total war essay evidence Flashcards
POWs
27,000 Americans taken prisoner - 40% died in captivity according to US Congressional Research Service
Compared to 1% who died in German POW camps
“The experiments had absolutely no medical merit,” he said. “They were being used to inflict as cruel a death as possible on the prisoners.”
- medical experiments
- Toshio Tono, one of only the surviving witnesses, medical student
Dunkirk
mass mobilisation of civilian effort - engaged in militaristic fashion
“we shall fight on the seas and oceans”
“we shall fight on the beaches”
“we shall never surrender” - Churchill
700 civilian craft - rowing lifeboats, yachts, fishing boats
nearly 100,000 troops saved
Blitz
43,000 dead
2.25 million plus homeless
57 nights of consecutive raids after 7 Sept
30,000 tons of high explosives dropped in 127 raids
Atomic Bomb
Little Boy - Levelling over 60 percent of the city, 70,000 residents died instantaneously in a searing flash of heat.
Fat Man - Over 20,000 people died instantly. In the successive weeks, thousands more Japanese died from the after effects of the radiation exposure of the blast
Sadako Moriyama, had gone to a bomb shelter when the sirens sounded. After the bomb had gone off, she saw what she thought were two large lizards crawling into the shelter she was in, only to realise that they were human beings whose bodies had been shredded of their skin because of the bomb blast
Home Front
- The growth of allotments (3.5 million by 1943) - veggie patches in every spare area of playing field or village green - ration
“dig for victory”
rationing - “Father said he used to dream of food…”
“and if you could get a bar of chocolate, you thought you were in heaven.” - Dorothy Bling
