World War II

Nonaggression pact

a 10-year pact between Stalin and Hitler on August 23 1939. After being excluded from the Munich Conference, Stalin was not eager to join the West and Hitler promised him territory. They secretly planned to split Poland between them and for USSR to take over Finland and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Blitzkrieg

The German invasion of Poland, being the first test of Germany's newest military strategy. They used fast-moving airplanes and tanks followed by massive infantry forces to take the enemy by surprise. After, they would crush opposition with pure force

Charles de Gaulle

a French general who fled to London after France fell to the Axis powers and set up a government-in-exile devoted to reconquering France and he went on to organize the Free French military forces that battled the Nazis until France was liberated in 1944

Winston Churchill

The new British prime minister at the beginning of WWII that declared that they would never give in to Germany

Battle of Britain

October 1940-May 1941 when Germans gave up daylight raids to avoid the RAF's attacks and began night bombing London. London resisted and forced Hitler to call off the attacks proving that Hitler's advances could be blocked

Atlantic Charter

a declaration between Roosevelt and Churchill that upheld free trade among nations and the right of people to choose their own gov't

Isoroku Yamamoto

a Japanese Admiral who argued that US fleet in Hawaii was a "dagger pointed at our throat" and must be destroyed, partook in the attack on Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941, American sailors bombed in Hawaii by Japanese air raid. Sunk or damaged 18 ships, 8 battleships included and killed 2,400, 1,000 wound, forced Congress to declare war on Japan

Battle of Midway

The battle on June 4-6, 1942 that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific against the Japanese

Douglas MacArthur

the General who was a commander of the Allied land forces in the Pacific who wanted to seize islands that were not well defended but were closer to Japan, then use these places to cut supply lines and starve enemy troops

Battle of Guadalcanal

the battle for control of the island of Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands, which started on August 7, 1942, fought for 6 months and eventually the Japanese abandoned the island after losing 23,000 out of 36,000 men

Aryans

Germanic peoples "a master race

Holocaust

the mass slaughter of non-Aryans in Europe, especially Germans, especially Jews

Kristallnacht

Night of Broken Glass" Nov. 1938, a Jewish boy's father was deported to Poland after living in Germany for 27 years, Herschel Grynszpan tried to avenge his deportation by shooting an employee of the German Embassy in Paris; Nazis launched attack on Jewish community; Nov. 9, storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues all over Germany, killing 100 Jews, and glass broke all over the streets; Marked a major step-up in Nazi policy of Jewish persecution, Jews future looked grim

Ghettos

overcrowded cities in Poland where Hitler "herded" and segregated all the Jews

Final Solution

Hitler's plan to commit a program of genocide

Genocide

the systematic killing of an entire people

Erwin Rommel

A German General who took the key port city of Tobruk in North Africa in June 1942, continuing a long period of advancement by the German forces

Bernard Montgomery

A British General sent to Tobruk to take control of British forces in N. Africa

Dwight D. Eisenhower

American General who led the Allied forces in Operation Torch

The Battle of Stalingrad

Aug 23, 1942, Luftwaffe bombed the city nightly setting it to fire, making it rubble, desperate situation but Stalin told commanders to defend the city

D-Day

Operation Overlord was the greatest land and sea attack in history, June 6, 1944, British, American, French, and Canadian troops fought their way onto a 60-mile stretch of beach in Normandy

Battle of the Bulge

Dec. 16, German tanks broke through weak defenses along an 85-mile front in the Ardennes, Allies pushed Germans back and won and Nazis had to retreat

Kamikaze

Japanese suicide pilots that would sink Allied ships by crash diving into them in their bomb-filled planes

Nuremberg Trials

In 1946, an International Military Tribunal representing 23 nations put Nazi war criminals on trial in Germany to deal with Germany's guilt in the Holocaust and insure that nothing like this would ever happen again; in the first of them, 22 Nazi leaders charged with wagingwar of aggression, violating law of war and committing "crimes against humanity", murder of 11 million people

Demilitarization

MacArthur began this process in Japan to ensure that the fighting would end by disbanding the Japanese armed forces and brought Japanese war criminals to trial and sentenced 7 to death

Democratization

the process of creating a governmen