Chapter 25

Question 1

Benito Mussolini

Answer 1

led Italy’s Fascist party, which attracted dissatisfied war veterans, nationalists, and those afraid of rising communism. Dressed in black shirts, the Fascists marched
on Rome and installed Mussolini in power as “II Duce” (the Leader)

Question 2

Adolf Hitler

Answer 2

used bullying tactics against Jews as well as Fascist ideology to
increase his popularity with disgruntled, unemployed German workers. Hitler seized the opportunity presented by the depression to play upon anti-Semitic hatreds. With his personal army of “brown shirts,” Hitler gained control of the German legislature in early 1933.

Question 3

Charles Lindbergh

Answer 3

To mobilize American public opinion against the war, they formed the America First Committee and engaged speakers like Charles Lindbergh to travel the country warning against the folly of getting involved a second time in Europe’s troubles.

Question 4

Wendell Wilkie

Answer 4

The Republican popular candidate to run against FDR. Criticized the New Deal, but agreed to give aid to Britain. He was against FDR breaking the two-term precedent set by George Washington.

Question 5

Dwight Eisenhower

Question 6

Douglas MacArthur

Answer 6

During the Bonus March, General Douglas MacArthur, the army chief of staff, used tanks and tear gas to destroy

Question 7

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Answer 7

Directed by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the project employed over 100,000 people and spent $2 billion to develop a weapon whose power came from the splitting of the atom. The atomic bomb, or A-bomb, was successfully tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Question 8

Harry Truman

Answer 8

Harry S. Truman, a moderate Democratic senator from Missouri, replaced the more liberal Henry Wallace as FDR’s vice president in the 1944 election. Thrust into the presidency after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Truman matured into a decisive leader whose basic honesty and unpretentious style appealed to average citizens. President Truman attempted to continue in the New Deal tradition of his predecessor.

Question 9

Good Neighbor Policy

Answer 9

In his first inaugural address in 1933, Roosevelt promised a “policy of the good neighbor” toward other nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Question 10

Fascism

Answer 10

the idea that people should glorify their nation and their race through an aggressive show of force—became the dominant ideology in European dictatorships in the 1930s.

Question 11

German Nazi Party

Answer 11

The Nazi party was the German equivalent of Italy’s Fascist party. It arose in the 1920s in reaction to deplorable economic conditions after the war and national resentments over the Treaty of Versailles.

Question 12

Axis Powers

Answer 12

1940, Japan, Italy, and Germany signed a treaty of alliance which formed the Axis Powers

Question 13

Appeasement

Answer 13

Hoping to avoid open conflict with Germany, the democracies adopted a policy of appeasement—allowing Hitler to get away with relatively small acts of aggression and expansion. The United States went along with the British and French policy.

Question 14

Blitzkrieg

Answer 14

Poland was the first to fall to Germany’s overwhelming use of air power and fast-moving tanks—a type of warfare called blitzkrieg (lightning war).

Question 15

Neutrality Acts

Answer 15

Isolationist senators and representatives in both parties held a majority in Congress through 1938. To ensure that U.S. policy would be strictly neutral if war broke out in Europe, Congress adopted a series of neutrality acts, which Roosevelt signed with some reluctance. Each law applied to nations that the president proclaimed to be at war.

Question 16

America First Committee

Answer 16

In 1940, after World War II had begun, the isolationists became alarmed by Roosevelt’s pro-British policies. To mobilize American public opinion against the war, they formed the America First Committee and engaged speakers like Charles Lindbergh to travel the country warning against the folly of getting involved a second time in Europe’s troubles.

Question 17

Cash and Carry

Answer 17

The British navy still controlled the seas. Therefore, if the United States ended its arms embargo, it could only aid Britain, not Germany. Roosevelt persuaded Congress in 1939 to adopt a less restrictive Neutrality Act, which provided that a belligerent could buy U.S. arms if it used its own ships and paid cash. Technically, “cash and carry” was neutral, but in practice, it strongly favored Britain.

Question 18

Destroyers for Bases

Answer 18

In September 1940, Britain was under constant assault by German bombing raids. German submarine attacks threatened British control of the Atlantic. Roosevelt could not sell U.S. destroyers to the British outright without alarming the isolationists. He therefore cleverly arranged a trade. Britain received 50 older but still serviceable U.S. destroyers in exchange for giving the United States the right to build military bases on British islands in the Caribbean.

