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Notes on video lecture:
WWII: Strategies for Total War
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
air, civilian, three, Stalingrad, economic, subordinate, 30%, degrees, liberators, France, failing, race, Americans, Europe, extinction, organized, Germany, attrition, transportation, army, brute, subjugating, Pentagon, atomic, inexhaustible, command, bravado, Soviet, factories, survival, 1944, soldiers, industrially
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why did the Allies win WWII?
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which model of government would be most effective in mobilizing its resources to pass the ultimate test of                  in an all out war
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Germany: War of Annihilation
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Nazis had a vision of a New World Order, one in which a master          which they defined would be on top, and all the other races would be                       
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1942: large area of              under their control
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population and GDP was alarmingly high, but when you are                        other peoples and treating them as a subordinate race, you have a hard time maximizing their                  potential
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imperial plans in the East
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in some parts of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were seen as                      since they hated Stalin and his suppressive government so much
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yet it was realized that the treatment by the Nazis was not much better and so these people were not mobilized to the German cause
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Nazi regime begin to envision the                      of entire populations of people they regarded as enemies
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"final solution" for the Jews
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came in               : first imprison them or push them out of the country, push them East, but then there were too many of them in prisons, and they were there again when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union
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1940-1942: began constructing factories to kill people                         , something that states, human beings, had never embarked upon before
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widespread extermination of Pole population
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Germans had East Front, Africa, Atlantic submarine war, and trying to protect their skies from air raids
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Soviet Union
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the Soviet Union's survival in WWII deserves some attention, it survives by envisioning the possibilities of a kind of "Communist Sparta", taking the notion of a                society to its ultimate end
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WWII is a war of                   : muscle on muscle, numbers on numbers
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the thing that keeps surprising the Germans is they keep assuming that the Soviets should be out of                 , how can they keep building all these tanks, where are they getting all these armies from?
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the fact was, however, that in 1941-1942, the populations and GDP of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were roughly the same
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so the mystery was how the Soviets got such an astonishing amount of outputs from a comparable set of inputs?
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in 1941, the Soviets had significantly more, in 1942 often double, the number of tanks, aircraft than the Germans, often not the same quality, but this was more a war of            strength and numbers
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even in 1942 when Germany is occupying some of the Soviet country denying them of many                   
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explanation
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these two countries are both dictatorships, but the Soviets a better                    dictatorship and command economy than the Germans do
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demand more sacrifices from their people
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do more to conscript more soldiers
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and they are not exterminating a significant portion of their population as the Nazi regime was
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Soviet communism was a more efficient system to run an all-out war economy than was Nazi fascism
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how could the Soviet Union turn their entire economy into a war economy producing a maximum of war equipment?
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you have to make trade-offs, e.g. you won't be able to make many                  products
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but in 1942-1944, the                    were supplying some of these other products
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can concentrate on one zone of combat, the Germans can't do that
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but for the Soviets, it is a close war, they do not have                            resources
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1942 is the critical year
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Soviets can leverage superior war material production to launch offensives that the Germans think the Soviets should not be able to launch
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                     is a significant success for the Soviets
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British and Americans are putting pressure on Germans on other fronts
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USA: The Juggler
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have many commitments
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           major fronts in the Pacific
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getting supplies to the Soviets
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jointly occupied Iran
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Mediterranean
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skies of Germany
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getting ready to launch battle in north of             
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Atlantic
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running factories and farms in States
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to organize this effort, they built the                 
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the largest office building in the world
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four gambles:
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1. keep focus on               
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2. can get by with a relatively small         
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navy and air force were larger
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leverage the power of the              army
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3. redouble bet on        power against Germany
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in 1942, Allied bombing campaign against Germany was               
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in 1943 begins to divert German effort:        of the cannon barrels of the Third Reich are pointing at the sky
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by         , bombing begins to have a tremendous impact
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break down Germany oil and                              industries
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4. bet that they can make an              bomb (early 1943)
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only the Americans had the scientific confidence and                to pull this off and have the resources to do it
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the Japanese and the Germans considered it but decided it was too hard
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by mid 1945, an atomic bomb was ready to use

People:

######################### (1890-1946)
Franklin Roosevelt's chief diplomatic advisor during WWII
  • in WWII was key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend-Lease program that sent aid to the Allies
  • one of the architects of the New Deal program
  • directed the WPA (Works Progress Administation) which became the largest employer in the country

Spelling Corrections:

atrition ⇒ attrition
1914: Schizophrenic Germany
1914: The Balkan Whirlpool
1914: From Balkan Crisis to War
1914-1916: All War Plans Fail Horribly
The 1916 Missed Opportunity for Peace
WWI Pushes Warring Countries Toward Total States
Why the Allies Won World War One
Post-WWI: Filling the Void of Collapsed Empires
Post-WWI Communism vs. Anti-Communism
Post World War I: The Age of Uncertainty
1910s/1920s: Modern Women
The World of 1930
The 1930s World Crisis
1930s: The Decade of Contingency
America's Entry into World War II
WWII: Strategies for Total War
1945: Hour Zero
Post WWII: Imagining New Countries
Conflicts in Postwar Nation Building
The Two Europes That Emerged After WWII
1947 China: Undesirable Communists vs. Flawed Nationalists
Post WWII: The Age of America
Reasons for the Korean War
How WWIII was Avoided in the Korean War
1950-1952: The Cold War Comes to Main Street
1950-1954: The H-Bomb and the Nuclear Revolution
1950s: Loosening Empires and Building Confederations
The Emergence of the Third World
1958-1962: The World at the Brink
Third World Proxy Wars of the 1950s and 1960s
Managerial States and the Transnational Disruption of 1968
1970s Obstacles to Reducing Cold War Tensions
1970s Democratic Socialism Becomes a Non-Choice
1980s Political Polarization
1980s: Global Capitalism Transformed