World War II History

109 flashcards by MentisLibrary

The war in order, from the Treaty of Versailles to the Tokyo trials, with a date on every card: the campaigns in Europe, the east, the Pacific, North Africa and Italy, the air and sea war, the Holocaust and the Allied conferences.

What was Operation Barbarossa?
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941 with roughly three million Axis troops along a front of about 1,800 miles, the largest invasion in history.
What was the Manhattan Project?
The Allied programme that built the first atomic bombs, running from 1942 to 1945, employing around 130,000 people and costing about 2 billion dollars.
What was the Battle of Britain?
The German air campaign to win control of British airspace, fought roughly from 10 July to 31 October 1940. RAF Fighter Command held, and the invasion of Britain was shelved.
What was Lend-Lease?
A United States programme, signed into law on 11 March 1941, that supplied weapons, food, vehicles and raw materials to Britain, the Soviet Union, China and other Allies without immediate payment.
What was the Battle of the Bulge?
Germany's last major offensive in the west, launched through the Ardennes on 16 December 1944 in bad weather that grounded Allied aircraft. The line was restored by 25 January 1945.
What did the Treaty of Versailles impose on Germany?
It assigned Germany responsibility for the war, stripped its colonies and territory, capped its army at 100,000 men and set reparations later fixed at 132 billion gold marks.
What happened in Manchuria in September 1931?
Japanese officers staged an explosion on the South Manchuria Railway near Mukden and used it as a pretext to seize Manchuria, setting up the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932.
When did Adolf Hitler become Chancellor of Germany?
On 30 January 1933, when President Hindenburg appointed him head of a coalition government after the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag.
What was the Enabling Act?
A law passed on 23 March 1933 that let Hitler's cabinet issue laws without the Reichstag or the president, converting his chancellorship into a dictatorship.
What were the Nuremberg Laws?
Two laws announced on 15 September 1935 that stripped German Jews of citizenship and banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and other Germans.
What was the remilitarization of the Rhineland?
German troops marched into the demilitarized Rhineland on 7 March 1936, breaking both Versailles and the Locarno treaties. France and Britain did not respond.
Why did the Spanish Civil War matter to the wider war?
Germany and Italy backed Franco's Nationalists while the Soviet Union backed the Republic, giving both sides a rehearsal for tactics, aircraft and armour between 1936 and 1939.
What began at the Marco Polo Bridge in July 1937?
A clash between Japanese and Chinese troops that escalated into the Second Sino-Japanese War, the conflict that merged into the Pacific war after 1941.
What was the Nanjing Massacre?
The mass killing and rape of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers by Japanese forces after Nanjing fell in December 1937. Estimates of the dead run from tens of thousands to 300,000.
What was the Anschluss?
Germany's annexation of Austria, when German troops crossed the border on 12 March 1938 and the union was confirmed by a controlled plebiscite in April.
What did the Munich Agreement concede?
Britain, France, Germany and Italy agreed on 30 September 1938 that Czechoslovakia would hand the Sudetenland to Germany. Czechoslovakia was not represented at the talks.
What was Kristallnacht?
A coordinated pogrom on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 in which synagogues were burned, Jewish shops destroyed, about 100 Jews killed and some 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.
What did Germany do in March 1939 that ended appeasement?
German troops occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, taking territory with no German-speaking majority and breaking the Munich promise outright.
What was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
A non-aggression treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union signed on 23 August 1939, with a secret protocol dividing Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Bessarabia into spheres of influence.
When did World War II begin in Europe?
On 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland from the north, west and south after a staged border incident at Gleiwitz.
When did Britain and France declare war on Germany?
On 3 September 1939, two days after the invasion of Poland, following an ultimatum Germany ignored.
What did the Soviet Union do on 17 September 1939?
It invaded eastern Poland under the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Poland was partitioned and Warsaw surrendered on 27 September.
What was blitzkrieg?
A method of attack that concentrated tanks, motorized infantry and close air support on a narrow front to break through and encircle, rather than grind forward along a line.
What was the Winter War?
The Soviet invasion of Finland, which began on 30 November 1939 and ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Finland ceded territory but kept its independence.
What was the Katyn massacre?
The Soviet secret police shot around 22,000 Polish officers, police and professionals in spring 1940, most of them at Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
What did Germany invade on 9 April 1940?
Denmark and Norway. Denmark surrendered the same day; Norway fought on with Allied help until 10 June 1940.
When did Winston Churchill become Prime Minister?
On 10 May 1940, the same day Germany attacked in the west, after Chamberlain lost the confidence of the House of Commons over the Norwegian campaign.
How did Germany attack in the west in May 1940?
Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940, then sent its armoured thrust through the Ardennes and reached the Channel at Abbeville on 20 May, cutting off the Allied armies in Belgium.
What was Operation Dynamo?
The evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June 1940, which lifted about 338,000 British and French soldiers to England using warships and hundreds of civilian craft.
When did Italy enter the war?
On 10 June 1940, when Mussolini declared war on France and Britain with the French army already collapsing.