US History – Review Sheet – World War II

Names

Franklin D. Roosevelt - the thirty-second President of the United States. Elected

to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president
to have served more than two terms of office. He was a central figure of the 20th
century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. After 1938,
Roosevelt championed re-armament and led the nation away from isolationism as
the world headed into World War II. He provided extensive support to Winston
Churchill and the British war effort before the attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the U.S.
into the fighting.

Harry S. Truman - the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953). As

vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three
months after he began his fourth term.

Husband Kimmel - a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. He was the
commander of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Walter Short - a Lieutenant General in the United States Army and the U.S.
military Commander responsible for the defense of U.S. military installations in
Hawaii at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Chester Nimitz - the Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Naval Forces for the United
States and Allied forces during World War II. He was the United States' leading
authority on submarines, as well as Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation in
1939. He was his country's last surviving Fleet Admiral.

Douglas MacArthur - an American general and Field Marshal of the Philippine

Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and later
played a prominent role in the Pacific theater of World War II. He was designated to
command the proposed invasion of Japan in November 1945, and when that was no
longer necessary he officially accepted their surrender on September 2, 1945.

Dwight Eisenhower - nicknamed "Ike", was a General of the Army (five star
general) in the United States Army and U.S. politician, who served as the thirty-
fourth President of the United States (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he
served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for
planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-
45.

George S. Patton - a leading U.S. Army general in World War II in campaigns in

North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany, 1943–1945. In World War II he
commanded both corps and armies in North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater
of Operations.
Omar Bradley - one of the main U.S. Army field commanders in North Africa and
Europe during World War II and a General of the Army in the United States Army. He
was the last surviving five-star commissioned officer of the United States.

Bernard Montgomery - an Anglo-Irish British Army officer. He successfully

commanded Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in the
Western Desert Campaign during World War II, and troops under his command were
partially responsible for the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa.

Erwin Rommel - commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps and also became
known by the nickname "The Desert Fox” for the skilful military campaigns he
waged on behalf of the German Army in North Africa. He was later in command of
the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion at Normandy. He is
thought by many to have been the most skilled commander of desert warfare in
World War II.

Adolf Hitler - an Austrian-born politician who led the National Socialist German
Workers Party. He became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 and Führer in
1934. He ruled until 1945.

Joseph Stalin - was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. During that time he
established the regime now known as Stalinism. As one of several Central
Committee Secretariats, Stalin's formal position was originally limited in scope, but
he gradually consolidated power and became the de facto party leader and ruler of
the Soviet Union

Albert Einstein - a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his

theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2. Einstein
received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and
especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."

J. Robert Oppehheimer –

DATES

December 7, 1941 – Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor

June 6, 1944 – Invasion of Normandy

May 8, 1945 – The Day of Victory

August 6, 1945 – B-29 bomber Enola Gay hits Hiroshima with an Atomic Bomb

September 2, 1945 – Surrender of Japan

PLACES
Pearl Harbor - a harbor on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It is also
the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire
of Japan on December 7, 1941 brought the United States into World War II.

Sicily - an autonomous region of Italy in Europe.

El Alamein - played a major role in the outcome of World War II. Two extended
battles were fought in that area of Egypt.

Stalingrad - a city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia.

Midway - a low-lying coral atoll in the Pacific ocean. Place of the Battle of Midway

Guadacanal - The island was the scene of the important Guadalcanal Campaign
during World War II.

Iwo Jima-Okinawa –

Normandy - situated along the coast of France south of the English Channel
between Brittany (to the west) and Picardy (to the east) and comprises territory in
northern France and the Channel Islands. The territory is divided between French
and British sovereignty.

Hiroshima - most known throughout the world as the first city in history subjected
to nuclear warfare with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World
War II by the United States of America.

Nagasaki - During World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
made Nagasaki the second city in the world to be subject to nuclear warfare.

Yalta - a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.

Potsdam - the capital city of the federal state of Brandenburg in Germany. It is

situated on the Havel River, southwest of Berlin. It is a part of the Metropolitan area
Berlin/Brandenburg.

IDENTIFY

Neutrality Acts - a series of laws that were passed by the United States Congress
in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil going on in Europe and Asia that
eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism in
the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the
US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts, especially in Europe.

Lend-Lease Act - the name of the program under which the United States of
America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other
Allied nations with vast amounts of war materiel between 1941 and 1945 in return
for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda and the British
West Indies. It began in March 1941, nine months before the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor.

Atlantic Charter - negotiated at the Atlantic Conference (codenamed Riviera) by

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
aboard warships in a secure anchorage at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland,
and was issued as a joint declaration on August 14, 1941.

Blitzkrieg - a popular name for an offensive operational-level military doctrine

which involves an initial bombardment followed by the employment of motorized
mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise to prevent an enemy from
implementing a coherent defense.

Kamikaze - a word of Japanese origin, which in English usually refers to the suicide
attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan, against Allied shipping, in the
closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II.

Island-hopping - refers to the means of crossing an ocean by a series of shorter

journeys between islands, as opposed to a single journey directly across the ocean
to the destination. Used by US to skip unimportant islands and save lives.

Operation Torch - the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World

War II during the North African Campaign, started 8 November 1942.

Operation Barbarosa - the codename for Nazi Germany and Axis powers invasion
of the Soviet Union during World War II that commenced on June 22, 1941. It
remains the largest military operation in history.

Operation Overlord - the phase in the Western front of World War II that was
fought in 1944 between German forces and the invading Allied forces. The
campaign began with Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944 (commonly known as D-
Day), among the largest amphibious assaults ever conducted when nearly three
million troops crossed the English Channel and ended on August 25, 1944, with the
liberation of Paris.

Operation Downfall - the overall Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end
of World War II. The operation was cancelled when Japan surrendered following the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Union's declaration of
war against Japan.

Rationing - the controlled distribution of resources and scarce goods or services.

Meat was heavily rationed in WWII, as were other things like oil, etc.

ESSAYS

1. Pearl Harbor
2. Development of the Atomic Bomb

3. Life on the Home Front in WWII