Student Sample for
U.S. History
Ms. Miranda

Adolf Hitler was Chancellor
of Germany from 1933 and
Führer (Leader) of Germany
from 1934 until his death. He
was leader of the National
Socialist German Workers
Party, better known as the Nazi
Party. German political and
military leader and one of the
20th century's most powerful
dictators, Hitler converted
Germany into a fully
militarized society and
launched World War II in 1939.
He made anti-Semitism a
keystone of his propaganda
and policies and built the Nazi
Party into a mass movement.
He hoped to conquer the entire
world.

BENITO MUSSOLINI,
(1883-1945), was the
Fascist dictator of Italy
from 1922 to 1943. He
centralized all power in
himself as the leader (il
duce) of the Fascist party
and attempted to create an
Italian empire, ultimately
in alliance with Hitler's
Germany. The defeat of
Italian arms in WORLD
WAR II brought an end to
his imperial dream and
led to his downfall.

Nazi Germany maintained
concentration camps
throughout the territories
it controlled. The first
Nazi concentration camps
were greatly expanded in
1933, and were intended
to hold political prisoners
and opponents of the
regime. They grew rapidly
through the 1930s as
political opponents and
many other groups of
people were incarcerated
without trial or judicial
process.

D-Day is the name given to
the landing of 160,000 Allied
troops in Normandy, France,
on June 6, 1944. The success
of the invasion of Normandy
was really the beginning of
the end for Nazi Germany.
The invasion, also called
“Operation Overlord,”
involved five separate
landings by American,
British, and Canadian troops
and was commanded by
American General Dwight D.
Eisenhower.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was
the most famous U.S. Army
general of World War II and
the 34th president of the
United States. A career Army
man, "Ike" rose to the level of
five-star general and
oversaw the Allied forces in
Europe, including the
famous D-Day invasion of
France in 1944. After the war
he served briefly as
president of Columbia
University, then was chosen
as the Republican candidate
for U.S. president in 1952.

Fascism is the name of an
authoritarian political movement
founded in 1919 by Benito
Mussolini. The Italian name of the
movement, fascismo, is derived from
fascio, "bundle, (political) group,"
but also refers to the movement's
emblem, the fasces, a bundle of rods
bound around a projecting axe-head
that was carried before an ancient
Roman magistrate by an attendant
as a symbol of authority and power.
The name of Mussolini's group of
revolutionaries was soon used for
similar nationalistic movements in
other countries that sought to gain
power through violence and
ruthlessness, such as National
Socialism.

Political police of Nazi
Germany. It was created by
Hermann Goring in 1933 from
the political and espionage units
of the Prussian police and by
Heinrich Himmler from the
police of the remaining German
states. Himmler was given
command in 1934. The Gestapo
operated without civil
restraints, and its actions were
not subject to judicial appeal.
Thousands of Jews, leftists,
intellectuals, trade unionists,
political clergy, and
homosexuals disappeared into
concentration camps after being
arrested by the Gestapo.

The Holocaust was the
systematic, bureaucratic,
state-sponsored persecution
and murder of
approximately six million
Jews by the Nazi regime and
its collaborators. "Holocaust"
is a word of Greek origin
meaning "sacrifice by fire."
The Nazis, who came to
power in Germany in
January 1933, believed that
Germans were "racially
superior" and that the Jews,
deemed "inferior," were an
alien threat to the so-called
German racial community.

Italy entered World War II on
June 10, 1940. In September 1940
Germany, Italy and Japan
signed the Tripartite Pact. By
1941, however, the Italians had
suffered multiple military
defeats; in Greece and against
the British in Egypt. It was only
through German intervention in
Yugoslavia, the Balkans and
North Africa that Italy managed
to avert a major military
collapse. By 1943 the Italian
people had lost faith in
Mussolini and no longer
supported the war; Italy had
lost its colonies, the allies had
taken North Africa in May and
Sicily had been invaded in July.

In 1940, Japan occupied
French Indochina (Vietnam)
upon agreement with the
French Vichy government,
and joined the Axis powers
Germany and Italy. These
actions intensified Japan's
conflict with the United
States and Great Britain
which reacted with an oil
boycott. The resulting oil
shortage and failures to solve
the conflict diplomatically
made Japan decide to
capture the oil rich Dutch
East Indies (Indonesia) and
to start a war with the US
and Great Britain.

On November 9–10, 1938, the
Nazis staged vicious
pogroms—state sanctioned,
anti-Jewish riots—against
the Jewish community of
Germany. These came to be
known as Kristallnacht (now
commonly translated as
“Night of Broken Glass”), a
reference to the untold
numbers of broken windows
of synagogues, Jewishowned stores, community
centers, and homes
plundered and destroyed
during the pogroms.

