Tucker Muse

Period 2

April 6, 2004

World War 2 Study guide

Appeasement: Western democracies denounced Hitler’s moves but took no real action. Instead they adopted a policy of appeasement, giving in to the demands of an aggressor in order to keep the peace.

Blitzkrieg: In September 1939, Nazi forces stormed into Poland, revealing the enormous power of Hitler’s blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.”

Cold War: A war between the United States and Russia for nuclear materials. In the west, Churchill’s “iron curtain” became a symbol of the cold war.

Collaborator: A person who cooperates with an enemy. Some people were collaborators who helped the Nazi’s hunt down the Jews.

Containment: The Truman Doctrine was rooted in the idea of containment, limiting communism to the areas already under Soviet control. George Kennan, the American statesman who first proposed this approach, believed that communism would eventually destroy itself.

Genocide: The deliberate attempt to destroy an entire religious or ethnic group. Hitler sought to destroy all of the Jews because of his hatred against them.

Kamikaze: To save their homeland, many Japanese became Kamikaze pilots, who undertook suicide missions, crashing their planes loaded with explosives into American warships.

Pacifism: The great depression sapped the energies of the western democracies. Finally, widespread pacifism, or opposition to all war, and disgust with the last war pushed governments to seek peace at any price.

Winston Churchill: The Czech crisis revealed the Nazi menace. British politician Winston Churchill, who had long warned of the Nazi threat, judged the diplomats harshly.  Later he would replace Chamberlain as prime minister. 

Francisco Franco: In 1936, a right wing general, Francisco Franco, led a revolt that touched off a bloody civil war. Franco’s forces, called nationalists, rallied conservatives to their banner.

Dwight Eisenhower: In 1942, Eisenhower took command of a joint Anglo American Force in Morocco and Algeria. Advancing from the west, he combined with the British forces to trap Rommel’s army, which surrendered in May 1943.

Haile Selassie- He was an Ethiopian who appealed to the League of Nations
for help. He needed better machinery to fight against Italy.

Harry Truman- He was the new American President. Truman had taken office after
FDR died unexpectedly on April 12. Truman knew that the atomic bomb was a
terrible new force for destruction.

Dunkirk- Retreating Allied forces were soon trapped between the advancing
Nazis and the English Channel. In desperate gamble, the British sent every
available naval vessel, merchant ship, and even every pleasure boat across
the choppy channel to pluck stranded troops off the beaches of Dunkirk and
Ostend located in France.

El Alamein- This was a battle fought in Egypt. Montgomery finally stopped
Rommel’s advance during the long, fierce battle of El Alamein.

Guernica- The bombing and strafing of the Spanish town of Guernica inspired
one of Pablo Picasso’s greatest works of art. To Nazi leaders, the attack
on Guernica was an experiment to see what their new planes could do.

Hiroshima- On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on
the midsize city of Hiroshima. Residents saw a flash of light and then,
total destruction. It flattened 4 square miles and killed more than 70,000 people.

Nagasaki- After dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima, the next day the
United States dropped a second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki, killing more than
40,000 people. The Japanese decided to surrender.

Pearl Harbor- General Tojo ordered a surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Early on December 7, 1941,
Japanese airplanes struck. They damaged or destroyed 19 ships, smashed
American planes on the ground, and killed more than 2,400 people. Roosevelt
asked the congress to declare war on Japan.

Operation Barbarossa- In June 1941, Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa-
the conquest of the Soviet Union. He wanted to gain “living space” for
Germans and to win control of regions rich in resources. In this operation,
Hitler unleashed a new blitzkrieg. About three million German poured into
Russia. They caught Stalin unprepared, his army still suffering from the
purges that had wiped out many of its top officers.

D-Day- The Allies chose June 6 as D-day, for the invasion of France. About
176,000 Allied troops were ferried across the English Channel. They broke
through German defenses and advanced toward Paris.

Battle of Midway- In May and June 1942, American warships and airplanes
severely damaged two Japanese fleets during the battles of the Coral Sea and
Midway Island. These victories greatly weakened Japanese naval power and
stopped the Japanese advance.

Holocaust- The Holocaust was when Hitler and the nazis massacred more than 6 million Jews. He did horrible things to them like medical experiments and torturing. 

Cold War Rivals- The United States, Canada, and the nine Western European countries formed a military alliance; they called it the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Soviet Union responded by forming its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, it included the USSR and seven satellite states in Eastern Europe.

Francisco Franco- In 1936, a right-wing general, Francisco Franco, led a revolt that touched off a bloody civil war. Franco’s forces, called Nationalists, rallied conservatives to their banner. Supporters of the republic, known as Loyalists, included communists, socialists, supporters of democracy, and others.

Benito Mussolini- Mussolini sent forces from Italy’s North African colony of Libya into Egypt. After awhile the Italians were fed up with him and overthrew Duce. The new Italian government signed an armistice, but the fighting did not end. Hitler sent German troops to rescue Mussolini and stiffen the will to Italians fighting in the north.

Adolph Hitler- In his fanatical anti-Semitism, Hitler set out to drive Jews from Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws placed severe restrictions on Jews. They were prohibited from marrying non-Jews, attending or teaching at German schools or universities, holding government jobs, practicing law or medicine, or publishing books. Hitler used innocent people as an excuse to attack all Jews.

Tojo Hideki- With talks at a standstill, General ordered a surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Tojo was gaining power in Japan. They did not want peace.

Neville Chamberlain- Returning from Munich, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told cheering crowds that he had achieved “peace for our time.” In the House of Commons, he declared that Munich Pact had “saved Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon.”

Franklin Roosevelt- In August 1914, Roosevelt and Churchill met secretly on a warship in the Atlantic. The two leaders issued the Atlantic Charter, which set goals for the war and for the postwar world. 

Stalingrad- The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the costliest of the war. Hitler was determined to capture Stalin’s namesake city. The battle began when the Germans surrounded the city. The Russians then encircled their attackers. As winter closed in, a bitter street-by-street, house-by-house struggle raged. Trapped, without food or ammunition and with no hope of rescue, the German commander finally surrendered in early 1943.

Explain 2 reasons why the US used the atomic bomb against Japan- Two reasons that the US used the atomic bomb against Japan are that the Japan would fight to death and this would cause more casualties, and when the Japanese ignored the deadline to surrender, the United States took action