World War II

Hitler's War Aims

• Lebensraum
• Racial Conquest
• Aryans vs. Slavs
• German Unity
  • Political Uniformity
  • Racial Purity
• German Greatness

1938

• Appeasement
• Austria
• Czechoslovakia
• Munich Conference
• Neville Chamberlain

1939

• Invasion of Czechoslovakia
• Nazi-Soviet Pact
• Poland
• Blitzkrieg
• Phony War (Sitzkrieg)

1940

• France
• Tanks
• Dunkirk

Hitler's New Order

• German Superiority
• Anti-semitism
• Concentration Camps

Battle of Britain-Aug-Sept.

• Spitfire
• Radar

1941

Soviet Union

• Barbarossa--July 1941
• "Einsatzgruppen"
• General Zhukov
• The U.S.A.?

Pearl Harbor--Dec. 1941

• Japan
• President Roosevelt

1942

Wannsee Conference Jan 1942

• The Holocaust
• Auschwitz

North Africa

• Rommel
• Montgomery
• Stalingrad
• Red Army

1943

• Russian Advance
• V-2
• Second Front?

1944

• Normandy
• Air Forces
• Fire Bombing
  • Dresden before after
  • Tokyo
• Concentration Camps
• Rape

1945

• Yalta
•  
• Death of Roosevelt
• April 1945--Hitler, Mussolini
• Hiroshima
• Origins of Cold War

Questions for review:

No nation likes to be occupied by foreign military forces. Why were the German occupiers of World War II hated even more than usual?

What led to the military defeat of the Germans?

Why were so many more civilians killed in World War II than in preceding wars?

Which nation suffered the largest number of civilian casualties? Why?