World War 2 Cheat Sheet — 1-page PDF

01Causes

Appeasement

Policy of giving concessions to an aggressive state to avoid war; exemplified by Britain/France and Hitler before 1939.

Collective security

System where states jointly resist aggression; weakened by League of Nations failure.

• Treaty of Versailles grievances: reparations, territorial loss, war guilt, demilitarization → German resentment.
• Great Depression: economic crisis → political extremism, authoritarianism, militarism.
• Rise of fascism/nazism: Italy, Germany, Japan pursue expansion and autarky.
• League of Nations weakness: no army, slow sanctions, major powers absent/withdrawn.
• Spanish Civil War, Ethiopia, Manchuria: early tests of appeasement + aggression unchecked.

Watch out:Munich Agreement = Sudetenland to Germany; not peace. It exposed the failure of appeasement and encouraged further expansion.

02European War

• Poland (1939): Germany + USSR divide Poland after invasion; Britain/France declare war.
• France (1940): fall after Germany goes through the Ardennes; Dunkirk evacuation.
• Battle of Britain (1940): RAF prevents invasion; air defense decisive.
• Operation Barbarossa (1941): Germany invades USSR; turns war into vast Eastern Front.
• Stalingrad (1942–43): Soviet victory; major turning point.
• El Alamein (1942): British victory in North Africa; Axis pushed back.
• Normandy / D-Day (June 6, 1944): Western Allied return to Europe.
• Battle of the Bulge (1944–45): last major German offensive in West.

Watch out:Eastern Front = largest, most lethal theater; key for German defeat. Western Front alone does not explain outcome.

03Pacific War

Island hopping

U.S. strategy of capturing selected islands, bypassing others, to move closer to Japan.

• Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941): Japanese surprise attack brings U.S. into war.
• Philippines, Singapore, Dutch East Indies: rapid Japanese advances in 1941–42.
• Midway (June 1942): U.S. naval victory; Japanese carrier losses; major turning point.
• Guadalcanal (1942–43): first major Allied offensive in the Pacific.
• Iwo Jima, Okinawa (1945): costly final island battles near Japan.
• Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Aug. 1945): Japan surrenders.

04Holocaust

Watch out:Holocaust = not only concentration camps; extermination camps and mass shootings were central.

05Home Fronts

Total war

War requiring full mobilization of economy, labor, and society; civilian and military spheres blur.

• Rationing: food, fuel, rubber, clothing.
• War production: conversion of factories to tanks, planes, ships, munitions.
• Women’s work: expanded industrial and military support roles; symbolized by “Rosie the Riveter.”
• Propaganda and censorship: sustain morale, demonize enemy, encourage sacrifice.
• Internment in the U.S.: Japanese American incarceration under Executive Order 9066.
• Strategic bombing: civilians targeted in Germany and Japan; cities become battlefields.

06Ending

• Germany surrenders: May 7–8, 1945 (VE Day in Europe).
• Hitler dies by suicide in April 1945; Berlin falls to the Soviets.
• Japan continues after Germany’s defeat; Soviet entry into war and atomic bombings accelerate surrender.
• Japan surrenders Aug. 15, 1945; formal signing Sept. 2, 1945 (VJ Day).
• War’s end brings occupation, war crimes trials, and reconstruction.

Unconditional surrender

Surrender without negotiated terms; demanded of Axis powers near war’s end.

Watch out:Debate over the atomic bombs: military necessity vs. demonstration of power / Soviet signaling; exam answers should identify multiple causes.

07Consequences

• Europe devastated; millions dead; cities, infrastructure, and economies ruined.
• Germany divided and occupied; later FRG/West Germany and GDR/East Germany.
• United Nations created to replace failed League of Nations.
• Decolonization accelerates in Asia and Africa as European empires weaken.
• U.S. and USSR emerge as superpowers; bipolar world order.
• Nuremberg and Tokyo trials establish precedents for war crimes and crimes against humanity.