HIST 144 Unit 2

In the summer of 1940, Hitler made the following decision:

He decided that attacking the Soviet Union would be Germany’s next operation

Identify Miklós Horthy:

Authoritarian head of Hungary

Did Hitler plan to seize the richest parts of the Soviet Union (such as the Caucasus oil-fields) and then come to a territorial agreement with Stalin?

No

Why did Mussolini decide to invade Greece?

To pre-empt Hitler, whom he suspected of attempting to create a sphere of influence in the Balkans

Why did Erwin Rommel land in Libya in February 1941?

To help the defeated Italian troops reconquer Libya

When Stalin heard that Germany was shipping weapons to Finland, which was an ominous sign, did he stop supplying Germany with coal?

No

The German attack plan on the Soviet Union was designed to

Encircle as many Red Army soldiers as possible

At which point did German commanders realize the Russian campaign might have to go on into 1942?

In late August 1941, when it was clear important cities would not be taken

Which of the following does NOT apply to the December 1941 Soviet counter-attack at Moscow?

Stalin personally took command

Identify the Demyansk Pocket:

Area near Leningrad where the Red Army encircled German troops who held out for weeks

With regard to the actions of the League of Nations in 1936-1939, all of the following statements are true EXCEPT:

After the League revoked Japan’s “South Seas Mandate” over a set of islands in the Pacific, the Japanese forces retreated from these islands

Stalin replaced his Secretary of State Litvinov with Molotov as

a sign of goodwill towards Germany

With regard to the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, all of the following statements are true EXCEPT:

Germany attacked the Polish elites, but the Soviet Union co-opted them to establish a friendly local administration

When Western Europe was attacked by Nazi Germany in May 1940, the defense was hampered by different issues, EXCEPT:

The Western armies had no tanks

What happened at Dunkirk?

Hundreds of thousands of British and French troops managed to escape encirclement

In 1940, the German military victories against Norway, France, and other countries caused the Japanese leadership to

Consider seizing French and other Western colonial holdings in Asia

Identify Chongqing:

The Chinese Nationalist wartime capital

Which of these does NOT apply to the Sino-Japanese war?

The Chinese Communists did most of the fighting

Which development happened in 1941 (in the Sino-Japanese war)?

The Japanese once more attacked the city of Changsha in vain, which once more halted their advance into central China.

Which of the following does NOT apply to Japan's wartime expansion?

Emperor Hirohito urged his military advisers to "strike south" instead of waiting.

Why did Japan attack the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor?

To take out a threat against the flank of its southward drive

Identify Hideki Tōjō.

Minister of War, became Prime Minister in 1941

According to the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg, what was the fatal flaw of Japanese grand strategy?

Assuming that once the Japanese forces had created an empire, this would be generally accepted

Identify Arthur Percival.

The British commander who oversaw the fall of Singapore

How did the Japanese manage to seize the Dutch East Indies?

By a series of landings on the main islands

Identify Strange Defeat 

Title of a critical work by the historian and war volunteer Marc Bloch

Identify Bessarabia

Region of Romania, seized by the Soviet Union

Identify City of Benares

British passenger ship that carried child evacuees

Chiang Kai-shek was

The leader of the Chinese Nationalist forces

Identify Maxim Litvinov

Soviet official who tried to bring the Soviet Union closer to the West

True or False. When Poland was attacked by Germany, it appealed to the League of Nations.

False

Which of the following is NOT true regarding Blitzkrieg?

The German tank divisions were much less maneuverable than the Allied ones

After the French defeat, Mussolini claimed French colonial possessions in Africa. How did Hitler react?

He stopped Mussolini’s claim so as not to antagonize Pétain

The Luftwaffe bombing campaign against Britain was

An attempt to get the British government to settle

In 1940, the Soviet Union engaged in all of these EXCEPT

It took over part of Japanese-dominated Manchuria (Manchukuo) to create a buffer zone to its east.

