world war 2 vocab

The Germans split the Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A struck lower Don River while Army Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards Volga River.[164]

On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interning thousands of Japanese, Italians, German Americans, and some emigrants from Hawaii who fled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the duration of the war.

Japan increased its blockade of China in September by seizing several bases in the northern part of the now-isolated French Indochina.[82]

In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front line around the Russian city of Kursk.[168]

War becomes global (1941)
German infantry and armoured vehicles battle the Soviet defenders on the streets of Kharkov, October 1941.

In contrast with impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, the bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to the signing of Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[219][220] with a subsequent shift to the Allied side by Finland.

The Axis advance was stopped in 1942, after Japan lost a series of naval battles and European Axis troops were defeated in North Africa and, decisively, at Stalingrad.

This success was offset soon after by an Axis offensive in Libya which pushed the Allies back into Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[171]

In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.[41]

In December 1941, the Empire of Japan, which aimed to dominate East Asia and Indochina, joined the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the West Pacific.

Both Germany and the USSR used this proxy war as an opportunity to test improved weapons and tactics.

In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia.

Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the nominally neutral Soviet Union fully or partially invaded, occupied and annexed territories of its six European neighbours, including Poland.

The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[158]

The Germans split the Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A struck lower Don River while Army Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards Volga River.[164]

Axis collapse, Allied victory (1945)
American and Soviet troops meet in April 1945, east of the Elbe River.