World War II Part 2

Sobibor:

• Nazi German extermination camp located in a forest near present-day Polish province of Lublin. Built in March 1942, it operated from May 1942 until October 1943, and its gas chambers killed a total of about 250,000 Jews, mostly from Poland and occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Sobibor was one of the three Operation Reinhard camps established after the Wannsee Conference to exterminate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. The others were Belzec and Treblinka. It was never liberated but destroyed by Nazis in 1943 along with Belzec.

• The code name for Nazi Germany's World War II invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941.

Tripartite Pact:

• A neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939.

• A defensive military alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy signed in Berlin on September 27, 1940. In 1940 it created the alliance known as the Axis Powers of WW II.

Operation Mincemeat:

• The name borrowed by the British press and applied to the heavy and frequent bombing raids carried out over Britain in 1940 and 1941 during the Second World War.

• A successful British disinformation plan during the Second World War, which convinced the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective.

Operation Overlord:

• A neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939.

• The code name for the Invasion of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II.

Mein Kampf:

• An autobiography by the National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler, in which he outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany; German for "my struggle."

• A particular philosophy or view of life; the worldview of an individual or group.

Nazi Party:

• A political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that practiced the ideology of Nazism, a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism.

• Nazi German extermination camp located in a forest near the village of Sobibór in the present-day Polish province of Lublin. Built in March 1942, it operated from May 1942 until October 1943, and its gas chambers killed a total of about 250,000 Jews, mostly from Poland and occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Sobibor was one of the three Operation Reinhard camps established after the Wannsee Conference to exterminate the Jewish population of occupied Poland. The others were Belzec and Treblinka. It was never liberated but destroyed by Nazis in 1943 along with Belzec. *

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• The foundational treaty of the United Nations, signed October 24, 1945.

• An unofficial designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933.

• A declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, the first global expression of what many believe are the rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.

Popular Front:

• An alliance of left-wing movements during the interwar period, including the French Communist Party (PCF), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), and the Radical and Socialist Party.

• The code name for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of World War II.

Operation Typhoon:

• The designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park

• The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union.

self-determination:

• An episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanking, then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War..

• A cardinal principle in modern international law that states that nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference.