Year 10 History: Tyrants, Terror, the Holocaust, and World War II

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the rise of the Nazi regime, Weimar Germany, the 8 stages of genocide, the Holocaust, the European Western Front, and the Asia-Pacific War.

Genocide

the intentional, planned destruction—in whole or in part—of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group

(Stage 1 of Genocide)

Classification: The initial stage of genocide where people in power categorize society by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality to establish an "us" versus "them" division (such as the Nuremberg Race Laws defining Jews in racial terms).

(Stage 2 of Genocide)

Symbolization: The stage of genocide where groups are identified and marked with names or distinct symbols, such as mandating that all Jews wear the yellow Star of David badge on their outerwear.

(Stage 3 of Genocide)

Dehumanization :The stage of genocide in which one group denies the humanity of another by likening them to animals, vermin, insects, or diseases, utilizing hate propaganda to make their subjugation acceptable to the public.

(Stage 4 of Genocide)

Organization : The stage in which genocidal killings and persecution are systematically planned, armed, and trained, usually by the state using specialized military units or militias like the Schutzstaffel (SS).

(Stage 5 of Genocide)

Polarization :The stage of genocide where extremists actively drive groups apart using propaganda and laws that forbid intermarriage or social interaction, eliminating middle ground and forcing citizens to take sides.

(Stage 6 of Genocide)

Preparation : The stage of genocide where victims are identified on death lists, stripped of their property, and physically separated into ghettos, concentration camps, or famine zones.

(Stage 7 of Genocide)

Extermination :The stage of mass killing legally known as genocide, carried out by the state and its militias who view their victims as non-human, utilizing concentration and extermination camps.

(Stage 8 of Genocide)

Denial: The final stage that always follows a genocide, in which perpetrators dig up mass graves, burn corpses, destroy documentation, intimidate witnesses, and blame the atrocities on the victims.

Nuremberg Laws (1935–1938)

A series of anti-Semitic laws that defined Jews in racial rather than religious terms, revoked their German citizenship, banned intermarriage, and systematically barred them from public life and the professions.

Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

A September 1935 Nuremberg law that forbade marriage and extramarital relations between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood, prohibited Jews from employing German females under 45, and forbade them from hoisting the Reich flag.

Einsatzgruppen

Nazi paramilitary mobile killing squads deployed across Poland and the USSR following the 1941 invasion, tasked with rounding up and shooting over 2 million racial and political enemies, predominantly Jews.

Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass")

A nationwide Nazi pogrom on November 9–10, 1938, triggered by the shooting of diplomat Ernst vom Rath; resulting in 91 murders, 30,000 arrests, the destruction of 1,000 synagogues, and the ransacking of 7,500 Jewish businesses.

Ghettos

Enclosed, walled-off urban sectors near railway lines where the Nazi regime forced Jewish populations into severe overcrowding and starvation before deporting them to death camps.

Warsaw Ghetto

The largest Nazi ghetto in occupied Poland, which crowded more than 400,000 Jewish people into an area of just 3.3 square kilometres under starvation rations of around 1,000 calories per day.

Judenrat

A Jewish council established by the Nazi authorities in larger ghettos that was forced to implement and enforce German administrative directives among their own community.

The Final Solution

The Nazi code name for the systematic state-sponsored plan to exterminate all 11 million European Jews, formalized at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

Wannsee Conference

A January 1942 meeting of senior Nazi and German officials in Berlin where the industrial coordination of the "Final Solution" and mass deportations to extermination camps were organized.

Zyklon B

Crystalline prussic acid dropped through ceiling openings into disguised gas chambers to murder packed groups of prisoners en masse in Nazi extermination camps.

Sonderkommando

Specially selected Jewish camp prisoners coerced under threat of death to extract gold dental fillings and hair from gassed victims and haul bodies into crematorium ovens.

Dr. Josef Mengele

An SS medical officer at Auschwitz known as the "Angel of Death" who performed selection on incoming transports and conducted lethal medical experiments on prisoners, notably twins and children.

Weimar Republic

The democratic government established in Germany in February 1919 at the town of Weimar following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the conclusion of World War I.

Article 48

An emergency decree clause in the Weimar Constitution allowing the President to pass laws without parliamentary approval, which was later exploited to dismantle German democracy.

Invasion of the Ruhr (1923)

The January 1923 military occupation of Germany's industrial Ruhr valley by French and Belgian forces to seize coal and raw materials after Germany defaulted on war reparations.

Hyperinflation (1923)

An extreme economic crisis caused by the German government printing trillions of bank notes to pay striking workers in the Ruhr, rendering the mark virtually worthless.

Beer Hall Putsch (1923)

A failed armed coup attempt led by Adolf Hitler in Munich to overthrow the Weimar Republic, resulting in his trial, short imprisonment, and the writing of Mein Kampf.

