World War II Flashcards
Kellogg-Briand Pact
a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them.”
Ethiopia
in the Horn of Africa, is a rugged, landlocked country split by the Great Rift Valley.
Appeasement
the action or process of appeasing.
Axis Powers
also known as the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, were the nations that fought in World War II against the Allied Powers. The Axis agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity.
Allied Powers
were the countries that opposed the Central Powers in the First World War. The members of the original Triple Entente of 1907 were the French Republic, the British Empire and the Russian Empire.
Munich Conference
a settlement permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country’s borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation “Sudetenland” was coined.
Anti-Comintern Pact
an anti-communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan (later to be joined by other, mainly fascist, governments) on November 25, 1936 and was directed against the Third (Communist) International.
German-Soviet Nonagression Pact
A treaty made by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 that opened the way for both nations to invade Poland.
Sanction
a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.
Demilitarized
remove all military forces from (an area).
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD PC PCc DL FRS RA was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman. He was the leader of Free France and the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.
Pearl Harbor
a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet.
Sudetenland
the German name (used in English in the first half of the 20th century) to refer to those northern, southern, and western areas of Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by ethnic German speakers, specifically the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Czech Silesia located within Czechoslovakia, since they were part of Austria until the end of World War I.
Siege of Leningrad
also known as the Leningrad Blockade, was a prolonged military blockade undertaken mainly by the German Army Group North against Leningrad, historically and currently known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II.
Battle of Stalingrad
a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia.
Phony War
an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there were no major military land operations on the Western Front.
Isolationist
a person favoring a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, especially the political affairs of other countries.
Battle of Britain
a military campaign of the Second World War, when the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against the German Air Force attacks from the end of June 1940.
Lend-Lease Act
the matériel and services supplied by the U.S. to its allies during World War II under an act of Congress (Lend-Lease Act) passed in 1941: such aid was to be repaid in kind after the war. verb (used with object), lend-leased, lend-leasing.
VE Day
Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces.[3] It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe.
D-Day
The Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.