World War II

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

1. The Unfinished Peace: Versailles, the League of Nations, and the Rise of Axis Revisionism. The failures of Versailles and the League of Nations opened the door to Axis territorial revisionism in the 1930s.
2. Appeasement and the Collapse of the Postwar Order (1935-1939). British and French appeasement failed to check German remilitarization, the Anschluss, and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
3. The Outbreak of War: Danzig, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the Invasion of Poland. The Danzig crisis, the Pact of Steel, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact converged in the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.
4. Blitzkrieg Triumphant: The Fall of France and the Battle of Britain (1940). German Blitzkrieg overran Scandinavia and France in 1940, though the Luftwaffe failed to subdue Britain from the air.
5. Operation Barbarossa and the Turning of the Tide in the East (1941-1943). Barbarossa, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk marked the rise and collapse of German fortunes on the Eastern Front.
6. The War Becomes Global: Pearl Harbor, North Africa, and the Pacific. Pearl Harbor globalized the conflict, joined by the North African desert campaigns and Allied island-hopping in the Pacific.
7. The Liberation of Europe and the Fall of the Third Reich (1943-1945). From the Italian campaign to D-Day, the Ardennes, and the fall of Berlin, the Allies closed in on Nazi Germany.
8. The Pacific Endgame, the Atomic Bomb, and the War's Human Cost. Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a war of unprecedented human cost to its end.