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Block: ____Name: _________________________________________Today’s Date: _________________ Due Date: ______________
USII.7abc
World War II 1939 – 1945
Special Note: pages 2,3 & 4 contain the Essential Knowledge for this SOL. It is your responsibility to study this information, learn it, and know it for your quiz and test. This packet is intended to help you practice and understand
this SOL better. Work hard and do your best! Use the boxes below to write notes to aid in your review of content standards for SOL testing. Both boxes must be filled in with as
much information as possible. Failure to do so will result in a 5 point deduction of the grade for this packet.
Before you begin this new unit on World War II, read the letter below of a British soldier who is about to enter the Battle of Arnhem. Many times soldiers would write letters such as this as their last words home should they not make it out of the battle. After you have finished reading the letter, answer these questions:
1. What type of war do you think World War II was to inspire a 21 year old soldier to write this type of letter home to his mother? _________________________________________________________________________________________
3. From what you already know about World War II, do you believe that the world needed to get involved in the war? Why or why not? _________________________________________________________________________________________
Ivor Rowbery Age: 21 Private Ivor Rowbery, of the South Staffordshire Regiment, wrote this letter to his mother just before the Arnhem Battle and placed it in an envelope on which he wrote, “To the Best Mother in the World”.
Dear Mom,
Usually when I write a letter it is very much overdue, and I make every effort to get it away quickly. This letter, however, is different. It is a letter I hoped you would never receive, as it is just a verification of that terse, black-edged card which you received some time ago, and which has caused you so much grief. It is because of this grief that I wrote this letter, and by the time you have finished reading it I hope that it has done some good, and that I have not written it in vain. It is very difficult to write now of future things in the past tense, so I am returning to the present.
Tomorrow we go into action. As yet we do not know exactly what our job will be, but no doubt it will be a dangerous one in which many lives will be lost – mine may be one of those lives.
Well, Mom, I am not afraid to die. I like this life, yes – for the past two years I have planned and dreamed and mapped out a perfect future for myself. I would have liked that future to materialize, but it is not what I will but what God wills, and if by sacrificing all this I leave that world slightly better than I found it I am perfectly willing to make that sacrifice. Don’t get me wrong though, Mom, I am no flag-waving patriot, nor have I ever professed to be.
England’s a great little country – the best there is – but I cannot honestly and sincerely say “that it is worth fighting for.” Nor can I fancy myself in the role of a gallant crusader fighting for the liberation of Europe. It would be a nice thought but I would only be kidding myself. No, Mom, my little world is centered around you and includes Dad, everyone at home, and my friends at W’ton – That is worth fighting for – and if by doing so it strengthens your security and improves your lot in any way, then it is worth dying for too.
Now this is where I come to the point of this letter. As I have already stated, I am not afraid to die and am perfectly willing to do so, if, by my doing so, you benefit in any way whatsoever. If you do not then my sacrifice is all in vain. Have you benefited, Mom, or have you cried and worried yourself sick? I fear it is the latter. Don’t you see, Mom, that it will do me no good, and that in addition you are undoing all the good work I have tried to do. Grief is hypocritical, useless and unfair, and does neither you nor me any good.
I want no flowers, no epitaph, no tears. All I want is for you to remember me and feel proud of me, then I shall rest in peace knowing that I have done a good job. Death is nothing final or lasting, if it were there would be no point in living, it is just a stage in everyone’s life. To some it comes early, to others late, but it must come to everyone sometimes, and surely there is no better way of dying.
Besides I have probably crammed more enjoyment into my 21 years than some manage to do in 80. My only regret is that I have not done as much for you as I would have liked to do. I loved you, Mom, you were the best Mother in the World, and what I failed to do in life I am trying to make up for in death, so please don’t let me down, Mom don’t worry or fret, but smile, be proud and satisfied. I never had much money, but little I have is all your. Please don’t be silly and sentimental about it, and don’t try to spend it on me. Spend it on yourself or the kiddies, it will do some good that way. Remember that where I am I am quite O.K., and providing I know you are not grieving over me I shall be perfectly happy.
Well, Mom, that is all, and I hope I have not written it all in vain. Good-bye, and thanks for everything.
Your unworthy son,
Ivor Easy Extra Point: Read this letter to your parents/guardians and
have them sign below.
_________________________________________________ X
Causes of World War II World War II was not an isolated event. Many books, movies and television programs present WWII as the “Good War” fought to get rid of the “Bad Guys” for the good of the whole world. And in many ways it was a war of good vs evil. The Axis Power led by the Nazi Party in Germany were bad. The Nazi Party gained power by promising to restore Germany to her glory. Ever since the Treaty of Versailles was ratified in 1919, Germany had been hit by (1) a worldwide depression, (2) high War Debt (caused by massive war reparations), (3) high Inflation, and (4) massive unemployment. Germans were, for a lack of better words, desperate and willing to trust anyone who could offer them any type of relief from those horrible times. The Nazi Party offered relief to the German people, but at a horrific price. It is very important to understand that while the Nazi Party was centered in Germany, it does not mean that all Germans were Nazis. The Nazi Party was a political party. The Nazi Party is responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and The Final Solution which caused the deaths of over 12 million people in Europe, 6 million of which were targeted above all others, the Jewish race of Europe. So why did the German people elect Adolf Hitler in 1933 as Reich Chancellor? Because when the human race becomes so desperate for change, they are willing to try anything thinking that something has to be better than what they currently have. Have you ever heard the expression:
The Nazi Party used that way of thinking to lure people into supporting them. They also gave people an excuse for their horrible lot in life by blaming all of Germany’s problems on the Jewish race. This is called: Scapegoating. Scapegoating is when you blame someone else for your problems. The Jewish race did nothing to bring this type of discrimination and murder upon themselves. Unfortunately though, there was enough despair within the people of Germany that they allowed the Scapegoating to evolve (grow) from taunting to bullying; bullying to discrimination; and ultimately discrimination to murder. This form of leadership is not one that tends to development in most democratic nations. When any government holds absolute authority such as the Nazi Party of Germany, Dictatorships develop.
Rise of Fascism
Fascism is a political philosophy in which total power is given to a dictator and individual freedoms are denied while nationalism and often, racism are emphasized. Fascist dictators of WWII included Adolf Hitler (Germany), Benito Mussolini (Italy), and Hideki Tojo (Japan). These dictators came together to lead their countries and became known as the Axis Powers. A Fascist regime (government) can be very scary. When a country is ruled by a Fascist dictator, there is no voice for the common man. Whatever a Fascist dictator says, is law. If he sentences you to death, then death it is, without question or argument. In fact, questioning such a Fascist leader will in all likelihood, get you a death sentence.
So who would dare stand up to the Fascist dictators of the Axis Powers? The Allied Powers did. The Democratic nations
of Great Britain, France, and Canada were known as the Allies. The Soviet Union later joined the Allies after being
invaded by Germany and the United States joined the Allied powers after being attacked by Japan on December 07, 1941
European Theater 1939–1945 Europe erupted into a second world war on September 01, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Prior to invading Poland, Hitler signed a secret agreement with
Stalin (the communist Tsar of Russia) called the Non-Aggression Pact. In this pact, the two nations agreed not to invade each other. Germany knew that they
wanted to retake land that was lost over the last hundred years in various wars. The Nazi Party argued that most of modern Poland and parts of western Russia had,
at one time, been part of a larger German Republic. As Poland bordered Russia, Germany did not want Russia knowing their plans for invasion. The Non-
Aggression Pact allowed German soldiers to invade Poland and set up troops along the Russian border without alarming the Russian troops. After all, even though
modern American text books tend to present Stalin as an “Allie” on the “good side” of WWII, he himself was
a dictator and a tyrant leader whom we know today as responsible for over 50 million of his own people’s
deaths. (He was not a very nice man and you definitely would not want to invite him over for dinner).
