1. The Beginning of WWII

2. Years of Crisis, 1919–1939
Societies undergo political, economic, and social changes that lead to renewed aggression.
Worldwide Depression
An economic depression in the United States spreads throughout the world and lasts for a decade.

3. Worldwide Depression (cont)
Unstable New Democracies
Fall of kingdoms, empires creates new democracies in Europe
People have little experience with representative government
Some form coalition governments—temporary, multi-party alliances
Frequent changes in government create instability

4. Fascism Rises in Europe
In response to political turmoil and economic crises, Italy and Germany turn to totalitarian dictators.
Italians want a leader who will take action
Fascist Party leader, Benito Mussolini, promises to rescue Italy

5. Hitler Rises to Power in Germany
A New Power
Adolf Hitler —obscure political figure in 1920s Germany
The Rise of the Nazis
Nazism—German brand of fascism
Hitler becomes Nazi leader, plots to seize national power
Mein Kampf —Hitler‘s book detailing beliefs, goals
Hitler believes that Germany needs lebensraum, or living space
Germans turn to Hitler when economy collapses

6. Hitler Becomes Chancellor
Hitler’s New Power
Hitler is named chancellor
Turns Germany into totalitarian state
Uses brutal tactics to eliminate enemies
Nazis take command of economy
The Führer Is Supreme
Hitler takes control over every aspect of German life

8. Hitler Defies Versailles Treaty
In 1935, Hitler begins rebuilding German army
In 1936, Germany occupies Rhineland
Britain urges appeasement, a policy of giving in to aggression – to avoid conflict
Germany, Italy, and Japan—the Axis Powers—form an alliance

9. Democratic Nations Try to Preserve Peace
United States Follows an Isolationist Policy
Isolationism—avoidance of political ties with other countries
In 1935, Congress passes Neutrality Acts
The German Reich Expands
Hitler plans to expand Third Reich—German Empire
In 1938, Hitler annexes Austria
Hitler demands the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia
Czechs refuse, ask France for help

10. Democratic Nations Try to Preserve Peace
Britain and France Again Choose Appeasement
Leaders meet at Munich Conference to settle Czech crisis
Britain and France agree to let Hitler take Sudetenland
But in 1939, Hitler still takes rest of Czechoslovakia
Mussolini takes Albania; Hitler demands part of PolandNazis and Soviets Sign Nonaggression Pact

11. Russian-German Alliance
In 1939, Stalin and Hitler pledge never to attack one another

12. Hitler Makes War on the Jews
Nazis deprive Jews of rights, promote violence against them

13. Jewish Persecution
The Nazi persecution of Jews began in Germany in By 1939, the country's Jews had been deprived of their civil rights and property and ostracized from the national community. German conquests in Europe after 1939 led to the implementation of antisemitic policies in the occupied territories. Though the pace and severity of persecution differed in each country, Jews were marked, vilified, and segregated from their neighbors.

14. In eastern Europe, the Nazis generally isolated Jews in ghettos, enclosed districts which often were established in the most desolate sections of a city or town. The ghettos isolated the Jews from the non-Jewish community. In western Europe, internment camps served as detention centers for Jews. Such policies of isolation aided the Nazis when they began mass shootings and deportations to the killing centers.

15. The Holocaust
Hitler made the decision in 1941 to carry out the systematic mass murder of Jews. Mobile killing squads followed the German army into the Soviet Union in June 1941, and by the end of the year, murdered almost 1 million Jewish men, women, and children. All Jews were targeted for death, but the mortality rate for children was especially high.

16. The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

17. Other targeted groups
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.