World War II
Zoe Vega Ponton
Vocabulary:
- Joseph Stalin - took Lenin's place as the head of the Communist Party
- Totalitarianism - a theory of gov. in which a single party or leader controls the economic, social, and cultural lives of people
- Benito Mussolini - leader of the Fascist Party
- Fascism - political system headed by a dictator in which the government controls business and labor and opposition is not permitted
- Adolf Hitler - led the Nazi Party
- Nazism - a set of political beliefs of the Nazi Party
- Francisco Franco - dictator who ruled over Spain
- Neutrality Act - act that allowed nations at war to buy goods and arms in the U.S. if they paid cash and carried the merchandise on their own ships
- Neville Chamberlain - British prime minister as WWII began, best known for his policy of appeasement towards Hitler
- Winston Churchill - prime minister of the U.K.
- Appeasement - policy of granting concessions in order to keep the peace
- Nonaggression Pact - Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years
- Blitzkrieg - "lighting war" that emphasized the use of speed and firepower to penetrate deep into the enemy's territory
- Charles de Gaulle - the French leader who led the Free French during WWII and then became president of France
- Kristallnacht - "Night of Broken Glass," organized attacks on Jewish communists in Germany on Nov. 9, 1938
- Genocide - willful annihilation of a racial, political, or cultural group
- Axis Powers - groups of countries led by Germany, Italy and Japan that fought the Allies in WWII
- Lend-Lease Act - act passed in 1941 that allowed President Roosevelt to sell or lend war supplies to any country whose defense he considered vital to the safety of the U.S.
- Atlantic Charter - in Jan. 1942, a group of 26 Allied nations pledged their support for this declaration
- Hideki Tojo - came to power in Japan in 1942
- George Marshall -he was hailed as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill, for his leadership of the Allied victory in WWII
- Women's Auxiliary Army Corp - U.S. Army group established during WWII so that women could serve in non-combat roles
- A. Phillip Randolph - planned to organize some 100k African Americans to march in DC "for jobs in national defense an equal integration in the fighting forces"
- Manhattan Project - code name of the project that developed the atomic bomb
- Office of Price Administration - established within the Office of Emergency Management of the US gov. by Executive Order 8875 with the purpose of controlling money and rents after the outbreak in WWII
- War Production Board - agency of the U.S. gov. that supervised war production during WWII
- D-Day - June 6, 1944 the day Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, France
- Omar Bradley - handpicked by General Dwight Eisenhower to command the 1st U.S. Army during D-Day invasion
- George Patton - innovative tank commander
- Battle of the Bulge - was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of WWII
- Douglas Macarthur - General of Army
- Chester Nimitz - commander of the Pacific Fleet during WWII
- Battle of Midway - turning point of WWII in the Pacific in which the Japanese advance was stopped
- Kamikaze - Japanese pilots who deliberately crashed planes into American ships during WWII
- J. Robert Oppenheimer - often called "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan project
- Nuremburg Trials - trials in which Nazi leaders were charged with war crimes
- GI Bill of Rights - eased the return of WWII veterans by providing education and employment aid
- Internment - temporary imprisonment of members of a specific group