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The information included here is intended to serve as a resource to classrooms and schools throughout the nation teaching about D-Day and World War II. Lesson plans and activities are designed for various grade levels, as noted within the documents. No part of this material may be transmitted or recorded in any form without written permission of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation. Classroom teachers may reproduce copies for classroom use only.
For more information about the following lesson plans and activities, please contact the National D-Day Memorial Foundation's Education department at education@dday.org or at (540) 586-DDAY ext.111.

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The information included here is intended to serve as a resource to classrooms and schools throughout the nation teaching about D-Day and World War II. Lesson plans and activities are designed for various grade levels, as noted within the documents.

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DocsTeach is a product of the National Archives education division. Our mission is to engage, educate, and inspire all learners to discover and explore the records of the American people preserved by the National Archives. The National Archives and Records Administration is the nation's record keeper.

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Cover for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument Foundational Document. Image of the USS Arizona Memorial from a divers perspective at the water line.
NPS Image

Click to review World War II Valor in the Pacific, now Pearl Harbor National Memorial's Foundation Document.

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History Services Division - Pearl Harbor National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service)

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Click to review World War II Valor in the Pacific, now Pearl Harbor National Memorial's Foundation Document.

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The following is a timeline of selected events leading up to, and following, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

1937

July: Japan invades North China from Manchuria.

1940

July: U.S. imposes trade sanctions, followed by an embargo, aimed at curbing Japan's military aggression in Asia.

1941

January: Adm. Yamamoto begins communicating with other Japanese officers about a possible attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jan. 27: Joseph C. Grew, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, wires Washington that he has learned that Japan is planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. No one in Washington believes the information. Most senior American military experts believe the Japanese would attack Manila in the Philippine Islands if war broke out.

February: Adm. Husband E. Kimmel assumes command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Kimmel and Lt. Gen.Walter C. Short, commanding general of the Hawaiian Department, prepare for the defense of the islands. They ask their seniors in Washington for additional men and equipment to insure a proper defense of military instillations.

April: U.S. intelligence officers continue to monitor Japanese secret messages. In a program code-named Magic, U.S. intelligence uses a machine to decode Japan's diplomatic dispatches. Washington does not communicate all the available information to all commands, including Short and Kimmel in Hawaii.

May: Japanese Adm. Nomura informs his superiors that he has learned Americans were reading his message traffic. No one in Tokyo believes the code could have been broken. The code is not changed.

July: Throughout the summer, Adm. Yamamoto trains his forces and finalizes the planning of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sept. 24: The "bomb plot" message from Japanese naval intelligence to Japan's consul general in Honolulu requesting a grid of exact locations of ships in Pearl Harbor is deciphered. The information is not shared with the Hawaii's Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short.

November: Tokyo sends an experienced diplomat to Washington as a special envoy to assist Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura, who continues to seek a diplomatic solution.

Japan wants the U.S. to agree to its southern expansion in Asia diplomatically but if those efforts were unsuccessful, Japan was prepared to go to war.

Nov. 16: Submarines, the first units involved in the attack, depart Japan.

Nov. 26: The main body, aircraft carriers and escorts, begin the transit to Hawaii.

Nov. 27: Kimmel and Short receive a so-called "war warning" from Washington indicating a Japanese attack, possibly on an American target in the Pacific, is likely.

Night of Dec. 6, Morning of Dec. 7: U.S. intelligence decodes a message pointing to Sunday morning as a deadline for some kind of Japanese action. The message is delivered to the Washington high command before 9 a.m. Washington time, more than 4 hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the message is not forwarded to the Pearl Harbor commanders and finally arrives only after the attack has begun.

At 0755, Hawaiian time, the first wave of Japanese aircraft begin the attack. Along with the ships in Pearl Harbor, the air stations at Hickam, Wheeler, Ford Island, Kaneohe and Ewa Field are attacked.

The Japanese attack continues for two hours and 20 minutes. When it's over, more than 2,400 Americans are dead and nearly 1,200 wounded. Eighteen ships have been sunk or damaged. More than 300 aircraft are damaged or destroyed.

Dec. 8: President Roosevelt addresses Congress and asks for a declaration of war against Japan, which he receives.

Dec. 16: Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short are relieved of their commands.
1942
January: The Roberts Commission appointed by President Roosevelt finds Kimmel and Short in dereliction of duty and solely responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster.
1944
January: Capt. Laurence Safford, the Navy's former chief cryptographer, discovers that officials in Washington withheld secret information from Kimmel and Short.

October: A Naval Court of Inquiry finds Kimmel had not been derelict but had acted appropriately given what he knew. The Chief of Naval Operations overrules the court, saying if Kimmel had done aerial reconnaissance he might have discovered the Japanese fleet just 250 miles off Hawaii.
1995
December: A Defense Department investigation finds others share the responsibility with Kimmel and Short for the Pearl Harbor disaster. It does not say who those "others" are.
2000
An amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act of 2001 finds Kimmel and Short acted competently and professionally and urges the president to restore the officers to their highest WWII rank.

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The following is a timeline of selected events leading up to, and following, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 1937 July: Japan invades North China from Manchuria. 1940 July: U.S. imposes trade sanctions, followed by an embargo, aimed at curbing Japan's military aggression in Asia. 1941 January: Adm.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

Most Germans did not expect their country to lose World War I. And many felt shocked and betrayed to learn that its leadership had surrendered. In the aftermath, German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm renounced the throne and fled to the Netherlands. As revolutionaries fought for control of the German capital of Berlin, a new government formed in a smaller city to the south called Weimar. Almost overnight, Germany had transformed into a democratic republic, which would be known as the Weimar Republic.

The collapse of the monarchy was very important because it created these power vacuums and this grab for power. And these disgruntled youth, hardened youth, came back into German society and Austrian society, and were very disillusioned, and had known-- their primary, formative years were in the carnage of the First World War, the Great War, the war to end all wars.

And so they come out of this experience and really bring that to the streets of Germany, to the political culture of Germany-- so that kind of combative spirit. A lot of the politicking that's occurring in Germany is in beer halls and in street fights. For a liberal society to function and a democracy to function, there has to be compromise. There has to be civility. And it's not part of that, the birth of democracy in Germany.

Adolf Hitler was among those youth who brought a combative spirit back to the new German democratic experiment. Hitler was an Austrian citizen who had volunteered to fight for the German army. He was in a hospital, recovering from a mustard gas attack that had left him partially blinded, when he learned of Germany's defeat. And he moved to Munich shortly thereafter.

Hitler was like hundreds of thousands of other Germans-- some of them in the army, some of them not-- in 1919-- disturbed by their nation's defeat, deeply unsettled by the political revolutions that occurred at roughly the same time, and looking for an answer. He found it in a political organization that already existed called the German Workers' Party. And he rapidly became a dominant figure in the movement because he had a gift for public speaking.

In early 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party for short.

It was a movement that offered him an explanation for Germany's defeat-- namely, that the nation had been sold out. That it was not his fault as a former soldier that Germany had lost, but rather seditious forces at home had undercut the war effort. And that explained why Germany had lost. That became the core of his message. And then attached to that was a particular statement that among those seditious forces were the Jews.

Traitors have betrayed us. That's why we lost the war. You need a scapegoat for that. The Jews were a scapegoat.

So that was the beginning-- that Hitler blamed this ignominious defeat on his political opponents. And then the peak of this early period of crisis-- from 1918 to 1923, Weimar was plagued with crisis-- was the hyperinflation.

In the great inflation of 1923, you need billions of marks to be able to get a loaf of bread. It didn't pay to work, because your money was losing value every hour of every day. And the entire middle class was wiped out.

It's not a coincidence that Hitler attempts to seize power in November 1923, the peak of the hyperinflation. And he sees this as an opportunity-- that Weimar has become so chaotic, the downward spiral has gone so far, that that's when he undertakes the Beer Hall Putsch.

Hitler and about 2,000 supporters attempted to stage a coup in which they took control of Munich. It ended in a confrontation which resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and four German policemen. And Hitler was arrested and charged with treason two days later.

The Putsch failed. He then was sentenced to jail. But he was treated in jail like a bit of a celebrity, and not treated with harshness, and not put away for a very long time. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf-- my battle, my struggle-- which was his blueprint. He told us what he was going to do. And then he did it.

When he came out, he decided that he had to adopt a new and more effective political strategy-- one that did not involve challenging the authorities with violence. And he called this, actually, the legality strategy. He spent most of the mid-1920s building up the political organization of the Nazi Party. But it's important to note that, in 1928, at the German parliamentary elections, he got 2.6% of the national vote. In 1924, he had gotten 6%. He was a marginal political figure.

