| A | B |
| Joseph Stalin | leader of the USSR after 1924, a ruthless dictator |
| totalitarian government | goverment that maintained complete control over its citizens |
| Benito Mussolini | established the fascist regime in Italy; a dictator |
| fascism | stressed nationalism and the interests of the state above those of the individual |
| Adolf Hitler | dictator of Nazi Germany |
| Nazism | the German brand of fascism |
| Francisco Franco | fascist general who took power in Spain after the Spanish Civil War |
| Neutrality Acts | 1935 law outlawing arms sales or loans to nations at war |
| Neville Chamberlain | tried to appease Hitler at Munich |
| appeasement | giving up principles to pacify an aggressor |
| nonaggression pact | treaty in which Hitler and Stalin promised not to fight each other |
| blitzkrieg | German style of mechanized warfare |
| Mein Kampf | Hitler's biography and blueprint for his rise to power |
| Charles Du Gaulle | Free French leader during WWII |
| Winston Churchill | Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII |
| Holocaust | systematic murder of Jews and others across Europe |
| Kristallnacht | night of anti-Jewish violence in Germany; November 9 and 10, 1938 |
| Final Solution | Hitler's plan to murder Europe's Jews |
| genocide | the deliberate and systematic killing of an entire population |
| Gypsies | killed by the Nazis because they were deemed "inferior" |
| Freemasons | killed because Nazis accused them of supporting the 'Jewish World Conspiracy'. |
| Jehovah's Witnesses | were killed for refusing to join the German Army of salute Hitler |
| ghettos | segregated Jewish areas in European cities |
| concentration camps | camps set up as killing stations or labor camps by the Nazis |
| Auschwitz | largest of the Nazi killing/labor camps |
| Elie Wiesel | Author of 'Night'- survivor of the camps |
| Axis powers | Germany, Italy and Japan |
| Lend-Lease Act | law which allowed massive aid to Britain |
| U boat | German submarine |
| Wolf Pack | group of U boats hunting for merchant ships |
| Atlantic Charter | joint declaration of war aims of the United States and Britain |
| Allies | Britain, the USSR, France and 23 other nations |
| Hideki Tojo | Japanese leader who advocated aggressive Japanese expansion |