Chapter 5

Question 1

two camps

Answer 1

• It was the Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary and Rumania) vs. The Allies (Great Britain, USSR, United States, Canada…).
• These coalitions were marriages of reason that were made as the conflict evolved.
• Leaders of the Allies met frequently during the war. Including a meeting in Newfoundland in 1941 and in Quebec City in 1944.

Question 2

type of alliances ww2

Answer 2

-The alliances of World War II were not long-standing alliances that had existed for decades. Alliances were not a cause of WWII.

Question 3

why did hitler feel like he could do what he did

Answer 3

• Since he rose to power in 1933, Hitler had repeatedly disrespected the much-maligned Treaty of Versailles.
• After sending German troops back to the Rhineland in 1936, a clear violation of the treaty of Versailles, he became increasingly confident that other countries would not start another war.
• Hitler was confident that the French and the British desperately wanted to avoid another major conflict in Europe and that they would not stop his expansionist policy.
• Hitler wanted to re-arm Germany, unite all the Germans (or Aryans) of Europe and give room to grow to this “superior” race. This is what he called the Lebensraum in Mein Kampf.

Question 4

how was hitlers rep in 1938

Answer 4

• Hitler had become more popular than ever in Germany by 1938.
• He was even admired by notorious non-Germans such as King Edward VIII, Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, Joe Kennedy… He was even named man of the year by Time magazine at the beginning of 1939.

Question 5

hitler first take over

Answer 5

• Hitler grew up in Austria-Hungary. Thus, his first goal was to add Austria to his Reich (empire).
• In the spring of 1938, Hitler sent 60,000 German troops to occupy Austria which was about to have plebiscite (i.e., referendum) on the possibility joining Germany (Hitler sent troops despite Mussolini’s disagreement. Mussolini compared Hitler to Attila the Hun).
• Once there, the Germans ousted the Austrian government and rigged the plebiscite.
• They claimed that 99.7 percent of Austrians voted for uniting with Germany. This led to the Anschluss (Austria’s annexation to Germany. You can see this annexation in The Sound of Music).
• Most Austrians shared Hitler’s anti-Semitic views. The Nazis were welcomed by most Austrians and Austrian Jews endured the same degrading conditions that had been imposed on German Jews since the Nazis had taken power five years earlier.
• Nobody in Europe dared to oppose the German takeover of Austria. This boosted Hitler’s confidence.

Question 6

what did hitler target after austria hungry

Answer 6

-Hitler’s next objective was to overtake the Sudetenland, the westernmost region of Czechoslovakia. The 3 million Germans who lived there represented the largest ethnic group of that area.

Question 7

which move from hitler finally triggered a response from European countries

Answer 7

This time, the other European powers did not stay totally passive.

• A conference was organized to discuss the invasion of the Sudetenland by the Germans in September, 1938. This conference took place in Munich, Germany.
• It was decided that the Sudetenland could become part of Germany despite the protests of the Czechoslovaks who had not even been invited to Munich.
• The British and the French were hoping that giving the Sudetenland to Germany would be enough to appease Hitler.

Question 8

what were the resulsts of the 1938 conference in Munich

Answer 8

• Their strategy of appeasement was defended by Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister (Chamberlain knew that his troops were not ready to fight Japan in Asia and Germany in Europe at the same time. King George VI also urged him to avoid war with Germany).
• The Appeasement strategy was a total failure. Winston Churchill was horrified by Chamberlain’s plan to ensure peace. He accused Chamberlain of picking dishonor instead of war. Hitler called Chamberlain and Daladier, the French president, cowards and worms.
• Hitler walked out of the Munich Conference with the firm belief that nobody in Europe had the backbone to stand in the way of his ambitious and aggressive expansionist policy.

Question 9

did hitler rewpesct the terms of the agreement ?

Answer 9

• Hence, the Fuhrer decided to seize the rest of Czechoslovakia even if he promised that he would stop invading new territories after receiving the Sudetenland at the Munich Conference.
• Hitler was sure that nobody in France or Great Britain would be willing to fight to save the Czechoslovaks. This proved that Hitler would not be satisfied by uniting the German-speaking population of Europe. He was a megalomaniac that could not be trusted.