In the mid '20s, the Weimar Republic did very well. Unemployment rate went down, the inflation rate went down. It seemed like Germans were going to be able to move forward with some relative stability and prosperity. And then came the stock market crash of 1929. And that was the beginning of the economic disaster.

What, in a calmer time, would have disqualified Hitler completely from being taken into the world of acceptability at this point gained and triggered support from segments of the population.

In 1930, they won 18% of the vote-- 107 seats. And then, by July 1932 they were up to 37% of the vote.

Now, people knew what Hitler stood for, but they weren't quite sure what his priorities were. We now know, in retrospect, looking back, that Hitler was obsessed with two things above all-- removing the Jews from Germany-- and that became increasingly a murderous program, and he was obsessed with winning what he called living space for Germany in the east.

But up until 1932, that's not what he talked about all the time. Indeed, in the last three years, between 1930 and 1933, when Hitler's vote was rising the fastest, the Nazis downplayed their antisemitic rhetoric. And their rhetoric was, what's wrong with this country is the system. The system is broken. The system doesn't know how to fix what's wrong with this country.

In 1932, Hitler ran against the current president, World War I general Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazis won the largest share of seats in the Reichstag, at 37%, but did not get the majority needed for Hitler to become president. In a second round of voting, Hindenburg was able to gain a narrow majority of votes and retain the office.

A third of the electorate gravitated toward Hitler. But it was only a third. And he wouldn't have come to power if it had not been for this powerful elite around the president who said, you've got to pick somebody. Let's pick him. And he thus became the person that the president chose to make chancellor.

They believed that they could control Hitler in this way. They called him the drummer, and he was going to head the parade. And the existing elites were going to manipulate him and pass the legislation that they needed. And Germany would be saved-- at least saved from communism, from a Marxist dictatorship. And it's one of the great mistakes in all of history.

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Scholars Wendy Lower, Peter Hayes, Michael Berenbaum, Jonathan Petropoulos, and Deborah Dwork describe how Adolf Hitler became a powerful political figure in Weimar Germany in the aftermath of World War I.

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Rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools

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The Nazis’ rise to power, and the role of Adolf Hitler himself, is one of the primary causes of the Holocaust. The Nazis initiated, organised and directed the genocide and their racist ideology underpinned it.

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The political instability in the late 1920s and early 1930s played an important role in helping the Nazis rise to power.

This topic will explain how the political situation escalated from the hope of the 'Grand Coalition' in 1928, to the dismissal of von Schleicher and the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933.
The 'Grand Coalition'
In June 1928, Hermann Müller had created the 'grand coalition' to rule Germany. This coalition was made up of the SPD, DDP, DVP and the Centre Party: parties from the left and right. Müller had a secure majority of 301 seats out of a total of 491. Political parties seemed to be putting aside their differences and coming together for the good of Germany.

But this was not how it worked out. The parties could not agree on key policies and Müller struggled to get support for legislation.

As the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash hit Germany and unemployment spiralled, the government struggled to balance its budget. On top of its usual payments, the amount of people claiming unemployment benefits was increasing. As the government struggled to agree on the future of unemployment benefits, Müller asked Hindenburg for the use of Article 48 to try and restore stability.

President Hindenburg was a right-wing conservative politician and therefore disliked having the left-wing SPD in power. He refused Müller's request. Müller resigned on the 27 March 1930.

Müller's successor was Heinrich Brüning. Although he did not have a majority of seats in the Reichstag, Brüning was well-respected by Hindenburg. Brüning increasingly relied upon, and was granted, use of Article 48 . This set a precedent of governing by presidential decree and moved the Republic away from parliamentary democracy.

As the economic crisis worsened in 1931, Brüning struggled to rule effectively. Extremism became more popular as people desperately sought a solution.

After a disagreement over provisions for the unemployed in 1932, Hindenburg demanded Brüning's resignation.
Von Papen and von Schleicher
A new election was called, and von Papen replaced Brüning.

Von Papen agreed with the conservative elite that Germany needed an authoritarian leader to stabilise the country. He called for another election in November 1932, hoping to strengthen the frontier against communism and socialism.

Whilst the left-wing and socialist SPD did lose votes, so did the right-wing Nazi Party. The Communist Party gained votes, winning eleven more seats in the Reichstag. Once again, no one party had a majority. The election was a failure.

Following von Papen's failure, Hitler was offered the chancellorship, but without the right to rule by presidential decree. He refused, and von Schleicher became chancellor.

However, without a majority of his own in the Reichstag, von Schleicher faced the same problems as von Papen. Hindenburg refused to grant von Schleicher permission to rule by decree.

Von Schleicher lasted just one month.

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The political instability in the late 1920s and early 1930s played an important role in helping the Nazis rise to power. This topic will explain how the political situation escalated from the hope of the 'Grand Coalition' in 1928, to the dismissal of von Schleicher and the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933.

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During World War II, Jewish resistance fighters launched attacks, created underground networks, led rescue missions and documented their experiences at great personal risk. But though historians have ample evidence of such acts of defiance, the idea that Europe's Jews didn't fight back against the Nazis persists. Now, a new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London seeks to honor these individuals' largely unheralded contributions.

" Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust" draws on documents, artifacts and survivor testimonies, many of which were gathered by library researchers during the 1950s. The show tells the stories of Jewish partisans in the Soviet Union, organized resistance in concentration camps and ghettos, and individual instances of bravery, among other topics.

"Sometimes the view that people have is that the Jews didn't really resist, and people have commented on 'why wasn't there more resistance?'" senior curator Barbara Warnock tells the 's Caroline Davies. "But in these incredibly extreme circumstances there are just so many examples of resistance, even in the most desperate situations."

One of the individuals featured in the exhibition is Tosia Altman, a young woman who used fake " Aryanized" papers to smuggle herself into Poland's ghettos. As a member of the social Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair, Altman invaded ghettos, organized resistance groups, spread information and moved weapons, reports Michelle Desmet for Dutch newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. At just 24 years old, she participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but was captured and died of her injuries shortly thereafter.

"Her story is quite amazing," says Warnock to the Guardian. "And she was typical of a lot of the resisters in camps and ghettos. She was quite young, and managed to obtain papers indicating she was just Polish rather than Jewish Polish, allowing her to move around occupied Poland."

In concentration camps, some prisoners undermined Nazi efforts to eradicate their culture by continuing religious practices and education. As Warnock explains in a video published by the library, diaries served as one of the most explicit ways in which individuals could "keep a sense of their humanity" and document Jewish experiences.

Philipp Manes, a German Jew incarcerated in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, kept extensive diaries throughout his life. Now preserved in the library's collection, Manes' writings provide documentation of cultural life in the ghetto prior to his deportation to Auschwitz in October 1944. The library also owns a trove of poems, letters and drawings made by Manes' fellow prisoners.

Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust

Other forms of resistance highlighted in the exhibition were more overt. Filip Müller, for instance, smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities out of Auschwitz-Birkenau while working as a member of the Sonderkommando, or units of Jewish prisoners assigned to the gas chambers and crematoria. Berlin resident Herbert Baum, meanwhile, started the anti-Nazi, pro-communism Baum Group in the 1930s. When he was forced to work at a factory in 1940, Baum recruited other young forced laborers, expanding the group's membership to around 100 people.

In May 1942, the Baum Group led an arson attack against the Soviet Paradise, an anti-communist, anti-Semitic exhibition that attempted to justify the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Many involved in the bombing-including Baum himself-were arrested and executed. Some of those who managed to escape later offered personal accounts of their experiences to the Wiener Library.

"Whether we're talking about a quiet act of bravery or a bold act of rebellion, these stories really leap off the page," says the library's director, Toby Simpson, in the video, "and the reason for that often is that they were gathered either during the time of the Holocaust or in the years that immediately followed. The Wiener Library's head of research, Eva Reichmann, gathered over a thousand testimonies in the 1950s, and many of those stories are featured in this exhibition for the first time."
"Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust" is on view at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London from August 6 to November 30.

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The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

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A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London showcases accounts of resiliency and defiance

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Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.

In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. For months after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, individual Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.

During the same year, ghetto inhabitants rose against the Germans in Vilna (Vilnius), Bialystok, and a number of other ghettos. Many ghetto fighters took up arms in the knowledge that the majority of ghetto inhabitants had already been deported to the killing centers; and also in the knowledge that their resistance even now could not save from destruction the remaining Jews who could not fight. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the slaughter of so many Jews.

Thousands of young Jews resisted by escaping from the ghettos into the forests. There they joined Soviet partisan units or formed separate partisan units to harass the German occupiers.

