The Manchester Times
By: Ian Merle and Molly Furlong
Joseph Stalin
In June of 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the U.S.S.R. and soon gained ground towards Moscow. With a last ditch effort Stalin burned Moscow and then turned to face the Germans at Stalingrad. After that victory he soon drove Germany from Russia and soon began pushing the German force back.
After the war in Europe was finished Stalin promised to help the United States fight Japan. He failed to do so due to the fact that Harry Truman disliked Stalin and the Soviet Union.
The Dutch Liberation.
Canada Entering the War
Adolf Hitler
Hitler- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was one of the most powerful and infamous dictators of the 20th century. After World War I, he comes into power in the National Socialist German Workers Party, taking control of the government in 1933. He established concentration camps for Jews and other groups he believed to be a threat to the country of Germany resulted in the death of more than 6 million people during the Holocaust. His attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II, and by 1941 Germany occupied much of Europe and North Africa. The wave of the war changed following an invasion of Russia and the U.S. came into battle.
After World War I, Hitler came to control the National Socialist German Workers Party, which he hoped to lead to power in Germany. When an attempt in 1923 failed, he got arrested. After getting released from jail, he had to build up the party to seize power with ways that were at least outwardly legal. He hoped to carry out a program calling for the restructuring of Germany on a racist basis so that it could win a series of wars to expand the German people’s living space until they dominated and exclusively inhabited the world.
Once Hitler had come to power in 1933, German military preparations were made for these wars. The emphasis in the short term was on weapons for the war against the western powers, and for the long term, on the weapons for war against the United States.
In 1938 Hitler drew back from war over Czechoslovakia at the last minute but came to look upon agreeing to a peaceful settlement at Munich as his worst mistake. When he turned to the war against France and Britain, he could not persuade Poland to subordinate itself to Germany to ensure a quiet situation in the east; hence, he decided to destroy that country before heading west. He was determined to have war and initiated it on September 1, 1939. To facilitate the quick conquest of Poland and break any blockade, he aligned Germany with the Soviet Union, assuming that concessions made to that country would be easily reclaimed when Germany turned east.
Hitler had originally hoped to attack in the west in the late fall of 1939, but bad weather–which would have hindered full use of the air force–and differences among the military led to postponement until the spring of 1940. During that interval, Hitler made two major decisions. Urged on by Admiral Erich Raeder, he decided to seize Norway to facilitate the navy’s access to the North Atlantic and did so in April 1940. Urged by General Erich von Manstein, he shifted the primary focus of attack in the west from the northern to the southern part of the force that was to invade the Low Countries. They might then cut off Allied units coming to aid the Belgians and the Dutch. Later Hitler was caught and arrested and while arrested he committed suicide, with his new wife.
The Holocaust
The holocaust- Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews, as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals, by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, a threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland. At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists. Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS), and later chief of the German police. By July 1933, German concentration camps held about 27,000 people in “protective custody.”
In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000, or only 1 percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were designated half-breeds. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in night of broken glass in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested. From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear.
When world war II was over and Germany was invaded by the allies they found these concentration camps and tried to nurse everyone back to help, not everyone survived but less died than what would’ve.
Appeasement Policy
Appeasement policy- the legacy of the Great War in France and Britain generated a strong public and political desire to achieve peace. neither country was militarily ready for war. Widespread pacifism and war were not conducive to rearmament. many British politicians believed that Germany had real grievances resulting from Versailles. some British politicians admired Hitler and Mussolini, seeing them not as dangerous fascists but as strong, patriotic leaders. In the 1930s, Britain saw its principle threat as Communism rather that fascism.
The League of Nations was intended to resolve international disputes peacefully. Yet the League’s ineffectiveness was soon shown. In 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria, the League condemned the action. However, without either the weight of the US or the power of its own army, it was unable to stop Japan. By 1937, Japan had launched a full-scale invasion of China. In October 1935, the League imposed economic sanctions but little more when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. In March 1936, a cautious Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, forbidden with the treaty of Versailles. In the League’s council, the USSR was the only country to propose sanctions. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ruled out the possibility.