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WWII HISTORY FROM THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM

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WWII HISTORY FROM THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM

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First Washington Conference: ARCADIA

The First Washington Conference, code-named ARCADIA, from December 22, 1941 to January 14, 1942, set the strategic direction for the Anglo-American war effort and established the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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The War | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The First Washington Conference, code-named ARCADIA, from December 22, 1941 to January 14, 1942, set the strategic direction for the Anglo-American war effort and established the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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Childhood

Born on July 29, 1883, in Verano di Costa, Italy, Mussolini was the son of blacksmith and ardent socialist Alessandro Mussolini and a devout Catholic mother, Rosa Maltoni. By most accounts, Mussolini's family lived in simple, small quarters.

Young Mussolini was expelled from his first boarding school at age 10 for stabbing a fellow student. At 14, he stabbed another student but was only suspended.

Socialist Activism

Much of Mussolini's early adulthood was spent traveling around Switzerland, getting involved with that country's Socialist Party and clashing with police. In 1909, he moved to Austria-Hungary to become editor of a socialist newspaper, but was deported back to Italy after being accused of violating laws meant to regulate press freedom.

In 1910, Mussolini became the editor for another Italian socialist newspaper, but soon spent six months in jail for inciting violence. During his incarceration, he began to write his autobiography-though still in his twenties-detailing his troubled school years and his many romantic conquests.

Mussolini split from the Socialist Party in 1914. Starting his own newspaper, he encouraged violence from his supporters as unrest spread across the country.

Italian Facism

In 1915, Mussolini joined the Italian army in World War I. He fought on the front lines and obtained the rank of corporal before being discharged for a war wound. Mussolini returned to newspapers and by 1918 called for a dictator to seize control of Italy. Pressure from Mussolini and his followers forced the government to order the internment of foreigners they considered enemies.

After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-and his dissatisfaction with it-Mussolini gathered the various fascist groups into a national organization called Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. The Italian Fascists courted war veterans and encouraged violence against socialists. Mussolini stockpiled weapons and explosives in his newspaper offices.

Children and Marriages

Mussolini was married twice: to Ida Dalser in 1914, and to his longtime mistress Rachele Guidi one year later. Additionally, Mussolini had a number of other mistresses and liaisons.

His first marriage produced a son, Benito Albino Mussolini. Following Mussolini's second marriage, records of his first marriage and son were destroyed or suppressed, and both wife and son were kept under constant surveillance. Italian authorities sent Ida to an island near Venice, where she died in 1937. Her son was forced into an asylum near Milan, where he died in 1942 at age 26.

Mussolini's marriage to Rachele lasted until his death. The couple had five children: three sons, Vittorio, Bruno and Romano, and two daughters, Edda and Anna Maria. Rachele died in 1979 at age 89.

Rise to Power

By the end of 1919, Mussolini stood in a general election as the Fascist candidate but lost in a Socialist sweep. Two days later, Mussolini was arrested for allegedly collecting arms to overthrow the government. He was released without charges the next day.

In 1921, the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III dissolved Parliament amidst growing violence and chaos. Elections brought a huge win for the Fascists, with Mussolini taking a seat as a deputy in Parliament. The party changed its name to Partito Nazionale Fascista.

Fascists Seize Control of Italy

In 1922, Fascists were instructed to wear uniforms, including black shirts, in squads that were modeled after Roman army groups. All party members were considered squad members.

Soon after, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads, who also burned down communist and socialist offices.

In October 1922, Mussolini threatened to march on Rome to take control of the government through violent force if it was not handed over. King Victor Emmanuel and the government were slow to act, eventually dispatching troops, though Fascists had already seized control of some local governments.

Refusing to pass martial law, Victor Emmanuel watched as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome. He dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.

Prime Minister Mussolini

Mussolini became Prime Minister, as well as Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mussolini did not become a dictator overnight, but a speech he gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, 1925, asserting his right to supreme power is generally seen as the effective date that Mussolini declared himself dictator of Italy.

Mussolini's first act as prime minister was to demand special emergency powers allowing him to rig elections in the Fascists' favor. Soon after, the Italian parliament made suspicion of being anti-Fascist punishable by imprisonment without trial.

The next year police rounded-up Socialists, and the government restricted their publishing activities. A Socialist deputy plotted to assassinate Mussolini, but the betrayal of a friend led to his arrest just before the attempt. Several other assassination attempts followed.

Italy Under Fascism

In 1926, Fascists created a youth group called the Opera Nazionale Balilla, pressuring children to join. The Catholic Boy Scouts were dissolved and the formation of other youth groups became illegal.

The same year, all communist members of Parliament were arrested, and all Socialist Party members expelled. Anyone who could not be prosecuted for a crime was detained for up to five years and placed in island internment camps.

Cinemas were required to screen government propaganda in the form of newsreels. Fascists owned 66 percent of the newspapers and controlled reporting, issuing daily editorial guidelines and threatening editors with arrest.

The Order of Journalists was created and membership was mandatory. Newspapers were allowed to criticize the government as long as they generally expressed support.
READ MORE: How Mussolini Seized Power in Italy
Mussolini and Hitler

At first, Mussolini disapproved of Germany's Adolf Hitler, but over time their partnership grew and Mussolini embraced Hitler's anti-Semitic measures.

Following Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, Germany was the second country to recognize Italy's legitimacy there. Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, with Mussolini providing 50,000 troops.

In 1937, Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany, and in March of 1938, Hitler invaded Austria with Mussolini's support.

Mussolini wrote an article in 1938 that aligned Italians with the German concept of the Aryan race. When anti-Jewish laws began to appear in Italy, Germany felt they were weak, but Mussolini was prepared to increase their severity as needed. Soon after, Mussolini called for the expulsion of foreign Jews from Italy.
WATCH VIDEO: American Women in World War II
Axis Powers

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 immediately caused Britain and France to declare war against Germany, but Mussolini, for the moment, remained neutral.

Germany's invasion of Denmark and Norway convinced Mussolini that Hitler would win the war. Soon Holland and Belgium also fell to Hitler. On May 22, 1939, Italy and Germany signed the " Pact of Steel" officially creating the Axis powers. ( Japan would join in September of 1940 with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.)

As the Germans plowed through France in June 1940, Mussolini announced Italy's entrance into the war. Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10, 1940.

The Plot Against Mussolini

By 1943, after years of fighting in World War II, Italy was viewed by its own citizens as losing the war.

On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested after a visit with the king and sent to the island of La Maddalena.

When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans.

Mussolini, fearful of being handed over, was instead rescued by Hitler's forces. Transported to German-occupied northern Italy, he was installed as Hitler's puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic and leading to the extermination of thousands of Italian Jews.

Allied forces began barreling through Italy in June 1944, and Mussolini attempted to flee to Spain in April 1945 with his lover, Claretta Petacci, but was discovered and arrested by partisans searching troop transport trucks.

How Did Mussolini Die?

There are conflicting stories about how Mussolini died, but autopsy reports state the dictator was executed by firing squad on April 28, 1945, shot by soldiers firing several bullets-with four of them near the heart-causing immediate death.

The bodies of both Mussolini and Petacci were hung upside down at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for crowds to kick and spit on. One day later, Hitler committed suicide and the following week, Germany surrendered.

Mussolini's Body

Mussolini's body was buried in an unmarked grave, which was unearthed in 1946 by Fascist supporters, who took the body to a convent in Lombardy. The government recovered it and interred it in a monastery near Milan.

Mussolini's wife petitioned to have the body moved from a grave in Milan to a family mausoleum in Predappio in 1957.

In 1966, she was given an envelope containing a piece of her husband's brain. The American diplomat who handed it to her claimed that the Americans had taken the brain in order to study what makes a dictator. She had the relic placed in his tomb, which receives 100,000 visitors a year.

Mussolini Quotes

"It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."

"Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant."

"Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story."

Sources

Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. Ray Moseley.
Mussolini. Jasper Ridley.
Mussolini. Rupert Colley.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). BBC.

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Benito Mussolini: Children, Death & World War II - HISTORY

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Benito Mussolini, an Italian political leader who allied himself with Adolf Hitler during World War II, became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925-1945.

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Adolf Hitler Appointed Chancellor — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), more commonly known as the Nazi Party, assumes control of the German state when German President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor at the head of a coalition…

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Japan started lacking natural resources and building space, so their military invaded Manchuria in 1931. Japan then started gaining control in Korea and Taiwan. Japan took these actions because more than 40% of their food and raw materials were imported from these places. Then in May 1932 a group of army officers murdered the current prime minister and attacked key government and banking officials. Japan's military and economic leaders decided to press for further conquests as they were close to going into WWII in search to consolidate political control and interests in rich resources that were in other parts of Asia. The military then started organizing a Japanese military dictatorship which, interestingly, wasn't led by a specific leader. Japan became more like a dictator but with a group of leaders and not a single person. Japan made sure to tighten it's hold on Korea and put an end to their culture. Japanese forced their language and habits upon the Korean teachers. Korean peasants were forced to produce rice for Japan and but Korea's nutrition at an expense. The population was pressed to join Japanese people in training to "suffer" hardship and young men were forced into labor groups.