Although many Jewish council ( Judenrat) members cooperated under compulsion with the Germans until they themselves were deported, some, such as Jewish council chairman Moshe Jaffe in Minsk, resisted by refusing to comply when the Germans ordered him to hand over Jews for deportation in July 1942.

Jewish prisoners rose against their guards at three killing centers. At Treblinka in August 1943 and Sobibor in October 1943, prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the SS staff and the Trawniki-trained auxiliary guards. The Germans and their auxiliaries killed most of the rebels, either during the uprising or later, after hunting down those who escaped. Several dozen prisoners eluded their pursuers and survived the war, however. In October 1944, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, members of the Jewish Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) mutinied against the SS guards. Nearly 250 died during the fighting; the SS guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying the members of the Sonderkommando with explosives to blow up a crematorium. All five women were killed.

In many countries occupied by or allied with the Germans, Jewish resistance often took the form of aid and rescue. Jewish authorities in Palestine sent clandestine parachutists such as Hannah Szenes into Hungary and Slovakia in 1944 to give whatever help they could to Jews in hiding. In France, various elements of the Jewish underground consolidated to form different resistance groups, including the Armée Juive (Jewish Army) which operated in the south of France. Many Jews fought as members of national resistance movements in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Slovakia.

Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with various forms of spiritual resistance. They made conscious attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people despite Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews from human memory. These efforts included: creating Jewish cultural institutions, continuing to observe religious holidays and rituals, providing clandestine education, publishing underground newspapers, and collecting and hiding documentation, as in the case of the Oneg Shabbat archive in Warsaw that would tell the story of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, despite its destruction in 1943.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Resistance comes in many forms, both violent and non-violent, collective and individual. Learn more about Jewish resistance to Nazi oppression.

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On July 22, 1942, on the eve of the Ninth of Av in the Jewish calendar, the Germans began the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto. By the time they ended on September 21, Yom Kippur, some 265,000 inhabitants of the ghetto had been deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The deportations were carried out at the Umschlagplatz - a train station and adjacent square situated on the edge of the ghetto. Those deported were packed into sealed, locked freight cars with little water and poor ventilation.

When the deportations began the Nazis promised that people who voluntarily reported for "transfer" would receive three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of jam. After a few days the volunteers stopped coming, and the Nazis switched to siege tactics: city blocks would be closed off and the Jewish Police would remove the buildings' residents to the streets. The Germans would carry out a selection while Polish or Ukrainian policemen would search in the abandoned homes for Jews in hiding. Many Jews who hid in the buildings or tried to escape the selection on the street were murdered on the spot. Most of the Jews who underwent the selection were chosen for deportation and sent to the Umschlagplatz.

After the deportations to Treblinka between 55,000 to 60,000 Jews remained in the Warsaw ghetto and they were concentrated in a few building blocs. The area of the ghetto was thus severely reduced.

A sense of bitter disillusionment and abandonment settled upon those who remained in the ghetto, the majority of whom were teenagers. Many blamed themselves for not resisting and for allowing their families to be deported. It was clear to them that they would share the same fate. Thus, they resumed the attempts at establishing a fighting underground organization.

The first attempts to establish an armed resistance organization within the ghetto took place even before the deportations. The "anti-Fascist bloc" was established between March-April 1942, based on a communist cell in the ghetto. However, the Gestapo discovered its leader in May 1942, who was arrested and murdered.

Representatives of three Zionist youth movements ("Hashomer Hatzair," "Dror," and "Akiva") established the first cell of the new organization. Members of the "Poalei Tzion" party joined them in October. Thus the "Jewish Fighting Organization" (ZOB) was established. Within a short period of time other youth movements joined the organization as well as non-Zionist parties - the "Bund" and the Communists. The commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization was Mordechai Anielewicz of "Hashomer Hatzair", who was 23 years old. The Revisionist Zionist youth movement "Beitar" established its own fighting organization, the "Jewish Military Union" (ZZW).

On January 18, 1943, the Germans launched another Aktion. The underground leadership, believing it to be the onset of the final deportation, ordered its forces to respond with arms. Upon discovering the resistance the Germans decided to halt the Aktion. This incident marked a turning point for most of the ghetto population, which from then on prepared for mass resistance and for hiding in underground bunkers in the cellars of homes.

The final Aktion began on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. The fighting groups and ghetto inhabitants barricaded themselves in bunkers and hideouts, their demonstrations of resistance taking the Germans by surprise. The ZOB scattered its positions throughout the ghetto; the ZZW did most of its fighting at Muranowska Square, impeding the Germans' attempts to penetrate their defenses. In response, the Germans began to systematically burn down the buildings, turning the ghetto into a firetrap. The Jews fought valiantly for a month until the Germans took over the focal points of resistance. It was the first popular uprising in a city in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became an example for Jews in other ghettos and camps. The uprisings that followed, however, were smaller in scope because of their isolation, a shortage of arms and hostile surroundings.

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On July 22, 1942, on the eve of the Ninth of Av in the Jewish calendar, the Germans began the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto.

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Throughout their imprisonment in the ghettos, Jews had found ways to defy and resist Nazi conquerors: they organized mutual aid societies, they continued to practice their religion and educate their children, and they made heroic efforts to document their lives (see reading, Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto in Chapter 8). In more than 100 ghettos, Jews formed underground movements with the goal of escaping the ghetto, joining partisan (armed resistance) groups, or organizing a revolt. Prisoners in several camps, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibór, mounted revolts. In Vilna, Bialystock, and several other ghettos, Jews resisted deportations with force. The largest armed resistance by Jews against the Nazis occurred in the Warsaw ghetto.

In 1942, about 300,000 Jews had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. Only 55,000 remained, mainly men and women without children because children and the elderly had been deported. Some of the "remnants," as they called themselves, formed the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB), or Jewish Fighting Organization. They reached out to partisan groups and the Polish underground for weapons. They received very few such weapons but were determined to do as much as possible with what they had.

When a new round of deportations began in January 1943, the ZOB struck back, firing on German troops and helping other ghetto residents into prearranged hiding places. Nazi commanders retaliated by executing 1,000 Jews in the main square of the ghetto, but they also briefly stopped the deportations. Surviving Jews made preparations for a major revolt.

April 19, 1943, was the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover and also the eve of Hitler's birthday. German General Jürgen Stroop arrived in Warsaw ready to wipe out all opposition within a single day as a birthday gift to his Führer. Stroop had 2,100 soldiers with 13 heavy machine guns, 69 handheld machine guns, 135 submachine guns, several howitzers, and 1,358 rifles. The approximately 750 Jewish resisters had two submachine guns, a handful of rifles, and homemade explosives. But the resisters were able to fight off Stroop's soldiers for the first few days, and they were able to hold out under siege for four weeks.

Simcha Rotem, a survivor, later told filmmaker Claude Lanzmann: "During the first three days of fighting, the Jews had the upper hand. The Germans retreated at once to the ghetto entrance, carrying dozens of wounded with them." On April 23, Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the ZOB, wrote:

What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans fled twice from the ghetto. One of our companies held its position for forty minutes, while the other one lasted-upwards of six hours . . . My life's dream has become a reality. I have seen the Jewish defense of the ghetto in all its strength and glory.

On April 26, Stroop reported to his superiors in Berlin:

The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could be broken only by relentlessly using all our force and energy by day and night. On 23 April 1943 the Reichsführer SS issued through the higher SS and Police Fuhrer East at Cracow his order to complete the combing out of the Warsaw Ghetto with the greatest severity and relentless tenacity. I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire, including the blocks of residential buildings near the armament works. . . . Not infrequently, . . . because of the heat and the fear of being burned alive [the Jews] preferred to jump down from the upper stories after having thrown mattresses and other upholstered articles in the street from the burning buildings. With their bones broken, they still tried to crawl across the street into blocks of buildings which had not yet been set on fire or were only partly in flames. Often Jews changed their hiding places during the night, by moving into the ruins of burnt-out buildings, taking refuge there until they were found by our patrols. Their stay in the sewers also ceased to be pleasant after the first week. Frequently from the street, we could hear loud voices coming from the sewer shafts.

Rotem described what happened once Stroop's men began to destroy the ghetto block by block:

The whole ghetto was ablaze. All life vanished from the streets and houses. We hid in the cellars and bunkers. From there we made our sorties. We went out at night. The Germans were in the ghetto mostly by day, leaving at night. They were afraid to enter the ghetto at night. . . .

I don't think the human tongue can describe the horror we went through in the ghetto. . . . Besides fighting the Germans, we fought hunger and thirst. We had no contact with the outside world; we were completely isolated, cut off from the world. We were in such a state that we could no longer understand the very meaning of why we went on fighting. We thought of attempting a breakout to the Aryan part of Warsaw, outside the ghetto.

