Ever since Mussolini began to falter, Hitler had been making plans to invade Italy to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold that would situate them within easy reach of the German-occupied Balkans. On the day of Italy's surrender, Hitler launched Operation Axis, the occupation of Italy.
After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Army Group North reached Estonia in July.
Because they both had fascist governments with expansionist agendas that didn't overlap and Mussolini and Hitler personally liked each other. But of course the Italians eventually revolted against Mussolini and switched sides to the allies. So they switched sides in both world wars.
Italy joined the war as one of the Axis Powers in 1940, as the French Third Republic surrendered, with a plan to concentrate Italian forces on a major offensive against the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East, known as the "parallel war", while expecting the collapse of British forces in the European theatre.
The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of continental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranean Sea; and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific.
A declared neutral country during the early phases of World War II, Latvia fell prey to the realpolitik of both Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union. They concluded a mutual Non-Aggression Treaty on 23 August 1939, known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Faced with severe shortages of oil and other natural resources and driven by the ambition to displace the United States as the dominant Pacific power, Japan decided to attack the United States and British forces in Asia and seize the resources of Southeast Asia.
In World War II the chief Allied powers were Great Britain, France (except during the German occupation, 1940–44), the Soviet Union (after its entry in June 1941), the United States (after its entry on December 8, 1941), and China.
Germany declared war on France. To avoid the French fortifications along the French-German border, the troops had to cross Belgium and attack the French Army by the north. Of course, Belgians refused to let them through, so the Germans decided to enter by force and invaded Belgium on Aug. 4, 1914.
Despite being neutral at the start of World War II, Belgium and its colonial possessions found themselves at war after the country was invaded by German forces on 10 May 1940.
At the start of World War II in 1939, the Portuguese Government announced on 1 September that the 550-year-old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact, but since the British did not seek Portuguese assistance, Portugal was free to remain neutral in the war and would do so.
| German invasion of Belgium |
|---|
| Date 4 August – 31 October 1914 (2 months, 3 weeks and 6 days) Location Belgium and Luxembourg Result German victory Territorial changes German occupation of most of Belgium and Luxembourg until 1918. |
| Belligerents |
| German Empire Supported by: Austria-Hungary | Belgium France British Empire |
The French invaded and controlled Belgium, 1794–1814, imposing all their new reforms and incorporating what had been the "Austrian Netherlands" and the Prince-Bishopric of Liege into France. New rulers were sent in by Paris. Belgian men were drafted into the French wars and heavily taxed.
Belgian-German relations refer to interstate relations between Belgium and Germany. Both of these are neighbouring countries and share a common 204 kilometer long landborder. Both nations are members of NATO, the European Union and the Eurozone.
Despite Holland's attempts to remain neutral as WWII took hold in Europe, German forces invaded the country on 10 May 1940. Soon after, Holland was under German control. This began five years of occupation, during which life only got worse for the Dutch people.
Historically, Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, a somewhat larger region than the current Benelux group of states that also included parts of northern France and western Germany. The country emerged in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution, when it seceded from the Netherlands.
So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany—only to be invaded by its “ally” as part of Hitler's strategy to create one huge eastern front against the Soviet Union. King Carol abdicated on September 6, 1940, leaving the country in the control of fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard.
In June 1940, the Soviet Union co-opted two Romanian provinces, and the king searched for an ally to help protect it and appease the far right within its own borders. So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany.
The Allies wanted Romania to join their side in order to cut rail communications between Germany and Turkey, and to cut off Germany's oil supplies. Britain made loans, France sent a military training mission, and Russia promised modern munitions.
During World War II, the Kingdom of Hungary was a member of the Axis powers. In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression.
After the conclusion of the Armistice Agreement in 1944, Soviet troops occupied the entire territory of Romania.
The Socialist Republic of Romania (Romanian: Republica Socialistă România, RSR) was a Marxist-Leninist one-party communist state that existed officially in Romania from 1947 to 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian People's Republic (Republica Populară Romînă, RPR).
On 23 August 1944, Romania left the Axis Powers, declared war on Germany, and allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory to reach Bulgaria.
Turkey did not want the territories it lost in WW1. There were not many Turks left in the territories Turkey lost due to numerous population exchanges. Their priority was to hang on to those lands that were won after a bloody struggle in the independence war.
The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V specifically wanted the Empire to remain a non-belligerent nation. However, he was more of a figurehead and did not control the government. Pressure from some of Meahamed's senior advisors led the Empire to enter an alliance with Germany and the Central Powers.
Much of the reason for Spanish reluctance to join the war was due to Spain's reliance on imports from the United States. Spain was still recovering from its civil war and Franco knew his armed forces would not be able to defend the Canary Islands and Spanish Morocco from a British attack.
In August 1944, the Soviet Army entered Bulgaria and cut overland contact between Turkey and the Axis powers. Turkey severed its diplomatic and commercial relations with Germany, and on February 23, 1945, declared war on Germany.
German dictator Adolf Hitler wanted to prevent the Hungarians from turning against Germany, as Hungary's oil was desperately needed for the war effort. On 12 March 1944, German troops received orders by Hitler to capture critical Hungarian facilities. On March 19th the occupation of Hungary began.
In fact, Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany during the second world war not to prevent Soviet conquest but to win back territories lost to the USSR as a result of the winter war of 1939-40. The peace treaty that ended the war in March 1940 left Finnish independence intact.
Turkish is most closely related to other Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek and Kazakh. Another theory is that it is one of the many Altaic languages, which also include Japanese, Mongolian, and Korean.
At its peak in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire was one of the biggest military and economic powers in the world, controlling an expanse that included not just its base in Asia Minor but also much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
