History WW2 Flash Cards
Joseph Stalin
Focused on creating a model Communist state. Made bot agricultural and industrial growth the prime economical goals of the USSR. Replaced all private farms with large gov. owned farms. Transformed the USSR to great industrial power. Responsible for 8 million to 13 million people.
Totalitarianism
Tried to exert complete control over citizens. Individuals have no rights, and gov. suppresses all opposition.
Benito Mussolini
Played on fears of economic collapse and Communism. Established the Fascist Party. Established totalitarian regime in Italy.
Fascism
Stressed nationalism and placed interest of state above individuals.
Adolf Hitler
Powerful speaker that promised to bring Germany out of chaos. Wanted to enforce racial purification. Aryans formed Master Race destined to rule the world.
Mein Kampf
My Struggle: Set forth the basic beliefs of Nazism that became plan of action for Nazi Party.
Nazism
German brand of fascism. Based on extreme nationalism.
Third Reich
Replaced Germany’s democratic Wiemar Republic with the Third Reich: Third German Empire. Would be a thousand-year reign.
Francisco Franco
Spanish Army general who rebelled against the Spanish republic. 3,000 Americans formed the Ab. Lincoln Battalion to fight against Franco.
Neutrality Acts
Outlawed arms sales or loans to nations at war or nations engaged in civil wars.
Quarantine Speech
FDR spoke against isolationism. Called peace-loving nations to isolate aggressive nations in order to stop the spread of war.
First two countries annexed by Germany
Austria and Czechoslovakia
Neville Chamberlain
British prime minister. Signed the Munich agreement
Munich Agreement of 1938
Turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot being fired.
Winston Churchill
Chamberlain’s political rival in GB. Thought that signing the Munich Agreement meant that they adopted a shameful policy of appeasement
Appeasement
Giving up principles to pacify an agressor
Nonaggression Pact (1939)
Soviet Union and nazi Germany committed never to attack each other. Hitler broke pact later on.
Blitzkrieg
New German military strategy . Made use of advances such as faster tanks and powerful aircraft by taking an enemy by surprise and crushing opposition with overwhelming force.
1-Sep-39
German military attacked Poland
3-Sep-39
Britain and France declare war on Germany
Charles de Gaulle
French general who set up a government-in-exile.
Battle of Britain
German assembled an air war to Britain. Luftwaffe tried to destroy Britain’s Royal Air Force. Hitler’s first major defeat.
Schutzstaffel
Hitler’s elite Security Squadron (SS)
Holocaust
The systematic murder of 11 million people across Europe
Nuremberg Law (1935)
Stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property. Jews also had to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing.
Kristallnacht (1938)
Night of Broken Glass. Nazi Storm Troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany and Austria. Around 100 Jews were killed and hundreds were injured. 30,000 Jews were arrested and hundreds of synagogues burned.
St. Louis Incident
German ocean liner passed Miami in 1939. Ship forced to return to Europe because the majority were Jews. Pres. FDR said he wouldn’t do anything which would hurt future of american citizens.
Genocide
The deliberate and systematic killing of an entire population
Final Solution Target Groups
Communists, socialists, liberals, people who spoke out against the gov., Gypsies, Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, mentally deficient, mentally ill, physically disabled, and the incurably ill.
Ghettos
segregated Jewish areas in certain Polish cities.
Concentration Camps
labor camps. Families were often separated, sometimes forever.
Death Camps
Overwork, starvation, beatings, and bullets didn’t kill fast enough. Nazis set up six death camps in Poland which had huge gas chambers which could kill 12,000 people could be killed a day. Prisoners told to undress for a shower. They are then killed by cyanide gas.
Righteous Gentiles
Non-Jews who risked and lost their own lives to save Jews from Nazis.
Cash and Carry (1939)
allowed warring nations to buy US arms as long as they paid cash and transported them in their own ships. Argued that it would help France and Britain defeat Hitler faster & keep US out of war. Isolationists attacked FDR for his actions.
Axis Powers
Germany, Italy, and Japan sign mutual defense treaty: Tripartite Pact. Became known as the Axis Powers.
Tripartite Pact (1940)
Aimed at keeping US out of the war. Each Axis nation agreed to come to the defense of the others in case of attack. Meant that if US were to declare war on Axis nation, it would face a two-ocean war.
Selective Training and Service Act
16 million men between the ages of 21 ad 25 were registered. 1 million were to be drafted for one year but were only allowed to serve in Western Hemisphere.
Lend-Lease Act (1941)
Pres. would lend or lease arms and other supplies to any country whose defense was vital to the US.
Atlantic Charter (1941)
GB and US pledged collective security, disarmament, self-determination, economic cooperation, and freedom of the seas.
Allies
Nations who fought the Axis Powers. Signed by 26 nations.
Hideki Tojo
Chief of staff of Japan’s Kwantung Army. Launched the invasion into China.
US oil embargo
US declared oil embargo to Japan due to Japanese push in Indochina.
Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)
Japanese fighters and bombers destroyed or damaged 21 ships. Nearly the entire US Pacific fleet destroyed. Killed 2,403 and wounded 1,178 americans.
Manhattan Project
Code name for research work that extended across the country to develop an atomic bomb as quickly as possible.
Rationing
The Office of Price Administration (OPA) set up a system to establish fixed allotments of goods deemed essential for the military. Households received ration books with coupons to be used for buying such scarce goods as meat, shoes, sugar, coffee, and gasoline.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
American general who commanded Operation Torch, an invasion of Axis-controlled North Africa. In 1953, he became president of the United States.
D-Day, Invasion of Normandy
June 6, 1944 - the first day of the Allied invasion, code-named Operation-Overlord. Shortly after midnight, 3 divisions parachuted down behind German lines. The were followed in the early morning hours by thousands upon thousands of seaborne soldiers - the largest land-sea-air operation in army history.
V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day, the war in Europe was finally over. General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich.
Douglas MacArthur
General in command of Allied forces on the islands at the time of Japanese invasion in December 1941. Was ordered to leave the Philippines on March 11, 1942, he vowed to return, and he did.
Hiroshima
An important Japanese military center that was bombed on August 6; a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay released an atomic bomb, code named Little Boy.
Nagasaki
Bombed three days later by a second atomic bomb, code named, Fat Man, because the Japanese refused to surrender,
GI Bill of Rights
Congress passed this act in 1944 to help ease the transition of returning servicemen to civilian life. This bill provided education and training for veterans, paid for by the federal government. Also provided federal loan guarantees to veterans buying homes or farms or starting new business.
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Founded in 1942 by civil rights leader, James Farmer, to confront urban segregation in the North.
