6

Unit 1

Name: ………………………………………. No: …..

Class: ……………………………….

2021-2022
Cover picture
Removal of corpses in Dresden, February 1945
© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

After the bombing of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945, because of the high number, not all the dead could be quickly buried. In order to
prevent epidemics, nearly 7,000 bodies were burnt on the Altmarkt.
 Unit 1

Second World War

(1939-1945)
With thanks to Stratton Bull for the proofreading and linguistic advice.

Compilation, design, and lay-out © Marijke Van Campenhout, Heilig Hartinstituut Heverlee, fourth, revised
edition, Sept. 2021.
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1 The Road to the Second World War (1930s) .......................................................................................................................... 3
Imperialism of the Axis Powers ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Japan ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Italy ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Germany .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Hitler Defied the Versailles Treaty .................................................................................................................................................... 2
The Munich Conference (1938) ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union (1939) .......................................................................................................................... 3
The Democracies Failed to Act ................................................................................................................................................. 3
Failure of the League of Nations .............................................................................................................................................. 4
Appeasement Policy of France and Britain ............................................................................................................................... 4
American Isolationism ............................................................................................................................................................. 4

Chapter 2 Course of the Second World War (1939-1945) ........................................................................................................................ 1

Resounding Successes of the Axis Powers (1939-1942)............................................................................................................ 1
Western Front ......................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Sitzkrieg or Phoney War (1939-1940) ............................................................................................................................................... 1
Blitzkrieg in Western Europe (May 1940) ......................................................................................................................................... 2
Battle of Britain (1940-1941) ............................................................................................................................................................ 2
Mediterranean and North Africa .............................................................................................................................................. 2
Eastern Front ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Invasion of Poland (1939) ................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Operation Barbarossa (1941) ............................................................................................................................................................ 2
Pacific Front ............................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Further Japanese Expansion ............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) ...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Turning Points and Defeat of the Axis Powers (1942-1945) ...................................................................................................... 3
Mediterranean and North Africa .............................................................................................................................................. 3
Battle of El Alamein (1942) ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
Liberation of Italy (1943-1944) ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Eastern and Western Front ...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) and the Liberation of Eastern Europe ........................................................................................... 3
D-Day (6 June 1944) and the Liberation of Western Europe ............................................................................................................ 3
East meets West–End of the Third Reich .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Pacific Front ............................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Battle of Midway Drove Japan in the Defensive (1942) .................................................................................................................... 5
Nuclear Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945) .............................................................................................................. 5

SUMMARY CHART WITH CHAPTERS 1 & 2 .................................................................................................................................................. 6

Chapter 3 The Peace Conferences of 1945 ............................................................................................................................................. 8

Yalta & Potsdam: Two Conferences with Different Dynamics ................................................................................................... 8
Yalta Conference (February 1945) ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945) .................................................................................................................................. 9
Agreements concerning Germany ............................................................................................................................................ 9
Territorial ................................................................................................................................................................................ 9
Disagreement on Reparations .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Denazification .......................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Agreements concerning Eastern Europe ................................................................................................................................. 10
Soviet Sphere of Influence and the Declaration of Liberated Europe ...................................................................................... 10
The Westward Shift of Poland ................................................................................................................................................ 10
 Agreements concerning Austria ............................................................................................................................................. 11
Agreements concerning the Pacific ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Creation of the United Nations .............................................................................................................................................. 11
The Atlantic Charter ............................................................................................................................................................... 11
Principal Organs .................................................................................................................................................................... 12.
12
Evaluation.............................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Chapter 4 Belgium in the Second World War (1940-1945) .................................................................................................................... 13

The 18 Days’ Campaign (10-28 May 1940) .............................................................................................................................. 13
Belgium Under German Occupation ....................................................................................................................................... 13
Under Military Administration ............................................................................................................................................... 13
Belgian Policy of the Lesser Evil.............................................................................................................................................. 13
Role of the Secretaries-General ...................................................................................................................................................... 13
Galopin Doctrine ............................................................................................................................................................................. 13
Life in Occupied Belgium ........................................................................................................................................................ 14
Censorship ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
Rationing ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
Allied Bombing ................................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Deportation and Forced Labour ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
Collaboration ......................................................................................................................................................................... 14
In Flanders....................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
In Wallonia ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Belgian Resistance ................................................................................................................................................................. 15
Passive Resistance........................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Active Resistance ............................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Liberation .............................................................................................................................................................................. 16
After the War......................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Epuration ............................................................................................................................................................................... 16
The Royal Question ................................................................................................................................................................ 16

Chapter 5 Holocaust ............................................................................................................................................................................. 18

A Long History of Persecution and Discrimination .................................................................................................................. 18
The Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism ................................................................................................................................... 18
Anti-Semitism in Modern Europe ........................................................................................................................................... 19
Nazi Anti-Semitism ................................................................................................................................................................ 19
Context .................................................................................................................................................................................. 19
Initial Persecution of the German Jews, (1933-1939).............................................................................................................. 20
Endlösung: from Mass Murder to Genocide (1939-1945)........................................................................................................ 20
The Changing Context after 1939 ................................................................................................................................................... 20
Mass Murder and Ghettoising (1939-1941) .................................................................................................................................... 20
Extermination Camps (1942-1945) ................................................................................................................................................. 20

