Causes and Course of WWII

Invasion of Ethiopia

Invasion of Ethiopia on Oct. 3, 1935 by Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini.

Rome-Berlin Axis

a military alliance in 1939 under the so-called "Pact of Steel"

Concentration camps

a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution.

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht (German for “Night of Broken Glass”) was a violent, organized attack against Jewish people across Nazi Germany on the night of November 9–10, 1938.

Anschluss

On March 11–13, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the neighboring country of Austria (Österreich) - German word that means “connection” or “joining.”

Appeasement

a strategy where a nation seeks to avoid conflict with a rival state by making concessions or compromises.

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

In the night of 23-24 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact., known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The countries agreed that they would not attack each other and secretly divided the countries that lay between them.

Blitzkrieg

an intense military campaign intended to bring about a swift victory.

Battle of Britain

a major air campaign fought largely over southern England in the summer and autumn of 1940.

Operation Barbarossa

On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation 'Barbarossa', the invasion of the Soviet Union

Pearl Harbor

The air raid on Pearl Harbor, which was launched from aircraft carriers, resulted in the U.S. declaring war on Japan the next day.

Holocaust

destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

Potsdam Conference

to negotiate terms for the end of World War II.