Question 10

things were going so well for hilter what did he do next ?

Answer 10

• The Nazis had been able to add Austria and Czechoslovakia to their German Reich without having to fire one single gunshot. Hitler’s next goal was to conquer Poland.
• For this he had to make an agreement with the USSR. The Soviets were also frustrated by the creation of Poland in 1919.
• The agreement was the Soviet-German Pact (Hitler and Stalin never met in person. The deal was done by diplomats, Ribbentrop and Molotov).

Question 11

why did Stalin agree on the german-russian alliance ?

Answer 11

• Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, knew that he would eventually have to face Hitler. But Stalin wanted to buy time because he had purged the army of all the dissenting officers and he was still “modernizing” the USSR (luckily, Stalin kept General Georgi Zhukov, who would become the greatest Soviet war hero).
• Stalin also felt like the British and the French were not trustworthy allies.
• Hence, Stalin accepted to create a temporary alliance with the Germans to divide Poland and buy some time to reform and modernize the Soviet military (Stalin also got Hitler’s approval to invade Finland and the Baltic states).

Question 12

goal of pact and poland take over

Answer 12

• This pact was supposed to guarantee a decade of peace between Germany and the USSR.
• These two powers who were trying to regain territories lost after World War I (Hitler actually admitted that Stalin was the only European leader that he truly respected).

Question 13

stalin cool dude ?

Answer 13

-Stalin’s Red Army also committed horrific crimes in Poland such as exterminating over 4,000 Polish officers in the Forest of Katyn.

Question 14

stalin cool dude?

Answer 14

-Stalin’s Red Army also committed horrific crimes in Poland such as exterminating over 4,000 Polish officers in the Forest of Katyn.

Question 15

invaision of poland

Answer 15

• In September 1939, the Germans used tanks (Wehrmacht) and planes (Luftwaffe) to invade Poland. This method of lightening warfare is known as Blitzkrieg (It was developed mainly by Heinz Guderian. It is basically a combination of speed and overwhelming force. This was very physically demanding for German soldiers who used methamphetamines to be able to keep up with the intense pace imposed by the Nazi officers).
• The reason given by Hitler was that Poland entered German territory (the attack did take place. It was done by Germans wearing polish uniforms).
• The invasion of Poland lasted only a month (September, 1939). It marked the end of Appeasement.

Question 16

poland reaction

Answer 16

-The French and the British could no longer passively tolerate the expansion plans of the ambitious Fuhrer.
-They declared war on Germany: “it was Hitler who aimed at unlimited territorial and racial aggression of a master race. Hitler made war inevitable” (Kreis, 2000, Lecture 10).
It is this reliance upon force, this lust for conquest, this determination to dominate throughout the world which is the real cause of the war that today threatens the freedom of mankind. William Lyon MacKenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 1939.
-The invasion of Poland is considered as the immediate cause of World War II.
-But this only marked the beginning of the “phony war”. The major European powers were at war, but there were no battles during the winter of 1939-1940.

Question 17

hiw did france feel about a german invasion

Answer 17

-The French were confident that they were protected from a third German invasion since 1870, because they had erected the Maginot Line on their border with Germany (Maginot was the French minister of defense. The Germans had the Siegfried Line on their side of the border with France).

Question 18

Was the magino line succesful ?

Answer 18

• But in the spring of 1940, the Germans used Blitzkrieg to invade Belgium and the Netherlands, France’s northern neighbors (the Germans also quickly invaded Denmark and Norway).
• This allowed the Germans to go around the Maginot Line by crossing the Ardennes Forest of Belgium who were supposedly impassible.

Question 19

Was the magino line succesful ?

Answer 19

• But in the spring of 1940, the Germans used Blitzkrieg to invade Belgium and the Netherlands, France’s northern neighbors (the Germans also quickly invaded Denmark and Norway).
• This allowed the Germans to go around the Maginot Line by crossing the Ardennes Forest of Belgium who were supposedly impassible.
• This bold strategy completely stunned the French and their British allies who failed to stop the German troops from advancing quickly towards Paris.

