7.8 Flashcards
Mass atrocities from 1900-present
What are the four categories of mass atrocities?
Famine, genocide, firebombing, disease
Explain the Ukrainian famine.
Under Stalin’s USSR, Ukrainian farmers protested collectivist policies by killing livestock and burning crops. This led to mass famine. This was also caused by the USSR’s continual exports of food despite their own people dying, as well as the government’s refusal to aid starving communities. This is also known as the Holodomor, and occurred between 1932-1933.
Explain the Influenza Pandemic and its significance.
The flu pandemic occurred in 1918-1919. At the end of WWI in 1918, soldiers returned to their respective home countries, spreading the virus like wildfire. It killed an estimated 50 million people.
Explain firebombing throughout WWII.
Firebombing is when bombs are encased in wood and designed to be dropped, detonate, and then catch fire to everything around it, effectively causing mass destruction.
- the Allies firebombed Germany in Hamburg and Dresden, resulting in their complete destruction and approximately 75,000 deaths
- U.S. firebombed Tokyo using three hundred and thirty four B-29 bombers, leaving 90-100,000 people dead
Definition of genocide
The intentional slaughter of a certain peoples/ the attempted extermination of a specific people group who belong to a certain ethnicity or nationality
Explain the Armenian Genocide.
In 1915, the Ottoman government, led by the Young Turks, accused Armenians of ties with Russia.
- gathered Armenians into concentration camps where they starved and died of disease, or were executed and buried in mass graves
- Armenians often led to Syrian desert to die or killed on the way
- “ethnic cleansing”, as Young Turks were attempting to impose Turkish culture on citizens of the Ottoman Empire, leading to resistance from the Christian Armenians
Between 600,000-1 million Armenian Christians killed
Explain the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was a part of Hitler’s “final solution” to ethnically cleanse Europe of Jews. The acquirement of lebensraum came with the acquirement of the Jews who had previously fled Germany’s original borders.
People removed from conquered territories and sent to concentration camps, where prisoners worked to support war efforts and production - affected groups include Slavs, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies (Roma), the disabled, and political opponents of Hitler or Nazis
The Final Solution began in 1942, when instead of being sent to labor camps where they’d die slowly from starvation and harsh conditions, they were sent to death camps where they’d be exterminated through gas chambers and crematoria.
Primary examples include Auschwitz and Dachau.
Explain the genocide in Bosnia.
New states were created after WWI, including Yugoslavia: home to Serbians, Croats, Slovenes, and Muslims.
The Muslims lived in the Bosnian region of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia collapsed with the USSR in 1991, and people conflicted while trying to carve out ethnic boundaries.
Serbian Slobodan Milosevic led a campaign to ethnically cleanse Bosnia of Muslims, leading to the execution of approximately 300,000 Muslims.
Explain the genocide in Rwanda.
Rwanda was a colony of Belgium, and was made up of two ethnic populations: the Tutsis (minority) and the Hutus (majority). The Belgians favored the Tutsis and gave them power to rule the colony, resulting in resentment from the Hutus.
In 1962, Rwanda became an independent nation, and Hutus gained control of the government due to their majority population. They enacted policies discriminatory against the Tutsis.
In 1994, the Hutu president of Rwanda was killed in a plane crash, and the Hutus believed it to be shot down by Tutsis.
- the systematic slaughter of Tutsis followed for the next three months
- approximately 500,000 Tutsis dead, most killed with machetes
