February 29- March 4

[5 Tara]

Monday (February 29)- Went over forum post topics. Started Germany presentation. 

Tuesday (March 1)- Finished Germany presentation. Took notes.

Wednesday (March 2)- Gone for state basketball. 

Thursday (March 3)- Mr. Bruns started his presentation about Germany. 

Friday (March 4)- Mr. Bruns went over more on Germany. Japan group started presenting. 

Notes are here.

Notes from Mr. Bruns Powerpoint on Germany:  

One people, one empire, one leader.

Treaty of Versailles:

• Lost a lot of land 
• Hitler wanted to undo Treaty of Versailles 
• Dismantle the military 
• Didn't want Germany to have power again 
• Had to pay $33 billion dollars 
• Germany forbidden to unite with Austria 
• A League of Nations was set up 

The German Reaction to the Treaty of Versailles 

• There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public
• The Treaty was seen by many Germans as being forced on them and the Germans had no choice to sign it 
• Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed
• German representative in Paris knew they had no choice as Germany was incapable of restarting the war again 
• Many right wing groups such as the Nazis believed in the Dolchstoss Theory (Stab in the Back theory)

Hitler as a Baby in Austria 

• Born in 1889 
• Tried to make a living by painting in the streets
• Was an artist 
• Abused as a kid 
• Did bad in school 

Swastika

• Wanted a slogan for Nazi
• Came from India
• In India it means peace 

Beer Hall Putsch- 1923 

• Unsuccessful 
• Tried to overthrow the government
• Lost the trial 
• Got off easy
• Didn't get death 
• Only in jail for a year 

Hitler in Prison

• Sentenced 5 years 
• Only served 9 months (good behavior)
• Wrote his book while he was in jail 

Hitler's Rise to Power

• Hitler is appointed Chancellor in 1933
• President Paul von Hindenburg dies shortly after and Hitler dissolves the Weimer Republic 

Early Actions of Hitler: 

• Drops out of the League of Nations 
• Starts rearming Germany 
• Rearms the German Rhineland area

Other Events: 

• Anschluss with Austria- 1938 
• Sudetenland Crisis- 1938 
• Sudetenland/Munich Conference- 1938 
• Winston Churchill- Opposed Appeasement 
• Hitler takes over all of Czechoslovakia- 1939

Munich Conference 

• Nevielle Chamberlain- Great Britain 
• Adolf Hitler-Germany 
• Benito Mussolini- Italy 
• Edouard Daladier- France 

Munich Conference- Chamberlain: "Peace for our time" 

• Hitler was given the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia
• Hitler promised that he was done taking over territories 
• Hitler wanted to re-unite all German speaking people 
• Became known as the "Policy of Appeasement" 

Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact:
German Ambassador von Ribbentrop and Soviet dictator Stalin laugh as Molotov signs the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression pack on August 23, 1939 

Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact 

• Russia gave raw materials to Germany in exchange for money and weapons 
• Both agreed to stay neutral if the other entered the war 
• Secretly agreed to invade and split Poland. 
  Germany would get the western half and USSR the eastern half 
• Russia would get Finland, Estonia, and Latvia and Germany would get Lithuania 

How did the world react to this pact? 

• Shock 
• Poland was scared 
• Hitler thought it would force Great Britain and France to back out of their promise to help Poland if attacked 

German invasion of Poland-Blitzkrieg:

1. Airforce attacks enemy front-line and rear positions, main roads, airfields and communication centers.
2. Tank units breakthrough main lines of defense and advance deeper into enemy territory. 
3. Infantry attacks enemy flanks in order to link up with other groups to complete the attack and eventually encircle the enemy and or capture strategic position
4. Mechanized groups go deeper into the enemy territory outflanking the enemy positions and preventing withdrawing troops and defenders from establishing effective defensive positions 
5. Main force links up with other units encircling and cutting off the enemy 
6. Goal was to achieve victory as quickly as possible

Axis Powers:

• Main Powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan 
• Other Powers- Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Thailand, and Hungary 

Other Events:

