People and Places

Words, Phrases, People & Places You Need to Know

Any student of the Second World War would be expected to recognize and understand the relevance of the following words, phrases, names, etc. This list will assist you in note taking.

The Versailles Conference (and Treaty)

The League of Nations

The Axis

Fascism (the Fascist Movement)

Benito Mussolini

Weimar Republic

Adolph Hitler

Nazism (the Nazi Party)

Mein Kampf

Isolationism

Maginot Line

Manchuko

Ethiopia

Spanish Civil War

Anschhluss

Appeasement

Sudetenland

Polish Corridor

Munich Conference

Neville Chamberlain

"Why die for Danzig!"

Nazi-Soviet Pact (also called the Stalin-Hitler Pact)

Russo-Finnish War

Phony War

Winston Churchill

"Blood, Sweat and Tears"

Stuka dive-bomber

Bombing of Rotterdam

Eben Emael

Sedan

Blitzkreig

"Fathers" of Blitzkreig:

  • Basil Liddell-Hart (England)
  • J.F.C. Fuller (England)
  • Charles de Gaulle (France)
  • Heinz Gauderian (Germany)

Panzer

Luftwaffe

The evacuation at Dunkirk

Hermann Goering

Marshal Henri Petain

The Vichy Government

General Charles De Gaulle

"France has lost a battle but France has not lost the war"

Free France

Admiral Jean Darlan

Battle at Mers-el-Kebir in Morocco

The Enigma Code (sometimes also referred to as Ultra)

The Purple Code

The New Order

Quisling

Concentration Camps

SS (Schutzstaffel)

Gestapo

Henrich Himmler

Adolf Eichmann

Operation Sea Lion

Operation Eagle

Grand Admiral Raeder

Radar

Robert Wattson-Watt

Hugh Dowding

The Battle of Britain

Spitfire

Hurricane

"Never in the course of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few"

"The few"

The Blitz

RAF

Graf Spee

Bismarck

Hood

Convoy

U-Boat

SONAR (also called ASDIC by the British)

Tripartite Pact (Germany, Italy and Japan)

Taranto

Afrika Korps

Gen. Erwin Rommel (The Desert Fox)

Destroyers-for-bases deal

Arsenal of Democracy

Lend Lease

Rudolf Hess flight to England

The Great Patriotic War

Lebensraum (living space)

Operation Barbarossa

General George C. Marshall

General Zhukov

Siege of Leningrad (900 days long)

Scorched earth policy

Tobruk

German "88" (both anti-tank and anti-aircraft; the best gun of the war)

Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere

Burma Road

Emperor Hirohito

US Embargo on export of scrap iron and steel to Japan

General Hideki Tojo

Cordell Hull

Chiang Kai-Shek

Singapore

Pearl Harbor

Admiral Yamamoto

December 7, 1941 (This is one of those dates that everybody should know!)

Arcadia Conference (in Washington, DC, December 41-January 42)

The Second Front

The "fathers" of strategic bombing in the 1920's and 30's:

  • General Douhet (Italian)
  • General "Billy" Mitchell (American)
  • General Hugh Trenchard (British)

General Arthur "Bomber" Harris

Orange War Plan

General Douglas MacArthur

Bataan

Corregidor

Bataan Death March

Wake Island

HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales

Doolittle Raid

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Coral Sea

USS Lexington

Midway

USS Yorktown Admiral Nimitz

The Final Solution

Holocaust

Nuremberg Laws (1935)

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)

Concentration Camps in Germany:

  • Dachau
  • Buchenwald

Babi Yar (in Russia)

Wannsee Conference

Extermination Camps:

  • Auchwitz/Birkeneau
  • Treblinka
  • Sobibor
  • Madeneck

Warsaw Ghetto

wolf packs

Scharnhorst

Gneiseau

Tirpitz

Convoy PQ-17

General Auchinleck

Battle of Alam Halfa Ridge

El Alamein

Quattara Depression

Tobruk

Stalingrad

General Paulus

Dwight D. Eisenhower (known as "Ike")

General Sir Harold Alexander

General Sir Bernard Montgoy (known as "Monty")

British Eighth Army (The Desert Rats)

The Dieppe Raid

Resistance Movement (also referred to as The Underground)

Operation Torch

Admiral Chester Nimitz

Admiral Ernest J. King

General Henry "Hap" Arnold

Solomon Islands

Guadalcanal

New Guinea

Rabaul

Battle of the Bismarck Sea

CBI (China-Burma-India Theater)

The "Hump"

The Ledo Road

General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell

General Orde Wingate

Merrill's Marauders

Casablanca Conference

Unconditional Surrender

Kasserine Pass

Soft Underbelly

Operation Husky

General George S. Patton (Old Blood and Guts)

General Albert Kessellring (Smiling Al)

General Mark Clark

Salerno

Gustave Line (in Italy)

Ploesti Raid

B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber

Kursk

T-34 (Russian tank)

Tarawa

Teheran Conference

Operation Overlord

Operation Anvil

Schnorkel

Mustang (P-51) long-range fighter

D-Day (June 6, 1944)

Mullbery Harbors

Omaha Beach

General Omar Bradley (The GI General)

July 20th plot

Colonel von Staufenberg

Operation Cobra

St. Lo

Avalanches

Falaise Pocket

V-1 (Buzz Bombs)

V-2 Rockets

Arnhem

Mariana Islands Campaign (Guam and Saipan)

The Battle of the Philippine Sea

The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot

The Battle of Leyte Gulf

"The Bulge"

Bastogne

Yalta Conference

United Nations

The Dresden Raid

The Remagen Bridge

Harry S. Truman

V-E Day Victory in Europe

Potsdam Conference

Iwo Jima

Okinawa

Kamikazi

Lord Louis Mountbatten

General William Slim

Operation Olympic

Manhattan Project

Atomic bomb (A-bomb)

Alamogordo, New Mexico

Hiroshima

Nagasaki

V-J day (Victory over Japan)

Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

Cold War