Deck 23: World War II

Question 1

How did the war change the landscape at home in the United States?

A) People moved North, South and West in search of defense jobs.
B) California faced housing shortages as record numbers of people relocated there.
C) The economies in states west of the Mississippi experienced the largest economic boom.
D) Southern states saw rapid industrial development and growth.
E) All of these choices.

Answer 1

E

Question 2

Which of the following was not one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms?

A) Freedom of Religion
B) Freedom from Fear
C) Freedom from Want
D) Freedom of Assembly
E) Freedom of Speech

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Stalin enthusiastically agreed to the four policemen approach to securing the postwar peace because

A) he thought it was Roosevelt's way of promising that governments friendly to Soviet interests would be installed in Eastern Europe.
B) he did not want to bear the burden of the reorganization of Europe.
C) he shied away from picking up the tab for the reconstruction of Europe.
D) he wanted to engage France, Britain, and the United States in a coalition rather than have them build cordial and friendly ties to Germans, turning them once again into a threat to the Soviet Union.
E) he understood that the United Nations could not possibly fulfill that role.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

In the Munich Agreement (1938),the leaders of Britain and France

A) allowed Hitler to annex all of Czechoslovakia.
B) elicited a promise from Hitler to end further aggressive action on smaller European countries.
C) confronted Hitler about his treatment of the plight of Jews, communists, and gays in Germany, but in the name of peace, dropped the subject.
D) permitted Hitler to occupy strategic areas of Czechoslovakia, in the hope that he would stop there.
E) told Hitler and Mussolini that they would not go to war against Nazi Germany if Hitler decided to annex German-speaking provinces of western Poland.

Question 5

Japan's first major action in the Pacific took place when its military invaded

A) Manchuria in China.
B) the Philippines.
C) the Dutch East Indies.
D) Russian Siberia.
E) Iwo Jima.

Question 6

Which of these aggressive acts of political defiance did Hitler commit in Europe in 1936?

A) Hitler invaded Poland.
B) Hitler occupied the Rhineland.
C) Hitler annexed German-speaking Austria.
D) Hitler seized Czechoslovakia.
E) Hitler occupied the Rhineland and annexed German-speaking Austria.

Question 7

The Japanese decided to bomb America's naval fleet at Pearl Harbor because

A) they wanted the United States out of China.
B) they were acting on behalf of Germany.
C) they hoped to handicap the U.S. navy, giving Japan time to achieve its conquests before the U.S. could rebuild and strike back.
D) they hoped to pull Americans into the war.
E) they were angry when Americans blocked Japanese imports to the U.S. and influenced other countries to do the same.

Question 8

Historians regard the Great Depression as probably the greatest factor in causing World War II because

A) Americans fared so much better than Europeans, leading to anger and in-fighting.
B) Facing dwindling resources of its own, Germany hoped to improve its economy by annexing other countries.
C) It led American businesses to reduce investments in Germany, which decreased that nation's production and its ability to repay its World War I reparations.
D) All of these choices.
E) None of these choices.

Question 9

Hitler's and Stalin's nonaggression pact involved which of these countries?

A) England.
B) United States.
C) France.
D) Poland.
E) Sweden.

Question 10

In May 1940,Winston Churchill

A) petitioned the U.S. Congress for military aid.
B) became Britain's Prime Minister and wrote to FDR.
C) became Britain's Secretary of the Navy.
D) met with FDR for the first of many meetings.
E) delivered his inspiring speech to the British Parliament in which he pledged that the British would continue to fight the Germans anywhere.

Question 11

The "Double V" campaign refers to

A) U.S. victory against the Japanese and the Germans.
B) growing victory gardens at home to help feed servicemen overseas.
C) African American efforts to win the war overseas and end discrimination at home.
D) Roosevelt's initiative to build public support for America's entry into World War II.
E) None of these choices.

Question 12

Which event set the stage of American involvement in the war?

A) The installation of the pro-German government installed in Vichy, France
B) The bombing of London in the Battle of Britain
C) Increased U.S. awareness of the Holocaust
D) The invasion of Poland
E) All of these choices.

Question 13

Which of the following is not true about the Holocaust?

