World War II: Americans at War Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards for World War II: Americans at War (1941-1945) lecture notes.

Selective Training and Service Act

Required all males aged 21 to 36 to register for military service in 1940.

GI

Abbreviation of 'Government Issue,' used to refer to American soldiers, sailors, and aviators in World War II.

Office of War Mobilization

Super-agency in the centralization of resources during World War II, headed by James F. Byrnes.

Liberty ship

Large, sturdy merchant ships that carried supplies or troops during World War II.

Victory garden

Home vegetable garden planted to add to the home food supply and replace farm produce sent to feed the soldiers.

Atlantic Charter

A joint declaration of principles made by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill in August 1941, that outlined their aims for the war and the postwar world; formed the basis for the United Nations.

Carpet bombing

Technique developed by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in which planes scattered large numbers of bombs over a wide area.

D-Day

June 6, 1944, the day the invasion of Western Europe began.

Battle of the Bulge

German counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg in mid-December 1944, which smashed into the U.S. First Army and pushed it back, forming a bulge in the Allied line.

Anti-Semitism

Discrimination or hostility, often violent, directed at Jews.

Holocaust

Nazi Germany's systematic murder of European Jews.

Concentration camp

Places where political prisoners are confined, usually under harsh conditions.

Kristallnacht

'Night of the Broken Glass,' a reference to the broken windows of Jewish shops that were looted and destroyed in Germany and Austria on November 9, 1938.

Warsaw Ghetto

Self-contained areas, usually surrounded by a fence, wall, or armed guards, where Jews were forced to live.

Wannsee Conference

Where Nazi officials met in January 1942 outside Berlin to agree on a new approach - 'the final solution to the Jewish question.'

Genocide

The deliberate destruction of an entire ethnic or cultural group.

Death camp

Existed primarily for mass murder.

War Refugee Board (WRB)

Created by Roosevelt in January 1944 to try to help people threatened by the Nazis.

Nuremberg Trials

Trials held in Nuremberg in November 1945 by an International Military Tribunal composed of members selected by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, where former Nazi leaders were charged with crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Bataan Death March

The gruelling 6- to 12-day journey faced by about 76,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.

Geneva Convention

Spelled out accepted international standards of conduct toward prisoners of war in 1929.

Battle of the Coral Sea

In May 1942, a largely American naval group engaged a superior Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia.

Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway opened on June 4, 1942, with a wave of Japanese bomber attacks on the island and a simultaneous, unsuccessful American strike on the Japanese fleet.

Battle of Guadalcanal

Allies first goal after the victory at Midway; to capture Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, where the Japanese were building an airfield to threaten nearby Allied bases and lines of communication with Australia.

Island-hopping

A military strategy of selectively attacking specific enemy-held islands and bypassing others.

Battle of Leyte Gulf

A three-day naval battle in October 1944 where More than 280 warships took part.

Kamikaze

Suicide planes.

Battle of Iwo Jima

One of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Battle of Okinawa

Fought from April to June 1945, The small island of Okinawa, little more than 350 miles from Japan itself, was historically Japanese soil.

Manhattan Project

Roosevelt organized the top secret Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Formed in Chicago in 1942; Believed in using nonviolent techniques to end racism.

Bracero

Mexican farm laborers brought to work in the United States.

Barrio

Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.

Interned

Confined, in camps in remote areas far from the coast.

Nisei

Citizens born in the United States to Japanese immigrant parent.