• Sitzkrieg- The Phony War
  • Ends in Spring, 1940 
• Tripartite Pact is signed in 1940 

• Miracle of Dunkirk 
• Dunkirk Evacuated 
  • June 4, 1940 
• France Surrenders
  • June, 1940 
• A DIvided France
• The French Resistance 
• Axis Invasion of the Balkans (Yugoslavia) 
  • 1941
• German Invasion of USSR 
  • Final Plan for Operation Barbarossa 
  • June, 1941 

Nazi Goals 

• Destroy the Royal Air Force before invasion is possible 
  • Never succeeded 
  • German bombers did so poorly against the air force that they started bombing at night only 
• Attack and destroy the British Navy 
• Attack British troops 
• Once air control was gained the invasion of Great Britain would begin 

Scorched Earth Policy 

• Stalin demanded this of the Soviet troop s as they retreated 

Major Cities that Hitler Tried to Take Over: 

1. Moscow 
2. Stalingrad
3. Leningrad 

Battle for Moscow:

• The Soviet Winter Counteroffensive 
  • December 6, 1941- April 30, 1942 
• The Russian winter sets in and make is a huge turning point in the war 

Battle of Stalingrad: 

• Winter of 1942-1943 
• German Army 
  • 1,011,500 men 
  • 10,290 artillery guns 
  • 675 tanks 
  • 1,216 planes 
• Russian Army 
  • 1,000,500 men 
  • 13,541 artillery guns 
  • 894 tanks 
  • 1,115 planes 
• Around 2 million total causalities 

Siege of Leningrad 

• August 30, 1941 
• Germans took over Leningrad's railroads, cutting them off from the rest of Russia and the world 
• Unlike the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans surrounded the city to starve the city into submission 
• Between November 1941 and October 1942
• 641,000 people died of starvation 
  • People resorted to eating rats, wallpaper paste, and some resorted to cannibalism 
• Finally, a successful Russian counter-offensive at Stalingrad 
  • Drained necessary resources the Germans needed to continue the blockade, and eventually, it failed
• The Germans never took Leningrad, but it was one of the most costly conflicts Russia had ever faced-over one million died 

The North Africa Campaign 

• The Battle of El Alamein
• 1942 
• General Bernard Law Montgomery
  • Monty 
• General Ernst Rommel
  • The Desert Fox 

The Italian Campaign 

• Operation Torch 
• Europe's "Soft Underbelly" 
• Allies plan assault on weakest Axis area North Africa
  • November 1942- May 1943
• George S. Patton leads American troops
• Germans trapped in Tunisia- Surrender over 275,000 troops

The Battle for Sicily 

• June, 1943

The Battle of Monte Casino

• February, 1944

The Allies Liberate Rome 

• June 5, 1944

D-Day 

• June 6, 1944 

General Eisenhower gives order for D-Day 

• Operation Overlord 

Normandy Landing 

• June 6, 1944 
• German Prisoners 
• Higgins landing crafts 

Assassination Plot 

• July 20, 1944 
• Major Claus von Stauffenberg 
• Adolf Hitler top of the list 

The Liberation of Paris 

• August 25, 1944 

The Battle of the Bulge 

• Hitler's Last Offensive 
• December 16, 1944- January 28, 1945 

US and Russian Solders Meet at the Elbe River

• In Germany
• April 25, 1945

Hitler Commits Suicide

• April 30, 1945  

V-E Day 

• May 8, 1945 
• General Keitel 
• Victory in Europe Day 

Propaganda painted Jews as the root of all their problems. 

The Holocaust 

• The genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War Two 
• A program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory 
• Approximately two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had lived in Europe before the Holocaust died 
• Some say that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazi's killing of millions of people in other groups from Germany and other occupied territory 
  • Jews 
    • 6 million dead 
  • Gypsies 
    • 500,000 to 1.5 million dead
  • Mentally/Physically Handicapped people 
    • 75,000 to 250,000 dead 
  • Soviet Slavs/POW's/Troops 
    • 16.5 millions 
  • Poles 
    • People from Poland 
    • 2.5 millions dead
  • Homosexuals 
    • 5-15 thousand dead
  • Communists/Socialists
    • Number not confirmed
  • Dark Skinned people 
    • Death and forced starvation 
  • Mixed Races 
    • Unknown 
  • Jehovah's Witnesses 
    • 2,500- 5,000 dead 
• By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims would be between 11 million and 17 million people 

What is the Aryan Race? 

