HIS 31 CHAPTER 24 POWER POINT World War II

KEY TERMS Popular Front – French alliance of communist, socialists, and moderates; goal was to combat fascism; governed France from 1936 to 1938; they were unable to pull France out of the Great Depression Axis Powers – in 1936, this alliance originally consisted of Germany and Italy (Rome- Berlin Axis); in 1939, the alliance became known as the Pact of Steel; Japan also joined Appeasement – giving into an aggressor’s demands in order to avoid war Munich Conference – French and British leaders appeased Hitler and allowed him to take the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in order to prevent war; appeasement failed because Hitler sent forces to overrun the remainder of Czechoslovakia; Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, which began WWII Blitzkrieg – German word for “lightning war”; these attacks consisted of highly coordinated air strikes and rapid deployment of tanks

KEY TERMS The Holocaust – Jewish word for the Final Solution; this was the systematic extermination of Jews, Slavs, and other peoples the Nazis deemed undesirable or inferior; Nazis, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, used gas chambers in death camps to kill prisoners thousands at a time; the six largest death camps were located in Poland D-Day – June 6, 1944; largest amphibious invasion in history; 176, 000 Allied troops as well as thousands of destroyers, naval vessels and aircraft invaded France; Supreme Allied Commander was General Dwight D. Eisenhower; American, British, and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of northern France (Normandy) in order to push back the German forces and end their occupation; Allies suffered huge losses, but we established a northwestern front Kamikazes - Japanese pilots who purposely crashed planes into Allied ships; over 2,000 kamikazes dive-bombed into Allied ships during the Battle of Okinawa United Nations – this organization was founded in 1945 by fifty-one nations to promote international peace and organization

ANALYZING QUESTION 1 Analyze some of the thinking behind Japanese aggression during the 1930s and 1940s Japan wanted to create an empire known as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere They rejected the “Western” system; they wished to rid their culture of individualism, liberalism, and materialism; they blamed Americans and Europeans for this influence China was a long-time rival of Japan; Japanese viewed China as a threat to building their empire Japan wanted to acquire economic and political dominance in Asia due to belief in their superiority among Asian peoples Nationalistic militarism led Japan to invade Manchuria in 1931 Japan invaded China in 1937 “Rape of Nanking” – Japanese forces invaded the Chinese Nationalist government’s capital; Japanese troops killed over 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians, including women and children; they also brutally raped women The United States stopped selling oil with the Japanese and froze their assets in our banks Japan attacked the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 because it was view as the last major threat to Japanese imperial expansion

ANALYZING QUESTION 2 How was the Holocaust connected to Hitler’s Nazi ideology and the course of WWI? Hitler wanted to maintain a high standard of living for Germans without having to call upon them to make sacrifices He implemented his “New Order”; program of economic exploitation and racial imperialism He create a racial hierarchy; Aryans, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, Dutch, Latin races, Slavs, Jews He wanted to absorb those most related to Germans and eradicate those judged inferior Nazis formally adopted a policy of genocide, know as the Final Solution, in 1942, in which the SS was charged with the task of eliminating Jews, Slavs, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and other “inferior” people from Europe

ANALYZING QUESTION 3 How did the Allies turn the tide and defeat the Axis Powers in WWII? Battle of Stalingrad – longest battle of the war; Russians mounted a huge counterattack against the German army; Russian winter took a huge toll on German forces and Hitler refused to allow his armies to retreat or to reinforce them; Russian women served as combat soldiers, tankers, and snipers; In January 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Red Army and they Germans never recovered from this massive loss of men and material D-Day Invasion – this invasion forced the Germans to fight a two-front war; Allies freed Paris and pushed the Germans out of France after establishing a northwestern beachhead at Normandy; Allied bombers destroyed German cities, manufacturing facilities, and transportations networks; Germany was running out of men, oil, equipment, and weapons; American and British forces invaded Germany in early 1945; Germany surrendered to the U.S. and Britain on May 8, 1945 and the Soviet Union on May 9, 1945 Victories in the Pacific – American forces destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in the spring of 1942 and this put the Japanese on the defensive fir the rest of the war; the Battle of Guadalcanal saw the success of the American island-hopping campaign in August 1942; in October 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Americans forces annihilated the Japanese fleet; on August 6 and 9, 1945, the USAAF dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which forced them to surrender

ANALYZING QUESTION 4 What problems faced negotiators trying to design a settlement at the end of WWII? The Allies (U.S., Great Britain, France, U.S.S.R.) disagreed over the fate of Eastern European countries Stalin argued that the Soviet Union needed these countries as a buffer zone due to Russia being invaded during WWI and WWII The U.S. and Great Britain demanded complete independence and democracy for these countries Potsdam Conference (July 1945) – Stalin proclaimed that the Soviet Union had to obtain complete security against Germany, so free elections were not allowed in Eastern European countries that Soviet troops occupied; Germany was divided into four occupation zones