World War Two/Great Depression Terms Flashcards
A date which will live in infamy
A description by President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the day of the Japanese attack attacks on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Roosevelt was addressing Congress, asking it to declare war on Japan.
Axis powers
Germany, Italy, and Japan, which were all allied before and during World War II.
Richard E. Byrd
An explorer of the 20th century, he was navigator on the first flight over the north Poll. He also made one of the first flights over the south Pole and went on several expeditions to Antarctica.
Al Capone
A leader of organized crime in Chicago in the late 1920s, involved in gambling, the illegal sale of alcohol, and prostitution. He was sent to prison in the 1930s for income tax evasion.
Child labor laws
Laws passed over many decades, beginning in the 1830s, by state and federal government, forbidding the employment of children and young teenagers, except at certain carefully specified jobs. Child labor was regularly condemned in the 19th century by reformers and authors, but many businesses insisted that the constitution protected their liberty to higher workers of any age. In several cases in the early 20th century, the Supreme Court agreed, declaring federal child labor laws unconstitutional. Eventually, in the late 1930s, the federal fair labor standards act was upheld by the court. This law greatly restricts the employment of children under 18 in manufacturing jobs.
Crash of 1929, stock market
An enormous decrease in stock prices on the stock exchanges of Wall Street in late October 1929. This crash began the Great Depression.
D-Day
The code name for the first day of a military attack, especially the American and British invasion of German occupied France during World War II on June 6, 1944. This marked the beginning of the victory of the allies in Europe. Germany surrendered less than a year later.
Great depression
The great slowdown in American economy, the worst in the countries history, which began in 1929 and lasted until the early 1940s. Many banks and businesses failed, and millions of people lost their jobs.
Dust bowl
A parched region of the Great Plains, including parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, where are a combination of drought and soil erosion created enormous dust storms in the 1930s. The novel, the grapes of wrath, by John Steinbeck, describes the plight of the “Okies“ and “Archies“ uprooted by the drought and forced to migrate to California.
Amelia Earhart
An aviator of the 20th century. Earhart was the first woman to pilot and airplane across Atlantic ocean. She disappeared in a flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
Fascism
A system of government that flourished in Europe from the 1920s to the end of World War II. Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy, Mussolini, and Spain under Franco we’re all fashion states. As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses of magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to straighten nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure“ people within his own nation, such as Jews in Germany. Although communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production nor as fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader, which is the cornerstone of fascism. Whereas communists are considered left-wing, fascists are usually described as right wing.
Today, the term fascist is used loosely to refer to military dictatorships, as well as governments or individuals that profess racism, and that act arbitrary, high handed manner.
Four freedoms
Four kinds of freedom mentioned by president Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech in 1941 as worth fighting for: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom for want, and freedom from fear. Roosevelt spoke of the four freedoms before the United States entered World War II. He was presenting the war as a struggle for freedom and calling for aid to the allies.
Fireside chats
A series of informal radio addresses given by President Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s in his fireside chats, Roosevelt sought to explain his policies to the American public and calm fears about the great depression.
G.I. Joe
A nickname for United States soldiers, particularly during World War II. G.I. is short for a government issue, a descriptive term for supplies distributed by the government.
Hiroshima
A Japanese city on which the US dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, on August 6, 19 45. After the destruction of the bombing, Hiroshima was largely rebuilt.
Holocaust
The killing of some 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. The Nazis, the holocaust was the “final solution“ to the “Jewish problem,“ and would help them establish a pure German master race. Much of the killing took place in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz and Dachau.
Iwo Jima
An island in the Pacific Ocean, taken from the Japanese by US Marines near the end of World War II. After a furious battle.
The battle has been immortalized by a famous photograph and sculpture based on the photograph of half a dozen Marines raising the flag of the US on the summit on Iwo Jima.
Interment of Japanese Americans
An action taken by the federal government in 1942, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into World War II. Government officials feared that Americans of Japanese descent living on the West Coast might cooperate in an invasion of the United States by Japan. Accordingly, more than 100,000 of these residents were forced into relocation camps inland, Losing their homes, businesses, and other property in the process. About 2/3 of those for United States citizens.
Many Japanese Americans, including especially created army, Italian, distinguished themselves in combat World War II
Kamikaze
Japanese fighter pilots in World War II, trained to make suicide crashes into allied ships
Manhattan Project
The code name for the effort to develop atomic bombs for the United States during World War II. The first controlled nuclear reaction took place in Chicago in 1942, and by 1945 bombs have been manufactured that use this chain reaction to produce great explosive force. The project was carried out in enormous secrecy. After test exposure in July 1945, the United States have dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Battle of Midway Island
A naval an air battle fought in World War II, in which planes from American aircraft carriers blended the Japanese naval threat in the Pacific Ocean.
Invasion of Normandy
The American and British invasion of France in World War II; Normandy is a Providence of northern France. The successful invasion began a series of victories for the allies, and Germany surrendered less than a year later.
New deal
A group of government programs and policies established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s; the new deal was designed to improve conditions for person suffering in the great depression. The projects of the new deal included the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the works progress administration.
The new deal remains controversial. Some have criticized it as too expensive and I’ve called it and invisible expansion of federal control over the American economy. Others have insisted that the new deal was an appropriate response to desperate conditions and produced programs of continuing value.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
A statement from the first in cruel address of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt was speaking at one of the worst points of the great depression.
