Key Vocabulary from Lecture Notes

These flashcards contain key vocabulary terms and definitions from the lecture that encompass significant events, policies, and figures from World War II and its background.

London Economic Conference

A sixty-six-nation meeting organized to stabilize international currency rates. Franklin Roosevelt's decision to revoke American participation contributed to a deepening world economic crisis.

Good Neighbor policy

A departure from the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, this stressed nonintervention in Latin America. It was begun by Herbert Hoover but associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act

This act reversed traditional high-protective-tariff policies by allowing the president to negotiate lower tariffs with trade partners, without Senate approval. Its chief architect was Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who believed that tariff barriers choked off foreign trade.

Rome-Berlin Axis

Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, and Fascist Italy, led by Benito Mussolini, allied themselves together under this nefarious treaty. The pact was signed after both countries had intervened on behalf of the fascist leader Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

Johnson Debt Default Act

Steeped in ugly memories of World War I, this spiteful act prevented debt-ridden nations from borrowing further from the United States.

Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937

Short-sighted acts passed to prevent American participation in a European war. Among other restrictions, they prevented Americans from selling munitions to foreign belligerents.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Idealistic American volunteers who served in the Spanish Civil War, defending Spanish republican forces from the fascist General Francisco Franco's nationalist coup. Some three thousand Americans served alongside volunteers from other countries.

Quarantine Speech

An important speech delivered by Franklin Roosevelt in which he called for 'positive endeavors' to 'quarantine' land-hungry dictators, presumably through economic embargoes. The speech flew in the face of isolationist politicians.

Appeasement

The policy followed by leaders of Britain and France at the 1938 conference in Munich. Their purpose was to avoid war, but they allowed Germany to take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Hitler-Stalin pact

Treaty signed on August 23, 1939, in which Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to fight each other. The fateful agreement paved the way for German aggression against Poland and the Western democracies.

Neutrality Act of 1939

This act stipulated that European democracies might buy American munitions, but only if they could pay in cash and transport them in their own ships, a policy known as 'cash-and-carry.' It represented an effort to avoid war debts and protect American arms-carriers from torpedo attacks.

Kristallnacht

German for 'night of broken glass,' it refers to the murderous pogrom that destroyed Jewish businesses and synagogues and sent thousands to concentration camps on the night of November 9, 1938. Thousands more attempted to find refuge in the United States but were ultimately turned away due to restrictive immigration laws.

War Refugee Board

A U.S. agency formed to help rescue Jews from German-occupied territories and to provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps. The agency performed noble work, but it did not begin operations until very late in the war, after millions had already been murdered.

America First Committee

An isolationist advocacy group formed in September 1940 that opposed American intervention in the Second World War. Though it boasted 800,000 members at its peak, support for the committee dissipated following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lend-Lease Bill

Based on the motto 'Send guns, not sons,' this law abandoned former pretenses of neutrality by allowing Americans to sell unlimited supplies of arms to any nation defending itself against the Axis powers. Patriotically numbered 1776, the bill was praised as a device for keeping the nation out of World War II.

Atlantic Charter

Meeting on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill signed this covenant outlining the future path toward disarmament, peace, and a permanent system of general security. Its spirit would animate the founding of the United Nations and raise awareness of the human rights of individuals after World War II.

Pearl Harbor

An American naval base in Hawaii where Japanese warplanes destroyed numerous ships and caused three thousand casualties on December 7, 1941—a day that, in President Roosevelt's words, was to 'live in infamy.' The attack brought the United States into World War II.

Benito Mussolini

Fascist leader of Italy from 1922 to 1943. Mussolini launched Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis powers and became a close ally of Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler

Nazi dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, Hitler was the mastermind behind the Holocaust. His rapacious quest for power provoked World War II.

Francisco Franco

Spanish general who became head of state after his fascistic troops prevailed over the republican Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. He remained head of the Spanish state until his death in 1975.

Cordell Hull

Secretary of state under President Franklin Roosevelt and chief architect of the low-tariff reciprocal trade policy of the New Dealers. Foreign trade increased appreciably under all the trade pacts that he negotiated. One of the chief architects behind the United Nations, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for 'co-initiating the United Nations.'

Wendell L. Willkie

Known as the 'rich man's Roosevelt,' Willkie was a novice politician and Republican businessman who lost to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential campaign. Although Willkie won more votes than any previous GOP candidate, Roosevelt still beat him by a landslide.

ABC-1 agreement

An agreement between Britain and the United States developed at a conference in Washington, D.C., between January 29 and March 27, 1941, that should the United States enter World War II, the two nations and their allies would coordinate their military planning, making a priority of protecting the British Commonwealth. That would mean 'getting Germany first' in the Atlantic and the European theater and fighting more defensively on other military fronts.

Executive Order No. 9066

Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, it authorized the secretary of war to designate military zones from which certain categories of people could be excluded. Fueled by historic anti-Japanese sentiment as well as panic following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the order led to the forced removal of some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry (70,000 of them U.S. citizens) from the Western Military Zone (the coastal sections of Washington, Oregon, and California). Most but not all of those removed were interned in relocation camps in the interior West. The order was rescinded in December 1944, and legislation passed in 1988 offered an official government apology and modest financial compensation to surviving citizen internees.

War Production Board (WPB)

Established in 1942 by executive order to direct all war production, including procuring and allocating raw materials, to maximize the nation's war machine. The WPB had sweeping powers over the U.S. economy and was abolished in November 1945 soon after Japan's defeat.

