World War II

Question 1

What phrase is associated with this image, which originated as a pop culture expression and form of graffiti during WWII.

Answer 1

“Kilroy Was Here”

Question 2

Race riots during World War II in Los Angeles that primarily targeted Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are widely known by a term that references what specific apparel item, which was popular among the victimized communities as a symbol of new-found prosperity?

Answer 2

Zoot Suit

Question 3

Women formed about 75% of the workforce at Bletchley Park, a British wartime site that was tasked with what?

Answer 3

Codebreaking

Bletchley Park was the site of the Government Code and Cypher School, which regulary penetrated Axis communications, most notably the Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.

Question 4

Marshal Rydz-Smigly was the commander in chief of this country’s army when it was invaded in 1939.

Answer 4

Poland

Question 5

What happened on September 1, 1939, the date usually given as the beginning of World War II?

Answer 5

Hitler invaded Poland

Question 6

Italy’s Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale were known commonly by this term, which referenced the articles of clothing they wore.

Answer 6

Blackshirts

Question 7

This 1940 agreement created a defensive pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. In the following year it saw additional signatories, including Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Answer 7

Tripartite Pact / Berlin Pact

Question 8

This was the codename given to the Axis’ 1941 attempated invasion of the western USSR. The name coincides with that of several Italian wine grapes.

Answer 8

Operation Barbarossa

Question 9

Some historians argue that the outbreak of WWII should be dated to a 1937 event known in English as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which sparked the conflagration between what two ancient (and present) rivals?

Answer 9

China, Japan

Question 10

The area around which Russian city was the site of the largest tank battle in history in 1943?

Answer 10

Kursk

Question 11

What does the German phrase ““Arbeit macht frei” on the infamous sign over the Auschwitz concentration camp entrance translate to in English?

Answer 11

Works Sets You Free

Question 12

The 1938 Munich Agreement, which led to Neville Chamberlain’s now-infamous declaration of “peace for our time,” authorized Nazi Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakian territory that is best known by what name?

Answer 12

Sudetenland

Question 13

What was the first city liberated by the 1944 D-Day invasion, though it’s closely associated with a work of art from a very different invasion?

Answer 13

Bayeux

Question 14

From June 1948 until September 1949, crews from the United States Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the French Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force coordinated in a non-combat mission over what city?

Answer 14

Berlin

Question 15

Name the man who became Japan’s War Minister in 1940 and Prime Minister in 1941, serving the latter role until 1944. He was hanged as a war criminal in December 1948.

Answer 15

Hideki Tojo

Question 16

This German word refers to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938.

Answer 16

Anschluss

Question 17

This is the name given to the square-pyramidal fortifications of reinforced concrete first used during the Second World War to impede the movement of tanks and mechanised infantry.

Answer 17

Dragon’s Teeth

Question 18

While it is today a peninsular province located in the Central Luzon region of the Philippines, it is historically associated with a 1942 World War II battle of the same name as well as the ensuing “Death March” during which Filipino and American soldiers were transferred to POW camps by the Japanese military.

Answer 18

Bataan

Question 19

This was the name of the Anglo-American invasion of French-controlled Northern Africa during World War II. Led by General Dwight Eisenhower in November 1942, it was aimed at reducing pressure on Allied forces in Egypt, and enabling an invasion of Southern Europe.

Answer 19

Operation Torch

Question 20

This fleet admiral of the U.S. Navy played a major role in World War II as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, commanding Allied air, land and sea forces. He was the last surviving officer who served in the rank of fleet admiral.

Answer 20

Chester W. Nimitz

Question 21

This German general was popularly known as the “Desert Fox” and served as field marshal in the Nazi military during World War II.

Answer 21

Erwin Rommel

Question 22

This was the German name for the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946.

Answer 22

Wehrmacht

Question 23

This German admiral briefly served as head of state following the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945.

Answer 23

Karl Dönitz

Question 24

This Japanese Marshal Admiral in the of the Navy was killed by the US Air Force in 1943 during Operation Vengeance in the Solomon Islands. He was the commander-in-chief during the early years of the Pacific war and oversaw the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Answer 24

Isoroku Yamamoto

Question 25

Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen earned the nickname “Candy Bomber” for his actions during this 1948-49 event.

Answer 25

Berlin Airlift

Question 26

In 1943 millions of matchbooks were distributed in the Philippines with this 3-word quote to boost morale.

Answer 26

I Shall Return

Question 27

The Japanese signed their surrender in World War II on this US battleship.

