history unit 4

Nagasaki

9 August: an implosion bomb ("Fat Man")was dropped on here. Nearby hills contained the blast, limiting casualties to ~65,000. Japan surrendered five days later. The city of Kokura was chosen as the primary target of the second bomb, and here, an industrial center producing war materiel and the largest seaport in southern Japan, was selected as a secondary target. When Japan refused to surrender, a second atomic bomb, named Fat Man, was dropped on here on August 9, 1945. At least sixty thousand people were killed herei. Kokura, the primary target, had been shrouded in clouds on that morning and thus had escaped destruction. It is impossible to say with certainty how many died in the two attacks; the heat of the bomb blasts incinerated or vaporized many of the victims. One question that has not been fully answered is why the United States dropped the second bomb here. As some scholars have noted, if Truman's intention was to eliminate the need for a home island invasion, he could have given Japan more time to respond after bombing Hiroshima. He did not, however. If it is indeed true that Truman had political motivations for using the bombs, then the destruction of this city might have been the first salvo of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. They had hoped to negotiate the terms of the peace, but Emperor Hirohito intervened after the destruction of here and accepted unconditional surrender.

Marie Curie

A Polish-born chemist decided to investigate further. She soon noticed that the element thorium also emitted penetrating radiation, but another chemist had discovered this two months earlier. She worked with her husband, French chemist Pierre _____, to purify & isolate anything unusual from tons of uranium-bearing ore. In July 1898 they discovered a new element, named polonium in honor of her homeland. She worked on alone. 1911: awarded a 2nd Nobel prize, this time for chemistry. One of only 4 people (& only woman) to win 2 Nobels— & the only one to win in 2 different sciences. The Académie des Sciences still refused to admit her.

Hiroshima

A coffee-mug-sized bit of U235 was all that fissioned in this bomb. The Enola Gay commanded by Col. Paul Tibbets, dropped a single bomb ("Little Boy") over the city. The resulting explosion was roughly equal to 15,000 tons of TNT. In the spring of 1945, the military began to prepare for the possible use of an atomic bomb by choosing appropriate targets. Suspecting that the immediate bomb blast would extend over one mile and secondary effects would include fire damage, a compact city of significant military value with densely built frame buildings seemed to be the best target. Eventually, this city, the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army, and the communications and supply hub for all of southern Japan, was chosen. The Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber named after its pilot's mother, dropped an atomic bomb known as "Little Boy" here at 8:15 a.m. Monday morning, August 6, 1945. A huge mushroom cloud rose above the city. Survivors sitting down for breakfast or preparing to go to school recalled seeing a bright light and then being blown across the room. The immense heat of the blast melted stone and metal, and ignited fires throughout the city. Two-thirds of the buildings here were destroyed. Within an hour after the bombing, radioactive "black rain" began to fall. Approximately seventy thousand people died in the original blast. The same number would later die of radiation poisoning. As some scholars have noted, if Truman's intention was to eliminate the need for a home island invasion, he could have given Japan more time to respond after bombing this city. He did not, however. The second bombing may have been intended to send a message to Stalin, who was becoming intransigent regarding postwar Europe. If it is indeed true that Truman had political motivations for using the bombs, then the destruction of Nagasaki might have been the first salvo of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Sudentenland

A region of Czechoslovakia where many Germans lived; demanded by Hitler in 1938 to have control of this land; when Czechs refused, Hitler threatened war.

Winter War

After annexing the Baltic states, Stalin sent troops to take Finland. This only lasted ~3.5 months, but far longer than Stalin expected. The Soviets had three times the soldiers, 30 times the aircraft, & 100 times the tanks. But the Finns were defending their homes... The Russo-Finnish "war" tied up Soviet troops for months, but ended with the Soviets in control of Finland.

Normandy

Allied forces broke out of this beachhead in July. By late 1944 had swept across northern France. The Soviets were also pushing the German Army steadily back across eastern Europe. December 1944— a weakened but still dangerous Germany struck back. Once free of the _________ hedgerows, Allied forces pushed east to the German border by Dec. 1944. A direct assault on Nazi Germany's "Fortress Europe" was still necessary for final victory. On June 6, 1944, the second front became a reality when Allied forces stormed the beaches of northern France on D-day. Beginning at 6:30 a.m., some twenty-four thousand British, Canadian, and American troops waded ashore along a fifty-mile piece of the coast. Well over a million troops would follow their lead. German forces on the hills and cliffs above shot at them, and once they reached the beach, they encountered barbed wire and land mines. More than ten thousand Allied soldiers were wounded or killed during the assault. Following the establishment of beachheads here, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated on August 20, 1944.

implosion-type bombs

An ________ device using plutonium was successfully tested 16 July 1945 at Trinity Site, near Alamogordo, N.M. 9 August: an __________ bomb ("Fat Man") was dropped on Nagasaki. A spherical shell of high-explosive material is made up of fitting pieces (called "lenses" to focus the explosion inward) which are wired with detonators to set them off simultaneously.

Warsaw Pact

An alliance between the Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations. This was in response to the NATO. 1955: the USSR & its client states formed this.

Bay of Pigs

An unsuccessful invasion of Cuba in 1961, which was sponsored by the United States. Its purpose was to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In January 1959, following the overthrow of the corrupt and dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista, Castro assumed leadership of the new Cuban government. The progressive reforms he began indicated that he favored Communism, and his pro-Soviet foreign policy frightened the Eisenhower administration, which asked the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to find a way to remove him from power. Rather than have the U.S. military invade the small island nation, less than one hundred miles from Florida, and risk the world's criticism, the CIA instead trained a small force of Cuban exiles for the job. After landing here on the Cuban coast, these insurgents, the CIA believed, would inspire their countrymen to rise up and topple Castro's regime. The United States also promised air support for the invasion. This invasion was a major foreign policy disaster for President Kennedy and highlighted Cuba's military vulnerability to the Castro administration. The following year, the Soviet Union sent troops and technicians to Cuba to strengthen its new ally against further U.S. military plots. Then, on October 14, U.S. spy planes took aerial photographs that confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The United States was now within easy reach of Soviet nuclear warheads.

communism

Appeasement was based on three assumptions, another destructive war was simply unthinkable & must be avoided by any means, Britain & the U.S. began to feel Germany had been mistreated at Versailles, Anti-Bolshevik fervor: at least Fascist states, for all their problems, were a bulwark against Soviet-style this. Axis = anti-this. With the support of major Italian industrialists and the king, who saw Fascism as a bulwark against growing Socialist and this movements, Mussolini became prime minister in 1922. Political fragmentation through the 1920s accentuated the severe economic problems facing the country. As a result, the German ________ Party began to grow in strength, frightening many wealthy and middle-class Germans. In addition, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles had given rise to a deep-seated resentment of the victorious Allies. It was in such an environment that Adolf Hitler's anti-this National Socialist Party—the Nazis—was born. Germany's president, Paul von Hindenburg, at the urging of large industrialists who feared a _________ uprising, appointed Hitler to the position of chancellor in January 1933. The sentiment in Japan was decidedly pro-capitalist, and the Japanese militarists were fiercely supportive of a capitalist economy. They viewed with great concern the rise of this in the Soviet Union and in particular China, where the issue was fueling a civil war, and feared that the Soviet Union would make inroads in Asia by assisting believers in this in China. The Japanese militarists thus found a common ideological enemy with Fascism and National Socialism, which had based their rise to power on anti-this sentiments. In 1936, Japan and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, pledging mutual assistance in defending themselves against the Comintern, the international agency created by the Soviet Union to promote worldwide ___________ revolution. In particular, they agreed to allow the ___________ government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

April 1949: twelve nations (10 European, plus Canada & the U.S.) joined to form this. Goals: to establish collective security & resist communist expansion. Article V of it's charter states that an attack on any member nation is an attack on all. Article V has been invoked once. West Germany was admitted to this in 1952. In April 1949, the three countries joined Canada and eight Western European nations to form this, an alliance pledging its members to mutual defense in the event of attack.

containment

As no one wanted to fight another war, the U.S. adopted a general policy of this, based on the ideas of U.S. diplomat George Kennan. Intended to block the spread of communist ideas: The U.S. would not interfere with already existing soviet-style governments in eastern Europe, would seek to prevent communism from spreading elsewhere. In February 1946, George Kennan, a State Department official stationed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, sent an eight-thousand-word message to Washington, DC. In what became known as the "Long Telegram," Kennan maintained that Soviet leaders believed that the only way to protect the Soviet Union was to destroy "rival" nations and their influence over weaker nations. According to Kennan, the Soviet Union was not so much a revolutionary regime as a totalitarian bureaucracy that was unable to accept the prospect of a peaceful coexistence of the United States and itself. He advised that the best way to thwart Soviet plans for the world was to contain Soviet influence—primarily through economic policy—to those places where it already existed and prevent its political expansion into new areas. This strategy, which came to be known as the policy of __________, formed the basis for U.S. foreign policy and military decision making for more than thirty years. As Communist governments came to power elsewhere in the world, American policymakers extended their strategy of containment to what became known as the domino theory under the Eisenhower administration: Neighbors to Communist nations, so was the assumption, were likely to succumb to the same allegedly dangerous and infectious ideology. Like dominos toppling one another, entire regions would eventually be controlled by the Soviets. The demand for anti-Communist _____________ appeared as early as March 1946 in a speech by Winston Churchill, in which he referred to an Iron Curtain that divided Europe into the "free" West and the Communist East controlled by the Soviet Union. The commitment to ___________ Soviet expansion made necessary the ability to mount a strong military offense and defense. In pursuit of this goal, the U.S. military was reorganized under the National Security Act of 1947. This act streamlined the government in matters of security by creating the National Security Council and establishing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct surveillance and espionage in foreign nations. It also created the Department of the Air Force, which was combined with the Departments of the Army and Navy in 1949 to form one Department of Defense. Hoping to starve the western parts of the city into submission, the Berlin blockade was also a test of the emerging U.S. policy of this. In 1949, two incidents severely disrupted American confidence in the ability of the United States to ________ the spread of Communism and limit Soviet power in the world. First, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb—no longer did the United States have a monopoly on nuclear power. A few months later, on October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong announced the triumph of the Chinese Communists over their Nationalist foes in a civil war that had been raging since 1927. The Nationalist forces, under their leader Chiang Kai-shek, departed for Taiwan in December 1949. On June 25, 1950, troops of the North Korean People's Democratic Army crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, the border between North and South Korea. The first major test of the U.S. policy of this in Asia had begun, for the domino theory held that a victory by North Korea might lead to further Communist expansion in Asia, in the virtual backyard of the United States' chief new ally in East Asia—Japan. President Johnson had never been the cold warrior Kennedy was, but believed that the credibility of the nation and his office depended on maintaining a foreign policy of this.

fascism

Associated with Mussolini, very right wing, conservative, crony capitalism, militaristic. Violent nationalism, glorifying "the nation", and "national destiny". Italy and Nazi Germany under this dictation formed the "Axis" later joined by Japan. These regimes also appeared in Eastern Europe. Czechoslavakia, lacking a dominant ethnic group, was a notable exception. After the Great Depression, many leaders rose to power under this ideology. Mussolini and Hitler were both proponents of this, using dictatorial rule to achieve national unity. Calls for totalitarian form of government and a heightened focus on national unity, Social Darwinism, and loyalty to state. With the support of major Italian industrialists and the king, who saw this as a bulwark against growing Socialist and Communist movements, Mussolini became prime minister in 1922. The Japanese militarists thus found a common ideological enemy with this and National Socialism, which had based their rise to power on anti-Communist sentiments.