Japanese police ses were able to put an end to the great effects of the Great Depression. As a cause of the Great Depression, half of all of Japan's factories were closed by 1931 because no one was in a position to buy imported products from them. With half of the factories in Japan closing, it left many people without jobs and a way to get food for their family. In desperate moments, children were begging for food to passengers on passing trains and farmers had no choice but to eat tree bark to stay alive. Because government policies in Japan responded quickly to this situation, they suffered much less than many other Western nations that were going through the Great Depression as well. The government achieved this by increasing its spending to provide jobs. In return, this action generated new demands for food, manufactured items ( which caused exportations to boom), and the elimination of unemployment by 1936. This policy, not only helped the people, but it allowed support to their government military purchasing. Japan's economy grew much faster than the West due to their turn to industrialization in 1931. A new series of industrial policies were established by the Japanese in order to prevent social unrest. These policies proved to be a durable future for Japanese society.

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Japan started lacking natural resources and building space, so their military invaded Manchuria in 1931. Japan then started gaining control in Korea and Taiwan. Japan took these actions because more than 40% of their food and raw materials were imported from these places.

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Polish-Soviet War - New World Encyclopedia

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Before the start of the Polish-Soviet War Polish politics were strongly influenced by Chief of State (naczelnik państwa) Józef Piłsudski. Piłsudski wanted to break the Russian Empire and create a Polish-led "Międzymorze Federation" of independent states: Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other Central and East European countries emerging out of crumbling empires after the First World War.

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From November 9 to 10, 1938, in an incident known as "Kristallnacht", Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and murdered close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night" or the "Night of Broken Glass"), some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse.

Hitler and Anti-Semitism

Soon after Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor in January 1933, he began instituting policies that isolated German Jews and subjected them to persecution.

Among other things, Hitler's Nazi Party, which espoused extreme German nationalism and anti-Semitism, commanded that all Jewish businesses be boycotted and all Jews be dismissed from civil service posts. In May 1933, the writings of Jewish and other "un-German" authors were burned in a communal ceremony at Berlin's Opera House.

Within two years, some German businesses were publicly announcing that they no longer serviced Jews. The Nuremberg Laws, passed in September 1935, decreed that only Aryans could be full German citizens. Furthermore, it became illegal for Aryans and Jews to marry or have extramarital intercourse.

Did you know? Shortly before Kristallnacht, U.S. aviator Charles Lindbergh toured Germany and was given a medal by Hermann Göring, commander of the German air force. After Kristallnacht, Lindbergh declined to return the medal. This, plus his ensuing anti-Semitic comments, permanently stained his status as an American hero.

Despite the repressive nature of these policies, through most of 1938, the harassment of Jews was primarily nonviolent. However, on the night of November 9, all that changed dramatically.

From Harassment to Violence

In the fall of 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew who had been living in France for several years, learned that the Nazis had exiled his parents to Poland from Hanover, Germany, where Herschel had been born and his family had lived for years. As retaliation, on November 7, 1938, the agitated teenager shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris.

Rath died two days later from his wounds, and Hitler attended his funeral. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister for public enlightenment and propaganda, immediately seized on the assassination to rile Hitler's supporters into an anti-Semitic frenzy.

Night of Broken Glass

Kristallnacht was the result of that rage. Starting in the late hours of November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs, SS troops and ordinary citizens torched or otherwise vandalized hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries.

Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence. Nazi officials ordered German police officers and firemen to do nothing as the riots raged and buildings burned, although firefighters were allowed to extinguish blazes that threatened Aryan-owned property.

After Kristallnacht, the streets and sidewalks of Jewish communities were littered with broken glass from vandalized buildings, giving rise to the names "Crystal Night" or "Night of Broken Glass." The Nazis held the German-Jewish community responsible for the damage and imposed a collective fine of $400 million (in 1938 rates), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Additionally, more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany-camps that were specifically constructed to hold Jews, homosexuals, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state.

U.S. Reaction to Kristallnacht

On November 15, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responded to Kristallnacht by reading a statement to the media in which he harshly denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism and violence in Germany. He also recalled Hugh Wilson, his ambassador to Germany.

