World War II

1. World War II

2. Who was president during World War II? • Franklin D. Roosevelt

3. What event started World War II ? • Hitler invaded Poland.

4. What did the Soviet Union do when Hitler invaded Poland? • Invaded Poland and the Baltic countries from the east

5. What were the Axis nations during World War II? • Germany • Italy • Japan

6. What happened to France in the first two years of World War II? • France was overrun by Germany.

7. What was the Battle of Britain? • Hitler’s air attack on Great Britain

8. What country did Hitler invade in mid-1941? • The Soviet Union

9. What was the position of the United States during the first two years of World War II? • Neutral

10. What foreign policy had strong support in the United States during the first two years of World War II? • Isolationism

11. Despite its official position of neutrality, how did the United States increasingly help Great Britain? • Gave Great Britain war supplies and old naval warships in exchange for military bases in Bermuda and the Caribbean Sea

12. What caused America’s gradual abandonment of its policy of neutrality? • Between 1939 and mid-1941, Germany overran France and most of Europe, pounded Great Britain by air in the Battle of Britain, and invaded the Soviet Union.

13. Identify the Lend-Lease Act. • A law that gave the President authority to sell, lease, or lend military equipment to countries to defend themselves against the Axis powers

14. Who compared the Lend-Lease Act to “lending a garden hose to a next-door neighbor whose house is on fire”? • President Franklin Roosevelt

15. How did America’s policy towards Japan change after the Japanese invaded Manchuria and China during the thirties?

16. U.S. refused to recognize Japanese conquests in Asia. • U.S. imposed an embargo on exports of oil and steel to Japan.

17. What event brought the U.S. into World War II? • Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

18. Who called the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 “a date that will live in infamy”? • President Franklin D. Roosevelt

19. Who was the leader of Germany during World War II? • Adolf Hitler

20. Who were the Allies in World War II? • Great Britain • the Soviet Union • the United States

21. Who was the leader of Great Britain during World War II? • Winston Churchill

22. Who was the leader of the Soviet Union during World War II? • Joseph Stalin

23. What strategy did the Allies follow? • Defeat Hitler First

24. In what battle in North Africa did the British defeat German forces, thereby denying Hitler control over the Middle Eastern oil fields and preventing Hitler from attacking the Soviet Union from the south?

25. El Alamein

26. What happened at the Battle of Stalingrad? • Soviet army defeated the Germans • Prevented the Germans from seizing the Soviet oil fields • Turned the tide against the Germans on the eastern front

27. What happened at the Normandy landings (D-Day)? • American and Allied troops landed in France. • Liberation of Western Europe had begun. • It was the turning point of the war on the western front.

28. Who was the commander of the Allied forces at the D-Day invasion? • Dwight D. Eisenhower

29. What was the turning point of the war in the Pacific? • The Battle of Midway

30. What was the Allied strategy in the Pacific? • Island hopping

31. The invasions of what two Pacific islands brought American forces closer to Japan? • Iwo Jima • Okinawa

32. How did the United States end the war in the Pacific? • Dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

33. During World War II, when men left the factories to serve in the armed forces, who often took their jobs?

34. Women

35. What image represented American women who worked in factories during World War II? • Rosie the Riveter

36. What became the slogan of African-Americans on the home front during World War II? • Victory in war and equality at home

37. Were the United States armed forces racially segregated during World War II? • Yes

38. During World War II, what group of African-American flyers served with distinction in Europe? • The Tuskegee Airmen

39. During World War II, what Japanese-American regiments earned a high number of decorations for bravery? • Nisei regiments

40. What Native American language was used by the U.S. military during World War II for communication codes in the Pacific? • Navajo

41. What international agreement established rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war? • The Geneva Convention

42. What happened on the Bataan Death March? • American POWs in the Philippines suffered brutal treatment by the Japanese

43. How did the treatment of prisoners of war in Europe differ from that in the Pacific? • The treatment of prisoners of war in Europe more closely followed the ideas of the Geneva Convention.

44. What is genocide? • The systematic and purposeful destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

45. What was the Holocaust? • Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of European Jews.

46. What was Hitler’s “final solution?” • Exterminate (kill) all the Jews in Europe

47. Besides Jews, what other groups were victims of the Holocaust?

48. Poles • Slavs • Gypsies • “Undesirables” defined by the Nazis as homosexuals, the mentally ill, and political dissidents (protesters)

49. What were the Nuremberg Trials? • Trials of Nazi leaders for war crimes

50. What was the short-term significance of the Holocaust? • In the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders and others were convicted of war crimes.