Glossary .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 22

2
La Paix malade, painting by Jean Le Moal, 1936
After World War I, agreements were made to prevent a new
global conflict: The League of Nations was founded, and new
countries with democratic regimes were created in Central
and Eastern Europe. However, things went wrong in the
1930s. The capitalist world was disturbed by a severe
economic crisis, and the imperialism of Japan, Germany and
Italy–their alliance became known as “the Axis”–worked
disruptively.
• Which factors contributed to the imperialism of Japan,
Germany and Italy?
• What were the similarities and differences between the
situation in Italy, Germany, and Japan? On which basis
did they decide to collaborate?
• Why did other countries fail to stop their aggressive
imperialism?
Imperialism of the Axis Powers
Japan
In the last third of the 19th century, Japan had started to
industrialise. Its need for raw materials and markets and its
expanding population led Japan into wars with China (1894-1895)
and Russia (1904-1905). In this period Japan acquired the southern
part of Sakhalin, Taiwan (1894), South Manchuria (1905) and Korea
(1910). The First World War provided Japan with a unique
opportunity to expand its power and influence in the Far East.
The economic and imperialistic successes enhanced patriotism
and nationalism. The government planted in many Japanese a
deep emotional tie to the Emperor, the government, and the idea
of the uniquely Japanese nation. This provided an effective
motivation for people to sacrifice, to be patriotic, and to lay down
their lives or their work for their country. The government’s well-
planned campaign for national loyalty convinced the majority that
their country was superior to others, the ‘land of the gods’.
In the 1920s, Japan began to adopt a more democratic system of
government. The economy was booming.
Yet, just as in Italy and Germany, problems began to emerge during
the late 1920s and early 1930s–problems that democratically
elected governments seemed incapable of overcoming.
▪ The Japanese people’s respect for parliamentary democracy
declined very quickly when it became evident that many
politicians were corrupt and open to bribery. This paved the
way towards a military dictatorship which was installed in
1932.
▪ The Japanese economy was badly damaged by the great stock
market crash because so much of its wealth came from
foreign trade, which declined drastically after 1929. Military
leaders believed that Japan’s economic problems could be
solved by building a Pacific empire. Such empire, they said,
would give Japan raw materials, win markets for Japanese
goods, and find space for its growing population.
3
These events promoted ultranationalist sentiments, which stated
that Japan was inherently superior, that the Japanese military
could never be defeated, and that Japanese culture and morality
were pure and true (as opposed to the ‘weak’ and ‘decadent’
Western culture).
The 1930s saw an outburst of Japanese imperialism at the
expense of China. In 1932, Japan invaded the Chinese province of
Manchuria, which was rich in iron ore and coal deposits. To a
small island nation such as Japan, with little resources, these were
prize assets. Furthermore, the early 1930s seemed like the ideal
time to invade Manchuria. In 1931, China was distracted by civil war
between the Guomindang Nationalists and the Communists.
Europe and the United States were busy dealing with their own
problems brought on by the Great Depression. Manchuria was
renamed Manchukuo, and a puppet government–controlled by
Japan–was installed.
Although the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was criticised by
the League of Nations and the United States, neither took any
action. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in March 1933
and rejected arms control. In November 1936, Japan signed the
Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, subsequently joined by Italy
in 1937.
In 1937 the Japanese invaded China again. The Chinese army was
no match for the superior equipment and training of the Japanese.
Beijing and other northern cities fell to the Japanese in less than a
week. The capital, Nanjing, fell by the end of 1937. Between
100,000 and 200,000 people in Nanjing were executed within six
weeks–this episode is remembered by the Chinese as the Rape of
Nanjing. Thus, Japan gained control over most of the Chinese
coast. Yet the Chinese did not surrender. Nationalists and
Communists joined in their effort to fight the Japanese aggressor.
Italy
Italians had felt since the late 19th century that they had not got
their fair share of colonies in the ‘scramble for Africa’. Although
Italy was a ‘winner’ in the First World War, it was bitter about the
Treaty of Versailles and anxious to reverse its verdict. The country
had entered the World War I in hopes of winning Austrian territory
in the Alps and along the Adriatic Sea. The Parisian Treaties,
however, did not give Italy as much land as it had wanted.
This frustration, together with the poor economic situation of
the country gave rise to fascism, the belief in a totalitarian
dictatorship controlling nearly all aspects of the state: government,
army, press, schools, etc. The leader of the Italian fascist movement
was Benito Mussolini.
Fascism was also intensely nationalistic and aggressive in its
foreign policy. Mussolini revived the idea of the ‘Mare Nostrum’
for use in fascist propaganda. He wanted to re-establish the
greatness of the Roman Empire. He created one of the most
powerful navies of the world to control the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1935, he invaded Ethiopia (commonly known as Abyssinia in
the 1930s). The League of Nations declared Italy an aggressor and
imposed an economic boycott, but coal, steel and–most
importantly–oil were excluded. The sanctions therefore had little
effect on Italy's war effort. In 1937, Italy left the League of Nations.
2
In 1939, Mussolini sent troops into Albania, hoping it would give
Italy control of the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, and provide Italy
with a beachhead in the Balkans.
Between 1936 and 1939, Mussolini’s relations with Hitler became
closer. In 1936, Mussolini signed a treaty of military cooperation
with Hitler that spoke of a “Rome-Berlin Axis” controlling Europe.
When the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) broke out, both Italy and
Germany gave military assistance to Franco. (See §1.3.1.)
The Rome-Berlin Axis led to the Anti-Comintern Pact with
Germany and Japan and was the origin of what would become
known as the Axis Powers in 1940.
Germany
Germany in the Interbellum
In the interbellum, Germany struggled with political instability,
economic problems, and feelings of humiliation as a result of the
Versialles Treaty.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany became a
totalitarian state. The ethos of Nazi Germany was summed up in
the phrase 'Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer' (one people, one
empire, one leader).
Hitler was openly hostile to communism and to democracy. He
saw the democracy of the Weimar Republic as a source of weakness
and believed that for Germany to regain its greatness it needed a
strong leader or Führer. The title of Fuhrer (leader) expressed Nazi
ideology about leadership.
Hitler's racial theories provided the basis for his nationalist
policies—the overthrow of the Treaty of Versailles and the union
of all German peoples in a Greater Germany. They also provided
a justification for his demand for 'lebensraum'—living space for
the Germans, which could only be acquired by conquests in Eastern
Europe and Russia.
The downside of this plan, was the expulsion of all ‘undesirable’
elements.
Nazi propaganda rammed home the message that the Germans
would achieve their destiny as the 'master race' by their loyalty to
their great Fuhrer. A highly developed personality cult depicted
Hitler as the supremely wise leader, the focus of his people's
aspirations. Mass rallies at Nuremberg, using all the techniques of
flags, banners, music, etc., allowed Hitler to use his rabble-rousing
oratorical gifts to the full.
Hitler Defied the Versailles Treaty
Although the issue of reparations had caused friction with other
countries, particularly France, Germany gradually began to develop
better foreign relations from the middle of the 1920s onwards,
culminating in Germany being admitted to the League of Nations in
1926.
However, this changed as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933.
Hitler had long pledged to undo the Treaty of Versailles, which
severely limited the size of Germany’s army, and cut off
considerable territories.
He achieved this by convincing the major European nations,
particularly Britain, that his motives were entirely honourable,
justifiable and peaceful, while at the same time isolating
countries that were the targets of his desire for the expansion of
German power.
In 1935, Hitler announced that Germany would no longer obey the
restrictions on the size of the army, thus creating jobs to boost the
economy. He also started the rearmament of Germany. The
League of Nations only issued a mild condemnation.
In January 1935, the Saar region, with its valuable coalfields, was
returned to Germany following a plebiscite (referendum) of the
local people. Although the plebiscite had taken place in line with
the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler fully exploited the
propaganda opportunity it provided to enhance his reputation
within Germany.
This convinced Hitler that he could take even greater risks. The
Treaty of Versailles had forbidden Germany’s placing troops in
Rhineland, which formed a strategic buffer between Germany and
France. In 1936, Hitler ordered German troops to march into
Rhineland and occupied it (remilitarisation of the Rhineland).
France and Britain failed to react.
The following year–at the behest of the Spanish dictator Franco–a
squadron of German planes dropped their load of bombs above the
Basque village of Guernica, killing hundreds of villagers most of
them women and children. The raid was conducted as a test, a try-
out for the new bombers that would later be used in the Second
World War.
In March 1938, Hitler finally achieved Anschluss (annexation) with
Austria in clear defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Following riots
and demonstrations organised by Austrian Nazis, German troops
moved in and declared Austria part of the Third Reich. As before,
Britain and France protested, but took no direct action.
The Munich Conference (1938)
Hitler now set about bringing more German-speaking people into
the Third Reich, and building a true German nation state.
There were around 3.5 million such people living in the Sudeten
area of Czechoslovakia. They claimed that they were being
discriminated against by the Czech government. Riots and
demonstrations broke out, many of them stirred up by Sudeten
German Nazis. The Czechs were naturally reluctant to hand over a
part of their country that was so vital to its industrial
infrastructure.
As the prospect of war increased, a four-power conference was
held in Munich on 29 September 1938. Hitler, Mussolini,
Chamberlain and Daladier discussed the best way of resolving the
problem of Czechoslovakia. Stalin was not invited. It was agreed
that Germany should take immediate possession of the
Sudetenland and that Hitler's plans for Czechoslovakia would end
with the acquisition of the Sudetenland. The Czech government
was not invited to the meeting–it was simply informed of the
agreement.
Chamberlain used the huge press coverage of his return to Britain
as an opportunity to demonstrate how successful he had been in
gaining an understanding with Hitler. Holding up the signed piece
of paper, he explained ‘I believe it is peace for our time’. The
British public was relieved that the threat of war had been averted,
but many were not convinced that Hitler could be trusted to keep
his promises. One of these was the politician Winston Churchill,
who described the Munich meeting as ‘a total and unmitigated
defeat’.
It quickly became apparent that Hitler had no intention of
honouring the agreements made at Munich. In March 1939,
German troops crossed the Czech border. Czechoslovakia ceased to
exist. Once again, Britain and France took no action, even if Hitler
had seized territory over which Germany had no justifiable right
and broken the promises he had made at Munich.
Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union (1939)
To the astonishment of the rest of Europe, Germany and the Soviet
Union signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression on 24
August 1939. This Pact is called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, after the foreign ministers of the
Soviet Union and Germany who carried out the negotiations. The
Pact pledged that Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack
each other. This part of the pact was made public.
In private however, they agreed to divide Eastern Europe.
Germany and the Soviet Union would each take over a part of
Poland. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was to have Finland and
the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, as well as parts
of Rumania.
News of the agreement stunned the world. Hitler's Nazis had
come to power by attacking communism and German Communists.
Communist sympathisers around the world were shocked that
Stalin would deal with Hitler. Even Hitler's Nazi supporters were
taken aback. Yet the advantage of the agreement for Hitler was
clear. Germany took possession of the Polish corridor which had
been cut from Germany after World War I to give Poland access to
the sea. Furthermore, Germany need not fear a two-front war
like the one it had faced in 1914.
It is unlikely that Hitler intended to honour this promise, and Stalin
was fully aware of this. However, the Soviet leader needed time
to build up his armed forces in preparation for war against
Germany, and the pact bought him that time. Besides, the Soviets
were still smarting from their exclusion at the Munich
Conference. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was not eager to ally
himself with the West but needed to protect his country from Nazi-
aggression. Obviously through this agreement the Soviet Union
retrieved the territories lost in 1918 because of the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk.
When German troops invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939,
Britain and France declared war. The Second World War had
started!
“Rendezvous”, cartoon by David Low, in the Evening Standard, 20
September 1939
3
 The Democracies Failed to Act
Failure of the League of Nations
During the interwar period, many people pinned their hopes for
world peace on the League of Nations. For a short period, it seemed
that the League was indeed helping to create a more peaceful
world. Unfortunately, these hopes collapsed as dictatorships
encouraged militarism in the 1930s.
Why the League of Nations failed:
▪ Membership
The United States, the only country strong enough to stand up
to the dictators, was not a member. Only France and Britain
were members throughout the existence of the League, making
it too much of an Anglo-French alliance. Ironically, the three
countries that posed the greatest threats to peace–Germany,
Japan, and Italy–were all member of the League of Nations in
1933, but they quit as soon as the League remarked on their
imperialism.
▪ Reluctance or inability to enforce its decisions
The League had no army. Aggressor states were willing to use
war to further their aims, but members of the League were not
willing to risk war to stop them.
▪ Sanctions
The only action taken against a powerful aggressor (the
imposition of sanctions against Italy) was ineffective, because
it was difficult to enforce.
Appeasement Policy of France and Britain
As world powers, Britain and France could have been expected to
take a stand against aggression. But the Great Depression of the
1930s forced both nations to deal with serious economic problems
at home. Helping workers in London and Paris find jobs seemed
more important than aiding Ethiopia or China.
In addition, the horrible suffering caused by World War I had
created a deep desire for peace.
Furthermore, Chamberlain believed the Treaty of Versailles had
been unjust, and that Hitler’s claims were legitimate. Hitler knew of
British reservations about the Versailles Treaty and was able to
play on these. British acceptance of rearmament, the reoccupation
of the Rhineland and the Anschluss convinced Hitler that he had
nothing to fear from Britain.
Finally, many British politicians regarded communism as a greater
threat than Nazi Germany. Their view of brutal Communism was
reinforced by the show trials of the 1930s in Stalin's Soviet Union.
At the same time, many politicians were impressed by Hitler. Many
believed that Hitler's Germany could be a strong defence against
possible Soviet plans to invade Europe. The fear of communism
effectively prevented an alliance between Britain, France and the
Soviet Union against German aggression.
American Isolationism
In America, many people believed that the United States should
avoid involvement in other nations’ affairs. These isolationists
argued that entry into World War I had been a costly mistake,
which should not be repeated.
4
Sources
ADAMS, X.; MARTENS, J., and VANGANSBEKE, J., Anno 6, Van In, Lier, pp.
22-25.
BBC, An evaluation of the reasons for the British policy of appeasement,
1936-1938, internet, BBC Higher Bitesize History, BBC, 2014,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/
history/roadwar/appease/revision/2).
BEOBIDE, H. History 4, Eleanitz, 2012, p. 162.
BUTLER, C., The Road to World War II (1919-39), internet, Flow of History,
2007, (http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/etc/20/FC135).
DE PRINS, H; MULLENS, M., and SWERTS, J., Tekens 6.2, Uitgeverij De Boeck,
Antwerpen, 2002, pp. 46-47.
GORIS, G. (coordination), Storia 5 ASO, Uitgeverij Van In, Lier, 2001, pp. 141-
142.
GORIS, G. (coordination), Storia ASO, Uitgeverij Van In, Wommelgem, 2009,
pp. 14-19.
HEATH, D., World History, Perspectives on the Past, 5th edition, D.C. Heath
and Company, Lexington, MA/Toronto, ON, 1997, pp. 698-703.
KERR, J.; WOOD, S., Chapter 10: Appeasement and the Road to War, to
1939, Higher History for CFE, [How to Pass], 3th edition, 2017, pp. 142-158.
LEFEVER, S., inedited student course, Leuven, Heilig Hartinstituut, 2002-
2004.
LIPMAN, J., Imperial Japan: 1894-1945, internet, About Japan, A Teacher’s
Resource, Japan Society, 2017,
(http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/imperial_japan_1894-
1945_1#sthash.ubrUj2RI.dpbs).
SCAIFE, Revise AS&A2, History, Complete Study and Complete Revision, p.
248.
VAN DE VOORDE, Historia 5, Uitgeverij Pelckmans, Kapellen, revised edition,
2008, pp. 174-177; 179-185.
Section Review
Knowledge and Insight
You understand and can describe/discuss
▪ the causes of Italian, Japanese, and German imperialism in the
1930s;
▪ the etymology and meaning of ‘Axis Powers’,
▪ building up of Japanese and Italian imperialism from late 19th
century till 1940 (with atlas);
▪ how Hitler gradually defied the Versailles Treaty;
▪ how the agreements of the Versailles Treaty paved the way to a new
world war; and
▪ why the democracies failed to stop the Powers of Axis.
Glossary
▪ Content-obligatory language
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly (see glossary):
alliance, annexation, bombers, boycott, civil war, communism,
conference, dictatorship, disarmament, imperialism, invasion/to
invade, nationalism, occupation/ to occupy, patriotism,
parliamentary democracy, plebiscite, rearmament, referendum,
and treaty.
▪ Historical concepts
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly and situate them in a historical
context:
Anschluss, appeasement, Anti-Comintern Pact, Axis Rome-
Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo/Tokyo-Rome, isolationism, League of Nations,
Mare Nostrum, Molotov-von Rippentrop Pact, Munich Conference,
and Nazi-Soviet Pact/Non-Aggression Pact.
Skills
▪ identify the imperialist conquests of the 1930s from your
history atlas;
▪ analyse and interpret cartoons related to the run-up to
WW2; and
▪ link the main events the 1930s to the fronts of WW2. See
comprehensive chart on pp. 12-13.
As well as Hitler seated on the Untermensch rug–while Uncle Sam and John Bull plead in chains–we see (from right) Tojo, a German field marshal, Mussolini
(with fan), Göring, Himmler, Laval (with a puppet Pétain) and Goebbels. (The wording on Hitler's throne reads: “I am the Holy Ghost”.).
A Madman's Dream, cartoon by Polish cartoonist Arthur Szyk, a fierce opponent of Hitler’s New Order, 1940

The German invasion of Poland marked the start of the Second Resounding Successes of the Axis Powers
World War. (1939-1942)

• What is the general outline of the war? In the first years of the war the Axis Powers kept expanding their
• What were the main events in the first stage of the war? territories. No country seemed to be able to stop them.
• Which factors contributed to the eventual success of the
Allied Powers?
• What were the turning points on each of the fronts? Western Front
• What were the main events in the decline of the Axis
Powers? Sitzkrieg or Phoney War (1939-1940)

For six months after the fall of Poland, there was a strange lull in
the fighting. Although German submarines began to attack British
merchant and passenger ships, there was no fighting on land
between the Allies (France and Britain) and Germany. Newspapers
called it a phoney war.

The only aggression in Europe during this time took place in

Scandinavia. Hitler wanted to control Denmark and Norway.
There he planned to set up airfields and naval bases from which he
could strike at Britain and British shipping.