Despite Roosevelt's condemnation of the Nazi violence, the United States refused to ease the immigration restrictions it then had in place, constraints that prevented masses of German Jews from seeking safety in America. One reason was anxiety over the possibility that Nazi infiltrators would be encouraged to legally settle in America.

A more obscured reason was the anti-Semitic views held by various officials in the U.S. State Department. One such administrator was Breckinridge Long, who was responsible for carrying out policies relating to immigration.

Long took an obstructionist role in granting visas to European Jews, and maintained this policy even when America entered World War II after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

A Wake-up Call to Jews

The violence of Kristallnacht served notice to Jews worldwide that Nazi anti-Semitism was not a temporary predicament and would only intensify. As a result, many Jews began to plan an escape from their native land.

Kristallnacht marked a turning point toward more violent and repressive treatment of Jews by the Nazis. By the end of 1938, Jews were prohibited from schools and most public places in Germany-and conditions only worsened from there.

During World War II, Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called "Final Solution" to what they referred to as the "Jewish problem," and carried out the systematic murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with, by some estimates, 4 million to 6 million non-Jews) in what came to be known as the Holocaust.

Sources

Kristallnacht. PBS: American Experience.
Kristallnacht: 1938. British Library.
9 November 1938: "Kristallnacht." Jewish Museum Berlin.
Breckinridge Long. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Kristallnacht: Definition & Meaning - HISTORY

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Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s), was a prolonged series of violent attacks on Jewish people, homes, businesses and synagogues in 1938 Germany.

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Labour's History

The Labour Party has always been about people. It was formed to give ordinary people a voice and has sought power in order to improve their lives. The fruits of this work have changed Britain for the better, through the most progressive governments in our country's history.

Ours is a proud history, with achievements - from the NHS to the welfare state - that have made a lasting difference to the lives of people across our country. Over the past century, we have been the Party of the many, not the few.

A new Party for a new century

The Labour Party was created in 1900: a new party for a new century. Its formation was the result of many years of struggle by working class people, trade unionists and socialists, united by the goal of working class voices represented in British Parliament.

It was this aim that united Keir Hardie and the colleagues who gathered for the famous inaugural meeting of the Labour Representation Committee at London's Memorial Hall in February 1900. Ignored by the Tories and disillusioned with the Liberals, they gathered together to push for change.

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Early years and into government

Slowly but surely, the Party grew. The first election campaign in 1906 saw 26 MPs elected to Parliament - together they chose Labour as their official name.

That early growth continued, with more MPs elected in the years to follow, leaving Labour well placed to challenge for power by the time of the 1924 election. It was this election which saw the first Labour government in our country's history with Ramsey MacDonald the Party's first Prime Minister.

The first Labour government only held office for a short time, but its achievements were notable. Despite having no majority it passed legislation to improve housing, education and social insurance while also addressing unemployment.

The 1924 government lasted only a few months, five years later came the election of the second. Dominated by the world economic crisis, the following two years were focused on action to tackle the unemployment of the Great Depression. It was not an easy Parliament and the 1931 election saw only 52 Labour MPs elected.

War, the 1945 Government and onto the future

Fortunately one of those who remained after the 1931 election was Clement Attlee. He became Deputy Leader in 1931, working with a new generation like Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton to turn the Party's fortunes around, before being elected Leader in 1935.

By the end of World War II, the British public were crying out for change. Labour would lead that change.

Our manifesto 'Let us Face the Future' laid out a bold vision, pledging to destroy the five 'evil giants': want, squalor, disease, ignorance and unemployment. It was a message which captured the imagination of the country and took Clement Attlee into Number 10 on the back of a landslide, winning 393 seats.

Attlee's Labour government wasted little time enacting visionary change, introducing social security, bringing key industries back into public ownership and introducing a major programme of house building, providing safe and secure homes.

But it was the Attlee government's introduction of the National Health Service which will rightly go down as Labour's greatest achievement. Spearheaded by Health Secretary, Nye Bevan, the creation of the NHS has transformed our country, removing the anxiety of illness from millions of families. To this day the NHS is a national treasure and Labour will always protect it.

The Wilson years and onwards

Despite winning nearly 50 per cent of the vote, Labour lost office in 1951. Attlee was succeeded by Hugh Gaitskill and would not return to power until 1964 under the leadership of Harold Wilson. The Labour governments (1964-70 and 1974-79) under Wilson and then James Callaghan were marked by a period of great change: the permanent ending of the death penalty, decriminalisation of homosexuality, legislation to outlaw racial discrimination, and the establishment of the Open University.