Office of Price Administration (OPA)

A critically important wartime agency charged with regulating the consumer economy by rationing scarce supplies, such as automobiles, tires, fuel, nylon, and sugar, and by curbing inflation by setting ceilings on the price of goods. Rents were controlled as well in parts of the country overwhelmed by war workers. The OPA was extended after World War II ended to continue the fight against inflation.

National War Labor Board (NWLB)

Established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to act as an arbitration tribunal and mediate disputes between labor and management that might have led to war stoppages and thereby undermined the war effort. The NWLB was also charged with adjusting wages with an eye to controlling inflation.

Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act

Passed amidst worries about the effects that labor strikes would have on war production, this law allowed the federal government to seize and operate plants threatened by labor disputes. It also criminalized strike action against government-run companies.

WACs (Women's Army Corps)

The women's branch of the U.S. Army established during World War II to employ women in noncombatant jobs. Women now participated in the armed services in ways that went beyond their traditional roles as nurses.

WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service)

The women's branch of the U.S. Navy established during World War II to employ women in noncombatant jobs. The women's branch of the U.S. Army established during World War II to employ women in noncombatant jobs. Women now participated in the armed services in ways that went beyond their traditional roles as nurses.

SPARs (U.S. Coast Guard Women's Reserve)

The women's branch of the U.S. Coast Guard established during World War II to employ women in noncombatant jobs. The women's branch of the U.S. Army established during World War II to employ women in noncombatant jobs. Women now participated in the armed services in ways that went beyond their traditional roles as nurses.

Bracero program

Program established by agreement with the Mexican government to recruit temporary Mexican agricultural workers to the United States to make up for wartime labor shortages in the Far West. The program persisted until 1964, by which time it had sponsored 4.5 million border crossings.

Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)

Threatened with a massive 'Negro March on Washington' to demand equal opportunities in war jobs and in the military, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration issued an executive order forbidding racial discrimination in all defense plants operating under contract with the federal government. The FEPC was intended to monitor compliance with the executive order.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Nonviolent civil rights organization founded in 1942 and committed to the 'Double V'—victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. After World War II, CORE would become a major force in the civil rights movement.

code talkers

Native American men who served in the military by transmitting radio messages in their native languages, which were undecipherable by German and Japanese spies.

Battle of Midway

A pivotal naval battle fought near the island of Midway on June 3-6, 1942. The victory halted Japanese advances in the Pacific.

D-Day

A massive military operation led by American forces in Normandy beginning on June 6, 1944. The pivotal battle led to the liberation of France and brought on the final phases of World War II in Europe.

Battle of the Bulge

So named because of the bulge in Allied lines caused by the last desperate German offensive on the western front in WWII. A force of some 400,000 German soldiers, 1000 aircraft, and several hundred tanks launched a surprise attack through the snow-clad Ardennes forest on December 16, 1944, aiming to divide and encircle the Allied forces and cut off access to the Belgian resupply port of Antwerp. The Germans were eventually stopped in late January 1945 at a cost of more than 8000 U.S. soldiers killed in action. It was the single costliest American battle of WWII.

V-E (Victory in Europe) Day

The source of frenzied rejoicing, May 8, 1945, marked the official end to the war in Europe, following the unconditional surrender of what remained of the German government.

Potsdam conference

From July 17 to August 2, 1945, President Harry S. Truman met with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British leaders Winston Churchill and later Clement Attlee (when the Labour party defeated Churchill's Conservative party) near Berlin to deliver an ultimatum to Japan: surrender or be destroyed.

Manhattan Project

Code name for the American commission established in 1942 to develop the atomic bomb. The first experimental bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the desert of New Mexico. Atomic bombs were then dropped on two cities in Japan in hopes of bringing the war to an end: Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

V-J (Victory Over Japan) Day

August 15, 1945, heralded the surrender of Japan and the final end to World War II.

A. Philip Randolph

America's leading black labor leader who called for a march on Washington D.C. to protest factories' refusals to hire African Americans, which eventually led to President Roosevelt issuing an order to end all discrimination in the defense industries.

Douglas MacArthur

The flamboyant, vain, and brilliant American commander in the Philippines and mastermind of the 'leapfrogging' strategy for bypassing strongly defended Japanese islands during World War II. MacArthur would go on to command American troops in the Korean War until he was relieved of his duties by President Harry S. Truman for insubordination in 1951.

Chester W. Nimitz

U.S. Navy admiral who was commander in chief of the Pacific naval forces for the United States and its allies during World War II. He strategized the important victories in the Battles of Midway and the Coral Sea.

Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower

Supreme commander of U.S. forces in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower the war hero later became the thirty-fourth president of the United States. During his two terms, from 1952 to 1960, Eisenhower presided over the economically prosperous 1950s. He was praised for his dignity and decency, though criticized for not being more assertive on civil rights.

Harry S. Truman

Vice president under Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, Truman assumed the office of the presidency in April of that year, when Roosevelt died from a brain hemorrhage while vacationing in Warm Springs, Georgia. Truman won another term in his own right in a historically close election in 1948 against Republican Thomas Dewey. As president, he chose to use nuclear weapons against Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Albert Einstein

German-born scientist who immigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the Nazis. He helped to persuade FDR to push ahead with preparations for developing the atomic bomb, but he later ruefully declared that 'annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities.'