The Nazis finally put down the uprising on May 16 by destroying the ghetto and sending any survivors to death or labor camps. Anielewicz did not survive. Rotem and Marek Edelman were among the few to escape through the sewers to the "Aryan" part of Warsaw. Others took their own lives before the Nazis could reach them.

More than 70 years later, Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum told Edelman and Rotem that he and other historians had concluded that "resistance meant all but certain death for all within the ghetto . . . and the only issue was how to face the reality of impending death." The conversation continued:

"Professor," Edelman said with barely concealed disdain that fighters have toward those who have never been in combat, "Professor, resistance was a choice with how to live in the moments before we died."

Death was a given. How to live in the interim was not. . . .

1. What motivated members of the ZOB and other Jews in the Warsaw ghetto to take part in the armed resistance? How was their resistance similar to other examples of resistance that you have learned about in Chapters 8 and 9? How was it different?

2. Compare and contrast the accounts of the uprising given by General Jürgen Stroop and survivor Simcha Rotem. What does each reveal? How do they differ? How would our understanding of these events be different if we had only Stroop's report?

3. Scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote that for those who resisted, "Death was a given." With such terrible odds against them, why did so many Jews participate in the Warsaw ghetto uprising? Did their resistance matter?

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Throughout their imprisonment in the ghettos, Jews had found ways to defy and resist Nazi conquerors: they organized mutual aid societies, they continued to practice their religion and educate their children, and they made heroic efforts to document their lives (see reading, Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto in Chapter 8).

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After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States. On December 8, 1941 (the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), Alan Lomax, then "assistant in charge" of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the American Folklife Center archive), sent a telegram to fieldworkers in ten different localities across the United States, asking them to collect "man-on-the-street" reactions of ordinary Americans to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States. A second series of interviews, called "Dear Mr. President," was recorded in January and February 1942. Both collections are included in this presentation. They feature a wide diversity of opinion concerning the war and other social and political issues of the day, such as racial prejudice and labor disputes. The result is a portrait of everyday life in America as the United States entered World War II.

Pete Seeger playing banjo, 1948. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, New York World Telegram and Sun Newspaper Collection. Photograph by Mel Kirkwood. Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-124417.

The 1941 recordings were made as a part of the the Library of Congress' Radio Research Project. A portion of this project aimed to create documentary recordings of Americans from around the country who described their lives, sang their songs, and told the stories of their own regions. The project's staff believed that most commercial radio broadcasts of the day were dominated by programs created in the great urban centers and that these programs failed to reflect regional culture, local talent, and, in particular, the voices of the people speaking in their own words. Alan Lomax was serving as folklore consultant for the project when he sent the December 8, 1941 telegram, asking fieldworkers to collect "man-on-the-street" reactions. This request resulted in approximately four and one half hours of recordings that were used to create a fifteen-minute radio program for the Mutual Broadcasting System.

A second set of recordings, in which the interviewees were asked to address their thoughts and opinions on the attack and the declaration of war directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was made under the auspices of the Office of Emergency Management in January and February 1942. These recordings total approximately seven and one half hours and were also used to create a radio program, entitled "Dear Mr. President," which was broadcast in May 1942. Pete Seeger and Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) recorded original songs for the "Dear Mr. President" interviews. Included in this presentation are Pete Seeger's "Dear Mr. President" and "The Martins and Coys."

In most cases, the recordings were digitized by Library of Congress staff directly from the discs on which they were originally recorded. The only editing redacted interviewee names from several recordings and removed Leadbelly's two songs for which permissions have not yet been received. Otherwise, the recordings are presented as they were originally recorded.

This online presentation includes one essay: "Making and Maintaining the Original Recordings." Also included are biographies of the fieldworkers who conducted and arranged the interviews, complete transcripts of the interviews, related manuscripts, and original disc sleeves.

This online presentation also includes a set of interviews conducted in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. During the course of these interviews, Library interviewers advised some interviewees that the interviews would not be broadcast. Presumably, the agreement to safeguard the identity of these persons was intentional, as some of the interviewees worked for the Federal government and/or otherwise required anonymity in order to participate. For this reason, the Library has edited the Washington, D.C., audiotapes and transcripts to remove interviewee names.

This presentation was made possible with the generous support of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the New Deal Network.

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About this Collection - After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor

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After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.

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Battle of Bataan | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they invaded Luzon, Philippines in January 1942. Despite insufficient supplies, American and Filipino troops were able to fight for three months. Eventually, they surrendered to Japanese troops and were forced into the Bataan Death March—where some of the most…

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contributor-Kazuo Nikawa,　Sadao Oshita,　Masae Himuro,　Shigeko Orimen,　Nobuo Tetsutani,　Junnosuke　Taniguchi,　Sumitomo Bank Hiroshima Branch, Sumio Watanabe, Hiroshi Doi, Chiyoko Kosaka, Hiroshima Prefectural Government, Hiroko Yamashita, Akijiro Yashima, Tokuso Wakamoto, Shigeo Sasaki, Masahiro Sasaki, Taiji Obara, Shigemi Hamamoto, US Army

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contributor-Kazuo Nikawa,　Sadao Oshita,　Masae Himuro,　Shigeko Orimen,　Nobuo Tetsutani,　Junnosuke　Taniguchi,　Sumitomo Bank Hiroshima Branch, Sumio Watanabe, Hiroshi Doi, Chiyoko Kosaka, Hiroshima Prefectural Government, Hiroko Yamashita, Akijiro Yashima, Tokuso Wakamoto, Shigeo Sasaki, Masahiro Sasaki, Taiji Obara, Shigemi Hamamoto, US Army

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"task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."

Communicating the Nazi Message

Nazi Following the seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry's aim was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.

There were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935 (before the Nuremberg Race Laws of September) and in 1938 (prior to the barrage of antisemitic economic legislation following Kristallnacht ). Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and "restoring order."

Real and perceived discrimination against ethnic Germans in east European nations which had gained territory at Germany's expense following World War I, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, was the subject of Nazi propaganda. This propaganda sought to elicit political loyalty and so-called race consciousness among the ethnic German populations. It also sought to mislead foreign governments-including the European Great Powers-that Nazi Germany was making understandable and fair demands for concessions and annexations.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Nazi propaganda stressed to both civilians at home and to soldiers, police officers, and non-German auxiliaries serving in occupied territory themes linking Soviet Communism to European Jewry, presenting Germany as the defender of "Western" culture against the "Judeo-Bolshevik threat," and painting an apocalyptic picture of what would happen if the Soviets won the war. This was particularly the case after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943. These themes may have been instrumental in inducing Nazi and non-Nazi Germans as well as local collaborators to fight on until the very end.

The Role of Film

(1938), depicted the Films in particular played an important role in disseminating racial antisemitism, the superiority of German military power, and the intrinsic evil of the enemies as defined by Nazi ideology. Nazi films portrayed Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating Aryan society. For example, The Eternal Jew (1940), directed by Fritz Hippler, portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites, consumed by sex and money. Some films, such as The Triumph of the Will (1935) by Leni Riefenstahl , glorified Hitler and the National Socialist movement. Two other Riefenstahl works, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty and promoted national pride in the successes of the Nazi regime at the Olympics. 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

The Role of Newspapers

Newspapers in Germany, above all Der Stürmer (The Attacker), printed cartoons that used antisemitic caricatures to depict Jews. After the Germans began World War II with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi regime employed propaganda to impress upon German civilians and soldiers that the Jews were not only subhuman, but also dangerous enemies of the German Reich. The regime aimed to elicit support, or at least acquiescence, for policies aimed at removing Jews permanently from areas of German settlement.

Covering up Atrocities and Mass Murder

During the implementation of the " ," the mass murder of European Jews, SS officials at Final Solution killing centers compelled the victims of the Holocaust to maintain the deception necessary to deport the Jews from Germany and occupied Europe as smoothly as possible. Concentration camp and killing center officials compelled prisoners, many of whom would soon die in the gas chambers, to send postcards home stating that they were being treated well and living in good conditions. Here, the camp authorities used propaganda to cover up atrocities and mass murder.

