On Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, the act that started World War II. The day before, Nazi operatives had posed as Polish military officers to stage an attack on the radio station in the Silesian city of Gleiwitz. Germany used the event as the pretext for its invasion of Poland.

Forced labour is the most common element of modern slavery. It is the most extreme form of people exploitation. Although many people associate forced labour and slavery with physical violence, in fact the ways used to force people to work are more insidious and ingrained in some cultures.

On September 1, 1939, German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. World War II had begun.

November. November 4 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons to non-belligerent nations.

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On 7 December 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an attack on the US naval and army base on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, beginning a war between Japan and the United States.

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At the same time, the United States was providing its allies in Great Britain and the Soviet Union with critically needed supplies. Many Americans volunteered to defend the nation from enemy bombing or invasion. They trained in first aid, aircraft spotting, bomb removal, and fire fighting.

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Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had guaranteed military support if it were attacked by Germany. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.

As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum (“living space”) to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come.