Deck 23: The Second World War, 1941-1945

Question 1

A new weapon, the ________, in World War II generated heat from the fusion of uranium or plutonium. First used against the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, within a week nearly 100,000 had died. It spurred the Japanese to sue for peace.

Answer 1

Atomic bomb

Question 2

A fictionalized character based on real women who flooded into the factories to make war material was called ___________.

Answer 2

Rosie the Riveter

Question 3

What was the response to fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast and a mistrust of the loyalties of Japanese Americans?

Answer 3

Internment.

Question 4

June 6, 1944, was known as what?

Question 5

What was Bretton Woods?

Question 6

Who was the U.S. general who was an early advocate of massed firepower, advanced technology, and quick movement?

Question 7

Who was Benjamin O. Davis?

Question 8

This famous aviator was best known for being the first person to cross the Atlantic alone in an airplane. Prior to World War II he became a strident isolationist.

Question 9

When Harry Truman, FDR's vice president, became president on Roosevelt's death, he had to be told what about the nation?

Question 10

Who became president following President Roosevelt's death in April 1945?

Question 11

In 1941, labor organizer A. Philip Randolph pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to

A) Compel all workers in a unionized plant to pay union dues.
B) Desegregate public schools.
C) Integrate the armed forces.
D) Ban racial discrimination in defense industries.

Question 12

Executive Order 8802

A) Established a Fair Employment Practices Committee.
B) Banned racial discrimination in defense industries.
C) Integrated the armed forces.
D) Was ignored by President Roosevelt.

Question 13

In the late 1930s many Americans blamed the beginning of World War II on which of the following?

A) Failure of the Treaty of Versailles.
B) Desperation caused by global economic collapse.
C) Nations that used military force to solve their problems.
D) All of the above.

Question 14

Which of the following best describes the position of internationalists in 1939?

A) They saw free trade as a solution to international conflict.
B) They wanted more immigrants in the United States to stimulate the economy.
C) They saw in war the opportunity to invest overseas.
D) They hoped to bring socialist ideas into the United States.

Question 15

In 1940, most Americans

A) Supported an active role in the war for the United States.
B) Were urging Congress to declare war on Germany.
C) Were convinced that they had to strike Japan first.
D) Feared involvement and opposed support for antifascist belligerents.

Question 16

Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime was built on

A) Racism and brutality.
B) A suspension of civil rights.
C) A secret police designed to eliminate opposition.
D) All of the above.

Question 17

The Nuremberg Laws resulted in all of the following except

A) Laws passed by the Congress to prevent the United States from going to war against Germany.
B) German Jews being stripped of citizenship and their civil rights.
C) The outlawing of marriages between Jews and members of the "Aryan race."
D) Many legal and moral acts of violence against German Jews.

Question 18

Which of the following is true of Kristallnacht?

A) It was "the night of broken glass," on which the German government destroyed Jewish shop windows.
B) President Roosevelt came to conclude that international opinion would not deter Hitler.
C) Throughout Germany Jewish synagogues, shops, homes, and hospitals were destroyed.
D) All of the above.

Question 19

The Axis Powers included all of the following except

A) Japan.
B) Russia.
C) Germany.
D) Italy.

Question 20

The term "Munich" has come to refer to

A) The meeting place where Hitler and Mussolini met with the English and French leaders in 1938.
B) The British and French appeasement of Hitler the aggressor.
C) Britain's and France's acquiescence to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.
D) All of the above.

Question 21

What weakened the position of isolationists in 1940?

A) The attack on Pearl Harbor.
B) Germany's invasion of Poland.
C) German bombings of England.
D) The fall of Stalingrad.

Question 22

The Neutrality Act of 1935 and its 1936 and 1937 amendments

A) Prohibited Americans from volunteering for the armed services of Great Britain.
B) Reflected the Congressional recognition that the American people were prowar.
C) Cautioned Americans about shipping goods to belligerent nations.
D) Restricted the president's ability to aid the enemies of Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Question 23

The election of 1940 resulted in

A) FDR's victory by a 5-million-vote margin.
B) FDR's election to a third term as president.
C) The candidates not making foreign and defense policy part of their campaign.
D) All of the above.

Question 24

Which of the following statements refers to the Lend-Lease Act?

A) It was passed by Congress over Roosevelt's veto.
B) It was an abandonment of the Neutrality Acts.
C) It provided massive military aid to Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
D) It restricted the British to trading with the United States alone.

