World War 2 Study Guide

Mein Kampf

"My Struggle"-a book written by Adolf Hitler during his imprisonment in 1923-1924, in which he set forth his beliefs and his goals for Germany

Kristallnacht

"Night of Broken Glass" -the night of November 9, 1938, on which Nazi troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues throughout Germany

Untermenschen

"under people"; word used by Nazi racial ideology to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East" (Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians, etc.).

Battle of El Alamein

(1942) World War II battle in which the Britain won a decisive victory over Germany in Egypt, securing the Suez Canal

Bataan Death March

(1942) a forced march of American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

Battle of Guadalcanal

(1942-1943) World War II battle in the Pacific; it represented the first Allied counter-attack against Japanese forces; Allied victory forced Japanese forces to abandon the island

Harry Truman

(HT) , 1947, President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology, mainly helped Greece and Turkey

Battle of Leyte Gulf

1944 World War II naval battle betweeen the United States and Japan. Largest naval engagement in history. Japaneze navy was defeated.

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

Pearl Harbor

7:50-10:00 AM, December 7, 1941 - Surprise attack by the Japanese on the main U.S. Pacific Fleet harbored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii destroyed 18 U.S. ships and 200 aircraft. American losses were 3000, Japanese losses less than 100. In response, the U.S. declared war on Japan and Germany, entering World War II.

Battle of Coral Sea

A battle between Japanese and American naval forces that stopped the Japanese advance on Australia.

Dunkirk

A city in northern France on the North Sea where in World War II (1940) 330,000 Allied troops had to be evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk in a desperate retreat under enemy fire.

Winston Churchill

A noted British statesman who led Britain throughout most of World War II and along with Roosevelt planned many allied campaigns. He predicted an iron curtain that would separate Communist Europe from the rest of the West.

Appeasement

A policy of making concessions to an aggressor in the hopes of avoiding war. Associated with Neville Chamberlain's policy of making concessions to Adolf Hitler.

League of Nations

A world organization established in 1920 to promote international cooperation and peace. It was first proposed in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson, although the United States never joined the League. Essentially powerless, it was officially dissolved in 1946.

Nazi

Adolf Hitler used fascism to create this type of government based on totalitarian ideas and was used to unite Germany during the 1930s.

Battle of Britain

An aerial battle fought in World War II in 1940 between the German Luftwaffe (air force), which carried out extensive bombing in Britain, and the British Royal Air Force, which offered successful resistance.

Adolf Hitler

Austrian-born founder of the German Nazi Party and chancellor of the Third Reich (1933-1945). His fascist philosophy, embodied in Mein Kampf (1925-1927), attracted widespread support, and after 1934 he ruled as an absolute dictator. Hitler's pursuit of aggressive nationalist policies resulted in the invasion of Poland (1939) and the subsequent outbreak of World War II. His regime was infamous for the extermination of millions of people, especially European Jews. He committed suicide when the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent (1945).

Joseph Stalin

Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communists after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush opposition

Operation Barbarossa

Codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II -- led to USSR joining the Allies

Battle of Bulge

December, 1944-January, 1945 - After recapturing France, the Allied advance became stalled along the German border. In the winter of 1944, Germany staged a massive counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg which pushed a 30 mile "bulge" into the Allied lines. The Allies stopped the German advance and threw them back across the Rhine with heavy losses.

Genocide

Deliberate elimination of a group through mass murder.

Operation Overload

Eisenhower planned to strike at Normandy, they set up a dummy army to fake out Hitler, it looked like it would attack French Seaport of Calais. The invasion of Normandy was the largest land and sea attack in history. It started on June 6, 1944. It was known as D-Day: British, American, French, Canadian troops fought their way onto 60 mile beach. Germans sheltered behind 3 feet thick concrete walls. The Allies took heavy casualties.

"Four Freedoms" Speech

FDR asked for increased authority to aid Britain; freedom of speech/expression, of religion, from want, from fear; resulted in Lend-Lease

Office of War Mobilization

Federal agency formed to coordinate issues related to war production during WWII

Final Solution

Final solution of the Jewish question-murder of every single Jew-had begun-mass arresting, and trafficking of Jews to the concentration camps-mass killings occurred as well in the gas chambers

Weimar Republic

German republic founded after the WWI and the downfall of the German Empire's monarchy.

Aryans

Germanic people seen as the master race

Operation Sea Lion

Germany's plan to invade Great Britain in 1940. It consisted first of taking air superiority and then launching an amphibious invasion. However, it failed because German air superiority could never be established.

Convoys

Groups of merchant ships protected by warships

Spanish Civil War

In 1936 a rebellion erupted in Spain after a coalition of Republicans, Socialists, and Communists was elected. General Francisco Franco led the rebellion. The revolt quickly became a civil war. The Soviet Union provided arms and advisers to the government forces while Germany and Italy sent tanks, airplanes, and soldiers to help Franco.

Mussolini

Italian fascist dictator (1883-1945)

Kamikaze

Japanese suicide pilots who loaded their planes with explosives and crashed them into American ships.

Navajo Code Talkers

Native Americans from the Navajo tribe used their own language to make a code for the U.S. military that the Japanese could not decipher

Francisco Franco

Spanish General; organized the revolt in Morocco, which led to the Spanish Civil War. Leader of the Nationalists - right wing, supported by Hitler and Mussolini, won the Civil War after three years of fighting.

Okinawa

The U.S. Army in the Pacific had been pursuing an "island-hopping" campaign, moving north from Australia towards Japan. On April 1, 1945, they invaded Okinawa, only 300 miles south of the Japanese home islands. By the time the fighting ended on June 2, 1945, the U.S. had lost 50,000 men and the Japanese 100,000.

Sudetenland

The area near Czechoslovakia that was mainly German ethnicity that Germany took.

Interventionists

These are people who favor intervention, especially by a government, in the affairs of others, such as nations. Woodrow Wilson finally adopted such a policy in 1917 when he chose to finally participate in WWI.

Battle of Stalingrad

Unsuccessful German attack on the city of Stalingrad during World War II from 1942 to 1943, that was the furthest extent of German advance into the Soviet Union.

WPB

War Production board-decided which companies would convert from peacetime to wartime production

Iwo Jima

a bloody and prolonged operation on the island of Iwo Jima in which American marines landed and defeated Japanese defenders (February and March 1945)

Operation Torch

begun Nov 1942, American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria, and pressing eastward trapped the German and Italian armies being driven westward by the British, forcing German and Italian troops to surrender, despite Hitler's orders to fight to the death.

Death Camps

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

Manhattan Project

code name for the secret United States project set up in 1942 to develop atomic bombs for use in World War II

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.

Battle of Midway

1942 World War II battle between the United States and Japan, a turning point in the war in the Pacific

FDR

..., Roosevelt, the President of the United States during the Depression and WWII. He instituted the New Deal. Served from 1933 to 1945, he was the only president in U.S. history to be elected to four terms

Nuremberg Laws

1935 laws defining the status of Jews and withdrawing citizenship from persons of non-German blood.

Lend-Lease Act

1941 law that authorized the president to aid any nation whose defense he believed was vital to American security

Axis Powers

Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II.

Rommel

Also known as the "Desert Fox" he was the the leader of the German African Corps. After being suspected of trying to kill Hitler, he commits suicide

Edward R. Murrow

An American journalist who criticized McCarthyism and helped bring about the eventual censure of Joseph McCarthy by the U.S. government.

Isolationists

People who wanted the United States to stay out of world affairs; opposed the League of Nations; opposite of internationalists

Anti-Semitism

Prejudice against Jews