Origins of World War II intro
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The HolocaustIntro By the end of WW2, the Nazi regime and its accomplices had physically annihilated millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, and others known as undesirables Jews were the primary target of Hitler’s racially motivated genocidal policies The resulting Holocaust epitomized the tragedy of conquest and occupation in WW2 The Holocaust, the near-destruction of European Jews by Germany, was a human disaster on a scale previously unknown The murder of Euro Jews was preceded by a long history of vilification and persecution of Jews For centuries Jewish communities had been singled out by Christian society as a “problem” By the time the Nazis assumed power in 1933, anti-Semitism had contributed significantly to the widespread tolerance for anti-Jewish measures Marked as outsiders, Jews found few defenders in their societies Nazi determination to destroy the Jewish population and Europeans’ passive acceptance of anti-Semitism laid the groundwork for genocide In most countries in Europe, the forces that would be expected to protect Jewish communities did not materialize Initially, the regime encouraged Jewish emigration Tens of thousands of Jews availed themselves of the opportunity to escape from Germany and Austria Many more were unable to do so Most nations outside the Nazi orbit limited the migration of Jewish refugees, especially if they were poor Most were since the Nazis had taken their wealth The situation worsened as German armies overran Europe, bringing an ever-larger number of Jews under Nazi control At that point Nazi “racial experts” toyed with the idea of deporting Jews to Nisko, a proposed reservation in eastern Poland, or to Madagascar The Final Solution The German occupation of Poland in 1939 and invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 gave Hitler an opportunity to solve what he considered the problem of Jews in Germany and throughout Europe When they invaded the USSR in 1941, the Nazis dispatched 3,000 troops in mobile detachments known as SS Einsatzgruppen (“action squads”) to kill entire populations of Jews and Roma and many non-Jewish Slavs in newly occupied territories The action squads undertook mass shootings in ditches and ravines that became mass graves By the spring of 1943, the special units had killed over one million Jews and tens of thousands of Soviet citizens and Roma Sometimes during 1941 the Nazi leadership committed to the “final solution” of the Jewish question Entailed the attempted murder of every Jew living in Europe At the Wannsee Conference on 20 Jan 1942, 15 Nazi bureaucrats gathered to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the final solution Agreed to evacuate all Jews from Europe to camps in eastern Poland, where they would be worked to death or exterminated Soon, German forces rounded up Jews and deported them to concentration camps in occupied Poland Traveled via train from all over Europe On the way the sick and elderly often perished in overcrowded freight cars As rumors spread of mass execution, Allied leaders were apathetic to their plight In camps such a Kulmhof (Chelmno), Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz, the final solution took on an organized and technologically sophisticated character Introduced gassing as the most efficient means for mass extermination Electrocution, phenol injections, flamethrowers, hand grenades, and machine guns were still used The largest of the camps were Auschwitz, where at least one million Jews perished Nazi camp personnel subjected victims to industrial work, starvation, medical experimentations, and outright extermination Used Zyklon B, enlarged the gas chamber size, and told the victims they were being deloused to calm them down at Auschqitz Construction of large crematories were to hide the evidence of their crimes The systematic murder of Jews were crimes against humanity Jewish Resistance The murder of European Jews was carried out with the help of the latest tech and with utmost efficiency For most of the victims, the will to resist was sapped by prolonged starvation, disease, and mistreatment There was fierce Jewish resistance throughout the war Thousands of Jews joined anti-Nazi partisan groups and resistance movements Others led rebellions in concentration camps or participated in ghetto uprisings from Minsk to Krakow The best-known uprising took place in the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943 60,000 Jews who remained in the ghetto that had once held 400,000 rose against their tormentors It took the German security forces using tanks and flamethrowers three weeks to crush the uprising 5.7 million Jews perished in the Holocaust Women and the WarIntro Observing the extent to which British women mobilized for war, the US ambassador to London noted that this was a woman’s war A poster encouraging women to join the WAVES (Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Services in the Navy) cried “It’s a Woman’s War Too!” While 100,000s in GB and the US joined the armed forces or entered war industries, women around the world were affected by the war in a variety of ways Some countries (US and GB) banned women from fighting, but China and the USSR took up arms, as did women in resistance groups Women often excelled at resistance work bc they were less suspect in the eyes of occupying forces Jewish women and children died alongside Jewish men Women’s Roles Women who joined military services or took jobs on factory assembly lines gained an independence and confidence previously denied them So too did women who were forced to act as heads of households in the absence of husbands killed or away at war, captured as POWs, or languishing in labor camps Women’s roles changed during the war, often in dramatic ways Those new role were temporary After the war, women warriors and workers were expected to return home and assume their traditional roles as wives and mothers IN the meantime, women made the most of their opportunities In Britain, women served as noncombatant pilots, wrestled with the huge balloons and their tethering lines designed to snag Nazi aircraft from the skies Drove ambulances and transport vehicles Labored in the fields to produce foodstuffs More than 500,000 women joined British military services, and 350,000 women did the same in the US Comfort Women Women’s experiences in war were not always ennobling or empowering The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as 200,000 women to serve in military brothels, called “comfort houses” The army presented these women to the troops as gifts from the emperor Came from Japanese colonies such as Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria and from occupied the territories in the Philippines and elsewhere in SE Asia The majority of women came from Korea and China Once forced into this imperial prostitution service, the “comfort women” catered to 20-30 men each day Stationed in war zones, the women often confronted the same risks as soldiers, and many became casualties of war Others were killed by Japanese soldiers, especially if they tried to escape of contracted venereal diseases At the end of the war, soldiers massacred large numbers of comfort women to cover up the operation The impetus behind the establishment of the comfort houses came from the horrors of Nanjing, where the mass rape of Chinese women had taken place In trying to avoid such atrocities, the Japanese army created another horror of war Comfort women who survived the war experienced deep shame and hi their past or faced shunning by their families They found little comfort or peace after the war Download 124.7 Kb. 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