APUSH Period 7 key terms: World War II

Battle of Midway

June 4, 1942, naval battle that crippled Japanese offensive capabilities in the Pacific. American airplanes destroyed 4 aircraft carriers and 245 planes. After this event, Japanese military operations were mainly defensive.

Kamikaze Pilots

Late-war tactic of the Japanese air force where pilots flew at American ships and crashed into them. Showed the desperate nature of the Japanese military situation at this time.

Battle of the Coral Sea

May 1942 American naval victory over the Japanese prevented the Japanese from attacking Australia. First naval conflict where losses on both sides came almost exclusively from bombing from planes.

Enola Gay

Name of the American bomber that on August 6, 1945 dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Initiated the nuclear age.

D-Day

On June 6, 1944, Allied forces landed in Normandy in France. With an initial force of 176,000 troops supported by 4,000 landing craft, 600 warships, and 11,000 planes, this was the largest amphibious landing in history. This operation led to decisive defeat for Germany.

Pearl Harbor

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, 190 Japanese warplanes attacked the American fleet anchored here in Hawaii. The Americans lost 2,400 lives, 150 planes, and 6 battleships. This event brought the U.S. into the war.

Isolationism

Opposition to U.S. intervention in war outside of the western hemisphere, especially in Europe, and binding international agreements that might draw the U.S. into wars without a vital national interest.

Final Solution

Plan of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany to eliminate Jewish civilization from Europe. By the end of the war in 1945, nearly 6 million Jews and 5 million others had been murdered. The full extent of German atrocities was not known in the U.S. until the end of the war, although the U.S. government had significant evidence of atrocities being committed as early as 1942.

GI

Popular term for American servicemen during World War II. This refers to the fact that virtually anything they wore or used was "government issued."

Internment Camps

The controversial decision to detain Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast in these was made after Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt authorized this with Executive Order #9066 and was validated by the Supreme Court in 1944 in Korematsu v. U.S.

Battle of Guadalcanal

The fighting over this Pacific Island lasted from August 1942 through February 1943. The American victory against fierce Japanese resistance was the first major offensive victory for the Americans in the Pacific War.

Montevideo Conference

The first of several Pan-America conferences held during the period between World War I and World War II concerning mutual defense and corporate between the countries of Latin America. The U.S. renounced the right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.

America First Committee

The primary "isolationist" organization that led opposition to FDR's interventionist policies in 1940 and 1941, this organization raised money and produced position papers opposing U.S. involvement in the widening WWII. Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator, was briefly a member of its national committee.

Neutrality Acts

These acts were designed to limit American interaction with warring nations. The first, passed by Congress in 1935, required an arms embargo against any country deemed by the president to be at war with another country. The second, passed in 1936, extended the first and added a prohibition on loans to warring nations. The third, passed in 1937, banned all arms sales, loans, credit, and travel on belligerents' ships when the president found a foreign or civil war endangered the U.S.

War bonds

These government securities were issued by the Treasury Department to help finance the war effort. By buying one of these securities, the holder was guaranteed repayment by the government in a specified number of years for more than the initial value of the security.

Stimson Doctrine

This 1932 doctrine stated that the United States would not recognize any agreements between the Japanese and Chinese that limited free commercial intercourse in the region as a result of Japan's invasion of China's northeastern province of Manchuria.

Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

This agreement between Hitler and Stalin provided Hitler with the opportunity to invade and occupy most of western Europe, included France by June 1940. It was broken by Hitler in summer 1941 as Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Spanish Civil War

This civil war was fought between a leftist, democratic government established in the 1930s and Gen. Fransisco Franco and other army leaders who staged a coup and installed a right-wing fascist government. Loyalist Republican forces aided by Russia were ultimately defeated by Franco's Fascist party aided by Mussolini and Hitler.

Rosie the Riveter

This image of a woman factory worker holding a pneumatic rivet gun was drawn by Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post during World War II. Women were needed to take on factory jobs that had been held by departing soldiers. By 1945, women made up nearly 37% of the entire domestic workforce. The image symbolized the important role women played in the war effort at home and portrayed a quite different picture of American womanhood than had been seen before.

"Cash and carry"

This policy allowed the president to sell non-embargoed goods to warring nations under the Neutrality Act of 1937, provided that the purchaser paid up front and transported the goods on their own ships.

Lend-Lease Program

This program was designed to get around the Johnson Act of 1934, which forbade the U.S. government from loaning money to warring countries. This program allowed the president to let any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States" use American-produced supplies. The program was extended in November 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Manchuria

This region in northwest China was invaded and occupied by the Empire of Japan beginning in 1931 after the Mukden incident, a contrived attack on Japanese soldiers designed as a pretext for imperial expansion. The Japanese, who used brutal tactics to maintain control over the territory, sought to control the regions mineral wealth and expand their growing Pacific empire. Thousands of Chinese civilians were killed during the Japanese occupation. The U.S. condemned the invasion, but neither the U.S. not the League of Nations took significant action to punish the Japanese.

