Question | Answer |
nonaggression pact | agreement between USSR and Germany not to attack one another but attack Poland, later broken by Germany |
V-E Day | Victory in Europe Day |
ghetto | specified area of cities for housing Jews during the Holocaust, overcrowding and horrible conditions caused many to die |
rationing | establishing fixed allotments of goods that were essential for the military |
GI Bill of Rights | provided education and training for veterans after the war, paid for by the federal government |
Munich Conference | attempted appeasement to stop Hitler by granting him the Sudentanland |
Comanche language | used in the ETO as a secret code |
Guadalcanal | called the island of death, first stop on the island hopping campaign |
Holocaust | genocide against the Jews, murder of 6 million during WWII |
Little Boy & Fat Man | names of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki |
Pearl Harbor | surprise attack here on December 7, 1941 by the Japanese brought the US into the war |
relocation of Japanese Americans | by executive order 9066 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced into relocation camps throughout the war due to fear they would aid the enemy |
D-Day | June 6, 1944 invasion of Normandy, the northern coast of France, controlled by Nazi Germany and protected by Hitler's Atlantic Wall, this successful invasion was pivotal to ending the war |
Leyte Gulf | MacArthur's triumphant return to the Philippines, liberated it from Japanese control and freed captured POW soldiers |
Bataan Death March | surrendered and captured American soldiers were forced on a brutal march to POW camp, many died from starvation, disease, and brutality |
USS Arizona | today this sunken ship is a tomb to those who died at Pearl Harbor and serves as a memorial to that fateful day |
Blitzkrieg | lightning war, Germany's military strategy using fast planes and powerful tanks |
Nuremberg Trial | at the conclusion of the war this trial condemned Nazi leaders for their war crimes |
kristallnacht | night of broken glass, when Nazi troops attacked Jewish businesses |
Mein Kampf | "My Struggle" book by Hitler that highlights his plan for Nazism |
Auschwitz | largest concentration camp that served as both a labor and execution camp, many killed in gas chambers |
Battle of the Bulge | last offensive effort of Nazi Germany |
RAF | Royal Air Force - British fighter pilots took on the German Luftwaffe in the skies over England and destroyed Hitler's plan for invasion |
what kind of items were hard to come by during the war? | rubber, nylon, sugar, butter, gas, etc all rationed for the war effort |
Manhattan Project | code name for the building of the atomic bomb, done in secret with laboratories and universities across the country participating, led by scientist Robert Oppenheimer |
Midway | turning point battle in the Pacific in which the Japanese code had been broken |
Stalingrad | battle over the city, in which the majority of the town was destroyed, Germans lost and it cost a million lives |
phony war | winter of 1939/1940 in which very little action will occur |
Navajo | code talkers of the PTO |