Chapter 32 - World War II

Atlantic Charter

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

Battle of the Bulge

1944-1945 battle in which Allied forces turned back the last major German offensive of World War II

Battle of Midway

A 1941 sea and air battle of WWII in which American forces defeated Japanese forces in the central Pacific. U.S. naval victory over the Japanese fleet in June 1942, in which the Japanese lost four of their best aircraft carriers. It marked a turning point in World War II. (p. 795)

Battle of Guadalcanal

A 1942-1943 battle of WWII in which Allied troops drove Japanese from the Pacific island of Guadalcanal.

Battle of Stalingrad

A 1942-1943 battle of WWII in which German forces were defeated in their attempt to capture the city of Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Began on August 23, 1942. Germans bombed the city and by early November controlled 90% of the ruined city. During the Russian winter, Soviet troops counter attacked, trapping the Germans inside the city and cutting off their supplies. On Feb 2, 1943, the German troops surrendered to the Soviets. Soviets lost over 1 million soldiers defending Stalingrad.

Battle of the Leyte Gulf

A 1944 battle of WWII in which Allied troops fought with Japanese troops. Within 3 days, the Japanese navy lost disastrously.

Battle of Britain

A series of battles between German and British air forces fought over Britain in 1940-1941.

Nuremberg Trials

A series of trials that took place in Nuremberg, Germany charging Nazi war criminals with waging a war of aggression, violating laws of war, and committing "crimes against humanity"-murdering 11 million people. The executed Nazi leaders were burned at the Dachau concentration camp.

atomic bomb

A-bomb; developed by top-secret Manhattan Project headed by General Leslie Groves and chief scientist Robert Oppenheimer. Truman warned Japanese. On Aug 6, 1945, US dropped bomb on Hiroshima killing 73,000 people. On Aug 9, 1945, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 37,500 people. Japanese surrendered on Sep 2, 1945 aboard US battleship, Missouri, in Tokyo Bay,

General Bernard Montgomery

After Rommel took the key port city of Tobruk in North Africa in June 1942, "Monty" was the British general sent to take control of British forces in North Africa.

Luftwaffe

Air Force of Germany; contained 4,500 planes

Royal Air Force

Air Force of Great Britain; contained 2,900 planes

Government propoganda

Allied governments conducted highly effective propoganda campaigns. But propoganda also had negative effect. Prejudice in US against Japanese Americans arose after Pearl Harbor. Seen as the enemy, Roosevelt set up program of internment and loss of property. Japanese Americans were shipped to relocation camps, which were restricted military areas located away from the coast. From 1941 until 1946, US imprisoned some 31 thousand people. Most were American citizens of Japanese descent, Nisei.

Island Hopping Camapaign

Allied paln to recapture Japanese held islands by getting one island at a time.

Colonel James H. Doolittle

Attacked Tokyo and damged Japan's psyche.

Ghettos

Because he couldn't get rid of all Jews through emigration, Hitler ordered Jews to be moved to certain cities in Poland. The Jews were forced to move into dismal, overcrowded segregated Jewish areas. The ghettos were sealed off with barbed wire and stone walls.

Battles of World War II, 1939-1945

Britain, Jul - Oct 1940; Leningrad, Sep 1941 - Jan 1944; Pearl Harbor, Dec 1941; Wake Island, Dec 1941; Singapore, Feb 1942; Midway, June 1942; Guadalcanal, Aug 1942 - Feb 1943; El Alamein, Oct - Nov, 1942; Tobruk, Nov 1942; Stalingrad, Nov 1942 - Feb 1943; Tunis, May 1943; Sicily, July 1943; Kursk, July 1943; Bataan, Jan - Feb, 1944; Anzio, Jan - Mar, 1944; Hollandia, Apr 1944; Monte Cassino, May 1944; Normandy, June 1944; Philippine Sea, Jun 1944; Saipan, Jun - Jul, 1944; Minsk, Jun - Aug 1944; Guam, Jul - Aug, 1944; Paris, Aug 1944; Warsaw, Aug 1944 - Jan 1945; Leyte Gulf, Oct 1944; Battle of the Bulge, Dec 1944; Hiroshima, Aug, 1945; Nagasaki, Aug, 1945; Iwo Jima, Feb - Mar, 1945; Okinawa, Mar - Jun, 1945; Berlin, Apr - May 1945

Winston Churchill

British statesman and leader during World War II

Flood of the Refugees

By the end of 1939, a number of Jews in Germany fled to other countries realizing that violence against them would increase. Nazis forced Jews who did not want to leave into emigrating. Jews fled to France, British, Latin America and the U.S. but each country limited the number of Jews they let in.

D-Day

Code-named Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy was the greatest land and sea attack in history. D-Day, the day chosen for the invasion to begin, was June 6, 1944.

Operation Barbarossa

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

Admiral Nimitz

Commander of the Pacific Fleet during WWII; defeated Japanese Fleet in the Battle of Midway

Enigma

Decoding device used against Germany

Nuremberg Laws

Deprived Jews of their rights to German Citizenship, jobs, and property, Jews had to wear a bright yellow star attached to their clothing

demilitarization

Disbanding the Japanese armed forces

May 7, 1945

Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich from the German military. Surrender was officially signed the next day-Victory in Europe Day.