Which of these countries led by an authoritarian ruler did NOT join the war on Germany’s side?

Francisco Franco’s Spain

What was the “Blue Division”?

A Spanish force that fought alongside the Germans in Russia

Identify Ion Antonescu

Authoritarian head of Romania

Identify Georgy Zhukov

Soviet general who coordinated the counter-attack at Moscow in December 1941

Identify Charles de Gaulle

French general who championed resisting the Germans

Germany’s military preparations for Operation Barbarossa featured

Close collaboration with the Romanian leadership

What was NOT a feature of the battle for Crete?

The British were able to dislodge the German invasion troops and establish a naval base

Germany’s April 1941 attack on Greece was designed to

Secure the Mediterranean from the British

The Germans closely involved all of their allies in the planning of Operation Barbarossa

False

In the months before the June 1941 German invasion, the Soviet leadership engaged in all of these actions EXCEPT:

Seek an alliance with Britain

What is the "Fourteen-Part Message"?

Document presented to the U.S. Secretary of State by the Japanese envoys after Pearl Harbor

Which of these did NOT happen in the spring of 1942?

Chongqing surrendered to the Japanese.

Identify the Flying Tigers.

U.S. volunteer air force sent to assist the Chinese Nationalists

The Sook Ching massacres happened

In Singapore

The main vehicle of the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army that took Malaysia was

The bicycle

Were the "regional," "native" troops who defended Western imperial possessions consistently undertrained?

No

When the Pacific War broke out,

Most of the Japanese ground troops were tied down in China.

In Japanese strategy, the "North Strike" lost to the "South Strike" for all of these reasons EXCEPT

The Japanese did not attack the Soviets in hopes of gaining the support of the Chinese Communists.

From Japan's point of view, did the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941) invalidate the neutrality treaty between Tokyo and Moscow (April 1941)?

No: both served the same purpose, that of neutralizing a possible Soviet attack which would preclude Japan from striking south.

Name one consequence of the September 1941 Battle of Changsha.

The Chinese victory prompted the United States and Britain to send material aid.

What was the main effect of the Doolittle Raid?

It persuaded the Japanese Navy that they had to secure the outer edges of their defensive perimeter.

What was Operation Ultra?

The breaking of Wehrmacht codes

Describe the dynamics that led to the German defeat at Stalingrad.

The Germans committed too many forces against Stalingrad, which made their outside forces vulnerable to a Soviet breakthrough and ensuing encirclement.

Regarding the three major clashes of 1942–1943 of Midway, El Alamein, and Stalingrad, which of the following statements is NOT correct?

Midway was the first aircraft-carrier battle in history; El Alamein and Stalingrad were the war's most important tank battles in their respective theaters.

After landing in Italy, the Western Allied forces

Had to fight an attritional battle against the Germans.

In 1942–1943, the U.S. forces engaged the Japanese mainly

On Japan’s outermost Pacific perimeter.

After the Washington Conference, where Churchill rejected plans for a major "second front," Stalin

Shared plans for the Soviet counter-offensive in southern Russia, since he still needed British material help.

U.S. President Roosevelt' announcement, at Casablanca in January 1943, that the Allies aimed for the Axis's unconditional surrender proved that

Heads of state were making major decisions without consulting their foreign-policy experts.

The difference between "strategic" and "tactical" bombing in WWII was that

"Strategic" bombing targeted civilian sites; "tactical" bombing concentrated on military infrastructure.

Frederick Lindemann's "dehousing paper" was

A memorandum addressed to the U.K. War Cabinet, arguing that "dehousing" the Germans through strategic bombing would strike at Germany's morale and productive capacity.

The U.S.-British Combined Bombing Offensive was

Decided upon in Casablanca in January 1943 as a strategic air offensive against the German home front.

Identify Operation Gomorrah.

The U.S.-British bombing of Hamburg

What is the correct sequence of events in the Pacific?