Many historians believe that Hitler really created this pact because he feared Stalin and his Russian troops.
Hitler thought the only way Germany could beat Russia would be to take Russia by surprise. It
worked…Kind of. That is until Stalin realized what was going on, and then watch-out Hitler, because no one
messed with the Stalin. With the help of the Russian troops maintaining the eastern front of the European
Theater and the British, French, American and Canadian troops holding down the western front of the
European Theater and northern Africa, it was only a matter of time before the Germans surrendered. Taking
on a two-front war like they had in Europe ended up not being such a good thing for the Germans…but a
great thing for the rest of humanity.
Directions: Complete the missing terms/phrases below:
1. Political __________________________ and ___________________________ devastation in
Pacific Theater 1941–1945 The United States had long maintained an isolationist foreign policy when it came to European problems. Ever since the Great Depression hit America in 1929,
America was trying to focus on herself and FDR was leading the revolution for social and government change in the hope of getting America out of the
Depression. Policies such as the ________ ________ helped America, but it did not end the Depression. The crank-up of American factories to produce and sell
(at huge marked-up prices) war supplies helped end the Depression in the US. So America’s foreign policy went from:
___________________________ to ______________________________ to ___________________________
The US’ direct involvement came on December 8, 1941, when FDR asked congress for a
Declaration of War against the empire of Japan. FDR’s request came 24 hours after Japan’s
navy attacked American Naval forces on the Island of Oahu on December 07, 1941. The
Japanese attack came in two waves. The first wave of
attack engaged between 7:40 and 7:55 am. The Americans
were completely caught off guard. America was not
anticipating an attack by Japan, let alone on a Sunday. To
make matters worse for the Americans, Hawaii wasn’t
even a state. It was simply military installation our Navy
and Air Force used to mobilize troops to the Pacific region
(ever since the Spanish-American war of ________).
The Second wave of attack by Japan came at ________am.
The first attack wave targets airfields and battleships. The
second wave targets other ships and shipyard facilities. The air raid lasts until 9:45 a.m. Due to
the lack in international communication, word of the Japanese attack did not reach the mainland
until after the attack was over. In the end, eight battleships were severely damaged, five ships
sunk along with three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels along with 188
aircraft. The casualty list includes 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians killed, with 1,178
wounded. Included are 1,104 men aboard the Battleship USS Arizona killed after a 1,760-pound air bomb penetrated into the forward magazine
causing catastrophic explosions. America immediately declared war on Japan, and because of the Axis alliance, Germany then declared war on the
United States. The US then found itself in the middle of two wars of the ___________________________ and the __________________________
and the leader in what would become history’s iconic war.
1. Rising tension developed between the _________________________ and ______________ due to Japan’s _____________________ in East Asia.
2. On __________________________, Japan attacked the United States at ____________________________ without ________________________.
