AP®︎ European History: Topic 8.8 Flashcards

Germany, Italy, and Japan, whose offensives brought rapid early victories but whose resources could not sustain a prolonged global war

Coalition led by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China that defeated the Axis through cooperation and superior resources

“Lightning war” coordinating tanks, motorized infantry, aircraft, artillery, and radio to penetrate, encircle, and rapidly defeat enemy forces

Germany’s rapid 1940 defeat of France through the Low Countries and Ardennes, bypassing major French defenses and encircling Allied armies

French fortified defensive line along much of the German frontier that German mobile forces largely bypassed through the Ardennes in 1940

1940 naval and civilian-boat evacuation that rescued much of the British Expeditionary Force from France but abandoned its heavy equipment

Britain’s successful 1940 air defense against the Luftwaffe, aided by radar, integrated command systems, fighter aircraft, and civilian endurance

German bombing campaign against British cities that caused heavy civilian destruction but failed to break morale or force Britain from the war

System using radio waves to detect aircraft or ships, crucial to Britain’s air defense and later Allied air and naval operations

British prime minister whose leadership and broadcasts sustained resistance in 1940 and helped maintain Britain and Allied cooperation

Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, whose early Blitzkrieg gains ended in logistical overextension and sustained Soviet resistance

The vast German-Soviet theater where the USSR’s total mobilization absorbed and destroyed most of Germany’s land-fighting power

1942–1943 battle in which Soviet forces encircled and destroyed Germany’s Sixth Army, decisively shifting strategic momentum in the east

Massive 1943 tank battle that ended Germany’s ability to regain the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front

Japan’s December 7, 1941 surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, bringing the United States directly into World War II.

May 1942 carrier battle fought mainly by aircraft without opposing principal ships seeing one another, halting a Japanese advance

June 1942 American victory, aided by codebreaking, that sank four Japanese carriers and shifted the Pacific naval balance

Use of aircraft launched from naval carriers, which displaced battleships as the central instrument of Pacific naval power

Allied Pacific strategy of capturing strategically useful islands while bypassing some heavily fortified Japanese positions

Late-1942 British victory under Bernard Montgomery that stopped the Axis advance into Egypt and helped reverse the North African war

November 1942 American and British landings in French North Africa that helped trap and defeat Axis forces there

Allied decision to prioritize defeating Nazi Germany as the greater threat even after Japan attacked the United States

1943 meeting where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin coordinated strategy and confirmed plans for the Allied invasion of France

American program supplying Allies with weapons, vehicles, food, fuel, and materials before and during direct U.S. participation

Description of the United States as the mass producer of ships, aircraft, vehicles, weapons, food, and supplies for the Allies

Struggle to protect Allied shipping from German U-boats, won through convoys, escorts, radar, sonar, aircraft, and codebreaking

Underwater detection technology that, with escorts and depth charges, helped Allied forces locate and destroy German submarines

British codebreaking center that deciphered significant portions of German encrypted communications

German encryption system whose messages Allied codebreakers partially deciphered to obtain valuable military intelligence

Highly secret Allied intelligence obtained from decrypted Axis communications, especially German Enigma messages

Long-range bombing intended to destroy an enemy’s industry, transportation, oil supplies, cities, and willingness to fight

German flying bomb used against Allied cities late in the war but deployed too late and in too few numbers to reverse Germany’s defeat

First long-range guided ballistic missile used in warfare, developed by Germany and foundational to postwar missile and space technology

Opposition to Axis occupation through intelligence, sabotage, illegal publications, sheltering fugitives, and armed partisan warfare

Networks that gathered intelligence, sheltered fugitives, and disrupted German communications, especially around the 1944 Allied invasion

Communist-led resistance forces under Josip Broz Tito that tied down Axis troops and liberated much of Yugoslavia

1944 Polish Home Army revolt against German occupation that was crushed while expected immediate Soviet assistance failed to arrive

June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy, enabled by multinational planning, landing craft, air superiority, engineering, intelligence, and deception

Germany’s final major western offensive in 1944–1945, which surprised the Allies but exhausted irreplaceable German reserves

American-led scientific and industrial program that combined nuclear physics, state investment, and enormous facilities to create the atomic bomb

August 1945 U.S. nuclear attacks that released unprecedented destructive power from single weapons, killing civilians through blast, fire, and radiation before Japan’s surrender

Spread of nuclear weapons to additional states, beginning when the Soviet test of 1949 ended the American nuclear monopoly

August 1939 agreement that temporarily prevented a German-Soviet war and secretly divided Poland and much of eastern Europe into spheres of influence

Warfare using mass-produced mechanized weapons and state mobilization of industry, science, bureaucracy, and entire societies