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Nazism
Nazism: The German National Socialist Party under Adolf Hitler, a beilef in the dominance of the Aryan Race. -
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FDR
As early as 1937, FDR warned the American public about the dangers posed by hard-line regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan, though he stopped short of suggesting America should abandon its isolationist policy. After World War II broke out in September 1939, however, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in order to revise the country’s existing neutrality acts and allow Britain and France to purchase American arms on a “cash-and-carry” basis. -
Rape of Nanking
In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking (or Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Nanking, then the capital of Nationalist China, was left in ruins,and it would take decades for the city and its citizens to recover from the savage attacks. -
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Dictator
Dictator: A person granted absolute power
Under the leadership of dictator Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany aimed at the acquisition of a vast, new empire of "living space"in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. -
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Fascism
Fascism: A system of government characterized by dictatorship, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition, and extreme nationalism and racism. -
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Propaganda
World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, both by Hitler's propagandist Joseph Goebbels and the British Political Warfare Executive. -
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Adolf Hitler
Hitlers establishment of concentration camps to inter Jews and other groups he believed to be a threat to Aryan supremacy resulted in the death of more than 6 million people in the Holocaust. His attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II, and by 1941 Germany occupied much of Europe and North Africa. The tide of the war turned following an invasion of Russian and the U.S. entry into battle, and Hitler killed himself shortly before Germany’s defeat. -
U.S declares Nuetrality
As war broke out in Europe, American sentiment heavily favored isolationism. With the nation still skeptical of Allied propaganda after it had lured the U.S. into the first World War, the United States declares its neutrality in the European War. -
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Benito Mussolini
Mussolini’s military expenditures in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean region, though they exhausted his armed forces by the late 1930s. Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership during World War II, but he was killed shortly after the German surrender in Italy in 1945. -
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Women’s Roles in WWII
During World War II, some 350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces, both at home and abroad.Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home. -
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War Bonds and Rationing
United States issued war bonds during World War II, when full employment collided with rationing, and war bonds were seen as a way to remove money from circulation as well as reduce inflation.The government found it necessary to ration food, gas, and even clothing during that time. Americans were asked to conserve on everything. With not a single person unaffected by the war, rationing meant sacrifices for all. -
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Winston Churchill
Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to provide war supplies–ammunition, guns, tanks, planes–to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war. -
Lend-Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries received weapons under this law. -
Pearl Harbor
ust before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
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Japanese-American internment camps
on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty. The War Relocation Authority was created to administer the assembly centers, relocation centers, and internment camps, and relocation of Japanese-Americans began in April 1942. -
Victory Gardens
From 1942 through 1945, Americans plante more than 30 million "victory gardens," as they were known, including 20 million in 1943 alone. Families built these gardens not just in backyards, but also on rooftops,publicparks and empty lots. American farmers produced 10 million tons of food in 1943, ehile victory gardens produced an additional 8 million tons. -
Office of War Information
To attract U.S. citizens to jobs in support of the war effort, the government created the Office of War Information (OWI) on June 13, 1942, some six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. OWI photographers documented American life and culture by showing aircraft factories, members of the armed forces, and women in the workforce. -
Audie Murphy
Audie Murphy wrote the final chapter in one of the most storied military careers in American history.During intense fighting in the Colmar Pocket along the French-Swiss border,19-year-old 2nd Lieutenant manned a machine gun on a burning tank destroyer and made a desperate solo attack against German forces. Murphy won the Medal of Honor for his actions, and later parlayed his military celebrity into a successful post-war film career. -
Vernon Baker
In the spring of 1945, Vernon Baker - the only black officer in his company - was in command of a weapons platoon made up of two light-machine-gun squads and two mortar squads. His unit was near Viareggio on April 5th when it was ordered to launch a dawn assault against Castle Aghinolfi, a mountain stronghold occupied by the Germans. On the second day of the assault, Baker led a battalion that finally secured the mountain for the American soldiers. -
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Harry S. Truman
Harry Truman, the 33rd U.S. president, assumed office following the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. In the White House from 1945 to 1953, Truman made the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, helped rebuild postwar Europe, worked to contain communism and led the United States into the Korean War. -
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Fire Bombing of Dresden
From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II, Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians were dead.
