What do you know about WWII?

I found this in the San Francisco Chronicle today. Tomorrow being Unification Day and all, this might give you an insight as to why you are here and not Hitler jun. in Whitehall or the White House.

P.S. I will post the answers tomorrow evening if I think of it. But you can also follow the link and look them up yourselves.

World War II quiz
Test your World War II knowledge. This Chronicle questionnaire was administered in San Francisco to 36 sophomores, 34 juniors and 20 seniors - but without benefit of multiple-choice options. Below is a multiple-choice version of the quiz, with each choice - incorrect, correct and nearly correct - taken from the students' original answers.

1. When was World War II?
a. 1700

b. 1939 to 1945

c. Europe: 1930 to 1945; U.S.: 1941-1945

d. 1967

2. Who was president during most of World War II?
a. Woodrow Wilson

b. Theodore Roosevelt

c. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

d. Harry Truman

3. Who was Winston Churchill?
a. Prime Minister of the U.K.

b. General of the U.S.

c. A dictator

d. Some important dude

4. Who was Adolf Hitler?
a. Super evil guy

b. Nazi leader

c. Killer of Jews

d. All of the above

5. Who was Benito Mussolini?
a. Soviet leader

b. An explorer

c. Dictator of Italy

d. A columnist

6. Who was Rosie the Riveter?
a. Icon of U.S. female participation in the war

b. A protester

c. Gay gang member

d. Congressman

7. What caused the U.S. to join World War II?
a. Fighting over Hawaii

b. Revenge

c. Zimmerman's note

d. The bombing of Pearl Harbor

8. How did World War II end?
a. Two atomic bombs were dropped in China

b. Hitler's suicide

c. Germany lost as Allies pushed into Berlin, Japan was bombed by two atom bombs, and Emperor Hirohito surrendered.

d. Americans and Russians freed the Jews

9. What was the war about?
a. Racism

b. Communism

c. Boston tea

d. Liberation of Europe and the Pacific

10. What was the Holocaust?
a. Genocide of over 6 million Jews and others

b. Slavery

c. Killing of those that weren't white

d. People looking down on Jews

A short history of WWII according to various student responses:

Now that is funny as hell!

I will personally berate to the nth degree anyone who doesn't know any of these answers. And the sad thing is, many on here will not know all the answers.

isn't 4 a bit biased? what would one answer? Wouldn't it depend on their view/bias and how literal they take the options?

I personally have never heard of Rosie the Riveter and I think the answer to question 9 is none of the above (well none of the above capture it properly).

it's an American thing so again- a cultural thing, can't blame everyone for not knowing that.

If you want to know more, watch The World At War.

Haggis Junior and I discussed the suggested answers and were not happy with all of them. Shows from which angle history is taught.

That show was made 35 years ago but it still is the benchmark when it comes to WWII documentaries. It has loads of eyewitness accounts of important players while they were still alive and especially of Germans who were involved in the war; something which was not easy considering how recent the war was to many people at the time and how reluctant they were to talk about it.

I watched this series as a child in Australia (scary!). Can you buy it on DVD? My husband would love them.

The theme music was the absolute best, sent shivers down your spine.

It's never a slog and Oliviers' narration makes it more than compelling. The sheer volume of original footage is still amazing.

Edit: I'm pretty sure you can get them as a box set. Wait, you can.

I actually think the whole quiz is pretty wanting and wonder who wrote it and for what reading level?

Edit: Seems to be college students...

Oh Great! Thanks Punchbear

And the book... (just published).

That's shocking! I would expect questions of that level to be aimed at 15-16 year old second level education students and even then I'd be expecting about an 80% correct rate...depending on whether they are American or European students.

Whoah, kinda pricey at 150 yoyos.

I have the box set. Do get it if you can, it's like a book that you'll want to pull out of your library to look things up forever.

Not the place to buy it from it seems...

But are the majority of the readers/writers on TT just far too educated for their own good? You and I, Keydeck are obviously far above the norm

It's on sale at Amazon UK for £57. Bargain.

No, I think most people here are thick as pigshit, but I'd still expect them to know most, if not all, of these answers. As to your last sentence, well that goes without saying.

Hitler's fate

Not really fair is it (assuming that you meant the US students would fair worse than the euro kids...and you did). I am pretty sure that a similiar percentage of Irish school kids would pass/fail this ridiculously easy quiz as Americans. Or Germans for that fact as I am interested about how throughly this is taught in a German school. point being we all have idiots, the US just happens to have alot more people, thus more idiots, but similiarly we have more well educated, worldly people than most countries. Its really a numbers game with us.

Not I didn't actually. I meant that some of the questions would be more easily answered by American kids and some of them by European kids. I personally only knew Rosie the Riveter from a rugby adaptation of the original poster which I saw a couple of years ago. We were simply not taught about her.

Good man yersel' JW, €81.

Just then, while ironing my dirndl for tomorrow, I had pause to reflect upon the quality of that piece of 70´s television in comparison to what is churned out today...

Apologizes and fair point on Rosie.

Oh God we are doomed!


I would expect these to be answered by 5th or 6th graders. All of them!


