WWII TEST KEY TERMS Flashcards
1
Q
“soft underbelly”
A
- The “soft underbelly” is a reference to what Winston Churchill described Italy as during WW2, when the Allies were choosing from where to invade Nazi-occupied Europe in 1943.
2
Q
A-bomb
A
- an “a-bomb” was another name for an atomic bomb, such as the one dropped on the Japanese city Hiroshima.
3
Q
Allies
A
- The Allies in the beginning of WWII were Great Britain, France and the Commonwealth. When Germany invaded France they were still considered an ally but they were unable to really help out. When Germany tried to invade the Soviet Union, the U.S.S.R. reached out to the Allied forces and asked for them to help. When the Germans failed the Soviet Union joined the Allies and fought against the Nazi’s.
4
Q
Anschluss
A
- Anschluss, German: “Union”, political union of Austria with Germany, achieved through annexation by Adolf Hitler in 1938. The Anschluss was among the first major steps in Austrian-born Hitler’s desire to create a Greater German Reich that was to include all ethnic Germans and all the lands and territories that the German Empire had lost after the First World War.
5
Q
Anti-Semitism
A
- It means prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people. Hitler was known for his hatred of Jewish people and believed that they were like bugs that needed to be exterminated.
6
Q
Appeasement
A
- Appeasement encouraged Hitler to be more aggressive, with each victory giving him confidence and power. The Policy of Appeasement led to the Second World War as Britain and France, two of the main powers in 20th century Europe, failed to appease Hitler to the extent where war with Nazi Germany was inevitable.
7
Q
Arsenal of Democracy
A
- It is generally agreed that no American city contributed more to the Allied powers during World War II than Detroit. Appropriately, Detroit grew to be known as “The Arsenal of Democracy,” a term coined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during one of his Fireside Chat radio broadcasts. Roosevelt promised to help the United Kingdom fight Nazi Germany by selling them military supplies while the United States stayed out of the actual fighting.
8
Q
Aryan
A
- Germans coined the term “Aryan” which is what they referred to as the master race. It is a concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative “Aryan race” is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy.
9
Q
Atlantic Gap
A
The Mid-Atlantic Gap is a geographical term applied to an undefended area beyond the reach of land-based RAF Coastal Command antisubmarine (A/S) aircraft during the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War.
10
Q
Auschwitz
A
- During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60,000 prisoners on a forced march to other locations. It aided in the mass murdered of the Jewish people in Europe.
11
Q
Axis
A
- The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of continental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranean Sea; and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific.
12
Q
BCATP
A
- The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), or Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) often referred to as simply “The Plan”, was a massive, joint military aircrew training program created by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, during the Second World War
13
Q
Black Christmas
A
- On Christmas Day, following a week of bombardment and fierce fighting, the beleaguered Allied forces surrendered. It was the first time in history that a British crown colony had surrendered to an invading force. It became known as ‘Black Christmas’.
14
Q
Blitzkrieg
A
- Blitzkrieg was a military tactic calculated to create psychological shock and resultant disorganisation in enemy forces through the employment of surprise, speed, and superiority in matériel or firepower.
15
Q
Bomber Command
A
- RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force’s bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bombing campaign against Germany became less restrictive and increasingly targeted industrial sites and the civilian manpower base essential for German war production.
16
Q
Concentration camp
A
Concentration camps were where people who were Jewish, homosexuals, disabled, the Roma, and others that the leaders did not see as “pure”. Conditions in these “camps” were terrible and barely livable to the point where the survival rate was incredibly low. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of operation. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Poles perished at the camp, along with 19,000 to 20,000 Romas and smaller numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and other individuals.
17
Q
Conscription
A
- The National Service (Armed Forces) Act imposed conscription on all males aged between 18 and 41 who had to register for service. Those medically unfit were exempted, as were others in key industries and jobs such as baking, farming, medicine, and engineering.
18
Q
Convoy
A
- The convoy system, a group of ships sailing together for protection, was designed to help protect cargo in passenger ships during the First and Second World War. The system was created out of desperation. As there were not enough warships to protect thousands of individual merchant ships, they were grouped into convoys with naval escorts, making them hard to find and difficult to attack.
19
Q
Corvette
A
- A corvette was a small, lightly armed Canadian warship used for anti-submarine warfare in the Second World War. The modern corvette appeared during World War II as an easily-built patrol and convoy escort vessel.
20
Q
Crimes Against Humanity
A
There were several crimes against humanity during the Second World War such as the mass slaughter of Jewish people, the killings of innocent civilians etc. Many who fought in this war were sentenced to prison because of their terrible crimes.
