World War II Summary

Purpose: To make sure that you understand World War I

Name_____________ Date______________ Per#______________

Directions: Read the following and annotate. Standard: 10.7 and 10.8 Subject: Causes and Effects of World War II Vocabulary
Nazism Churchill Roosevelt Pearly Harbor D-Day Hiroshima Munich Pact Appeasement Enigma Hirohito Nagasaki Bliztkrieg Final Solution Aryans Allies Axis Weimar Republic Nonaggression Pact

German Depression and the Rise of Hitler Because of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany fell into depression. People lost their jobs and were very poor. They could barely support their families. This was because of inflation (the value of money decreased). The people of Germany were very desperate and were looking for a strong leader. This allow Adolf Hitler to gain control. Adolf Hitler started out as a poor painter. He joined the German army during World War I. After World War I, he joined the Nazi Party. The main goals of the Nazi Party were to overthrow the Treaty of Versailles and get rid of the Jewish population of Germany. Hitler and the Nazis tried to take over the government through a coup. This did not work, and Hitler was put in jail. There he wrote Mein Kampf, which outlined his ideas for Germany. Within a few years, Hitler and the Nazis were elected to lead the government of Germany. The Axis Powers Adolf Hitler and the Nazis led the Axis Powers. Two other countries were part of the Axis Powers as well. Italy was led by Benito Mussolini, and Japan was led by Emperor Hirohito. Mussolini led a fascist government in Italy. Fascism is a type of government that is mostly run by the military. The people under fascism are required to be loyal to the country and obedient to the leader. Mussolini gained control when he and 30,000 of his supporters marched to King Emmanuel IIIs palace and demanded that Mussolini be put in charge. He also terrorized his enemies. Japan was also mostly run by the military, with Emperor Hirohito in charge. Japan started by invading the Chinese state of Manchuria. They went on to commit the Rape of Nanjing in which innocent Chinese civilians were killed. The League of Nations did nothing about this, and Japan was the first country to drop out of the League of Nations. The Allies The Allies were led by Great Britain and France. The other countries in the Allies were the United States and the USSR (Russia). Great Britain and France were not prepared for a war with Germany. When Germany threatened to take over Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France took a strategy of appeasement. Appeasement means to give in to an aggressor for peace. In the case of Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France gave in to Germany in order to keep peace. Germany was given part of Czechoslovakia, and promised not to go to war. Six months later, Hitler and Germany took over the rest of Czechoslovakia. During this time, the United States and the USSR stayed out of everything. The United States had a policy of isolationism. Isolationism meant that the U.S. did not want to get involved in war or in partnerships with other countries. The USSR had the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany. The Non-Aggression Pact was an agreement between Germany and the USSR to not fight each other. For this reason, both the United States and the USSR stayed out of the war until they were attacked by the Axis Powers. The Start of the War World War II officially started with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 by Germany. Germany used the blitzkrieg attack. This is an attack that uses heavy bombings and lots of troops to

quickly take over a country. Poland was conquered in less than two weeks. Germany went on to conquer several other countries. The next major country that Germany attacked was France. Italy, who was also part of the Axis Powers, attacked France as well, and France was conquered. Their leader, Charles De Gaulle, was forced to set up the French government in London, Great Britain. Great Britain was also attacked. Great Britain, led by Winston Churchill, had a way to defend against Germany though. Spies from Great Britain had stole a German code-breaking machine, called an Enigma. With this, the British could find out where the Germans were going to attack. Great Britain was able to avoid being conquered. Germany also attacked the USSR, breaking the Non-Aggression Pact. The USSR defended their country by burning much of the land. The USSR had a huge army, but it was not very well trained. The Holocaust While all of this was happening, the Jewish Holocaust was also taking place. Hitler did not like the Jews because they were not blond-haired blue-eyed Germans. He also did not like them because he blamed them for Germanys economic problems, even though they were actually caused by the Treaty of Versailles. The Holocaust had 8 stages. It started with the boycott of Jewish businesses. The Nazi government announced a boycott of all businesses owned by Jews. The next step was the Nuremburg Laws. These laws made it illegal for Jews and Germans to marry. It also required that Jews were a yellow star on their arm to show that they were Jewish. Next was Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). On this night, German citizens throughout Germany attacked Jewish people and businesses. This is also when Jews started to be put in camps. The concentration camps were built to hold and kill Jewish people. They were also placed in ghettos. The ghettos were a small part of the cities where Jews where forced to live. Many died of starvation in the ghetto. From this point on, Jews had two options. Deportation was one. This required Jews to leave Germany. The Final Solution was the other option. The Final Solution was the mass genocide of Jews. It was not until the end of the war that Liberation came, when the Jews were finally freed. We left off on World War II with Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was a U.S. military base in Hawaii. Japan attacked this base on December 7th, 1941. The reason for this attack was that the U.S. cut off oil supplies to China. Japan had been using these supplies, and decided to attack the U.S. They used kamikaze (honorable suicide) bombers in the attack. These bombers crashed their planes into U.S. ships as a way of killing more soldiers. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Germany, Italy, and Japan (the Axis Powers) and put over 100,000 JapaneseAmericans in concentration camps in the U.S. By 1944, the U.S. had put together its army, and prepared for its first major attack. On June 6 th, the U.S. worked with Great Britain to launch D-Day. D-Day was an attack on German forces in Normandy, France. They attacked Normandy, because the Germans had taken over France. This resulted in many people dying, but was the start of the end for Germany. Within a year, the U.S. and the Allies succeeded in conquering the Nazis and ending the war in Germany. All that was left was to end the war in Japan. The U.S. had been preparing the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project. After the war in Europe ended, Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman took over. He had to decide if the U.S. should use the bomb or not. Truman believed that using the bomb would save U.S. soldiers and after spending so much money on the bomb, Truman decided that he wanted to use it. The U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. 80,000 people died instantly. Overall, 200,000 people died from the first bomb alone. On August 9, 1945, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. This time, the Japanese immediately surrendered, ending World War II.