Download Nearly 50 million people died…half were citizen casualties

Nearly 50 million people died…half were citizen casualties
Blitzkreig – 43,000 killed
Picasso’s Geurrnica
Leningrad – Hitler insisted that city be destroyed, regardless of a surrender
- half of city’s population killed, but they never backed down
- lasted 3 years (900 days)
Kill any who threatened the spread of German control
Germans murdered nearly 1 million Soviet Jews
- these executions de-moralized the German soldiers, who had been hunting down
Jews one-by-one
- there needed to be a “better plan”
Trains used to transport Jews to concentration camps, even though German troops needed
supplies
- several Jews died in the train cars, en route to the concentration camps
Auschwitz was built on land confiscated from Jews
A bowl of turnip soup at noon and a slice of bread in the evening
- the food supply was enough so your body would last half a year
As many as 6,000 could be killed in a single day
- Jewish prisoners were responsible for untangling bodies after the gas chamber
The Final Solution destroyed 2/3rds of Europe’s Jews
JAPAN
- Textbooks glorified war and taught their students that the emperor was a deity
o Emperor regarded as living god, worth dying for
 Suicide (kamikaze) pilot missions in WWII
- Japanese people were told they were invincible
o pulled out images of the past, glorifying their superior qualities
- China was first step towards Japanese empire in Asia
- December 1937, Rape of Nanjing
o raped women, multiple times, then killed them by setting them on fire
o killed nearly 200,000 civilians and raped nearly 20,000 women
- Japanese barbarism spread all over China and went on to conquer Southwest Asia
under banner of liberation and cooperation
- Allied forces started to push against Japanese
- Propaganda led Japanese to believe that Americans were too individualistic and
that individualism needed to be destroyed
Bombings of Berling, Dresden and Tokyo
- US firebombs killed 80,000 civilians in Tokyo
- Nearly 200,000 Japanese killed in 2 major bomb attacks
Nuremburg War Crime Trials
- First time in history national leaders were held responsible
- Crimes against humanity
US HOMEFRONT
- 2000 perished in Pearl Harbor and nearly half of naval fleet destroyed
- Army was ranked 19th in world in 1940
- An officer’s wife showed no emotion when her husband went overseas
- 15 million armed forces
- President asked Americans to follow his radio speeches on a map
o President was beacon of light during his radio talks
o Had capacity to inspire country with words
- Reluctant to send woman to work
o Couldn’t work machinery, would be a distraction to men and would leave
children at home
o Turned out thousands of ships and planes every month
o 1940-1944 woman made up a full 1/3rd of work force
- War Bonds
o Actors helped sell war bonds
- Rationing
o Car was assigned an A, B or C sticker to determine when to
- Everybody felt what they did mattered
- Propaganda
- Japanese Internment Camps, Executive Order 9096
o 120,000 Japanese Americans
o Jay Edgar Hoover was one of few government officials that opposed
o One of the greatest civil rights violations in American history
- Teenage girls became more precocious because their boyfriends were going off to
war
o Newfound sexuality
- For all the boys, any man in uniform was a hero
o Lived for the war movies
o Played war
- Families on homefront didn’t understand how brutal life on the war front was
- The realization that war wasn’t fun anymore came when boys from the town were
being killed
- As death toll rose, so did American resolve
(can stop video around 1:38)