220-239 vt terms Flashcards
Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936, when added to the previously annexed Libya, created an overseas empire. Italy also intervened in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) on the side of General Francisco Franco (1892–1975), whose militarists overthrew the republican government. Mussolini also annexed Albania in 1939 in preparation for further expansion into the Balkans.
Italy got aggressive
The emperor of Ethiopia was speaking at the League of Nations in 1936. He strongly protested against the Italian invasion of his nation in 1935, and expressed his deep disappointment in the League for its inaction in bringing Italy to account. On 12 September 1974, him and his government were overthrown by the Derg, a non-ideological committee of low-ranking officers and enlisted men in the Ethiopian Army who became the ruling military junta. He was eventually assassinated.
Emperor Haile Selassie (1892–1975)
Hitler referred to the signing of the 1918 armistice as the “November crime” and blamed it on those he viewed as Germany’s internal enemies: Jews, communists, and liberals of all sorts.
The November Crime
It was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War, it ceased operations on 20 April 1946.
League of Nations
He (like Mussolini) was aggressive and openly defied Versailles. Hitler began with the forced annexation of Austria (known as the Anschluss) in March 1938. He justified this annexation as an attempt to unite all Germans into a single homeland.
Hitler’s early moves
He was the British PM, and wanted to avoid war with Germany. “Peace in our time”
Neville Chamberlain
In September 1938, European politicians anxious to avoid war held a conference in Munich where they consolidated the policy that came to be known throughout the 1930s as appeasement. It was attended by representatives of Italy, France, Great Britain, and Germany and revealed how most nations outside the revisionist sphere had decided to deal with territorial expansion by aggressive nations, especially Germany. In conceding demands to Hitler, or “appeasing” him, the British and French governments extracted a promise that Hitler would not expand German territorial aims beyond the Sudetenland. Their goal was to keep peace in Europe, even if it meant making major concessions. Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), arrived home from Munich to announce that the meeting had achieved “peace for our time.” Unprepared for war and distressed by the depression, nations sympathetic to Britain and France also embraced peace as an admirable goal in the face of aggression by the revisionist nations.
Hitler, however, quickly broke the promises he made in the Munich agreement, and in March 1939 German troops occupied and annexed most of Czechoslovakia.
The Munich Conference
In Hawaii, the home of the US navy. Japanese Planes bombed the base and ships, with many casualties. It was a loud provocation which the US responded to quickly.
Pearl Harbor
Was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. Churchill, FDR, and Joseph Stalin are the “Big Three.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.
Total War
A term used to describe a method of offensive warfare designed to strike a swift, focused blow at an enemy using mobile, maneuverable forces, including armored tanks and air support. Such an attack ideally leads to a quick victory, limiting the loss of soldiers and artillery.
Blitzkrieg
A German word for “armored”… relates to tanks
Panzer
Was the longest-running battle of the war, lasting from September 1939 through April 1945. During that time, German submarines (Unterseeboote) (U Boats) attempted to cut off imports of food and war material to Britain, while the British navy formed convoys of ships to protect against submarine attack.
The battle of the Atlantic
In 1942 British intelligence cracked the secret German code used by submarines, which greatly aided the Allies. Despite having the codes, however, only 10 percent of the intercepted messages were decrypted in time to prevent attacks on British ships. The battle of the Atlantic thus remained an important and dangerous theater for the duration of the war. The Enigma Machine device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. … The Enigma code was first broken by the Poles, under the leadership of mathematician Marian Rejewski, in the early 1930s.
Code Breakers
This policy, formally titled, An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was a program under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, Free France, the Republic of China, and later the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945.
Lend Lease
In April 1940 the Germans occupied Denmark and Norway, then launched a full-scale attack on western Europe. By seizing control of Norway, the Germans gained control of the eastern North Sea and prevented Britain’s navy from implementing a blockade.
The German offensive against Belgium, France, and the Netherlands began in May, of 1940 and again the Allies were overwhelmed by Blitzkrieg tactics. Belgium and the Netherlands fell in May, while the French signed an armistice.
Germany’s mid war campaigns
This was first broken by the Poles, under the leadership of mathematician Marian Rejewski, in the early 1930s.
The Enigma Machine device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II
The Japanese coordinated their strike against Pearl Harbor with simultaneous attacks against the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island, Hong Kong, Thailand, and British Malaya.
For the next year the Japanese military maintained the initiative in southeast Asia and the Pacific, capturing Borneo, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and several Aleutian Islands off Alaska.
Australia and New Zealand were now in striking distance. The Japanese navy emerged almost unscathed from these campaigns.
The humiliating surrender of British-held Singapore in February 1942 dealt a blow to British prestige and shattered any myths of European military invincibility.
Singapore was a symbol of European power in Asia. The slogan under which Japan pursued expansion in Asia was “Asia for Asians,” implying that the Japanese would lead Asian peoples to independence from the despised European imperialists and the international order they dominated.
The Pacific Theatre
The U.S. automotive industry alone, for instance, produced more than four million armored, combat, and supply vehicles of all kinds during the war. In the Atlantic, although German submarines sank a total of 2,452 Allied merchant ships and 175 Allied warships over the course of six years, after 1942 U.S. naval shipyards simply built more “Liberty Ships” than the Germans could sink.
By the end of 1943, sonar, aircraft patrols, and escort aircraft from carriers eliminated the U-boat as a strategic threat. As the importance of the German U Boats diminished, so did their military advantage.
The defeat of the Axis Powers
Desperate German counter offensive failed repeatedly, and the Red Army, drawing on enormous personnel and material reserves, pushed the German invaders out of Russian territory.
By 1944, the Soviets had advanced into Romania, Hungary, and Poland, reaching the suburbs of Berlin in April 1945. At that point, the Soviets had inflicted more than six million casualties on the German enemy—twice the number of the original German invasion force. The Red Army had broken the back of the German war machine.
Russia’s huge contribution to WW II