1
On April 9, 1940, German tanks rolled into Denmark. Denmark
surrendered within 24 hours. On the same day, bombers of the
German Luftwaffe (air force) attacked Norway. A German invasion
force scrambled onto Norway's rocky shores. The Norwegians were
better prepared than the Danes had been. Even so, Norway's major
seaports and its capital city, Oslo, fell to the Germans within two
days.
Blitzkrieg in Western Europe (May 1940)
On 10 May, 1940, Germany launched an offensive against France.
To circumvent the strong Maginot Line–an elaborate set of
fortifications on the Franco-German border–Germany directed its
attack at the neutral nations of Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Luxembourg. The success of the Blitzkrieg (“lighning war”) was
due to the fast-moving weapons of modern war (armoured tanks
and airplanes), which the countries under attack were completely
unprepared for.
Luxembourg collapsed in only a few hours. On May 14, Germany
threatened to destroy all Dutch cities if the Netherlands did not
surrender. As proof, the Luftwaffe pounded Rotterdam to rubble
even as talks about surrender were in progress. That same day, the
Netherlands surrendered. Belgium resisted the German army for
18 days, before it capitulated on May 28th.
Columns of German tanks moved into northern France, driving
Allied troops back toward the port of Dunkirk on the English
Channel. There the Allied troops were trapped with their backs
to the sea. For eight days, from May 28 to June 4, ships sailed back
and forth between Britain and the burning, bombed-out docks of
Dunkirk to carry almost 340,000 soldiers safely to Britain.
On June 17, 1940, the defeated French signed an armistice.
According to the terms of surrender, France was divided into two
parts. The Germans were to occupy the northern two thirds of
France and control the coastline. Marshal Pétain's government was
to hold the southern part, which came known as the Vichy
Regime. As time went on, however, the Vichy government
cooperated more and more closely with the Nazis.
Battle of Britain (1940-1941)
In all of Europe, only one country still held out against Hitler. That
country was Great Britain. In May 1940, Neville Chamberlain, the
leader of appeasement, had been forced to resign as prime
minister. His successor was Winston Churchill, who had long
warned that Britain must make a stand against Hitler.
Ignoring the advice of his generals, Hitler decided to invade Britain.
During the summer of 1940, the Germans prepared for a seaborne
attack on Britain. First, however, Hitler sent the Luftwaffe
bombers to knock out Britain's defences, particularly its Royal Air
Force (RAF). This episode is called the Battle of Britain. It began in
July 1940. During the next six months, the British and German air
forces collided in the largest air battles of World War II.
Although outnumbered, the British possessed two secret
weapons. One was an electronic tracking system known as radar.
A newly installed network of radar towers enabled the RAF to
determine the number, direction, and speed of in-coming German
warplanes. Britain's second secret weapon was a decoding
machine called Ultra which enabled the British to crack German In
May 1940, Hitler prepared to strike at France.codes, including the
Enigma code. Together these warnings gave RAF fliers the time
2
they needed to scramble into their planes and rise to the attack.
Furthermore, British bombers flew over Germany, hitting Berlin
and other cities.
Having failed at making Britain surrender and sign an armistice with
Britain, Hitler shifted his attention to Operation Barbarossa, in June
1941. However, as he anticipated an Allied invasion of Nazi-
occupied Europe from the United Kingdom, Hitler ordered the
construction of the Atlantic Wall, an extensive system of coastal
defence and fortifications built along the coast of continental
Europe and Scandinavia. The wall was frequently mentioned in Nazi
propaganda, where its size and strength were usually exaggerated.
The fortifications included colossal coastal guns, batteries, mortars,
and artillery, and thousands of German troops were stationed in its
defences.
Mediterranean and North Africa
By mid-1939, Mussolini had conqueredEthiopia and Albania.
In 1941, he invaded both Yugoslavia and North Africa, got bogged
down by stiff resistance, and called on Germany to bail him out.
German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece. Hitler’s conquest
of the Balkans was a precursor for his real objective: an invasion of
the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German
master race the “Lebensraum” it needed.
By the end of the year, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary had all
entered the war on the side of the Axis.
Eastern Front
Invasion of Poland (1939)
If Hitler thought that France and Britain would not honour their
pledge to protect Poland, he was mistaken. Days after he invaded
Poland on September 1st, 1939, Britain and France declared war.
Ten days later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East. By
the end of September 1939, Poland was conquered. Nazi armies
occupied the western half, and the Soviet Union the east.
As a result of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, it remained
quiet on the Eastern front in the following months.
Operation Barbarossa (1941)
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, code
name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. In doing so, he
broke the pact he had made with Stalin less than two years earlier,
and drove the Soviet Union into the camp of the Allied Powers.
Hitler hoped that, by conquering the Soviet Union, Germans would
find ‘Lebensraum’, as well as valuable mineral resources. It would
also cut off the resources to the Soviet army.
The invasion of Russia was probably Hitler's biggest mistake,
although at first it did not seem that way. The German troops
inflicted staggering losses on the Soviets and drove deep into the
Soviet Union within a few months, and stabilised their front in a
line running from Leningrad in the north, past Moscow, to
Stalingrad in the south. But when the Russian winter set in,
German soldiers, unequipped and unprepared for these sub-zero
conditions, suffered horribly while their equipment broke down.
 Pacific Front
Further Japanese Expansion
France and Britain’s preoccupation with the outbreak of war in
Europe allowed Japan to turn south and threaten the European
colonies in South-East Asia. It declared the intention to create a
self-sufficient ‘bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free
of Western powers’. In practice, however, militarists and
nationalists saw an opportunity to strengthen Japan's position
and advance its dominance within Asia, securing access to raw
materials as well as markets for its manufactured goods.
Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941)
In 1941, the United States, nearly as concerned about aggression in
Asia as in Europe, cut off its oil shipments to Japan in an attempt
to force it to back off from invading even more European colonies.
The Japanese, desperate for oil, took the fatal step of attacking the
United States' naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands
(7 December 1941). In response, president Roosevelt declared war
on Japan, which put an end to US isolationism. Germany and Italy
reacted by declaring war on the United States.
The attack on Pearl Harbor did cripple American naval power in the
Pacific for the time being, but it also brought into action an
industrial giant that Japan would have a hard time matching blow
for blow. Still, the opening months of 1942 saw a virtually unbroken
string of Japanese successes, including the conquest of the
Philippines, which was at the time under American rule.
“Remember Pearl Harbor – Work – Fight - Sacrifice”, poster created
by the African-American cartoonist James Henry Alston for the US
Department of War, 1 January 1943 (US National Archives)
Turning Points and Defeat of the Axis Powers (1942-
1945)
As 1942 dawned, the Axis Powers were faced with two new and
powerful enemies: the United States and the Soviet Union. This
situation turned the tide to the advantage of the Allied Powers.
Mediterranean and North Africa
Battle of El Alamein (1942)
In North Africa, the Allied effort, increasingly bolstered by American
military and industrial might, met with success. Allied forces under
the British General Montgomery decisively defeated German
General Rommel and his Africa Corps at El Alamein in Northern
Egypt. Despite all of Rommel's efforts, the German war effort in
North Africa faltered. By May 1943, the Germans had been cleared
from North Africa.
Liberation of Italy (1943-1944)
The Allied effort drove the Germans from North Africa and Sicily
and invaded Italy in 1943. German forces defending Italy used its
rocky and mountainous terrain well and slowed down the Allies.
After Southern Italy was liberated and Mussolini had been
deposed, German troops asserted control over the North of Italy to
prevent Allied Powers to push through to Germany.
The slowness of the Allied advance in Italy aggravated Stalin who
pushed the British and Americans to open a new front to take the
pressure off the Soviet Union. Much of the hostility between the
Soviet Union and the West after the war came from Stalin's belief
that his allies intentionally dragged their feet while the Soviet
Union and Germany bled each other to death.
Eastern and Western Front
Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) and the Liberation of
Eastern Europe
If any battle was the turning point of the war, it was the Battle
of Stalingrad, an industrial city that Hitler saw as the key to
Russia's oil fields in the south. After initial German successes that
took 90 percent of the city, the fighting bogged down the German
war machine until the Soviets could build their forces for a counter-
attack that cut off and destroyed the entire German Sixth Army
in February 1943.
After that, Soviet troops slowly drove the Germans back across
Eastern Europe between 1943 and May 1945.
D-Day (6 June 1944) and the Liberation of Western Europe
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the British and Americans finally gave
Stalin the second front he had been asking for by launching an
invasion on the beaches of Normandy, the largest such assault
in history. It ran a tremendous risk but was successful in
establishing a foothold in France. In the following weeks, the
Allies expanded that foothold and then broke out into the French
countryside in July. In the following months, they triumphantly
advanced through France, liberating Paris in August, and
Brussels in September. The Netherlands, however, would go into
another winter under German occupation.
3
In one last desperate bid, Hitler launched a surprise attack against
the American and British forces in the Ardennes in December 1944.
The Germans were initially successful in this Battle of the Bulge,
but their offensive literally ran out of gas and men as the Allies
regrouped and counterattacked.
As the war progressed, so did the intensity of aerial
bombardments of German cities, including Hamburg in 1943
and Dresden in 1945. The destruction and death tolls from these
raids were devastating to the German people.
East meets West–End of the Third Reich
In early 1945, the Soviets, Americans, and British invaded
Germany from both east and west. As the Soviet Army entered
German territory from the east, its soldiers sought revenge for the
atrocities carried out in Russia by the German Army in the
preceding years. Rape and pillage were widespread and tacitly
condoned.
With invasions closing in from all sides and air raids tearing apart
Germany's cities, only Hitler, who was secluded in an underground
"This evil enemy won't get out of the knot we've got him in! Treaty of solidarity between the Soviet Union, England, and the United States",
prophetic propaganda poster by the artist collective Kukryniksy, 1942
4
bunker, failed to recognise the inevitable collapse of Germany and
refused to surrender.
On April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe
River, near Torgau in Germany (East meets West), marking an
important step toward the end of World War II in Europe.
In late April, Soviet forces reached Berlin. What few German
forces that remained put up a desperate resistance. Just as the
Soviets were closing in on his bunker, Hitler committed suicide. On
May 2nd, Berlin was captured by the Red Army.
On May 7th, 1945, the German army surrendered
unconditionally.
The occupation of Norway ended the next day, that of Denmark a
had surrended a few days before. The war in Europe was over.
In his wake, Hitler left an unprecedented amount of death and
destruction, including the brutal murder of more than 5,000,000
Jews and millions of others in his death camps. He had intended
his Third Reich to last a thousand years. It had lasted twelve.
 Pacific Front
Battle of Midway Drove Japan in the Defensive (1942)
The Japanese advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical
Battle of Midway, near Hawaii. It was a turning point in the
Pacific war. It also marked the end of major Japanese offensive
operations as the initiative passed to the Americans.
In the next years, the main American effort was focused on
capturing islands close to Japan, as staging posts for an invasion
of Japan itself. In the process, colonies of European powers were
liberated. By 1944, the Allies had taken the Japanese islands of Iwo
Jima and Okinawa, islands within bomber range of Japan, and
were launching devastating raids on Japanese cities.
Nuclear Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945)
By the time the war in Europe was over, the Allies were preparing
to invade the Japanese homeland. However, Allied leaders knew
that such an invasion would be a desperate struggle. Japan still had
a large army that would defend every inch of its homeland.
Moreover, thousands of Japanese pilots were prepared for suicide
missions. These kamikazes, as they were called, crashed their
explosive-filled planes into Allied ships, killing themselves at the
same time.
Complicating this situation was the fact that Stalin had promised
to enter the war against the Japanese three months after the
conclusion of the war in Europe. That would put his entry into the
war in early August. The United States, not wanting to give Stalin a
chance to expand in Asia, needed to win the war quickly with as few
casualties as possible. Therefore, President Truman decided to use
a powerful new weapon: the atomic bomb, which they had been
developing through the Manhattan Project since 1942.
On August 6, 1945, the United States Air Force launched a nuclear
attack on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The level of destruction
and suffering was unprecedented. After the first nuclear bomb was
dropped, Stalin ordered the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo, and
in the following weeks Soviet forces penetrated deep into its
territories, and liberated the north of Korea. After a second atom
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on August 9th, the Japanese
emperor announced the capitulation of Japan in a radio
broadcast. However, some fighting went on, till Japan officially
surrendered on September 2nd, 1945 (V-J Day). This event marked
the end of the Second World War.
Debates continue about whether the United States should have
dropped these bombs. Some see it as a needless act of mass
destruction launched against a country on the verge of collapse.
They called the use of the atomic bombs an immoral act.
However, to Americans still caught up in the fury of a world war, it
was a way to shorten the war and save American lives. For
Truman, the bomb served another purpose as well. He saw it as
giving the United States more military strength, which could be
useful if relations with the Soviet Union declined further. He hoped
that by showing America’s technological superiority, they
would convince Stalin to moderate his aggressive behaviour, and
prevent Soviet claims in the Pacific. However, the use of the
bomb was to increase Stalin’s suspicion. In a way, the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the start of the Cold
War.
Section Review
Knowledge and Insight
You understand and can describe/discuss
▪ the main events on each of the fronts and in each of the stages of
the war (phase 1–turning point–phase 2);
▪ why the United States and the Soviet Union joined the Allied Powers
in 1941, thus changing the course of the war;
▪ the insistence of Stalin on opening a second front;
▪ the simultaneity of events on the different fronts;
▪ the simmering distrust between Stalin and the western Allies; and
▪ the American motives for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Glossary
▪ Content-obligatory language
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly (see glossary):
aggressor, air battles, annexation/to annex, armistice, blockade,
boycott, capitulation/to capitulate, imperialism, invasion,
isolationism, mobilisation/to mobilise, nuclear weapon,
occupation/to occupy, (to) surrender, and to wage war.
▪ Historical concepts
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly and situate them in a historical
context:
Allied Powers, Anschluss, Anti-Comintern Pact, Appeasement
Policies, Atlantic Wall, Axis Powers, Battle of Britain, Battle of El
Alamein, Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Midway, Battle of Stalingrad,
Blitzkrieg, D-Day, Kamikaze Attack, Operation Barbarossa, and
Phoney War/Sitzkrieg.
Skills
You are able to
▪ deduce the outline of the war, and the main events from your
history atlas;
▪ analyse and interpret cartoons related to WW2;
▪ apply historical criticism to historic photographs and news reels;
▪ and organise the main events of WW2 in a comprehensive chart,
according to front and stage of the war, so as to identify the order
of events and the synchronicity of events over the different fronts.
Hints & tips
▪ Study with your atlas, as you will be allowed to use it during
tests and exam. It will spare you lots of pure memorising.
▪ Fill out the chart on pp. 12-13, and use it when studying
chapters 1 and 2. It will help you to understand the meaning of
events on each front, and will give you more insight in the
synchronicity of events on the different fronts.
Sources
BUTLER, C., World War II in Europe, internet, Flow of History, 2007,
(http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/etc/20/FC136).
BUTLER, C., World War II in the Pacific, internet, Flow of History, 2007,
(http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/etc/20/FC13).
HEATH, D, World History, Perspectives on the Past, 5th edition, D.C.Heath
and Company, Lexington, MA/Toronto, ON, 1997, pp. 706-719.
SCAIFE, M., Revise AS&A2 History, Modern British and European History,
Letts Educational, London, 2011, pp. 115-118.
WOOD, S., The Cold War, Hodder Gibson, Paisley, 2016, pp. 8-9.
5
SUMMARY CHART WITH CHAPTERS 1 & 2
Complete the chart on the next page using the information below.
How to proceed.
• Start by adding references to the relevant history maps in your history atlas.
• Then name the main enemies on each front. (Choose from list below.)
• Rows Nos 1-4: Obviously the events should be placed in chronological order. Respect the chronology within each box as well.
• This assignment should be completed by going through your textbook and notes attentively. No gambling or looking-up on the internet
allowed! The structure of the course (table of contents!), insight in the world map (atlas!) and knowledge of concepts (glossary!)
such as invasion, occupation, annexation, liberation, capitulation … are essential for success!
• Start by looking for the turning point on each front.
• Exceptionally an event may appear in two different columns.
Relevant History Atlas Map Main events
Write down the No from your history atlas!
▪ Anschluss
▪ Anti-Comintern Pact between
Italy, Germany, and Japan
Who were the main enemies on each front? ▪ Atomic bombings on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Choose from: ▪ Attack on Pearl Harbor
▪ Italy, joined by Germany against Britain, and ▪ Axis Rome-Berlin
later United States. ▪ Battle of Britain
▪ Japan against United States and Britain ▪ Battle of El Alamein
▪ Germany against Soviet Union ▪ Battle of Midway
▪ Germany against western Allies ▪ Battle of Stalingrad
▪ Battle of the Bulge
▪ Blitzkrieg
▪ D-Day
▪ East meets West at the Elbe
▪ German capitulation
▪ German invasion of Greece
and Yugoslavia
▪ Italian invasion of Yugoslavia
and North Africa.
▪ Japanese capitulation
▪ Japanese conquest of
European colonies in the
Pacific
▪ Japanese Invasion of East
Coast of China
▪ Liberation of Eastern Europe
by Soviet troops
“Just Wait Until the Little Fellow Grows up”, political
cartoon shows baby 1942 taking on the Powers of
Axis (source unknown)
6
▪ Japanese occupation of Manchuria
▪ Liberation of France and Belgium
▪ Liberation of Southern Italy by western
allies – Capitulation of the Mussolini
Regime
▪ Liberation of the Netherlands
▪ Munich Conference
▪ Non-aggression pact between Nazi
Germany and Soviet Union
▪ Northern Italy ‘defended’ by German
troops
▪ Occupation of Abyssinia
▪ Occupation of Albania
▪ Occupation of Czechia and Slovakia
▪ Operation Barbarossa
▪ Phoney War
▪ Push-back of Japanese troops by United
States
▪ Remilitarisation of the Rhineland
▪ Russian and German invasion of Poland
▪ Saarland became German again after
referendum
▪ Soviet invasion of Manchuria
▪ Start of construction Atlantic Wall
▪ V-J Day
Study Tip
Use this chart to study Chapters 1 + 2.
It will help you to situate the main
events of the war in time and place,
and will deepen your insight in the
course of events on each of the fronts,
as well as on the interaction between
the fronts.
 Western Front Eastern Front Mediterranean Front Pacific Front
& Africa

History Atlas Map No

Main Enemies

1 Major Developments in the 1930s See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. ..............
(Road to War) .............. .............. ..............

2 Major Developments in the See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p.
First Stage of WW2 .............. .............. .............. ..............

Title in Text Book: …..

3 Turning Points on Each Front

+ dates!

4 Major Developments in the Second See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p. See text book § .................., p.
Stage of WW2 .............. .............. .............. ..............

Title in Text Book: …..

7
The Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) at the Yalta Conference, February 1945
As soon as it became clear that a turning point had been
reached in the war, the ‘Big Three’ of the Allied Powers (United
States, Soviet Union, and Britain) launched a series of peace
conferences, from 1943 onwards. In the next chapter we’ll
focus on the two conferences of 1945: the Conferences of Yalta
(February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August, 1945).
• How and why did the demands and the bargaining
positions of each country shift between conferences?
How was the relationship between the Western Allies and
the Soviet Union?
• What was the outcome of both conferences? To what
extent were these decisions influenced by the stage of
the war at the time of the conference?
Yalta & Potsdam: Two Conferences with Different
Dynamics
Yalta Conference (February 1945)
The conference at Yalta (on the Crimean Peninsula) took place in
February 1945. Germany was not yet defeated. The ‘Big Three’ at
Yalta were US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Soviet Leader
Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Coming into the conference, the Soviet Union held the strongest
military position in Europe. They controlled Rumania, Bulgaria, and
8
most of Poland and Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, and
had moved within 160 km of Berlin. As Germany had invaded
Russia/Soviet Union both in the First and the Second World War,
Stalin insisted on creating a buffer zone or sphere of influence.
Basically, he wanted control over Eastern Europe, and a weak
Germany.
The Western Allied Powers wanted the Nazi leaders to be tried,
but Soviet expansion to be limited. On the other hand, president
Roosevelt wanted Soviet help in the Pacific, and was prepared to
agree to almost anything as long as Stalin agreed to go to war with
Japan.
Although the Conference appeared successful, behind the scenes,
tension was growing, particularly about reparations, and about
Poland.
After the Yalta Conference, many critics of Roosevelt and
Churchill believed that the United States gave in too much to the
Soviet Union. However, at the time the Soviet Union held the
superior position, yet didn't get everything they wanted, including
severe monetary reparations from Germany. Later in history, as the
Cold War began, many people looked back on anything given to the
Soviet Union as too much.
 Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945)
The Potsdam Conference took place in Germany, from July 17 till
August 2, 1945. The ‘Big Three’ nations were once again
represented, though their leaders had changed. Stalin was there,
but Truman had become President when Roosevelt died in April.
Churchill was there to begin the conference, but he was replaced
when Clement Attlee was elected Prime Minister in the middle of
the conference.
At the Potsdam Conference suspicion between Soviet Union and
Western nations had increased dramatically.
Furthermore, soon after he had arrived at the Conference, Truman
learned that America had tested the first atomic bomb. It gave
the Americans a huge military advantage over everyone else. It
also meant that Truman didn't need Stalin's help in Japan.
Instead, Truman's main aim at the conference was to find out from
Stalin what date the Soviets intended to enter the war in the
Pacific–something which (unlike Roosevelt) he did not want.
Agreements concerning Germany
What to do with Germany was one of the major topics at the
Peace Conferences of Yalta and Potsdam. This involved debates
about the German borders, denazification, demilitarisation and
democratisation.
Territorial
British zone French American zone Soviet zone
Polish and Soviet annexed territory
The eventual partition of Germany into Allied Occupation Zones,
and German territories lost to Poland and the Soviet Union
All territories annexed or occupied by Germany before and
during the war were returned to these countries.
Furthermore, Germany had to cede some eastern territories
(territories east of the Oder-Neisse line) to Poland (see below §3.2)
and to the Soviet Union.
It was decided to divide both Germany and Berlin into four
separate zones of control, one each under the three Great Powers
and France. (Britain insisted on France being involved.) The zones
were to be controlled from Berlin, which was in the Soviet zone
of control.
After a few years, the Americans, British and French united their
areas of occupation.
Disagreement on Reparations
The Big Three disagreed about reparations.
Stalin wanted reparations to compensate the Soviet Union for
its 20 million dead and for the destruction of a thousand towns and
cities and insisted on a harsh punishment so that Germany could
never wage war again.
For the United States, the United Kingdom and France the issue
of extracting reparations was of less concern. They did not want
the German people to be left poor and hungry because of
reparations, as this might trigger resentment. From 1946 onwards,
Britain, America and France would nurture the reconstruction of a
market economy.
As the parties involved did not come to terms, each zone was in fact
being treated as a separate economic entity. The Soviets set about
dismantling factories and removing machinery. Thousands of
prisoners of war were employed as forced labour in the Soviet
post war reconstruction. Many of them didn’t survive. In 1956, the
last surviving German prisoner of war returned home from the
Soviet Union.
These different approaches initiated the enduring economic
disparity between East and West Germany.
Denazification
The process of denazification aimed to identify and punish Nazis,
and to help German people to establish a basis for democracy.
However, this process ran into practical difficulties largely due to
the scale of the task. There were approximately eight million Nazi
Party members by the end of the Second World War, so it would
not be possible to punish Germans simply for being Nazis. On
the other hand, to distinguish degrees of guilt among such a large
group would be a difficult, time-consuming task. As attention
turned to the problems of reconstruction it became necessary to
engage competent administrators among the population. After 12
years of Nazism, it was inevitable that people with the required
experience were often ex-Nazis and so zealous denazification
was replaced by turning a pragmatic blind eye.
The allies together agreed that persecution therefore would focus
on putting on trial the leading Nazis for war crimes. They decided
that they should make a list of all major war criminals and every
criminal captured would be given a fair judicial trial.
The most prominent aspect of this process was the Nuremberg
Trials of those leading Nazis who had been captured at the end of
the War. The trials resulted in several death sentences; others
received life imprisonment, and some even walked out of the court
room as a free person.
The trials produced a thorough documentation of Nazi crimes,
they established a principle of individual responsibility even
when the accused claimed to be following orders, and they set
9
before the German people the nature of the crimes committed in
their name.
Although the legal justifications for the trials and their procedural
innovations were controversial at the time, the Nuremberg trials
are now regarded as a milestone toward the establishment of a
permanent international court, and an important precedent for
dealing with later instances of genocide and other crimes against
humanity.
Joseph Stalin initially proposed the execution of 50,000 to 100,000
German staff officers. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill discussed
the possibility of summary execution (execution without a trial) of high-
ranking Nazis but was persuaded by American leaders that a criminal
trial would be more effective. Among other advantages, criminal
proceedings would require documentation of the crimes charged
against the defendants and prevent later accusations that the
defendants had been condemned without evidence.
There were many legal and procedural difficulties to overcome in
setting up the Nuremberg trials. First, there was no precedent for an
international trial of war criminals. There were earlier instances of
prosecution for war crimes, however, these were trials conducted
according to the laws of a single nation rather than, as in the case of the
Nuremberg trials, a group of four powers (France, Britain, the Soviet
Union and the US) with different legal traditions and practices.
The Allies eventually established the laws and procedures for the
Nuremberg trials. They defined three categories of crimes:
▪ crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting or
waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international
agreements),
▪ war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war,
including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war),
and
▪ crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or
deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or
racial grounds). It was determined that civilian officials as well as
military officers could be accused of war crimes.
The city of Nuremberg in the German state of Bavaria was selected as
the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was relatively
undamaged by the war and included a large prison area. Additionally,
Nuremberg had been the site of annual Nazi propaganda rallies;
holding the post-war trials there marked the symbolic end of Hitler’s
government, the Third Reich.
The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War
Criminals, held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946. The chief
American prosecutor was Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), an associate
justice of the US Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied powers
supplied two judges–a main judge and an alternate.
Agreements concerning Eastern Europe
Soviet Sphere of Influence and the Declaration of
Liberated Europe
The Big Three agreed that Eastern Europe could be a Soviet ‘sphere
of influence’, as long as Stalin did not interfere with the internal
politics of those countries.
Therefore, Churchill insisted that Stalin should accept the
Declaration of Liberated Europe. It was a promise that allowed
the people of Europe ‘to create democratic institutions of their
own choice’. The declaration pledged, ‘the earliest possible
establishment through free elections governments responsive to
the will of the people.’
Stalin later broke the pledge by encouraging most Eastern
European countries to construct a Communist government, instead
of letting the people construct their own.
The Westward Shift of Poland
Furthermore, the territorial changes of Poland immediately after
World War II were very extensive. Poland's borders were redrawn
as the Soviet Union demanded the recognition of the military
outcome of the secret Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.
This resulted in the Westverschiebung (westward shift) of Poland.
The pre-war eastern Polish territories were permanently
annexed by the Soviet Union. As a result, Poland lost 45 percent of
pre-war territories in the east. Most of the Polish inhabitants of
these territories got expelled.
In turn, post-war Poland was assigned considerably smaller
territories to the west including the pre-war Free City of Danzig
and the former territory of Nazi Germany east of the Oder-Neisse
line. The German population fled or was forcibly expelled before
these territories were repopulated with Poles expelled from the
eastern regions and those from central Poland.
Although Poland's independence had been the cause that brought
Britain and France into the war, Poland with the rest of Eastern
Europe was now abandoned to the Soviet sphere of influence.

The defendants were allowed to choose their own lawyers, and the most
common defence strategy was that the crimes defined in the London
Charter were examples of ex post facto law; that is, they were laws
that criminalised actions committed before the laws were drafted.
Another defence was that the trial was a form of victor’s justice–the
Allies were applying a harsh standard to crimes committed by Germans
and leniency to crimes committed by their own soldiers.

In the end, the international tribunal found all but three of the
defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and
the rest were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life
behind bars.

Following the Trial of Major War Criminals, there were 12 additional

trials held at Nuremberg. They differed from the first trial in that they
were conducted before US military tribunals rather than the
international tribunal that decided the fate of the major Nazi leaders.
The reason for the change was that growing differences among the four
Allied powers had made other joint trials impossible. The subsequent
trials were held in the same location at the Palace of Justice in
Nuremberg. Westward shift of Poland after WW2

10
 Agreements concerning Austria
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Austria, like Germany, was
divided into four occupation zones and jointly occupied by the
United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France. Vienna,
like Berlin, was similarly subdivided but the central district was
administered jointly by the Allied Control Council.
Whereas Germany was divided into East and West Germany in
1949, Austria remained under joint occupation of the Allies and of
the Soviet Union until 1955. It was accorded full independence
after promises of perpetual neutrality.
Agreements concerning the Pacific
At the time of the Yalta Conference, the United States was still at
war with Japan, with no clear end in sight. So, the United States
asked the Soviet Union to declare war against Japan. Stalin agreed
to declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's
surrender. In return for Soviet help, Roosevelt promised the Soviet
Union the islands (Southern Sakhalin, Kurils) Russia had lost to
Japan after the Russo-Japanese War (1905), as well as the control
of Outer Mongolia, two ice-free Pacific ports, and control of two
railways in Chinese-owned Manchuria.
Truman confirmed the deal in Potsdam, but it turned out that
buying Stalin’s support was unnecessary. The US bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war just days before the Soviet
Union invaded Manchuria.
After the Japanese capitulation, it was decided that Japan would be
occupied by the Western Allied Powers, under American
command. Unlike in the occupation of Germany, the Soviet Union
was allowed little to no influence over Japan. During the
occupation, which lasted till the beginning of the 1950s, Japan
became a democracy, and its economy got boosted.
As China was considered a major ally in the war against Japan, the
United States and Britain gave up all territorial and extra-
territorial rights on the Chinese mainland. In 1943, it was agreed
that Manchuria and Taiwan would be returned to China.
Manchuria, which had been ‘liberated’ by the Soviet Union, was
eventually turned over to the People's Republic of China, in 1955.
Creation of the United Nations
The Atlantic Charter
Despite the failure of the League of Nations, belief in the basic idea
of an international organisation to ensure future world peace
remained intact. As early as August 1941, following a meeting
between the British prime minister Winston Churchill and the US
president Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Atlantic Charter was issued.
This outlined the war aims of the Allies, but also established their
vision for the post-war world. There are many similarities
between this Charter and the aims that Wilson had expressed in
1917 when outlining his objectives for the post-First World War
settlement. It is also significant that Roosevelt's involvement in the
release of this statement came months before the USA's official
entry into the war.
On 1 January 1942, 26 countries signed the Declaration of the
United Nations, outlining their war objectives and their
commitment to the Atlantic Charter. The initial signatories included
four major powers–the United States, Britain, the USSR and the
Republic of China. The Big Three agreed to set up a new meeting in
San Francisco on April 25, 1945 for a future conference to
complete plans for the formation of the United Nations.
Together these nations pledged ‘to save succeeding generations
from the scourge of war.’
The new peacekeeping organisation was based in New York City,
where a magnificent headquarters complex was completed in
1952. Later three regional headquarters were opened, in Geneva
(Switzerland), Vienna (Austria), and Nairobi (Kenya).
Principal Organs
The UN charter provided for a main representative body called the
General Assembly. Every member nation (the total is currently at
193) can cast a vote in the General Assembly. The General Assembly
approves new members, discusses a broad range of issues, and
makes recommendations and agreements.
The Security Council, is in charge of investigating disputes,
peacekeeping, and emergency action. Currently, the Security
Council consists of fifteen members.
Five countries –Britain, China, France, the United States, and the
Soviet Union/Russia–are permanent members of the council. The
United States and the Soviet Union agreed that each permanent
member would have veto power. In other words, the Security
Council can take no action unless all five permanent members
agreed.
Ten other members are chosen from the UN membership at large.
The ten non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis:
five for African and Asian countries; one for Eastern European
countries; two for Latin American and Caribbean countries; two for
Western European and other countries. These members serve
two-year terms with five replaced each year. In January 2019,
Belgium was one of the five non-permanent members which
begun to assume responsibilities for the 2019-2020 period.
The non-permanent members have no veto power.
Besides the General Assembly and the Security Council, the UN
included many other organisations and agencies. For example, an
International Court of Justice deals with questions of
international law. The Secretariat, headed by the Secretary-
General, organises the daily business of the United Nations. The
current Secretary-General of the United Nations is António
Guterres.
11
 Evaluation
From the start, the United Nations enjoyed at least two
advantages over the old League of Nations.
First, no major powers refused to join.
Second, the charter provided for a UN peacekeeping force–the
Bluehelmets–,an armed group that could be drawn from the
troops of member countries. The UN could use these troops to
enforce its decisions or to separate warring groups.
Despite these advantages, the UN also faced a major stumbling
block. Unless all five permanent members of the Security Council
agreed on a course of action, the UN can do nothing.
The United Nations proved more effective on social and economic
issues than in solving political crises. In 1948, it adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that
supports human rights through the protection of individuals against
oppression and the preservation of basic rights and freedoms.
According to the preamble, the Declaration serves as ‘a common
standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.’ It also
provides that all people are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.
The UN also set up agencies such as UNESCO (United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation), FAO (Food and
Agriculture Organisation), WHO (World Health Organisation), and
UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund)
to help coordinate worldwide efforts to battle disease, feed the
hungry, and improve literacy.
Sources
BEOBIDE, H. History 4, Eleanitz, 2012, pp. 177-183.
CLARE, J., The Big Three during the War, internet, access date: 7 October
2017, (http://www.johndclare.net/cold_war4.htm).
HABIBI, M., et al., History of Europe and the Middle East, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 2012, pp. 259-266.
HISTORY.COM STAFF, Nuremberg Trials, internet, History.com, access
date: 7 October 2017, (http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-
ii/nuremberg-trials).
The USA and containment of communism in in Asia, 1945-1950, internet,
Pearsons Schools and Colleges, pp. 29 & 40,
(https://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Secondary/History/16plus/ASandA
2OCRHistoryA/Samples/ASStudentBookSampleChapters/TheUSAandtheColdWarinAsi
a1945-1975Chapter2.pdf).
The Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, internet, GCSE Bitesizes: History,
access date: 7 October 2017, (bbc bitesize
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir2/yaltaandpot
sdamrev3.shtml).
WHITFIELD, R., The Transformation of China, [Oxford AQA History], Oxford
University Press, 2015, pp. 24-27.
12
Section Review
Knowledge and Insight
You understand and can describe/discuss
▪ the changing bargaining positions of the Big Three in both
conferences;
▪ the agreements concerning Germany, Austria, Poland,
Eastern Europe, and the Pacific;
▪ the goal, results and ultimate importance of the
Nuremberg Trials;
▪ the reasons why the Western Allied Power ‘gave in’ to
Stalin;
▪ the growing distrust between the Soviet Union and the
Western Allied Powers; and
▪ the origins, main bodies, strengths and weaknesses of the
United Nations.
Glossary
▪ Content-obligatory language
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly (see glossary):
demilitarise, peace conference, refugee, reparations, and
veto power.
▪ Historical concepts
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly and situate them in a
historical context:
Declaration of Liberated Europe, Bluehelmets, FAO,
International Court of Justice, occupation zones, Potsdam
Conference, Nuremberg Trials, Secretariat of the UN, UN
General Assembly, UN Security Council, UNESCO, UNICEF,
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Westverschiebung/
Westward Shift, WHO, and Yalta Conference.
Skills
You are able to
▪ link the decisions during the Peace Conference to each of
the wartime fronts, and
▪ compare opinions relating to the use of the nuclear
weapon, and the Nuremberg Trials.
Hints & tips
• Study with your atlas, as you will be allowed to use it
during tests and exam. It will spare you lots of pure
memorising.
• Consider how you could extend the chart pp. 12-13,
with the information concerning the peace conferences

After the First World War, Belgium declared its neutrality once
again. However, as in the First World War, this neutrality was
violated, and Belgium lived under German occupation for more
than four years.
• How did the Belgian army and government react to the
German invasion?
• What was life like under German occupation?
• What fate befell Belgian Jews?
• Which tensions dominated the after-war period?
The 18 Days’ Campaign (10-28 May 1940)
As political tensions escalated in the years leading to World War II,
the Belgian government again announced its intention to remain
neutral in the event of war in Europe.
Without warning, the Germans invaded Belgium on 10 May
1940, as part of the wider Blitzkrieg invasion of France, the
Netherlands and Luxembourg. The German invasion triggered a
panic amongst Belgian civilians. It is estimated that around two
million civilians fled their homes during the campaign, towards
the west.
The government's policy of neutrality had left Belgium with an
outdated and ill-equipped army and air force, no match to the well-
equipped German army. The military held out against German
forces for 18 days, against overwhelming odds.
Leopold III, King and commander in chief of the Belgian army,
surrendered personally to German forces on 28 May. The
government fled to France, and later the United Kingdom,
establishing an official government in exile under Hubert Pierlot.
They were responsible for forming a small military force made up
of Belgian and colonial troops, known as the Free Belgian Forces,
which fought as part the Allied forces.
Belgium Under German Occupation
Under Military Administration
Germany annexed Eupen-Malmedy, a German-speaking region
given to Belgium under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The rest of
the country was occupied.
Shortly after the surrender of the Belgian army, a military
administration was created by the Germans. The German
administration juggled competing objectives of maintaining order
while extracting material from the territory for the war effort.
They were assisted by the Belgian civil service, which believed that
limited co-operation with the occupiers would result in the least
damage to Belgian interests. (See also 2.2.1.)
In the first year of the occupation, the German administration
pursued a conciliatory policy toward the Belgian people in order
to gain their support and co-operation. From 1941, the regime
became significantly more repressive. This was partly a result of the
increasing demands on the German economy created by the
invasion of the Soviet Union, as well as the decision to implement
Nazi racial policies. From August 1941, the military administration
announced that for every German murdered by the resistance, five
Belgian civilian hostages would be executed, the hostages to be
selected from political prisoners and criminals rather than civilians
picked at random. The systematic persecution of minorities
began from 1942 and was also coupled with much stricter
repression of Belgian political dissent.
Belgian Policy of the Lesser Evil
Role of the Secretaries-General
Before leaving the country in 1940, the Belgian government had
installed a panel of senior civil-servants, the Secretaries-General,
to administer the territory in the absence of elected ministers. The
Germans retained the Committee during the occupation.
However, from August 1940, the Germans began introducing new
members, and by 1941 its composition was almost completely
different. Among those promoted were pro-Germans, who had
been involved in Belgian Fascist movements before the war. The
Committee enabled the Germans to implement their policies more
efficiently than the military administration could have done by
force. Its members helped to facilitate the more radical
administrative reforms demanded by the Germans, although the
Committee refused to involve itself in the deportation of Belgian
Jews.
Galopin Doctrine
The Belgian government had also established a body of important
economic figures, under the leadership of Galopin, the director
of the Société Générale de Belgique. The Committee was able to
negotiate with the German authorities and was also in contact with
the government in exile.
Galopin pioneered a controversial policy, known as the ‘Galopin
Doctrine’. The Doctrine decreed that Belgian companies continue
producing goods necessary for the Belgian population (food,
consumer goods etc.) under the German occupiers. However, it
refused to produce war materiel or anything which could be used
in the German war effort.
The policy hoped
▪ to prevent a repeat of World War I, when the Allies had
encouraged Belgian workers to passively resist the Germans
by refusing to work. The Germans instead deported Belgian
workers and industrial machinery to German factories,
benefitting their economy more.
▪ to avoid an industrial decline which would have negative
effects on the country's recovery after the war.
13
However, between 1941 and 1942, the German authorities began
to force Belgian businessmen to make an explicit choice between
obeying the doctrine (and refusing to produce war materials, at risk
of death) and circumventing the doctrine as collaborators.
As a result, many viewed the policy as collaboration.
Life in Occupied Belgium
Censorship
The occupying authorities tightly controlled which newspapers
could be published and what news they could print. Newspapers of
pro-Nazi political parties continued to be printed, along with so-
called ‘stolen’ newspapers, which were published by pro-German
groups without their owners' permission.
Many civilians listened to regular broadcasts from Britain, so-
called Radio Belgique, despite being officially prohibited from
December 1940.
Rationing
Living standards in occupied Belgium decreased significantly
from pre-war levels. Wages stagnated, while the occupying
authorities tripled the amount of money in circulation, leading to
rampant inflation.
The amount of food permitted to Belgian citizens was roughly two-
thirds of that allowed to comparable German citizens and was
amongst the lowest in occupied Europe. On average, scarcity of
food led to a loss of five to seven kilograms of weight per Belgian
in 1940 alone. Later in the war, the rations diminished, and many
civilians survived by fishing or by growing vegetables in allotments.
Because of the tight rationing, a black market in food and other
consumer goods emerged. Food on the black market was extremely
expensive, and prices rose constantly during the war. Because of
the profits to be made, the black market spawned large and well-
organised networks. Numerous members of the German
administration were involved in the black market, stealing military
or official supplies and reselling them.
Allied Bombing
Factories, ports and other strategic sites used by the German
war effort were frequent targets of British and American bombers.
In the early years of the occupation, Allied bombing took the form
of small-scale attacks on specific targets, such as the ports of
Knokke and Zeebrugge, and on Luftwaffe airfields.
During the preparation for D-Day in the Spring of 1944, the Allies
carried out intensive bombing of railway junctions and transport
networks. Many of these were located in towns and cities, and
inaccuracy of the bombing resulted in substantial civilian
casualties. Bombing of targets in Belgium steadily increased as the
Allies advanced across France. Allied bombing during the liberation
in September 1944 killed 9,750 Belgians and injured 40,000.
14
Deportation and Forced Labour
Before 1941, Belgian workers could volunteer to work in
Germany; nearly 180,000 Belgians signed up, hoping for better pay
and living conditions.
Compulsory deportation of Belgian workers to Germany began in
October 1942. 145,000 Belgians were sent to Germany, most to
work in manual jobs in industry or agriculture for the German war
effort. Working conditions for forced workers in Germany were
notoriously poor. Workers were paid little and worked long hours,
and those in German towns were particularly vulnerable to Allied
aerial bombing.
Following the introduction of compulsory deportation, 200,000
Belgian workers went into hiding for fear of being conscripted. They
were often aided by resistance organisations, who provided
food and false papers. Many persons in hiding went on to enlist in
resistance groups, swelling their numbers enormously from late
1942.
Collaboration
Both Flanders and Wallonia had right-wing Fascist parties which
had been established in the 1930s, often with their own
newspapers and paramilitary organisations. All had supported the
Belgian policy of neutrality before the war, but after the start of the
occupation began to collaborate actively with the Germans.
Because of their different ideological backgrounds, they often
differed with the Nazis on a variety of ideological issues such as the
role of Catholicism or the status of Flanders. Though allowed more
freedom than other political groups, the Germans did not fully trust
these organisations and, even by the end of 1941, identified them
as a potential ‘threat to state security’.
After the war, 53,000 Belgian citizens (0.6 percent of the
population) were found guilty of collaboration, providing the only
estimate of the number involved during the period. Around 15,000
Belgians served in two separate divisions of the Waffen-SS, divided
along linguistic lines. In particular, many Belgians were persuaded
to work with the occupiers as a result of long-running hostility to
Communism, particularly after the German invasion of the Soviet
Union in 1941.
By 1944, Belgian collaborationist groups began to feel increasingly
abandoned by the German government as the situation
deteriorated. As resistance attacks against them escalated,
collaborationist parties became more violent and launched
reprisals against civilians.
In Flanders
Before the war, several Fascist movements had existed in Flanders.
The two major pre-war Flemish Movement parties, the Vlaams
Nationaal Verbond (VNV) and Verdinaso, called for the creation
of an independent authoritarian Flanders encompassing both
Flanders and the Netherlands. Shortly after the occupation, VNV
decided to collaborate with the Germans and soon became the
biggest group in Flanders, gaining many members after Verdinaso
disbanded in 1941. There was also an organisation, the Duits-
Vlaamse Arbeidsgemeenschap (‘German-Flemish Work
Community’, known by its acronym DeVlag), which advocated the
inclusion of Flanders into Germany itself.
The military government encouraged Flemish Movement parties,
especially the VNV, and promoted Flemish nationalists to
important administrative positions in the occupied territory. In
turn, the VNV was important in recruiting men for a new Flemish
Legion, an infantry unit within the Wehrmacht, formed in July 1941
after the invasion of Russia. The unit fought on the Eastern Front.
From 1942, VNV's dominance was increasingly challenged by the
more radical DeVlag, which had the support of the SS and Nazi
Party.
In Wallonia
Rex, founded by Léon Degrelle in 1935, was a fascist and anti-
Semitic party. With the German invasion, the party rapidly
accepted the occupation and became a major force in
collaboration.
However, Rex was not given the same favoured status accorded to
Flemish Fascists. Nevertheless, the party was permitted to
republish its newspaper and re-establish and expand its
paramilitary wing. Degrelle formed a Walloon Legion in the
Wehrmacht in July 1941, after the invasion of Russia. It was sent to
the Eastern Front, and declared itself part of the Waffen SS in
1943. The Formations de Combat were responsible for numerous
attacks against Jews and, from 1944, also participated in arbitrary
reprisals against civilians for attacks by the resistance.
Belgian Resistance
Passive Resistance
The most widespread form of resistance in occupied Belgium was
non-violent. Striking, and listening to Radio Belgium broadcasts
from London, which was officially prohibited by the German
occupiers, were common forms of passive resistance, as well as
civil disobedience. This was often carried out by Belgian
government institutions that were forced to carry out the
administration of the territory on behalf of the German military
government. In June 1941, the City Council of Brussels refused to
distribute Star of David badges on behalf of the German
government to Belgian Jews.
Active Resistance
Resistance to the German occupiers began in Belgium in the winter
of 1940, after the German defeat in the Battle of Britain made it
clear that the war was not lost for the Allies. Involvement in illegal
resistance activity was a decision made by a minority of Belgians
(approximately five percent of the population). Within Belgium,
resistance was fragmented between many separate
organisations, divided by region and political stances. The
resistance included both men and women from both Walloon and
Flemish parts of the country.
Active resistance in Belgium took the form of sabotaging railways
and lines of communication as well as hiding Jews and Allied
airmen, at great personal risk. The resistance produced large
numbers of illegal newspapers in both French and Dutch,
distributed to the public to provide news about the war not
available in officially approved, censored newspapers.
Attacks on German soldiers were comparatively rare as the
German administration made a practice of executing at least five
Belgian hostages for each German soldier killed.
The German Geheime Staatspolizei (‘Secret state police’), known as
the Gestapo, was responsible for targeting resistance groups in
Belgium. Resistance fighters who were captured could expect to be
interrogated, tortured and either summarily executed or sent to a
concentration camp. The Gestapo was effective at using informants
within groups to betray whole local resistance network and in
examining resistance publications for clues about its place of
production.
The Germans requisitioned the former Belgian army Fort
Breendonk, near Mechlin, which was used for torture and
interrogation of political prisoners and members of the resistance.
SS Camp Breendonk
On September 20th, 1940 Sturmbannführer Philip Schmitt
brought his first victims to Breendonk, a former fort of the
Belgian army. The Fort became officially the Auffanglager
Breendonk, a transit camp. Prisoners stayed on average three
months at the fortress before being deported towards the
concentration camps in Germany, Austria or Poland.
During the first year of the occupation, the Jews made up half
the total number of prisoners. That changed in 1942 when a
transit camp was created at the Dossin Barracks in Mechlin
where the Jews were assembled before their departure towards
the extermination camps. Most of the Jews disappeared from
Breendonk, which gradually became a camp for political
prisoners and members of the Resistance.
The regime set up in Breendonk by the Nazis hardly differed
from that of an official concentration camp. The
undernourishment and the forced labour wore down the
body and mind. The ever-present physical cruelty sometimes
caused the death of prisoners.
Initially, the camp was only guarded by a few German SS and a
detachment of the Wehrmacht. In September 1941, the
Wachtgruppe of the SD arrived as back up. This time, these were
no longer German SS but mainly Flemings.
In total, around 3,500 persons, including around thirty women,
were subjected to the ‘Hell of Breendonk’, as Franz Fischer
calls it in his memoirs.
Around half of these did not come back from the camps alive.
15
 Liberation
The liberation of Belgium from German occupation was completed
on 4 February 1945 when the entire country was reportedly free of
German troops. The operation began when Allied forces entered
on 2 September 1944.
The Belgian government was returned to power on 8 September
1944, after Allied forces captured Brussels four days earlier, and
began rebuilding the Belgian state and army. King Leopold III's
brother, Charles, was appointed Prince-Regent while a decision
was made about whether the King could return to his functions.
Areas in the south-east of the country were briefly recaptured
during the German Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge
in the winter of 1944. This no more than delayed the total liberation
of the country and on 4 February 1945, the entire country was in
Allied hands.
After the War
Epuration
The transition to democracy did not go smoothly. Until 1947, the
government had extraordinary powers.
Already at the end of the war there was a real terror and counter-
terror between the resistance (Whites) and the collaborators
(Blacks). After the liberation, true and self-evident resistance men
arrested a large number of true and alleged collaborators. Those
were humiliated and abused. Some 'resistance killers' benefited
from the confusion to settle some old accounts.
Only in a second phase did the government play a role in the
repression: some collaborators were tried for military courts.
Others were affected by civilian epuration (loss of civil and political
rights). There was also a purification of the political staff (German
governors, mayors ... were deployed.)
The repression was inevitable, but bulky and hard. There is no
doubt that there have also been derailments.
The Royal Question
The Royal Question was a major political crisis in Belgium that
lasted from 1945 to 1951, coming to a head between March and
August 1950. The Question at stake surrounded whether King
Leopold III could resume his royal powers and duties as King of
the Belgians amid allegations that his actions during World War II
had gone contrary to the provisions of the Belgian Constitution.
The crisis emerged from the division between Leopold and his
government, led by Hubert Pierlot, during the German invasion of
1940. Leopold, who was suspected of authoritarian sympathies,
had taken over command of the Belgian Army at the outbreak of
war. Considering his constitutional position as Commander-in-Chief
to take precedence over his civil role as head of state, he refused to
leave his army and join the Belgian government in exile in France.
Leopold's refusal to obey the Government marked a
constitutional crisis and, after having negotiated the surrender to
the Germans on 28 May 1940, Leopold was widely condemned. He
was denounced by the Belgian Prime Minister, Hubert Pierlot, and
declared ‘incompetent to reign’.
16
During the subsequent German occupation, Leopold was held
under house arrest in his palace, and received popular praise
for stoically sharing the suffering of ordinary Belgians.
However, Leopold was keen to find an accommodation with
Germany in 1940, hoping that Belgium would remain as a unified
and semi-autonomous state within a German-dominated Europe.
As part of this plan, in November 1940, Leopold visited Adolf
Hitler, the Führer of Germany, in Berchtesgaden to ask for Belgian
prisoners of war to be freed, to discuss the food supply in occupied
Belgium and the future of the Belgian dynasty. An agreement was
not reached, and Leopold returned to Belgium. This fuelled the
belief that Leopold, who had expressed anti-Semitic views before
the war, was collaborating with the Nazis rather than defending
his country's interests.
Attempts by the government in exile to pursue Leopold to defect
to the Allied side were unsuccessful; Leopold consistently refused
to publicly support the Allies or to denounce German actions
such as the deportation of Belgian workers.
In 1941, while still incarcerated, he married Lilian Baels,
undermining his popularity with the Belgian public which disliked
Baels and considered the marriage to discredit his claim to martyr
status.
Shortly before the Allies liberated the country in 1944, Leopold III,
and his family, was deported to Germany by the Nazis. With
Belgium liberated but the King still in captivity, his brother, Prince
Charles, Count of Flanders, was elected regent. The King’s status
of being incompetent to rule was prolonged in accordance with
the Constitution. With the country divided along political lines over
whether the King could ever return to his functions, and with the
left-wing dominant politically, Leopold went into exile in
Switzerland.
In 1950, a non-binding national referendum was organised by a
new centre-right government to decide on whether Leopold could
return. Although the result was a victory for the Leopoldists, it
produced a strong regional split between Flanders, which was
broadly in favour of the King's return, and Brussels and Wallonia
which generally opposed it.
Leopold's return to Belgium in July 1950 was greeted with
widespread protests in Wallonia and a general strike. The unrest
culminated in the killing of four workers by police on 31 July.
With the situation fast deteriorating, on 1 August 1950 Leopold
announced his intention to abdicate. After a transition period, he
formally abdicated in favour of Baudouin in July 1951.

Section Review
Knowledge and Insight
You understand and can describe/discuss
▪ outline of WW2 in Belgium,
▪ the role of the Secretaries-General, and the Galopin
Doctrine,
▪ life in Belgium under occupation,
▪ collaboration and resistance in Belgium, and
▪ the Royal Question.
Glossary
▪ Content-obligatory language
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly
capitulation, collaboration, curfew, liberation, occupation,
plebiscite, rationing, referendum, and resistance.
▪ Historical concepts
You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly and situate them in a
historical context:
18 Days Campaign, Blacks, Galopin Doctrine, Royal
Question, Secretaries-General, and Whites.
Pro-Leopold meeting at the time of the Royal Question, 1950
Source
ADAMS, X.; MARTENS, J. en VANGANSBEKE, J., Anno 6, Van In, Lier, 2002,
pp. 22-25.
Belgium in World War II, internet, Wikipedia, last edited 27 July 2017,
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium_in_World_War_II).
D’ENGHIEN, P., Knack Wereldgeschiedenis, Roularta Books NV, Wetteren,
2004, pp. 208-247.
DE PRINS, H; MULLENS, M. en SWERTS, J., Tekens 6.2, Uitgeverij De Boeck,
Antwerpen, 2002, pp. 46-47.
GORIS, G. (coordination), Storia 5 ASO, Uitgeverij Van In, Lier, 2001, pp. 141-
142.
GORIS, G. (coordination), Storia 6 ASO, Uitgeverij Van In, Wommelgem,
2009, pp. 14-19.
GERARD, E., Politieke geschiedenis van België, inedited notes of the course,
Leuven, Faculteit politieke wetenschappen, academic year 2013-2014, pp.
112-124.
LEFEVER, S., inedited student course, Leuven, Heilig Hartinstituut, 2002-
2004.
PEUTEMAN, A., ‘En plots zagende Walen het licht’, Knack¸4 August 2010,
pp. 92-95.
VAN DE VOORDE, H. and VANDEPITTE, P., Historia 5, Uitgeverij Pelckmans,
Kapellen, 2001, pp. 190-195.
VAN DE VOORDE,H., Historia 5, Uitgeverij Pelckmans, Kapellen, revised
edition, 2008, pp. 174-177; 179-185.
VERLEYEN, M., Het bittere verleden, Knack, 11 May 2005, pp. 34-40.
17
“Their Last Steps”, painted by David Olère, a Polish-born French painter and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based
on his experiences as a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II
The drawback of Hitler’s ideal of creating a German nation
state, was the treatment of Jews, and other ‘undesirables’,
including gypsies, Jehovah witnesses, and homosexuals. The
obsession with making the German Reich ‘judenfrei’
eventually led to the Holocaust, an ethnic cleansing of the
Jewish people.
• What were the historic antecedents to the Nazi ideas
about Jews?
• How and why did the persecution of Jews and other
groups escalate under the Nazi regime?
18
A Long History of Persecution and Discrimination
As disturbing as the Nazi ideas were, they were nothing new or
original to European culture.
The Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism
Religious rivalry initially was theological. It soon also became
political.
Historians agree that the break between Judaism and Christianity
followed the Roman destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in
the year 70 AD and the subsequent exile of Jews, which was the
start of the Jewish diaspora.
As Christianity spread in the first centuries, most Jews continued to
reject that religion. As a consequence, by the 4th century, Christians
tended to regard Jews as an alien people who, because of their
repudiation of Christ and his church, and as they were seen as the
murderers of Christ, were condemned to perpetual migration (a
belief best illustrated in the legend of the Wandering Jew). When
the Christian church became dominant in the Roman Empire, its
leaders inspired many laws by Roman emperors designed to
segregate Jews and curtail their freedoms when they appeared to
threaten Christian religious domination. Therefore, Jews were
increasingly forced to the margins of European society.
Religious attitudes were reflected in the economic, social, and
political life of medieval Europe. In much of Europe during the
Middle Ages, Jews were denied citizenship and its rights, barred
from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded
from membership in guilds and the professions.
The Jewish populations of towns and cities were often segregated
into ghettoes, a practice that lasted until the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
At the end of the 11th century, the First Crusade unleashed a wave
of anti-Semitic violence in France and the Holy Roman Empire.
Unfounded accusations of ritual murder and of host
desecration and the blood libel—allegations of Jews’ sacrifice of
Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened
bread—appeared in the 12th century.
But where they were needed, Jews were tolerated. Living as they
did at the margins of society, Jews performed economic functions
that were vital to trade and commerce. Because premodern
Christianity did not permit moneylending for interest and because
Jews generally could not own land, Jews played a vital role as
moneylenders and traders. Where they were permitted to
participate in the larger society, Jews thrived. During the Middle
Ages in Spain, they were instrumental in transmitting the
intellectual heritage of the Classical world to medieval
Christianity.
But regularly, economic resentment, allied with traditional religious
prejudice, prompted the forced expulsion of Jews from several
countries and regions. As a result of these mass expulsions, the
centres of Jewish life shifted from western Europe and Germany
to the Ottoman Empire and then to Poland and Russia.
The idea that the Jews were evil persisted during the Protestant
Reformation. The Catholic Reformation renewed anti-Jewish
legislation and reinforced the system of ghettoised segregation
in Roman Catholic countries.
Periodic persecutions of Jews in western Europe continued, and
until the French Revolution of 1789, the status of Jews in Europe
remained tenuous.
Anti-Semitism in Modern Europe
As a result of the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution, with
its promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the rights of
citizenship were extended to Jews in larger parts of Europe. Still,
respect and rights were conditioned on the willingness of Jews to
abandon their age-old customs and their communal identity.
In Eastern Europe, Jews remained subject to occasional
massacres, which rivalled the worst massacres of Jews in the
Middle Ages. In the Russian Empire in the 1880s, Jews were
stripped of their rural landholdings and restricted to designed
towns and cities. These measures, which crippled many Jews’
activities as rural traders and artisans, spurred the immigration of
more than a million Jews to the United States over the next four
decades. Another result was a somewhat smaller immigration of
Jews to the countries of western Europe, where anti-Semitic
agitators exploited xenophobic sentiments against them.
Even in France itself, emancipation did not end anti-Semitism but
merely transformed it. With the emergence of nationalism as the
defining factor in European society in the 19th century, anti-
Semitism acquired a racial rather than a religious basis. Pseudo-
scientific theories asserted that the Jews were inferior to the so-
called Aryan ‘race’, and gave anti-Semitism new respectability
and popular support, especially in countries where Jews could be
made scapegoats for existing social or political grievances.
The Dreyfus Affair became a focal point for anti-Semitism. In 1894,
Alfred Dreyfus, a highly placed Jewish army officer, was falsely
accused of treason. His final vindication (in 1906) was hampered
by the French military and the bitterly anti-Semitic French press,
and the wrenching controversy over the case left lasting scars on
French political life.
The discrimination of the Jews at the end of the 19th century, was
such, that it gave rise to the concept of Zionism: in 1896, Theodor
Herzl advocated the forging of a Jewish nation state in Palestine,
in a pamphlet titled The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat).
During the first decade of the 20 th century, there was a period of
moderate decline in anti-Semitic tensions—except in Russia, where
serious pogroms occurred and where the Russian secret police
published a forgery entitled Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion, which, as the supposed blueprint for a Jewish plot to
achieve world domination, furnished propaganda for subsequent
generations of anti-Semitic agitators.
The widespread economic and political dislocations caused by
World War I notably intensified anti-Semitism in Europe after the
war. In addition, the many Jewish Bolshevik leaders in the
Russian Revolution of November 1917 gave anti-Semites a new
focus for their prejudices in the threat of ‘Jewish Bolshevism.’ In
post-war Germany, anti-Semites joined forces with revanchist
nationalists in attempting to blame the Jews for that country’s
defeat (the so-called stab-in-the-back legend). In eastern
Europe, anti-Semitism became widespread in Poland, Hungary, and
Romania in the interwar period.
Nazi Anti-Semitism
Context
The idea of an Aryan super-race was partly rooted in German
philosophy, in particular Friedrich Nietzsche, whose idea of a new
superior type of human (Übermensch) was easily taken out of
context and narrowly applied by the Nazis to the German people.
Ordinarily, such ideas would have little appeal in normal
prosperous times. However, conditions in Germany after World
War I were anything but normal or prosperous. Given these
conditions, it is hardly surprising that many Germans were drawn
to the idea of themselves as a super-race that had been
treacherously betrayed by ‘inferior’ enemies from within and
without.
The Nazis' obsession with the Jew was based on a number of
assumptions.
▪ Jews were a race–a biologically distinct group–rather than a
religious group. Nazis were therefore rather anti-Semitic than
antijudaist.
19
▪ As a non-Aryan race, Jews could never be part of the German
nation or Volk.
▪ Jews possessed a number of characteristics that made them
exceptionally deadly rivals to Aryans. They were
megalomaniac, aiming at world domination; they were
cohesive, their allegiance to each other transcending any
loyalty they felt to the country in which they happened to live;
and they were devious, hiding behind various stooges and
accomplices such as the Communists (Hitler was convinced
that Soviet Communism was controlled by Jews).
Initial Persecution of the German Jews (1933-1939)
Shortly after coming to power, Hitler deprived Jews of their
political rights and property.
There were three waves of persecution–1933, 1935 and 1938–
with a period of relative calm between them. Each wave of
persecution followed a similar pattern: an outburst of violence
and thuggery, in which the SA took the lead, followed by a round of
anti-Semitic legislation.
The Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), in November 1938,
signalled the beginning of a far more dangerous assault on the
Jews. It was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany,
carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. The
German authorities looked on without intervening. The name
Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered
the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings,
and synagogues were smashed.
On the eve of war, in 1939, the Nazi regime had not agreed and
settled anti-Jewish policy. In general, measures went into two
directions: the confiscation and sale of Jewish property, with the
proceeds being invested in the drive towards autarky, and, a policy
of forced emigration that would make Germany Judenfrei (free
of Jews).
Endlösung: from Mass Murder to Genocide (1939-1945)
The Changing Context after 1939
After the outbreak of the war, Nazi anti-Jewish policy hardened,
principally as a result of German expansion and conquest. After
Hitler conquered Poland and invaded Russia, several millions of
Jews lived in Nazi-controlled territory. Poland, invaded by
Germany in 1939, was home to 3 million Jews, one-third of the
European total. Western Russia, attacked and largely occupied by
Germany in 1941, contained 2.5 million Jews.
The German invasions of France, Holland and Belgium (1940) and
of Greece and Yugoslavia (1941), together with the alliances it
formed with Rumania and Hungary (1941), left another 2 million
Jews living in west and south-east Europe, at the Nazis' mercy.
20
Mass Murder and Ghettoising (1939-1941)
From 1939 onwards, the Nazis set off to get to a final solution
(‘Endlösung’) to the Jewish problem, by which they meant the fact
there were Jews living in Aryan territories. Bullying them into exile
was no longer seen as the most efficient way to deal with the
problem.
In occupied Poland and–later–Russia the Nazis were able to
operate out of public view. The German invasions of Poland and
Russia were accompanied by mass executions of Jews. In
September 1939, Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary dead squads of the
SS followed the German armies into Poland. Their main task was to
murder potential resistance leaders–army officers, landowners,
intellectuals–many of whom were Jews. However, they were also
responsible for numerous anti-Semitic atrocities that had nothing
to do with neutralising opposition.
In town after town, the SS methodically rounded up Jews and
any other people who threated Nazi rule. They then took their
prisoners to isolated fields where no one would observe them.
The killing units then brutally shot innocent men, women, and
children and hid their bodies in mass graves. Historians now
believe that the SS killing units murdered 1.4 million Jews.
From late 1939 onwards, Poland's Jews were herded into ghettoes,
confined areas of large cities. The Nazis sealed each ghetto off
from the rest of the city with barbed wire and stone walls. Jews
caught outside the ghetto were usually killed. The biggest ghettoes
were at Lodz, Warsaw and Krakow.
By the end of 1941, most Polish Jews were confined inside badly
overcrowded ghettoes. The Warsaw ghetto, for example,
contained half a million people squeezed into an area that usually
housed 10,000. Half a million Jews died in Poland's ghettoes as a
result of malnutrition and disease.
Despite these horrible conditions, the Jews valiantly struggled to
maintain their traditions and keep their dignity. Ghetto theatres
produced plays and concerts. Teachers taught lessons in secret
schools. And writers kept records so that the rest of the world
would find out the truth about what was happening.
Extermination Camps (1942-1945)
On January 20, 1942, 16 top Nazi officials met in the Berlin suburb
of Wannsee to coordinate the total destruction of the Jews . this
meeting became known as the Wannsee Conference. It was
officially resolved that the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’
was to consist of wholesale and systematic extermination of the
Jews. In 1942, the Nazis began the extermination of Jews and other
undesirables in extermination camps. For the rest of the war,
Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution were sent to the six
extermination camps located in Poland: Chełmno, Bełżec,
Sobibór, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek.
Historians make a point of drawing a distinction between
concentration camps and extermination (or death) camps. In
concentration camps millions of prisoners died through
mistreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or were executed
as unfit for labour. The death camps’ primary functions were
genocide.
When the victims arrived, they were divided into two groups. In
one group were those judged healthy enough to do heavy labour
for the Nazi state. In the other were those who were to die at once.
Always included in this group were babies, young children, and the Section Review
elderly.
Knowledge and Insight
Those selected for death were stripped of their clothes and herded You understand and can describe/discuss
into a chamber that their guards called a shower room, where they ▪ Nazi anti-Semitic policy as a low point of century long anti-
would be gassed using Cyclon-B. Semitism;
▪ explain the religious, political, and economic aspects of
This cruel efficiency enabled Nazi officials at Auschwitz to anti-Semitism before Nazism;
slaughter up to 30,000 people a day. By the end of the war, 1.75 ▪ how the turmoil of the interwar period empowered anti-
million people had been killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. Semitic feelings in Germany;
▪ the gradation in the treatment of the Jews under the Nazi-
The insane intensity of this anti-Semitism is illustrated by the fact regime;
that, while locked in an increasingly unsuccessful war, the German ▪ the effect of the expansion of the German occupation
government still saw fit to devote substantial resources of towards Eastern Europe on the ‘Jewish problem’;
manpower, communications, and technology to this horrible ▪ the meaning of the Wannsee Conference; and
task. In the midst of the eastern campaign, trainloads of Jews from ▪ the industrial character of the operation.
France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were being shipped the
length of Europe to eastern camps. In 1943 and 1944, the SS was Glossary
still expanding its program to deal with Greek and Hungarian Jews. ▪ Content-obligatory language
Only in October 1944, with the Red Army threatening to overrun You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
the camps, the dreadful routine was ceased. pronounce and write them correctly:
Bolshevik, communism, discrimination, ethnic cleansing,
By the end of the war, 50 percent of Belgian Jews, 66 percent of forgery, genocide, nation state, persecution, pogrom, and
Romanian Jews, and 75 percent of the Dutch community were racism.
dead. Historians put the final toll of Jewish victims to well over 5
million, which embraces two thirds of the occupied pre-war Jewish ▪ Historical concepts
populations. You understand and can use the words/concepts below, and
pronounce and write them correctly and situate them in a
It should not be forgotten that some three million non-Jews, mainly historical context:
Slavs and political opponents of Nazism, also died in extermination concentration camp, Einsatzgruppen, Endlösung,
camps. extermination camps, ghetto, Holocaust, Kristallnacht, and
Wannsee Conference.

Skills
You are able to analyse and compare historic document related
to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

Sources

BERENBAUM, M., Anti-Semitism, internet, Encyclopædia Britannica, last

updated 14 September 2017, (https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-
Semitism).
BUTLER, C., Adolf Hitler and the Rise of Nazism in Germany (1919-39),
internet, Flow of History, 2007,
(http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/etc/20/FC134).
HEATH, D., World History, Perspectives on the Past, 5th edition, D.C. Heath
and Company, Lexington, MA/Toronto, ON, 1997, pp. 723-726.
MURPHY, D.; MORRIS, T., International Relations, 1879-2004,
HaperperCollinsPublishers Limited, London, 2008, pp. 98-99.
VAN DE VOORDE, H.; VANDEPITTE, pp. (supêrvision of the series), De
judeocide, Historia 5, Uitgeverij Pelckmans, Kapellen, 2001, pp.198-199.
WHITE, A.; BLOOMFIELD, A, The Nazi Holocaust, Unit 3 D1: From Kaiser to
Führer: Germany, 1900-45, HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2012, pp. 92-
94.

“Gassing”, painting by David Olère ,a Polish-born French painter

and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings
based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate at
Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

21
  aggressor A person or nation that that attacks another first.
aggressor, aanvaller
 alliance A promise to support another country if a conflict broke out.
alliantie, bondgenootschap
 Allied Powers During WW2, the Allied Powers consisted of Britain and its Commonwealth (Australia, New
Zealand, Canada), France, as well as Norway, Belgium and The Netherlands. In 1941, the United
States entered the war on the Allied side as well as the Soviets. China was also a significant
member of the Allied Powers.
 annex To take control of a country, region, etc., especially by force. The annexed territories become
part of the invading country.
annexeren, (grondgebied) inlijven
 Anschluss The annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, to form a ‘Greater Germany’.

The idea of an Anschluss began after the Unification of Germany excluded Austria and the
German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German nation state in 1871. After the fall of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918, the Paris Peace Treaties forbade the union.
 Anti-Comintern Pact An anti-communist agreement, signed in 1936-1937, between Germany, Italy and Japan.
Anti-Kominterpact
 appeasement (policy of) The lack of decisive action by Britain and France against the imperialism of Germany and Italy
in the 1930s. Appeasement culminated in the Munich Conference of 1938.
appeasementpolitiek
 armistice A formal agreement during a war to stop fighting and discuss making peace (synonym: ceasefire)
staakt-het-vuren, wapenstilstand
 Atlantic Charter A declaration of principles issued in August 1941 by British prime minister Winston Churchill
and US president Franklin Roosevelt, on which the Allied peace plan at the end of World War
II was based. The document is considered one of the first key steps toward the establishment of
the United Nations in 1945.
Atlantisch Handvest
 Atlantic Wall System of coastal defence and fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944
along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated
Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from the United Kingdom.
Atlantikwall (de Duitse terminologie wordt overgenomen)
 authoritarian Requiring absolute loyalty and obedience to the state.
autoritair
 Axis Powers The Axis powers, also known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, were the nations that fought
in World War II against the Allied forces. The Axis powers agreed on their opposition to
the Allies but did not completely coordinate their activity.
Asmogendheden
 Battle of the Bulge A strong but unsuccessful attack by German forces against the Allies (December 1944-January
1945) through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and
Luxembourg.
Ardennenoffensief
 Blitzkrieg The literal translation of the word is ‘lightning war’. A sudden, massive attack, as performed by
Nazi Germany at the beginning of WW2.
 blockade The closing off of a nation’s port or ports by ships or troops to prevent passage in and out.
blokkade
 Bluehelmets The UN has no standing army of its own. For its peace missions, it relies on troops from the
member states. These UN peacekeepers are often called Blue Helmets because of their
headgear. Peacekeepers are groups of soldiers, officers or civilians that go to a conflict area and
try to keep warring parties apart. They do many things, for example, monitor elections, organise
meetings between enemy factions or protect human rights.

22
 The United Nations Security Council must approve of peacekeeping missions before soldiers are
sent there. Sometimes the UN gives NATO or other military organizations permission to send
peacekeepers to conflict areas.
Blauwhelmen
 Bolshevik A supporter of the group led by Lenin that took power in Russia in 1917; (Russian) Communist.
bolsjewiek
 boycott To protest by refusing to buy a product or service.
boycot
 capitulation The act of accepting that you have been defeated by an enemy (synonym: surrender).
capitulatie, overgave
 civil war Conflict between two political groups within the same nation.
burgeroorlog
 collaboration The act of helping the enemy during a war when they have taken control of your country.
collaboratie
 Communism A theory of government in which wealth and property are owned in common and production and
labour are shared equally amongst the people. In reality, in communist countries in the 20 th
century, the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the state.
communisme
 concentration camp A prison camp in which political prisoners or prisoners of war (POW’s) are held by force, and
often kept in extremely bad conditions. Often concentration camps were used as labour camps
as well.
concentratiekamp
 curfew A law which says that people must not go outside after a particular time at night until the
morning; the time after which nobody must go outside.
avondklok
 Declaration of Liberated A declaration that was created by Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin
Europe during the Yalta Conference. It was a promise that allowed the people of Europe ‘to create
democratic institutions of their own choice’. However, the countries of Eastern Europe later
became known as Stalin's Satellite Nations
Verklaring over het Bevrijde Europa
 demilitarise To disband the armed forces and remove military equipment from a region.
demilitariseren
 DeVlag Short for ‘Deutsch-Vlämische Arbeitsgemeinschaft’, a pro-Nazi organization active in Flanders
during the German occupation of Belgium (WW2), aiming at the outright annexation of Flanders
into the Greater German Empire.
 diaspora The dispersal of the Jews from their homeland in Palestine—especially during the period of
more than 1,800 years that followed the Romans’ destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D.
70.
diaspora
 Dreyfus affair A controversy in France in the 1890s, centring on the trial and imprisonment of a Jewish army
officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been falsely accused of selling military secrets to
Germany.
 economic sanctions Restrictions on trade imposed against a nation in order to change its policy.
economische sancties
 Eighteen Days Campaign An offensive campaign by Germany during the Second World War in Belgium. It took place over
18 days in May 1940 (10-18 May) and ended with the German occupation of Belgium following
the surrender of the Belgian Army.
Achttiendaagse Veldtocht
 Einsatzgruppen SS death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings throughout Eastern
Europe, primarily by shooting, during World War II. The Einsatzgruppen played an integral role
in the implementation of the so-called Final solution to the Jewish question (Die Endlösung
der Judenfrage) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany.
 Endlösung Short for ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ (‘Final solution to the Jewish Question’). Used to refer
to the mass murder of the European Jews.
 ethnic cleansing The policy of forcing the people of a particular race or religion to leave an area or a country.
etnische zuivering

27
  extermination camp Death camps designed and built by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939-1945) to
systematically kill millions of Jews, Slavs, Communists, and others whom the Nazis considered
‘Untermenschen’, primarily by gassing, but also in mass executions and through extreme work
under starvation conditions. The six extermination camps were set up in occupied Poland (1942-
1945): Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek.
uitroeiingskamp, vernietigingskamp
 Fascism A political movement that believes in an extreme form of nationalism: denying individual rights,
insisting upon the supremacy of the state, and advocating dictatorial one-party rule.
fascisme
 Galopin Doctrine A controversial policy during WW2, which decreed that Belgian companies continue
producing goods necessary for the Belgian population (food, consumer goods etc.) under the
German occupiers, but refused to produce war materiel or anything which could be used in the
German war effort.
Galopindoctrine
 genocide The intentional killing of an entire people.
genocide of volkerenmoord
 General Assembly of the UN One of the six principal organs of the United Nations, the only one in which all member nations
have equal representation, and the main deliberative, policy-making and representative organ
of the UN. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the UN, appoint the non-permanent members
to the Security Council, appoint the Secretary-General of the United Nations, receive reports
from other parts of the UN and make recommendations in the form of General Assembly
Resolutions.
Algemene Vergadering van de Verenigde Naties
 ghetto The area of a town where Jews were forced to live.
ghetto
 Guomindang Nationalist Party of China.
Kwomintang, Chinese Nationalisten
 Holocaust The systematic murder of Jews and others by the Nazis.
Holocaust
 imperialism The policy of extending one country’s rule over many lands.
imperialisme
 invasion The act of an army entering another country by force in order to take control of it.
invasive
 isolationism The idea that a country should avoid political or military involvement with other countries in
order to avoid being drawn into wars not related to direct territorial self-defence.
US isolationism started with the Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s and lasted till the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
isolationisme
 kamikaze attack Suicide attacks that were performed by Japanese military aviators against Allied naval vessels
in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy warships more
effectively than was possible with conventional attacks.
kamikazeaanval
 Kristallnacht Also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi
Germany on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians.
The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the
shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores,
buildings, and synagogues were smashed.
 League of Nations An intergovernmental organisation (1920-1946) founded as a result of the Paris Peace
Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose
principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals included preventing wars
through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through
negotiation and arbitration. After WW2 the League of Nations was replaced by the United
Nations.
Volkenbond
 Lebensraum Means literally ‘living space’, and was the additional territory that, according to Adolf Hitler,
Germany needed because it was overcrowded. This was used as a legitimisation of attacking
the USSR in 1941.
 Manhattan Project An American research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the
first nuclear weapons.

28
 Mare Nostrum Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea (mare nostrum is Latin for ‘Our Sea’). The term was
again taken up by Benito Mussolini for use in fascist propaganda from the 1920s onwards.
Mussolini wanted to re-establish the greatness of the Roman Empire.
 martial law The control of a country by its army instead of by its usual leaders.
krijgswet
 militarism Glorification of armed strength.
militarisme
 mobilise When a country makes itself ready to fight in a war.
mobiliseren
 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact See Non-Aggression Pact.
 nation state An independent geopolitical unit of people having a common culture and identity.
natiestaat
 nationalism The desire by a group of people who share the same race, culture, language, etc. to form an
independent country.
nationalisme
 Nazism The doctrine of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, based on totalitarianism, a
belief in racial superiority, and state control of industry.
nazisme
 Nazi-Soviet Pact See non-aggression Pact
Nazi-Sovjetpact
 neutrality A policy of refusing to support either side, especially in war.
neutraliteit
 Non-Aggression pact The Non-Aggression Pact or Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany consisted two elements: the promise not to attack each other, and the treaty
included a secret protocol that divided territories of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland,
and Romania between Germany and the Soviet Union.
niet-aanvalspact
 nuclear weapon A weapon that is powered by atomic energy.
kernwapen
 occupation zone An area controlled by military forces. After WW2 Germany and Austria were divided into
occupation zones controlled by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
bezettingsgebied
 occupy To take control over a country, especially by military force.
bezetten
 patriotism Love of your country and willingness to defend it.
patriottisme; vaderlandsliefde
 Pearl Harbor A large US naval base in Hawaii and home of the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese attack on Peral
Harbor, on December 7th, 1941, drew the United States into WW2.
 prime minister The prime minister heads the cabinet.
eerste minister, premier
 propaganda One-sided information designed to convince people of a certain point of view.
propaganda
 racism The belief that one race is superior to other races.
racisme
 Rape of Nanjing Also: Nanjing Massacre. The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape
committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of
the Republic of China, in 1937.
Bloedbad van Nanking
 rationing A system limiting the amount of goods people can buy during a time of shortage.
rantsoenering
 rearmament Building new weapons and recruiting more soldiers.
herbewapening
 referendum A direct popular vote on some public issue. Synonym: plebiscite.
referendum, volksraadpleging

29
  refugee
 reparations
 Resistance
 Royal Question
 Schutzstaffel (SS)
 Security Council of the UN
 Secretaries-General
 Secretary-General of the UN
 Sitzkrieg or Phoney War
 Sturmabteilung (SA)
 Third Reich
 total war
 totalitarian
 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
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A person who flees to a foreign country to escape danger.
vluchteling
Monetary or material compensation paid after a war by a defeated nation for the damages it
caused other nations.
herstelbetalingen
A secret organisation that resists the authorities, especially in a country that an enemy has
control of.
verzet, weerstand
A major political crisis in Belgium that lasted from 1945 to 1951. The ‘Question’ at stake
surrounded whether King Leopold III could resume his royal powers and duties as King of the
Belgians amid allegations that his actions during World War II had gone contrary to the provisions
of the Belgian Constitution. It was eventually resolved by the abdication of Leopold in favour of
his son, Baudouin, in 1951.
Koningskwestie
This ‘Protection Squadron’ was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
It began with a small guard unit to provide security for party meetings. Later, it grew to one of
the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. The SS was the foremost agency of security,
surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
Main Body of the United Nations. It is currently composed of 15 members. Of them five- Russia,
China, United States, Britain, and France-are permanent members. These were the main
powerful states after the Second World War. The other ten members are non-permanent. They
are elected by the General Assembly for two years.
The five permanent members have the power of 'veto', so if they think that any decision might
go against them, they have the right to use the 'veto' and the proposal will not be approved.
The Security Council can authorize peacekeeping operations by using UN troops, the Blue
Helmets.
Veiligheidsraad van de Verenigde Naties
In the context of WW2 in Belgium: A panel of senior civil-servants which had to administer the
territory in the absence of elected ministers during WW2.
Secretarissen-Generaal
The head of the United Nations Secretariat. The Secretary-General serves as the chief
administrative officer of the United Nations. As of 2018, the Secretary-General is António
Guterres.
Secretaris-Generaal van de Verenigde Naties
The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there were
no major military land operations on the Western Front. It began with the German invasion
of Poland on September 1st, 1939 and the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France
against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939 and ended with the German attack on France and
the Low Countries on 10 May 1940.
Schemeroorlog–French: Drôle de guerre
The ‘Brownshirts’ or the thugs of the Nazi Party played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to
power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies
and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary
units of the opposing parties, and intimidating people, unionists, and Jews.
Bruinhemden
The Third German Empire established by Adolf Hitler in 1933.
Derde Rijk
A war in which nations commit all their resources–human and industrial–to the war effort.
totale oorlog
A political system in which the government has total control over the lives of individual
citizens.
totalitair
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed in 1918 between Soviet Russia and the
Central Powers, that ended Russia's participation in World War I. In the treaty, Bolshevik Russia
ceded the Baltic States and Polish territories to Germany, and other territories to the Ottoman
Empire and recognised the independence of Ukraine.
Vrede van Brest-Litovsk
  United Nations (UN) The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international co-
operation and to create and maintain international order. The organisation was founded in 1945.
Verenigde Naties
 Universal Declaration of A 1948 statement in which the United Nations declared that all human beings have rights to
Human Rights life, liberty, and security.
Universele Verklaring van de Rechten van de Mens
 Vichy France Unoccupied, southern part of France during WW2. It was proclaimed by Marshal Philippe
Pétain following the military defeat of France.

Vichy France wilfully collaborated with Nazi Germany to a high degree from the Nazi German
defeat of France to the Allied liberation in World War II. It acted as a vasal state of Nazi Germany.
 Wannsee Conference A meeting of senior Nazi leaders held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The
purpose of the conference was to ensure the implementation of the so-called Final solution to
the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported
to Polish extermination camps.
Wannseeconferentie, Conferentie van Wannsee
 Westverschiebung Refers to the westward shift of Poland after the Second World War, meaning it lost territory
to the Soviet Union in the West and obtained some smaller territories at the cost of Germany in
the West. The shift resulted in a major refugee crisis.
 Zionism A movement founded in the 1890s to promote Jewish self-determination and the
establishment of a Jewish state in the ancient Jewish homeland.
zionisme

Note: For Chinese words, the Pinyin transcription has been used throughout the course. This is quite different from the Wade-Giles
transcription, which is added whenever a name is used for the first time.

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