Transcript Slide 1
For almost six years from 1939 to 1945 Britain fought the toughest war it had ever experienced. World War II was total war – nearly every person and every service was involved. Britain did not fight alone, the war also involved many countries. World War II involved 61 countries with 1.7 billion people Fifty million people lost their lives and hundreds of millions people were injured. After World War One ended in 1918, Germany had to give up land and was banned from having armed forces. In 1933 the German people voted for a leader named Adolf Hitler, who led a political party in Germany called the National Socialists or Nazis. Hitler promised to make his country great again and quickly began to arm Germany again and to seize land from other countries. Shortly before 5am on Friday 1st September, 1939, German forces stormed the Polish frontier. Tanks and motorized troops raced into the country over ground, supported by Stuka dive bombers overhead. A total of 1.25 million Germans soldiers swept into Poland The Axis and the Allies The war was fought chiefly between the two major, Axis and the Allies. The Axis Germany Italy Japan Slovakia Hungary Romania Bulgaria The Allies Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China Czechoslovakia Denmark Estonia France Greece India Latvia Lithuania Malta The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland South Africa United Kingdom United States USSR Yugoslavia Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th 1889 in a small Austrian town called Braunau, near to the German border. Hitler served in the Bavarian army during World War-1 and rose to become the leader of Nazi Germany during World War II. Under his leadership, the Nazis sought to make Germany the most powerful empire in the world and exterminate all they viewed as inferior. In pursuit of this, he ordered the extermination of over 11 million people, the majority of them Jewish, but also including Roman Catholics the physically and mentally handicapped, e.c.t (will be mentioned later in the next slide) This mass killing is known as the Holocaust. As the war was ending, and it became clear that the Germans would not win, Hitler retreated to a bunker with his mistress, Eva Braun. He arranged for the their marriage and then it is believed that Eva poisoned herself while Hitler killed himself with a pistol shot on April 30, 1945. Adolf Hitler was a Nazi, German, frightening, oppressor during World War 2. He oversaw the genocide of millions of Jews not just but lots others e.g.: Gypsies, Romanies Freemasons(community of people(worsip(religon))) Opponents of the Nazis, including communists, socialists, labor leaders and people who opposed the Nazis on religious grounds Soviet political advisers Soviet prisoners of war (3.5 million killed, this was the largest group after the Jews) prostitutes and people with no fixed address During World War II all sorts of essential and non-essential foods were rationed, as well as clothing, furniture and petrol. To make the British weak, the Germans tried to cut off supplies of food and other goods. German submarines attacked many of the ships that brought food to Britain. Before the war, Britain imported 55 million tons of food, a month after the war had started this figure had dropped to 12 million. The Ration Book became the key to survival for nearly every household in Britain. Every member of the public was issued with a ration book. ration books were books which contained coupons that shopkeepers cut out or signed when people bought food and other items. (People still paid for the goods with money.)