Question 20

did everyone get captured in the capitulation of France

Answer 20

• However, 335,000 British and French soldiers managed to flee to Great Britain, during the Miracle of Dunkirk (approximately 40,000 others could not escape and they became Prisoners of War in Nazi concentration camps).
• The French were forced to surrender to the Germans in the same railway car in which the Germans had been forced to sign the armistice back in 1918.

Question 21

fate of france

Answer 21

• Paris was left undefended. This spared the French capital from destruction (unlike other major cities such as Warsaw and Rotterdam that were previously invaded by the Nazis). Paris quickly fell under German control. German troops arrived in Paris on June 13th (1940), the day of humiliation.
• The Germans controlled 60 percent of the French territory. They had Paris and most of the coastal areas.
• Vichy France (i.e., the French heartland) was governed by Philippe Petain, an aging French hero of World War I, who was collaborating with the Germans.
• Petain’s puppet government was constantly at the mercy of Nazi Germany.
• By the end of 1940, most of Western Europe was occupied by the Germans.

Question 22

last party of the axis

Answer 22

-Moreover, Hitler and his old fascist ally Mussolini (Italy) added Japan to their Axis (Tripartite Pact. It also included Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria).

Question 23

hitler compariomnsomns to other wolrds leaders in 1940

Answer 23

-In 1940, during Hitler’s only visit in Paris he saw the tomb of Napoleon. Ironically, Hitler was confronted with the same dilemma as Napoleon: taking control of Great Britain (an island) and the USSR (the largest and coldest country in the world).

Question 24

great britain position on peace

Answer 24

-In Great Britain, Churchill was under pressure to avoid war against Germany. He stubbornly refused to negotiate with Hitler. He argued that making peace with a monster was to make a monstrous peace.

Question 25

Battle of Britain

Answer 25

-The Luftwaffe, the German air force, was unable to bomb Great Britain into submission, during the Battle of Britain (thanks to the Royal Air Force and the effective use of radars. The bombings went from the fall of 1940 to the spring of 1941. More than 23,000 Britons died due to the German bombings).

Question 26

arial blitz pn brittain effective ?

Answer 26

-Hitler’s aerial blitz on Britain air fields and London failed. Nazi Germany was never able to safely land troops on the British soil. Moreover, the British Royal Air Force had also been able to retaliate by bombing Berlin, the German capital.

Question 27

hitler reaction to the failure of the areil blitls on Britain.

Answer 27

• Hitler believed that the stubborn British would be discouraged; if Germany could defeat the USSR (the British hoped that they could convince Stalin to betray Germany to join their side).
• Therefore, Hitler decided in the spring of 1941 to use his Luftwaffe (i.e., the German air force) against the USSR instead of Great Britain.

Question 28

invaison ussr name

Answer 28

• Moreover, Hitler was able to assemble 3 million men, the largest army ever assemble at that point, to fight on a front that was 1,000 kilometers wide in the USSR (Morrow, 2011).
• But Hitler badly underestimated the resiliency of the Soviets and Joseph Stalin.
• Germany’s invasion of the USSR was launched in June, 1941. It was called Operation Barbarossa (it was named after a German emperor of the Middle Ages).

Question 29

war on many fronts

Answer 29

• It started more than 3 years of unrelenting total war in the USSR (Hitler had hoped that he could defeat Stalin and the Soviets in only 10 weeks. He planned to attack the USSR during the spring of 1941. His plans were postponed by his Italian allies who were struggling to defeat Greece).
• As for the Japanese, they launched a surprising aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, at the end of 1941 (on December 7th 1941, “A date that will live in infamy”. 2,400 American died during the attack).

Question 30

reaction pearl harbour

Answer 30

• The American public, media and government were all galvanized and Congress quickly declared war on Japan to respond to this vicious attack.
• But the Americans did not declare war against Germany. It was actually Hitler who declared war on the Americans to support Japan.

