WWII Review
Life in a Totalitarian State (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy & Soviet Union)
• Government Controls Human Rights• Mass Censorship• Mass Arrests• Secret Police• One Party System• Booming Economy (Not in Great Depression)• Restoring Lost Glory
Causes of WWII
• Treaty of Versailles• Rise of Fascism & Nazism• Appeasement- Sudetenland & Munich
Agreement• Fascist Aggression (Italian occupation of
Ethiopia)• Non-Aggression Pact- Germany does not have
to fight a two-front war
Alliances
Allies• United States• Great Britain• Soviet Union• France• Italy
Axis• Germany• Japan• Italy
World War II
• Operation Barbarossa (German Invasion of Soviet Union)
-Eventual loss due to Climate & Geography• December 7,1941
Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor
-US enters War
Main Turning Points of WWII1. Entry of US2. Battles of Stalingrad &
Midway3. Cracking of Japanese &
German Codes
Yalta Conference
– Big Three (Roosevelt, Stalin & Churchill)– Decisions• Divide Germany• Soviets taking eastern Europe• Set Up United Nations
The Holocaust (Final Solution)
• Deliberate murder of six million Jews• Carried out by Nazi Germany• Planned in great detail & required cooperation
of a lot of people• SS, led by Himmler, Heydrich & Eichmann, will
be in charge of Holocaust • Led to the formation of Israel after the WWII.• Leaders of Holocaust tried at Nuremburg Trials
(Charged with “Crimes Against Humanity”
The End of the War
• VE Day (Victory in Europe) May 1945. – Fall of Berlin
• VJ Day (Victory over Japan) September 1945– Dropping of Atomic Bombs
• Hiroshima• Nagasaki-Emperor becomes a Constitutional Monarch (No Longer Divine)-Japan becomes a representative democracy
Post-War Programs
United Nations• Goal is to maintain global
peace, promote trade & protect human rights
• Security Council-Most important- Job is to maintain
international peace & security
- 5 Permanent members: US, Russia, Great Britain, China & France
Marshall Plan• US Plan that gave massive
aid to western Europe to rebuild after WWII.
• Goal is to stabilize economies & governments so they will not fall to communism
Major Impacts of WWII
• US & USSR are now Superpowers• Europe is divided between two sides• Cold War• Japan becomes a Constitutional Monarchy• US rebuilds & reindustrializes Western Europe
& Japan• US no longer in Isolationism