Answer 27

USS Missouri

Question 28

To Churchill, it was the “worst disaster” in British history, while Hitler considered it such a disgrace to the white race that he refused to congratulate the victors. These were among the reactions to the surrender, on February 15, 1942, of what supposedly impregnable city?

Answer 28

Singapore

Question 29

Shown here is a memorial to the 80 members of what group? This display would reach its final form in 2019, when its last goblet was turned over following the death of Lt. Col. Richard Cole.

Answer 29

Doolittle Raiders (Tokyo Raid)

Question 30

The Dimitrov Battalion, consisting of volunteers from the Balkans, the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, and the French-Belgian February Sixth Battalion were among the non-American units of what brigade, which first came to prominence at the 1937 Battle of Jarama?

Answer 30

Abraham Lincoln Brigade (XV International Brigade)

Question 31

The flag of what nation has been obscured in this graphic?

Answer 31

Canada

Question 32

What U.S. state is notable for being the only state to contain a land battlefield from World War II? Today, that battlefield is probably the least-visited National Historical Landmark in the country, as it is located on an uninhabited island 445 miles from the nearest town.

Answer 32

Alaska (Battle of Attu)

Question 33

The only large-scale prisoner revolt of the Holocaust took place in October, 1943 in what extermination camp near Lublin, Poland? The last of the 58 survivors of this event, Semion Rosenfeld, would die in June 2019.

Answer 33

Sobibor

Question 34

This is a term used by the Allied forces to refer to Japanese human wave attacks and swarming mounted by infantry units. It refers to the words shouted by the Japanese when using this tactic.

Answer 34

Banzai charge

Question 35

The deadliest single day in the history of warfare is believed to have been March 10, 1945, in which over 100,000 people were killed. Many of those dead were civilians in or near what major city, which was targeted in the Operation Meetinghouse raid?

Answer 35

Tokyo

Question 36

“Successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre.” In these words, Charles de Gaulle summarized the career of what French general, who had served as de Gaulle’s commanding officer at the Battle of Verdun?

Answer 36

Philippe Petain

Question 37

This city served as the French seat of government from 1940 to 1944.

Answer 37

Vichy

Question 38

Following World War II, four Soviet cities were proclaimed “Hero Cities” for their role in resisting the Nazi invasion. Two of these cities were Leningrad and Stalingrad; the other two were honored for slowing the invasion, even though they were both eventually captured after long sieges. Name either of those cities.

Answer 38

Odessa, Sevastopol

Question 39

In the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii, the United States Supreme Court took the unusual step of announcing that what 74-year old court decision, which upheld the conviction of a California man for violating Executive Order 9066, “was gravely wrong on the day it was decided?”

Answer 39

Korematsu v. United States

Question 40

A captain responsible for sinking 13 warships and nearly a thousand deaths in World War I— what’s so fearsome about that? Name the Austro-Hungarian submarine commander pictured here, who is much more famous today because of his refusal to fight in World War II.

Answer 40

George Ritter Von Trapp

Question 41

In 1940’s Operation Fork, Britain launched a surprise invasion of what neutral country, which would remain under British and American occupation for the rest of the war?

Answer 41

Iceland

Question 42

Japan’s “Death Railroad,” which was built by allied prisoners of war under brutal conditions between 1942 and 1943 and which was dramatized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, was an attempt to complete a rail link between what two cities, their respective nations’ most populous?

Answer 42

Bangkok, Yangon (Rangoon)

Question 43

In April 1939 this country absorbed Albania.

Answer 43

Italy

Question 44

Dirk Stikker, Dutch foreign minister 1948-1952, wrote, “Churchill’s words won the war”; this American’s “words won the peace”

Answer 44

George Marshall

Question 45

What’s the more common name for Operation Vittles, carried out between June 1948 and May 1949?

Answer 45

The “vittles” in question were going to a blockaded West Berlin. This was the Berlin Airlift.

Question 46

Of the various major conferences attended by heads of Allied states during World War II, two African cities served as hosts: Cairo (twice), and what other city, in January 1943?

Answer 46

Casablanca

Question 47

This phrase was used by the British government during WW2 to encourage the repair of clothes and other household items that would normally be discarded, due to shortages and rationing.

Answer 47

Make do and mend

Question 48

The term “foo fighter” originated during World War II, when it was used by Allied pilots to describe what mysterious aerial phenomenon?

Answer 48

UFO

Question 49

In politics it’s someone who firmly supports one side; in WWII history, it refers to anti-Nazi resistance fighters

Answer 49

Partisan