Question 31

main probelm hitler military

Answer 31

• The main problem for Hitler was that he never effectively coordinated his military planning with his Japanese and Italian allies.
• Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor led him to declare war on the United States earlier than he expected and by the end of 1941 his German troops were starting to struggle with the invasion of the USSR partly because of his detour in Greece to bail out Mussolini’s struggling plans to recreate the Roman Empire.

Question 32

first defeat ussr

Answer 32

• Hitler was unable to finish his invasion of the USSR before the winter of 1941-1942 like he had planned.
• His German troops suffered their first defeat in Rostov in December, 1941. This defeat and a brutal Russian winter of 1941-1942 stopped the Nazis before they could reach Moscow, the capital of the USSR.

Question 33

??

Answer 33

• The attacks on Pearl Harbor by Japan and the USSR by Nazi Germany proved to be fatal mistakes for the Axis. These decisions allowed Great Britain to find the allies it desperately needed.
• This alliance led by the USA, the USSR and Great Britain would coordinate its effort much more efficiently than the Axis.
• The Americans, Soviets and British agreed to cooperate until the complete and unconditional surrender of the powers of the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan).
• Canada was on the side of the Allies. In fact, Canada had been the first country of the Americas to enter the war (even if the French Canadians did not agree with this decision of their Prime Minister, Mackenzie King).

Question 34

In 1942-1943, two major events definitively stopped the imperialist expansion of Germany and Japan:

Answer 34

• In 1942-1943, two major events definitively stopped the imperialist expansion of Germany and Japan:
  1. The American victory over Japan, at the naval battle of Midway (May, 1942).
  2. The battle of Stalingrad (from August 1942 to February 1943) in the USSR. It was the deadliest battle in history. German troops were defeated even if Hitler declared that his troops had won on the German radio. More than 1.5 million Soviets were killed or injured while defending Stalingrad.

Question 35

stalingrad tactical enjeux

Answer 35

• Stalingrad was the culmination of merciless war of extermination on an enormous front that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
• The Battle of Stalingrad (Volgograd) was the last chance of the Soviets to stop the Germans from controlling the Volga River and the precious oil reserve of the Caspian Sea.

Question 36

other german losses in the URSS

Answer 36

• The Germans also lost the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history.
• This flat battlefield was turned into deafening inferno but the Soviets resisted (even if the Germans were using new tanks designed by the brilliant engineer Ferdinand Porsche).
• This defeat convinced Hitler that he could not conquer the USSR (Mussolini had tried to convince him that conquering the USSR was impossible due to its enormous size and its frigid winters).
• The retreating Germans had the Red Army of the USSR on their heels everywhere in Eastern Europe (the Red Army did slowdown in Poland to intentionally allow the Germans to have the time to destroy the city of Warsaw).

Question 37

net effect germans v ussr

Answer 37

-The Soviet troops would progressively regain their country and liberate Eastern Europe and the Death Camps. Auschwitz still had 7,000 prisoners when the Soviets took this camp from the Nazis in the spring of 1944 (on the other hand, the Soviets captured Germans soldiers. Some of them stayed in the USSR for up to 10 years).

Question 38

ther important setback for the Axis

Answer 38

• The other important setback for the Axis was the loss of their conquests in Northern Africa, after the defeat of Erwin Rommel’s Africa Corps at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942 (near Alexandria in northern Egypt).
• The Axis forces were hoping to take control of the Suez Canal and the Oil fields of the Middle East but they were stopped (Churchill even had a heart attack before the battle. The nerves might have caused it).

Question 39

Rommel defeat ? 2

Answer 39

-The British and the Americans were finally able to defeat Rommel, their nemesis, thanks to the new Sherman tanks who stunned the Germans at El Alamein.

Question 40

what was the adavntage of taking northern africa

Answer 40

• Controlling Northern Africa allowed the British and the Americans to invade Sicily and the rest of Italy.
• The allies definitively took control of Italy on June 4th, 1944 after overcoming the stiff resistance of the German troops who had moved in to Italy (the Italian troops had surrendered in 1943).

