...envisioned a vast, new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German dominance in Europe, its leaders calculated, would require war. 1939 After securing the neutrality of the Soviet Union (through the August 1939German-Soviet Pact of nonaggression), Germany started World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. Within a month, Poland was defeated by a combination of German and Soviet forces and was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 1940 The relative lull in fighting which followed the defeat of Poland ended on April 9, 1940, when German forces invaded Norway and Denmark. On May 10, 1940, Germany began its assault on western Europe by invading the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), which had taken neutral positions in the war, as well as France. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany, which provided for the German occupation of the northern half of the country and permitted the establishment of a collaborationist regime in the south with its seat in the city of Vichy. With German encouragement, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states in June 1940 and formally annexed them in August 1940. Italy, a member of the Axis (countries allied with Germany), joined the war on June 10, 1940. From July 10 to October 31, 1940, the Nazis waged, and ultimately lost, an air war over England, known as the Battle of Britain...
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...that would decide quite a bit about world affairs for decades to come. In 1933 Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany and as he began to consolidate his power he was rapidly developing an environment that would sustain his plans for the Third Reich. He viewed the treatment of Germans after World War I as unnecessarily drastic and used this in his emphatic speeches to convince the German people to stand up against the sanctions imposed on them by the Treaty of Versailles. He viewed the treaty as a continuation of French aggression by diplomatic means through occupation and war indemnity. The ensuing war reparations had effectively crippled the German economy and after Black Tuesday and the collapse of the United States economic system the Germans could no longer rely on loans provided by the US and rapid inflation caused their currency to skyrocket to nearly four billion Reichsmarks for every one US dollar. The German government had been struggling to find a leader and after repeated votes of non-confidence towards the existing system the Nazi party, and it’s radical agenda perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, gained complete control of the German government. He preached that the German people were the rightful race to rule the world and the subsequent military buildup would lead other nations in Europe to begin to fear the coming of another war that could get out of control just as World War I had almost twenty years earlier. To attempt to ensure...
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...explain why the United States acted as it did throughout the conflict. LO 4 Describe and discuss the American home front during World War II, paying special attention to long-term societal changes. LO 5 Explain how World War II was brought to an end, both in Europe and in the Pacific, and discuss the immediate aftermath of the war both in America and around the world. 9781133438212, HIST2, Volume 2, Kevin M. Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization Just as World War II transformed the world, it also transformed the United States’s role in world affairs. “ ” If the New Deal could not end the Great Depression, a world war would. Beginning in the late 1930s, talk of war became more insistent and The Second World War can be seen as an energizing urgent in Europe. The finanevent in American history rather than a destructive one. cial uncertainty of the worldStrongly Disagree Strongly Agree wide depression had created 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 political vulnerabilities that assisted the rise of militant, expansion-minded dictators in Italy and Germany. Americans watched the continent nervously, uncertain how European affairs might affect them. Little did they know that, in the end, the Second World War would transform America even more than the New Deal. The war prompted a tremendous mobilization of American resources, at a level unseen since the Civil War....
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...treaties---all proved meaningless in view of the growth of Nazi Germany and its deliberate scrapping of the postwar settlement in the 1930s ---World War II was largely made possible by the failure of Britain and France to oppose strongly flagrant German violations of the Treaty of Versailles A. The Role of Hitler 1. WW II in Europe had its beginnings in the ideas of Adolf Hitler, who believed that only Aryans were capable of building a great civilization 2. Hitler was a firm believer in the doctrine of Lebensraum which stated that a nation’s power depended on the amount and kind of land it occupied 3. Hitler thought that the Russian Revolution created conditions for Germany’s acquisition of land to its “racially inferior Slavic” east (Mein Kampf spelled out Hitler’s desire to expand eastward and to prepare for the inevitable war with the “Bolshevik Jew-led” Soviet Union) 4. Hitler always returned to his basic ideological plans for racial supremacy and empire as keys to the blueprint for achieving his goals 5. Hitler’s desire to create an Aryan empire led to slave labor and even mass extermination on a scale that would have been incomprehensible to previous generations of Germans (or anybody else outside of Uncle Joe’s reach) B. The “Diplomatic Revolution” (1933-1936) 1. between 1933 and 1936, Hitler and Nazi Germany achieved a diplomatic revolution in Europe 2. For Hitler, it was most important that Germany...
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...Turning Point In World War II For this essay I am going to study the Battle of Britain and analyse its importance as a *turning point of World War II. *A turning point is a particular decision or act that significantly alters the turnout of a conflict. In 1939 Adolph Hitler led Nazi Germany on a crusade to dominate all of Western Europe. After crushing Poland, Norway and eventually France with their vicious and relentless “Blitzkrieg” or “Lightening War” tactics Germany had only one obstacle left before it attained total Western European domination; Great Britain. After a humiliating defeat in France, the British Expeditionary Force, or B.E.F. as it was better known, was faced with a terrible choice. Either stay to fight the German advance and risk encirclement, or pull back to the beaches of Dunkirk, and attempt to get as many men as possible back to Great Britain. Eventually the British and French commanders decided that France was lost and that they should evacuate as soon as possible. What followed was a mass withdrawal using as many floating vessels as were available. Under heavy bombardment from both land and air, cargo ships, freighters, battleships and even fishing boats were used in an attempt to pull the B.E.F. and the “Free French” army back to the relative safety of Dover, leaving almost all their valuable equipment behind. With his empire in the West relatively safe, Hitler turned his attention to the East, and Russia. Under the control of Communist dictator...
