WWI/Interwar/WWII

1914-1918

Dates of WWI

Central Powers vs Allies

Who?

Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire (Turkey)

The Central Powers

France, Britain, Russia (later the USA replaces Russia)

Triple Entente (Allies)

German plan to invade France through Belgium then invade Russia to avoid fighting a two front war

Schlieffen Plan

Russia exits war, then the Ottoman Empire followed by Austria-Hungary. There is an uprising in Germany

Alliances at the end of the war (how it ended)

Returned Alsace-Lorraine to France

Gave other territories to Belgium, Denmark, Poland

All colonies (Africa, China, Pacific islands) taken over by Allied nations

Germany:

Forced to accept blame for the war

Set reparations for damage to Allied territory (33 billion in 1921)

Forbade manufacture of most military equipment including tanks and aircraft

Made the Rhineland a demilitarized zone; placed it and the Saar valley under international control

Treaty of Versailles

officially known as the German Reich, a constitutional federal republic, Nazis hated it as it was seen as a historical aberration

Weimar Republic

understood the power of media and rose through the ranks of the fascist party; was very liked

Mussolini

group of veterans who hated the Weimar Republic and who rose because people also the the Republic and loved Hitler

Nazis

the Parliament building, Reichstag, was set on fire a few days before elections and blamed it on the communists

Reichstag Fire

creates a state of emergency and allows Hitler to pass legislation without other approval, gave Nazis total power

Enabling Act

after the fire, there was a built hatred towards communists and there were only Nazis who had power

Reichstag and the Enabling Act

Italian veterans, the paramilitary arm of the Fascist party

Blackshirts

Nazi militarized core of supporters many of whom were veterans and Freikorps also known as SA or Stormtroopers

Brownshirts

German paramilitary group (militia) formed of unhappy veterans who used violence to undermine other groups, they hated the Weimar Republic and wanted the monarchy

Freikorps

War Communism, New Economy Plan, 5 Year Plan

Russian economy plans

production run by the state and extra food needed to be given to the army first, it tried to abolish money, failed

War communism

abolished state confiscation of extra food but instituted a 10% tax, private businesses back and currency reform

New Economy Plan

Great Britain - Winston Churchill, The US - FDR, The Soviet Union - Joseph Stalin

Big Three

Germany - hitler, Italy - Mussolini, Japan - Emperor Hirohito

Axis Powers

giving Hitler what he wants to avoid war

Appeasement

March 7, 1936 - Nazis occupy the Rhineland

March 12/13, 1938 - Nazi troops enter Austria

Oct 15, 1938 - Nazi troops occupy Czechoslovakia

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so that Germans could have more "living space", and to unify all German regions to make one large country with shared nationalism

Territories Hitler took before the war (which ones and why?)

before the war - Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact

after the war - Soviet Union divided Germany and Berlin into four occupation zones to be administered by the four countries

What happened between Germany and the USSR before and after the war

Japan's attempt to form an economic and military bloc consisting of nations within East and Southeast Asia against Western colonization and manipulation, Japanese racial purity and supremacy, treated Chinese and Koreans with brutality

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

June 22, 1940: France signs an armistice with Germany agreeing to the German occupation of northern France and the coast, french military was demobilized, one portion was under control of the German military, the other was left French in full sovereignty

France in 1940

May 26 - June 4 1940: 331,226 soldiers were rescued at Dunkirk

Done by civilian craft and war destroyers

The RAF played a huge role in defending the retreating troops from the Luftwaffle

Dunkirk

Winston Churchill refused to surrender

The Luftwaffe began massive attacks on Britain (7 Sep 1940) to destroy air defenses and morale

Britain held firm

Operation Sea Lion

The British resistance convinced Hitler to postpone the invasion but he continued bombing attacks

The Blitz

The turning point of the war

Nazi Germany and allies vs Soviet Union

Lasted 199 days (Aug 1942 - Feb 1943)Iwo Jima

Staligrad

Operation Overload

The Allied needed to establish a second front

General Dwight Eisenhower launched an invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944

Successful

Allowed them to push Germany back

D-Day

Japanese Admiral Yaramoto hoped to capture Midway Island as a base to attack Pearl Harbor again

US Admiral Chester Nimitz caught the Japanese by surprise and sank all 4 Japanese aircraft carriers

Midway

All 100000 Japanese defender killed

US invaded this island which would provide a staging area of the Japanese island

Okinawa

American marines invaded this island which was needed to provide fighters escort for bombings over Japan

Iwo Jima

Operation torch (1943) - Allied victory in North Africa and invasion of Italy

D-Day

Turning points on the Western Front

Stalingrad

Turning points on the eastern front

Battle of midway

Turning points in the pacific

originally named Operation Fritz, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War

Operation Torch

Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain

Operation Sea Lion

WWII ended with the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hitler committed suicide

How did the war end? What happened to Hitler?

VE day - victory in Europe day (May 8, 1945)

VJ day - victory over Japan day (Aug 14, 1945)

VE and VJ day

Nazi propaganda Minister Jospeh Goebbels incites the crowd in the Berlin Lustgarten to boycott Jewish owned businesses as a response to the anti-German “atrocity propaganda” being spread around by “international Jewry”

Nazi storm troopers would block the entrance to Jewish owned stores

Signs would read “Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!” and “Germans, defend yourselves, buy only at German shops!”

The Boycott of Jewish Businesses

burned books with “unGerman” ideas

Einstein - Jewish, academic

Karl Marx - communist

Freud - wrote about science, Jewish

Book burnings (why? which authors?)

deprived German Jews of their rights of citizenship

Forbid jews to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans

It caused confusion as to who exactly was a “Jew”

The Nazis settled on defining a “full Jew” as a person with three Jewish grandparents

A person who acts contrary to these prohibitions of will be punished with hard labor

Made Jews legally different then their non Jewish neighbors

The Nuremberg Laws (purpose, what did they determine?)

Created by the Nazis as holding areas for Jews awaiting deportation

Starvation diet, poor sanitation, disease

The Ghettos (purpose, conditions of life)

The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons

The Manhattan Project

The Potsdam Declaration, or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, was a statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II.

The Potsdam Declaration

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon

Trinity

On 6 (Hiroshima - Little Boy) and 9 (Nagasaki - Fat Man) August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

warning to the Soviets

wanted unconditional surrender

knew the Japanese military code did not allow surrender

save us from having to invade Japan, American lives saved

2 billion dollars was too much to spend on a weapon and not use it

reasons for dropping the bomb

evidence that Japan was already negotiating surrender before Hiroshima

the results of pervious firebombing its use was militarily unnecessary

some believe the effect of the bomb on civilians made it a war crime

many believe it was simply morally unconscienceable

reasons to not drop the bomb