An Important Note to You the Student: In the face of an evil like the Holocaust, making a true connection with the victims can be overwhelming. Separating the victims from the numbers in order to comprehend the scope and horror of the Holocaust is nearly impossible. Museums, books, and pictures try to help educate people; but the fact will always remain that more than twelve million people, six million Jews alone, were slaughtered, at the hands of other humans. This is a tremendously difficult reality to grasp both emotionally and intellectually. The enormous number of victims and the many ways in which they were tortured and murdered are so widespread that it is incredibly easy for anyone to get lost the reality of the event. But it did happen. The Holocaust was real and still is real today. Nothing and no one will ever make that fact go away. If this is a difficult topic for you to study, please note that while you will study the basic provisions and facts of the Holocaust, the actual extent of depth in which you study the Holocaust is always up to you. No matter how many years go by, those events will not, must not, be forgotten. Directions: Define the following terms 1. Anti-Semitism: ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Aryan supremacy: _________________________________________________________________________ The Nazi Party prided itself in scapegoating the problems of Germany on the Jewish race. However, there were millions of other people that were scapegoated by the Nazi also. Some of those groups include: Poles (people from ____________), Romani –AKA: Gypsies (nomadic peoples from northwest India), Catholics, Social Dissidents (people who spoke out or questioned the __________________), Prisoners of War (POWs), the Handicapped and Disabled (both physically and ______________), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals and African-German children to name a few. At first the Nazi’s didn’t know exactly what to do with these groups of “unclean” people. So they started boycotting their stores and places of business hoping they would leave Germany voluntarily. When that didn’t work, the Nazi’s began threatening the groups; even encouraging young members of German society to engage in such hateful behavior towards these groups. But as history has shown the world, threats only go so far before actions need to take place and the threats were eventually replaced by segregation. The segregation was cruel, inhumane and subhuman. Members of these groups were forcibly taken away from their homes and towns and placed in Ghettos. The ghettos were heavily guarded and were without basic necessities to endure life. Hundreds of thousands died in these Ghettos, all because they didn’t have something as simple as basic medical necessities or even clean water or food. When the Ghettos became too big for the Nazi’s to control Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and Reinhard Heydrich devised a “complete solution to the Jewish question”. They developed a systematic way to “eliminate” the Jews of Europe. They Imprisoned and killed of Jews and others in concentration camps and death camps.
From that point on throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans began arresting those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. These people were mostly sent by train to forced-labor or concentration camps. While there were many camps, the list the follows outlines some of the more well known work and death camps of Europe.
Both the Russia and German Armies had over 1 million
men fighting at Stalingrad – Each!
91,000 Germans were taken prisoner by the Russians
Some historians believe that Hitler ordered the taking of Stalingrad simply because of the name of the city and Hitler's hatred of Joseph Stalin. For the same reason Stalin ordered that the city had to be saved. In September 1942, the German commander General Paulus advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields there. Stalingrad was also an important target as it was Russia’s center of communications and manufacturing for the country. The battle for the city descended into one of the most brutal in World War Two. The Germans took a great deal of the city but they failed to fully assert their authority. Areas captured by the Germans during the day, were re-taken by the Russians at night. In addition, the Germans also had to face the harsh Russian winter. Temperatures dropped well below zero and food, ammunition and heat were in short supply since Stalin had ordered all food and shelters to be destroyed before the Germans had arrived. Hitler ordered that Paulus should “fight to the last bullet”. However, by the end of January 1943, the Germans could do nothing else but surrender. The failure of the German Army was nothing short of a disaster. With such a massive loss of manpower and equipment, the Germans simply did not have enough manpower to cope with the Russian advance to Germany when it came. The battle at Stalingrad bled the German army dry in Russia and after this defeat, the Germany Army was in full retreat.
Operation Overlord “D-Day”
Date – June 06, 1944
Conflict – World War II
Participants – US, Britain, France, Canada Vs German
Location – Various beaches of Normandy, France
Interesting Facts – Planned by General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Largest Seaborne invasion in modern history
Allied troops had been waiting in boats to cross the English
Channel for up to 48 hours before they were given the go-ahead to
attack. Many of these soldiers became grossly sea sick as they
raided the shores.
Overnight between June 5th and the morning of June 6th, roughly 20,000 British and American airborne troops had been dropped by parachute behind Germany lines and were ordered to do as much damage as possible before the ground troops arrived by sea. Meanwhile, over 6,000 ships carrying hundreds
of thousands of Allied soldiers were making their way across the English Channel to five separate beaches with the hope that the airborne troops and the ground troops would meet up again as they pushed the Germans off the beaches of France and back toward Germany. The first wave alone brought 150,000
Allied soldiers to the French shore. Waiting for the Allied troops were the significantly better positioned German soldiers who held the higher ground positions above the beaches. The first day of the invasion was costly for the Allies in terms of casualties—especially at one landing point, Omaha Beach were over 4,000 Allied soldiers died—but the Germans were vastly outnumbered and rapidly overwhelmed by the incoming forces. The Allies therefore accomplished nearly all of their set objectives for the first day, which included fully securing the landing areas.
