Growth of Our Nation: Chapter 14: World War II, Lessons 1–4

A dictator is a ruler who has total power over a country.

Fascism is a movement that gives all power to the government and does away with individual freedoms.

The Allies then declared war on Germany.

Many Americans worried that this action would draw the country into war.

Rationing is a system that limits the amount of scarce goods people can buy.

By purchasing bonds, Americans lent money to the government.

These places were called internment camps. They seemed like prisons to the families forced to live in them.

In 1941, President Roosevelt issued an order that banned discrimination in war industries.

Most Japanese Americans lived near the West Coast. Would they help defend the country against a Japanese attack?

Radar is an electronic system that uses sound to identify objects from a distance.

The sound waves hit the object and show up on a screen, revealing the object's location.

At the same time, American and British bombers were hitting targets inside Germany.

The Nazis had rounded them up and sent them to these prisons, or concentration camps.

These soldiers had come across evidence of genocide.

Genocide is the murder of an entire group of people, based on their race, culture, or beliefs.

This period of Germany's genocide against the Jews in now known as the Holocaust.

A ghetto is an area in a city where members of certain minority groups are forced to live. Jewish ghettos had existed in European cities and towns for centuries.

But under the Nazis they now had a special purpose. Jews were held in ghettos until they could be sent to concentration camps.

Scientists were trying to create the first atomic bomb.

Much of Japan's growth was the result of its taking over other islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The economic cost of the war is harder to determine.