Unit 19: WWII

• WWII Images


  • Title
  • Who
  • What
  • Where
  • When
  • Why
  • Other
  • Iconic photographs
• The depression helped undermine an already shaky world political as unrest spread across Europe and Asia
• International trade dropped by as much as two-thirds
• Unemployment rose
• Militaristic regimes sprang up that threatened peace
• FDR had no clear foreign policy plans
• Totalitarianism


  Government that exerts control over a nation by using terror to suppress individual rights and silence all opposition
• Fascism


  Emphasizes the importance of the nation or an ethic group and the supreme authority of a leader
• Communism


  Dictatorial government that does not respect individual rights and freedoms
• Militaristic authoritarian regimes that emerged in Soviet Union, Spain, Japan, Italy, and Germany threatened peace throughout the world
• Joseph Stalin


  • 5 year plan to modernize agriculture and build industries
  • Combined individual farms into collectives run by the state
  • Food shortages along with shortages of housing, clothing, and consumer goods
  • Sent millions to labor camps in Siberia
  • Purges of opponents in Communist Party and any other threat
• Francisco Franco


  • Civil War in Spain
  • Nationalists (rebels, Franco) vs. Republicans
  • International involvement
  • Nationalists- Germany and Italy
  • Republicans- Soviet Union
  • Fascism
  • Neutrality
• Guernica


  • Picasso painted Guernica at his home in Paris in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists.
• Benito Mussolini


  • Anger over Versailles Treaty- wanted more territory
  • Blackshirts
  • Appointed Prime Minister by King
  • Suspended elections, outlawed other political parties, created a dictatorship
  • Improved the economy
  • Took over Ethiopia in hopes of creating a new Roman Empire
• Adolf Hitler


  • Anger over Versailles Treaty
  • Fascism- Nazism
  • Jailed for trying to overthrow the government
  • Writes Mein Kampf
  • Plans for the nation
  • Blames WW1 defeat on Jews
  • Aryan race- expand land (eastern Europe)
  • Nazis gain power
  • Suspend freedom of speech and press
  • Secretly rearm Germany
  • Unemployment fell to 0%
  • Build autobahn
  • Remilitarize Rhineland
  • Propaganda
  • Anschluss- union with Austria
  • Take Sudentenland (area of northwestern Czechoslovakia)- Germany and Italy appeased by France (President Daladier) and England (Prime Minister Chamberlain)
  • Kristallnacht –Jews targeted
• Hideki Tojo


  • General then prime minister
  • Totalitarianism
  • Became imperialistic and more militaristic
  • Totalitarian- Emperor with military and civilian governments
  • Imperialistic and militaristic
  • Japan took over Manchuria and then invaded China
  • During 1930s, military established almost complete control over the government
  • Many political enemies were assassinated
  • communists persecuted
  • Indoctrination and censorship in education and media
  • Navy and army officers occupied most of the important offices, including the one of the prime minister
  • Wanted the following with joining the Axis: a free hand to continue with the conquest of China and Southeast Asia, no increase in US or British military forces in the region, cooperation by the West "in the acquisition of goods needed by our Empire"
• Alliances in WWII


  • Axis
  • Allied
  • Neutral
  • Axis-controlled
• Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact to prevent 2-front war, promised not to attack each other, offered Stalin control of eastern Poland and the Baltic states
• Germany invaded Poland


  September 1, 1939
• Britain and France declare war


  September 3, 1939
• Blitzkrieg


  "lightning war" - broke quickly through Polish lines
• Blitzkrieg


  1. SU and Germany divided Poland

  2. Sitzkrieg then fighting

  3. Phony war: winter of waiting

  4. Resumed attack April 1940

  5. Attack on Netherlands, Belgium, France: go through Luxembourg and Ardennes Forest

  6. Germans went around, instead of across, Maginot Line (series of concrete and steel fortifications armed with heavy artillery along France's border with Germany)

  7. Split Allied forces
• Germany occupied 3/5 of France (Resistance movement)
• Vichy France: southern France unoccupied by Axis but a puppet state; led by Gen. Henri Philippe Pétain
• Vichy France taken over by Germany November 1942
• The Battle of Britain (July-October 1940)


  • Luftwaffe (German air force): launch major offensive
  • Blitz (intense bombing) of London and other cities to break British morale
  • 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night
  • Many fleeing to the Underground stations that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night
  • In the worst single incident, 450 were killed when a bomb destroyed a school being used as an air raid shelter
  • British fought back with radar system
  • British able to rebuilt air strength quickly
  • Inflict major losses on Luftwaffe bombers
  • In September, Hitler postponed invasion of GB indefinitely
• Iconic photographs


  • St. Paul's Cathedral, London
  • Churchill's War Museum, London
• Isolationism was the post-WW1 policy in the 1920s and 1930s, with many Americans concluding entry into WWI and an active foreign role had been a mistake
• College students protested the war
• Neutrality Acts passed by Congress

  • 1st: 1935- Banned US from providing weapons to nations at war
  • 2nd: 1936- Banned loans to nations at war
  • 3rd: 1937- Permitted trade with fighting nations in nonmilitary goods as long as those nations paid cash and transported the cargo themselves (Cash and Carry)
• FDR promoted military preparedness, despite little national support
• As the Nazi air force attacked Britain, FDR pushed for increased military expenditures
• FDR's Quarantine Speech (1937)


  Compared military aggression to a disease, called for economic sanctions
• FDR was reelected in 1940 with the pledge to keep out of war, but he knew he would not be able to keep this
• Four Freedoms


  Freedoms FDR was promoting in his 1941 speech to Congress: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear
• The Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 authorized the President to aid any nation whose defense he believed was vital to American security
• Lend-Lease provided $48.6 billion in aid to the Allies, with the largest amounts going to Great Britain ($31 billion), the Soviet Union ($11 billion), France ($3 billion), and China ($1.5 billion)
• The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 solidified the alliance between Roosevelt and Churchill, and was fashioned after Wilson's 14 Points
• In June 1941 Germany invaded Russia, bringing the Soviets into the Allied alliance
• The Japanese threatened to seize Europe's Asian colonies, and after Japan seized Indochina, FDR cut off trade