Mein Kampf

Adolf Hitler's autobiographical and ideological book, written while imprisoned in 1924, detailing his doctrines of Lebensraum, racial hierarchy, anti-Semitism, and Autarky.

Paul von Hindenburg

German Field Marshal during World War I and President of Germany (1925–1934) who, under pressure from advisers, appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

Reichstag Fire (February 1933)

The arson burning of the German parliament building, blamed by Hitler on a Communist plot and used to justify sweeping emergency restrictions on civil liberties.

Enabling Act (March 1933)

A constitutional amendment passed by the Reichstag granting Hitler the legal power to issue decrees and enact laws without the consent of parliament, ending democratic governance.

Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD)

The National Labour Service established in 1935, requiring young German men to live in camps, wear uniforms, and perform public works such as motorway construction and drainage ditching.

German Work Front (DAF)

The state-controlled labor organization created by the Nazi regime that replaced all 169 dissolved independent German trade unions, governing all employment terms and wages.

Sturmabteilung (SA)

The Nazi Party's original paramilitary force, known as the Storm Troopers or Brownshirts, which provided physical protection at rallies and attacked political opponents.

Schutzstaffel (SS)

The elite Nazi paramilitary organization led by Heinrich Himmler that served as Hitler's personal guard, enforced racial purity, and carried out the mass murder of European Jews.

Night of the Long Knives (June 29–30, 1934)

The internal purge in which Hitler used the SS to execute SA leader Ernst Röhm, over 200 senior SA commanders, and various political rivals to win the allegiance of the German Army.

Appeasement

The British diplomatic policy led by Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s of making concessions to Hitler's territorial demands in order to prevent another European war.

The Phoney War (October 1939 – April 1940)

The initial seven-month period of World War II on the Western Front following Britain and France's declarations of war on Germany, marked by an absence of major land combat.

Maginot Line

A heavily fortified concrete defense network along France's border with Germany that proved useless when German forces bypassed it through Belgium and the Ardennes in May 1940.

Blitzkrieg

A military tactic of "lightning war" featuring sudden, highly concentrated assaults by armored divisions and air power executing a three-step doctrine: attack, penetrate, and encircle.

Operation Overlord (D-Day)

The massive Allied amphibious invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, under Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, which landed 150,000 troops to liberate Western Europe.

The Blitz (September 1940 – May 1941)

The relentless nighttime bombing offensive by the German Luftwaffe targeting London and other British cities to break civilian morale, resulting in approximately 43,000 civilian deaths.

Bushido

The traditional Japanese military code known as "the way of the warrior" that elevated duty above life, embraced death in battle, and regarded military surrender as utterly dishonorable.

General Hideki Tojo

Prime Minister and military leader of Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1944 who led aggressive expansion across the Asia-Pacific and was later executed for war crimes in 1948.

Manchukuo

The puppet state established in Manchuria by the Imperial Japanese military following their invasion of northeastern China on September 19, 1931.

Rape of Nanking (December 1937)

A six-week atrocity during the Second Sino-Japanese War in which Japanese troops captured China's capital and murdered approximately 300,000 civilians and captured soldiers.

Unit 731

A covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that conducted lethal experiments and surgical amputations on human prisoners without anesthesia.

Fall of Singapore (February 15, 1942)

The surrender of Britain's premier Southeast Asian military fortress to Japanese forces under General Arthur Percival, leading to the capture of over 130,000 troops, including 15,000 Australians.

Bombing of Darwin (February 19, 1942)

A major air assault on northern Australia by more than 260 Japanese planes that killed 252 people and marked the beginning of 55 subsequent air attacks on the port town.

Changi Prison

A prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore where the Japanese held roughly 50,000 British and Australian captives under brutal conditions, leading to 850 deaths in the main facility.

Operation Downfall

The proposed Allied land invasion of the Japanese mainland, which top commanders estimated would cost up to 1 million U.S. casualties, leading Truman to opt for atomic weapons.

Little Boy

A gun-assembly uranium-235 atomic bomb with an estimated 15,000-ton TNT equivalent, dropped by the B-29 Enola Gay on Hiroshima at 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945.

Fat Man

An implosion fission bomb fueled by plutonium-239 with an estimated 21,000-ton TNT yield, dropped on Nagasaki by the B-29 Bockscar on August 9, 1945, after Kokura was obscured.

Potsdam Declaration (July 26, 1945)

A joint statement by the United States, Britain, and China demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan's armed forces or face "prompt and utter destruction."

Totalitarianism

A political system in which the central government exercises absolute, autocratic control over every sphere of public and private life, suppressing all political opposition.

Social Darwinism

The pseudoscientific misapplication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to human societies, falsely asserting that specific races were biologically superior to others.