WWII Final

1945 conference in which the Big 3 met and decided 1) Germany would be divided into occupational zones 2) there would be free elections in the newly liberated Eastern European countries 3) Soviets would enter war against Japan (entered Aug 8th 1945, just as Japan was about to surrender) 4) Soviets would control southern half of Sakhalin island and the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, and have special concessions in Manchuria 5) United Nations would be formed

German rocket propelled bombs that could travel over the English Channel; more psychological than effective

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization in the Soviet Union, responsible for political repression during Stalinism. It ran the Gulag system of forced labor, organized the subversion of foreign governments, deported millions of Kulaks, and ran the state espionage system., Stalin's secret police

December, 1943 - A meeting between FDR, Churchill and Stalin in Iran to discuss coordination of military efforts against Germany, they repeated the pledge made in the earlier Moscow Conference to create the United Nations after the war's conclusion to help ensure international peace.

was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final and most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Heinrich Himmler was the chief architect of the plan, and the German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler termed it: "the final solution of the Jewish question" ("die Endlösung der Judenfrage").[1] Mass killings of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made either by the time of or at the Wannsee conference, which took place in Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. The conference was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich. He was acting under the authority given to him by Reichsmarshall Göring in a letter dated July 31, 1941. Göring instructed Heydrich to devise "...the solution of the Jewish problem..." During the conference, there was a discussion held by the group of German Nazi officials how best to handle the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". A surviving copy of the minutes of this meeting[2] was found by the Allies in 1947, too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trials. By the summer of 1942, Operation Reinhard began the systematic extermination of the Jews, although hundreds of thousands already had been killed by death squads and in mass pogroms. In Heinrich Himmler's speech at the Posen Conference of October 6, 1943, Himmler, for the first time, clearly elucidated to all assembled leaders of the Reich to what the "Final Solution" referred.

Undertaken in November 1942, it employed an allied army of more than 100,000 troops. Led by General Eisenhower, the troops landed in Morocco and Algeria and pressed eastward to entrap the German forces being pushed by British forces in Libya. Surrounded, the Germans surrendered in May 1943.

a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in war factories during World War II, many of whom worked in the manufacturing plants that produced munitions and materiel. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military. The character is considered a feminist icon in the US.

Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there.

Jan. 14-23, 1943 - FDR and Chruchill met in Morocco to settle the future strategy of the Allies following the success of the North African campaign. They decided to launch an attack on Italy through Sicily before initiating an invasion into France over the English Channel. Also announced that the Allies would accept nothing less than Germany's unconditional surrender to end the war.

December, 1944-January, 1945 - After recapturing France, the Allied advance became stalled along the German border. In the winter of 1944, Germany staged a massive counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg which pushed a 30 mile "bulge" into the Allied lines. The Allies stopped the German advance and threw them back across the Rhine with heavy losses.

June 6, 1944 - Led by Eisenhower, over a million troops (the largest invasion force in history) stormed the beaches at Normandy and began the process of re-taking France. The turning point of World War II.

1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government. The failure of both the assassination and the military coup d'état which was planned to follow it led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo.[1] According to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 of these were executed,[1] resulting in the destruction of the organised resistance movement in Germany for the remainder of World War II.

Major German counter-offensive

German field marshal in World War II who directed the conquest of Poland and led the Ardennes counteroffensive (1875-1953)

Also known as the "Desert Fox" he was the the leader of the German African Corps. After being suspected of trying to kill Hitler, he commits suicide

Conference of Nazi leaders in January 1942 during which they designed the system of concentration/death camps to execute the final solution

Code name given to the development of the US atomic bomb during World War II. Work on the bomb was carried out in great secrecy by a team including US physicists Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The first test took place on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the next month the US Air Force dropped bombs on Japan.

second time the United States was on the offensive (the Battle of Guadalcanal had been the first); and the first offensive in the critical central Pacific region; also the first time in the war that the United States faced serious Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing

an air raid on Tokyo that took place in March 1945-->demonstrated the immense power of the U.S. bombing campaign; targets=the industrial districts of Tokyo-->total war-->more than 100 thousand people died within the first 6 hours of the firestorm-->LeMay was encouraged by this attack and before the end of the war, he ordered the bombing of 3 more Japanese cities

Bombs dropped on Germany and Japan with intentions to spread fires and take down cities

Japanese fighter pilots who destroyed American Warships by flying their bomb laden planes into them, suicide pilots.

The commander of the U.S. Air Force's 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific theater during World War II. LeMay is best known for developing the U.S. strategy of using massive incendiary bomb attacks on Japanese cities in order to break the Japanese will near the end of the war.

a campaign in the closing days of World War II in the Pacific (April to June 1945) In savage close-quarter fighting United States marines and regular army troops took the island from the Japanese; considered the greatest victory of the Pacific campaign. The island was the only one large enough in the Ryukyu chain to support an invasion force

The name of the American B-29 bomber, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets, Jr., that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

This battle occurred in the October 1944, due to the landing of Allie troops within the Philippines during the fall of 1944. Under the command of General Douglas McArthur, he was able to crush the Japanese navy. In return, the Japanese sent kamikazes afterward.

a bloody and prolonged operation on the island of Iwo Jima in which American marines landed and defeated Japanese defenders (February and March 1945)

Harry S Truman decision to use the bomb on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, August 1945, Enola Gay, killed thousands of Japanese, ended World War II in the Pacific Front