Hollywood 10

At first, Hollywood encountered difficulties in adjusting to the post-World War II environment. Although domestic audiences reached a record high in 1946 and the war's end meant expanding international markets too, the groundwork for the eventual dismantling of the traditional studio system was laid in 1948, with a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, film studios had owned their own movie theater chains in which they exhibited the films they produced; however, in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., this vertical integration of the industry—the complete control by one firm of the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures—was deemed a violation of antitrust laws. The HUAC hearings also targeted Hollywood. When Senator McCarthy called eleven "unfriendly witnesses" to testify before Congress about Communism in the film industry in October 1947, only playwright Bertolt Brecht answered questions. The other ten, who refused to testify, were cited for contempt of Congress on November 24. The next day, film executives declared that the so-called "______________" would no longer be employed in the industry until they had sworn they were not Communists. Eventually, more than three hundred actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other entertainment professionals were placed on the industry blacklist. Some never worked in Hollywood again; others directed films or wrote screenplays under assumed names. One of the original ___________, director Edward Dmytryk publicly announced he had once been a Communist and, in April 1951, answered questions and "named names" before the House Committee on Un- American Activities. Hollywood reacted aggressively to these various challenges.

Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)

Both the U.S. & Soviets were developing missiles capable of hitting targets 1000s of miles away. Different classes of rockets were created. These: for targets beyond 5500 kms (3400 miles). Even the earliest of these were capable of striking deep in either country's heartland in less than 20 minutes. U.S. research usually led the way & (also as usual). The U.S. believed its technological lead was insurmountable. The closest the world ever came to nuclear war was the crisis over Soviet rockets in Cuba. October 1962: U.S. discovers Soviets installing missile launch pads in Cuba. Both sides had nuclear-tipped ________ , BUT: having shorter-range missiles so close to the Florida coast meant the Soviets could strike most U.S. cities within minutes.

Neville Chamberlain

British Prime Minister & (fairly or not) poster boy for appeasement. Let Hitler convince him that, if allowed to take the Sudetenland, Germany's territorial ambitions would be satisfied. Believed Germany could not commit to a sustained war. Eastern Europe ranked low in British priorities anyway. Daladier (France), him, Hitler, & Mussolini meet. Both France & Britain capitulate to Hitler's demands. He returned to England & proclaimed "peace in our time". At a conference in Munich later that year, Great Britain's prime minister, and France's prime minister, Édouard Daladier, agreed to the partial dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of the Sudetenland (a region with a sizable German population) by German troops.

Allied Powers

China, France, US, Britain, and Soviet Union

George Patton

Clearing weather finally allowed Allied planes to drop relief supplies as well as paratroopers from the 101st Airborne. His 3rd army swung north. The German penetration was forced back. He was a General of the United States Army who commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean theater of World War II, and the U.S. Third Army in France and Germany following D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

Ho Chi Minh

Communist leader of North Vietnam. Cuba was not the only arena in which the United States sought to contain the advance of Communism. In Indochina, nationalist independence movements, most notably Vietnam's Viet _________ under the leadership of him, had strong Communist sympathies. President Harry S. Truman had no love for France's colonial regime in Southeast Asia but did not want to risk the loyalty of its Western European ally against the Soviet Union. In 1950, the Truman administration sent a small military advisory group to Vietnam and provided financial aid to help France defeat the Viet _____. In 1954, Vietnamese forces finally defeated the French, and the country was temporarily divided at the seventeenth parallel. Him and the Viet _____ controlled the North. In the South, the last Vietnamese emperor and ally to France, Bao Dai, named the French-educated, anti-Communist Ngo Dinh Diem as his prime minister. But Diem refused to abide by the Geneva Accords, the treaty ending the conflict that called for countrywide national elections in 1956, with the victor to rule a reunified nation. After a fraudulent election in the South in 1955, he ousted Bao Dai and proclaimed himself president of the Republic of Vietnam. He cancelled the 1956 elections in the South and began to round up Communists and supporters of him. Realizing that Diem would never agree to the reunification of the country under his leadership, the North Vietnamese began efforts to overthrow the government of the South by encouraging insurgents to attack South Vietnamese officials. By 1960, North Vietnam had also created the National Liberation Front (NLF) to resist Diem and carry out an insurgency in the South. The United States, fearing the spread of Communism under him, supported Diem, assuming he would create a democratic, pro-Western government in South Vietnam. However, Diem's oppressive and corrupt government made him a very unpopular ruler, particularly with farmers, students, and Buddhists, and many in the South actively assisted the NLF and North Vietnam in trying to overthrow his government.

Los Alamos

Concerns about secrecy & the chance for accidents led officials in 1943 to move research to a new facility being built in the thinly populated west. This lab was led by Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist blessed with rare organizational & management skills. Safety & privacy concerns led to moving research to here. Some of the world's sharpest minds soon designed a uranium "gun assembly" bomb, & another, more powerful implosion device based on plutonium. Stalin already knew about the Trinity test thanks to his spies at this lab. In late 1941, the program received its code name: the Manhattan Project. Located here, the Manhattan Project ultimately employed 150,000 people and cost some $2 billion. In July 1945, the project's scientists successfully tested the first atomic bomb.

concentration (labor) camps

Dachau, Bergen-Belson, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Ravensbruk. Nazi Germany exploited the abilities of the occupied peoples from the onset of the occupation. More than 14 million people and 2.5 million prisoners of war were transported to Germany for this. Jews were enslaved and interned in a far-reaching network of these across Europe, in the Reich itself, in the west and, foremost, in the east. The SS Central Office for Administration and Economy defined the new goal: labor exploitation of these prisoners, who would be taken to hundreds of these for service on behalf of the German war machine.

Auschwitz

Death camp in Poland. 1 million + deaths. Here, trains pulled into a mock-up of a normal station. Jews were helped off the cattle trucks by other Jews specially selected to help. Collaboration wasn't appealing, but could mean another day of life. New arrivals then went through "selection". Here, new arrivals were greeted by a Jewish orchestra playing classical music. Mothers, children, the old & sick went straight to the 'showers,' which were really gas chambers. The able bodied were sent to work camp were they were killed through a process known as 'destruction through work'. The slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free) was inscribed above the gates. Notice how the Death camp is set out like a factory complex. The Nazis used industrial methods to murder the Jews and process their dead bodies.

Red Scare

Due to rising fears of communist infiltration, Truman ordered Loyalty checks of government workers in 1947. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held numerous public hearings & ruined the reputations of blacklisted individuals, including many from TV, radio, & the movies. Powerful sources in & out of government claimed that Communists & their sympathizers were polluting the nation's entertainment industry—radio, television, & movies—with subversive propaganda. Many entertainment industry figures were blacklisted & unable to work— merely because of leftist leanings, sometimes years before. It proved civil liberties were no safer in a "cold war" than a hot one. The U.S. survived a period of deep paranoia, but at the cost of thousands of lives & ruined careers.

loyalty oaths

Due to rising fears of communist infiltration, Truman ordered these of government workers in 1947. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held numerous public hearings & ruined the reputations of blacklisted individuals, including many from TV, radio, & the movies. Roosevelt's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal were often criticized as "socialist," which many mistakenly associated with Communism, and Democrats were often branded Communists by Republicans. In response, on March 21, 1947, Truman signed Executive Order 9835, which provided the Federal Bureau of Investigation with broad powers to investigate federal employees and identify potential security risks. State and municipal governments instituted their own boards to find and dismiss potentially disloyal workers. In addition to these review boards, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), established in 1938 to investigate suspected Nazi sympathizers, after World War II also sought to root out suspected Communists in business, academia, and the media. HUAC was particularly interested in Hollywood because it feared that Communist sympathizers might use motion pictures as pro-Soviet propaganda. Witnesses were subpoenaed and required to testify before the committee; refusal could result in imprisonment. Those who invoked Fifth Amendment protections, or were otherwise suspected of Communist sympathies, often lost their jobs or found themselves on a blacklist, which prevented them from securing employment. Notable artists who were blacklisted in the 1940s and 1950s include composer Leonard Bernstein, novelist Dashiell Hammett, playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman, actor and singer Paul Robeson, and musician Artie Shaw.

Berlin Wall

East (Communist) Germany was suffering a "brain drain" to West. The younger, better educated, and most talented were "voting with their feet" by leaving the Soviet zone for freedom in the US/British/French sectors. August 1961: Soviet & East German troops erected this to keep them in the eastern sector. JFK saw this as a propaganda disaster for the Soviets. Lets it stand rather than invade East Germany. Besides, with the civil rights movement hitting full stride in the U.S., America had its own image problems to deal with.

Haile Selassie

Emperor of Ethiopia and symbol of African independence. He fought the Italian invasion of his country in 1935 and regained his throne during World War II, when British forces expelled the Italians. He ruled Ethiopia as an autocrat.

Erwin Rommel

England nearly took Libya from Italy as well. Germany intervened to prevent the loss of Libya. Sent in its Afrika Corps under this man. He was known as "the gentleman general" & as "the desert rat". Noted for audacity & speed of attacks, he defeated British at Gazala & Tobruk. But his attempted invasion of Egypt was defeated at El Alamein (1942). Hitler dispatched the Afrika Korps under this general, and the outcome of the situation was in doubt until shortly before American forces joined the British.

Marshall Plan

European Recovery Program(1947)—known as this. Western European nations were given ~$13 billion to rebuild their economies & encourage them to stay in the western capitalist fold. Aid was offered to the Soviet Union, which declined. By 1946, the American economy was growing significantly. At the same time, the economic situation in Europe was disastrous. The war had turned much of Western Europe into a battlefield, and the rebuilding of factories, public transportation systems, and power stations progressed exceedingly slowly. Starvation loomed as a real possibility for many. As a result of these conditions, Communism was making significant inroads in both Italy and France. These concerns led Truman, along with Secretary of State George C. Marshall, to propose to Congress the European Recovery Program, popularly known as this. Between its implantation in April 1948 and its termination in 1951, this program gave $13 billion in economic aid to European nations. Truman's motivation was economic and political, as well as humanitarian. The plan stipulated that the European nations had to work together in order to receive aid, thus enforcing unity through enticement, while seeking to undercut the political popularity of French and Italian Communists and dissuading moderates from forming coalition governments with them. Likewise, much of the money had to be spent on American goods, boosting the postwar economy of the United States as well as the American cultural presence in Europe. Stalin regarded the program as a form of bribery. The Soviet Union refused to accept aid from this, even though it could have done so, and forbade the Communist states of Eastern Europe to accept U.S. funds as well. Those states that did accept aid began to experience an economic recovery.

Battle of the Coral Sea

First air-sea battle in history with carrier based planes in lead role. Opposing ships never saw each other. Japan was threatening Australia. The Allies turned the tide in May and June 1942, at this battle and the Battle of Midway.