Question 19

Lend-Lease Act

Answer 19

Roosevelt proposed ending the cash-and-carry requirement of the Neutrality Act and permitting Britain to obtain all the U.S. arms it needed on credit. The president said it would be like lending a neighbor a garden hose to put out a fire. Isolationists in the America First Committee campaigned vigorously against the lend-lease bill. By now, however, majority opinion had shifted toward aiding Britain, and the Lend-Lease Act was signed into law in March 1941

Question 20

Four Freedoms

Answer 20

Addressing Congress on January 6, 1941, the president delivered a speech that proposed lending money to Britain for the purchase of U.S. war materials and justified such a policy because it was in defense of “four freedoms.” He said the United States must stand behind those nations that were committed to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Question 21

Atlantic Charter

Answer 21

With the United States actively aiding Britain, Roosevelt could foresee the possibility that the United States might soon be drawn into the war. He arranged for a secret meeting in August with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard a ship off the coast of Newfoundland. The two leaders drew up a document known as the Atlantic Charter that affirmed what their peace objectives would be when the war ended. They agreed that the general principles for a sound peace would include self-determination for all people, no territorial expansion, and free trade

Question 22

Pearl Harbor

Answer 22

The U.S. fleet in the Pacific was anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, while most American sailors were still asleep in their bunks, Japanese planes from aircraft carriers flew over Pearl Harbor bombing every ship in sight. The surprise attack lasted less than two hours. In that time, 2,400 Americans were killed (including over 1,100 when the battleship Arizona sank), almost 1,200 were wounded, 20 warships were sunk or severely damaged, and approximately 150 airplanes were destroyed.

Question 23

War Production Board

Answer 23

Early in 1942, the War Production Board (WPB) was established to manage war industries. Later the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) set production priorities and controlled raw materials. The government used a cost-plus system, in which it paid war contractors the costs of production plus a certain percentage of profit.

Question 24

Manhattan Project

Answer 24

The top-secret Manhattan Project had begun in 1942. Directed by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the project employed over 100,000 people and spent $2 billion to develop a weapon whose power came from the splitting of the atom. The atomic bomb, or A-bomb, was successfully tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Question 25

Japanese Internment

Question 26

Rosie the Riveter

Answer 26

A song about “Rosie the Riveter” was used to encourage women to take defense jobs. The pay they received, however, was well below that of male factory workers.

Question 27

Battle of the Atlantic

Answer 27

The protracted naval war to control the shipping lanes was known as the Battle of the Atlantic. German submarines sank over 500 Allied ships in 1942. Gradually, however, the Allies developed ways of containing the submarine menace through the use of radar, sonar, and the bombing of German naval bases

Question 28

D-Day

Answer 28

The Allied drive to liberate France began on June 6, 1944, with the largest invasion by sea in history. On D-day, as the invasion date was called, British, Canadian, and U.S. forces under the command of General Eisenhower secured several beachheads on the Normandy coast.

Question 29

Holocaust

Answer 29

As U.S. troops advanced through Germany, they came upon German concentration camps and witnessed the horrifying extent of the Nazi’s program of genocide against the Jews and others. Americans and the world were shocked to learn that as many as 6 million Jewish civilians had been systematically murdered by Nazi Germany

Question 30

Kamikaze attacks

Answer 30

For the first time in the war, the Japanese used kamikaze pilots to make suicide attacks on U.S. ships. Kamikazes also inflicted major damage in the colossal Battle of Okinawa (April to June 1945).

Question 31

Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Answer 31

On August 6, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. About 250,000 Japanese died, either immediately or after a prolonged period of suffering, as a result of the two bombs.

Question 32

The Big Three

Answer 32

During the war, the Big Three (leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain) arranged to confer secretly to coordinate their military strategies and to lay the foundation for peace terms.

Question 33

Yalta Conference

Answer 33

In February 1945, the Big Three conferred again at Yalta, a resort town on the Black Sea coast of the Soviet Union. Their agreement at Yalta would prove to have long-term significance. After victory in Europe was achieved, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed that Germany would be divided into occupation zones there would be free elections in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe (even though Soviet troops now controlled this territory) the Soviets would enter the war against Japan, which they did on August 8, 1945—just as Japan was about to surrender the Soviets would control the southern half of Sakhalin island and the Kurile Islands in the Pacific and would also have special concessions in Manchuria a new world peace organization (the future United Nations) would be formed at a conference in San Francisco.

Question 34

Potsdam Conference

Answer 34

In late July, after Germany’s surrender, only Stalin remained as one of the Big Three. Truman was the U.S. president, and Clement Attlee had just been elected the new British prime minister. The three leaders met in Postsdam, Germany (July 17–August 2, 1945) and agreed (1) to issue a warning to Japan to surrender unconditionally, and (2) to hold war-crime trials of Nazi leaders.