REVIEW 20TH CENTURY: 1933-1945

From left to right:

Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong led 90,000 Red Army followers to safety after suffering repeated attacks on his rural strongholds by Chiang Kai-shekÕs Nationalist forces during a prolonged civil war. The ÔLong MarchÕ through hostile territory to Yanan, 6,000 miles (9,600 km) to the north, took exactly a year (1934-35)

On May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg burst into flames after colliding with its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-five passengers and crew on board the flight were killed, along with one crewman on the ground. The disaster marked the end of the rigid airship as a means of travel

The British monarchy was plunged into crisis with the abdication of  King Edward VIII. Afterwards styled the Duke of Windsor, he gave up the throne to marry the woman he loved, twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson

Architect of the centuryÕs defining episode of terror, the holocaust, Adolf HitlerÕs dream of a world dominated by a Teutonic master race led to the systematic slaughter of six million Jews, together with gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Communists, and other ÒundesirablesÓ in the death camps. Europe talked peace when he seized the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia Ð not until his invasion of Poland in 1939 did Britain and France declare war

A respite from the horrors unfolding in Europe, the 1939 film Gone With the Wind, based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, redefined romance. The three-hour epic, set during the American Civil War and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as tempestuous lovers Rhett Butler and Scarlett OÕ Hara, won eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Director

The Spitfire played a crucial part in the Battle of Britain, raging in the skies above southern England from August to October 1940. The nimble little aircraft saw off numerous German fighters as they attacked airfields, radar stations, ports and aircraft factories as part of HitlerÕs plan to crush British defences prior to an invasion

ÒArbeit Macht FreiÓ, (Work Brings Freedom) was the chilling sign over the gates of Auschwitz, placed there on the orders of camp commandant Rudolf Hoess. An estimated two million people, including 1,500,000 Jews, were murdered in the most notorious of the Nazi extermination camps

The first meeting of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill took place in Tehran in 1943, at which a decison to invade Western Europe the following Spring was confirmed. A later meeting of the ÒBig ThreeÓ, at Yalta in 1945, mapped out the future of post-war Europe

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Co-pilot Robert Lewis wrote in his journal, ÒMy God, what have we done?Ó The city was vaporized; the death toll eastimated at over 200,000. Three days later a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki, bringing about the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II