Unit 5 - WWII and the Holocaust Flashcards
(38 cards)
Holocaust
Systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War.
Genocide
Violence against members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group.
Dictator
To grant a person absolute or unlimited government power during an emergency.
Totalitarian
A form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens.
Scapegoat
Person, group, or thing forced to take blame for the crimes or mistakes of others.
Fascism
A political movement that promotes an extreme form of nationalism, a denial of individual rights, and a dictatorial one-party rule.
Nazism
A form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system.
Appeasement
Foreign policy of pacifying an aggrieved country through negotiation in order to prevent war.
Lend Lease Act
Act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United States”.
Rationing
Setting limits on purchasing certain high-demand items.
Conservation
The act of consciously and efficiently using land and/or its natural resources.
Internment
The forced relocation by the U.S. government of thousands of Japanese Americans to detention camps during World War II, beginning in 1942.
Siege
A military blockade of a city or fortified place to compel it to surrender.
Island Hopping
Skipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance.
Atomic Bomb/Manhattan Project
Top-secret World War II government program in which the United States rushed to develop and deploy the world’s first atomic weapons before Nazi Germany.
Nuclear Radiation
Energy released as high-speed charged particles or electromagnetic waves. Radiation can come from many sources, both natural and manufactured. All living things are constantly exposed to low doses of radiation from rocks, sunlight and cosmic rays. Very harmful.
United Nations
An intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and serve as a center for harmonizing the actions of nations.
Concentration Camps
Internment center for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups. A camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
Ghetto
Desolate sections of Nazi-occupied cities where Jews were held before being shipped to death camps.
Persecution
The act of harassing or oppressing a person or a group of people, especially because of their identity.
Kristallnacht
Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and murdered close to 100 Jews.
Final Solution
Referred to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. It brought an end to policies aimed at encouraging or forcing Jews to leave the German Reich and other parts of Europe.
Liberation
The act of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression.
Nuremberg Trails
Allied governments established the first international criminal tribunals to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime atrocities.