This is EASILY the biggest event in the history of the planet. For 8 years, the nearly the entire planet fought the deadliest war in human history. Countless books, shows, and movies have been made about WWII. In fact, WWII might be the thing you knew the most about coming into this course… WARNING: The College Board doesn’t expect you to know that much about it. So, DO NOT GET BOGGED DOWN HERE. Don’t worry about battles or people as much. Focus on what got the world into this war… and then what happened after this war. They really only want you to focus on the new weaponry in WWII for the actual fighting of the war: FIREBOMBING and NUCLEAR BOMBS. That’s it. So, watch Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk later. Place WWII into the greater scheme of Unit 7, but don’t get lost here…

1. SECOND SINO-JAPANESE WAR
2. LEBENSRAUM
3. APPEASEMENT
4. BLITZKRIEG
5. BRITISH INDIAN ARMY

1. CONDUCTING WWII from Heimler’s History

2. WORLD WAR II from CRASH COURSE WORLD HISTORY

1. THE MUNICH AGREEMENT, September 1938, Nazi Germany, UK, France, Italy
2. EINSTEIN-SZILARD LETTER, Albert Einstein to President Franklin Roosevelt, August 1939
3. WE SHALL FIGHT ON THE BEACHES, Winston Churchill, June 1940
4. DAY OF INFAMY, Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8 1941
5. JAPANESE INSTRUMENT OF SURRENDER, September 1945

1. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON, 1939

2. WE CAN DO IT, J. Howard Miller, 1943

3. SAMURAI DESTROYING US AND UK SHIPS (POSTCARD), 1943

4. MARINE CORPS WAR MEMORIAL, Arlington, VA, 1954

5. MOTHERLAND CALLS, Volgograd, 1967

1. This topic is way too large to wrap your head around in this course. (Sorry).
2. Focus on the causes: TOTALITARIAN AGGRESSION=Japan, Germany & Italy.
3. Different nations mobilized for the war differently (US, UK, Nazi Germany, Japan).
4. Large empires like the UK, mobilized their colonies like they did in WWI.
5. New military tech like FIREBOMBING (Napalm) and ATOMIC BOMBS (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) massively increased wartime casualties.