in-class #21: The Early Battles
Read Chapter 21 ("America and World War II: 1941-1945"), section 2 only ("The Early Battles"), pages 722-727 and answer the questions below:
1. What part of the U.S. fleet survived the attack at Pearl Harbor, thus allowing the U.S. to plan and retaliate against earlier than Japan expected?
2. What were the keys to the success of James Doolittle's air attack against Tokyo a few months after the Pearl Harbor attack?
3. How did Japan's war strategy change as a result of the Doolittle Raid?
4. What role did the breaking of the Japanese code have on Japan's plans to attack Midway Island and New Guinea?
5. Why was the naval Battle of Midway a turning point in the war in the Pacific?
6. Why did Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Communist Soviet Union, want the United States to open a second front in Europe?
7. Why did British Prime Minister Winston Churchill not want to launch a second front?
8. Why were American troops first sent into North Africa to confront Germany's "Afrika Korps" (under the command of the "desert Fox" -- General Erwin Rommel)?
9. What was the "Battle of the Atlantic" and why was it important?
10. Why was the city of Stalingrad so important to both the Germand and the Russians in 1942?