World War II Terms – Flashcards

Cash and carry was a policy requested by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a special session of the United States Congress on September 21, 1939, subsequent to the outbreak of war in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Acts of 1936. The revision allowed the sale of materiel to belligerents, as long as the recipients arranged for the transport using their own ships and paid immediately in cash, assuming all risk in transportation.

Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." By allowing the transfer of supplies without compensation to Britain, China, the Soviet Union and other countries, the act permitted the United States to support its war interests without being overextended in battle.

(Jan 1941) Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans' entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Edward R. Murrow was born on April 25, 1908, in Polecat Creek (near Greensboro), North Carolina. In 1935, he became director of talks for CBS. He started news broadcasts in 1928 and continued throughout WWII. In 1951 he launched the television journalism program, See it Now, which created controversy with an exposé of Joe McCarthy. Murrow left broadcasting in 1961. He died on April 27, 1965, in Pawling, New York.

The Blitz, from the German word Blitzkrieg meaning 'lightning war', was the name used by the British press to describe the heavy air raids carried out over Britain in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The German air offensive was concentrated, aimed at the direct bombing of industrial targets and civilian centres which began with heavy raids on London during the latter phase of the battle for air superiority over the United Kingdom which became known as the Battle of Britain.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, led to the United States' entry into World War II. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning.

The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."

Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast) was the British-American invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign of the Second World War which started on 8 November 1942.

The Bataan Memorial Death March is a challenging march through the high desert terrain of the White Sands Missile Range. The memorial march is conducted in honor of the heroic service members who defended the Philippine Islands during World War II, sacrificing their freedom, health, and, in many cases, their very lives.

The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. Occurred in New Mexico.

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea conference and code named the Argonaut Conference, held from February 4 to 11, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union for the purpose of discussing Europe's postwar reorganization. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union.

Leapfrogging, also known as island hopping, was a military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against Japan and the Axis powers during World War II.

The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast.

Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) was an American general who commanded the Southwest Pacific in World War II (1939-1945), oversaw the successful Allied occupation of postwar Japan and led United Nations forces in the Korean War (1950-1953). A larger-than-life, controversial figure, MacArthur was talented, outspoken and, in the eyes of many, egotistical. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1903 and helped lead the 42nd Division in France during World War I (1914-1918). He went on to serve as superintendent of West Point, chief of staff of the Army and field marshal of the Philippines, where he helped organize a military. During World War II, he famously returned to liberate the Philippines in 1944 after it had fallen to the Japanese. MacArthur led United Nations forces during the start of the Korean War, but later clashed with President Harry Truman over war policy and was removed from command.

Nimitz was the leading U.S. Navy authority on submarines. Qualified in submarines during his early years, he later oversaw the conversion of these vessels' propulsion from gasoline to diesel, and then later was key in acquiring approval to build the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, whose propulsion system later completely superseded diesel-powered submarines in the U.S. He also, beginning in 1917, was the Navy's leading developer of underway replenishment techniques, the tool which during the Pacific war would allow the US fleet to operate away from port almost indefinitely. The chief of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation in 1939, Nimitz served as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 1945 until 1947. He was the United States' last surviving officer who served in the rank of fleet admiral.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower. (October 14, 1890 - March 28, 1969) Was an American politician and Army general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942-1943 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-1945 from the Western Front.

General George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 - December 21, 1945) was a senior officer of the United States Army who commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean and European theaters of World War II, but is best known for his leadership of the U.S. Third Army in France and Germany following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley (February 12, 1893 - April 8, 1981), nicknamed Brad, was a highly distinguished senior officer of the United States Army who saw distinguished service in North Africa and Western Europe during World War II, and later became General of the Army. From the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 through to the end of the war in Europe, Bradley had command of all U.S. ground forces invading Germany from the west; he ultimately commanded forty-three divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a single U.S. field commander. After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration and became Army Chief of Staff. In 1949, Bradley was appointed the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the following year oversaw the policy-making for the Korean War, before retiring from active service in 1953.

George Catlett Marshall, Jr. (December 31, 1880 - October 16, 1959) was an American statesman and soldier. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. He was hailed as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II.

The Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II, in which the Allies took the island of Sicily from the Axis powers (Italy and Nazi Germany). It was a large amphibious and airborne operation, followed by a six-week land campaign and was the beginning of the Italian Campaign.

The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France, on 6 June 1944. The invaders were able to establish a beachhead as part of Operation Overlord after a successful "D-Day," the first day of the invasion.

Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines began on 11 March 1942, during World War II, when General Douglas MacArthur and members of his family and staff left Corregidor Island, where his forces had been surrounded by the Japanese. They traveled in PT boats (patrol torpedo boats) for two days through stormy seas patrolled by Japanese warships to reach Mindanao. From there, MacArthur and his party flew to Australia in a pair of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, ultimately arriving in Melbourne by train on 21 March. In Australia, he made his famous speech in which he declared, "I came through and I shall return".

Okinawa is a Japanese prefecture comprising more than 150 islands in the East China Sea between Taiwan and Japan's mainland. It's known for its tropical climate, broad beaches and coral reefs, as well as its World War II sites. On the largest island (also named Okinawa) is Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum, commemorating a massive 1945 Allied invasion, and Churaumi Aquarium, home to whale sharks and manta rays.

The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February - 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the three Japanese-controlled airfields (including the South Field and the Central Field), to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. This five-week battle comprised some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War of World War II.

The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 - 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive campaign in its western theater during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, on the Western Front, towards the end of World War II, in the European theatre. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany's armoured forces on the Western Front, and they were largely unable to replace them. German personnel and later, Luftwaffe aircraft (in the concluding stages of the engagement), also sustained heavy losses.

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.

Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe.

Victory over Japan Day (also known as Victory in the Pacific Day, V-J Day, or V-P Day) is the day on which the Empire of Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war. The term has been applied to both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made - to the afternoon of August 15, 1945, in Japan, and, because of time zone differences, to August 14, 1945 (when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands) - as well as to September 2, 1945, when the signing of the surrender document occurred, officially ending World War II.