Transcript WWII part 2ax

Part 2 Key Questions
1. How is the decision made and
implemented to commit a Europeanwide genocide?
2. What were the major effects of WWII
on American society including
minorities and women?
III. The Jewish Genocide
A. Early Jewish Persecution
• 1935 Nuremburg laws in Germany
stripped German Jews of citizenship
and rights
• 1938 Kristellnacht Nazis unleashed
wave of violence against Jews
attacking them in their homes,
synagogues and businesses
• Tens of thousands of European Jews
fled for countries that would admit
them
B. America and the Jewish
refugees
• Among them distinguished musicians, architects,
writers, scholars who enriched the cultural life of
their adopted nation
• Refugee physicists like Enrique Ferme contributed
to developing the atomic bomb for the U.S.
• Discriminatory Immigration laws in place at time
• Congress refused to change the quotas for Jews
• FDR would not exert pressure on lawmakers to do
so
• Majority of Americans opposed letting in more
Jews (isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic
sentiments)
Jewish refugees
on board MS St
Louis in 1939
while docked in
Havana, Cuba
Stopped by US
Authorities and
forced to return to
Europe
Video: Jewish
Refugees – The
Roosevelts
C. The Jewish Genocide
• Onset of the war accelerates the
process of elimination
– Deportation of “undesirables” into
concentration camps
– In Eastern Europe (esp. Poland) , forced
relocation of Jews into Ghettoes
• Mandatory wearing of clothing to identify
them as Jews
• Forced labor
• Not allowed to leave
• Hunger, fatigue, disease kill thousands of Jews
by month
Other Victims of the Holocaust
• Political opponents
– Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats,
and trade union leaders
• Roma (Gypsies)
– On racial grounds - Accused of being workshy/asocial, 1st victims of gas chambers
• Poles/Slavic peoples (considered racially
inferior)
• Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals,
mentally + physically disabled
• Video: The Path to Nazi Genocide
Radicalization after USSR invasion
• German movement East places much
larger Jewish population under Nazi
control
• Einsatzgruppen follow troops and
exterminate all racial and political
enemies
– 1 million people gunned down 1941-1943
• Method eventually considered too
inefficient and wearing on assassins
First Extermination Camps Fall
1941
• Built in East (e.g. Belzec, Poland)
• December 1st gassings occur in
Chelmno, Poland in trucks
• Turning Point of conscious policy of
total extermination
CAMPS
IN
EUROPE
1933 1945
Mass Extermination
• The Final Solution
– Genocide on European scale as of 1941
– Made official at Wannsee Conference
Jan 20, 1942
– SS Reinhard Heydrich defines
administrative and practical methods to
exterminate all Jews in Europe
– Physically capable Jews used in the
German war effort, all others eliminated
– Gypsies sent to death camps from 1943
Planned and methodical
organization
• 2 sorts of camps, overseen by the SS
– Concentration Camps
• Work camps created after 1933,
• e.g. Dachau, stone quarry: Mauthausen
(Austria), chemical plant: Auschwitz
• Conditions variable: death more or less
frequent from overwork, abuse, starvation
• Detainees diverse, resistance members
progressively sent, some camps only female
• Systematic treatment of humiliation to make
prisoners feel a loss of humanity
Death Camps
• In Poland
– Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chalmno,
Majdanek, Sobibor & Treblinka
• Death organized in an industrial fashion
• Populations throughout Europe
transported like animals in wagon cars
– Apt workers separated from the weak who
are killed in gas chambers
– Bodies burned or buried in communal graves
– Detainees used as guinea pigs for medical
experiments under authority of doctors like
Josef Mengele in Auschwitz
Outcome
• 10 million people killed from Nazi
extermination policy
• Jewish victims the most numerous:
– 5.1 – 5.8 million deaths
– Half the Jewish population in 1939
– Gypsies suffer 240,000 deaths (1/3
population)
• Regions Unevenly affected
– Extermination more systematic in the East
– The Polish Jewish population decreased
by 89% between 1939 and 1945
Local Reactions to Nazi
Extermination Policy
• Occupied territories of Nazi Germany reacted
differently
– Local governments and civilian populations
cooperated differently depending on the country
• Resistance of Danish & Swedish authorities and
populations saved Jewish population of the country
• French collaboration (state and people) led to
extermination of 28% of Jewish population
• Opposition of Finnish and Bulgarian governments
(Nazi allies) led to end of deporting their Jewish
citizens to extermination camps
• Jewish populations resisted policies in some
areas
– Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Video: To Live and Die with Honor Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
(4’45)
• Video: Holocaust Survivor Barbara Steiner
Country
Germany
Number of
Deaths
% of Jewish population
exterminated
120,000
50%
Austria
50,000
83%
Belgium
24,000
27%
Estonia
2,000
44%
France
75,000
28%
Greece
60,000
81%
Hungary
180,000
45%
9,000
18%
70,000
74%
130,000
90%
1,000
50%
100,000
71%
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
3,000,000
89.5%
Romania
270,000
36%
Czechoslovakia
260,000
82.5%
USSR
700,000
23%
60,000
80%
Yugoslavia
Survivors of the Concentration
Camp of Dachau celebrate
their release
HOMEWORK
Reading Material
Mastering Modern World History
Part I. War and International Relations
Chapter 6 The Second World War, 1939-1945
Genocide (pp. 111-117)