Ch 21: A Threatening World

Battle of Britain

A 1940 air campaign in which the UK's Royal Air Force defended against the German Luftwaffe. Prime Minister Winston Churchill praised the pilots during this crucial Allied defensive success.

Anti-Semitism

Prejudice, discrimination, or hostility directed against Jewish people, which became state policy in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.

Lend Lease Act

A 1941 United States law allowing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide military aid to foreign nations fighting the Axis powers.

Final Solution

Nazi Germany's plan and genocide during World War II to systematically murder the European Jewish population, overseen by figures like Heinrich Himmler.

Stalin

Dictator of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, leading the nation through World War II.

Wendell Willkie

The 1940 Republican presidential nominee who ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt and later supported the administration's wartime policies.

Gestapo

The official secret police of Nazi Germany, established in 1933 by Hermann Göring to crush political opposition.

Operation Barbarossa

The 1941 Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, ordered by Adolf Hitler, which opened the massive Eastern Front of World War II.

Blitzkrieg

A military tactic meaning "lightning war," used by Germany in 1939 to achieve swift, overwhelming victory through coordinated air and armored strikes.

RAF

The aerial warfare service branch of the United Kingdom, which played a decisive role in the 1940 Battle of Britain.

Appeasement

A diplomatic policy of making political concessions to an aggressive power, famously pursued by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Sudetenland

A region of Czechoslovakia with a heavily German population that was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 following the Munich Agreement.

Franco

The authoritarian dictator of Spain who came to power after the Spanish Civil War ending in 1939, maintaining neutrality during World War II.

Operation Sea Lion

Nazi Germany's planned amphibious invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in 1940, which was ultimately canceled.

Munich Pact

A 1938 agreement that permitted Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia, negotiated by leaders including Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.

Nye Committee

A 1934 U.S. Senate committee chaired by Gerald Nye that investigated financial and munitions interests promoting U.S. involvement in World War I.

Nonaggression Pact

The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other and secretly divided Eastern Europe.

Third Reich

The common name for Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was governed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party as a totalitarian dictatorship.

Atlantic Charter

A 1941 joint declaration issued by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill outlining allied goals for the post-World War II world.

Rome-Berlin Axis

A 1936 coalition alliance formed between fascist Italy, led by Benito Mussolini, and Nazi Germany.

Kristallnacht

The "Night of Broken Glass" in November 1938, during which Nazi stormtroopers and civilians destroyed Jewish businesses and synagogues across Germany.

Charles de Gaulle

A French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany and later became president of France.

Nuremburg Laws

Antisemitic laws introduced in 1935 by Nazi Germany that stripped Jews of German citizenship and targeted them for persecution.

Weimar Republic

The democratic government of Germany from 1919 to 1933, which collapsed amid severe economic crises and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Sitzkrieg

A phase in early World War II marked by a lack of major military operations in Western Europe following the invasion of Poland in late 1939. Means “sitting war”.

Luftwaffe

The aerial warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht during World War II, commanded by Hermann Göring.

Chamberlain

The British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940 who is best known for his policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany.

Wehrmacht

The unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945, encompassing the army, navy, and air force under Adolf Hitler's supreme command.

Mussolini

The fascist dictator of Italy who ruled from 1922 until 1943 and allied his nation with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Churchill

The British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 who rallied the nation to resist Nazi Germany during World War II.

Tripartite Pact in Sept 1940

Created a mutual defense alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan that was primarily designed to deter the United States from entering WW2.

Selective Training and Service Act

U.S. law signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that created the first peacetime military draft in American history to prepare the nation's armed forces for potential involvement in WW2.

Anschluss

Means to unite, it was the 1938 annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany.

Operation Dynamo

Evacuation of over 338,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, utilizing a hastily assembled fleet of military and civilian vessels to rescue troops trapped by advancing German forces.

Emperor Hirohito

Japan's longest-reigning monarch (1926–1989) who presided over the country's mid-century military expansion and involvement in WW2.

Embargo

Government-imposed ban on trade or commercial activity with a specific country, typically used as a political or economic sanction

Fascism

Far-right and authoritarian political ideology that places the nation—and often a specific race—far above the individual, running under a centralized dictatorship that forcibly crushes all opposition.

Mein Kampf

1925 autobiographical manifesto by Adolf Hitler that outlines his antisemitic, racist, and expansionist ideology, which later served as the blueprint for Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Battle of the Atlantic

The longest continuous military campaign of World War II, lasting from 1939 to 1945, consists of many separate conflicts and battles merged into this one title.