Terms
Terms : Hide Images
| 487116417 | Long Term Causes of World War II | These included Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression and the Failure of the League of Nations | |
| 487116418 | Treaty of Versailles (Cause) | This document placed unfair restrictions on Germany's military; it took away land and placed all blame for the war on Germany (aka: the war guilt) | |
| 487116419 | Great Depression (Cause) | This event began with the crash on Wall Street and lead to global inflation, high unemployment and the rise of fascism | |
| 487116420 | League of Nations (Cause) | This organization failed to keep a just and lasting peace because it excluded countries like Germany and Russia, its members wanted to avoid war and it did not have an army to enforce its policy | |
| 487116421 | Appeasement | The policy of giving in to an aggressor (nation) in hopes of avoiding war; this was used by Britain and France prior to World War II. Signing the Munich Pact in September 30, 1938. Signing of the Munich Pact, Sept 30 1938 | |
| 487116422 | Neville Chamberlain | The British Prime Minister who practiced a policy of appeasement as Hitler continued to violate the Treaty of Versailles | |
| 487116423 | Fascism | A political movement that promotes an extreme form of nationalism, a denial of individual rights and one-party rule by a dictator | |
| 487116424 | Non-Aggression Pact | An agreement between Stalin and Hitler to not attack each for a period of ten years; secretly, they agreed to divide Poland between them | |
| 487116425 | December, 1937 | Second Sino, Nanking massacre (date) | |
| 487116426 | September 1, 1939 | World War II began in Europe when Germany invaded Poland (date) | |
| 487116427 | Invasion of Poland | World War II began when Germany launched a surprise attack against Poland to regain the Polish Corridor; this caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany. | |
| 487116429 | Blitzkreig | A military strategy involving fast-moving airplanes and tanks, followed by massive infantry forces, to take the enemy by surprise. Then blitzkrieg forces would crush the opposition with overwhelming force | |
| 487116431 | Invasion of the Western Front | In April, Hitler attacked Denmark and Norway; In May, Hitler invaded Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium before attacking France in June | |
| 487116432 | June 22, 1940 | France surrendered to the superior German army but continued to resist German domination (date) | |
| 487116433 | Dunkirk | The beach where 338,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from German troops by a ragtag fleet of British ships including naval vessels, yachts, motorboats and fishing boats | |
| 487116434 | Winston Churchill | The British Prime Minister who choose to fight rather than surrender when he said, "We shall fight whatever the cost may be...We shall never surrender!" | |
| 487116435 | Operation Sea Lion | Hitler's planned invasion of Great Britain; his plan was to bomb by air and then invade by sea | |
| 487116436 | RAF | The name of the British airforce | |
| 487116437 | Luftwaffe | The name of the German airforce | |
| 487116438 | Battle of Britain | Hitler's campaign of intensive bombing to destroy the will of the British as well as their vital defense systems and their factories; it was a turning point in the war and forced Hitler to abandon Operation Sea Lion | |
| 487116440 | Enigma | A German code-making machine that allowed Britain to decoded the secret messages of the Germans | |
| 487116441 | Axis Powers | An alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II | |
| 487116442 | Erwin Rommel | The German general sent to North Africa to help regain the ground lost by Italy; he was known as the Desert Fox | |
| 487116443 | Invasion of the Balkans | Those countries that refused to join Hitler were attacked; Hitler needed this land in order to build military bases for his future invasion of the Soviet Union | |
| 487116444 | Operation Barbarossa | Hitler's planned invasion of the Soviet Union; he build military bases in the Balkans so he could capture Russia's rich oil supply | |
| 487116445 | Battle of Stalingrad | Hitler's attempt to take this city became a turning point on the East for the Allies; as a result of this battle, the Russians were able to force the Germans to retreat | |
| 487116446 | December 7, 1941 | Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii; as a result, the United States declared war again Japan and her allies (date) | |
| 487116447 | Battle of the Coral Sea | During this battle, both sides used a new kind of naval warfare; the entire battle was fought by airplanes and aircraft carriers (Japan won) | |
| 487116448 | Battle of Midway | During this battle, the Allies allowed Japan to begin its attack then the Allies attacked Japan's naval fleet (Japan's crippled fleet was forced to retreat) | |
| 487116449 | Battle of Guadalcanal | During this battle, the Allies, who wanted to prevent Japan from building an airbase, fought against the Japanese for six month (Japan eventually retreated from the "Island of Death") | |
| 487116450 | Operation Overlord | The Allies planned invasion of Normandy, the northern coast of France; originally it was scheduled for 1942, then 1943; it took place in June of 1944 | |
| 487116451 | June 6, 1944 | The Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy in an attempt to break through the German lines and to liberate France on their way to Germany; they suffered heavy losses but liberated Paris (date) | |
| 487116452 | Bernard Montgomery | The British general who was sent to command the Allied forces in North Africa after Rommel took the port city of Tobruk | |
| 487116453 | Battle of El Alamein | During this battle, the Allies surprised the Germans and forced them to retreat; this was considered to be a turning point of the war in North Africa | |
| 487116454 | Operation Torch | The Allies planned invasion of North Africa; it was made possible by the Battle of El Alamain | |
| 487116455 | Dwight Eisenhower | The American general who was sent to invade North Africa; as a result of Operation Torch, Germany suffered a crushing defeat | |
| 487116456 | Benito Mussolini | The fascist dictator who committed Italy to war; he was later caught trying to escape -- as a result, he was shot and hung (April 1945) | |
| 487116457 | Total War | A conflict in which the participating countries devote all of their resources to the war effort | |
| 487116458 | Rationing | The limiting of the amount of goods people can buy when goods are in short supply | |
| 487116459 | Propaganda | Information spread to advance a cause or to damage an opponent's cause | |
| 487116460 | Battle of the Bulge | During this battle, Hitler made his last attempt to defeat the Allied Powers on the Western Front | |
| 487116461 | Adolf Hitler | The fascist dictator who committed Germany to war; On April 30, 1945 he committed suicide rather than surrender | |
