Transcript The Road to WWII - Boyd-GLHS

The Road to WWII
Chapter 16
New Dictators Emerge
Following WWI democracies in Europe began to fail,
leading way to a socialist regime
In Russia, the hope for democracy led to a civil war which
resulted in the formation of a communist state, under
the rule of Joseph Stalin
Russia became known as the Soviet Union in 1922, and
Stalin took control in 1924.
Stalin
He focused on creating a model communist state. He
made both agricultural and industrial growth the prime
economic goals for the Soviet Union
He wanted to transform the Soviet Union from a
backward rural country into a great industrial power
Stalin would eliminate anyone who got in his way, even
his most faithful supporters
Roughly 8-13 million people
Totalitarianism
By 1939, Stalin had established a totalitarian
government that maintained complete control over its
citizens
In a totalitarian state, people have no rights, and the
government suppresses all opposition
Italy
Benito Mussolini was also establishing a totalitarian
regime in Italy
By 1921, Mussolini had established the Fascist Party
Fascism stressed nationalism and placed the interests of
the state above those of the individuals.
Mussolini and his fascist party had thousands of
followers
Hitler’s Rise
Adolf Hitler was a soldier in World War I
He joined the Nazi party in 1919
Such a powerful public speaker and organizer that he
became the party’s leader. Nicknamed Der Fuher, he
promised to bring Germany out of chaos
Hitler
In his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler set forth
the basic beliefs of the Nazi party, which later became
the plan for the party.
Nazism is the German form of fascism was based on
extreme nationalism
Hitler wanted to unite all German-speaking people in a
great German empire
He also wanted to enforce racial “purification”
He viewed blue-eyed, blonde-haired “Aryans” as the master
race that was destined to rule the world
Inferior races included Jews, Slavs, and all nonwhites and
were deemed fit only to serve the Aryans
The third element to Nazism was to expand the nation of
Germany
He believed that for Germany to survive it needed more
living space
Their aim was “to secure for the German people the land
and soil to which they are entitled on this earth” even if this
could only be done by “the might of a victorious sword
Nazi’s Rise to Power
The Great Depression in the US helped the Nazi’s come to
power.
The German people were desperate and they turned to
Hitler as their last hope
By mid 1932, the Nazis had become the strongest political
party in Germany
In Jan 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor (prime
minister)
He then dismantled the Weimer Republic and replaced it
with the Third Reich
US Stand
The US wanted to cling to isolationism and neutrality
In an effort to do this in 1935, Congress passed a series
of Neutrality Acts.
The first 2 outlawed arms sales or loans to nations at
war. The third act was padded in response to fighting
in Spain. The act extended the ban on arms sales and
loans to nations engaged in civil wars
War breaks in Europe
On November 5, 1937, Hitler met with his top military
advisors, and declared that in order for Germany to grow
and prosper they needed the land of its neighbors
Wanted to add Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Third
Reich
Austria came first. Following WWI Austria was turned into
a small nation. Most of the population of Austria was
German and they supported the union
On March 12, 1938, German troops marched through
Austria unopposed
Czechoslovakia
Hitler went to Czechoslovakia next. The western
border regions was called the Sudetenland.
Hitler wanted to annex Czechoslovakia in order to
provide more living space for Germany as well as to
control its important natural resources
Both France and Great Britain promised to protect
Czechoslovakia. Hitler then invited the French
premier and British prime minister Neville
Chamberlain to meet in Munich
At this conference Hitler said that the annexations of
the Sudetenland would be his last territorial demand
They chose to believe him in order to prevent war
So on September 30, 1938, they signed the Munich
Agreement that turned the Sudetenland over to
Germany without a single shot being fired
War moves on
Although the Munich Agreement was signed Hitler
was not finished expanding the Third Reich
On March 15, 1939, German troops marched into the
remainder of Czechoslovakia. Following this Hitler
turned to Poland
In the spring of 1939, Hitler began to charge his troops
into Poland claiming that the Germans there were
being mistreated by the Poles
Poland did not think that Hitler would attack because
that might cause the Soviet Union (Poland’s eastern
neighbor) to enter conflict with Germany causing a
two-front war
Because the two-front war was what cost Germany
WWI, no one thought Hitler would do that again
As tensions rose over Poland, Stalin signed a
nonaggression pact with Hitler. On August 23, 1939,
Hitler and Stalin agreed to never attack each other
They also signed a secret pact to divide Poland between
them
Hitler takes Poland
On September 1, 1939, the German air force bombed
Polish military bases, airfields, railroads and cities.