Question 41

musolini fate

Answer 41

• As for Mussolini he was captured, humiliated and brutally murdered by anti-fascist Italians.
• On June 6th, 1944 (D-Day) two days after finalizing their takeover of Italy, the Allies launched a risky and ambitious offensive that involved 139,000 soldiers to liberate France from the Germans.

Question 42

where did the envasion of italy leave the war

Answer 42

-The Germans had firmly established their presence on the French coastal areas (i.e., it was called Fortress Europe or the Atlantic Wall) and the Allies knew that.

Question 43

would the french coastal areas be easy to take

name plan

Answer 43

• The Allies had failed miserably to land troops on French soil at Dieppe, back in the summer of 1942 (half of the 10,000 soldiers who were sent there were Canadians. Nearly 1,000 Canadians died and 2,000 were captured and sent to concentration camps by the Germans).
• The Allies did not want to see a repeat of that deadly fiasco. They carefully planned Operation Overlord, the most ambitious naval invasion in history.
• This bold attack was orchestrated by the American General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower (he eventually became the 34th American president of the United States).

Question 44

how many beaches were taken from the germans

Answer 44

• The allies took five beaches from the Germans. Taking Omaha Beach was especially challenging because the American soldiers arrived later than planned and the high tide made the landing difficult. This beach also had cliffs that gave an advantage to the Germans.
• The previous aerial and naval bombings were also ineffective and so was the use of tanks on that particular beach (the Canadians took Juno Beach in 30 minutes).

Question 45

were the normandy beaches an important area to conquer or just a small peace in a larger war

Answer 45

-This victory of the Allies was crucial because the beaches of Normandy gave them footholds where they could land the troops and the equipment, they needed to free the areas that were still under German control.

Question 46

d day larger spectrum

Answer 46

• D-day was only the beginning of a long operation. The Normandy campaign lasted 3 months and 4 million soldiers were deployed. The Germans surrendered only after 9 more months of bitter fighting.
• The allies were converging towards Berlin, the German capital; during the winter of 1945 (the Germans had almost created major upset during their last counteroffensive at the Bulge, in Belgium).
• Major German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden were ravaged by firebombs dropped by American and British planes.
• Many Germans such as Jorg Friedrich (2003) still argue that this was a terrible war crime committed by the Allies.

Question 47

end of war

Answer 47

• The desperate Fuhrer knew that the war was lost. Moreover, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
• Hitler moved into his bunker where he committed suicide in April with some members of his entourage such as Joseph Goebbels. Hitler had previously escaped an assassination attempt Stauffenberg, a German officer who was a leader of Operation Valkyrie.
• Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor, asked the for peace terms.
• In the meantime, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill had met in Yalta (USSR) in February of 1944. They planned the final stage of the war.

Question 48

surrender of Germany end of war?

Answer 48

-President Roosevelt died a few weeks after travelling to Yalta. This left his vice-president, Harry Truman, with the task of finding a way to end the war against Japan in the Pacific.

Question 49

was Japan likely to surrender at the end of the war

Answer 49

• The American soldiers were exhausted after winning brutal battles in the Pacific such as Saipan, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Okinawa and bombing the main cities of Japan incessantly with incendiary bombs.
• The American troops were fighting determined Japanese soldiers who saw Hirohito, their emperor, as a god that was worth dying for.
• This is what convinced the kamikaze pilots to commit suicide by crashing their planes into American ships that were near Japan in 1944 and 1945.
• James J. Fahey, who was aboard the USS Montpelier offers this description of kamikaze attack: The Jap planes were falling all around us, the air was full of Jap machine gun bullets. Jap planes and bombs were hitting all around us. Some of our ships were being hit by suicide planes (Fahey, 1944).
• The dedication of the Japanese soldiers was also demonstrated by Hiroo Onada. He lived in hiding for 29 years after the war to avoid surrendering to the Americans.