In June 1944, the German Security Police permitted an camp-ghetto, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (today: Czech Republic). The SS and police had established Theresienstadt in November 1941 as an instrument of propaganda for domestic consumption in the German Reich. The camp-ghetto was used as an explanation for Germans who were puzzled by the deportation of German and Austrian Jews who were elderly, disabled war veterans, or locally known artists and musicians "to the East" for "labor." In preparation for the 1944 visit, the International Red Cross team to inspect the Theresienstadt ghetto underwent a "beautification" program. In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish "residents" of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. When the film was completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

Mobilizing the Population

The Nazi regime used propaganda effectively to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest until the very end of the regime. Nazi propaganda was likewise essential to motivating those who implemented the mass murder of the European Jews and of other victims of the Nazi regime. It also served to secure the acquiescence of millions of others-as bystanders -to racially targeted persecution and mass murder.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Nazi propaganda had a key role in the persecution of Jews. Learn more about how Hitler and the Nazi Party used propaganda to facilitate war and genocide.

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State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda was underwritten in part by grants from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation and Katherine M. and Leo S. Ullman with additional support from the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund established in 1990.

EXHIBITION DEVELOPMENT

Curator
Steven Luckert

EXHIBITION DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Design
LaymanDesign, Glenview, Ill.

Video Programs
Cortina Productions, McLean, Va.

SOURCES
Austria
Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna

Bulgaria
Bulgarska Nacionalna Filmoteka, Sofia

Germany
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin
Bundesarchiv, Koblenz
Deutsches Fotothek der Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart
Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt
Historisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
Landesarchiv Berlin
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
Stadtarchiv Nürnberg
Stadtarchiv Wartburgstadt Eisenach
Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Wiesbaden
Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo, Munich
Transit Film GmbH, Munich
20th Century Fox of Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Ullstein Bild, Berlin
Yildiz Film, Munich

Israel
Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, Western Galilee
Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Jerusalem

Poland
Institut Pamięci Narodowej, Warsaw

Russia
Rossiisky Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kinematography, Krasnogorsk

United Kingdom
Lebrecht Music and Arts, London

United States
AJC Center for Jewish Research, New York
Art Resource, New York
Randall Bytwerk
Corbis, New York
Getty Images, New York
Granger Collection, New York
International Historic Films, Inc., Chicago, Ill.
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Calif.
Julian Bryan Archive, New York
Killer Tracks Production Music, Santa Monica, Calif.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.
National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia
U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, Fla.

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State of Deception - Google Arts & Culture

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After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to which he appointed Joseph Goebbels as leader. Himself a painter in his youth, Hitler understood the power of propaganda, though it was Goebbels who was to use it to the greatest effect.

Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea.

-Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf

Anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda came in the shape of speeches, actions, music, theatre, radio, publications, education and art. One of the chief jobs of Hitler's propaganda machine was to convince those Germans who were not anti-Semitic.

Some propaganda was even so brazen as to proclaim that the Jewish people were not being persecuted by the Nazis, even while referring to Jews in insulting terms and displaying drawings with racist caricatures.

1. Posters

Arguably the most striking and memorable examples of the Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda campaign come in the form of posters. Making use of stark imagery and blunt racial messages, this media penetrated all sections of German society, literally painting Jews as outsiders and sinister enemies of 'ordinary' people.

The Nazi propaganda machine also used posters - as well as other materials that made similar use of graphic art - in occupied territories, such as Poland and France.

2. Comics

Pro-Nazi newspapers, especially Der Stürmer ('The Attacker'), frequently ran comics or cartoons depicting Jews as dangerous and subhuman. The use of these kinds of hate-stirring comics even extended to their inclusion in children's books.

3. Articles and essays

Written materials in periodicals and pamphlets took on a more argumentative form, which lent 'weight' to the simplistic slogans and caricatures of posters and cartoons.

Essays like Kurt Hilmar Eitzen's 1936 piece 'Ten Responses to Jewish Lackeys' were hardly subtle or philosophical, but they provided all manner of reasons to mistrust and hate the Jew, from economic and religious arguments to appeals for national pride.

4. Film

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' projects included anti-Semitic films such as Jud Süss, based on a popular 1925 historical novel, which was actually written by Lion Feuchtwanger, a successful author who was himself a Jew.

Director Veit Harlan turned Feuchtwanger's philosophical story, as well as previous interpretations for film and theatre, on its head. Victim becomes villain and an oppressive justice system is instead portrayed as righteous.

Harlan's Jud Süss is an inflammatory piece of film propaganda, which was successful at the box office as well as shown at indoctrination events by the SS and Hitler Youth.

5. Art exhibitions

'The Eternal Jew' exhibition took place in Munich's German Museum library in 1937-38, followed by runs in Vienna and Berlin in 1938-39. Though the Nazi Party line was anti-modern art, the pieces shown at 'The Eternal Jew' were distinctly avant-garde in nature, the point being to invite the public to them.

Termed by the Nazis as 'degenerate', modern art was shown at other free exhibitions in a number of cities.

Though the purpose of these propaganda exhibits was to discredit the art they displayed, the long running 'The Eternal Jew' and other shows proved to be very popular, despite the Nazis associating the art with Jews and Communists.

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5 Examples of Anti-Jewish Propaganda in Nazi Germany

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After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to which he appointed Joseph Goebbels as leader. Himself a painter in his youth, Hitler understood the power of propaganda, though it was Goebbels who was to use it to the greatest effect.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

Japanese imperialism was about increasing its territory on the Asian mainland and elsewhere in the region, but it wasn't simply fueled by territorial ambition. There was also a strong ideological sense of mission. And this was encompassed in a word, which we don't hear much nowadays but which was very much used at the time, the idea of Pan-Asianism. In other words, in the Japanese mind, the idea that they were expanding their empire in Asia, not simply to increase their own territory but to liberate those territories from Western imperialism-from the British, the French, the Dutch, the Americans-all of whom had colonies in the region.

Now, this idea, of course, was highly misleading because, of course, essentially the Japanese were just replacing one empire with another. But they argued that because they were Asians too, because they had an idea of wanting to bring their Asian brothers to the same level that the Japanese themselves were at, that somehow their mission was different. And even today in Japan in some quarters, you will hear a justification of Japan's military aggression and expansion on exactly those grounds. Pan-Asianism started as an idea that had more to do with shared Asian culture, but by the 1930s, it was really a fig leaf for militarist expansion.

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MUSIC PLAYING] Japanese imperialism was about increasing its territory on the Asian mainland and elsewhere in the region, but it wasn't simply fueled by territorial ambition. There was also a strong ideological sense of mission. And this was encompassed in a word, which we don't hear much nowadays but which was very much used at the time, the idea of Pan-Asianism.

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The World at War: 1931-1945

Economic Background

While the United States was still struggling to emerge from the Great Depression at the end of the 1930s, and would do so partly because of the war, Japan had emerged from its own period of depression, which had begun in 1926, by the mid-1930s. Many of the young soldiers mobilized into the Japanese army by the early 1930s came from the rural areas, where the effects of the depression were devastating and poverty was widespread. Their commitment to the military effort to expand Japanese territory to achieve economic security can be understood partly in these terms. The depression ended in the mid-1930s in Japan partly because of government deficits used to expand greatly both heavy industry and the military.

Internationally, this was a time when "free trade" was in disrepute. The great powers not only jealously protected their special economic rights within their colonies and spheres of influence, but sought to bolster their sagging economies through high tariffs, dumping of goods, and other trade manipulation. The Japanese, with few natural resources, sought to copy this pattern. They used cutthroat trade practices to sell textiles and other light industrial goods in the East Asian and U.S. markets, severely undercutting British and European manufacturers. They also developed sources of raw materials and heavy industry in the colonies they established in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. Japan used high tariffs to limit imports of American and European industrial products.

The Japanese military faced a particular tactical problem in that certain critical raw materials - especially oil and rubber - were not available within the Japanese sphere of influence. Instead, Japan received most of its oil from the United States and rubber from British Malaya, the very two Western nations trying to restrict Japan's expansion. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's embargo of oil exports to Japan pressured the Japanese navy, which had stocks for only about six months of operations.

The Japanese army, for its part, was originally concerned with fighting the Soviet Union, because of the army's preoccupation with Manchuria and China. The Japanese army governed Manchuria indirectly through the "puppet" state of Manchukuo and developed heavy industry there under its favorite agencies, disliking and distrusting the zaibatsu (large Japanese corporations). But the Soviet army's resistance to Japanese attacks was sufficient to discourage northern expansion.

Meanwhile in 1937, the intensification of Chinese resistance to the pressure of the Japanese military drew Japan into a draining war in the vast reaches of China proper, and in 1940 into operations in French Indochina, far to the south. Thus, when the navy pressed for a "southern" strategy of attacking Dutch Indonesia to get its oil and British Malaya to control its rubber, the army agreed.

While it seems that economic factors were important in Japanese expansion in East Asia, it would be too much to say that colonialism, trade protection, and the American embargo compelled Japan to take this course. Domestic politics, ideology and racism also played a role.
Domestic Politics
The political structure of Japan at this time was inherited from the Meiji era and was increasingly dominated by the military. During the Meiji period, the government was controlled by a small ruling group of elder statesmen who had overthrown the shogun and established the new centralized Japanese state. These men used their position to coordinate the bureaucracy, the military, the parliament, the Imperial Household, and other branches of government. Following their deaths in the early 1920s, no single governmental institution was able to establish full control, until the 1931 Manchurian Incident, when Japan took control of Manchuria. This began a process in which the military behaved autonomously on the Asian mainland and with increasing authority in politics at home.

From 1937 on, Japan was at war with China. By the time General Hideki Tôjô became prime minister and the war against the United States began in 1941, the nation was in a state of "total war" and the military and their supporters were able to force their policies on the government and the people. The wartime regime used existing government controls on public opinion, including schools and textbooks, the media, and the police, but Japan continued to have more of an authoritarian government than a totalitarian one like Hitler's Germany. In particular, the government was never able to gain real control of the economy and the great zaibatsu, which were more interested in the economic opportunities provided by the military's policies than in submitting loyally to a patriotic mission.

The emperor has been criticized for not taking a more forceful action to restrain his government, especially in light of his own known preference for peace, but Japanese emperors after the Meiji Restoration had "reigned but not ruled." One wonders if a more forceful emperor in fact could have controlled the army and navy at this late date. The doubts are strengthened in light of the difficulty the emperor had in forcing the military to accept surrender after the atomic bombings. The emperor's decision at that point to bring agreement among his advisers was an extraordinary event in Japanese history.
Ideology
The emperor-based ideology of Japan during World War II was a relatively new creation, dating from the efforts of Meiji oligarchs to unite the nation in response to the Western challenge. Before the Meiji Restoration, the emperor wielded no political power and was viewed simply as a symbol of the Japanese culture. He was the head of the Shintô religion, Japan's native religion, which holds, among other beliefs, that the emperor is descended from gods who created Japan and is therefore semidivine. Westerners of that time knew him only as a shadowy figure somewhat like a pope.

The Meiji oligarchs brought the emperor and Shintô to national prominence, replacing Buddhism as the national religion, for political and ideological reasons - since Buddhism had originated in India and come to Japan via China. The people were not allowed to look at the emperor, or even to speak his name; patriotism had been raised to the unassailable level of sacredness.

It is sometimes difficult to comprehend the extreme sacrifices the Japanese made in the name of the emperor. This can perhaps best be viewed, however, as extreme patriotism - Japanese were taught to give their lives, if necessary, for their emperor. But this was not entirely different from the Americans who gave their lives in the same war for their country and the "American" way. The kamikaze pilots, who were named for the "divine wind" (kami kaze) that destroyed the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century and saved Japan from invasion, might be compared to the young Iranian soldiers fighting in suicide squadrons in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, or even to fanatical Shiites responsible for the truck bombing of the U.S. Lebanese embassy in 1983.
Racism
The Japanese were proud of their many accomplishments and resented racial slurs they met with in some Western nations. Their attempt to establish a statement of racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations was vetoed by the United States (because of opposition in California) and Great Britain (Australian resistance). The Japanese greatly resented this.

The Japanese military was convinced of the willingness of its people to go to any sacrifice for their nation, and it was contemptuous of the "softness" of the U.S. and European democracies, where loyalty and patriotism were tempered by the rights and well-being of the individual. The military's overconfidence in its own abilities and underestimation of the will of these other nations were thus rooted in its own misleading ethnic and racial stereotypes. While Asians, the Japanese saw themselves as less representatives of Asia than Asia's champion. They sought to liberate Asian colonies from the Westerners, whom they disdained. But although the Japanese were initially welcomed in some Asian colonies by the indigenous populations whom they "liberated" from European domination, the arrogance and racial prejudice displayed by the Japanese military governments in these nations created great resentment. This resentment is still evident in some Southeast Asian nations.

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Japan's Quest for Power and World War II in Asia | Asia for Educators | Columbia University

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The World at War: 1931-1945 Economic Background While the United States was still struggling to emerge from the Great Depression at the end of the 1930s, and would do so partly because of the war, Japan had emerged from its own period of depression, which had begun in 1926, by the mid-1930s.

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Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Anti-Comintern Pact | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan in 1936 was one of the truly momentous and horrifying conjunctures of the twentieth century.

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1. It got its name before it started.

The stage for the battle was set in May 1940, when Nazi Germany launched a massive blitzkrieg against Western Europe. Hitler's armies overran Belgium, the Netherlands and France in only a matter of weeks, leaving Britain as the lone standing Allied power. During a June 18 speech, Prime Minister Winston Churchill predicted a showdown with Germany when he said, "The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin."

2. Hitler tried to convince Britain to surrender without a fight.

Despite being fresh off his lightning conquest of France, Hitler was wary of invading Britain. The island nation was protected by the English Channel, and its Royal Navy was superior to the German Kriegsmarine. He instead hoped that Britain would acknowledge "her militarily hopeless situation" and sue for peace. A small contingent of British politicians also favored a compromise, but Winston Churchill brushed off talk of surrender and announced that Britain was determined to fight on. He rallied the public by characterizing the coming battle as a struggle for national survival, and when the Nazis dangled the prospect of a peace treaty in early July 1940, he rejected it outright. It was only then that Hitler reluctantly approved plans for Operation Sea Lion, an amphibious invasion originally scheduled to unfold in mid-August.

3. It was the first battle in history waged almost exclusively in the air.

Hitler's plan to invade the British mainland hinged on Germany first annihilating the Royal Air Force and winning air superiority over England. With this in mind, the fight for Britain transformed into an all-air contest between the Luftwaffe's bombers and Messerschmitt Bf109s and British Fighter Command's Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires. Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering initially believed he would easily sweep the RAF aside in just a few days, but the dogfights dragged on for three and a half long months. By the time the battle ended in late-October, Germany had lost more than 1,700 planes-nearly twice as many as the British.

4. The battle included one of the earliest uses of radar in combat.

While the Luftwaffe enjoyed an edge in total aircraft during the early stages of the battle, the RAF had a secret weapon in the form of Radio Direction Finding, better known as radar. Shortly after the technology was developed in the 1930s, the British built a ring of radar stations along their coastline. These "Chain Home" stations were still primitive-a civilian Observer Corps was required to spot low-flying aircraft-but they nevertheless became a crucial part of Britain's strategy. By pinging approaching Luftwaffe raiders with radio waves, the RAF could pin down their location and scramble fighters to intercept them, thereby robbing the Germans of the element of surprise. Nazi leaders never appreciated the importance of British radar, and their failure to degrade it allowed the RAF to consistently remain a step ahead of the Luftwaffe.

5. The Royal Air Force's squadrons included many foreign fighter pilots.

Of the more than 2,900 RAF pilots who served in the Battle of Britain, only around 2,350 were British. The rest were natives of Commonwealth territories such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as expatriates from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and other countries under Nazi occupation. There were even a handful of American pilots, most notably Billy Fiske, a 29-year-old sportsman who had previously won a gold medal for bobsledding at the Winter Olympics. The international contingent proved especially deadly in the cockpit. The Polish No. 303 fighter squadron downed 126 German planes during the battle-more than any Allied unit-and the RAF's top scoring ace was Josef Frantisek, a Czech aviator who singlehandedly claimed 17 aerial victories.

6. Pilot exhaustion and personnel shortages plagued both sides.

For men on both sides of the Battle of Britain, combat fatigue was as persistent a foe as enemy Spitfires and Messerschmitts. German morale sank to dangerous lows as the battle wore on, and British airmen were beaten down by grueling 15-hour shifts and constant Luftwaffe bombing raids on their airfields. Pilots often flew several missions a day on only a few hours of sleep, and many took amphetamine pills just to keep themselves awake. In a bid to bolster its used up fighter force, the RAF eventually cut the training time for new pilots from six months to just two weeks. Some recruits even ended up on the front lines with as little as nine hours' experience in modern fighter planes.

7. A British pilot famously rammed a German bomber to prevent the destruction of Buckingham Palace.

During one of the battle's most frantic periods of fighting over London, RAF Sergeant Ray Holmes spotted a German Dornier bomber headed in the direction of Buckingham Palace. Holmes had already used up all his ammunition in an earlier dogfight, but rather than retiring, he steered his Hawker Hurricane straight at the enemy aircraft and rammed it with his wing. The blow sliced the Dornier's tail clean off and sent it plummeting into nearby Victoria Station. Holmes' Hurricane was also wrecked, but he managed to bail out and land dangling from the roof of an apartment complex. The astonishing incident was partially captured on film, and Holmes was hailed as a national hero for having saved the royal residence from potential disaster.