German tanks also races across the countryside
This was the first test of the German military strategy
known as blitzkrieg, or lightening war
Made use of advanced in military technology, such as
fast tanks and more powerful aircraft as a way to take
the enemy by surprise
Two days following the terror on Poland, France and
Germany declared war on Germany
The Holocaust
Shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, he
ordered that all ‘non-Aryans” to removed from
governmental jobs
This was the first move in a campaign for racial purity
that eventually led to the Holocaust
The systematic murder of 11 million people across
Europe, more than half were Jews.
Targets
Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust, they
were the center of the Nazi’s targets
Anti-Semitism, or hatred of the Jews, had a long
history in many European countries.
Hitler found that the majority of Germans were willing
to support his belief that Jews were responsible for
Germany’s economic problems and defeat in WWI
The Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David on
their clothes so the Nazis could identify them
The Final Solution
A policy of genocide, the deliberate and systematic
killing of an entire population
Percentage system
Aryans were superior and that the strength of the
master race must be preserved
In addition to the Jews the Nazi’s targeted Gypsies,
Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, handicapped,
homosexuals, mentally ill, and the incurably ill
Hitler started in Poland with his SS (security
squadrons) rounded up Jews—men, women, children
and babies– and shot them on the spot
Ghettos
Jews were also ordered to live in over-crowded ghettos,
or segregated Jewish areas in certain Polish cities. The
Nazis sealed them off with barbed wire and stone walls
Bodies of victims would pile up on the streets of the
ghettos
Concentration Camps
Jews that were not reached by the killing squads were
taken to concentration camps, or labor camps.
Families were separated, sometimes forever
Prisoners were crammed into wooded barracks that
held up to 1000 each
Shared meals and quarters that also housed thousand
of rats and fleas. People were so hungry that if
something was spilled they would eat it and the mud
around it
Worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, until
they collapsed
Those that were too weak to work were killed
Final Solution reached it’s final stage in 1942, when
Hitler decided to begin the phase of the mass murder
of Jews. As a way of doing this, they would add a third
method of killing– poisonous gas
Mass Extermination
The Germans built six death camps in Poland, each
camp had several huge gas chambers in which they
killed as many as 12,000 people each day
Auschwitz was the largest of the death camps. They
had doctors that separated those strong enough to
work from those who would die that day
Both groups had to leave all possessions behind
Those that were to die were led into a room outside the
gas chamber and were told to undress for a shower
As a was to complete the deception, the prisoners were even
given soap
They were then led into the chamber and poisoned with
cyanide gas that spewed from vents in the walls
The mass extermination was sometimes accompanied by
music
The bodies were buried in huge pits. Other inmates would
dig graves and empty the gas chambers
The decaying corpses gave off a stench that could be smelled
for miles around
Some camps tried to cover up the evidence by installing
huge crematoriums in which they burned the dead
At other camps the bodies were thrown into a pit and
set fire
Prisoners were also shot, hanged, or injected with
poison
They also died as a result of medical experiments
carried out by camp doctors
Some were injected with deadly germs
Were tested with different methods of sterilization
The Survivors
About 6 million Jews died in the death camps and in
the Nazi massacre
Some however did survive by people hiding them and
some even survived the concentration camps
Video Clips
Schindler’s List
"Schindler's List" is the based-on-truth story of Nazi
Czech business man Oskar Schindler, who uses Jewish
labor to start a factory in occupied Poland. As World
War II progresses, and the fate of the Jews becomes
more and more clear, Schindler's motivations switch
from profit to human sympathy and he is able to save
over 1100 Jews from death in the gas chambers