Question 25

Prior to the entry of the United States into the World War, President Roosevelt allowed all of the following except

A) The sale of "surplus" weapons and military supplies to Great Britain.
B) Trading 50 overage destroyers for leases to eight naval bases.
C) Strict enforcement of the Neutrality Acts.
D) The first peacetime draft in American history.

Question 26

Why did Japan pursue a "go south" strategy in 1939?

A) To encircle China.
B) To avoid Chinese armies.
C) To antagonize the United States.
D) To secure crucial cotton supplies.

Question 27

In the months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

A) The United States cut off oil exports to Japan.
B) Germany withdrew its troops from the Soviet Union.
C) Congress did not express American opposition to territorial change by conquest.
D) Congress emphasized the defeat of imperial Japan as the first priority.

Question 28

Whereas Admiral Nimitz wanted to seize islands in the Central Pacific for an air and land assault on Japan, General MacArthur favored

A) Landing troops in China.
B) Retaking the Philippines from the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
C) Securing territory in Indochina and India.
D) Rolling back Japanese control from Manchuria.

Question 29

The battles of Midway and Coral Sea resulted in

A) Proof that the American fighting forces were not going to be easy targets.
B) Giving the United States time to concentrate on building an army and winning the war in Europe.
C) Putting the Japanese forces on the defensive.
D) All of the above.

Question 30

The first use of carrier battle groups was in contests between the United States and Japan

A) In the Coral Sea.
B) Near Soho off the coast of New Zealand.
C) Off the coast of India.
D) In Tokyo Bay.

Question 31

Prior to the Nazi invasion of France, how did the U.S. army compare in size with the Germany army?

A) The U.S. army was nearly the same size as the German army at that stage in the World War.
B) The U.S. army was much smaller than the German army.
C) The U.S. army was already greater in size than the Germany army.
D) The U.S. army consisted of 1 million more men than the German army in mid-1940.

Question 32

During World War II, army leadership struggled to preserve

A) Every soldier's human dignity.
B) Civilian life at all costs.
C) Racial traditions of segregation.
D) Their dominance in the Roosevelt administration.

Question 33

Compared to other warring countries during World War II, the United States enlisted

A) Far more gays and lesbians.
B) Relatively few women.
C) Far fewer African Americans.
D) Low-skilled troops.

Question 34

American weapons technology was characterized by all of the following except that

A) Before 1943, most American servicemen were using a combination of World War I equipment combined with recently manufactured weapons.
B) It was years ahead of anything produced in Europe at the time.
C) It benefited from American industries that could mass produce the latest in weapons design.
D) It pushed the design and development of secret weapons.

Question 35

The Manhattan Project

A) Produced the atomic bomb.
B) Financed the production of American war materials.
C) Financed and manufactured the B-29 Super fortress.
D) Financed the production of the atomic bomb.

Question 36

The "miracle of production" was made possible by

A) The mass manufacture of consumer products to finance the war.
B) A coordinated effort between big government and corporations.
C) The coordinated efforts of African American men and women in the manufacture of war-related goods.
D) All of the above.

Question 37

The need for civilian workers in war production resulted in all of the following except

A) Increased labor violence.
B) Increased wages.
C) New kinds of workers doing new kinds of jobs.
D) Increased union membership.

Question 38

How many workers and family members migrated to jobs at new sites of war production during World War II?

A) 200,000.
B) 1 million.
C) 5 million.
D) 9 million.

Question 39

One problem faced immigrant workers relocating to the new sites of war production, and that was

A) A shortage of schools.
B) A shortage of housing.
C) A shortage of food and shopping.
D) Health care.

Question 40

"Rosie the Riveter" was

A) A star in a radio drama about women factory workers.
B) A cartoon produced by Walt Disney.
C) The graphic image of a glamorous machinist who labored in American industry to bring her man home from war.
D) A woman in wartime propaganda documentaries produced in Hollywood.

Question 41

If white Americans did not know what they were fighting the war for, they knew what they fighting against. That list included all of the following except

A) Fascism.
B) Racism.
C) Gestapos.
D) Master races.

Question 42

What wartime legal victory did the NAACP secure in the case of Smith v. Allwright (1944)?

A) A federal antilynching law.
B) The desegregation of schools.
C) A mandate for equal pay.
D) A ban on the all-white primary.

