Chapter 27: WWII Flashcards
Aryans
Hitler’s ideal Germanic race: blond hair, blue eyes, tall. He thought they were superior race plus some others, but Jews and Slavs and other ethnicities were subhuman, lots of persecution, Holocaust.
Axis Powers
Germany, Italy, and Japan: they were fighting against the allied powers.
Black Shirts
Mussolini’s private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist party headquarters, every ally pushing Socialists out of the city governments of northern Italy.
Blitzkrieg
Come back to this one
Collectivization of Agriculture
Forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin, showed Communist ideal of “one people”
Enabling Act
An act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years, VERY BAD OBVIOUSLY!
Eugenics
Pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about “race and space” and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust.
Fascism
Movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military. Liked a scapegoat, someone to blame.
Five Year Plan
Plan launched by Stalin that was termed “revolution from above”, aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity.
Holocaust
Systematic effort of Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during WWII.
Kulaks
Better-off Russian peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them were starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for “re-education”.
Lateran Agreement
1929 agreement that recognized Vatican as independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope.
Lebensraum
This is the German word for “living space” for Hitler, one of Hitlers main purposes was to expand in order to have more living space for his desired Aryan race.
Mein Kampf
Book by Adolf Hitler that outlines his plans for Germany, wants a revival from the loss of WWI and blames problems on capitalists.
National Socialism
Movement and political party driven by extreme nationalism and racism, led by Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into WWII.