It was Barbara Castle, our Secretary of State for Employment, who also brought about significant social change, as she introduced the groundbreaking Equal Pay Act of 1970. Once again Labour men and women led the way in modernising and reforming Britain to improve the lives of millions.

The election of 1979 began the wilderness years of opposition. Initially, under Michael Foot, the party began a period of contemplation and ultimately renewal. His successor, Neil Kinnock took on the work of reconstruction, with modernising reforms which would be continued by John Smith who introduced One Member One Vote (OMOV) to further democratise the people's Party.

Tony Blair after winning the 1997 General Election for Labour in a landslide victory.

New Labour

Following the death of John Smith in 1994, Tony Blair was elected Leader, ushering in the era of New Labour. The reforms introduced in this era - a revitalised policy programme built on Labour values hand-in-hand with a modernised party machinery - would lead to the landslide General Election win of 1997.

After 18 years under the Tory rule, Labour offered the hope of a better Britain. The governments that followed - under Tony Blair then Gordon Brown - brought many of the changes our country desperately needed.

Record investment in the NHS, schools and the police rescued our public services. The introduction of the National Minimum Wage and the New Deal meant more jobs paying a decent wage, while devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put power in people's hands while peace came to the latter through the landmark Good Friday Agreement.

In power Labour put into practice our values of equality and social justice, introducing Civil Partnerships, the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and legislating for equality of opportunity for all. We cancelled up to 100 per cent of debt for the world's poorest countries and brought about the world's first Climate Change Act.

For the many, not the few: 2010, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn

The late 2000s saw a global economic crisis and for Labour the loss of power at the 2010 election. Faced with a Conservative government which was pressing forward with an austerity agenda, the leadership of Ed Miliband saw Labour prioritise working people and the protection of public services. He also used his period in office to introduce important party democracy reforms.

Following the election of 2015, a change was in the air for Labour. With a bold vision for change, renewal, and a robust anti-austerity agenda, outsider Jeremy Corbyn won the party's leadership election by a landslide. Under him, the Party tripled in size with new members inspired to join a mass movement for change and the work began on a new transformative policy agenda that takes on the powerful few on behalf of the many.

The snap election of 2017 provided an early test. The Conservatives expected to be returned with a landslide but with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm and our mass membership campaigning, Labour confounded expectations. Our manifesto 'For The Many, Not The Few' laid out a transformative vision of a better Britain: a Real Living Wage of £10 an hour; scrapping tuition fees; mass housebuilding; serious investment in our public services; public ownership of rail, water and post; and a country that works for the many, not the few.

The electorate responded, giving Labour its biggest increase in the share of the vote since 1945, returning 262 MPs, 45 per cent of whom are women, meaning Labour today has more female MPs than all the other parties combined.

Just like the early pioneers of the Labour Party over 100 years ago, Labour today is leading the way with a vision of hope - that by working together we can transform Britain for the many, not the few.

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Spartacus Educational Subject Menu: The Second World War

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The World at War, history of WW 1939-1945

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This Web site is intended for enthusiasts of World War II, a period now far behind us. The text has been written using our own judgement and should be easily understood by everybody. The reader is taken back in time and feels that he was actually present when the events took place, a new and compelling way of experiencing the events of World War II. Every possible care has been taken to ensure that the facts are presented accurately, although new developments could of course shed new light on the matter. Every such work as The World at War, history of WW 1939-1945 is an attempt to walk the tightrope between the fullest possible and the most accessible description of the period. Our aim has been to provide a basic source of information for these vastly important and often misrepresented years, enabling students to orient themselves rapidly or the general reader to browse through the entries following a theme by use of the cross-references. The chronologies, too, have been designed for this dual purpose. However, we are very confident that this story will make a contribution to history, a contribution which will benefit mankind in the future. We hope you will like it.
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Never has there been a war that could have been avoided more easily than the one that has just destroyed (1939 - 1945) whatever was left of the world after the previous confrontation (1914 -1918).

