Part 2 Key Questions
1. How is the decision made and
implemented to commit a Europeanwide genocide?
2. What were the major effects of WWII
on American society including
minorities and women?
III. The Jewish Genocide
A. Early Jewish Persecution
• 1935 Nuremburg laws in Germany
stripped German Jews of citizenship
and rights
• 1938 Kristellnacht Nazis unleashed
wave of violence against Jews
attacking them in their homes,
synagogues and businesses
• Tens of thousands of European Jews
fled for countries that would admit
them
B. America and the Jewish
refugees
• Among them distinguished musicians, architects,
writers, scholars who enriched the cultural life of
their adopted nation
• Refugee physicists like Enrique Ferme contributed
to developing the atomic bomb for the U.S.
• Discriminatory Immigration laws in place at time
• Congress refused to change the quotas for Jews
• FDR would not exert pressure on lawmakers to do
so
• Majority of Americans opposed letting in more
Jews (isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic
sentiments)
Jewish refugees
on board MS St
Louis in 1939
while docked in
Havana, Cuba
Stopped by US
Authorities and
forced to return to
Europe
Video: Jewish
Refugees – The
Roosevelts
C. The Jewish Genocide
• Onset of the war accelerates the
process of elimination
– Deportation of “undesirables” into
concentration camps
– In Eastern Europe (esp. Poland) , forced
relocation of Jews into Ghettoes
• Mandatory wearing of clothing to identify
them as Jews
• Forced labor
• Not allowed to leave
• Hunger, fatigue, disease kill thousands of Jews
by month
Other Victims of the Holocaust
• Political opponents
– Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats,
and trade union leaders
• Roma (Gypsies)
– On racial grounds - Accused of being workshy/asocial, 1st victims of gas chambers
• Poles/Slavic peoples (considered racially
inferior)
• Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals,
mentally + physically disabled
• Video: The Path to Nazi Genocide
Radicalization after USSR invasion
• German movement East places much
larger Jewish population under Nazi
control
• Einsatzgruppen follow troops and
exterminate all racial and political
enemies
– 1 million people gunned down 1941-1943
• Method eventually considered too
inefficient and wearing on assassins
First Extermination Camps Fall
1941
• Built in East (e.g. Belzec, Poland)
• December 1st gassings occur in
Chelmno, Poland in trucks
• Turning Point of conscious policy of
total extermination
CAMPS
IN
EUROPE
1933 1945
Mass Extermination
• The Final Solution
– Genocide on European scale as of 1941
– Made official at Wannsee Conference
Jan 20, 1942
– SS Reinhard Heydrich defines
administrative and practical methods to
exterminate all Jews in Europe
– Physically capable Jews used in the
German war effort, all others eliminated
– Gypsies sent to death camps from 1943
Planned and methodical
organization
• 2 sorts of camps, overseen by the SS
– Concentration Camps
• Work camps created after 1933,
• e.g. Dachau, stone quarry: Mauthausen
(Austria), chemical plant: Auschwitz
• Conditions variable: death more or less
frequent from overwork, abuse, starvation
• Detainees diverse, resistance members
progressively sent, some camps only female
• Systematic treatment of humiliation to make
prisoners feel a loss of humanity
Death Camps
• In Poland
– Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chalmno,
Majdanek, Sobibor & Treblinka
• Death organized in an industrial fashion
• Populations throughout Europe
transported like animals in wagon cars
– Apt workers separated from the weak who
are killed in gas chambers
– Bodies burned or buried in communal graves
– Detainees used as guinea pigs for medical
experiments under authority of doctors like
Josef Mengele in Auschwitz
Outcome
• 10 million people killed from Nazi
extermination policy
• Jewish victims the most numerous:
– 5.1 – 5.8 million deaths
– Half Jewish population in 1939
– Gypsies suffer 240,000 deaths (1/3
population)
• Regions Unevenly affected
– Extermination more systematic in the East
– The Polish Jewish population decreased
by 89% between 1939 and 1945
Local Reactions to Nazi
Extermination Policy
• Occupied territories of Nazi Germany reacted
differently
– Local governments and civilian populations
cooperated differently depending on the country
• Resistance of Danish & Swedish authorities and
populations saved Jewish population of the country
• French collaboration (state and people) led to
extermination of 28% of Jewish population
• Opposition of Finnish and Bulgarian governments
(Nazi allies) led to end of deporting their Jewish
citizens to extermination camps
• Jewish populations resisted policies in some
areas
– Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Video: To Live and Die with Honor Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
(4’45)
• Video: Holocaust Survivor Barbara Steiner
Country
Germany
Number of
Deaths
% of Jewish population
exterminated
120,000
50%
Austria
50,000
83%
Belgium
24,000
27%
Estonia
2,000
44%
France
75,000
28%
Greece
60,000
81%
Hungary
180,000
45%
9,000
18%
Leetonia
70,000
74%
Lithuania
130,000
90%
1,000
50%
100,000
71%
Italy
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
3,000,000
89.5%
Romania
270,000
36%
Czechoslovakia
260,000
82.5%
USSR
700,000
23%
60,000
80%
Yugoslavia
Survivors of the Concentration
Camp of Dachau celebrate
their release
IV. The U.S. Home Front
• Selective Service Act
– Men ages 18-65 have to register after PH
• War Productions Board
– ½ production goes to the war effort
• Funding the War
– Increased taxes
– War bonds
• Video: Propaganda income taxes
Women during the War
• Women in the military
– WACs (Women’s Army Corps)
– WAVES (Women Appointed for Voluntary
Emergency Service)
• Female Mobility
– Some women moved to new
communities to work in aircraft, munitions,
automobile industries
Of all the images of working
women during World War II,
the image of women in
factories predominates.
Rosie the Riveter--the
strong, competent woman
dressed in overalls and
bandanna--was introduced
as a symbol of patriotic
womanhood. The
accoutrements of war
work--uniforms, tools, and
lunch pails--were
incorporated into the
revised image of the
feminine ideal
Video: Rosie the Riveter on the assembly line
WWII and African Americans
• Nearly 1 million African Americans
served in segregated units
– Tuskegee airmen – First African American
aviators in the U.S. Army
• Double V Campaign
– Victory at home and Victory abroad
• Video: FDR’s EO 8802 affect on
minorities
WWII and Native Americans
• Navajo volunteers used as “code
talkers”
• Japan unable to crack their code
used for military communication
WWII and Mexican Americans
• Bracero Program
– 1942 need for farm labor leads US govt to issue
short-term work permits to Mexican workers
– About 150,000 Braceros worked in agriculture
and the railroads
• Zoot Suit Riots, 1943 (L.A.)
– Young Mexican Americans become object of
frequent violent attacks by white sailors and
marines
– In June, riots break out in East L.A.
– 150 were injured, 500 Mexican Americans
arrested
The Home Front and Japanese
Americans
• Executive Order 9006
– Passed by FDR, required relocation of Japanese
Americans living on West Coast to internment
camps
• Korematsu vs. US (1944)
– Japanese American sued the US govt for EO 9006
– Went to the Supreme Court which upheld the
internment camps
• Significance?
– Civil liberties decrease during war-time
• Video: Japanese Internment The Roosevelts
• Video: Superman 1:25 – 2:10
HOMEWORK
Reading Material
The Unfinished Nation
Chapter 28 America in a World War
(pp. 720-749) CHAPTER SCANNED ON
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