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World War II and the Holocaust. The Path to War in Europe A. 1936 : Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland . France & Great Britain did not want to force the issue. This was the beginning of appeasement. Rhineland. B. 1938 :
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World War II and the Holocaust • The Path to War in Europe A. 1936 : • Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland. • France & Great Britain did not want to force the issue. • This was the beginning of appeasement.
B. 1938 : • Hitler demanded the Sudetenland in NW Czechoslovakia. • Britain and France gave in. • 1939 - Hitler invaded rest of Czechoslovakia, - no response from Britain & France.
C. 1939 : • Germany & the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. • Hitler offered Stalin eastern Poland and the Baltic states. • Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. • Finally, 2 days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany.
Path to War in the Pacific A. 1931 : • In September, Japanese soldiers seized Manchuria. • By the mid-1930s, militants connected to the government and the armed forces gained control of Japanese politics. • By 1937, Japan and China were involved in a full blown war.
Japanese soldiers seized Manchuria. • By the mid-1930s, militants connected to the government and the armed forces gained control of Japanese politics. • By 1937, Japan and China were involved in a full blown war.
B. 1940 : • Japanese demanded right to exploit economic resources in French Indochina. • U. S. responded with economic sanctions. • Dec. 7, ‘41, Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
World War II: The European Theater • The 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany took just 4 weeks. • Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), panzer divisions (strike forces of about 300 tanks) supported by soldiers and airplanes. • On Sept. 28, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland.
1940 - Hitler invaded Denmark & Norway. • Germany then attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. • The French had fortified their border with Germany along the Maginot Line, but the Germans surprised them by going around it.
1941- June - Hitler invaded Soviet Union. • Germans moved quickly & captured two million Russian soldiers by November. • They were within 25 miles of Moscow. • Winter came early in 1941 and forced the Germans to halt (not equipped for the bitter Russian winter). • Dec., the Soviet army counterattacked. Started slow push to Berlin.
Jan. 1945 - Hitler in underground bunker in Berlin. • He blamed the Jews for the war. • April 30, he committed suicide. • 2 days before, Italian partisans–resistance fighters–had shot Mussolini. • May 7, 1945, German commanders surrendered, & war in Europe was over.
World War II: The Pacific Theater • In 1942, the Allies had their first successes in the Pacific. • 1942 – • Battle of the Coral Sea, US naval forces stopped the Japanese and saved Australia from invasion. • Battle of Midway Island was the turning point in the Pacific war. • U.S. planes destroyed 4 Japanese aircraft carriers & established naval superiority.
In 1942, the United States Marine Corps recruited the Navajo to develop a military code that the Japanese could not break. • Based on their oral language, the “Navajo Code Talkers” created the only unbreakable code in military history. • In the final years of the war, young Japanese volunteered to serve as suicide pilots against U.S. ships. • They were called kamikaze (“divine wind”) pilots.
1945 - U.S. president Harry S Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Japan. • He hoped that this would avoid an invasion of Japan. • The first bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6. • 3 days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki • Japan surrendered on Aug. 14.
The Holocaust • The Nazis saw the Slavic peoples as racially inferior. • The Nazis wanted the lands for German settlers. • After conquered Poland, began to put plans for an Aryan racial empire into action.
Moved Slavic people out and replace them with Germans. • Western Poland, Germans moved one million Poles to southern Poland. • 1942, two million ethnic Germans had been moved in to colonize the new German provinces in Poland.
With the Soviet Union invasion, • Hitler planned to turn the people into slaves and move in German peasants. • German plans could involve killing 30 million Slavs.
Hitler was convinced that Jewish people were the greatest threat to Aryan Empire. • He directed that Jews in Europe be exterminated completely. • His plan was called the Final Solution; genocide, or the physical extermination, of the Jewish people.
1941 - Einsatzgruppen began acting as mobile killing units. • Followed the army, rounded up all Jews, and executed them. • Buried the victims in mass graves. Perhaps one million Jews were killed in this way. • However, the Nazis found this process was too slow.
1942 - Jews from countries occupied by or sympathetic to Germany were transported to Poland in freight trains. • Six death camps were built in Poland. • The largest was Auschwitz. • About 30 percent worked in labor camps. • Many were starved or worked to death. • The rest were exterminated in mass gas chambers.
Even as the Nazis were losing the war in 1944, Jews were being shipped from Greece and Hungary to the death camps. • The Final Solution had priority over the military for trains. About 6,000,000 Jews killed. • The Nazis killed nine to ten million non-Jewish people. • 40% Europe’s Gypsies were killed, as were Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians who lost their lives as slave laborers. • Also, they probably killed at least three to four million Soviet prisoners of war.
Mass slaughter of European civilians, particularly European Jews, is called the Holocaust. • The Danish people were able to protect most of their Jewish citizens. • Though in many places, collaborators (people who assisted the enemy) helped the Nazis find Jews. • 1.2 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.
Guido and Nino, aged about four. Two days later the SS man brought them back in a frightening condition. They had been sewn together like Siamese twins. The one child was tied to the second one on the back and wrists. Mengele had sewn their veins together. The wounds were filthy and they festered. There was a powerful stench of gangrene. The children screamed all night long. Somehow their mother managed to get hold of morphine and put an end to their suffering.