Question 50

atomic bombs

Answer 50

• To discourage the Japanese, President Truman made the decision to use the Atomic bomb that had been tested in New Mexico by the team of scientists of the Manhattan Project. It was the biggest government founded scientific project at that point in history. The bomb had been tested successfully in the New Mexico. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the main scientist who developed the bomb, was impressed and horrified by the power of his creation. He famously said Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
• The allies had worked on other projects to find a weapon that could end the war such as research on anthrax in Scotland and in Grosse-Ile, Quebec.
• The first bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. It instantly killed 80, 000 people (the heat generated by the bomb made the city warmer than the surface of the Sun!!!).
• A second bomb (Fat Man) was dropped on Nagasaki, three days later. It killed over 50,000 Japanese (the bomb also allowed the Americans to defeat Japan without getting help from the USSR).

Question 51

atomic bombs effective ?

Answer 51

-This convinced the Japanese to surrender on August 14th (I.e. VJ Day). World War II was finally over.
The Americans agreed to let Hirohito remain the emperor of Japan but Japan emperor no longer claim to have a divine status. Hirohito continued to rule Japan until he died in 1989.

Question 52

death toll WW2

Answer 52

-It had caused about 50 million deaths (Grant, 2009); approximately half of the victims were from the USSR.

Question 53

holocaust intro and stats

Answer 53

“Those who were fit to work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated” Rudolf Hoess, commandant au Auschwitz, 1946.
-The casualties of the Holocaust include approximately 6 million Jews who were exploited and murdered by the Nazis.
-This attempt to exterminate the European Jews is also known as the Shoah. This word means destruction in Hebrew. The Nazis killed around 70 percent of the European Jews. This is a breakdown of the number of victims per country.
Poland leading 2 800 000

Question 54

holocaust just jews

Answer 54

-The victims of the Holocaust also include another 10 million victims of groups targeted by the Nazis such as Polish Catholics, Serbians, Ukrainians, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, prisoners of war… (Hallock, 2013, p. 114).

Question 55

jewish ghettos

Answer 55

-The Nazis began by confining the Jews to specific ghettos after they quickly conquered Poland at the beginning of the war.
“Life in the ghetto is stagnant and frozen. There are walls around us; we do not have space, no freedom of action. Whatever we do we do illegally; legally we don’t even have permission to exist. Our sources of livelihood are all tenuous and temporary’’ Chaim Kaplan, 1942.

Question 56

ss and the holocaust

Answer 56

• In June 1941, they formed SS mobile killing squads (Eisatzgruppen) to follow the German army into Eastern Europe.
• The SS had to round up Jews, execute them and pushed them into mass graves.
• If we look at the specific example of Karl Jaeger, the SS commander of Einsatzgruppen 3, he was given the mission identifying and killing Jews after the Nazis conquered Lithuania in 1941.
• His unit operated whit merciless efficiency. The SS under his command killed 137, 346 Jews in five months during the summer and the fall of 1941.
• This is what he wrote in his final report to his superiors: Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for Lithuania, has been achieved…In Lithuania there are no more Jews, apart from Jewish workers and their families Karl Jaeger, 1941
• All this was done with the help of the local non-Jewish populations who shared the hateful Anti-Semitic beliefs of the Nazis. For example, the Lithuanians helped the SS kill the 48,000 Jews of the Vilnius Ghetto. In Kiev, the SS gunned down 33,000 Jews in two days after conquering that city in 1941.

Question 57

ss efficiency

Answer 57

• The SS killing units killed approximately 1 million Jews. It still was not enough to satisfy the Nazi leaders.
• They were also receiving complaints from German officers that some soldiers developed stress problems and that other drank excessively to forget the horrible scenes they were witnessing. Both were problems for discipline according to the Nazi leaders.

Question 58

what did they do when the ss soldier problem arrived

who what where when

Answer 58

• They began to explore other options to eliminate the European Jews more quickly.
• The decision to establish Death Camps in Poland was taken at the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942 to accelerate the extermination of the 11 million Jews who lived in Europe in the early 1940s. The Wansee conference was held in this lakeside villa:
• The decision to exterminate millions of Jews quickly in death camps is known as the Final Solution. Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann engineered this plan to accelerate the killing of the peoples that were considered to be inferior by the Nazis.