| 487116462 | May 7, 1945 | Germany surrendered to the Allies to end World War II in Europe (date) | |
| 487116463 | Harry S. Truman | The president of the United States who "dropped the bomb" on Japan to force an end to the war in the Pacific | |
| 487116464 | August 6, 1945 | The Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb (date) | |
| 487116465 | August 9, 1945 | The Japanese city of Nagasaki was destroyed by an atomic bomb (date) | |
| 487116466 | September 2, 1945 | Japan surrendered to the Allies to end World War II in the Pacific (date) | |
| 487116467 | Holocaust | The systematic mass slaughter of Jews and other groups judged inferior; Hitler referred to this as the "Final Solution" -- 6 million Jews were killed | |
| 487116468 | Genocide | The systematic killing of an entire group of people | |
| 487122818 | The Good war -- for us in 1945 | Defining moment of US as Global power. 1. Isolation from horros of combat, patriotic censorship 2. Moral Issue -- a just war. We were good guys 3. Good for the US -- ended the Great Depression | |
| 487122819 | Total war -- for Allies | 5 year torment, high technology armies, understanding enemy, Racial war (Japs, Jews, Communists, Fascist , war on cities/civilians) | |
| 487124063 | Genocide | The deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation. | |
| 487129067 | Eugenics | The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin) as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis. July 1933 -- sterilization law allows German doctors to forcibly sterilize people who have hereditary or diseased offspring Regulate marriage birthrights Protect German purity Posters "Life unworthy of life 1939 Euthanasia begins Breeding humans here in states | |
| 487135122 | Race Hygiene | Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of "scientific racism") is the selection, by a government, of what it considers the most physically, intellectually and morally superior people to raise the next generation (selective breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics. practices and programs designed to improve the "hereditary" health of a nation or race. Often used interchangeably with "eugenics" until the 1930s, when the Nazi regime's race hygiene laws gave the term a new and precise meaning. | |
| 487135123 | Nuremburg Laws of 1935 | Result of Eugenics. Rudolph Hess (Deputy Fuhrer) says "National Socialism is nothing but applied biology". Everything grounded in race. Jews stripped of citizenship (no welfare, education, public amendments). By 1936 all Germans need self-made racial passport. Race grounded in biology | |
| 487135124 | Anschluss | March 12, 1938 -- Germany annexes Austria with no overt violence. Heinrich Himmler enters Austria and Vienna and strips Jews of their property and rights. | |
| 487140936 | Rudolf Hess | Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom, where he was arrested and became a prisoner of war. Hess commanded an SA battalion during the Hitler-led Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, which failed. Hess served seven and a half months in Landsberg Prison; Hitler was sentenced to five years in the same prison, but served just nine months. Acting as Hitler's private secretary in prison, Hess transcribed and partially edited Hitler's book Mein Kampf. | |
| 487140937 | Heinrich Luitpold Himmler | Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Nazi Germany. Commander of the Replacement (Home) Army and General One of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the persons most directly responsible for the Holocaust. Formed the Einsatzgruppen and built extermination camps. As facilitator and overseer of the concentration camps, Himmler directed the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and other victims; the total number of civilians killed by the regime is estimated at eleven to fourteen million people. | |
| 487171917 | Joseph Goebbels | Rose to power in 1933 along with Hitler and the Nazi Party Appointed Propaganda Minister. Responsible for book burnings. He exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany. Attacks on the Jewish population culminated in the Kristallnacht assault of 1938 He produced a series of anti-Semitic films Goebbels used modern propaganda techniques to ideologically prepare the German people for aggressive warfare. By late 1943, the tide of the war was turning against the Axis powers, but this only spurred Goebbels to intensify the propaganda by urging the Germans to accept the idea of total war and mobilization. After Hitler's suicide, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor. Goebbels along with his wife Magda killed their six young children and then committed suicide. The couple's bodies were burned in a shell crater, but owing to the lack of petrol the burning was only partly effective. | |
| 487171918 | Ernst Julius Günther Röhm | German officer in the Bavarian Army early Nazi leader. He was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA),[1] the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander. In 1934, as part of the Night of the Long Knives, he was executed on Hitler's orders as a potential rival. | |
| 487180094 | Treaty of Versailles | Treaty resulting from WWI: The following land was taken away from Germany :Alsace-Lorraine (given to France), Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium),Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark), Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia), West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland), The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum. The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies. Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land. Germany's army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks She was not allowed an airforce She was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the River Rhine was made into a demilitarised zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years. Financial The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her. Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate, in an attempt to keep her economic potential to a minimum. 1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause". 2. Germany, as she was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231, was, therefore responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. Therefore, she had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. Quite literally, reparations would be used to pay for the damage to be repaired. Payment could be in kind or cash. The figure was not set at Versailles - it was to be determined later. The Germans were told to write a blank cheque which the Allies would cash when it suited them. The figure was eventually put at £6,600 million - a huge sum of money well beyond Germany's ability to pay. 3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace. |