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...Adam Raabe History 374 Informing the Public of Genocide World War II was one of the worst and horrific conflicts that took place during recent history because of the Nazi’s strict ideals to create a master race and their means of doing so. During the start of World War II the American public was in a period of isolation. This isolation period made the American public view the Second World War as just another European conflict. World War II allowed the Nazi regime tried to cover up the genocide of any person that they did not find to fit in their master Aryan race. Although the American public was informed of the events that were taking place during the war. They were even informed that the Jewish people were being victimized and killed throughout the war. Looking at American newspaper articles that were published during the war, we can see how the American public could have had the knowledge about the genocide that was being committed. Looking strictly at the topic of Jewish people that were living in Poland under the Nazis, it becomes apparent that the American public had the knowledge that Genocide was taking place during the war. The first article was ran in 1940 by the New York Times and states that polish Jews who were living under the Nazis, were being shoot, staved and beaten. The article mentions the “neighborhood of Lodz” (pg. 8) and notes how Jews are treated extremely harsh there. The article even goes on the explain several of the laws that where placed to...
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...When I looked back at the war, the thoughts of me toward the Americans would be the drastic changed that was made in America. Many of us may know the war in Europe and Asia had started in 1939, roughly after German had aggression against neighboring states. This was before America has administrated their neutrality laws. Through many Americans, they believe that the involvement of United States entered the war would powers Great Britain to win. On September 1939, President Roosevelt have administrated a revision of the neutrality laws that allowed U.S. arms makers to sell their products to the belligerents and to transport the merchandise on their own ships. The surface of this revision laws was just a theoretically so that American could purchase weapons. At the times, Roosevelt knew that this practice would only benefit the Allies and it would prevent German from crossing the Atlantic. By doing this, many Americans are confident that the Allies would win. However, in the spring of 1940, a dashed had come through and German had conquered Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France. Moreover, German’s army and air force were far larger, but British on the other hand were far more powerful with its Royal Navy. Not long before British Isles was subjected an attacks from the air and the sea by the late 1940. This was such a trend that shocks many American people and the deepened dilemma of neutrality. Thousands of questions had been competing within everyone in the United States...
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...in, in order to promote the idea of not having world conflict. 6. Example of U.S internationalism in the 1920’s and 1930’s included the United States attempted to stay out of world affairs. It was only after WWII that the U.S. took a conservative internationalist approach, first under Truman, then later under Reagan, both of whom made great strides to eliminate the threat of Communism. 7. U.S isolationism in the 1930’s was largely the result of reflected by Neutrality Act. 8. Many Americans had difficulty with the policy of neutrality because they were seeing the Atlantic Ocean as less and less of a protective barrier than what it had been. 16-2 1. In 1938, Hitler ordered the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland for the purpose of Austria and Czechoslovakia, producing more living space for Germans as well as to control its important natural resources. 2. In response to German...
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...Britain and World War II [pic] In this module you will study: • The Phoney War • Evacuation • Dunkirk • The Battle of Britain • The Blitz • Conscription • The Battle of the Atlantic • D-Day • Censorship and Propaganda • Internment • The role of Women in the War • Rationing |The Phoney War |Source A | | |3 Sept: 827,000 children and 535,000 | |Dawn: This Phoney war gets on my nerves. If we’re going to have a war, I wish |pregnant mothers have been evacuated from| |they’d get it started. |the towns to the country. | |Mum: Just ignore her. |4 Sept: a Nazi U-boat sinks the SS Athena| |Hope and Glory |– 112 passengers died. | | |9 Sept: RAF drops 12 million propaganda | |By the end of September, Germany and Russia had defeated Poland. Everyone expected |leaflets on Germany. | |Hitler to attack western Europe with his ‘blitzkrieg’ tactics, but nothing happened |15...
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...adjourned accomplishing nothing, furthermore strengthening extreme nationalism. II. Freedom for (from?) the Filipinos and Recognition for the Russians 1. With hard times, Americans were eager to do away with their liabilities to the Philippine Islands, and American sugar producers wanted to get rid of the Filipino sugar makers due to competition. 2. In 1934, Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act, stating that the Philippines would receive their independence after 12 years of economic and political tutelage, in 1946. i. Army bases were relinquished but naval bases were kept. 3. Americans were freeing themselves of a liability, creeping into further isolationism, while militarists in Japan began to see that they could take over the Pacific easily without U.S. interference or resistance. 4. In 1933, FDR finally formally recognized the Soviet Union, hoping that the U.S. could trade with the USSR and that the Soviets would discourage German and Japanese aggression. III. Becoming a Good Neighbor 1. In terms of its relations with Latin America, the U.S. wanted to be a “good neighbor,” showing that it was content as a regional power, not a world one. 2. In 1933, FDR renounced armed intervention in Latin America at the Seventh Pan-American Conference in...