Destroyer-for-bases deal

This trade organized by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the British Ambassador to the U.S. gave the British 50 naval warships in exchange for U.S. access to British military installations in the Americas.

Executive Order 9066

This wartime order from FDR brought wartime prejudice towards Japanese-Americans to its highest level. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese-American community was severely distrusted, and this order forcefully moved them into internment camps for the duration of the war. They had to sell their homes and businesses at extreme losses, which they were unable to recover.

Double V Campaign

World War II policy supported by several prominent black newspapers, which stated that blacks in America should work for victory of the Axis powers but at the same time work for victory over oppression at home. Black leaders remained frustrated over continued segregation in the military.

"Unconditional surrender"

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Act of Havana

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Benito Mussolini

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Bliztkrieg

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Cairo Conference

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Casablanca Conference

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Declaration of Panama

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Douglas MacArthur

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Hiroshima & Nagasaki

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J. Robert Oppenheimer

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Lima Conference

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Munich Conference

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Nye Committee

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Office of Price Administration

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Okinawa

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Panay Incident

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Quarantine Speech

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Smith Act

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Stalingrad

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Tehran Conference

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Tydings-McDuffie Act

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War Labor Board

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Winston Churchill

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War Bonds

Also called Liberty Bonds, these were sold by the government during the world wars to raise money for the war effort. A person who purchased a bond could make money by cashing it in after 5-10 years. Movie starts and other celebrities encouraged Americans to buy war bonds.

Yalta Conference

At this meeting held between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in February 1945, Stalin agreed to assist the U.S. against the Japanese after Germany was defeated. Stalin also agreed to hold free elections in Eastern Europe. Critics said FDR trusted Stalin too much.

Battle of the Atlantic

Began in spring 1941 with the sinking of an American merchant vessel by a German submarine. Armed conflict between warships of America and Germany took place in September 1941. U.S. merchant ships were armed by 1942.

Manhattan Project

Begun in 1941 to develop an atomic weapon for the United States. Aided by German scientists added to the research team who had been working on a bomb in Germany. The first test of the bomb took place in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

Allied Powers

Coalition of nations that opposed Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II. Led by Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

War Production Board

Created in 1942, this government agency oversaw the production of thousands of planes, tanks, artillery pieces, and munitions that FDR requested once the U.S. entered WWII. The agency allocated scarce resources and shifted domestic production from civilian to military goods.

Battle of the Bulge

December 1944 German attack was the last major offensive by the Axis powers in World War II. The Germans managed to push forward into Belgium but were then driven back. The attack was costly to the Germans in terms of materials and manpower.

Revenue Act of 1942

Designed to raise money for the war, this bill dramatically increased the number of Americans required to pay income tax. Up to this point, roughly 4 million Americans paid income tax. As a result of this legislation, nearly 45 million paid income tax.

Ration Cards

During World War II, these recorded the amount of goods such as automobile tires, gasoline, meat, butter, and other materials an individual had purchased. Where regulation in World War I had been voluntary, consumption in World War II was regulated by government agencies.

Atlantic Charter

Fall 1941 agreement between FDR and Winston Churchill that stated the U.S. and Britain would support a postwar world based on self-determination and endorse a world body to ensure "general security." The U.S. agreement to convoy merchant ships drew it closer to war with Germany.

Bataan Death March

Forced march of 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers captured by the Japanese in May 1942. More than 10,000 soldiers died during this one-week ordeal.

Four Freedoms

Fundamental principles for which the United States stood in a world at war laid out by President Roosevelt in 1941. Norman Rockwell created posters for them.

Adolf Hitler

German Chancellor from 1933, he was the leader of the NSDAP, or Nazis for short. His militaristic aggressions help plunge the world back into world war beginning in 1939. His virulent anti-Semitism helped contribute to the mass murder of millions of innocent civilians in Europe during WWII. He committed suicide as the Soviet Army conquered Berlin in April and May 1945.

Holocaust

Historical term used for the extermination of 6 million Jewish victims by Nazi Germany during World War II. Much has been written on the reasons for it and why it occurred in Germany.

Annexation of Austria

Hitler and Germany achieved this in March 1938 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. This addition of territory is seen by most historians as another step in Nazi plans to bring much of central Europe under German control.

Buenos Aires Conference

In 1936 the U.S. agreed in principle to submit all disputes from the Americas to arbitration.

Island-Hopping

Successful American military tactic in the Pacific War of taking strategic islands that could be used as staging points for continued military offensives, while bypassing enemy strong points. American dominance in air power made this possible.