The first peacetime military draft in U.S. history began in 1940.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Selective Training and Service Act of September 1940 required men to register more than a year before Pearl Harbor.
Category: Home Front
Question 2
The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 renounced war but included no way to punish nations that broke it.
Correct Answer
True
True. The United States and other nations condemned war as a way to settle disputes, but the pact required no action against violators. It did nothing to stop the aggression of the 1930s.
Category: Road to War
Question 3
Japan's 1931 seizure of Manchuria led the League of Nations to impose strong economic sanctions on Japan.
Correct Answer
False
False. The League of Nations protested the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo but took no further action. Japan simply left the League, a sign of how weak collective security had become.
Category: Road to War
Question 4
In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other and secretly agreed to divide Poland between them.
Correct Answer
True
True. The public nonaggression pact carried a secret protocol dividing Poland and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres, and it freed Hitler to invade Poland on September 1, 1939, without fear of a war with the Soviets. Hitler broke the agreement by invading the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Category: Road to War
Question 5
Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939 after Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.
Correct Answer
False
False. Britain and France declared war on September 3, 1939, after Germany invaded Poland. Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia earlier that year without triggering war.
Category: Road to War
Question 6
Congress declared war on Germany on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Correct Answer
False
False. On December 8 Congress declared war on Japan. Germany and Italy then declared war on the United States on December 11, and Congress answered with its own declarations.
Category: Road to War
Question 7
During World War II, the federal government began routinely withholding income taxes from most workers' paychecks.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Current Tax Payment Act of 1943 made payroll withholding routine for most workers, and along with war bond sales it helped pay for the war. The withholding system is still used today.
Category: Home Front
Question 8
Japanese Americans in Hawaii were interned in larger numbers than Japanese Americans on the West Coast.
Correct Answer
False
False. Most Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not interned, even though Hawaii had been attacked. Removal and confinement fell mainly on Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.
Category: Civil Rights in Wartime
Question 9
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up mostly of Japanese Americans, became one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history for its size.
Correct Answer
True
True. The 442nd fought in Italy and France while many of its soldiers' families were held in camps. Its record became a powerful rebuke to claims that Japanese Americans were disloyal.
Category: Civil Rights in Wartime
Question 10
The Congress of Racial Equality, founded in 1942, relied on armed self-defense to fight segregation.
Correct Answer
False
False. CORE, founded by James Farmer and others, used nonviolent tactics such as sit-ins to challenge segregation. Those methods became central to the later civil rights movement.
Category: Civil Rights in Wartime
Question 11
Navajo code talkers sent radio messages in a code based on their own language that Japanese forces could not decipher.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Marine Corps code built on the Navajo language, with Navajo words standing for military terms, was never broken by the Japanese. Navajo Marines served in battles such as Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, and Comanche code talkers served in the European theater.
Category: Civil Rights in Wartime
Question 12
Women who took factory jobs during the war were generally paid the same wages as men for the same work.
Correct Answer
False
False. Women earned less than men for the same work even as they filled jobs once held only by men. Many were also pushed out of those jobs when the war ended.
Category: Home Front
Question 13
Members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots ferried military aircraft so that male pilots were free for combat.
Correct Answer
True
True. The WASPs flew new planes from factories to bases and performed other flying duties at home. They were civilians and did not fly in combat.
Category: Home Front
Question 14
At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Big Three agreed to postpone any invasion of France until 1946.
Correct Answer
False
False. At Tehran, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin finalized plans for a cross-channel invasion of France. That invasion came on D-Day in June 1944.
Category: Allied Diplomacy
Question 15
Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Harry S. Truman became president before the war ended.
Correct Answer
True
True. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Germany surrendered. Truman led the country through the end of the war in both Europe and the Pacific.
Category: Allied Diplomacy
Question 16
Adolf Hitler was captured by Soviet troops and put on trial for war crimes.
Correct Answer
False
False. Hitler committed suicide in Berlin on April 30, 1945, as Soviet forces closed in, and Germany surrendered on May 8. Other surviving Nazi leaders faced war crimes trials.
Category: European Theater
Question 17
Besides Jews, Nazi camps imprisoned and killed Roma, gay people, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.
Correct Answer
True
True. Jews were the main target of the Nazis' plan of extermination, but many other groups were also sent to camps. Many prisoners died of forced labor, disease and starvation, and most sent to extermination camps were killed on arrival.
Category: European Theater
Question 18
The Battle of Okinawa in 1945 was a quick American victory with light casualties.
Correct Answer
False
False. Okinawa, fought in the spring of 1945, was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war, with heavy losses among American troops, Japanese troops and Okinawan civilians. Its toll shaped fears about the cost of invading Japan itself.
Category: Pacific Theater
Question 19
Scientists of the Manhattan Project built the first atomic bombs at a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Manhattan Project employed a huge workforce at sites across the country, and the bombs were designed at Los Alamos. The first test explosion took place in New Mexico in July 1945.
Category: Atomic Bomb
Question 20
Harry Truman was closely involved in the Manhattan Project throughout his time as vice president.
Correct Answer
False
False. Truman did not learn about the Manhattan Project until after Roosevelt died and he became president. He then made the decision to use the bomb against Japan.
Category: Atomic Bomb