8. The Spitfire was not Britain's main aircraft.

Thanks to its sleek lines and blistering speed, the Supermarine Spitfire has gone down in popular lore as the plane that saved England during the Battle of Britain. Yet Spitfires only made up a third of the British fighters during the campaign. The bulk of the RAF force consisted of the less glamorous Hawker Hurricane, an older wood-and-fabric fighter that was slower than the Spitfire but reportedly sturdier and more forgiving in combat. While the two planes carried the same armaments, the Hurricane's superior numbers meant that it was responsible for the vast majority of Luftwaffe losses during the battle.

9. Hitler's decision to bomb London turned the battle in Britain's favor.

The Luftwaffe's bombing campaigns in England were initially restricted to military and industrial targets, but the strategy changed in September 1940, after the RAF launched a retaliatory raid against Berlin. The strike sent Hitler into a fit of rage. Ignoring the progress the Luftwaffe was making in attacking RAF air bases, he demanded they shift their focus toward "erasing" British cities from the map. The bombing campaign now known as the Blitz began on September 7 with a raid on London, and dozens more attacks followed over the next several weeks. While the bombings took a sobering toll on British civilians, they also temporarily relieved pressure on the RAF, allowing it to repair its crippled airfields and refresh its pilots. The respite proved critical. When the Luftwaffe tried to score a knockout blow with a massive air attack on September 15, a resilient RAF intercepted them and downed roughly 60 aircraft. Hitler was forced to shelve Operation Sea Lion only a few days later.

10. German bombing raids continued long after the battle had ended.

The Battle of Britain fizzled out in late-October 1940, when Hitler abandoned his quest for control of British airspace and turned his attention toward attacking the Soviet Union. The campaign was Germany's first major defeat in World War II, but it didn't mark the end of the Blitz against Britain. The Luftwaffe continued to conduct nighttime bombing raids over London, Coventry and other cities for several more months in a futile attempt to break Britain's fighting spirit. By the time the campaign finally ended in May 1941, some 40,000 people had been killed.

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10 Things You Should Know About the Battle of Britain

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The stage for the battle was set in May 1940, when Nazi Germany launched a massive blitzkrieg against Western Europe. Hitler's armies overran Belgium, the Netherlands and France in only a matter of weeks, leaving Britain as the lone standing Allied power.

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In the spring of 1940, Hitler's armies smashed across the borders of the Netherlands and Belgium and streamed into the northern reaches of France. The German "Blitzkrieg" moved swiftly to the west and the south, splitting the British and French defenders, trapping the British army at Dunkirk and forcing its evacuation from continental Europe. The Germans entered Paris on June 14 and forced

France's surrender on June 22. The British now stood alone, awaiting Hitler's inevitable attempt to invade and conquer their island.
Great Britain was in trouble. The soldiers rescued from Dunkirk were exhausted by their ordeal. Worse, most of their heavy armaments lay abandoned and rusting on the French beaches. After a short rest, the Germans began air attacks in early summer designed to seize mastery of the skies over England in preparation for invasion. All that stood between the British and defeat was a small force of RAF pilots outnumbered in the air by four to one.

Day after day the Germans sent armadas of bombers and fighters over England hoping to lure the RAF into battle and annihilate the defenders. Day after day the RAF scrambled their pilots into the sky to do battle often three, four or five times a day. Britain's air defense bent but did not break. By September, the Germans lost enthusiasm for the assault. Hitler postponed and then canceled invasion plans, turning his attention to the defeat of Russia. In appreciation of the RAF pilots' heroic effort, Winston Churchill declared: "Never before in human history was so much owed by so many to so few."

In the summer of 1940, twenty-one-year-old Pilot Officer John Beard was a member of a squadron of Hurricanes based near London. Waiting on the airfield while his plane is rearmed and refueled, Beard receives word of a large German attack force making its way up the Thames River towards London. The afternoon sun illuminates a cloudless blue sky as Beard and his fellow pilots lift their planes off the grass airstrip and climb to meet the enemy. The defenders level off at 15,000 feet and wait for the attackers to appear:

"Minutes went by. Green fields and roads were now beneath us. I scanned the sky and the horizon for the first glimpse of the Germans. A new vector came through on the R.T. [radio telephone] and we swung round with the sun behind us. Swift on the heels of this I heard Yellow flight leader call through the earphones. I looked quickly toward Yellow's position, and there they were! It was really a terrific sight and quite beautiful. First they seemed just a cloud of light as the sun caught the many glistening chromium parts of their engines, their windshields, and the spin of their airscrew discs. Then, as our squadron hurtled nearer, the details stood out. I could see the bright-yellow noses of Messerschmitt fighters sandwiching the bombers, and could even pick out some of the types. The sky seemed full of them, packed in layers thousands of feet deep. They came on steadily, wavering up and down along the horizon. 'Oh, golly,' I thought, 'golly, golly . . .'

And then any tension I had felt on the way suddenly left me. I was elated but very calm. I leaned over and switched on my reflector sight, flicked the catch on the gun button from 'Safe' to 'Fire,' and lowered my seat till the circle and dot on the reflector sight shone darkly red in front of my eyes.

The squadron leader's voice came through the earphones, giving tactical orders. We swung round in a great circle to attack on their beam-into the thick of them. Then, on the order, down we went. I took my hand from the throttle lever so as to get both hands on the stick, and my thumb played neatly across the gun button. You have to steady a fighter just as you have to steady a rifle before you fire it.

My Merlin [the airplane's engine] screamed as I went down in a steeply banked dive on to the tail of a forward line of Heinkels. I knew the air was full of aircraft flinging themselves about in all directions, but, hunched and snuggled down behind my sight, I was conscious only of the Heinkel I had picked out. As the angle of my dive increased, the enemy machine loomed larger in the sight field, heaved toward the red dot, and then he was there!

I had an instant's flash of amazement at the Heinkel proceeding so regularly on its way with a fighter on its tail. 'Why doesn't the fool move?' I thought, and actually caught myself flexing my muscles into the action I would have taken had I been he.

When he was square across the sight I pressed the button. There was a smooth trembling of my

Hurricane as the eight-gun squirt shot out. I gave him a two-second burst and then another. Cordite fumes blew back into the cockpit, making an acrid mixture with the smell of hot oil and the air-compressors.
I saw my first burst go in and, just as I was on top of him and turning away, I noticed a red glow inside the bomber. I turned tightly into position again and now saw several short tongues of flame lick out along the fuselage. Then he went down in a spin, blanketed with smoke and with pieces flying off.

I left him plummeting down and, horsing back on my stick, climbed up again for more. The sky was clearing, but ahead toward London I saw a small, tight formation of bombers completely encircled by a ring of Messerschmitts. They were still heading north. As I raced forward, three flights of Spitfires came zooming up from beneath them in a sort of Prince-of-Wales's-feathers maneuver. They burst through upward and outward, their guns going all the time. They must have each got one, for an instant later I saw the most extraordinary sight of eight German bombers and fighters diving earthward together in flames.

I turned away again and streaked after some distant specks ahead. Diving down, I noticed that the running progress of the battle had brought me over London again. I could see the network of streets with the green space of Kensington Gardens, and I had an instant's glimpse of the Round Pond, where

I sailed boats when I was a child. In that moment, and as I was rapidly overhauling the Germans ahead, a Dornier 17 sped right across my line of flight, closely pursued by a Hurricane. And behind the Hurricane came two Messerschmitts. He was too intent to have seen them and they had not seen me! They were coming slightly toward me. It was perfect. A kick at the rudder and I swung in toward them, thumbed the gun button, and let them have it. The first burst was placed just the right distance ahead of the leading Messerschmitt. He ran slap into it and he simply came to pieces in the air. His companion, with one of the speediest and most brilliant 'get-outs' I have ever seen, went right away in a half Immelmann turn. I missed him completely. He must almost have been hit by the pieces of the leader but he got away. I hand it to him.
At that moment some instinct made me glance up at my rear-view mirror and spot two Messerschmitts closing in on my tail. Instantly I hauled back on the stick and streaked upward. And just in time. For as I flicked into the climb, I saw, the tracer streaks pass beneath me. As I turned I had a quick look round the "office" [cockpit]. My fuel reserve was running out and I had only about a second's supply of ammunition left. I was certainly in no condition to take on two Messerschrnitts. But they seemed no more eager than I was. Perhaps they were in the same position, for they turned away for home. I put my nose down and did likewise."

References:
This eyewitness account was originally published in: Michie, Allan A. and Walter Graebner, Their Finest Hour (1941)and subsequently reprinted in Commager, Henry Steele, The Story of the Second World War (1945); Deighton, Lee, Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain (1977).