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...The Forgotten Fighting Spirit of Poland War is not won by standing alone. The evil posed by Hitler required the forces of many great nation to oppose, including the British, the French, the Soviets, and the Americans. However, the contributions of the smaller nations to the Allied war effort largely go unremembered by the general public, especially the contributions of Poland and its Home Army. Mostly seen as a vicitm, rather than a contributor to the overall victory in Europe, Poland's surviving armies get very little mention, if at all within the context of the shallow military historians of today. The foreword to Micheal Peszke's The Polish Underground Army, by Piotr S. Wandycz states that “Poland’s contribution to the Allied war effort is often minimized or glossed over. . . And yet, in proportion to the size and population of their state, the Poles rendered great services in the war against the axis powers.” They helped to reconstruct the German Enigma machine ciphers and handed it over to the French and the British. In the September 1939 campaign, Polish soldiers inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans, who lost about 300 planes and 1000 tanks in their Blitzkrieg in Poland. Wandycz says that Peszke’s book can be viewed as a noble attempt to evaluate the military and strategic thinking of the Polish government in exile in Paris and London. Michael Alfred Peszke is no stranger to the field of Poland during World War II. This is his third book related to wartime Poland;...
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...of Shannon Airport by American troops we, as Irish citizens, have every right to be concerned about where we stand on the question of neutrality. After all it is a treasured ‘sacred cow’ of the Irish Constitution. Or is it? A look at the record shows that, during World War II, Fianna Fail was not only a ‘slightly constitutional party’ but Ireland was also a slightly neutral country! | Crashed "Liberator" aircraft, Co. Donegal, 1943 | 'The focal point of the war against England and the one possibility of bringing her to her knees is in attacking sea communications in the Atlantic ' ,said Karl Donitz, Grand Admiral, German U-boats. For him, things were looking good. In December 1939, the opening year of World War 2, German submarines operating together with planes and surface raiders, accounted for 754,000 tons of Allied shipping losses. This represented 99.6 per cent of all shipping sunk in 1939. At this point in the war Britain had less than 3 weeks supply of wheat; stocks of many other commodities such as sugar had fallen to under 6 weeks supply. A solution had to be found, and quickly. England in great danger As Europe fell to the advancing German armies, the UK became more and more isolated and increasingly dependent on the Atlantic trade route for industrial raw materials and food. If this lifeline were broken England would starve both physically and financially. Following the successful conclusion of the 'Battle of Britain' in October 1940 England prepared immediately...
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...1940s Architecture The Pentagon, built in 1943, has twice as many bathrooms as needed. The reason for this is because the Pentagon was built in a time when the United States was still segregated by race, therefore when they built the pentagon they needed bathrooms for whites, and bathrooms for blacks so, now, since the United States is no longer segregated by race, the pentagon has twice as many bathrooms than needed. In the 1940s architecture was still based upon segregation laws and the separation of blacks and whites in restrooms and other buildings and that was one great difference in architecture in the 1940s and architecture today. From 1942 to 1945, The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a mass homicide by Adolf Hitler's Nazi government system which killed around six million...
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...mark the beginning of the greatest of global conflicts. In 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, a northern province of China. In July 1937, the Japanese moved again, this time directly against the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. The atrocities that followed shocked the world. Meanwhile, in 1936, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler moved aggressively into the Rhineland, previously a demilitarized zone, and in 1938, he incorporated Czechoslovakia and Austria into the Third Reich. By this time, the Western world was fully alert to the menace of the fanatically ambitious and confident Fuhrer. Then, in the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his armies into Poland. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Within a matter of weeks the Soviet Union, which had recently signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler, attacked Poland from the east. Within a month, Polish resistance collapsed, and Warsaw fell. World War II had begun. In general, the American people did not want to have any part in a European war. They felt protected by great oceans on both sides of the North American continent. And they felt that, in World War I, American boys had fought and bled in France mostly to make fortunes for munitions makers and arms merchants. Moreover, the United States had allowed its armed forces to wither in the 1920s and 1930, so that when World War II broke out in Europe, its army of 190,000 men ranked about eighteenth in the global rankings...
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...Americans were exposed to propaganda encouraging them to support the war effort by doing simple tasks, such as donating blood, working harder at their jobs, saving cigarette tinfoil wrappers, and buying war bonds. President Roosevelt saw the importance of providing the country with information and opinions, so he formed the Office of War Information with intent to disperse the public opinion of the true enemy of war and responsibilities of each American during the war. Enemy soldiers were a target audience for discouraging messages, sending messages to suggest a wrong allegiance and encouraged doubt for their cause. In the 1940’s, the movie industry ignited. Nearly ninety million Americans went to the movies each week during the war, and movie companies...
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