Background Information

Nationalism  regarded as a condition of loyalty to one's own nation and its interests

Mein Kampf (My Struggle)  Hitler’s political philosophy  Written while in prison  1923  Anti-Semitism – Jewish scapegoats  German expansion – blames the Treaty of Versailles for lost land  Critics- never taken seriously  Warnings signs were overlooked

July 14, 1933  Creation of the Nazi Party  Swastika

The Third Reich  Translation – Third Empire  "Thousand Year" Empire

Nuremberg Laws  Laws endorsed by the Nazi Party  Nuremberg, Germany in 1933 and 1935  Severe restrictions on German Jews  Aryan German race  Holocaust  The undesirable / sub-human

Yellow Star of David  Six pointed star  Jewish religious symbol  Identification

Kristallnacht  November 10, 1938  Widespread violence  “Night of broken glass”

Early Acts of Discrimination against Jews in Germany  Book burnings  Boycott of Jewish owned businesses  Professors expelled from universities  April 7, 1933 Jews barred from German civil service.  September 15, 1935 Nuremberg Laws ended German citizenship for Jews.  September 21, 1935 Jewish doctors forced to resign from private hospitals by Nuremberg Laws.  November 16, 1937 Jews could obtain passports for travel outside of Germany only in special cases.  July 22, 1938 Effective January 1, 1939 in Germany, all Jews forced to carry special identification cards.  November 15, 1938 German schools expelled all Jews.  November 28, 1939 German Jews restricted by curfew

Warsaw Ghetto  Largest Jewish ghetto during WWII  Warsaw, Poland  Population: estimated from 450,000 to 71,000

Background Information

Incident that began WWII  Invasion of Poland on September 1,  First military engagement in the European theater  September 3, 1939 – declaration of war

The Final Solution  1942  Persecute, deport, exterminate

Holocaust  Sacrifice by fire; burnt offerings  Mass murder of millions

Jewish Deaths in WWII  200,000 surviving Jews  About 5.8 million Jews

Concentration Camps  Starts in Germany  Designed as “work camps”  Uniforms  Ammunition factories  Other countries that had Concentration Camps

Attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941  Early on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941  President Franklin D. Roosevelt  Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Surprise of Attack

Japanese –Americans in WWII  President Franklin D. Roosevelt  Executive Order No  Fear of acts of sabotage  Fear of undermining the US war effort  Over 100,000 Japanese Americans  Japanese-American soldiers

Selective Service Act  President Franklin D. Roosevelt  Required: year old males  Changed to due to WWII

The Axis Powers of WWII  Germanyleader: Hitler  Italyleader: Mussolini  Japan leader: Hirohito

Allied Countries  In World War II ( ), the Allied Powers, included:  Britainleader: Churchill  United Statesleader: Roosevelt  Soviet Unionleader: Stalin

Manhattan Project  Efforts to build an atomic weapon  New York's Columbia University in Manhattan  “Fat Man” – Nagasaki, Japan  “Little Boy” –Hiroshima, Japan  End of WWII

D-Day  June 6, 1944  150,000 Allied soldiers  Normandy, France  Refers to any day of action or decision

WWII ends in Europe  Unconditional surrender  May 8, 1945  V-E Day – Victory over Europe

WWII ends in Japan  August 15, 1945  V-J Day – Victory over Japan

What happened to Hitler at the end of the war?  April 30  Kills self to avoid Allied forces

Nuremberg Trials  Shortly after the end of World War II  1945 – 1946  Convictions for war crimes

Genocide  The systematic annihilation of a group of people  (nation, ethnicity, race, religion)

Josef Mengele  Auschwitz / Birkenau  Unethical and painful medical experiments

Kindertransport  Evacuation of approximately 10,000 Jewish children 

Oskar Schindler  Hero  Employed Jews  Saves them from certain death

Anne Frank  Anne Frank's diaries  Documents of human strength in the face of unrestrained oppression