Participants – Japan Vs United States Location – Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Interesting Facts – Hawaii was not a US state at the time
Japan had been at war with China since 1937 and was trying to take over as much of eastern Asia as it could. It also had serious ambitions toward taking territory in the Soviet Union. If Germany, which the Japanese government saw as a potential ally, would attack Russia from the west, Japanese military leaders felt they stood a good chance of seizing Soviet-controlled territory in the east. Throughout the 1930s, because of the Great Depression, the United States and many other European nations placed high tariffs on Japan. Because of these taxes Japanese oil, scrap metal and other materials were not being purchased by Americans. Japan lost millions of dollars in revenue which created a depression in Japan. Japan became very hostile towards the United States. Then on September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and _____________. The pact made the three nations official allies and formed the ____________ Powers. As early as January 1941, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku developed a plan for attacking the U.S. fleet at _____________________ and carried out training exercises to prepare specifically for such an attack. Japan’s goal was to make a permanent end to Western interference in its affairs by obliterating the U.S. and British military forces in the Pacific.
On the morning of December _____, 1941, a fleet of six aircraft carriers, twenty-five submarines, and nearly three dozen additional support ships were sitting 200 miles north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu—in the open sea, far beyond the line of sight of any U.S. forces. The first wave of Japanese planes numbered more than 180. Although U.S. radar operators saw the massive formation nearly a full hour before the attack began, they raised no alarm, because they mistook the planes for a group of U.S. bombers expected to arrive from California around the same time. The first wave of Japanese bombers arrived at the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor at 7:55 A.M. and was a complete surprise to US service members there; only nine Japanese planes were lost. The primary targets were major U.S. warships, most of which were docked close together in neat lines. These included eight of the nine battleships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, along with several dozen other warships. The Japanese also targeted six nearby military airfields. A second attack wave of more than 160 planes followed just over an hour later. By this time, the Americans were well alerted and managed to bring down twenty Japanese planes. In all, the attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,402 Americans, completely destroyed five battleships, damaged three more battleships, sank or seriously damaged at least eleven other warships, and destroyed nearly 180 aircraft on the ground. The only good luck the U.S. Navy had was that none of its aircraft carriers were in port at the time and that the Japanese bombers failed to hit the large fuel reserves in the area. In addition to attacking Pearl Harbor that day, Japan also attacked the U.S. territories of Guam, the Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway Island, as well as British interests in Malaya and Hong Kong. The next day, December 8, Roosevelt went before both houses of the U.S. Congress to request a declaration of war against Japan. After only a few hours, the declaration was formalized by Congress. Britain declared war on Japan the same day. Three days later, Germany declared war on the United States. Thus, the United States was now at war with both Japan and Germany and able to enter fully into its alliance with Britain.
This is an image of __________________________________.
Directions: On the lines below, write a radio commercial urging young American women to join the work force in order to help the war effort. Be sure to include (a) the type of business (b) why they should work there and (c) how working there will benefit America. ________________________________________________________
What was your favorite page in this packet? _______
Why was this your favorite page? _______________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
*Continuation from page 5 of this packet: Private Ivor Rowbery, of the South Staffordshire Regiment of England, wrote this letter to his mother just before the Arnhem Battle and placed it in an envelope on which he wrote, “To the Best Mother in the World”. Ivor was killed in action on September 17, 1944.This letter was mailed home as his last words to his mother. Ivor’s letter still serves as a constant reminder of the type of men and women who were fighting during the second world war to ensure our peace and humanity in the world today.