Sputnik

First artificial Earth satellite, it was launched by Moscow in 1957 and sparked U.S. fears of Soviet dominance in technology and outer space. It led to the creation of NASA and the space race. However, the United States often feared that the Soviets were making greater strides in developing technology with potential military applications. This was especially true following the Soviet Union's launch of this, the first manmade satellite, in October 1957. In September 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which pumped over $775 million into educational programs over four years, especially those programs that focused on math and science. The launch of the Soviet satellite frightened many in the United States, who feared that Soviet technology had surpassed their own. To calm these fears, Americans domesticated it, creating children's games based on it and using its shape as a decorative motif. 4 October 1957: one day before the most wondrous event in the history of the universe, the USSR shocked the world by launching an artificial satellite into Earth orbit. It was fairly primitive, weighed ~180 lbs, contained a radio transmitter that went "beep beep beep", fell back into the atmosphere & burned up after 3 months. Even so, Americans were aghast to be living under a "Red moon". The second version, launched less than a month after the first, weighed 1,000 lbs & carried a small dog named Laika into orbit. Clearly, Soviet rockets could hit any spot in the U.S. with a nuclear strike — within minutes. Embarrassed Americans were sure the U.S. could have been first into orbit had Eisenhower allowed use of secret Army technology. 6 December 1957: the U.S. Navy prepared to launch the first U.S. satellite. The press quickly dubbed this as Flopnik or Stayputnik. 31 January 1958: Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite.

Ivy-Mike

First thermonuclear bomb. It was the codename given to the first test of a full-scale thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. It was detonated by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll, in the Pacific Ocean, as part of Operation Ivy.

Berlin Airlift

Germany was divided into four regions overseen by occupying Allied forces. Berlin was totally within the Soviet zone, but the city also had British-, U.S.-, & French-controlled areas. The Soviets blockaded the city of Berlin & halted all ground-based traffic into the city. Without relief, the city would be starved into submitting to Soviet control. The U.S., France, & England responded by flying food, coal, & other supplies to keep West Berlin open. For almost a full year, Allied planes flew into Berlin around the clock. May 1949: the Soviets backed down & allowed ground traffic to resume. In a broader sense, the airlift forged good feelings in Germany toward the US, reassured western Europe the US wouldn't retreat into isolation again. In April 1949, the three countries joined Canada and eight Western European nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance pledging its members to mutual defense in the event of attack. On May 12, 1949, a year and approximately two million tons of supplies later, the Soviets admitted defeat and ended the blockade of Berlin.

Wolf Packs

Germany's primitive U-boats of WWI had been devastating. The more modern German submarines of WWII (these) sank millions of tons of merchant shipping.

U-boats

Germany's primitive ______ of WWI had been devastating. Even so, these sinking 500,000 tons of shipping each month in the Atlantic.

The War in Europe

Germany, Italy and Soviet Union vs. France, Britain, US, and later the Soviet Union

George Orwell

He fought in Spain & was badly wounded in the neck; though he was fighting against the Fascist Falangists, he also got an up close look at Stalin's tactics & found them equally frightening.

Bernard Montgomery

He gradually pushed the Germans out of north Africa. He pushed westward from Egypt & the U.S. pushed eastward from Algeria. By early 1943 the Nazis had retreated & withdrawn from northern Africa.

Franklin Roosevelt

He moves cautiously in 1940, an election year. July: he authorized $4 billion to increase number of U.S. warships. November: he was re-elected to a third term. He devised a plan for sending aid to Britain without demanding payment. In August 1941, Churchill & him met for the first time aboard a warship off Newfoundland. Although the U.S. was not yet officially at war, him & Churchill issued an 8-point "Joint Declaration" of post-war principles, became known as the Atlantic Charter. He ordered all American ships operating in the Atlantic to "shoot on sight" at any submarines. On October 30, a German sub sank an American destroyer off the coast of Newfoundland. The Allies met to discuss the course & conduct of the war, & he announces goal of Germany's "unconditional surrender" meant to ensure Germany was beaten & knew it (no more "stab in the back" excuse) criticized as stiffening German resistance & preventing a negotiated peace. President was aware of the challenges facing the targets of Nazi aggression in Europe and Japanese aggression in Asia. Although he hoped to offer U.S. support, Congress's commitment to nonintervention was difficult to overcome. His willingness to accede to the demands of the noninterventionists led him even to refuse assistance to those fleeing Nazi Germany. Although he was aware of Nazi persecution of the Jews, he did little to aid them. In a symbolic act of support, he withdrew the American ambassador to Germany in 1938. He did not press for a relaxation of immigration quotas that would have allowed more refugees to enter the country, however. In 1939, he refused to support a bill that would have admitted twenty thousand Jewish refugee children to the United States. Once all-out war began between Japan and China in 1937, he sought ways to help the Chinese that did not violate U.S. law. Responding to the German invasion of Poland, he worked with Congress to alter the Neutrality Laws to permit a policy of "Cash and Carry" in munitions for Britain and France. As the battle raged in the skies over Great Britain throughout the summer and autumn of 1940, he became increasingly concerned over England's ability to hold out against the German juggernaut. In June 1941, Hitler broke the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union that had given him the backing to ravage Poland and marched his armies deep into Soviet territory, where they would kill Red Army regulars and civilians by the millions until their advances were stalled and ultimately reversed by the devastating battle of Stalingrad, which took place from August 23, 1942 until February 2, 1943 when, surrounded and out of ammunition, the German 6th army surrendered. The very same day that Germany invaded Poland in 1939, President promoted George C. Marshall, a veteran of World War I and an expert at training officers, from a one-star general to a four-star general, and gave him the responsibility of serving as Army Chief of Staff. Him and his administration already had experience in establishing government controls and taking the initiative in economic matters during the Depression. In April 1941, he created the Office of Price Administration (OPA), and, once the United States entered the war, the OPA regulated prices and attempted to combat inflation. Although a study commissioned earlier by Roosevelt indicated that there was little danger of disloyalty on the part of West Coast Japanese, fears of sabotage, perhaps spurred by the attempted rescue of a Japanese airman shot down at Pearl Harbor by Japanese living in Hawaii, and racist sentiments led him to act. Despite the fact that a Japanese attack in the Pacific was the tripwire for America's entrance into the war, he had been concerned about Great Britain since the beginning of the Battle of Britain. He viewed Germany as the greater threat to freedom. Hence, he leaned towards a "Europe First" strategy, even before the United States became an active belligerent. That meant that the United States would concentrate the majority of its resources and energies in achieving a victory over Germany first and then focus on defeating Japan. Within Europe, Churchill and Roosevelt were committed to saving Britain and acted with this goal in mind, often ignoring the needs of the Soviet Union. As He imagined an "empire-free" postwar world, in keeping with the goals of the Atlantic Charter, he could also envision the United States becoming the preeminent world power economically, politically, and militarily. He entered World War II with an eye toward a new postwar world, one where the United States would succeed Britain as the leader of Western capitalist democracies, replacing the old British imperial system with one based on free trade and decolonization. Through a series of wartime conferences, he and the other global leaders sought to come up with a strategy to both defeat the Germans and bolster relationships among allies. In January 1943, at Casablanca, Morocco, Churchill convinced him to delay an invasion of France in favor of an invasion of Sicily. He agreed to demand an unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan to assure the Soviet Union that the United States would not negotiate a separate peace and prepare the former belligerents for a thorough and permanent transformation after the war. He thought that announcing this as a specific war aim would discourage any nation or leader from seeking any negotiated armistice that would hinder efforts to reform and transform the defeated nations. The last time the Big Three met was in early February 1945 at Yalta in the Soviet Union. He was sick, and Stalin's armies were pushing the German army back towards Berlin from the east. Churchill and him thus had to accept a number of compromises that strengthened Stalin's position in eastern Europe. In particular, they agreed to allow the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place. Albert Einstein, who had emigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the Nazis, urged President to launch an American atomic research project, and he agreed to do so, with reservations. He extended lend-lease aid to the Soviets. He also proclaimed a national emergency & ordered German & Italian consulates in US to close. In July 1941, he froze Japanese assets in U.S. This was not an act of war, but close to it.

Benito Mussolini

He re-invaded Ethiopia. Claimed it was to be part of "Greater Italia," a revival of Roman glory. Hitler & him helped Franco & his army return to mainland Spain. Hitler & him also sent troops & tested new weapons & tactics in Spain. Axis seizure of the canal would force Allied ships to go around Africa to resupply & protect British colonies in the Far East. British & Empire forces had driven him out of Ethiopia. Having re-taken Sicily, Allied troops began pushing their way north through Italy. The Italians overthrew him & surrendered. In such an unstable environment, he capitalized on the frustrations of the Italian people who felt betrayed by the Versailles Treaty. In 1919, he created the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squadron). The organization's main tenets of Fascism called for a totalitarian form of government and a heightened focus on national unity, militarism, social Darwinism, and loyalty to the state. With the support of major Italian industrialists and the king, who saw Fascism as a bulwark against growing Socialist and Communist movements, he became prime minister in 1922. Between 1925 and 1927, he transformed the nation into a single party state and removed all restraints on his power. But while Stalin urged his allies to invade France, British and American troops pursued the defeat of his Italy. However, Churchill saw Italy as the vulnerable underbelly of Europe and believed that Italian support for him was waning, suggesting that victory there might be relatively easy. Moreover, Churchill pointed out that if Italy were taken out of the war, then the Allies would control the Mediterranean, offering the Allies easier shipping access to both the Soviet Union and the British Far Eastern colonies.

Francisco Franco

He was in charge of Spain's Army of Africa (in Spanish Morocco). His army was initially blocked at Gibraltar by Republican warships. Hitler & Mussolini helped him & his army return to mainland Spain. Italy & Germany helped him by supplying planes, tanks, & supplies. Legion bombed the town of Guernica. Two days later, his army overran the town. Gradually the Nationalists (his Falangist party) wore down Loyalist strength. Italy & Germany had formally recognized the ______ regime in 1936 as the legitimate gov't of Spain. Great Britain & France recognized him in 1939. International recognition of his right-wing dictatorship quickly followed.

Gary Francis Powers

He was the pilot who was captured when the Russians shot down his U-2 plane in 1960. He was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.

uranium

Henri Becquerel discovered that certain of these salts naturally emitted something that penetrated like x-rays. Merely being close to this ore left an impression on film unexposed to visible light. These samples could penetrate heavy, light-proof paper & leave a blurry image on photographic film. Curie worked with her husband, French chemist Pierre Curie, to purify & isolate anything unusual from tons of this-bearing ore. Radium, as they called it, proved much more radioactive than this. All these atoms have 92 protons in the nucleus, & most "natural" this - U238 - has 146 neutrons there as well. A rare isotope of this had three fewer neutrons in the nucleus: hence, U235. This with more of the 235 isotope was known as "enriched". 1938: physicist Lise Meitner correctly interpreted her colleague Otto Hahn's experimental results involving this. Meitner & Hahn's explanation of how this might be used to produce a chain reaction— & a bomb— stunned the physics world. Fermi & his team built a multi-layered pile of graphite bricks intermixed with these fuel pellets. The control rods which prevented a runaway melt down were handled by students pulling on ropes! Some of the world's sharpest minds soon designed this type of "gun assembly" bomb, & another, more powerful implosion device based on plutonium. Scientists were certain this gun-type would work & didn't bother to test it. As early as 1939, German scientists had discovered how to split these atoms, the technology that would ultimately allow for the creation of the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein, who had emigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the Nazis, urged President Roosevelt to launch an American atomic research project, and Roosevelt agreed to do so, with reservations. In late 1941, the program received its code name: the Manhattan Project. Located at Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Manhattan Project ultimately employed 150,000 people and cost some $2 billion. In July 1945, the project's scientists successfully tested the first atomic bomb.

