Allied powers: The Allies were a union of countries who were military opponents to the Axis powers during World War II; usually refers to Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but the Allies technically included all countries threatened or invaded by the Axis countries.
anti-Semitism: Hostility toward or discrimination against Jewish people.
armistice: A cease-fire during a war until formal negotiations can be arranged.
Aryan: A term originally identifying a large group of races but used by Hitler to refer to a race of people supposedly superior to all others: those of western European countries whose general populations possessed Germanic features.
Axis powers: The Axis was a union of countries who were military opponents to the Allied Powers during World War II; Germany, Japan, and Italy were the major Axis nations.
Battle of the Bulge: Also called the Ardennes Offensive, this was the last major offensive (rather than defensive) attack initiated by Nazi Germany during the war. It was a surprise attack against U.S. troops, begun on December 16, 1944, in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. The Germans pushed the U.S. troops back far enough to form a bulge in their line, but the Germans were pushed back by the end of January 1945.
black market: An “underground economy,” so named because its transactions are conducted outside the “light” of the law. During World War II, food was often bought and sold on the black market, without the use of Nazi-issued ration cards.
blitzkrieg: A mode of warfare whereby the simultaneous use of tanks, planes, and troops coordinated by radio, moving at top speed, and not confined to regular roads, creates a surprise attack.
buzz bombs: Also called V-1 bombs, robot bombs, or doodlebugs; a Vergeltungswaffe (“vengeance weapon”) of Nazi Germany, buzz bombs were self-propelled, contained nearly 2,000 pounds of explosives, could travel at speeds of up to 350 mph, and could cover a distance of 250 kilometers before landing and destroying everything within a few hundred feet.
concentration camps: Located primarily in Poland and Germany, the hundreds of concentration camps run by the Nazi regime were designed to punish and kill large groups of people deemed undesirable by the Nazis.
D-day: The day that a certain military operation will begin. The term has become permanently associated with the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe initiated on the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
Drôle de Guerre (“Silly War”): Called “the Phony War” in English, this period was the peaceful but tense eight-month period between September 3, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and May 10, 1940, when Germany simultaneously invaded France and several other countries.
espionage: The practice of spying to secretly obtain important information about the plans and activities of a foreign government.
Fascism: A political ideology that promotes a centralized and authoritarian one-party system.
Germanisation (or Germanization): The process by which Nazis forced Aryan-appearing peoples to forsake their own culture and become German.
Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolize, “secret state police,” established by Hitler in 1933 to locate and punish his political enemies, the Gestapo was later made to join forces with the intelligence brance of the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
Holocaust: Greek for “a sacrifice completely consumed by fire”; in terms of World War II history, it means the murder of approximately six million Jews by Nazi Germany.
intelligence: Important information regarding an enemy power gathered from espionage (spying).
Judenfrei: “Jew-free.” During Word War II it meant ridding certain areas of Jewish people.
Judenrein: “Jew-pure” or “Jew-clean,” often also translated as “Jew-free.” The concept went beyond Judenfrei, implying that Europe needed to be racially cleansed of the Jews by destroying them, not just moving them out.
Kristallnacht: “Crystal Night” or “Night of the Broken Glass.” The widespread, destructive attack against the Jews in Germany and Austria, coordinated by the Nazis on the night of November 9, 1938, and resulting in the destruction of thousands of Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues and the arrest and deportment to concentration camps of thousands of Jewish men.
Luftwaffe: “Air weapon”; refers to the German air force.
maquis: A type of wild French plant. During the Nazi occupation of France the term referred to French men who banded together in rural areas to avoid forced labor in German munitions factories and to fight the Germans.
Morse code: A system of communication developed by American Samuel Morse in which a series of dots and dashes—long and short measures of light or sound—represent letters and numbers. World War II radio operators sent and received messages by Morse code.
Nazi: Short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP), the fascist political party led by Adolf Hitler that grew out of the tiny German Worker’s Party and ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
NSB (Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging): The Dutch Nazi party whose members openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers.
Office of Strategic Services (OSS): The U.S. wartime intelligence-gathering agency.
onderduiker: “Under-diver”; during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, this referred to individuals hiding either themselves or their real identities (by the use of a false ID cards) from the Germans because they were under arrest for Resistance work or had been ordered to work in German munitions factories.
propaganda: Communications presented as complete truth but instead using only certain facts, often appealing to the emotions (rather than to rational thinking), to purposely influence public opinion in a certain way. During the German occupation of Europe, propaganda was used constantly to promote Nazi ideology and support the occupation.
Resistance: Sometimes also referred to as the Underground, this was the term given to the efforts of people in Nazi-occupied areas to fight the Germans in any way they could.
resister: A person involved with the Resistance.
Royal Air Force (RAF): The air force of Great Britain.
sabotage: Destructive action, usually involving explosives, meant to hinder an enemy’s war effort, such as destroying the enemy’s means of transportation and communication, military equipment, and munitions factories.
Special Operations Executive (SOE): A British Resistance organization formed in 1940 to conduct clandestine (secret) warfare in Nazi-occupied countries.
SS: Schutzstaffel, “Protection Squadron”; the Nazi unit primarily responsible for implementing Hitler’s racial policies, including hunting down and imprisoning Jews and running the concentration and death camps. The SS had its own armed forces, the Waffen SS, which was distinct from the German Wehrmacht.
Third Reich: A term created by Hitler to refer to Nazi Germany.
underground newspaper: During World War II, these were newspa-perssecretly printed and distributed by Resistance workers in Nazi-occupied countries in order to encourage and inform occupied peoples and to counteract Nazi propaganda.
Vergeltungswaffen: “vengeance weapons”; See buzz bombs. The V-1 buzz bomb and the V-2 rocket used by Nazi Germany against the Allies.
Versailles Treaty: An agreement signed on June 28, 1919, between Germany and the countries it had been fighting against, principally France and Great Britain, seven months after World War I ended. The treaty was extremely punitive toward Germany and created vast economic problems and resentment there.
Wehrmacht: The name for the German armed forces; it often refers to the regular German army as opposed to the Waffen SS, the armed service branch of the SS.
work camps: Camps where occupied peoples were forced to live while providing labor in Nazi munitions factories or agricultural areas run by Germans.
World War I: Referred to as the Great War before the outbreak of World War II, World War I was the destructive global conflict that took place between 1914 and 1918.
Yad Vashem: The world center for documentation, research, education, and commemoration of the Holocaust, located in Jerusalem, Israel, and the organization that grants the award of Righteous Among the Nations to non-Jews who assisted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe.