Unit 7 - WWII - Mobilization of America

Blitzkrieg

"Lighting war", typed of fast-moving warfare used by German forces against Poland n 1939

VJ Day

"Victory over Japan day" is the celebration of the Surrender of Japan, which was initially announced on August 15, 1945

Kristallnacht

(Night of the Broken Glass) November 9, 1938, when mobs throughout Germany destroyed Jewish property and terrorized Jews.

Munich Conference

1938-Meeting between British,French,and German leaders in which Germany was given control of the Sudetenland in exchange for German leader Hitler's promise to make no more claimes on European territory

Atlantic Charter

1941-Pledge signed by US president FDR and British prime minister Winston Churchill not to acquire new territory as a result of WWII amd to work for peace after the war

Executive Order #9066

2/19/42; 112,000 Japanese-Americans forced into camps causing loss of homes & businesses, 600K more renounced citizenship; demonstrated fear of Japanese invasion

Marshall Plan

A plan that the US came up with to revive war-torn economies of Europe. This plan offered $13 billion in aid to western and Southern Europe.

Lend-Lease Act

Approve by Congress in March 1941; The act allowed America to sell, lend or lease arms or other supplies to nations considered "vital to the defense of the United States."

General MacArthur

He was one of the most-known American military leaders of WW2(He liberated the Phillipines and made the Japanese surrender at Tokyo in 1945, also he drove back North Korean invaders during the Korean War), Commander of the UN forces at the beginning of the Korean War, however President Harry Truman removed him from his command after MacArthur expressed a desire to bomb Chinese bases in Manchuria.

Casablanca Conference

January 1943 conference between FDR and Churchill that produces Unconditional Surrender doctrine

Japanese Internment

Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States during WWII. While approximately 10,000 were able to relocate to other parts of the country of their own choosing, the remainder-roughly 110,000 me, women and children-were sent to hastly constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation's interior.

Bombing of Pearl Harbor

Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The attack devastated the American fleet. America declared war on Japan.

The Potsdam Conference

July 26, 1945 - Allied leaders Truman, Stalin and Churchill met in Germany to set up zones of control and to inform the Japanese that if they refused to surrender at once, they would face total destruction.

D-Day

June 6, 1944 - Led by Eisenhower, over a million troops (the largest invasion force in history) stormed the beaches at Normandy and began the process of re-taking France. The turning point of World War II.

Adolf Hitler

Leader of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich in Germany during World War II.

VE Day

May 8, 1945; victory in Europe Day when the Germans surrendered

The "Final Solution"

Nazi Germany's plan and execution of its systematic genocide against European jews during World War II.

Neutrality Acts

Originally designed to avoid American involvement in World War II by preventing loans to those countries taking part in the conflict; they were later modified in 1939 to allow aid to Great Britain and other Allied nations.

Einsatzgruppen

Referring to the mobile death squads estimated to have killed more than 1.5 million Jews. Vicitims were executed in mass shootings and buried in unmarked graves-usually in ditches they were forced to dig

Declaration of war in Europe

September 3, 1939, Britain and France declare war. September 1939, German blitzkrieg in Poland and Poland surrendered on September 28th. During the winter of 1939-1940, the war was called the Phony War because nothing really happened. April 9, 1940 Germany launched another blitzkrieg against Norway and Denmark (Norway surrendered June 9th). May 10, 1940, Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Netherlands fell in 5 days. In late May, British and French troops were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. 350,000 French and British troops were rescued, dubbing it the "Miracle at Dunkirk". June 22, 1940, France surrenders. Nazi's took control of ⅗ of France. The Vichy government, a nazi puppet, was in control of Southern France.

Harry Truman

The 33rd U.S. president, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945. Truman, who led the country through the last few months of World War II, is best known for making the controversial decision to use two atomic bombs against Japan in August 1945. After the war, Truman was crucial in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which greatly accelerated Western Europe's economic recovery.

Battle of Midway

U.S. naval victory over the Japanese fleet in June 1942, in which the Japanese lost four of their best aircraft carriers. It marked a turning point in World War II.

Isolationism

a policy of nonparticipation in international economic and political relations

Death Camps

camps used under the rule of Hitler in Nazi Germany for the purpose of killing prisoners immediately.

Battle of the Coral Sea

fought from 4-8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other. It was also the first naval battle in history in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. It saved Port Moresby and stopped the Japanese advance on New Guinea

The Wannsee Conference

in 1942 nazi leaders met to make plans for exterminating europe's jews more quickly and efficiently at---

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

nuclear attacks during World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States of America at the order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman

Concentration Camps

prison camps used under the rule of Hitler in Nazi Germany. Conditions were inhuman, and prisoners, mostly Jewish people, were generally starved or worked to death, or killed immediately.

Island Hopping

the American navy attacked islands held by the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean. The capture of each successive island from the Japanese brought the American navy closer to an invasion of Japan.

The Warsaw Ghetto

the largest ghetto that there was. It is estimated that 300,000 polish jews died here. This was also where the largest Jewish revolt took place

Enola Gay

the name of the American B-29 bomber, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets, Jr., that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

Battle of Ardennes

was a major German offensive (die Ardennenoffensive), launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, hence its French name (Bataille des Ardennes), and France and Luxembourg on the Western Front.