World War II

Baby Boom

30 million war babies were born between 1942 and 1950. (Large numbers of babies born after the war)

Tuskegee Airmen

332 Fighter Group famous for shooting down over 200 enemy planes. African American pilots who trained at the Tuskegee flying school.

Neutrality Acts

4 laws passed in the late 1930s that were designed to keep the US out of international incidents

Appeasement

Accepting demands in order to avoid conflict

Nonaggression Pact

Agreement between Germany and Russia not to fight each other

George Patton

Allied Commander of the Third Army. Was instrumental in winning the Battle of the Bulge. Considered one of the best military commanders in American history.

Hiroshima

City in Japan, the first to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, on August 6, 1945. The bombing hastened the end of World War II.

Genocide

Deliberate extermination of a racial or cultural group

Internment Camps

Detention centers where more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were relocated during World War II by order of the President.

Dr. Jonas Salk

Developed polio vaccine

Hirohito

Emperor of Japan during WWII

Benito Mussolini

Fascist dictator of Italy (1922-1943). He led Italy to conquer Ethiopia (1935), joined Germany in the Axis pact (1936), and allied Italy with Germany in World War II. He was overthrown in 1943 when the Allies invaded Italy.

Adolf Hitler

German Nazi dictator during World War II (1889-1945)

FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

Independent regulatory agency that oversees electronic media.

Nagasaki

Japanese city devastated during World War II when the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Aug 8th, 1945.

Auschwitz

Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there. (p. 800)

Rationing

Restricting the amount of food and other goods people may buy during wartime to assure adequate supplies for the military

Joseph Stalin

Russian leader who succeeded Lenin as head of the Communist Party and created a totalitarian state by purging all opposition (1879-1953)

Lend-Lease Act (1941)

The program under which the US supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945.

Franchise

The right to sell a good or service within an exclusive market( right to vote)

Manhattan project/ Oppenheimer

U.S. research program to develop an atomic bomb for WWII use

Chester Nimitz

United States admiral of the Pacific fleet during World War II who used aircraft carriers to destroy the Japanese navy (1885-1966)

Omar Bradley

United States general who played an important role in the Allied victory in World War II (1893-1981) Led forces on D-Day

George Marshall

United States general, who as Secretary of State organized the European Recovery Program

1941-1945

World War II

conglomerate

a group of diverse companies under common ownership and run as a single organization

D-Day (Normandy)

a name given to June 6, 1944—the day on which the Allies launched an invasion in Normandy of the European mainland during World War II.

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)

a. Atomic bombs dropped (1945) b. Yalta Conference (1945) c. The beginning of the Baby Boom (1945) d. Truman Doctrine (1947) e. Marshall Plan (1947) f. NATO formed (1949) g. Cold War (1946-1991) 33rd President

GI Bill

law passed in 1944 to help returning veterans buy homes and pay for higher educations

Dwight D. Eisenhower

leader of the Allied forces in Europe then was elected to be Pres. of the USA

Holocaust

the Nazi program of exterminating Jews under Hitler

planned obsolescence

the designing of products to wear out or to become outdated quickly, so that people will feel a need to replace their possessions frequently

Blitzkrieg

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

Douglas MacArthur

(1880-1964), U.S. general. Commander of U.S. (later Allied) forces in the southwestern Pacific during World War II, he accepted Japan's surrender in 1945 and administered the ensuing Allied occupation. He was in charge of UN forces in Korea 1950-51, before being forced to relinquish command by President Truman.