How To Cite This Article:
"Battle of Britain, 1940," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).

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In the spring of 1940, Hitler's armies smashed across the borders of the Netherlands and Belgium and streamed into the northern reaches of France. The German "Blitzkrieg" moved swiftly to the west and the south, splitting the British and French defenders, trapping the British army at Dunkirk and forcing its evacuation from continental Europe.

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By the summer of 1939, war in Europe seemed inevitable. As people braced themselves, many wondered how the Soviet Union would respond. For years, Hitler had targeted the Soviet Union and the Communist Party as Germany's primary enemy. Joseph Stalin held similar views of Germany and the Nazi Party.

To the surprise of almost everyone, the two dictators announced a nonaggression pact on August 23, 1939. The two men agreed that their countries would not to attack each other, either independently or along with other nations. They also vowed to consult each other in order to provide information or raise questions concerning their common interests and also to resolve any differences through negotiation or arbitration. The pact would be in effect for ten years, with an automatic extension for another five years unless either party gave notice to end it.

The treaty startled people everywhere. Both Stalin and Hitler knew that their internal propaganda machines would have to work hard to change current public opinion within their nations and also to change the negative perceptions that each country had been cultivating about the other. According to historian Roger Moorhouse:

[T]he tone of public and cultural life in the Soviet Union shifted after the signing of the pact. From one day to the next, the newspapers stopped criticizing Nazi Germany and instead began lauding German achievements. As Kravencho (a factory director) noted . . . "The Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries instantly discovered the wonders of German Kultur. Visiting Moscow on business, I learned that several exhibits of Nazi art, Nazi economic achievements and Nazi military glory were on view or in the process of organization. In fact, everything Germanic was in vogue."

In Germany, people were equally surprised. As in the Soviet Union, official propaganda reversed itself quickly after its years of attacks on Soviet communism. According to Moorhouse:

Public discourse was uniformly positive about the pact, with German newspapers immediately altering the tone with which they reported Soviet current affairs or Russian culture. Where reporters and editors had once been unable to resist inserting-at the very least-a derogatory adjective or a critical aside, they now reported events with scrupulous evenhandedness. On the morning of the pact's announcement, the newspapers seemed desperate to make the case for the new arrangement. Every title carried almost verbatim reports and commentaries, scripted under Goebbels's supervision, rejoicing at the restoration of the "traditional friendship between the Russian and the German peoples." In the Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, [German Foreign Minister] Ribbentrop congratulated himself by lauding his achievement as "one of the most important turning points in the history of our two peoples." Even the in-house newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarze Korps, toed the optimistic line, reminding its readers, in a gallop through Russian and Soviet history, that the empire of the tsars had originally been a Germanic state, that it had twice "saved" Prussia, and that it had "paid dearly" for its enmity with Germany in World War I. Echoing Ribbentrop, the newspaper concluded that the two countries had always flourished when they were friends and so looked forward to a new era of collaboration.

At the time, only a handful of diplomats from both countries knew that the treaty contained a set of secret clauses in which Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland and other parts of eastern Europe between them. The clauses were not made public until much later.

1. Why did the Soviet Union and Germany enter into a nonaggression pact? What was in the secret clauses that might have convinced them to sign the pact?

2. What changes in propaganda did German leaders have to make after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact? What changes were also necessary in the Soviet Union?

3. Historian Gerhard Weinberg has argued that for Hitler, the primary objective of treaties was "either the immediate gain of space by the partitioning of third countries or the postponement of troubles considered dangerous at the moment until they could be faced with safety. In either case, treaties were temporary instruments to be broken as soon as they were no longer useful." How does this reading support that argument?

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By the summer of 1939, war in Europe seemed inevitable. As people braced themselves, many wondered how the Soviet Union would respond. For years, Hitler had targeted the Soviet Union and the Communist Party as Germany's primary enemy. Joseph Stalin held similar views of Germany and the Nazi Party.

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An Assessment of the Nazi-Soviet Pact (Classroom Activity)

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Primary sources with questions and answers on An Assessment of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Classroom lessons activities with primary sources and student questions and answers. Key Stage 3. GCSE Modern World History - Nazi Germany. A-level - Life in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945

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The Soviet Role in World War II: Realities and Myths

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As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, it would be much better not only for the history of Russia but also for the country’s future if Russian leaders were willing to permit—and even encourage—a more even-handed discussion of the Soviet Union’s role in the war.

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During World War II Stalin emerged, after an unpromising start, as the most successful of the supreme leaders thrown up by the belligerent nations. In August 1939, after first attempting to form an anti-Hitler alliance with the Western powers, he concluded a pact with Hitler, which encouraged the German dictator to attack Poland and begin World War II. Anxious to strengthen his western frontiers while his new but palpably treacherous German ally was still engaged in the West, Stalin annexed eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania; he also attacked Finland and extorted territorial concessions. In May 1941 Stalin recognized the growing danger of German attack on the Soviet Union by appointing himself chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (head of the government); it was his first governmental office since 1923.

Yalta Conference Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives

Study how Stalin's Soviet Union employed scorched-earth tactics against German troops on the Eastern Front Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Examine how Stalin's Red Army defeated Hitler's Fourth and Sixth armies in the Battle of Stalingrad Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Stalin's prewar defensive measures were exposed as incompetent by the German blitzkrieg that surged deep into Soviet territory after Hitler's unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union of June 22, 1941. Khrushchev claimed that Stalin was shocked into temporary inactivity by the onslaught, but, if so, he soon rallied and appointed himself supreme commander in chief. When the Germans menaced Moscow in the winter of 1941, he remained in the threatened capital, helping to organize a great counter-offensive. The Battle of Stalingrad (in the following winter) and the Battle of Kursk (in the summer of 1943) were also won by the Soviet Army under Stalin's supreme direction, turning the tide of invasion against the retreating Germans, who capitulated in May 1945. As war leader, Stalin maintained close personal control over the Soviet battlefronts, military reserves, and war economy. At first over-inclined to intervene with inept telephoned instructions, as Hitler did, the Soviet generalissimo gradually learned to delegate military decisions.

Learn about the Potsdam Conference attended by Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin to decide the future of Germany and Europe after WWII Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz See all videos for this article

Stalin participated in high-level Allied meetings, including those of the "Big Three" with Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehrān (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945). A formidable negotiator, he outwitted these foreign statesmen; his superior skill has been acclaimed by Anthony Eden, then British foreign secretary.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Last years

After the war, Stalin imposed on eastern Europe a new kind of colonial control based on native Communist regimes nominally independent but in fact subservient to himself. He thus increased the number of his subjects by about a hundred million. But in 1948 the defection of Titoist Yugoslavia from the Soviet camp struck a severe blow to world Communism as a Stalin-dominated monolith. To prevent other client states from following Tito's example, Stalin instigated local show trials, manipulated like those of the Great Purge of the 1930s in Russia, in which satellite Communist leaders confessed to Titoism, many being executed.

Far from continuing his wartime alliance with the United States and Great Britain, Stalin now regarded these countries-and especially the United States-as the arch-enemies that he needed after Hitler's death. At home, the primacy of Marxist ideology was harshly reasserted. Stalin's chief ideological hatchet man, Andrey Zhdanov, a secretary of the Central Committee, began a reign of terror in the Soviet artistic and intellectual world; foreign achievements were derided, and the primacy of Russians as inventors and pioneers in practically every field was asserted. Hopes for domestic relaxation, widely aroused in the Soviet Union during the war, were thus sadly disappointed.

Increasingly suspicious and paranoid in his later years, Stalin ordered the arrest, announced in January 1953, of certain-mostly Jewish- Kremlin doctors on charges of medically murdering various Soviet leaders, including Zhdanov. The dictator was evidently preparing to make this " Doctors' Plot " the pretext for yet another great terror menacing all his senior associates, but he died suddenly on March 5, according to the official report; so convenient was this death to his entourage that suspicions of foul play were voiced.

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Joseph Stalin - Joseph Stalin - Role in World War II: During World War II Stalin emerged, after an unpromising start, as the most successful of the supreme leaders thrown up by the belligerent nations.

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In this section, you can find important primary and secondary source documents on the Manhattan Project, the Cold War, nuclear tests, and more. These documents trace key decisions, moments, and characters of the making of the atomic bomb in World War II.

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LibGuides: Primary Sources: World War II: Manhattan Project

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primary sources related to WWII (1939-1945)

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This Week in Military History | The Bataan Death March | Season 2 | PBS

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Thousands of U.S. POWs took Bataan Death March after the Battle of Bataan in World War II.