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.
New Order
The New Order or the New Order of Europe was the political order which Nazi Germany wanted to impose on the conquered areas under its dominion.
Final Solution
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews during World War II.
Holocaust
also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis.
Auschwitz
a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
FDR
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
Douglas MacArthur
an American five-star general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
the 1943 act of Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany’s final effort to transport the remaining Ghetto population to Treblinka.
Battle of Midway Highlands
a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Genocide
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Poland
an eastern European country on the Baltic Sea known for its medieval architecture and Jewish heritage.
UnitedNations
an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation.
Kamikaze
suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional attacks.
Mobilization
the action of a country or its government preparing and organizing troops for active service.
Island Hopping
a military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against Japan and the Axis powers during World War II.
Atomic Bomb
an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion.
Hiroshima
a modern city on Japan’s Honshu Island, was largely destroyed by an atomic bomb during World War II. Today, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park commemorates the 1945 event.
Nagasaki
the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
Bretton Woods Conference
formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.
Truman Doctrine
the name given to a policy announced by US President Harry Truman March 12 th, 1947.
VJ Day
the day on which the Empire of Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war.
Concentration Camp
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled before and during the Second World War.
Nanjing
capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, is roughly 300 km up the Yangtze River from the city of Shanghai.
Atlantic Charter
a joint declaration released by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 following a meeting of the two heads of state in Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter provided a broad statement of U.S. and British war aims.
Operation Overload
the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings.
Nuremberg Trials
a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after World War II, which were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes.
Quit India
or the India August Movement, was a civil disobedience movement launched at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee or more simply by Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India.
Bataan Death March
the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saisaih Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains.
King’s African Rifles
a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from Britain’s various possessions in British East Africa in the present-day African Great Lakes region from 1902 until independence in the 1960s.
Normandy
a region of northern France.
Invasion
a military offensive in which large parts of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the objective of either conquering, liberating or re-establishing control or authority over a territory, forcing the partition of a country, altering the established government or gaining concessions from said government, or a combination thereof.
Aggression
hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront.
Halie Selassie
Haile Selassie I; 23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975, born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael, was Ethiopia’s regent from 1916 to 1930 and emperor from 1930 to 1974.
Mutilation
the action of mutilating or being mutilated.
Mein Kampf
a 1925 autobiographical book by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work outlines Hitler’s political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926.
