| A | B |
|---|
| Anti-Comintern Pact | concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan on November 25, 1936 and was directed against the Communist International (Comintern) in general, and the Soviet Union in particular |
| Comintern | an international Communist organization founded in Moscow in March 1919 |
| de-nazification | A post-WW II process where all organizations, beliefs, and attitudes that could be attributed to the Nazi party would be eliminated. |
| Atlantic Charter | Issued on August 14, 1941 during a meeting between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This document outlined the ideal postwar world, condemned military aggression, asserted the right to national self-determination, and advocated disarmament. |
| versailles | post WWI peace treaty developed just outside of Paris; terms were harsh on Germany |
| Alsace-Lorraine | They were returned to France in 1919, after World War I, by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. During World War II, under terms of the armistice of 1940 between France and Germany, the territory was ceded to Germany, but France regained it after Germany's defeat in 1945. |
| isolationism | A foreign policy strategy of withdrawing from international affairs as long as the country's interests are not affected. It is a means of avoiding involvement in international conflicts, and implies neutrality in most cases. |
| buffer zone | area that serves the purpose of keeping two or more other areas (often, but not necessarily, countries) distant from one another |
| demilitarized zone | an area, usually the frontier or boundary between two or more military powers (or alliances), where military activity is not permitted |
| sphere of influence | an area or region over which an organization or state exerts some kind of indirect cultural, economic, military or political domination. |
| balance of power | system of international relations in which nations seek to maintain an approximate equilibrium of power among many rivals, thus preventing any one state from becoming too powerful. |
| war guilt clause | Part of the Treaty of Versailles where Germany had to admit it had started WW I. |
| Manchuria | The part of China invaded by the Japanese in 1931. |
| Ethiopia | AKA Abyssinia; location of an Italian invasion in 1935. |
| war reparations | Payments for damages done during a war. |
| nationalism | loyalty and devotion to a nation; desire for a sovereign country |
| appeasement | agreeing to their demands to avoid confrontation |
| Chamberlain | British PM who negotiated the Munich Pact with Hitler and others. |
| Munich Pact | conference held on September 28 and 29, 1938, by the government leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, in which agreement was reached on the transfer to Germany of regions of Czechoslovakia |
| Non-Aggression Pact | An August 1939 deal between Germany and the USSR. |
| Spanish Civil War | 1937 conflict in Spain following the failure of a military rebellion to overthrow Spain's democratically elected government |
| Rhineland | An area of Germany where Germany was forbidden from militarizing. |
| Sudetenland | An area within Czechoslovakia where many ethnic Germans lived and given to Hitler as part of the Munich Pact. |
| Axis Powers | Allies consisting of Germany, Japan and Italy. |
| anti-Semitism | hostility to or prejudice against Jews |
| Dunkirk | French coastal area where the Allies were trapped by German forces and forced to flee across the English Channel. |
| Operation Barbarossa | Germany attacks its former WWII ally. |
| Munich Crisis | 1938 situation where Hitler demands the Sudentenland. |
| Blitzkrieg | lightning warfare |
| total war | a military conflict in which nations mobilize all available resources in order to destroy another nation's ability to engage in war |
| self-determination | One of Wilson's main points: every nation is entitled to a sovereign territorial state, and that every specifically identifiable population should choose which state it belongs to, often by plebiscite. |
| Stalingrad | a battle between Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union for the Soviet city of Volgograd that took place between August 19, 1942 and February 2, 1943, as part of World War II. |
| Danzig | As a result of the Versailles treaty after World War I, this free city became a free city under the protection of the League of Nations. |
| Blitzkrieg | A German term: lightning warfare |
| Chamberlain | British Prime Minister famous for appeasing Hitler at Munich |
| Churchill | Popular watime British Prime Minister present at the Yalta Conference |
| Fascism | A political system adopted by Germany prior to World War Two |
| Reich | Nazi Germany and the Third ... (?) are the common English names for Germany under the regime of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), which established a totalitarian dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945. |
| National Socialism | commonly called Nazism |
| Weimar Republic | The German democratic government that served from 1919 to 1939 |
| Young | A plan adopted in 1929 to facilitate the German payment of reparations for damage caused in World War I. Replaced the Dawes Plan. |
| putsch | A German word for the failed "beer hall" effort at revolution initiated in 1923 by Adolf Hitler. |
| Gestapo | The secret police created in 1933 to suppress opposition to the Hitler regime. |
| Knives | Night of the Long... (?) where Hitler ordered the SS to murder members of the unruly SA (brownshirts) |
| Polish Corridor | the term used between the World Wars to refer to the Polish territory that separated the German exclave of East Prussia from the German province of Pomerania. |
| Lebensraum | living space; one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology |
| anschluss | the 1938 annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazis |
| Dawes Plan | an attempt following World War I for the Allies to collect war reparations debt from Germany |
| collective security | participants agree that any "breach of the peace is to be declared to be of concern to all the participating states," and will result in a collective response |
| Final Solution | genocide; the exterimination of all Jews in Europe by the Nazis |
| woodrow wilson | US president responsible for developing 14 points |
| Nuremberg Laws | only individuals of “German blood” could be citizens of the German Reich; the Nazis deprived German Jews of all civil rights and effectively excluded them from social and cultural life. Their policy was then aimed at expropriating Jewish property with a view to compelling Jews to emigrate from Germany. |
| Dieppe | 1942 battle where Canadian forces were defeated in a battle on the Normandy coast. |
| Vimy Ridge | On April 9, 1917, Canadian troops led an attack to capture this location in northern France that was held by German forces. |
| U-Boat | German submarine. |
| Militarism | the government focuses on preparation for military operations and conducting military operations to help solve disputes |
| Maginot Line | a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates and machine gun posts and other defenses which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the light of experience from World War I |
| Holocaust | term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler. |
| Invasion of Poland | September 1939 marked the start of World War II in Europe as this nation's western allies, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, declared war on Germany on September 3, soon followed by France, South Africa and Canada, among others. |
| Baltic states | Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania |
| the Blitz | the sustained bombing of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II |
| Yalta Conference | Conference where there was an agreement that the priority would be the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. After the war Germany would be split into four occupied zones with a quadripartite occupation of Berlin, prior to unification of Germany. |
| Enabling Act | a law passed by the Reichstag with a two-thirds majority, by which the government was authorized to legislate without the consent of the Reichstag; the second stepping-stone after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which Adolf Hitler obtained dictatorial powers using largely legal means |
| Locarno Pact | signed in Switzerland in 1925; the powers individually and collectively guaranteed the common boundaries of Belgium, France, and Germany as specified in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919; Germany also signed arbitration treaties with France and Belgium, and mutual defense pacts against possible German aggression were concluded between France and Poland and France and Czechoslovakia. |
| Kellogg-Briand Pact | a 1928 international treaty that attempted to outlaw war |
| Potsdam Conference | One of the agreements at this conference included agreement on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. |