• Nazi's used term to refer to a so-called master race that originated around Germany 
• Perfect Aryan was blonde, blue-eyed, tall and muscular 
• The original term refers to a people speaking a Indo-European dialect 

Lebensborn-Fount of Life 

• THe program aimed to promote the growth of "superior" Aryan populations by providing excellent health care and living conditions to women and by restricting access to those deemed "fit" 
• Houses were set up throughout Germany and many occupied territories 
• Many Lebensborn children were born to unwed mothers which helped lead to many rumors of rape 
• Contrary to widespread rumors, women were not forced to have relations with Aryan Germans 

Hitler's Jewish Question- 1933 

• What should we do with the Jews?
• Nazi's "temporarily" suspend civil liberties for all citizens in 1933
  • Never restored
• The Nazi's set up the first concentration camp at Dachau in 1933
  • First inmates are 200 communists
• Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, 
• Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Service, and teachers in public high schools. All but few Jewish students are banned from public hig schools and colleges 

Nuremburg Laws- 1935

• Took away German citizenship from Jews thus making Jews second class citizens by removing their basic civil rights
• Establishes membership in the Jewish race as being anyone who either considered themselves Jewish or had three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents were considered to be mixed race
  • Eventually anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was risk in Nazi Germany 
• Jews could only marry Jews 
• No seual relations between non-Jewish Germans and Jews 
  • So no mixed races were made 

Nazi's boycott Jewish-owned businesses- 1936 

Kristallnacht- 1938 

• "Night of the Broken Glass" 
• On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938 
• Nazi's roams through Jewish neighborhoods doing criminal acts against the Jewish businesses and homes
  
  • Breaking windows 
  • Burning synagogues 
  • Looting 
• 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed 
• 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent/deported to concentration camps
• Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died in the attack 
• All Jews children are expelled from public schools in Germany and Austria 
• Nazi's take control of Jewish-owned businesses 

1939

• Hitler orders the systematic murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria 
• Jews are required to wear armbands or yellow stars 

Hitlers Final Solution 

• What should we do with the Jews? 
  • Genocide 
• What is genocide? 
  • Means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,  a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such 
    • Killing members of the group 
    • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 
    • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about it's physical destruction in whole or in part 
    • Imposing measures intended to prevents births within the group 
    • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group 

1940 

• Nazi's begin deporting German Jews to Poland 
• Jews are forced into ghettos 
• Nazi's begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland 

1941 

• Jews throughout Eastern Europe are forced into ghettos 
• In two days, German units shoot 33,771 Ukrainian Jews at BabiYar- the largest single massacre of the Holocaust 
• The death camp at Chelmno in Poland begins murdering Jews 
  • Why did they burn the bodies?
    • To get rid of the evidence and conserve space 

1942

• Nazi officials announce "Final Solution"
  • Their plan to kill all European Jews
• Five death camps begin operaton in Poland
  • Majdanek
  • Sobibor 
  • Treblinka 
  • Belzec 
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau 
• Ghettos of Eastern Europe are being emptied as thousands of Jews are shipped to death camps 
• The United States, Great Britian, and the Soviet Union acknowledge that Germans are extermination the Jews of Europe 

1943

• Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto resist as the Nazis begin new rounds of deportations. These Jews hold out for nearly a month before the Nazi's put down the uprising  

1944

• Hitler takes over Hungary and begins deporting 12,000 Hungarian Jews each day to Auschwitz where they are murdered 

1945 

• Hitler is defeated and World War Two ends in Europe 
• The Holocaust is over and the death camps are found emptied 
• Many survivors are placed in displaced persons camps until they find a country willing to accept them 

1947

• The United Nations establishes a Jewish homeland in British-controlled Palestine, which becomes the States