History

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History

The Holocaust:

In Germany anti-Semitic ideas were popular before Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Hitler set out his view in his book Mein Kampf.

In 1933 Hitler order a boycott of Jewish shops. Jews were banned from teaching.

In 1935 marriage between Jews and German citizens was made illegal. Jews could not be German

In 1938 Jews were banned from practising to become doctors.

On the 10th of November 1938 Nazis organized an attack on Jewish synagogues and property. Thousands of Jews were kill. Since, there were so many windows smashed they called the night ‘Kristallnacht’ (the ‘Night of Broken Glass’)

In 1938 Jews were banned from running businesses, going to cinemas, driving cars, and sending their children to school.

Life became extremely difficult for the 500,000 Jews living in Germany.

Many Jews tried to leave or send their children abroad.

When war broke out in 1939 thing became worse.

First Poland was invaded, where many Jews lived, than the Soviet Union was invaded bringing the number of Jews living in German to 6 million, The the SS units came, whose job was to find and kill Jews.

Starting point of the Holocaust.

In 1942 the shooting of Jews was replaced by gassing them.

There were two camps, the concentration camps to hold their enemies and the death camps to kill Jews.

All 6 death camps were in Poland in location chosen for good rail links and relative isolation.

Killing of Jews was called the ‘final solution’.

The Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews of Europe, but they didn’t succeed although the killed over 6 million.

7,000 Jews were kill from Denmark, 350,000 from France, 350,000 from Germany, and 3,300,000 from Poland.

Lidice:

Heydrich was the protector of Bohemia and Moravia, regions of Czechoslovakia 1941.

Heydrich was Hitlers Possible successor.

On the 29th of December 1941, the two Czech patriots parachuted into Czechoslovakia by the Royal Air Force (RAF)

They met up with local resistance to plan an attack on Reinhard Heydrich and five months later carried out the attack.

On May 27 1942, Prague, Reinhard Heydrich’s vehicle was grenaded by two Czechoslovakian patriots, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik.

Heydrich died on the 8th of June.

Heydrich’s funeral was on the 9th of June.

On the 10th of June Lidice, 6 miles away from Prague, 199 men aged 15 or over were shot.

60 woman and 88 children were sent to concentration camps, but some children were considered for Germanization.

Jan Kubis, and Josef Gabcik were killed in a gun battle with German troops, because they hide out was betrayed.

The 26th of October 1968, there was a memorial to all the Czechs and Slovaks who died in the war and particularly to the seven Czechs patriots who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich.

‘Bomber’ Harris:

From 1940 until 1941 the LuftWaffe, German air force, bombed British cities.

British policy responded by bombing German cities.

Bombing German cities helped to maintain public morale and showed allies that Britain was making a strong contribution to the war.

1941 Churchill said, “We need to make the enemy burn and bleed in every way.

On 14 February 1942 the air ministry bombed specific targets such as factories and railways, to area bombing.

They destroyed whole areas of towns and cities.

‘Bomber’ Harris took over Bomber Command in 1942.

With success he destroyed industries that supplied German armed forces.

In January 1945, Albert Speer, the German minister, calculated that the bombing produced 35% fewer tanks, 31% less aircrafts, and 42% fewer trucks.

It was decided that the primary objective was focused on morale of the enemy civilian population.

There was a list of target and the city of Dresden was in it.

At 9:51p.m. on the 13th of February 1945 RAF and USAAF dropped 4,500 tons of high explosives and incendiary shelters.

Dresden had a lack of air raid shelter, the anti-aircraft guns had mostly been moved east, there were no search lights, and the weather was perfect.

The firestorm caused by the bombing killed 25,000 people, which left 3 square miles of the city centre in ruins.

Hiroshima:

6th of August 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay Dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

In minutes around 70,000 people were dead and around the same number were injured.

One square mile of the city was destroyed by the explosion, 4.4 square miles were destroyed by fire.

The reason why the bomb was dropped was, because it cost 2 billion dollars to make, and the USA wanted to show the USSR how powerful the USA is.

Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and another 36,000 people died.

President Truman was the one the decided to drop the bomb, and he afterwards said that “This is the greatest thing in history”

Dropping the bomb saved thousands of American and Japanese lives, plus shortening the war.

Victory in Europe (VE):

The 7th of May a German U-boat sank two merchant ships off Scotland.

On the same day Germany’s military formally surrendered.

German units had surrendered earlier, and other continued to fight the Red Army for several more days.

In Britain (VE) Day was the 8th of May 1945.

8th of May 1945 was the date when the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany.

Millions of people celebrated on the streets of Britain.

In Britain people would either celebrate, relax, or they are too busy to do both.

500,000 homes were destroyed

However, some British soldiers celebrated other still had to fight for a few days.

Other felt a sense of relief, but they sobbed with tears, because of the death of their friends.

The day after (VE) Day the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane.

In Poland it was the day that marked the day Poland lost their freedom.

However, people in Poland did celebrate, but not the same as in Britain.

Out of 265,000 Polish soldiers on 105,000 went back to Poland the rest stayed in Britain.

Poland became smaller and was moved further West.

There was also the Katyn Massacre in 1940 were roughly 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals captured by the Red Army Disappeared inside the Soviet Union.

In 1943 German armies uncovered 4,500 corpses in the forest of Katyn.

Nuremberg:

The Allies set up an International Criminal Court in Nuremberg.

Nuremberg was chosen, because the court buildings were large enough and relatively undamaged by Allied bombing.

There was as well a large Prison to hold the defendants.

Nuremberg was the annual Nazi Party rallies and so symbolically, a good place to bring Nazism to an end.

The trials took place from 1945 to 1949.

The major war criminals like members of the extermination squads and doctors were tried first.

Not all the Nazi leaders were tried, because some like Hitler committed suicide, other were killed, or they escaped.

The trials began on the 20th of November 1945 including leading Nazi politicians and military leaders.

Notably Hermann Goering (commander of the Luftwaffe), Rudolf Hess (deputy leader until 1943), and Albert Speer (minister of Armaments).

They would be charged by one or more of 4 charges.

Cold War:

In 1950 Stalin ordered North Korea, an ally, to attack South Korea, America’s ally.

War ended in 1953 with no border changes, and Stalin died that same year.

1956 Hungarian leaders tried to give their people more freedom, but the Soviet Union invaded.

1957 Sputnik is the first satellite, into space, Soviet Union.

1959 the Cuban government was overthrown by pro-communist revolution.

Communism was being spread by the Soviet Union by force. So it had to be controlled by the US.

McCarthy accused important Americans of being communist spies, between 1948 and 1954.

America was falling behind Soviet technology.

In the 1950s the Soviet were closing the gap with the US of Nuclear Missiles.

US President Eisenhower disliked Senator McCarthy.

US didn’t want to risk nuclear war, because of Hungarians in 1956.

War between Warsaw Pact and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in Berlin.

In 1962 Soviet Union send missiles to their ally Cuba and war nearly broke out.

Soviet withdrew missiles from Cuba.

US soldiers fought communist North Vietnam to protect their ally South Vietnam.

1968 Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia to stop Czech leaders giving more freedom to their people.

In the 1960s US struggled in the fight of Vietnam.

US lost the war.

1973 US agreed to withdraw their troops from South Vietnam and signed a treaty called SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviet.

Relationship between the US and Soviet Union improved.

They limited the amount of missiles for the first time.

This ‘thaw’ in the Cold War was called ‘detente’ (loosening of tension)

In 1975 the US, Soviet Union and other countries signed Helsinki Agreement, which meant that they would respect human rights.