Charles De Gaulle

French general and statesman who became very popular during World War II as the leader of the Free French forces in exile (1890-1970)

Erwin Rommel

German field marshal noted for brilliant generalship in North Africa during World War II (1891-1944). Known as the Desert Fox.

Siegfried Line

German line opposite the Maginot Line

Aryans

Germanic Peoples; Hitler's "Master Race"

Battle of Alamein

Germans were dug in so well at El Alamein, British could not pass them. Monty launched the Battle of Alamein with a massive attack from the front surprising the Axis soldiers and beating Rommel's army.

Nonaggression Pact

Germany and the Soviet Union signed this pact and promised not to attack each other. Germany offered Stalin control of Eastern Poland and the Baltic States.

General Douglas MacArthur

He was one of the most-known American military leaders of WW2(He liberated the Phillipines and made the Japanese surrender at Tokyo in 1945, also he drove back North Korean invaders during the Korean War)

Ardennes

Heavily wooded area in northeastern France and Luxembourg

Final Solution

Hitler's final plan was a program of genocide, the systematic killing of an entire people. Most labor camps were built in Germany. Extermination camps were built in Poland.

Operation Sea Lion

Hitler's plan to invade Great Britain by taking out the Royal Air Force then to land 250,000 soldiers on England's shores

Mussolini

Italian dictator was fired on July 25, 1943 and arrested. Mussolini was captured on April 28, 1945, disguised as a German soldier. He was shot and his body was hanged in the Milan town square the day after.

Bataan Death March

Japanese forced about 60,000 of americans and philippines to march 100 miles with little food and water, most died or were killed on the way

Kamikaze

Japanese suicide pilots

Auschwitz

Largest of the Polish death camps.

Operation Torch

Launched by the Allies, 107,000 troops (mostly Americans) landed in Morocco and Algeria led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In May 1943, Rommel's Afrika Korps was defeated.

Henri Petain

Leader of Vichy France

Blitzkrieg Warfare

Lightening War - a form of warfare in which surprise attacks with fast-moving airplanes are followed by massive attacks with infantry forces.

Baltic Countries

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

Holocaust

Mass slaughter of civilians, especially Jews

Amateur Armada

May 26 - June 4: 850 Royal Navy and civilian craft carried 338,000 trapped troops to england while being bombed by Germans

Kristallnacht

Night of Broken Glass, November 1938 - Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany and murdered around 100 Jews in response to a Jewish youth's shooting an employe of the German Embassy in Paris because his father had been deported from Germany to Poland after 27 years. Marked a major step-up in the Nazi policy of Jewish persecution.

Lille

Northern French City in which allied forces were trapped

Invasion of Italy

On July 10, 1943, 180,000 Allied troops landed in Silicy, capturing it from Italian and German troops by August and toppling Mussolini from power. Italy surrendered on Sep 3, 1943. Fighting in Italy (against the Germans) continued until May 1945 when Germany fell.

Appeasement

Policy of giving into an an aggressor's demands in order to keep peace

Americans' support

Produced the weapons and equipment that helped win the war. Factories converted peacetime operations to wartime production, making everything from machine guns to boots. Auto factories produced tanks. Typewriter company made armor piercing shells. By 1944, almost 18 million workers (many of them women) were working in war industries.

Marshall Henri Petain

Puppet leader of France put into power by Hitler

Red Army

Russian Army containing 5 million soldiers

Sitzkrieg

Sitting War

General Georgi Zhukov

Soviet General who led the counter attack on the German advance on Moscow

Lend Lease Act

U.S. policy before the U.S. enters W.W. II in December, 1941 in which the U.S. provided war materials to the Allies fighting the Axis powers. Shows that in the period 1939-1941 the U.S. was moving away from its policy of neutrality.

Maginot Line

a fortification built before World War II to protect France's eastern border

Pearl Harbor

base in hawaii that was bombed by japan on December 7, 1941, which eagered America to enter the war

Isoruko Yamamoto

japan naval strategist, in charge of Pearl Harbor

Radar

measuring instrument in which the echo of a pulse of microwave radiation is used to detect and locate distant objects

Luftwaffe

the German airforce

democritization

the process of creating a government elected by the people. MacArthur and his advisers drew up a new constitution changing it into a parliamentary democracy like Great Britain. Accepted by the Japanese, it went into effect on May 3, 1947. The emperor, who was previously considered as a god, became a constitutional monarch or largely a figurehead.

Battle of Britain

the prolonged bombardment of British cities by the German Luftwaffe during World War II and the aerial combat that accompanied it

Phony War

was a phase in early World War II marked by few military operations in Continental Europe, in the months following the German invasion of Poland and preceding the Battle of France. Although the great powers of Europe had declared war on one another, neither side had yet committed to launching a significant attack, and there was relatively little fighting on the ground

Battle at Coral sea

world's 1st naval battle fought with aircraft via carriers