The 1940s: The War Years Trivia Quiz

After WWII began on September 1, 1939, a period of stagnation called the Phoney War occurred, as there wasn't much action taking place on the Western Front. By May 10, 1940, however, that changed when the the Nazi war machine began its invasion of France and the Low Countries.

British, French, and Belgian troops had to retreat to northern France, and were in serious peril when the advancing Germany army was issued a three day Halt Order in order to reorganize. The Allied troops that had been trapped at Dunkirk, were given time to escape. While an estimated 338,000 Allied troops were rescued from the port of Dunkirk from May 27-June 4 during Operation Dynamo, about 30,000-40,000 were not so lucky. They were captured by the Germans, the port of Dunkirk was mostly destroyed, and most of Britain's heavy equipment was abandoned or destroyed.

On a quiet Sunday morning at a U.S. naval base in Hawaii, all hell was about to break loose on December 7, 1941. Talks with Japan, regarding the future relations of the two countries, had broken down, and it appears that as soon as the Japanese delegates left Washington, D.C., the signal was given to begin a series of coordinated attacks that began with Pearl Harbor, where the United States Pacific Fleet was stationed.

A total of 353 Japanese airplanes were launched from six aircraft carriers in two waves of attacks. All eight U.S. battleships that were kept at the naval base were damaged, along with thirteen other support vessels; 180 aircraft were destroyed. American casualties numbered 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded.

Japanese actions on this "date which will live in infamy", brought the United States, a country that had tried to retain its neutrality during the first two years of WWII, into the conflict.

An important turning point in the war, the Battle of Coral Sea on May 4-8, 1942, was the first naval battle in history where ships did not fire at each other - or even see each other for that matter. Instead, airplanes that took off from aircraft carriers fought. It was a completely different type of battle, and each side suffered from a lack of knowledge about the new type of fighting.

American commanders, however, seemed to be able to communicate better, as they were stationed on the aircraft carriers, closer to the action than Japanese leaders were. While the United States lost more ships, the Japanese lost more aircraft. In the end, the Allies were able to stop the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, and by the time the Battle of Midway occurred a month later, the Japanese were still short on airplanes.

Immediately after the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Germans began to set apart large numbers of urban Jews into confined areas called ghettos, or Jewish Quarters. The largest ghetto, located in Warsaw, contained an estimated 300,000-400,000 people, who lived in an area of about 3.3 square kilometers.

Starvation and disease quickly began to take a toll on the people, and the Germans began a mass deportation policy to what the Jews were originally told were labor camps. After it was discovered that the people were actually being deported to extermination camps, Jewish resistance groups began to form; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 19-May 16, 1943, was the largest single Jewish revolt during WWII.

According to one of the Jewish resistance leaders who survived the war, the people there did not hope to win. They hoped "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths". The Germans deported those who survived the uprising and destroyed the ghetto.

At the time it was carried out on June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord, also called D-Day, became the largest sea invasion in history. The Allies had been planning the invasion of the coast of Normandy in France for weeks, and knew that the weather conditions there would only give them a handful of possible days each month to put their plan into action. In fact, the original plans were to launch the invasion of June 5, but it was postponed a day because of the weather.

The plan for Operation Overlord was not was only an amphibious invasion of about 156,000 men, but also an aerial attack of 24,000 troops. Although not immediately successful, the invasion did eventually lead to the liberation of French cities. A landing from the Mediterranean Sea, code named Operation Dragoon, led to the liberation of Paris by August 25, 1944.

After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, the Japanese government made it known that they intended to surrender. Some people believe that V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks the day that Japanese forces surrendered - it is August 14 or August 15, 1945, depending on the time zone. In the UK and Japan the day is observed on August 15; the Japanese call it "the day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace".

The United States marks V-J Day on September 2. That is the day when Japanese officials formally signed the document of surrender on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Totally defeated at the end of WWII and with its wartime leader, Benito Mussolini, dead, Italians decided to abolish the Kingdom of Italy, and on June 2, 1946, voted to become a republic.

Italy's government had technically been a constitutional monarch since unification in 1861. In 1922, however, King Victor Emmanuel III nominated Benito Mussolini as his prime minister, and the country fell under fascist rule. Even though the King attempted to save the monarchy, it was too late. He abdicated the throne in favor of his son, and a month later the people of Italy voted to become a republic, the first time since 27 BC, when Augustus abolished the Roman Republic in order to become the first emperor.

It is a familiar story that remains popular to this day. Anne Frank and her family lived in the Netherlands in hiding from the Nazis in the Secret Annex for over two years before being discovered and deported to prison camps.

On July 5, 1942, Anne's sister Margot received a summons to report to relocation in a work camp, and the next day the entire family and, eventually, some of their friends - a total of eight people - went into hiding. Anne had already been writing in her now famous diary for about a month, and continued to do so.

Upon their discovery on August 4, 1944, members of the group were eventually transported to Auschwitz, and two months later Anne and Margot were moved to Bergen-Belsen, where they both died a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Their father, Frank, was the only member of the group who survived.

He returned to Amsterdam where he was given pages of Anne's diary that had been collected by Miep Gies, one of the friends who had helped the family while in hiding. At first he did not wish to read the papers, but he eventually had them translated into German and distributed among other family members who encouraged him to have the diary published.

By 2014, 35 million copies of "The Diary of a Young Girl", originally called "The Annex", had been printed in 65 different languages.

After World War I, the British government had been given a mandate to administer land in Palestine and Transjordan, which had been taken from the newly dissolved Ottoman Empire. The purpose of the mandate was to have the British help oversee the land until the people could do it on their own. During this time the British government was quite vocal about supporting the existence of a new Jewish state in the region, however, in 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine officially ended, after unsuccessful plans had been discussed by the United Nations to divide the land into an Arab state and a Jewish state.

Although Arabs had rejected the plans, the state of Israel announced its independence on May 14, 1948, when the mandate ended. Armies of neighboring Arab countries entered Palestine the next day, initiating a war that lasted for ten months. By the end of the First Arab-Israeli War, Israel had maintained control of the land that had been proposed as the Jewish state and more than half of the land that was to be formed into an Arab state.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, was formed in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1949. Members of the group, hoping to avoid another world war, agreed to help each other in case of an attack by a third party.

During the Cold War the alliance was seen as being necessary in case of an attack by the Soviet Union, but was also kept in place after its dissolution in the 1990s. Since then, NATO has overseen military operations all over the world. It has been instrumental in promoting democratic governments and the security of its members, as well as fighting terrorism. NATO's main headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium.