Curated playlist
Politics of World War II
- Europe firstEarly in World War II, the US sent over three times as many soldiers to the Pacific as to Europe.
- Restatement of Policy on GermanyA 1946 speech named for hope alarmed Poland. US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes questioned its new borders.
- German occupation of Estonia during World War IIEstonian partisans attacked Soviet trucks the day Germany invaded the USSR.
- Four PolicemenUnder the Four Policemen plan, only four nations would have been allowed to own any weapon more powerful than a rifle. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the idea during World War II as a guarantor of world peace. He wanted a council…
- Vichy FranceIn July 1940, French lawmakers voted 569 to 80 to give Marshal Pétain absolute power. Vichy France began that day.
- Declaration by United NationsThe name "United Nations" was coined by Roosevelt, and Churchill noted Lord Byron had used it.
- Potsdam AgreementThe Potsdam Agreement was a communiqué, not a peace treaty, yet it shaped Germany until 1990.
- World War II by countryA Salvadoran diplomat in Geneva helped save up to 40,000 people with false papers.
- Anglo-German Naval AgreementThe Anglo-German Naval Agreement brought Adolf Hitler what he called "the happiest day of his life". The treaty was an arms limitation pact between the United Kingdom and Germany, signed in London in 1935. On paper it dealt with the dry…
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)Hitler gave Czechoslovakia's president two choices: cooperate or face armed destruction.
- Morgenthau PlanRoosevelt and Churchill initialed a plan to turn Germany into farmland. Both soon distanced themselves from it.
- Anti-Comintern PactThe Anti-Comintern Pact had a secret clause naming the Soviet Union. The public text did not.
- Axis powersThe Axis powers got their name from a single phrase Mussolini used in 1936.
- AppeasementAppeasement was once a respectable word for peaceful settlement. After 1939 it came to mean cowardice and surrender.
- Armistice of CassibileThe battleship Roma sank with nearly 1,400 men after Italy's surrender. German bombers hit it at sea.
- Allies of World War IIRoosevelt proposed the name United Nations for the Allies in December 1941. Churchill agreed.
- Romani HolocaustIn May 1944, Roma at Auschwitz-Birkenau armed themselves with iron pipes and shovels.
- New Order (Nazism)Hitler's 1941 "European New Order" sounded like paperwork but was a plan of conquest and genocide.
- Occupation of the Baltic statesIn August 1940, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were absorbed into the Soviet Union. Sham elections came first.
- Atlantic CharterThe Atlantic Charter was never actually signed. Roosevelt himself said no copy of it existed that he knew of.
- Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity SphereIn December 1941, Japan's War Ministry drew up a plan to rule Hawaii, Australia and Alaska.
- Opposition to World War IIIn May 1941, Rudolf Hess parachuted alone into Scotland with a peace proposal. The British did not negotiate.
- Phoney WarDuring the Phoney War, the RAF helped bury German airmen at Clacton-on-Sea. Wreaths of sympathy lay on the coffins.