[Meanings of World War II]
Before class:
* Read Palmer, 801-832
* Key terms
Maginot Line conferences: Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam
Neville Chamberlain blitzkrieg
remilitarization of the Rhineland Dunkirk
Anschluss Vichy France
Francisco Franco Lend-lease
Spanish Civil War United Nations
appeasement Sudetenand
Munich crisis peace in our time
Nazi-Soviet Pact Atlantic Charter
battles: Britain, Moscow, El Alamein, Stalingrad Dresden
Albert Speer
Final Solution
* Key questions
1. What explanations may be suggested for the pacifism of the Western powers in the
1930s?
2. Describe the emergencies precipitated by Hitler from 1933 to the eve of the Munich
crisis.
3. Why may the Munich crisis be considered the climax of the policy of appeasement?
Explain the circumstances under which the Western powers abandoned the policy.
4. What caused the collapse of France in 1940? What happened to the country after defeat?
5. How did Britain react to the Nazi conquests through the summer of 1940? (See map on p. 818) Explain the
nature and results of the battle of Britain.
6. Explain the nature of the combination aligned against the Axis by 1942. Why were the
Russians dissatisfied with the failure to open a true "second front"?
7. What different attitudes toward the postwar settlement can be discerned in Roosevelt,
Churchill, and Stalin, respectively? What decisions were reached at the various
conferences they held? How did the peace settlement after WWII differ from the peace settlement after WWI?
8. The second World War has been called the greatest conflict in human history, in part
because of the heavy toll of civilian lives. Assess the responsibility of each of the major
participants for the destruction of populations and other atrocities during the war.
* Key quotation
From the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the outbreak of European war in 1939,
force was used by those who wished to revise the international order, but never by those who
wished to maintain it.
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