A) The mass killing of European Jews remained confined to concentration camps.
B) Hitler's first step in murdering six million European Jews involved intimidating, isolating, and concentrating Jews in work and concentration camps throughout Europe.
C) Until 1940, few outside Europe knew about Hitler's processes of terror and murder.
D) German death camps began operations as early as 1942.
E) Hitler used Social Darwinism and eugenics to justify his country's actions in the Holocaust.

Question 14

From the spring of 1940 until the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941,President Roosevelt and the U.S government

A) refused to get caught up in the drama overseas.
B) organized the manufacturing, transfer, and transportation of war materials and American defense bases to assist Great Britain and prepare for likely war against Nazi Germany.
C) continued to believe that Americans could maintain complete neutrality and still sell to the Allies and the Axis powers.
D) concentrated on providing massive military assistance to China and beefing up the defenses of American islands in the Pacific to prevent Japan from achieving territorial and geo-political gains in Asia and the Pacific.
E) adopted a policy of strict neutrality that prohibited selling armaments and providing any military assistance to Great Britain.

Question 15

In 1940,the United States experienced its first

A) attempted attack from another country on American soil, in the state of Oregon.
B) peacetime draft.
C) request for military assistance from another country: Britain.
D) debate in Congress as to whether the United States should enter the new European war.
E) attack by a German submarine on an American merchant ship.

Question 16

Women participated in the U.S.World War II effort by

A) working in war plants.
B) joining the military.
C) growing Victory Gardens.
D) playing in baseball leagues.
E) All of these choices.

Question 17

The Lend Lease Act,passed mainly for the benefit of Great Britain,empowered the president to

A) send advisers to assist any country fighting the Germans.
B) put warships in the Pacific to protect American interests from the Japanese.
C) offer military materiel to any country willing to fight against the Germans.
D) lend money but no hardware to those threatened by Germany.
E) lend weapons and supplies to all nations fighting either the Germans or the Japanese.

Question 18

When Franklin Roosevelt came into the presidency,he set out to mend relations with the countries of Latin America by using

A) the Roosevelt Corollary to the Roosevelt Corollary.
B) the policy of "dollar diplomacy."
C) his plans to pull all American troops out of every Latin American country.
D) the "good neighbor" policy.
E) the Lend-Lease Policy.

Question 19

Roughly 90 percent of all Americans favored isolationism despite the situation in Europe for all of the following reasons except

A) They were haunted by memories of World War I and its brutality.
B) The problems of the Great Depression had Americans focused on improving conditions at home.
C) Many Americans respected Adolf Hitler.
D) America was riddled with anti-Semitism and did not want to get into war over Jews.
E) Americans did not want to bear the cost of war, which they feared would only deepen the Depression.

Question 20

In June 1942,American forces halted Japan's advance at the Battle of

A) Midway.
B) the Bulge.
C) the Coral Sea.
D) Iwo Jima.
E) the Philippines.

Question 21

Executive Order 8802 established

A) fair working conditions for women in the defense industries.
B) desegregation in the armed forces.
C) the bracero program, which brought Mexican migrant workers to America to fill acute labor needs.
D) anti-discriminatory hiring practices in industries that had government defense contracts.
E) price controls under the oversight of the Office of Price Administration.

Question 22

The most famous spokesman of the "America First Committee" was Harry Truman.

Question 23

What were the actions of Joseph Stalin that demonstrated his distrust of the West in regard to his country's communist government? What was the most ironic outcome of Stalin's manipulations?

Question 24

The task of the War Relocation Authority was to

A) select sites for the new defense facilities to be built across the country.
B) oversee the forced internment of Japanese-Americans, including American citizens, in various camps in California and the American Southwest.
C) close the CCC camps and help the young men either return home or locate an enlistment office for the branch of service in which they were interested.
D) return the migrant workers to Mexico when the war ended and their services were no longer needed.
E) facilitate the return of women to the home, and to help veterans become reintegrated into society.

Question 25

By September 1944,the countries of France,Belgium,and Luxembourg had been liberated from the Germans,and by late 1944,Allied troops crossed the border into Germany.

Question 26

American troops fought their first battles of the war in 1942 in the Pacific,where they were soundly defeated in each one.

