World War II Study Guide PDF

World War II Test Review - **Adolph Hitler** was the Nazi dictator in Germany - **Hideki Tojo** was the Militarist dictator in Japan. - **Joseph Stalin** was the Communist dictator in the Soviet Union (Russia) - **Winston Churchill** was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (Engla...

World War II Test Review - **Adolph Hitler** was the Nazi dictator in Germany - **Hideki Tojo** was the Militarist dictator in Japan. - **Joseph Stalin** was the Communist dictator in the Soviet Union (Russia) - **Winston Churchill** was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (England) - **Franklin Delano Roosevelt** was the President of the United States during WWII - **Dwight Eisenhower** was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe - **Douglas MacArthur** was the Commander of the Armed Forces in the Pacific - The **Munich Agreement** was an agreement concluded at [Munich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich) on 30 September 1938, by [Nazi Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany), the [United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom), the [French Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Third_Republic), and [Fascist Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Italy_(1922%E2%80%931943)). The agreement provided for the [German annexation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia) of part of [Czechoslovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia) called the [Sudetenland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland), where more than three million people, mainly [ethnic Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudeten_Germans), lived. The agreement, called **Appeasemen**t, was made in hopes that Hitler would stop their invasions of surrounding countries. The appeasement did not work, causing the beginning of World War II. - On December 7, 1941, the **Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor** Naval Shipyard near Honolulu, Hawaii. The US had previously placed sanctions on steel, oil, gas, and rubber when Japan occupied French Indochina in 1941. - **The Neutrality Acts** were a series of acts passed by the US Congress in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 in response to the growing threats and wars that led to World War II. President [**Franklin Delano Roosevelt**](https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/franklin-d-roosevelt) appears before Congress and asks that the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws passed earlier in the decade, be amended. Roosevelt hoped to lift an embargo against sending military aid to countries in Europe facing the onslaught of [**Nazi aggression**](https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nazi-party) during [World War II](https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii). - Many Americans worried that **citizens of Japanese ancestry** would act as spies or saboteurs for the Japanese government. Fear, not evidence, drove the U.S. to place over 127,000 **Japanese Americans in Interment (concentration) camps** for the duration of WWII. Over 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned during World War II. - **[The Holocaust](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust)** was the systematic, state-sponsored, persecution, murder, and attempted genocide of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945 across Europe and North Africa. The height of the persecution and murder occurred during World War II. By the end of the war in 1945, the Germans and [their collaborators](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/collaboration) had killed nearly two out of every three European Jews. The Nazis believed that Germans were racially superior. They believed Jews were a threat to the so-called German racial community. While Jews were the primary victims, the Nazis also targeted other groups for persecution and murder. The Nazis claimed that [Roma](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945), [people with disabilities](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program), some Slavic peoples (especially [Poles](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-victims) and [Russians](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-soviet-prisoners-of-war)), and [Black people](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust) were biologically inferior.  - **The Bataan Death March** began on April 10, 1942, when the Japanese assembled about 78,000 prisoners (12,000 U.S. and 66,000 Filipino). They began marching up the east coast of Bataan.  75,000 Americans and Filipinos walked 65 miles in 5 days to a POW camp. The prisoners were not given food or water. Approximately 17,000 died on the march. Thousands more died in the camp from starvation, disease, and murder. - **The Battle of Midway** was an epic clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the [attack on Pearl Harbor](https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor). The U.S. Navy's decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan's hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of [World War II](https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history) in the Pacific. - **The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944**, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The operation, given the codename OVERLORD, delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France. - On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the **world's first deployed atomic bomb** over the Japanese city of **Hiroshima.** The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on **Nagasaki,** killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb." President Harry Truman's decision to drop the Atomic Bombs **caused a long-term consequence**, other nations began to build atomic weapons, leading to an arms race during the Cold War. - The \"island hopping\" plan involved winning battles on Pacific islands to gain military bases and moving across the Pacific Ocean and closer to Japan. This strategy would span three years and would take U.S. forces in almost a full circle around the Pacific. - **The Manhattan Project** was an unprecedented, top-secret World War II government program in which the United States rushed to develop and deploy the **world\'s first atomic weapons** before Nazi Germany. The project was so secret, **Harry Truman did not know about it until after he became President.** - As the U.S. military recruited young men for service, civilians were called upon to do their part by **buying War bonds** to help finance the war effort, planting **victory gardens** which reduced civilian needs for commercially grown food, donating to charity, or, if they worked in industry. **Many women worked in non-traditional jobs** during the war years. Many items, including **meat, tires, gasoline were rationed** to ensure the fair distribution of scarce goods. - The **United States Office of War Information** (**OWI**) was a [United States government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government) agency created during [World War II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II). The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other forms of media, the OWI was the connection between the battlefront and civilian communities. The office also established several overseas branches, which launched a large-scale information and [propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda) campaign abroad. From 1942 to 1945, the OWI revised or discarded any film scripts reviewed by them that portrayed the United States in a negative light, including anti-war material. - A **Code Talker** is the name given to Native Americans who used their **tribal language to send secret, encoded communications during World War II**. US Marines had a native Navajo speaker in embedded each unit as they Island Hopped across the Pacific towards Japan. The Japanese never cracked the Marine Code. - The **Tuskegee Airmen** were dedicated, determined young men who volunteered to become America\'s first African American military airmen. Their service and valor helped increase support for ending segregation in the US after World War II. - **Radar**, which is essentially "seeing" with radio waves, found dozens of other uses in the war. It was used to aim searchlights, then to aim anti-aircraft guns. It was put on ships, where it was used to navigate at night and through fog, to locate enemy ships and aircraft, and to direct gunfire. It was put into airplanes, where it might be used to locate hostile aircraft or ships, or to navigate the aircraft, or to find bombing targets. Radar could be used to locate enemy artillery and even buried mines. - U.S. Marines invaded **Iwo Jima** on February 19, 1945, after months of naval and air bombardment. The Japanese defenders of the island were dug into bunkers deep within the volcanic rocks. Approximately 70,000 U.S. Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the battle. In thirty-six days of fighting on the island, nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines were killed. Another 20,000 were wounded. Marines captured 216 Japanese soldiers; the rest were killed in action. The island was finally declared secured on March 26, 1945. It had been one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history. A photograph taken of 6 Marines raising the US Flag on Iwo Jima was later turned into a memorial in Washington DC. - **Vernon Baker** was the only living African Americans to receive the Medal of Honor for service in World War II, an award delayed decades by bias and discrimination. In both war and peace, Baker served as an inspirational leader for the soldiers that served under his command and for generations to come.