U2

High-flying American spy plane, whose downing in 1960 destroyed a summit and heightened Cold War tensions. They routinely flew over Soviet Union. U.S. spy planes took aerial photographs that confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The United States was now within easy reach of Soviet nuclear warheads.

Einsatzgruppen (SS)

Himmler sent four specially trained units called "________________ battalions" into German occupied territory and shot at least 1 million Jews. Victims were taken to deserted areas where they were made to dig their own graves, & then were shot. When they ran out of bullets they sometimes killed their victims using flame throwers. They publicly shot people for smuggling food or for any act of resistance. The guards who murdered the Jews were brainwashed with Anti-Semitic propaganda. Jews were transported in cattle cars in terrible conditions. Naked, dirty & half starved people look like animals, which helped to reinforce the Nazi propaganda. They trained their new guards by encouraging them to set fire to a pit full of live victims - usually children. They would try to force up to 2000 people into gas chambers like this.

Bastogne

Hitler noticed a weak spot in the advancing allied lines in France. Throwing the dice, Hitler decided to direct several dozen divisions, supported by Panzer tanks, on this area. The German buildup was hidden in the snow- covered Ardennes forest near the small village... U.S. troops were surrounded & trapped in the crossroads town. German officers requested the Americans to surrender. U.S. forces took to calling themselves "the battling bastards of ________". They didn't surrender.

Ardennes Forest

Hitler noticed a weak spot in the advancing allied lines in France. Throwing the dice, Hitler decided to direct several dozen divisions, supported by Panzer tanks, on this area. The German buildup was hidden in the snow- covered this forest near the small village of Bastogne...

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.

Harry Truman

In 1944, FDR had run for an unprecedented fourth term, adding Senator of Missouri as his running mate. Franklin Roosevelt, the only President millions of Americans had ever known, died of a massive stroke. He took the oath of office as 33rd president. After Roosevelt's death, new U.S. Pres. met with Stalin & Churchill at Potsdam, German. He also told Stalin about "a new weapon of unusually destructive force". When Japan ignored the declaration, he decided to use the bomb on Japan. The victorious Allies set about determining what to do to rebuild Europe at the Potsdam Summit Conference in July 1945. Attending the conference were Stalin, this guy, and Churchill, now the outgoing prime minister, as well as the new British prime minister, Clement Atlee. According to some estimates, as many as 250,000 Americans might die in securing a final victory. Such considerations undoubtedly influenced his decision. He, who had not known about the Manhattan Project until Roosevelt's death, also may not have realized how truly destructive it was. One question that has not been fully answered is why the United States dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. As some scholars have noted, if his intention was to eliminate the need for a home island invasion, he could have given Japan more time to respond after bombing Hiroshima. He did not, however. The second bombing may have been intended to send a message to Stalin, who was becoming intransigent regarding postwar Europe. If it is indeed true that he had political motivations for using the bombs, then the destruction of Nagasaki might have been the first salvo of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Atlantic Charter

In August 1941, Churchill & Roosevelt met for the first time aboard a warship off Newfoundland. Although the U.S. was not yet officially at war, FDR & Churchill issued an 8-point "Joint Declaration" of post-war principles. The eight principal points of this. The blueprint of Anglo-American cooperation during World War II. This stated that the United States and Britain sought no territory from the conflict. It proclaimed that citizens of all countries should be given the right of self-determination, self-government should be restored in places where it had been eliminated, and trade barriers should be lowered. Further, this mandated freedom of the seas, renounced the use of force to settle international disputes, and called for postwar disarmament. As Roosevelt imagined an "empire-free" postwar world, in keeping with the goals of this, he could also envision the United States becoming the preeminent world power economically, politically, and militarily. The goals of this had explicitly included self-determination, self-government, and free trade.

Wannsee

In January 1942, Heinrich Himmler decided to change tactics once again and called a special conference here. At this conference it was decided that existing methods were too inefficient, & that a new 'Final Solution' was necessary. At this conference it was decided that if one of a person's parents was Jewish, then they were Jewish. However, if only one of their grandparents had been Jewish, they could be classified as being German. In 1940, all Jews had their pass-ports stamped with the letter 'J' & had to wear the yellow Star of David on their jacket or coat. At this Conference in 1941, the Nazis laid plans to kill 11 million Jews. Of a pre-war population of over 3 million, today there are only 2,000 Jews living in Poland. Overall, the Nazis managed to kill almost 6 million Jews.

Heinrich Himmler

In January 1942, this man decided to change tactics once again and called a special conference at Wannsee. At this conference it was decided that existing methods were too inefficient, & that a new 'Final Solution' was necessary. He sent four specially trained SS units called "Einsatzgruppen battalions" into German occupied territory and shot at least 1 million Jews. Victims were taken to deserted areas where they were made to dig their own graves, & then were shot. When the SS ran out of bullets they sometimes killed their victims using flame throwers.

Stalingrad

In June 1941, Hitler broke the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union that had given him the backing to ravage Poland and marched his armies deep into Soviet territory, where they would kill Red Army regulars and civilians by the millions until their advances were stalled and ultimately reversed by this devastating battle, which took place from August 23, 1942 until February 2, 1943 when, surrounded and out of ammunition, the German 6th army surrendered. Following the establishment of beachheads at Normandy, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated on August 20, 1944. The invasion did succeed in diverting German forces from the eastern front to the western front, relieving some of the pressure on Stalin's troops. By that time, however, Russian forces had already defeated the German army here, an event that many consider the turning point of the war in Europe, and begun to push the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Although the Allied campaign secured control of the southern Mediterranean and preserved Egypt and the Suez Canal for the British, Stalin and the Soviets were still engaging hundreds of German divisions in bitter struggles here and at Leningrad. The invasion of North Africa did nothing to draw German troops away from the Soviet Union.

Chiang Kai-shek

In October, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Nationalist forces under this man had been forced to retreat to the island of Taiwan. Republicans, shut out of the White House since 1933, immediately began to blame Truman & the Democrats for having "lost China". He became the darling of the right for awhile, despite his obvious weaknesses. A few months later, on October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong announced the triumph of the Chinese Communists over their Nationalist foes in a civil war that had been raging since 1927. The Nationalist forces, under their leader, departed for Taiwan in December 1949. Chinese nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975, first in mainland China until 1949 and then in Taiwan until his death.

Mao Zedong

In October, he proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek had been forced to retreat to the island of Taiwan. Republicans, shut out of the White House since 1933, immediately began to blame Truman & the Democrats for having "lost China". First, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb—no longer did the United States have a monopoly on nuclear power. A few months later, on October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist Party leader announced the triumph of the Chinese Communists over their Nationalist foes in a civil war that had been raging since 1927. The Nationalist forces, under their leader Chiang Kai-shek, departed for Taiwan in December 1949. Fears that Communists within the United States were jeopardizing the country's security had existed even before the victory of chairman and the arrest and conviction of the atomic spies. On June 27, the UN Security Council denounced North Korea's actions and called upon UN members to help South Korea defeat the invading forces. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the Soviet Union could have vetoed the action, but it had boycotted UN meetings following the awarding of China's seat on the Security Council to Taiwan instead of to his People's Republic of China. June 1950: communist (PRK) forces attacked across the 38th parallel & swept almost unimpeded southward. Historians still debate whether Stalin or him gave approval, but North Korean leaders believed — or pretended to believe — they had backing from their fellow communist patrons. Newly communist China repeatedly warned U.N. troops not to approach the Yalu River— its border with North Korea. Bent on eliminating communism from the peninsula, MacArthur ignored the warnings & pushed onward. Instead, he provoked a Chinese intervention.

Seoul

In September, Gen. Douglas MacArthur plotted a risky amphibious landing at Inchon, 200 miles behind enemy lines. A push east could liberate the South Korean capital & trap many North Korean soldiers in the south. The landing worked, sort of, it was liberated and tens of thousands of PRK troops were trapped in the south. Identifying them proved much more difficult. In late November, hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese forces (CCF) poured across the Yalu River. Overwhelmed U.N. troops were forced back south of here. By January 1951, much of the Korean peninsula was back in communist hands. Following a costly retreat from North Korea's Chosin Reservoir, MacArthur urged Truman to deploy nuclear weapons against China. Truman, however, did not wish to risk a broader war in Asia. MacArthur criticized Truman's decision and voiced his disagreement in a letter to a Republican congressman, who subsequently allowed the letter to become public. After the initial invasion of South Korea by the North Korean People's Democratic Army, the United Nations established a defensive line in the southern part of the country. The landing at Inchon in September reversed the tide of the war and allowed UN forces under General Douglas MacArthur to retake this city, which had fallen to North Korean troops in the early days of the war.

Inchon

In September, Gen. Douglas MacArthur plotted a risky amphibious landing here, 200 miles behind enemy lines. A push east could liberate the South Korean capital, Seoul, & trap many North Korean soldiers in the south. On June 27, Truman ordered U.S. military forces into South Korea. They established a defensive line on the far southern part of the Korean peninsula near the town of Pusan. A U.S.-led invasion here on September 15 halted the North Korean advance and turned it into a retreat. As North Korean forces moved back across the thirty-eighth parallel, UN forces under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur followed. MacArthur's goal was not only to drive the North Korean army out of South Korea but to destroy Communist North Korea as well. At this stage, he had the support of President Truman; however, as UN forces approached the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea, MacArthur's and Truman's objectives diverged. The landing here in September reversed the tide of the war and allowed UN forces under General Douglas MacArthur to retake the city of Seoul, which had fallen to North Korean troops in the early days of the war.

plutonium

In a chain reaction, neutrons strike the nucleus of an element such as uranium or this. When the nucleus splits (fissions), pieces form one or more new elements with smaller nuclei, & any leftover neutrons continue on to strike more atoms. This sort of exponential acceleration is called a "chain reaction." Some of the world's sharpest minds soon designed a uranium "gun assembly" bomb, & another, more powerful implosion device based on this. An implosion device using this was successfully tested 16 July 1945 at Trinity Site, near Alamogordo, N.M. While they were effective in forcing defense contractors, such as the DuPont Corporation, to hire African Americans, they were not able to force corporations to place African Americans in well-paid positions. For example, at DuPont's this production plant in Hanford, Washington, African Americans were hired as low-paid construction workers but not as laboratory technicians.

Midway

Japan also attacked the Philippines, Guam, here, Hong Kong & Malaya. Thanks to ULTRA, Admiral Nimitz knew of Japan's plan to attack this place. Sent large carrier force to meet it. Japan's first major defeat, ended expansion. Japan lost 4 carriers, a heavy cruiser, 300+ planes, & over 5,000 sailors. After this, Japan on defensive for remainder of war. The Allies turned the tide in May and June 1942, at the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of here. This battle witnessed the first Japanese naval defeat since the nineteenth century.

