World War II: Causes, Strategies, and Consequences

1. Lesson 1 • 1. Hitler came to believe that the Germans were a superior race who should rule all others. He planned to conquer the Soviet Union so the Germans could expand their population, using as slaves the people who already lived there. • 2. Most world powers were so traumatized by World War I that they were desperate to avoid another war. They were also distracted by economic problems.

2. Lesson 2 • 3. He used a blitzkrieg, or "lightning war" in which armored panzer divisions were backed up by airplanes. Each panzer division was a strike force of about 300 tanks, which broke through defensive lines effectively. Hitler moved fast to surprise the Allies, convince them of German superiority, and make them lose hope. • 4. In June 1942, at Midway Island, the United States established naval superiority in the Pacific. In August 1942, Americans attacked Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

3. Lesson 3 • 5. In all four nations, children had less of everything, including food. British children were relocated. In the Soviet Union, children suffered from severe housing shortages and many died of starvation. Children in the United States experienced housing shortages and racism. In Germany and occupied Eastern Europe, many schools were closed. Many children lost one or both parents in the war. Late in the war, young German teens served on the front lines. Japan mobilized everyone over the age of 12. • 6. The goal of targeting civilians was to force peace by causing fear and undermining morale. British, German, and Japanese civilians became more determined to win the war. Until the United States used atomic bombs it was not successful.

4. Lesson 4 • 7. The Nazis used an elite guard, the Einsatzgruppen, to round up Jews in their villages and execute them. At labor and death camps, many people were starved, killed, or subjected to deadly medical experiments. • 8. Japan used the slogan to try to persuade the countries it took over that it was rescuing them from Western colonizers. But the reality was that power rested with Japanese authorities. • Lesson 5 • 9. The Allies probably could not have beaten Germany if the D-Day invasion had failed because its enormous size was crucial to defeating the well-provisioned German army. • 10. After World War II, Western countries feared an international Communist conspiracy, and the Soviet Union feared global domination by capitalist countries.

5. 21st Century Skills • 11. Japan needed raw materials found in those regions. If it attacked Southeast Asia, it would lose the raw materials it was receiving from the United States. • 12. The Final Solution was to try to kill every Jew in Europe. Among the effects were the murders of nearly two out of every three European Jews. Ever since the Holocaust, people have grappled with its horror and inhumanity.

6. Document-Based Questions • 14. He calls Japan "the enemy" to convince the American people and the world that the United States was defending itself when it dropped the atomic bomb. • 15. It is not inaccurate, but it is incomplete. It does emphasize the sheer power of the bomb, but it does not acknowledge that most of the victims were civilians.

7. Extended-Response Questions • 16. Germany wanted to be a superior race that ruled the world. Japan wanted other countries' natural resources. Both powers forced millions of native peoples to work for their war machines. Germany also committed mass murder. Like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan used both prisoners of war and local people as slave labor. In Vietnam, for example, more than a million people starved when Japanese officials forcibly took their rice.

10. Reviewing Understanding • What grandiose plan motivated Hitler to strengthen the German military, send troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, and expand Germany's authority over Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland?(Answers may include that Hitler believed in the superiority of the Germans and a so-called Aryan race and planned to build a German empire that would dominate Europe for a thousand years.) • How did Germany's alliances with Italy and Japan fit into Hitler's plan?(Japan and Italy did not object to Hitler's expansion, as did Great Britain and France. The Italian dictator Mussolini had his own plans to expand when he invaded Ethiopia, as did Japan when it invaded Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, and it hoped to seize Siberia with Germany's help.) • What action might countries take if they objected to another country's expansion?(Answers may include engaging in war or forming alliances with other like-minded countries as a deterrent to further expansion.) • How did alliances lead to the global expansion of war? (Answers may include that when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan, and four days later Germany declared war on the United States. Great Britain, the United States, and Russia formed an alliance to defeat Germany and Japan.) • What was the scale of the destruction of human life during World War II?(Millions of soldiers and civilians died during the war. Families were separated from each other and displaced from their homes, and many became refugees in other countries. About six million European Jews died, and millions of people from other ethnicities died from the actions of the Nazis during World War II.) • How did the bombing of cities such as London, Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki affect how the world recovered after the war?(Answers may include that many areas were devastated during the war, and rebuilding took resources and money, both of which were scarce.)

11. Statistics • Seventeen million soldiers on both sides were killed in battle, as were 20 million civilians, many of whom were children. • In the Russian city of Leningrad, 1.5 million people died when Germans besieged the city for 900 days. In the United States, 110,000 Japanese on the West Coast were sent to internment camps. • In Britain, 6 million children were moved due to the German bombing of London, and some never saw their parents again. • Half a million German civilians died when the Allies bombed German cities. • German children as young as 14 or 15 fought in the last years of World War II. • The Nazis murdered six million Jews and caused the deaths of nine to ten million non-Jews; three to four million Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians died as slave laborers. • Three to four million Soviet prisoners of war were killed. • In Vietnam, one million people starved due to the Japanese confiscating rice grown by native people. • The United States destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, which resulted in the immediate deaths of thousands and thousands more died later from radiation.