HISB91 Lecture 15 – March 15

World War II

- Russians who had the most devastating war b/c they faced the brunt of Hitler’s fighting
- 1944 – Germans continue to retreat
- June 1944: steady Soviet advance and Germany was being squeezed by both fronts
- Became a war of extermination, annihilation
 Idea of crushing the enemy
 Soviet propaganda – idea of crushing the Germans
 Germans fought on because of the brutality of the Russian invasion
 War was much lighter in the west than in the east
 Berlin was the prize: it is the centre of Europe

- Torgau, April 26, 1945. Russians and Americans meet in the South. Symbolic: end of
European power
- Berlin, German Reichstad. Hoisting of the Soviet flag
- What would happen after the war? Stalin was paranoid. Key questions: why did it take
so long to open up another front? Felt that the Americans had other intentions because it
took them so long
- February 1945 resort at Yalta. Churchill and Roosevelt surrendered Eastern Europe –
part of the Soviet sphere of influence
- Mussolini and his wife were executed and their dead bodies were hung up by their
heels. Spit at the man who promised everything to Italy
- Hitler married Brown. Marked the end, where usually marriage marks the beginning

The Holocaust
- Measure of secrecy on the Eastern front
- When was this decision made?
- Means of representation fails us – cant express the horror, terror, pain etc
- Final solution: said it was decided upon at a beautiful lake
- Wannsee Conference
 Decision was confirmed here
 Really unknown when the final solution was decided upon
 Is it taken at the height of victory? 1941?
 Is it taken when the advance to Russia began?

- Anti Semitism was endemic in Europe

1
 HISB91 Lecture 15 – March 15

- It was easy to blame the Jew for any misfortune

- Ghetto-ization of Jews
- People didn’t really pay that much attention to Hitler’s plan because of the anti
Semitism that already existed
- Jews were basically assimilated into society
- 500 000 Jews in Germany
- Roughly 6 million came from Eastern Europe where they had been allowed to settle
the pale of settlement
- All of this is done beyond Germany
- Most famous was Auschwitz
- Key leaders knew about what was going on – Churchill, Roosevelt, the Pope, Stalin
- Anti Semitism was always under the radar
- Why didn’t the Pope speak up? – communism was seen as a bigger evil
- Paper trail would not be complete
- Who knew what? Hard to determine but you CANNOT deny that it happened
- Lots of concentration camps, but very few extermination camps
- Germans were forced to look at the pictures of what had happened
- Dividing line between the age of progress and doubt
- 1945 was not the victory year, it was the problem year

Allied air war on Germany

- 1940: 10 000 tons of bombs
- 1941: 30 000
- 1942, 40 000

Dresden
- Tons of refugees from other areas
- Very few men of fighting age
- The city is hit 13 and 14 of July 1943
- How many died here? Difficult to determine this as well – 20-300 thousand

Atomic Bomb
- Aug 1945