Question 59

inventor final solution

Answer 59

-Heydrich had been recruited into the SS when Heinrich Himmler, the founder of the SS was looking for perfect Aryan young men (i.e., tall blond Germans with blue eyes). He had quickly risen to the top of the SS by the time of the Final Solution.

Question 60

death camps gathering process

Answer 60

• The Germans and their allies gathered Jews from all over Europe to send them to death camps in Poland.
• The Jews were forced into train wagons designed to transport cattle and sent to death camps in Poland such Treblinka, Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The camps were strategically located near railroads (Auschwitz was the largest death camp. The Nazis could kill up to 4,000 people per day there).

Question 61

what awaited the jews in the death camps

Answer 61

• The Jews who were deemed fit for work by the Nazis were unpaid coerced laborers in the ghettos and the death camps to contribute to the Nazi war effort (it was only 30 percent of the Jews who were sent to death camps that were put to work. The others were mercilessly gassed to death and burnt).
• The Jews who were fit to work were exploited and dehumanized by the Nazis. Many of them died of exhaustion, illnesses or cruel punishments (Jews who had skills that were considered essential for the German war effort could avoid deportation to the camps. Oskar Schindler used this exemption to protect 1,300 Jewish workers).

Question 62

example working jew

Answer 62

-For example, the Sonderkommando, were Jewish workers in charge of the crematoria and the pits of Birkeneau.
-This is where the bodies of their fellow Jews poisoned in the gas chambers by Zyklon B were burnt.
-Dr. Lettich from France (1945) offers a detailed description of what he saw during his investigation of the death camps:
The SS (Otto) Moll threw gas in through
a little vent. One could hear fearful screams,
but a few moments later there was complete
silence. 20 to 25 minutes later, the door and
windows were opened to ventilate the rooms
and the corpses were thrown at once in pits to
be burnt.

Question 63

who freed jews death camps

Answer 63

-At the end of the War, the Red Army freed the Jews who were in the Death camps in Poland. American and British soldiers freed prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

Question 64

consequences holocaust

Answer 64

• The Nazi leaders who survived the war were put on trial in Nuremberg for 11 months. It was the first international tribunal on war crimes.
• The Nuremberg trials sentenced over 20 surviving Nazi leaders such as Goering, Ribbentrop and Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect) to death or prison (only 3 Nazis were acquitted).
• The legal team led by Robert Jackson, an American judge, successfully demonstrated that the Nazis were guilty of planning wars of aggression, violations of international treaties and crimes against humanity.
• The Nazis had been embarrassed and the little support they still enjoyed from the German population quickly declined after each damning testimony.

Question 65

were the nuremberg trials efficient

Answer 65

-But there were still about 30,000 German war criminals who managed to escape justice. They included notorious Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele, the mad scientist of Auschwitz. Eichmann was captured in Argentina and he had to face a trial in Israel in the early 1960s.

Question 66

palestine

Answer 66

• The main problem of the Jewish people before World War II had always been that they did not have their own state since Antiquity. This made the Jews vulnerable. The problem was still not solved in 1945.
• Many Jewish survivor of the Holocaust were not able to return to their towns since their property had been destroyed or stolen while they were in the ghettos and the camps. The reality of most European Jews who survived the Holocaust was that they had to live in refugee camps after World War II. This added to the urgency of finding a new home for the European Jews.
• The Holocaust brought international sympathy for the Jewish cause, especially from President Truman of the USA.
• Zionist leader such as David Ben-Gurion seized that opportunity.
• Modern Zionism had been founded in the late 19th Century by Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Hungary.
• Herzl and his fellow Zionists wanted to establish a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, where the Jews had founded a Kingdom ruled by King David during the 10th Century B. C.
• Their wish came true in 1948 with the recognition of Israel by the United States.
• The United Nations, a new organization that was formed to preserve world peace, also approved the foundation of an Israeli state in Palestine.