The War in Asia/ Pacific

Japan vs. China, France, US, Britain, Soviet Union

Pearl Harbor

Japan's quest for power began at the turn of the century & intensified in the 1930s. China suffered the most; invaded by Japan in mid-30s; brutal occupation U.S. possessions in Asia & the Pacific were vulnerable to Japan's ambitions to set up a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japan was on a quest for power. They needed natural resources and risked war with China, US, and the Soviet Union to get them. FDR fore Japanese assets in the US. The US broke Japanese code, Ultra, and knew there was going to be an attack but didn't know where it was going to be. Assumed they would attack the Philippines. Japan attacked the American Pacific fleet here. At the same time, Japan also attacked the Philippines, Guam, the Midway Islands, Hong Kong & Malaya. This united the country behind the war, but it also became a symbol of U.S. unpreparedness. Despite this, the U.S. navy was hardly defeated. Most carriers & many smaller ships were at sea & undamaged in the attack. Thanks to its industrial might, the U.S. undertook a rapid production schedule of planes & ships. Japanese losses were minimal. The strike was part of a more concerted campaign by the Japanese to gain territory. After this, as American military strategists began to plan counterattacks and campaigns against the Axis powers, California became a training ground. Troops trained there for tank warfare and amphibious assaults as well as desert campaigns—since the first assault against the Axis powers was planned for North Africa. The Japanese attack on this unleashed a cascade of racist assumptions about Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in the United States that culminated in the relocation and internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, 66 percent of whom had been born in the United States. Executive Order 9066, signed by Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, gave the army power to remove people from "military areas" to prevent sabotage or espionage.

Axis Powers

Japan, Germany and Italy

internment camps

Japanese agents & saboteurs were active. A Japanese pilot who had bombed Pearl Harbor made an emergency landing on Ni'ihau, one of the Hawaiian islands. Many living on the U.S. west coast expected a Japanese attack at any time. Under intense public pressure, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in January 1942. It authorized removing people of Japanese ancestry from coastal or war-related areas. The U.S. built special relocation centers in remote sections of the U.S. & evacuated about 110,000 Japanese (60,000 were U.S. citizens). Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were not relocated despite being more numerous. The U.S. government allowed Japanese- American men to volunteer for military service in Europe. It even drafted them after January 1944. Japanese Americans also suffered from discrimination. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unleashed a cascade of racist assumptions about Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in the United States that culminated in the relocation of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, 66 percent of whom had been born in the United States. The army then used this authority to relocate people of Japanese ancestry living along the Pacific coast of Washington, Oregon, and California, as well as in parts of Arizona, to these in the American interior. Some sixteen thousand Germans, including some from Latin America, and German Americans were also placed in these, as were 2,373 persons of Italian ancestry. However, unlike the case with Japanese Americans, they represented only a tiny percentage of the members of these ethnic groups living in the country. Most of these people were innocent of any wrongdoing, but some Germans were members of the Nazi party. No interned Japanese Americans were found guilty of sabotage or espionage.

38th Parallel

July 1953: both sides agreed to a "demilitarized zone" along the this & signed a truce. No treaty ending the war has ever been signed. 1945: the Korean peninsula was liberated from Japanese rule & divided at here between Soviet & U.S. occupying armies. June 1950: communist (PRK) forces attacked across this & swept almost unimpeded southward. Historians still debate whether Stalin or Mao gave approval, but North Korean leaders believed — or pretended to believe — they had backing from their fellow communist patrons.

Fidel Castro

Kennedy's multifaceted approach to national defense is exemplified by his careful handling of the Communist government of this man in Cuba. In January 1959, following the overthrow of the corrupt and dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista, he assumed leadership of the new Cuban government. The progressive reforms he began indicated that he favored Communism, and his pro-Soviet foreign policy frightened the Eisenhower administration, which asked the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to find a way to remove him from power. Rather than have the U.S. military invade the small island nation, less than one hundred miles from Florida, and risk the world's criticism, the CIA instead trained a small force of Cuban exiles for the job. After landing at the Bay of Pigs on the Cuban coast, these insurgents, the CIA believed, would inspire their countrymen to rise up and topple his regime. The United States also promised air support for the invasion. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a major foreign policy disaster for President Kennedy and highlighted Cuba's military vulnerability to his administration. The following year, the Soviet Union sent troops and technicians to Cuba to strengthen its new ally against further U.S. military plots. Then, on October 14, U.S. spy planes took aerial photographs that confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The United States was now within easy reach of Soviet nuclear warheads.

Charles DeGaulle

Leader of French army. Was a French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to reestablish democracy in France.

Pierre Curie

Marie worked with her husband, French chemist, to purify & isolate anything unusual from tons of uranium-bearing ore. In July 1898 they discovered a new element named polonium in honor of Marie's homeland. Marie, him, & Becquerel shared the Nobel prize in physics. Marie & him coined the term "radioactivity" to describe the effect they & Becquerel had observed. He was killed by a horse-drawn wagon.

fission

Meitner & Hahn had discovered atomic _______ of heavy, unstable elements. In a chain reaction, neutrons strike the nucleus of an element such as uranium or plutonium. When the nucleus splits, pieces form one or more new elements with smaller nuclei, & any leftover neutrons continue on to strike more atoms. This sort of exponential acceleration is called a "chain reaction." When a nucleus splits, energy is released: a LOT of energy, according to Einstein's famous formula, E=mc2. Since the c2 in the formula is such a large number, the m, or mass, can be very small & still produce a big explosion. A coffee-mug-sized bit of U235 was all that _________ in the Hiroshima bomb.

George Marshall

Most Americans, however, were willing to serve, and they required a competent officer corps. The very same day that Germany invaded Poland in 1939, President Roosevelt promoted him, a veteran of World War I and an expert at training officers, from a one-star general to a four-star general, and gave him the responsibility of serving as Army Chief of Staff. The desire to create a command staff that could win the army's confidence no doubt contributed to the rather meteoric rise of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Belzec

Nazi killing center located in eastern Poland. It opened in March 1942 and closed in December 1942. More than 400,000 persons, overwhelmingly Jews,, were murdered there, initially in gas vans and later in gas chambers.

extermination camps

New arrivals then went through "selection". At some of these the Nazis would play records of classical music to help calm down the new arrivals. Notice how it is set out like a factory complex. The Nazis used industrial methods to murder the Jews and process their dead bodies. Gas chambers were some- times disguised as showers or bath houses. Guards would force prisoners into cement rooms, then drop canisters of Zyklon B, or prussic acid, through small holes in the roof. The SS would try to force up to 2000 people into gas chambers like this. Specially selected Jews known as sonderkommando were used to to remove the gold fillings and hair of people who had been gassed. Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed the dead bodies into the crematoria. Mothers, children, the old & sick went straight to the 'showers,' which were really gas chambers. The able bodied were sent to work camp were they were killed through a process known as 'destruction through work'. Nazi Germany built these during the Holocaust in World War II, to systematically murder millions of Jews. Others were murdered here as well, including Poles, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and Roma. The victims of these were primarily killed by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. Some Nazi of these, such as Auschwitz and Majdanek, served a dual purpose before the end of the war in 1945: __________, but also through extreme work under starvation conditions.

John Kennedy

No one symbolized the hopes and energies of the new decade more than him, the nation's new, young, and seemingly healthful, president. He had emphasized the country's aspirations and challenges as a "new frontier" when accepting his party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from Harvard University and went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946. Even though he was young and inexperienced, his reputation as a war hero who had saved the crew of his PT boat after it was destroyed by the Japanese helped him to win election over more seasoned candidates, as did his father's fortune. In 1952, he was elected to the U.S. Senate for the first of two terms. For many, including Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a historian and member of his administration, he represented a bright, shining future in which the United States would lead the way in solving the most daunting problems facing the world. his popular reputation as a great politician undoubtedly owes much to the style and attitude he personified. He and his wife Jacqueline conveyed a sense of optimism and youthfulness. Few knew that behind his healthful and sporty image was a gravely ill man whose wartime injuries caused him daily agony. He did not appeal to all voters, however. Many feared that because he was Roman Catholic, his decisions would be influenced by the Pope. Even traditional Democratic supporters feared that a Catholic candidate would lose the support of Protestants. To shore up support for him in the South, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Protestant Texan who was Senate majority leader, was added to the Democratic ticket as the vice presidential candidate. In the end, he won the election by the closest margin since 1888. His victory in the Electoral College was 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219. His win made him both the youngest man elected to the presidency and the first U.S. president born in the twentieth century. His lofty goals ranged from fighting poverty to winning the space race against the Soviet Union with a moon landing. He assembled an administration of energetic people assured of their ability to shape the future. He appointed his younger brother Robert as attorney general, much to the chagrin of many who viewed the appointment as a blatant example of nepotism. His domestic reform plans remained hampered, however, by his narrow victory and lack of support from members of his own party, especially southern Democrats. He focused most of his energies on foreign policy, an arena in which he had been interested since his college years and in which, like all presidents, he was less constrained by the dictates of Congress. He, who had promised in his inaugural address to protect the interests of the "free world," engaged in Cold War politics on a variety of fronts. For example, in response to the lead that the Soviets had taken in the space race when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to successfully orbit the earth, he urged Congress to not only put a man into space but also land an American on the moon, a goal finally accomplished in 1969. To counter Soviet influence in the developing world, he supported a variety of measures. One of these was the Alliance for Progress, which collaborated with the governments of Latin American countries to promote economic growth and social stability in nations whose populations might find themselves drawn to communism. He also established the Agency for International Development to oversee the distribution of foreign aid, and he founded the Peace Corps, which recruited idealistic young people to undertake humanitarian projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He hoped that by augmenting the food supply and improving healthcare and education, the U.S. government could encourage developing nations to align themselves with the United States and reject Soviet or Chinese overtures. Much of his administration's new approach to defense, however, remained focused on the ability and willingness of the United States to wage both conventional and nuclear warfare, and he continued to call for increases in the American nuclear arsenal. His multifaceted approach to national defense is exemplified by his careful handling of the Communist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. The United States also promised air support for the invasion. He agreed to support the previous administration's plans, and on April 17, 1961, approximately fourteen hundred Cuban exiles stormed ashore at the designated spot. However, he feared domestic criticism and worried about Soviet retaliation elsewhere in the world, such as Berlin. He cancelled the anticipated air support, which enabled the Cuban army to easily defeat the insurgents. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a major foreign policy disaster for President and highlighted Cuba's military vulnerability to the Castro administration. The following year, the Soviet Union sent troops and technicians to Cuba to strengthen its new ally against further U.S. military plots. On October 22, he demanded that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev remove the missiles. He also ordered a naval quarantine placed around Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from approaching. Despite his use of the word "quarantine" instead of "blockade," for a blockade was considered an act of war, a potential war with the Soviet Union was nevertheless on the president's mind. As U.S. ships headed for Cuba, the army was told to prepare for war, and he appeared on national television to declare his intention to defend the Western Hemisphere from Soviet aggression. Not made public, but nevertheless part of the agreement, was his promise to remove U.S. warheads from Turkey, as close to Soviet targets as the Cuban missiles had been to American ones. He and Khrushchev signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting tests of nuclear weapons in Earth's atmosphere. When he took office, Diem's government was faltering. Continuing the policies of the Eisenhower administration, he supplied Diem with money and military advisors to prop up his government. Cold War concerns, which guided U.S. policy in Cuba and Vietnam, also motivated his administration's steps toward racial equality. Although his stance on civil rights had won him support in the African American community and his steely performance during the Cuban Missile Crisis had led his overall popularity to surge, he understood that he had to solidify his base in the South to secure his reelection. On November 21, 1963, he accompanied Lyndon Johnson to Texas to rally his supporters. The next day, shots rang out as his motorcade made its way through the streets of Dallas. Seriously injured, he was rushed to Parkland Hospital and pronounced dead. The gunfire that killed him appeared to come from the upper stories of the Texas School Book Depository building; later that day, Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee at the depository and a trained sniper, was arrested. Claimed Eisenhower created "Missile gap". No "missile gap" existed, but real numbers were classified. He followed a moderate, undistinguished road as senator. He wins nomination. Democrats unsure South will vote for Catholic. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas added to appeal to southerners. He projected an attractive, romantic image as president. Inaccurately promoted as an intellectual. Camelot was a popular musical of the time; Jackie promoted the myth. He was an unapologetic Cold Warrior. Revisionist claims he would have avoided Vietnam are inconsistent with political realities of the time. Adopted "flexible response" as well as containment. Covert operations, increased spy network. Increased funding for Green Berets & other special forces. The Bay of Pigs: planned under Eisenhower, this was his first foreign policy crisis. He saw the wall as a propaganda disaster for the Soviets. Lets wall stand rather than invade East Germany. He ordered a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to block further equipment delivery. He also demanded the Soviets withdraw all missiles & warheads from the island. He was careful not to call this a blockade (which is technically an act of war).

