| A | B |
|---|
| nonaggression pact | an agreement in which nations promise not to attack one another |
| blitzkrieg | "lighting war" - a form of wardfare in which surprise attack with fast moving airplanes are followed by massive attacks with infantry forces |
| Charles de Gaulle | a French general who set up a government in exile in london after France fell to the Germans |
| Winston Churchhill | British Prime Minister as the nation stood alone against Hitler's Germany |
| Battle of Britain | a series of battles between German and British air forces, fought over Braintain in 1940 |
| Erwin Rommel | German General known as the Desert Fox; commanded a crack German tank force in Africa. |
| Atlantic Charter | a declaration of principles issued in august 1941 by British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt, on which the allied peace plan at the end of World War II was based |
| Isoroku Yamamoto | Japan'g greatest naval strategist; called for an attack on the U.S. Naval fleet in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor in 1941 |
| Pearl Harbor | located in Hawaii, the site of the U.S. naval fleet; site of attack by Japan, "a day which will live in infamity" according to President Roosevelt |
| Battle of Midway | a 1942 sea and air battle of World War II, in which American forces defeated Japanese forces in the central Pacific |
| Douglas MacArthur | General who commanded the Allied land forces in the Pacific; developed a plan for "island hopping" past Japanese strongholds. |
| Battle of Guadalcanal | a 1942 - 1943 battle of World War II, in which Allied troops drove Japanese forces from the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. |
| Aryans | to the Nazis, the Germanic people who formed a "master race." |
| Holocaust | a mass slaughter of Jews and other civilians, carried out by the Nazi government of Germany before and during World War II. |
| Kristallnacht | "Night of Broken Glass" - the night of November 9, 1938, on which Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues throughout Germany |
| ghetto | city neighborhoods in which European Jews were forced to live. |
| "Final Solution" | Hitler's program of systematically killing the entire Jewish people. |
| genocide | the systematic killing of an entire people |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | General, 1890 - 1969, named supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Known as "Uncle Ike". |
| Battle of Stalingrad | a 1942 - 1943 battle of World War II in which German forces were defeated in their attempt to capture the city of Stallingrad in the Soviet Union. |
| D-Day | June 6, 1944 - the day on which the Allies began their invasion of the European mainland during World War II. |
| Battle of the Bulge | 1944 - 1945 battle in which Allied forces turned back the last major German offensive of World War II. |
| kamikaze | means "divine wind" ; during World War II, Japanese suicide pilots trained to sink Allied ships by crashing bomb-filled planes into them. |
| luftwaffe | German word for "air weapon" |
| The Middle East | Includes the countries of Southwest Asia and northeast Africa |
| invincible | unconquerable |
| beachheads | enemy shoreline captured just before invading forces move inland |
| Nuremberg Trials | a series of court proceedings held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, in which Nazi leaders were tried for aggression, violations of the rules of war, and crimes against humanity |
| demilitarization | a reduction in a country's ability to wage war, achieved by disbanding its armed forces and prohibiting it from acquiring weapons. |
| democratization | the process of creating a government elected by the people. |
