AP World Ch 27- WWII

Winston Churchill

British prime minister during WWII

Appeasement

Giving in to the demands of another country in hopes of keeping the peace

Rome-Berlin Axis

Military pact between Germany and Italy

Anti-Comintern Pact

Military alliance between Germany and Japan

Axis Powers

Alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan

Third Reich

German empire

Neville Chamberlin

British prime minister who let Hitler take land because of appeasement

Danzig

Polish port that Hitler wanted to capture from Poland

German-Soviet Non Aggression Pact

Pledged that Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack each other

Mukden Incident

Japanese claim that the Chinese forces had attacked a railway near Mukden owned by Japan; controversial

United Front

Alliance between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists

Nanjing Massacre

Six-week-long incident where Japanese soldiers killed or raped many Chinese in the city of Nanjing

Blitzkrieg

Lightning war; quick war by the Germans to take over Poland

Vichy Government

Government set up by the Nazis in France

Destroyers for Bases Agreement

Agreement between Britain and the U.S. in which the U.S. promised delivery of 50 destroyers in exchange for some British air and naval bases in the Western Hemisphere

Lend-Lease Act

U.S. gave up all pretensions of neutrality by lending war materials to Britain

Luftwaffe

German air force

Battle of Britain

Air raids by Germany to bomb British cities

Battle of Leningrad

Siege that Soviets defended the city of Leningrad

Pearl Harbor

U.S. naval base bombed by Japan

Erwin Rommel

"Desert Fox"; led German troops in Egypt

Battle of El Alamein

Battle in which British defeated Rommel

Battle of Stalingrad

Battle in which Soviet counteroffensive successfully defeated the cream of Hitler's military

Battle of the Coral Sea

First Allied victory against Japan; U.S. Navy stopped a Japanese fleet set out to invade Australia

Battle of Midway Island

Destruction of four Japanese aircraft carriers

Island-Hopping

Strategy where the Allies invaded weak Japanese islands and avoided strong ones

Douglas MacArthur

U.S. General who came up with island-hoping

Aircraft Carriers

Ships that allowed planes to take off and land from their decks at sea

D-Day

When the Allies invaded France; many casualties, but Allies gained a base in France

Battle of the Bulge

Battle that the Allies won which led to no realistic winning of the war for Germany

Battle of Kursk

Largest tank battle of the war

V-E Day

When Germany surrendered

Hiroshima/Nagasaki

Japanese cities bombed by the U.S. with atomic bombs

V-J Day

When Japan surrendered

Heinrich Himmler

Leader of the Nazi special police; oversaw policies of genocide

Tokyo/Dresden

Cities firebombed by the Allies

Tehran Conference

Meeting between the Big Three where the Soviet Union agreed to free Eastern Europe while Britain and the U.S. freed Western Europe

Yalta Conference

Meeting where Stalin revealed his distress of the other Allies

Potsdam Conference

Final meeting between the Big Three where there Soviet Union had conflicts with the U.S.

Sudetenland

Territory that Hitler demanded from Czechoslovakia

Firebombing

Technique used by the Allies by bombing cities to start fires

Oxford University

The one city off limits in Britain due to Hitler's respect of the University

Holocaust

Genocide of six million Jews and others

Mein Kampf

Hitler's book

Rosie the Riveter

Woman used in American war posters to encourage women to help the war effort

Nuremberg Laws

Anti-Semitic laws in Germany

Kristallnacht

Burning of synagogues and Jewish businesses in Germany

Ghettos

Special sections of cities for Jews