Doolittle Raid – Battle of Midway – Battle of Guadalcanal – Battle of Tarawa

Guadalcanal is

A Pacific island in the Solomons chain, site of a U.S.-Japanese clash from August 1942 to early February 1943.

Identify the Açores.

Portuguese islands, where the Allies were allowed naval bases from October 1943

The breaking of Wehrmacht codes (operation Ultra) impacted the following theaters:

North Africa and the Atlantic

When the "Big Three" convened at Tehran in November 1943, all of these things were true EXCEPT

It was the second time the "Big Three" convened, after Casablanca

In Italy, the Western Allies' forces faced

The Germans, since the Italian government had concluded an armistice.

The Battle of Midway was decided in minutes. After this, the war in the Pacific featured all of the following EXCEPT

Battles over Japan's outer perimeter were also decided quickly.

In June 1942, Japan successfully attacked

The island of Attu off Alaska.

The Western Allies' bombing of German cities had all of the following aims EXCEPT

Prepare the ground for the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

Stalingrad bogged down into a battle of attrition for all of these reasons EXCEPT

British and U.S. troops participated in the battle, which in turn prompted the Germans to draw in their allies.

The British leadership was at first reluctant to contemplate a landing in northern France because

They feared being ejected from the European mainland again.

The main problem with the German defenses in northern France was the following:

German intelligence did not know the location of the planned Allied landing.

Which of the D-Day landing beaches saw the worst casualty rate among the attackers?

Omaha

The bocage was

The landscape of hedges that made the Allied (especially the American) advance difficult.

Why did Operation Lüttich fail?

Because the Ultra decryption service had uncovered the plans, and yet Hitler continued to issue unrealistic orders to resume the attack

The Wehrmacht was under orders to take a stand and turn their position into a "fortress" wherever possible. As a result, on the eastern front,

Faced with an overwhelming force, German commanders were unable to make tactical retreats in their own time.

In Operation Bagration, the attacking forces of the Red Army

Vastly outnumbered and out-gunned the German Army Group Centre.

Operation Bagration was preceded by

Sabotage actions by Russian partisans behind the German lines.

Operation Bagration was a great tactical victory for the Red Army, but strategically it was more problematic, because it now created a Soviet "bulge" that was threatened in the north and the south by intact Wehrmacht forces.

False

The German leadership reacted to the fate of Army Group Centre

With dismay: Goebbels thought it worse than Stalingrad.

The Bomb Plot of July 20, 1944, had the following consequence for military leadership in Germany:

A suspicious Hitler now demanded uncritical loyalty from his generals.

After the Allied breakthrough in northern France, the Westheer

Continued to obstruct the Allied advance in the Netherlands and Belgium.

For the German leadership, the Allied crossing of the Rhine meant that

All hopes of negotiating an end to the war from a position of relative strength were dashed: to end the war would mean surrender and nothing else.

The Volkssturm was

The People's Army, a militia raised for homeland defense.

For Hitler, a repeat of the end of World War One in 1918, when imperial Germany had laid down arms, was

Something to be avoided at all costs.

Identify Alfred Jodl.

Hitler’s chief of operations

Why did Operation Overlord not take place across the Strait of Dover?

Because that is where the Germans would have expected the western Allies to attack

The landing forces on D-Day were overwhelmingly U.S.

False

Name one reason why the Omaha beach landing was the most costly one in terms of human lives.

Because the obstacles which the Germans had placed on the beach had remained largely intact

Identify "Mulberries."

Artifical harbors used for the Normandy landings

The July 20, 1944 Bomb Plot had the following effect on German military leadership.

It made Hitler suspicious of his generals, who now had to demonstrate intense offensive zeal, however unrealistic.

Operations Overlord and Bagration led to breakthroughs which were then immediately followed up by a swift thrust into Germany proper.

False

From the point of view of the Red Army, Operation Bagration can best be described as

A swift and devastating blow ending in victory.