, becoming the province called Reichsgau Posen, later Reichsgau Wartheland ( Warthe being the German name for the Warta river ).

Nazi Germany's aggressive foreign policy took control of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia, and its invasion of Poland initiated the Second World War.

The incidents were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening event of World War II.

As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in December 1941, signalling that the invasion of the Soviet Union had failed, Hitler and other Nazi officials realised that mass deportations to the east would no longer be possible.

In November 2009, Hezbollah pressured a private English-language school to drop excerpts from The Diary of Anne Frank, a book of the writings from the diary kept by the Jewish child Anne Frank while she was in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, after Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel complained, asking how long Lebanon would " remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education "?

While Stalin personally told a Polish general they'd " lost track " of the officers in Manchuria, Polish railroad workers found the mass grave after the 1941 Nazi invasion.

In February 1941, Beria became Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of the State Defense Committee ( GKO ).

* 1940 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands flees her country to Great Britain after the Nazi invasion.

Nazi Germany terminated the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact with its invasion of the Soviet Union at 03: 15 on 22 June 1941.

In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed to both a non-aggression pact and an agreement to invade and partition Poland between them, resulting in the invasion of Poland in September 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union and the beginning of World War II, with the Allies declaring war on Germany.

Once the bombing and shelling had largely ceased, the ground invasion began as Soviet forces stormed the centre of Berlin street by street, building by building, aiming to capture the Reich Chancellery and other key symbols of the Nazi government.

Persian Gulf therefore became a critical maritime path through which the Allies transported equipment, to Russia against the Nazi invasion.

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany broke the non-aggression treaty and invaded the Soviet Union with the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history, opening the largest theater of World War II.

In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939.

Iceland was encouraged to do this by the British and American armed forces that were defending Iceland from Nazi invasion.

* 1939 – World War II: following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the Free City of Danzig ( now Gdańsk, Poland ) is annexed by Nazi Germany.

* 1939 – World War II: The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland during the Polish Defensive War of 1939.

During the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, the MP38 production was still just starting and only a few thousand were in service, but it proved very effective especially in close quarters urban combat.

In August 1939, after Stalin's attempts to establish an Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance failed, Stalin entered into a pact with Nazi Germany that divided their influence in Eastern Europe and allowed the USSR to regain some of its lost territories.

The agreement gave Hitler the go ahead to invade Poland with impunity a week after the Soviets had gained the upper hand in the far east, and guaranteed Nazi Germany that they would not have to fight the USSR.

He refused to believe repeated warnings from his intelligence services on the Nazi buildup, fearing the reports to be British misinformation designed to spark a war between Germany and the USSR.

Julian Semyonov was an influential spy novelist, writing in the Eastern Bloc, whose range of novels and novel series featured a White Russian spy in the USSR ; Max Otto von Stierlitz, a Soviet mole in the Nazi High Command, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka.

In 1973, his novel Seventeen Moments of Spring ( 1968 ) was adapted to television as a twelve-part mini-series about the Soviet spy Maksim Isaev operating in wartime Nazi Germany as Max Otto von Stierlitz, charged with preventing a separate peace between Nazi Germany and America which would exclude the USSR.

After World War II started, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union ( USSR ) in 1940, and later occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944.

After the Nazi retreat in 1944, it was again occupied by the USSR.

During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 – 1942, the mountains became a key element in Nazi planning for the territories which they expected to conquer in the USSR.

On 14 May 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in October 1954 – only nine years after the defeat of Nazi Germany ( 1933 – 45 ) that ended with the Soviet and Allied invasion of Germany in 1944 / 45 during World War II in Europe.

In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany.

The USSR ( 1922 – 1991 ), Nazi Germany ( 1933 – 1945 ), and the USA ( 1823 – present ) each sought regional hegemony ( sphere of influence ), then global hegemony.

The film was banned in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the USSR and Falangist Spain

The USSR had been overtly hostile to Nazi Germany for most of the pre-war period, but the failure of appeasement convinced Stalin that the Allies were weak at best, or at worst actively seeking a Nazi-Soviet war.

In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

On the nuclear attacks on Japan in WWII, he adhered to the view that " there was even less sign of a crack in Japan's determination to fight to the end with that of Nazi Germany, which is why nuclear arms were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ensure a rapid Japanese surrender ", though believed there was an ancillary political, non-military reason for the bombings: " perhaps the thought that it would prevent America's ally the USSR from establishing a claim to a major part in Japan's defeat was not absent from the minds of the US government either.

A period of win-win cooperation continued between the USSR and UK against Nazi Germany till the end of the war in 1945.

During the course of their World War II attempts to occupy much of the western USSR, the government of Nazi Germany intended to establish a German-ruled civil regime in Soviet-held Central Asia.

As a result of Renner's actions Austria was to benefit greatly in the eyes of the Allies as she had fulfilled the stipulation of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, where the Foreign Secretaries of US, UK and USSR declared that the annexation ( Anschluss ) of Austria by Germany was null and void calling for the establishment of a free Austria after the victory over Nazi Germany provided that Austria could demonstrate that she had undertaken suitable actions of her own in that direction.

The USSR and the U. S. became allies during World War II, after Nazi Germany's surprise attack on the USSR in 1941, but the U. S. government was highly suspicious of Joseph Stalin's long-term intentions.

Nevertheless, the FBI took no immediate action, in line with the political orientation of the USA which viewed the potential threat from the USSR as minor, when compared to that of Nazi Germany.

With the tide turning towards an eventual Soviet war victory over the Nazi invaders, Bronstein was able to once again play some competitive chess, and he defeated Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik at the 1944 USSR Championship, which was his own first appearance at the Soviet top-standard event.

Having failed to conquer the USSR with Operation Barbarossa ( June – December 1941 ), the Siege of Leningrad ( September 1941 – January 1944 ), Operation Nordlicht (" Northern Light ", August – October 1942 ), and the Battle of Stalingrad ( July 1942 – February 1943 ), Nazi Germany found itself at a logistical disadvantage.