World War II

Overview

• Most destructive war in human history

• Started in 1939 when Germany

invaded Poland and ended in 1945 when Japan surrendered

• Over 100 million men fought from

over 30 countries

Germany after WWI

• Treaty of Versailles left Germany bankrupt

• Germany moved away from democracy and towards fascism

• Fascism is a form of government in which individual freedoms are denied and complete power is given to the government

Fascism

• Fascist governments include strong nationalism, virtually unlimited central authority, militarism, and state control of production

• State more important than the individual

• Nation vs. Other Nations

Benito Mussolini, fascist leader of Italy

Emperor Hirohito of Japan

Adolf Hitler

• The Führer means leader or guide

• If Hitler hadn’t existed unlikely WWII would of happened

• Promised to return the homeland to former glory

• Anti-Semitism: prejudice, hatred, or discrimination against Jews

Causes

•World war one Treaty of Versailles

•Appeasement: Giving into Hitler’s

demands in hopes he would be satisfied and prevent war

•R ise of Fascism

Living Space

• Germany’s agriculture was insufficient and organized in lots of small farms

• Germany needed a lot of land in order to be self-sufficient in food production

• Plan to take land over Poland, Ukraine, and parts of Eastern Russia and resettle land with Germans so it could feed German people

Blitzkrieg

• Lightning war• Military technique used by Germans

in World War II• Combined quick movements of

troops, tanks, and massive use of air power to support infantry movement

• Tactic helped Germany roll over must of Europe

Germany’s attack on Great Britain

• British motivation poster produce in

1939 in preparation of the Second World War

• German air attacks… bombed.. Known as the Blitz

1941• Russia invaded by

Germany which broke the German-Soviet nonaggression pact (agreement) and opened the Eastern front of the war

• Pearl Harbor bombed by Japan

• Video

Allied Powers Axis Powers

Germany

Italy

Japan

Great Britain

France

Soviet Union

United States

VS.

Internment Camps

• Detention centers where more than

100,000 Japanese Americans were located during World War II

D-Day

• Largest invasion force in history led by Eisenhower

• June 6, 1944 over a million troops stormed the beaches of Normandy and began the process of re-taking France.

• Turning point of World War II

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• Atomic bomb was built during World War II under code name the Manhattan Project

• Little boy and Fat boy were the names of the two atomic bombs that were dropped

• Video

End of the War

• Battle of the Bulge was Germany’s last major offensive in World War II.

• The Allies pushed the Germans back and won.

• 60 million casualties- soldiers and civilians died during World War I

The Holocaust

• Final Solution: Hitler’s program of systematically killing the entire Jewish population

• Concentration camps were established by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party for Jews and other political prisoners during the war

• Death Camps were also established for the purpose of killing prisoners immediately- 4,000 people put to death each day at Auschwitz

Hungarian Jews selected to go to gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp

Execution of Jews by German soldiers

Men forced to dig their own graves

Dormitory at a concentration camp

Freed prisoners of a concentration camp, 1945

The skulls and bones of thousands of unidentified victims are displayed

The Holocaust

• 11 Million Killed included 1 million children

• Two-thirds of Jewish people living in Europe at the time of World War II were killed by Nazis

• Israel established as a Homeland in

1948 so massacre like this could never again take place