Topic 8 Vocabulary

Appeasement

the policy of giving in to an aggressors demands in order to keep the peace.

Rosie the Riveter

a popular name for women who worked in war industries during WWII.

Yalta Conference

meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in February 1945 where the three leaders made agreements regarding the end of World War II.

Dunkirk

port in France from which 300, 000 Allied troops were evacuated when their retreat by land was cut off by the German advance in 1940.

Hiroshima

the city in Japan where the first atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945.

Concentration camp

detention center for civilians considered enemies of the state.

Island-hopping

during World War II, Allied strategy of recapturing some Japanese- held islands while bypassing others.

Pacifism

opposition to all war.

Internment

confinement during wartime.

Stalingrad

now Volgograd, a city in SW Russia that was the site of a fierce battle during WWII.

Holocaust

the systematic genocide of about six million European Jews by the Nazis in World War II.

Crematorium

a place used to burn corpses.

Auschwitz

a group of three German concentration camps and extermination camps in southern Poland, built and operated during the Third Reich.

Sudetenland

a region of western Czechoslovakia.

Vichy

city in central France where a puppet state governed unoccupied France and the French colonies.

Axis powers

a group of countries led by Germany, Italy, and Japan that fought the Allies in World War II.

Atlantic Charter

agreement in which Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill set goals for the defeat of Nazi Germany and for the postwar world.

Anschluss

the union of Austria and Germany.

Kamikaze

Japanese pilot who undertook a suicide mission.

Aircraft carrier

ship that accommodates the taking off and landing of airplanes, and transports aircraft.

Manhattan Project

code name for the project to build the first atomic bomb during WWII.

Bataan Death March

during World War II, the forced march of Filipino and American prisoners of war under brutal conditions by the Japanese military.

Nuremberg Trials

a series of war crimes trials held in Germany after WWII.

Neutrality Acts

a series of acts passed by the U.S. Congress from 1935 to 1939 that aimed to keep the U.S. from becoming involved in WWII.

Nazi-Soviet Pact

an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 in which the two nations promised not to fight each other and to divide up land in Eastern Europe.

D-Day

code name for June 6, 1944, the day that Allied forces invaded France during WWII

V-E Day

Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945, the day the Allies won WWII in Europe

Blitzkrieg

lightning war

Luftwaffe

German air force

Nagasaki

Japanese city; on an island in its harbor, the Tokugawa shoguns in the 1600s permitted one or two Dutch ships to trade with Japan each year

Lend-Lease Act

an act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1941 that allowed the president (FDR) to sell or lend war supplies to any country whose defense was considered vital to the United States

United Nations (UN)

an international organization formed in 1945 at the end of World War II. Since then, its global role has expanded to include economic and social development, human rights, humanitarian aid, and international law.