Kristallnacht

November 9, 1938, when mobs throughout Germany destroyed Jewish property and terrorized Jews. By the end of that year, Nazi activity had changed & became more violent, with Joseph Goebbels launching this on 9 November 1938. Night of broken glass.

D-Day

Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, launched on 6 June 1944. Largest combined sea, air, & land military operation in history. Enabled by astonishing US industrial production. A direct assault on Nazi Germany's "Fortress Europe" was still necessary for final victory. On June 6, 1944, the second front became a reality when Allied forces stormed the beaches of northern France on this day. Beginning at 6:30 a.m., some twenty-four thousand British, Canadian, and American troops waded ashore along a fifty-mile piece of the Normandy coast. Well over a million troops would follow their lead. German forces on the hills and cliffs above shot at them, and once they reached the beach, they encountered barbed wire and land mines. More than ten thousand Allied soldiers were wounded or killed during the assault. Following the establishment of beachheads at Normandy, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated on August 20, 1944. The invasion did succeed in diverting German forces from the eastern front to the western front, relieving some of the pressure on Stalin's troops. By that time, however, Russian forces had already defeated the German army at Stalingrad, an event that many consider the turning point of the war in Europe, and begun to push the Germans out of the Soviet Union. June 6, 1944, the date of the invasion of Normandy, France, by British, Canadian, and American forces, which opened a second front in Europe.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Operation Torch commanded by this lieutenant. An average West Point graduate, respected as staff officer, but with limited battlefield experience. He was often cautious when decisive audacity was needed. But: able to corral & massage large egos among subordinates. He oversaw the Allied invasion of Sicily, summer 1943, and Allies landed on Italian mainland by Sept. The desire to create a command staff that could win the army's confidence no doubt contributed to the rather meteoric rise of this man. During World War I, he had been assigned to organize America's new tank corps, and, although he never saw combat during the war, he demonstrated excellent organizational skills. When the United States entered World War II, he was appointed commander of the General European Theater of Operations in June 1942. Promoted to the level of one-star general just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had never held an active command position above the level of a battalion and was not considered a potential commander of major military operations. However, after he was assigned to the General Staff in Washington, DC, he quickly rose through the ranks and, by late 1942, was appointed commander of the North African campaign. African American leaders such as James Farmer and Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP since 1931, were asked by this general to investigate complaints of the mistreatment of African American servicemen while on active duty.

Otto Hahn

Physicist Lise Meitner correctly interpreted this colleague's experimental results involving uranium. Meitner & him had discovered atomic fission of heavy, unstable elements. Hahn later received the 1944 Nobel Prize. Meitner & his explanation of how uranium might be used to produce a chain reaction— & a bomb— stunned the physics world. He was German— & still in Germany.

Lise Meitner

Physicist correctly interpreted her colleague Otto Hahn's experimental results involving uranium. Her & Hahn had discovered atomic fission of heavy, unstable elements. She, a Jewish woman, did not get a noble prize. Her & Hahn's explanation of how uranium might be used to produce a chain reaction— & a bomb— stunned the physics world. She, an Austrian Jew, had already fled to Sweden.

Alamagordo

Plutonium bomb was tested here. This Bombing Range, it had been acquired by the government in 1942. The patented landhad been condemned and grazing rights suspended. Scientists used this as a laboratory for testing bomb components. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF __________ Bombing and Gunnery Range. The fireball of the conventional explosion was visible from _________ Army Air Field 60 miles away, but there was little shock at the base camp 10 miles away.

Treblinka

Polish death camp, 800,000 deaths, mostly from Warsaw.

Truman Doctrine

President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology, mainly helped Greece and Turkey. Truman asks for major economic aid to Greece & Turkey to prevent possible communist takeovers. In Europe, the end of World War II witnessed the rise of a number of internal struggles for control of countries that had been occupied by Nazi Germany. Great Britain occupied Greece as the Nazi regime there collapsed. The British aided the authoritarian government of Greece in its battles against Greek Communists. Great Britain announced that it could no longer afford the cost of supporting government military activities and withdrew from participation in the Greek civil war. Stepping into this power vacuum, the United States announced this, which offered support to Greece and Turkey in the form of financial assistance, weaponry, and troops to help train their militaries and bolster their governments against Communism. Eventually, the program was expanded to include any state trying to withstand a Communist takeover. This thus became a hallmark of U.S. Cold War policy.

Yalu River

River separating North Korea and China. UN forces close to here caused Chinese intervention. Newly communist China repeatedly warned U.N. troops not to approach here— its border with North Korea. Bent on eliminating communism from the peninsula, MacArthur ignored the warnings & pushed onward. Instead, he provoked a Chinese intervention. In late November, hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese forces (CCF) poured across this. Overwhelmed U.N. troops were forced back south of Seoul. By January 1951, much of the Korean peninsula was back in communist hands. MacArthur's goal was not only to drive the North Korean army out of South Korea but to destroy Communist North Korea as well. At this stage, he had the support of President Truman; however, as UN forces approached this, the border between China and North Korea, MacArthur's and Truman's objectives diverged. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, who had provided supplies and military advisors for North Korea before the conflict began, sent troops into battle to support North Korea and caught U.S. troops by surprise.

El Alamein

Rommel's attempted invasion of Egypt was defeated at here in 1942. Gen. Bernard Montgomery gradually pushed the Germans out of north Africa. Battles of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of here. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was appointed and led the Eighth Army offensive. The Allied victory was the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields. The battle revived the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis since Operation Crusader in late 1941. The battle coincided with the Allied invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch on 8 November, the Battle of Stalingrad and the Guadalcanal Campaign.

Lend-Lease

Roosevelt devised this plan for sending aid to Britain without demanding payment. The Act ended all pretensions of U.S. neutrality; the U.S. was materially aiding Germany's enemy. June 1941: Germany suddenly attacked the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). FDR extended this aid to the Soviets.

neutrality

Roosevelt imposed an arms embargo had little effect on Italy, but hurt Ethiopia. Congress then passed the ________ Act, authorizing the president to prohibit all arms shipments to nations at war, advise U.S. citizens not to travel on belligerents' ships except at their own risk. Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 ended all pretensions of U.S. _______; the U.S. was materially aiding Germany's enemy. To ensure that the United States did not get drawn into another war, Congress passed a series of _________ Acts in the second half of the 1930s. The _______ Act of 1935 banned the sale of armaments to warring nations. The following year, another _________ Act prohibited loaning money to belligerent countries. The last piece of legislation, the _________ Act of 1937, forbade the transportation of weapons or passengers to belligerent nations on board American ships and also prohibited American citizens from traveling on board the ships of nations at war. Since Japan did not formally declare war on China, a state of belligerency did not technically exist. Therefore, under the terms of the _________ Acts, America was not prevented from transporting goods to China. In 1940, the president of China, Chiang Kai-shek, was able to prevail upon Roosevelt to ship to China one hundred P-40 fighter planes and to allow American volunteers, who technically became members of the Chinese Air Force, to fly them. Responding to the German invasion of Poland, Roosevelt worked with Congress to alter these Laws to permit a policy of "Cash and Carry" in munitions for Britain and France. The legislation, passed and signed by Roosevelt in November 1939, permitted belligerents to purchase war materiel if they could pay cash for it and arrange for its transportation on board their own ships.

Joe McCarthy

Sen. of Wisconsin began to allege communist influence in the government with a speech in February 1950, in which he claimed the U.S. State Department was riddled with communists or sympathizers. He was a buffoon & a chronic liar, but for several years he was able ruin the careers & lives of real people, most of whom were totally innocent. He eventually overstepped when he went after the U.S. Army. Shortly thereafter he was censured by the Senate. Died of alcoholism in 1957, but his influence lives on... Immediately, there were suspicions that spies had passed bomb-making secrets to the Soviets and that Communist sympathizers in the U.S. State Department had hidden information that might have enabled the United States to ward off the Communist victory in China. Indeed, in February 1950, Wisconsin senator, a Republican, charged in a speech that the State Department was filled with Communists. As the war in Korea came to an end, so did one of the most frightening anti-Communist campaigns in the United States. After charging the U.S. State Department with harboring Communists, Senator had continued to make similar accusations against other government agencies. Prominent Republicans like Senator Robert Taft and Congressman Richard Nixon regarded him as an asset who targeted Democratic politicians, and they supported his actions. In 1953, as chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, he investigated the Voice of America, which broadcast news and pro- U.S. propaganda to foreign countries, and the State Department's overseas libraries. After an aborted effort to investigate Protestant clergy, he turned his attention to the U.S. Army. This proved to be the end of the senator's political career. From April to June 1954, the Army-and this man's Hearings were televised, and the American public, able to witness his use of intimidation and innuendo firsthand, rejected his approach to rooting out Communism in the United States. In December 1954, the U.S. Senate officially condemned his actions with a censure, ending his prospects for political leadership. Many anti-Communists, including him, believed that gay men, referred to by Senator Everett Dirksen as "lavender lads," were morally weak and thus were particularly likely to betray their country. Eisenhower disliked the tactics of this man but did not oppose him directly, preferring to remain above the fray. He saw himself as a leader called upon to do his best for his country, not as a politician engaged in a contest for advantage over rivals. The HUAC hearings also targeted Hollywood. When Senator called eleven "unfriendly witnesses" to testify before Congress about Communism in the film industry in October 1947, only playwright Bertolt Brecht answered questions.