Question 27

What were the "reasons" for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II? What exactly did "internment" mean for these families? Were there ironies in these actions by the U.S.government? When and how did the internment end?

Question 28

Which of the following statements about World War II is not correct?

A) Historic buildings - some a thousand or more years old - were obliterated in Europe by the war.
B) More than 23 million Soviets lost their lives.
C) The war deaths worldwide totaled over 62 million.
D) About half of the Jews killed were from Poland, and about half from other European countries.
E) About 1 million American soldiers died and about half that figure came home injured.

Question 29

The Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last desperate attempt to capture Allied strongholds in Belgium and win the war.

Question 30

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill)provided

A) some unemployment benefits for veterans.
B) low-interest housing loans.
C) medical care for veterans.
D) financial aid for education.
E) All of these choices.

Question 31

Which agency's job was to set wages,working conditions,and hours,as well as to try to prevent strikes?

A) National War Labor Board
B) Office of Price Administration
C) War Production Board
D) Office of War Mobilization
E) Fair Employment Practices Committee

Question 32

Operation Overlord - the official name for the D-Day landing in Normandy - involved ____ Allied soldiers.

A) 100,000
B) 500,000
C) 1 million
D) 3 million
E) 10 million

Question 33

Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima and later Nagasaki because

A) he wanted to demonstrate the full force of the U.S. military.
B) Japan did not respond to an Allied ultimatum to end the war or face destruction.
C) he feared if he did not strike first, Japan would again launch an attack on U.S. soil, more devastating than Pearl Harbor.
D) he knew that the Japanese and German governments were developing a bomb of their own.
E) All of these choices.

Question 34

In return for an opening of a second front against Nazi Germany in the West in the summer of 1944,Stalin promised at the Tehran Conference

A) peaceful cooperation in the occupation of Germany.
B) to open a front against Japan once Germany had been defeated.
C) to forget about past tensions in Russian-American foreign policy confrontations.
D) to give up parts of his Southeast European colonial possessions.
E) military assistance.

Question 35

The decisive military turning point for the United States and the Allies against Japan in the Pacific occurred in 1943 with the Allied offensive at the Battle of

A) Guadalcanal
B) Coral Sea
C) Manila Bay
D) Guam
E) Midway Island

Question 36

Rosie the Riveter was a fictional character meant to represent whom? What were some of the ways in which "Rosies" across the country played their part in the war effort?

Question 37

Who were the major participants in the meeting that resulted in the Munich Agreement? What was included in that agreement? What famous statement issued after that agreement proved to be absolutely untrue?

Question 38

Which of these events did not happen at Potsdam?

A) Churchill was called home mid-conference because his party had been defeated in a general election.
B) The Allies divided Germany and Austria into four occupied zones.
C) Truman learned that the atom bomb had been tested successfully.
D) Poland was given an outlet to the sea and had its prewar territorial integrity and political independence fully restored and protected.
E) Both the Americans and British became more concerned about and suspicious of Stalin and his political intentions than they had been earlier in the war.

Question 39

Explain the Double V campaign of African Americans during World War II.What motivated black Americans to commit themselves to this campaign?

Question 40

Similar to a militant and extreme version of the New Deal,the deficit spending by Hitler's Nazi government during the 1930s,including a massive German arms buildup which put many Germans to work,helped pull Germany out of its economic depression by 1936.

Question 41

Just under 1.5 million southerners,most of them African Americans,left the segregated South during World War II,despite the fact that jobs were available in southern defense industries.

Question 42

The Zoot Suit Riots occurred between Mexican and American youths in the city of Brownsville,Texas.

Question 43

Several American companies still in business today stopped producing consumer goods (ex.: cars,tires)and began to manufacture military equipment and materiel (ex.: jeeps,tanks,ammunition)under lucrative government contracts.

Question 44

One of the major social and economic changes resulting from the war was that by 1945 female employment outside the home had increased by more than 50 percent,to 20 million.

Question 45

The "Double V" campaign was a commitment made by African American military personnel fighting in the war; they would achieve victory abroad and then come home to work for victory over discrimination against African Americans in their own country.