| A | B |
|---|
| appeasement | Giving in to the demands of Hitler to keep the peace. |
| Neutrality Acts | The United States passed these in the mid-1930s to avoid any involvement in a European war. |
| Anschluss | The union of Austria and Germany. |
| Sudetenland | This region of Czechoslovakia contained over 3 million Germans and was desired by Hitler to add to his empire. |
| Munich Conference | British and French leaders choose appeasement and gave into Hitler's demands by persuading the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland without a fight. |
| Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact | Hitler and Stalin pledged peaceful relations. Secretly, the two agreed not to fight one another if the other went to war AND to divide up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. |
| Adolf Hitler | "The Fuhrer"; The leader of Nazi Germany. |
| Joseph Stalin | The leader of the Soviet Union. |
| Benito Mussolini | The fascist leader of Italy. |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | The president of the United States during most WWII |
| Axis Powers | Mainly Germany, Italy and Japan. |
| Allied Powers | Included Great Britain, France, the Soviet Unioun, China, the U.S., and 45 other nations. |
| blitzkrieg | The German invasion of Poland was the first test of Germany's newest military strategy--the blitzkrieg or "lightning war." It involved using fast-moving airplanes and tanks, followed by massive infantry forces, to take the enemy by surprise and quickly overwhelm them. |
| Phony war | During the winter of 1939-40, Britain and French troops hunkered down along the Maginot Line expecting a German attack that nerver came. |
| Charles de Gaulle | The leader of France during the war |
| Winston Churchill | The prime minister of Great Britain during the war. |
| The London Blitz | The German Luffwaffe's air campaign against Great Britan began in August 1940 and lasted till June 1941. |
| Leningrad | This 2 1/2 year siege of this Russian city saw over 1 million citizens die during the German siege. |
| Lend-Lease Act | This allowed President Roosevelt to sell or lend war materials to Allied countries during WWII |
| Pearl Harbor | The Japanese succesfully attacked and disabled the American naval fleet on December 7th, 1941. |
| genocide | deliberate murder of a people |
| the Big Three | Roosevelt, Churchil, & Stalin |
| Reparations | Payment for damages caused by war |
| Battle of Stalingrad | Considered the turning point on the Eastern front whereupon the German suffered over 300,000 killed, wounded or captured in a key loss to the Russians |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | He was made the supreme allied commander in 1944 |
| D-Day | Normandy was the largest land and sea attack in history. The invasion began on June 6, 1944--known as D-day. At dawn on that day, British, American, French, and Canadian trrops fought their way onto a 60-mile stretch of beach in Normandy. |
| Nuremberg Laws | laws restricting the rights of jews in Germany; took away their German citizenship; and to protect a "pure" German nation made it illegal to marry a Jew |
| Island Hopping | The technique used to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific War |
| Luftwaffe | German air force |
| Totalitarian state | the state controls all aspects of its citizens lives |
| Holocaust | extermination of more than 6 million Jews during WWII |
| lebensraum | Hitler declared that Germany was overcrowded and needed more lebensraum, or living space. He promised to get that space by conquering eastern Europe and Russia. |
| total warfare | targeting the civilian population |
| Nazis | Short name for Hitler's political party National Socialist German Worker's Party |
| ghettos | Where Jews were sent and deliberately starved |
| Pearl Harbor | American naval base bombed by the Japanese; the event that caused the US to enter the war on the side of the Allied powers |
| Aryan race | Hitler's goal for the development of a master race |
| SS | "Schulzstaffeln"; Hitler's elite secret police; Sent Jews to the concentration camps |
| "Kristallnacht" | "night of the shattered glass"; Nov. 9, 1938 Nazis targeted Jewish businesses and synagogues; 30,000 male Jews were rounded up & sent to the concentration camps |
| swastika | symbol of the Nazi party |
| propaganda | ideas spread to influence public opinion for or against a cause; Ex. radio and moves used for propaganda purposes during WWII; the German film The Triumphe of the Will |
| Hitler Youth | organization for young German males between ages of 10-18 to educate and train them in Nazi principles |
| September 1, 1939 | Germany invaded Poland; two days later Great Britain & France declare war on Germany |
| Dropping the atomic bomb | US President Harry Truman makes decision to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; both cities were leveled. A week later Japan surrendered. |
| Final Solution | the "Final Solution" consisted of gassings, shootings, random acts of terror, disease, and starvation that accounted for the deaths of about six million Jews -- two-thirds of European Jewry. |
| Wannsee Conference | in January 1942, the SS and NAzi govt. agencies meet to discuss the Final Solution; the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Jews from all over Europe to six extermination camps in poland |
| concentration camps | killing centers designed to carry out genocide. |
| Mein Kampf | While in jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My struggle). This book set forth his beliefs and his goals for Germany. Hitler asserted that the Germans, whom he incorrectly called "aryans" were a "master race." he declared that non-Aryan "races," such as Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies were inferior. He called the Versailles Treay an outraged and vowed to regain German lands. |
| Hiroshima | President Truman warned the Japanese, by saying to them that unless they surrendered they could expect a "rain of ruin from the air". The Japanese did not reply. So, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a Japanese city of nearly 350,000 people. Between 70,000 and 80,000 died in the attack. |
| Harry Truman | thirty-third President of the United States (1945-1953). As vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term. |