Kellogg-Briand Pact

Some diplomats wanted to rely on the moral authority of the League to secure peace. Others wanted disarmament: voluntary or mandated by the League. This outlawed war as an international crime. In 1928, the United States and fourteen other nations signed this, declaring war an international crime. Despite hopes that such agreements would lead to a more peaceful world—far more nations signed on to the agreement in later years—they failed because none of them committed any of the nations to take action in the event of treaty violations.

gun-type bomb

Some of the world's sharpest minds soon designed a uranium "_______ assembly" bomb, & another, more powerful implosion device based on plutonium. Scientists were certain the uranium _________ would work & didn't bother to test it. The U.S. developed two types of atomic bombs during the Second World War. The first, Little Boy, was a _______ weapon with a uranium core. Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. This type fission weapons are fission-based nuclear weapons whose design assembles their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "_________" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. Although this is sometimes pictured as two sub-critical hemispheres driven together to make a supercritical sphere, typically a hollow projectile is shot onto a spike which fills the hole in its center. Its name is a reference to the fact that it is shooting the material through an artillery barrel as if it were a projectile.

sonderkommando

Specially selected Jews known as this were used to to remove the gold fillings and hair of people who had been gassed. These Jews were also forced to feed the dead bodies into the crematoria. Jews who were in charge of the disposal of bodies.

island hopping

Taking Guadalcanal was bloody & difficult, but gave valuable practice at amphibious landings (essential to this). The Pacific much larger than Atlantic. No planes then able to deliver bombs over vast distances & return safely. To counterattack, Allied forces had to get closer to Japan. Strategy known as this. The U.S. embarked on this strategy in the Solomon Islands. Slowly, throughout 1943, the United States engaged in a campaign of this, gradually moving across the Pacific to Japan. In the Pacific, MacArthur and the Allied forces pursued this strategy that bypassed certain island strongholds held by the Japanese that were of little or no strategic value. By seizing locations from which Japanese communications and transportation routes could be disrupted or destroyed, the Allies advanced towards Japan without engaging the thousands of Japanese stationed on garrisoned islands. The goal was to advance American air strength close enough to Japan proper to achieve air superiority over the home islands; the nation could then be bombed into submission or at least weakened in preparation for an amphibious assault. By February 1945, American forces had reached the island of Iwo Jima.

Winston Churchill

Talented but arrogant Tory politician; spent most of the 1930s telling any- & everyone that Hitler was a threat. Served twice as Prime Minister (1940-1945, 1951-1955). Extraordinarily talented with the English language & at personal diplomacy. Famous for his bulldog tenacity & this V-for-Victory hand gesture. On taking office in 1940, he addressed Parliament regarding his policy: Newly installed as Prime Minister, he called on every available channel-ready craft to help evacuate the soldiers back to England. England knew when & where German air attacks were coming thanks to a new invention called radar. To keep it secret, he sometimes had to let German bombers come in unchallenged. In August 1941, him & Roosevelt met for the first time aboard a warship off Newfoundland. Although the U.S. was not yet officially at war, FDR & he issued an 8-point "Joint Declaration" of post-war principles. He didn't think the Allies were ready to take on Fortress Europe. Feb. 1945: following his re-election, Roosevelt, him & Stalin met at Yalta (on the Black Sea). After Roosevelt's death, new U.S. Pres. Harry Truman met with Stalin & him at Potsdam, Germany. In August 1941, Roosevelt met with the British prime minister off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.Within Europe, he and Roosevelt were committed to saving Britain and acted with this goal in mind, often ignoring the needs of the Soviet Union. In 1941, although Roosevelt had yet to meet Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, he had confidence that he could forge a positive relationship with him, a confidence that he believed was born of naiveté. These allied leaders, known as the Big Three, thrown together by the necessity to defeat common enemies, took steps towards working in concert despite their differences. In January 1943, at Casablanca, Morocco, he convinced Roosevelt to delay an invasion of France in favor of an invasion of Sicily. At a meeting in Tehran, Iran, also in November 1943, him, Roosevelt, and Stalin met to finalize plans for a cross-channel invasion. However, he saw Italy as the vulnerable underbelly of Europe and believed that Italian support for Mussolini was waning, suggesting that victory there might be relatively easy. Moreover, he pointed out that if Italy were taken out of the war, then the Allies would control the Mediterranean, offering the Allies easier shipping access to both the Soviet Union and the British Far Eastern colonies. Him and Roosevelt thus had to accept a number of compromises that strengthened Stalin's position in eastern Europe. In particular, they agreed to allow the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place. For his part, Stalin reaffirmed his commitment, first voiced at Tehran, to enter the war against Japan following the surrender of Germany. Attending the conference were Stalin, Truman, and him, now the outgoing prime minister, as well as the new British prime minister, Clement Atlee. Plans to divide Germany and Austria, and their capital cities, into four zones—to be occupied by the British, French, Americans, and Soviets—a subject discussed at Yalta, were finalized. In addition, the Allies agreed to dismantle Germany's heavy industry in order to make it impossible for the country to produce more armaments.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The 1962 confrontation bewteen US and the Soviet Union over Soviet missiles in Cuba. Then, on October 14, U.S. spy planes took aerial photographs that confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The United States was now within easy reach of Soviet nuclear warheads. On October 22, Kennedy demanded that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev remove the missiles. He also ordered a naval quarantine placed around Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from approaching. Despite his use of the word "quarantine" instead of "blockade," for a blockade was considered an act of war, a potential war with the Soviet Union was nevertheless on the president's mind. As U.S. ships headed for Cuba, the army was told to prepare for war, and Kennedy appeared on national television to declare his intention to defend the Western Hemisphere from Soviet aggression. Behind the scenes, Robert Kennedy and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin worked toward a compromise that would allow both superpowers to back down without either side's seeming intimidated by the other. On October 26, Khrushchev agreed to remove the Russian missiles in exchange for Kennedy's promise not to invade Cuba. On October 27, Kennedy's agreement was made public, and the crisis ended. Not made public, but nevertheless part of the agreement, was Kennedy's promise to remove U.S. warheads from Turkey, as close to Soviet targets as the Cuban missiles had been to American ones. The showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union over Cuba's missiles had put the world on the brink of a nuclear war. Both sides already had long-range bombers with nuclear weapons airborne or ready for launch, and were only hours away from the first strike. In the long run, this nearly catastrophic example of nuclear brinksmanship ended up making the world safer. Although his stance on civil rights had won him support in the African American community and his steely performance during the Cuban Missile Crisis had led his overall popularity to surge, Kennedy understood that he had to solidify his base in the South to secure his reelection.

Warsaw Ghetto

The Jews in here were only fed 1000 calories a day. A human being needs 2400 calories a day to maintain weight. Hungry people are easier to control. In 1943, here, like many others, rebelled against the Nazis when the Jews realized what was really happening. The _________ Rebellion, like all others, was brutally suppressed. Jews were to be rounded up and isolated into transit camps. Those living in these would be used as a cheap source of labor. The young & fit would go through a process called 'destruction through work'. Conditions in there were designed to be so bad that many would die. The rest would be willing to leave in the hope of better conditions elsewhere. They would be shipped to 'resettlement areas' in the East.

Robert Oppenheimer

The Los Alamos lab was led by him, a brilliant physicist blessed with rare organizational & management skills. He later recalled being reminded of a line from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita.

Joseph Stalin

The Soviet advisors in Spain had seen Germany's new Wehrmacht in action. Fearing the West might strike a deal with Hitler, he beat them to the punch. August 1939: the Soviet Union signs a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. He to get a share of Poland, Finland, & the Baltic States in the event of war. After annexing the Baltic states, he sent troops to take Finland. He was demanding a second front to distract Germany from its brutal assault on the Soviet Union. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was just a matter of convenience for Hitler: very disposable. Hitler authorizes invasion of the Soviet Union. Initially a complete success: his purges had cost Russia its most capable commanders. Just as his purges cost the Soviet Union, so did Hitler's politics & racism cost Germany. Changes in the character of war: he played on the Russian will to survive, war increasingly characterized as crusade to save the Russian motherland. He oversaw an astonishing recovery of the Soviet Red Army. In early June, 1944, he finally got the second front he had been demanding... FDR wanted Soviet help against the Japanese. After agreeing to declare war on Japan, he got certain territories along the Pacific Rim. Decided to partition Germany & divide Berlin. He agreed to support & join a successor to the League of Nations. After Roosevelt's death, new U.S. Pres. Harry Truman met with him & Churchill at Potsdam, Germany. He already knew about the Trinity test thanks to his spies at Los Alamos. In the Soviet Union, this man, observing Hitler's actions and listening to his public pronouncements, realized that Poland, part of which had once belonged to Germany and was home to people of German ancestry, was most likely next. Although fiercely opposed to Hitler, he, sobered by the French and British betrayal of Czechoslovakia and unprepared for a major war, decided the best way to protect the Soviet Union, and gain additional territory, was to come to some accommodation with the German dictator. In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union essentially agreed to divide Poland between them and not make war upon one another. He, who was not at the conference, affirmed the concept of unconditional surrender when asked to do so. However, he was dismayed over the delay in establishing a "second front" along which the Americans and British would directly engage German forces in western Europe. A western front, brought about through an invasion across the English Channel, which he had been demanding since 1941, offered the best means of drawing Germany away from the east. At a meeting in Tehran, Iran, also in November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and him met to finalize plans for a cross-channel invasion. Although the Allied campaign secured control of the southern Mediterranean and preserved Egypt and the Suez Canal for the British, him and the Soviets were still engaging hundreds of German divisions in bitter struggles at Stalingrad and Leningrad. But while he urged his allies to invade France, British and American troops pursued the defeat of Mussolini's Italy. This choice greatly frustrated him, who felt that British interests were taking precedence over the agony that the Soviet Union was enduring at the hands of the invading German army. Following the establishment of beachheads at Normandy, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated. The invasion did succeed in diverting German forces from the eastern front to the western front, relieving some of the pressure on his troops. By that time, however, Russian forces had already defeated the German army at Stalingrad, an event that many consider the turning point of the war in Europe, and begun to push the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was sick, and this man's armies were pushing the German army back towards Berlin from the east. Churchill and Roosevelt thus had to accept a number of compromises that strengthened his position in eastern Europe. In particular, they agreed to allow the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place. For his part, he reaffirmed his commitment, first voiced at Tehran, to enter the war against Japan following the surrender of Germany. He also agreed that the Soviet Union would participate in the United Nations, a new peacekeeping body intended to replace the League of Nations. Attending the conference were him, Truman, and Churchill, now the outgoing prime minister, as well as the new British prime minister, Clement Atlee. Plans to divide Germany and Austria, and their capital cities, into four zones—to be occupied by the British, French, Americans, and Soviets—a subject discussed at Yalta, were finalized. In addition, the Allies agreed to dismantle Germany's heavy industry in order to make it impossible for the country to produce more armaments.

thermonuclear

The US's monopoly on atomic weapons had lasted only four years. By 1949, the USSR had exploded a fission type bomb using the implosion (plutonium) method. The US, urged on by Edward Teller, sought to develop a more powerful fusion weapon. This fusion is what powers the sun & other stars. This hydrogen-based weapon was called the "Super" or "H-bomb". Fusion weapons do the opposite: the heat & pressure of a conventional fission explosion are used to fuse together the nuclei of light elements (such as hydrogen) to turn them into heavier elements (e.g. helium). Ivy-Mike was the first of these to be tested/ used.

