WWII Nazi Era Terms: Holocaust, Gestapo, Occupation

Collaborators

Collaborators: Policy of support for Nazi Germany during World War II. It was followed by various governments and political movements in the territories of Europe occupied by the German armies.

Dictatorship

Dictatorship: A political regime installed and maintained by force. It is characterized by the disappearance of individual liberties, the use of violence to intimidate or eliminate the opposition, and the suppression of unions and political parties. Power is concentrated in one person, group, or institution, and is typically supported by a single party, propaganda, and the police.

Axis

Axis: A name given to the collaboration between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy between 1936 and 1945.

Gestapo

Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police). National police created in 1933 to control, combat, and eliminate all opponents of the Hitler regime. It depended on the ministry of the interior and acted as a paramilitary body independent of the regular army. The Gestapo extended its actions throughout Nazi-occupied Europe during the war and organized the deportation of German and European Jews to extermination camps.

Ghetto

Ghetto: A neighborhood of tall houses and narrow streets, often surrounded by walls, historically inhabited by Jewish communities in sixteenth-century Italian cities. The French Revolution equated Jews with other citizens and led to the abolition of many European ghettos; however, during the Second World War these neighborhoods reappeared under German occupation.

Holocaust

Holocaust: The systematic extermination practiced against Jewish communities during the Second World War in Germany and in the European territories occupied by German troops as a result of the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi regime. The so-called Final Solution was applied from 1941 in the death camps.

Giacomo Matteotti

Giacomo Matteotti (1885–1924): An Italian Socialist politician. He served as deputy and as general secretary of the Italian Socialist Party since 1919. In 1924, Matteotti publicly accused Mussolini of having falsified the elections and of responsibility for acts of street violence. He was abducted by fascist groups and his body was found weeks later; this event contributed to the end of the parliamentary system's normal functioning.

March on Rome

March on Rome: Expression used by Italian Fascists to refer to the way that Mussolini came to power in 1922. The petition of King Victor Emmanuel III to Mussolini to form a government was preceded by the fascist threat to occupy Rome. Mussolini's Blackshirts paraded through the city.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor: The main U.S. naval base in Hawaii. It was attacked without warning by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941. The next day, the United States declared war on Japan.

Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws: Anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany adopted unanimously on September 15, 1935, during the seventh Reichsparteitag (annual congress of the NSDAP) held in the city of Nuremberg.

Yalta Conference

Yalta Conference: Meeting held in the Soviet city of Yalta in February 1945 between Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. It reached agreements on actions to be taken after the end of the war.