Question 43

Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese Americans in the Western Defense Command because

A) Cases of sabotage started to abound.
B) Japanese Americans were caught signaling to enemy planes.
C) Japanese farmers refused to sell to the U.S. military.
D) California's press and congressional delegation were pushing for it.

Question 44

Reviewing the practice of Japanese American internment in 1947, the Western Defense Command

A) Conceded that it had acted too hastily.
B) Apologized for the injustice.
C) Appeared increasingly defensive about the practice.
D) Was full of praise, seeing the practice as a role model for the future.

Question 45

Korematsu v. United States

A) Invalidated internment.
B) Upheld internment.
C) Gave internees reparations.
D) None of the above.

Question 46

The United States responded to reports of the Holocaust in all of the following ways except which of the following?

A) Many Americans dismissed reports of the Holocaust as someone else's business.
B) The U.S. State Department erected paper barriers to keep unwanted immigrants out of the United States.
C) The United States relaxed immigration quotas to admit all Jewish refugees from Europe.
D) The United States refused to allow ships with refugees from the extermination camps to dock in the United States.

Question 47

All of the following refer to the German death camps in World War II except that

A) The Germans used a high-powered gas, Zyklon-B, to exterminate millions of Jews.
B) General Patton liberated the Buchenwald camp in Germany.
C) Roosevelt ordered the bombing of the notorious death camp at Auschwitz.
D) The United States did not make humanitarian rescue a military priority during the war.

Question 48

The turning point in the war for the Allies was

A) D-Day.
B) The North Africa campaign.
C) The surrender of Italy.
D) The surrender of France.

Question 49

D-Day, the Allied invasion of France, was

A) January 1, 1944.
B) June 6, 1944.
C) July 20, 1944.
D) May 8, 1945.

Question 50

Patton's strategy since the beginning of the war had been

A) To use guerilla tactics.
B) To employ mobile, aggressive tactics.
C) To combine Soviet soldiers with American forces.
D) To employ as many soldiers as he could in every battle against the Germans.

Question 51

In the Pacific, the American strategy was designed to

A) Lure Japanese troops farther away from Japan to make supply difficult.
B) Get close enough to the Japanese islands to force Japan to surrender.
C) Wear out Japanese troops by attacking one island after another.
D) Recapture the Philippines, where the Japanese government was entrenched.

Question 52

Once American troops got to Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, B-29 bombers

A) Could fly air strikes to Luzon.
B) Could reach Tokyo with fire bombs.
C) Could reach Brisbane for refueling.
D) Ended the war against Japan.

Question 53

Even before the war was over, American military planners

A) Stressed reconversion to prewar levels.
B) Had already made plans for a global system of military bases.
C) Recognized that the infantry was no longer a viable option for modern warfare.
D) Stressed the need to develop space rockets and missiles to protect the United States.

Question 54

Bretton Woods was a multinational meeting of economists and diplomats to discuss the

A) Staggering economic problems that would face the postwar world.
B) Plans for preventing another economic collapse like the Great Depression.
C) Creation of an International Monetary Fund.
D) All of the above.

Question 55

Critics of the Bretton Woods agreements said that

A) Local interests prevailed over international interests.
B) It gave nations almost unlimited domestic freedom at the expense of international conformity and stability.
C) The plans gave national governments too much leeway.
D) All of the above.

Question 56

In the election of 1944,

A) FDR achieved a landslide victory.
B) Americans reelected FDR to an unprecedented fourth term in office despite his obvious failing health.
C) FDR had no running mate during the campaign.
D) Thomas E. Dewey ran as FDR's vice president.

Question 57

When Harry Truman, FDR's vice president, became president on Roosevelt's death, he had to be told

A) About the nation's Manhattan Project.
B) That he was now the president and have the job explained to him.
C) That the Germans had surrendered.
D) All of the above.

Question 58

President Harry S. Truman ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A) To test how useful these new weapons would be in Europe.
B) As a first step in a plan to annihilate the Japanese people.
C) To avenge Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March.
D) To force Japan to surrender.

Question 59

Five days following the bombing of Nagasaki,

A) Harry Truman was sworn in as president of the United States.
B) Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender.
C) The United States dropped a third bomb on Kyoto.
D) All of the above.

Question 60

Discuss the reasoning behind the isolationists' thinking about the United States staying out of the war in Europe.

Question 61

Discuss the ways that World War II changed the lives of minorities and women.

Question 62

Did the United States save Europe in World War II, yes or no? Discuss.

Question 63

According to American leaders, what caused the war in Europe?