Pusan

The first U.S. & U.N. troops were barely able to hold on around the southern port city. The so-called "________ perimeter" marked the southernmost point ever reached by North Korean forces. On June 27, Truman ordered U.S. military forces into South Korea. They established a defensive line on the far southern part of the Korean peninsula near this town.

The Big Three

The nickname given to the leaders of the three major Allied nations: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin. These allied leaders, thrown together by the necessity to defeat common enemies, took steps towards working in concert despite their differences. The last time they met was in early February 1945 at Yalta in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was sick, and Stalin's armies were pushing the German army back towards Berlin from the east. In particular, they agreed to allow the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place. For his part, Stalin reaffirmed his commitment, first voiced at Tehran, to enter the war against Japan following the surrender of Germany. He also agreed that the Soviet Union would participate in the United Nations, a new peacekeeping body intended to replace the League of Nations. Roosevelt did not live to attend the next meeting.

Doolittle Raid

The retaliatory attack by American bombers after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Surprise army-navy bombing project to bomb Japanese industrial centers, to inflict both material and psychological damage on the enemy. Called for the use of US Army Air Force bombers to be launched from an aircraft carrier. In that case though, there wouldn't be enough fuel to get back, so it was basically a suicide mission. One place they bombed was Tokyo.

McCarran Security Act

This (1950) required communist & "communist-front" organizations to register with the Justice Dept. & turn over membership lists & financial statements. The President was given broad powers to detain potential enemies. Truman vetoed the bill as "a long step toward totalitarianism" but it was passed over his veto.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

This held numerous public hearings & ruined the reputations of blacklisted individuals, including many from TV, radio, & the movies. Hollywood generally avoided political films, but released a few anti-communist potboilers to improve its public image after this's investigation of the movie industry. In addition to loyalty review boards, this, established in 1938 to investigate suspected Nazi sympathizers, after World War II also sought to root out suspected Communists in business, academia, and the media. It was particularly interested in Hollywood because it feared that Communist sympathizers might use motion pictures as pro-Soviet propaganda. Witnesses were subpoenaed and required to testify before the committee; refusal could result in imprisonment. Those who invoked Fifth Amendment protections, or were otherwise suspected of Communist sympathies, often lost their jobs or found themselves on a blacklist, which prevented them from securing employment. Notable artists who were blacklisted in the 1940s and 1950s include composer Leonard Bernstein, novelist Dashiell Hammett, playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman, actor and singer Paul Robeson, and musician Artie Shaw. The hearings also targeted Hollywood. When Senator McCarthy called eleven "unfriendly witnesses" to testify before Congress about Communism in the film industry in October 1947, only playwright Bertolt Brecht answered questions. The other ten, who refused to testify, were cited for contempt of Congress on November 24. The next day, film executives declared that the so-called "Hollywood Ten" would no longer be employed in the industry until they had sworn they were not Communists. Eventually, more than three hundred actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other entertainment professionals were placed on the industry blacklist. Some never worked in Hollywood again; others directed films or wrote screenplays under assumed names.

Lyndon Johnson

This man of Texas added to appeal to southerners. Kennedy's running mate also envisioned a country characterized by the social and economic freedoms established during the New Deal years. To shore up support for Kennedy in the South, he, the Protestant Texan who was Senate majority leader, was added to the Democratic ticket as the vice presidential candidate. To quiet the rumors and allay fears that the government was hiding evidence, he, Kennedy's successor, appointed a fact-finding commission headed by Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, to examine all the evidence and render a verdict. On November 27, 1963, a few days after taking the oath of office, President addressed a joint session of Congress and vowed to accomplish the goals that John F. Kennedy had set and to expand the role of the federal government in securing economic opportunity and civil rights for all. He brought to his presidency a vision of a Great Society in which everyone could share in the opportunities for a better life that the United States offered, and in which the words "liberty and justice for all" would have real meaning. President had never been the cold warrior Kennedy was, but believed that the credibility of the nation and his office depended on maintaining a foreign policy of containment.

Operation Overlord

This operation, the invasion of France, launched on 6 June 1944: D-Day. Largest combined sea, air, & land military operation in history. Enabled by astonishing US industrial production. This was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings.

Suez Canal

This, built in 1870, connected the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Although the Allied campaign secured control of the southern Mediterranean and preserved Egypt and this for the British, Stalin and the Soviets were still engaging hundreds of German divisions in bitter struggles at Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Demilitarized Zone

U.N. forces halted the PRK/Chinese advance & pushed back northward in early 1951. Most of 1952 was a stalemate. GOP Presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower promises, if elected, to "go to Korea". In December 1952, president-elect Eisenhower kept his promise & visited the troops. He wasn't yet inaugurated, so largely symbolic. July 1953: both sides agreed to a "____________________" along the 38th parallel & signed a truce. No treaty ending the war has ever been signed. Americans were left to wonder what, if anything, was gained by the loss of ~38,000 American & perhaps 2,000,000 Korean lives. A border between North and South Korea, one quite close to the original thirty-eighth parallel line, was agreed upon. This between the two nations was established, and both sides agreed that prisoners of war would be allowed to choose whether to be returned to their homelands. Five million people died in the three-year conflict. Of these, around 36,500 were U.S. soldiers; a majority were Korean civilians.

Bataan Death March

U.S. & Filipino forces besieged at Corregidor, an island fortress off this peninsula. 140,000 prisoners force-marched to Japanese detention camp. 1000s died on the way or in appalling conditions at the camp. Stories of the dispiriting defeats here and the Japanese capture of the Philippines at Corregidor revealed the Japanese cruelty and mistreatment of Americans. This, during which as many as 650 American and 10,000 Filipino prisoners of war died, intensified anti-Japanese feelings.

Leyte Gulf

US tightened the noose on Japan. Largest naval battle in history. "Last stand of the tin can sailors" off Samar island. Destroyed the power of the Japanese Navy. The Philippines were recaptured. Douglas MacArthur "returned".

Enrico Fermi

University of Chicago gave him their football field to test theories for the atomic bomb. Directed a classical series of experiments which ultimately led to the atomic pile and the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. He subsequently played an important part in solving the problems connected with the development of the first atomic bomb (He was one of the leaders of the team of physicists on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.) The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to him for his work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.

Sobibor

Very large concentration camp/death camp in Poland. 200,000 murders minimum.

Richard Nixon

Vice President under Eisenhower and 37th President of the United States. A former State Dept. diplomat named Alger Hiss was accused of disloyalty by Whittaker Chambers, who had already confessed to being a Soviet spy. Hiss's most tenacious attacker was this young politician from California. He rode his anti- communist credentials all the way to the Vice- Presidency in 1952. After charging the U.S. State Department with harboring Communists, Senator Joseph McCarthy had continued to make similar accusations against other government agencies. Prominent Republicans like Senator Robert Taft and this Congressman regarded McCarthy as an asset who targeted Democratic politicians, and they supported his actions. Eisenhower campaigned largely on a promise to end the war in Korea, a conflict the public had grown weary of fighting. He also vowed to fight Communism both at home and abroad, a commitment he demonstrated by choosing as his running mate, a congressman who had made a name for himself by pursuing Communists, notably former State Department employee and suspected Soviet agent Alger Hiss. Nowhere was Kennedy's style more evident than in the first televised presidential debate held on September 23, 1960, between him and his Republican opponent Vice President. Seventy million viewers watched the debate on television; millions more heard it on the radio. Radio listeners judged him the winner, whereas those who watched the debate on television believed the more telegenic Kennedy made the better showing. In the end, Kennedy won the election by the closest margin since 1888, defeating him with only 0.01 percent more of the record sixty-seven million votes cast. His victory in the Electoral College was greater: 303 electoral votes to him 219. Brezhnev, this man, Henry Kissinger, & Gerald Ford pursued a policy of détente in the 1970s. Led to the first arms reductions treaties.

Final Solution

When Hitler seized power in 1933 he used his new powers under the 'Enabling Law' to begin his persecution of Jews. By 1938, about half of Germany's 500,000 Jews had emigrated to escape Nazi persecution. By the end of that year, Nazi activity had changed & became more violent, with Joseph Goebbels launching Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938. 1939: Germany invaded Poland, with a population of 3 million Jews. 1941: Germany invaded Russia, with a population of 5 million Jews. At this conference it was decided that existing methods were too inefficient, & that a new '______________' was necessary. Shooting was too inefficient; the bullets were needed for the war effort. Jews were to be rounded up and isolated into transit camps called ghettos. Those living in the ghettos would be used as a cheap source of labor. The young & fit would go through a process called 'destruction through work'.

Holocaust

When Hitler seized power in 1933 he used his new powers under the 'Enabling Law' to begin his persecution of Jews. By 1938, about half of Germany's 500,000 Jews had emigrated to escape Nazi persecution. By the end of that year, Nazi activity had changed & became more violent, with Joseph Goebbels launching Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938. 1939: Germany invaded Poland, with a population of 3 million Jews. 1941: Germany invaded Russia, with a population of 5 million Jews. Himmler sent four specially trained SS units called "Einsatzgruppen battalions" into German occupied territory and shot at least 1 million Jews. In January 1942, Heinrich Himmler decided to change tactics once again and called a special conference at Wannsee. At this conference it was decided that existing methods were too inefficient, & that a new 'Final Solution' was necessary. Shooting was too inefficient; the bullets were needed for the war effort. Jews were to be rounded up and isolated into transit camps called ghettos. Those living in the ghettos would be used as a cheap source of labor. Conditions in the ghettos were designed to be so bad that many would die. The rest would be willing to leave in the hope of better conditions elsewhere. They would be shipped to 'resettlement areas' in the East. On arrival, the Jews would go through a process called 'selection'. At the Wannsee conference it was decided that if one of a person's parents was Jewish, then they were Jewish. However, if only one of their grandparents had been Jewish, they could be classified as being German. In 1940, all Jews had their pass-ports stamped with the letter 'J' & had to wear the yellow Star of David on their jacket or coat. Also killed were ~1.5 to 2.0 million other "undesirables" such as Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, the disabled, the mentally ill. At the Wannsee Conference in 1941, the Nazis laid plans to kill 11 million Jews. Of a pre-war population of over 3 million, today there are only 2,000 Jews living in Poland. Overall, the Nazis managed to kill almost 6 million Jews.

Chosin Reservoir

Where the US Marines are surrounded by Chinese ships in bad weather and are able to break out and retreat and regroup. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, sent troops into battle to support North Korea and caught U.S. troops by surprise. Following a costly retreat from North Korea's _____________, a swift advance of Chinese and North Korean forces and another invasion of Seoul, MacArthur urged Truman to deploy nuclear weapons against China. Truman, however, did not wish to risk a broader war in Asia.

socialism

With the support of major Italian industrialists and the king, who saw Fascism as a bulwark against growing this and Communist movements, Mussolini became prime minister in 1922. In Germany, a similar pattern led to the rise of the totalitarian National _________ Party. In addition, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles had given rise to a deep-seated resentment of the victorious Allies. It was in such an environment that Adolf Hitler's anti-Communist National __________ Party—the Nazis—was born. The Japanese militarists thus found a common ideological enemy with Fascism and National this, which had based their rise to power on anti-Communist sentiments.