21
Q
Dachau
A
- Located in southern Germany, Dachau was initially a camp for political prisoners; however, it eventually evolved into a death camp where countless thousands of Jews died from malnutrition, disease and overwork or were executed.
22
Q
Day of infamy
A
- On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered this “Day of Infamy Speech.” Immediately afterward, Congress declared war, and the United States entered World War II. Roosevelt’s speech was worded to reinforce his portrayal of the United States as a victim of unprovoked Japanese aggression and appealed to patriotism rather than to idealism.
23
Q
D-Day
A
- On June 6, 1944 the Allied Forces of Britain, America, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of Normandy, France. With a huge force of over 150,000 soldiers, the Allies attacked and gained a victory that became the turning point for World War II in Europe.
23
Q
Desert Fox
A
- Erwin Rommel, in full Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, byname the Desert Fox, was a German field marshal who became the most popular general at home and gained the open respect of his enemies with his spectacular tactics and battle strategies.
24
Q
Dictator
A
A dictator is a form of government in which- one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations.
25
Q
Dieppe
A
- The Dieppe raid of August 19, 1942, was a disaster. Within a few hours of landing on the French beach, almost a thousand Canadian soldiers died and twice that many were taken prisoner. Losses of aircraft and naval vessels were very high. Dieppe was a humiliation for the Allies and a tragedy for those killed, seriously wounded or taken prisoner.
26
Q
Fascist
A
- The Nazi government that ruled under Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1945 was a fascist government. Fascism is a far-right theory of government that opposes the political philosophies of the Enlightenment and the 19th century, including democratic liberalism, communism, and socialism.
27
Q
Fighter Command
A
- RAF Fighter Command was one of the commands of the Royal Air Force. It was formed in 1936 to allow more specialised control of fighter aircraft. It served throughout the Second World War. It earned near-immortal fame during the Battle of Britain in 1940, when the Few held off the Luftwaffe attack on Britain.
28
Q
Final solution
A
- The Nazis and their supporters sought the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the murder of all Jews: men, women, and children and their eradication from the human race. In Nazi ideology that perceived Jewishness to be biological, the elimination of the Jews was essential to the purification and even the salvation of the German people.
28
Q
Fuhrer
A
- Führer, also spelled Fuehrer, German Führer, (“Leader”), title used by Adolf Hitler to define his role of absolute authority in Germany’s Third Reich.
29
Q
Genocide
A
- The deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. There was a mass genocide of the Jewish people in Germany and the territories that they took over. Nazis would send mass amounts of Jewish men, women and children to concentration camps to try and eradicate them from existence.
30
Q
Gestapo
A
- The official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
31
Q
Ghettos
A
- During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe’s Jews. Jews were forced to move into the ghettos, where living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
32
Q
Gold
A
Gold Beach: the easternmost beach of the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion of World War II. It was assaulted on June 6, 1944, by units of the British 3rd Division, with French and British commandos attached.
33
Q
Hedgehog
A
The Hedgehog was a forward-throwing anti-submarine weapon that was used primarily during the Second World War. The hedgehog defence is a military tactic in which a defending army creates mutually supporting strongpoints in a defence in depth, designed to sap the strength and break the momentum of an attacking army.
34
Q
Hiroshima
A
- On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.
35
Q
HJ
A
The Hitler Youth, often abbreviated as HJ, was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. From 1936 until 1945, it was the sole official boys’ youth organisation in Germany and it was partially a paramilitary organisation. It was composed of the Hitler Youth proper for male youths aged 14 to 18, and the German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth for younger boys aged 10 to 14.
36
Q
Holocaust
A
- The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate m
37
Q
Hurricane
A
- The Hawker Hurricane was a British single-seater monoplane fighter aircraft designed by Chief Designer Sydney Camm at Hawker Aircraft in the early 1930’s. It saw exemplary service in World War II and accounted for over 60% of the air victories in the Battle of Britain.
38
Q
Indoctrinate
A
- It is the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. From the 1920s onwards, the Nazi Party targeted German youth as a special audience for its propaganda messages.
39
Q
Inflation
A
- With such extensive reparations payments, Germany was forced to surrender colonial territories and military disarmament, and Germans were naturally resentful of the treaty. This contraction, as well as the government’s continued printing of money to pay internal war debts, generated spiralling hyperinflation.
40
Q
Internment
A
- Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin D. From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent, including U.S. citizens, would be incarcerated in isolated camps.