As the resident expert, I saw no anti-Americanism in Keydeck's posts here whatsoever. There were two answers that were most obviously pointed at Americans and our point of view. We fought the war to liberate Europe and the Pacific (others obviously may have had a different point of view on this) and Rosie was HOT and pretty much still is!

Lesson number 1 for our allies: This is Rosie-



Might even be Parnell's ideal woman!

She came to my attention via this picture.

ah yes, the SF Crapicle. I remember it well. Make USA Today look like scientific text. Wouldn't be suprised if its answers were wrong!

Somehow that doesn´t surprise me...

I didn't think he was making an Anti-American statement.

hm, had no clue about Rosie the Riveter.

Here are what are considered the correct answsers. What I miss is any background as to the cause of WWII, and I don't mean the invasion of Poland, I mean going back at least to the Treaty of Versailles after WWI. Nichts, nada, niente, pas de tout. WWII was there and the US joined in 1941, nuff said.

1. When was World War II?
a. 1700

b. 1939 to 1945

c. Europe: 1930 to 1945; U.S.: 1941-1945

d. 1967

2. Who was president during most of World War II?
a. Woodrow Wilson

b. Theodore Roosevelt

c. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

d. Harry Truman

3. Who was Winston Churchill?
a. Prime Minister of the U.K.

b. General of the U.S.

c. A dictator

d. Some important dude

4. Who was Adolf Hitler?
a. Super evil guy

b. Nazi leader

c. Killer of Jews

d. All of the above

5. Who was Benito Mussolini?
a. Soviet leader

b. An explorer

c. Dictator of Italy

d. A columnist

6. Who was Rosie the Riveter?
a. Icon of U.S. female participation in the war

b. A protester

c. Gay gang member

d. Congressman

7. What caused the U.S. to join World War II?
a. Fighting over Hawaii

b. Revenge

c. Zimmerman's note

d. The bombing of Pearl Harbor

8. How did World War II end?
a. Two atomic bombs were dropped in China

b. Hitler's suicide

c. Germany lost as Allies pushed into Berlin, Japan was bombed by two atom bombs, and Emperor Hirohito surrendered.
d. Americans and Russians freed the Jews

9. What was the war about?
a. Racism

b. Communism

c. Boston tea

d. Liberation of Europe and the Pacific

10. What was the Holocaust?
a. Genocide of over 6 million Jews and others

b. Slavery

c. Killing of those that weren't white

d. People looking down on Jews

as a balance some East German teenagers were interviewed on heute last night and not many knew much about the DDR and they didn't seem to know who Honecker was.

I think there is still quite a bit of good stuff made, its just that you have to look for it and most people think it is boring because they prefer to hear about Britney, the next superstar or top model, and Brad Pitt

Wow. Pretty basic stuff there. Still, I do wonder what people think they know - I watched 'Atonement' last night which, despite being a very good film, was massively flawed in terms of the way it portrayed the British/French evacuation of Dunkirk. Well worth watching the film, but ignore the bits set in France.

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with Atonement?

The evacuation is depicted as being a complete shambles - the soldiers are all shown drunk, generally just dicking about on the beach, having abandoned all hope. A character refers to the Lancastria being sunk when she was sunk a fortnight later, not off Dunkirk. He also states that the wounded were being left behind (some were, most weren't). He then goes on to say that 'High Command' had forbidden air cover. Brits wouldn't have called it High Command, and in any case there was air cover... Little things I suppose (apart from the apparent disorganisation, when in fact it was held together pretty well), but not really in any way accurate. The film also seems to suggest that Dunkirk took place in June 1939, when war hadn't even broken out...
EDIT: Oh yeah, and there's a black guy with him, wearing Corporal's stripes, even though I seriously doubt the BEF had any black members, let alone NCOs.

I actually found out why this was, I had a student two weeks ago and we were discussing Arts and Entertainment along with Culture. He is an Ossi. What he told me was that after the Russians took control a lot of things from WWII never came out. They didn't have much time to think about it with Russia changing things and most information about the war was lost to the East until the wall came down. With that they had all the information from the West as well as some of the old archive history.
For some reason I cant explain that as well as I can in my head, anyways that is the general gist of things.

I think I could have answered them aged 10, some of the Q. are a bit childish ( no.4 ??no. 9 ?)
Even Rosie the Riveter was obvious , these were our Rosie by the way
Ohhh god bless’m

Are you trying to say that conscription never applied to blacks then ? Or that blacks weren´t allowed in the army in the war years ?

OK. How many black guys do you think were living in England in 1940? Not many. Secondly they were still viewed very much as an underclass. Thirdly the troops in the BEF in 1940 were not conscripts - they were professional soldiers. Fourthly I don't believe black troops served with their white counterparts as frontline troops for the British army at any point in WWII (not often anyway - I'm sure there were exceptions). Those colonial troops that did fight fought in colonial units, not 'mixed' ones. Furthermore I'm not sure they'd have been promoted to NCO. I've no idea of any/many blacks were conscripted from England during the war, but I suspect that the answer is very few and even then probably not to frontline service.

the first immigrants to Britain from the west Indies started in the early fifties,The American Black soldiers that were stationed in Blighty after Dunkirk were the first Blacks the vast majority of Brits had ever seen in the flesh so to speak ,they were apparently quiet a hit with the ladies then