Lend-Lease was a
program of the United
States Federal government
during World War II
which enabled the United
States to provide the
Allied nations with war
material while the US was
still officially a neutral
country. The Lend-Lease
program began in March
1941, nine months before
the US entered the war in
December of 1941.

The Manhattan Project
was the codename for a
project conducted
during World War II to
develop the first atomic
bomb. The project was
led by the United States,
and included
participation from the
United Kingdom and
Canada. The scientific
research was directed
by American physicist J.
Robert Oppenheimer.

Nazi ideology stressed the
failures of communism,
liberalism, and democracy,
and supported the "racial
purity of the German people"
and that of other
Northwestern Europeans.
The Nazis persecuted those
they perceived as either race
enemies or Lebensunwertes
Leben, that is "life unworthy
of living". This included
Jews, Slavs, Roma, and socalled "Mischlings" along
with Communists,
homosexuals, the mentally
and physically disabled, and
others.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was
an American theoretical
physicist and professor of
physics at the University of
California, Berkeley. He is
best known for his role as the
scientific director of the
Manhattan Project, the
World War II effort to
develop the first nuclear
weapons at the secret Los
Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico. For this
reason he is remembered as
"The Father of the Atomic
Bomb".

Hitler’s invasion of Poland in
September 1939 was the
tripwire that set off World
War II, the most devastating
period in the history of the
Polish state. Between 1939
and 1945, 6 million people,
over 15 percent of Poland's
population, perished, with
the uniquely cruel inclusion
of mass extermination of
Jews in concentration camps
in Poland. Besides its human
toll, the war left much of the
country in ruins, inflicting
indelible material and
psychic scars.


Q-ships, also known as Qboats, Decoy Vessels,
Special Service Ships or
Mystery Ships, were heavily
armed merchant ships with
concealed weaponry,
designed to lure submarines
into making surface attacks.
This gave Q-ships the chance
to open fire and sink them.
The basic ethos of every Qship was to be a wolf in
sheep's clothing.
They were used by the
United States Navy as a
countermeasure against
German U-boats and
Japanese submarines.

During World War II,
battles were won by the
side that was first to spot
enemy airplanes, ships, or
submarines. To give the
Allies an edge, British and
American scientists
developed radar
technology to "see" for
hundreds of miles, even at
night. The research that
went into improving radar
helped set the stage for
post-war research into the
transistor.

The Sea Lion Operation
was Nazi Germany's plan
to invade the United
Kingdom during World
War II, beginning in 1940.
To have had any chance of
success, however, the
operation would have
required air supremacy
over the English Channel.
With the German defeat in
the Battle of Britain, Sea
Lion was postponed
indefinitely on 17
September 1940 and never
carried out.[

Beginning in 1940, new
tank designs were
prepared. The Battle of
France had shown the
importance of medium
tanks, and the United
States Army had a
requirement for a
medium tank with a 75
mm gun. Eventually,
this would become the
famous Medium Tank
M4, the most important
tank of the war for the
Western Allies.

Each country in the
war had an area
which they excelled,
and for the Germans
that was the powerful
U-boats with cannons,
big guns and
torpedoes, sailing the
Atlantic. There were
many operations for
U-boats during
WWII.

During World War Two,
mail and morale were one
and the same, and early in
1942 the military devised
a simple method to
deliver millions of pieces
of very important news
from home to the
servicemen serving in
Europe. It was called VMail, and, of course, the V
meant Victory (The
hyphen in the phrase "VMail" was printed as three
dots and a dash — Morse
code for the letter "V“.

The Warsaw Ghetto was the
largest Jewish Ghetto in any
German-occupied country, it
was located in occupied
Poland during World War II.
The ghetto was split into two
areas, the "small ghetto",
generally inhabited by richer
Jews and the "large ghetto",
where conditions were more
difficult. The two ghettos
were linked by a single
footbridge. The Nazis then
closed the Warsaw Ghetto
from the outside world on
November 16, 1940, by
building a wall and
deploying armed guards.

Xenophobia is a dislike
and/or fear of that
which is unknown or
different from oneself.
No community was
more significantly
affected by the World
War II "enemy alien"
detentions than
Japanese Americans. An
estimated 110,000 were
detained in internment
camps during the war.

The Yalta Conference, was
the February 4–11, 1945
wartime meeting of the
heads of government of the
United States, the United
Kingdom, and the Soviet
Union—President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, and
General Secretary Joseph
Stalin, respectively—for the
purpose of discussing
Europe's postwar
reorganization. Mainly, it
was intended to discuss the
re-establishment of the
nations of war-torn Europe.

"Force Z" was the British
Battleship HMS Prince of
Wales and Battle cruiser
HMS Repulse sunk by the
Japanese ARMY twin
engine bombers on
December 10, 1941. The
result of which, convinced
Naval Officers world
wide, that the Battleship
no longer ruled the seas;
AIRCRAFT now ruled the
seas, via the Aircraft
Carrier.