When World War II began in 1939, Germany was the aggressor, it was later joined in June 1940, by Italy, and Japan in December 1941. The war against Japan was fought over two-thirds of the world's surface, with America and her allies taking part in vast air, land and sea battles. It turned WW II into global conflict and ended it with the drawning of nuclear era. Together they formed the major Axis nations, each had their strenghts and weakness. From 1900 until the late 1930's the armies of the world believed that massed infantry charges, heavy artillery, and static defenses could dominate and control any battlefield. But on the morning of September 1st 1939, the world was forever changed as Germany invaded Poland and executed its first "Blitzkrieg" or "Lightning attack", quickly crushing Polish resistance. And the entry of France and Britain into the conflict on 3 September, marked not so much the beginning of a new war as opening of a more intensive phase of a war that already in progress. A possible opinion was that it had never stopped at all during the years since 1914. A more moderate view, might take the outbreak of the Spanish revolt in July 1936 as the starting point. But to any informed observer it was at least clear that the struggle had waged, bloodlessly but with growing intensity, for a considerable period before the resort to armed hostilities.

From 1939 to 1945, Germany's military machine struck out and conquered most of Western Europe, swept into deserts of North Africa and drove deep into the hinterlands of Russia. In time, however, the Allies gathered strength and eventually crushed the German Army and Axis powers with a display of brute force that has remained unmatched to this day. What started out as a war based on military technical tactics and blitzkriegs, later became a war reliant on industry and mass production.
The western offensive has learned the German much, though they will not remember all the lessons. They have seen the movement of heavy armoured vehicles, and the battlefield tactics they could employ, significantly reduced by unhelpful terrain and the most modest of road obstructions; columns of such machines have also often been badly delayed by human traffic, in the form of fleeing refugees. With command of the air and relatively light resistance, however, the Blitzkrieg technique has been proven; the tempo of advance has been unprecedented and, indeed, caused its own, unforeseen logistical problems. But the success of the Battle of France may have proved to be the Germans' undoing for they expect future battlefields to be equally susceptible to these techniques and when this proves not to be the case some of its finest commanders will be found wanting, their one-dimensional approach not being effective in defence or retreat. Furthermore, the rapid defeat of France has focused Allied minds. Had they been able to hold their ground for longer, old strategies might have been clung to and new equipment might not have been urgently demanded. For the French, the last weeks have been a chastening experience. Their industry has broken all manufacturing records to keep the armed forces suppilied, but political foresight and military resolve have been absent. It is indicative that their air force ends the Battle of France with more aircraft than when it started, thanks to that manufacturing spurt accompanied by the logistical failure to deploy what was available.

The deeds of the Japanese extremists and of Hitler and Mussolini, which led up to martial conflict, are the positive points of the story, but they are not more of it than the negative points, the ability of democracy to understand the nature of peace and to cope with the swelling flood of aggression. Peace itself might have been preserved if men of good will who were leading the democracies had also been men of good sense. It would make a poor understanding of the world crisis if these failures were not continually borne in mind.

Victory won over evil, we have still not found peace or safety and we are still in the grip of dangers which are even worse than the ones we have survived. I seriously hope that a careful consideration of the past may show us the way in the years to come, that it will enable the new generation to make up for the errors (against animals and wildlife too, not only people) committed in the past and that they will thus be able to rule this vast, rapidly developing world, in accordance with the needs and the dignity of mankind, with the help of all the numerous new technological developments at our disposal, such as nuclear energy and electronics, and all their benefits.

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The best site 2019 is chosen by me, Wilfried Braakhuis, and my friends of Elite Engineer Publishing, Jan Willem Westra en Arnoud Zuidema.

The best WW II site 2019,

We found the presentation of this elite site at the Internet very valuable, and therefore I would like to bestow the 'Pañstwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau' site with the best WW II site 2019 in the category history WW 1939-1945; the murder of minority races.
Pañstwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau;
http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/
This Museum site is about concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. The camp Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity, which was committed against the European Jews, blacks, many other minorities and POWs as part of Hitler's plan for the complete destruction of that people.

Strategy of the War,
There is a lot of bad information about the war. Some of it was done during the War to confuse the enemy, some of it was done after the War to protect reputations, and some of it is just sloppy research and writing.

The Military aspects,
This is an apolitical page dealing with the military aspects of the WW II only and nothing more, does not support any political thought and no support should be assumed.

Acknowledgements,
I would like to thank the following people, who have provided invaluable assistance in preparing this home page: Jan Willem Westra (translation, publishing), research assistance of Arnoud Zuidema (historical research) and others. To all go appreciation and thanks. We should furthermore like to thank all the very many others that have made a site on World War II. These are invaluable as a reference to our site. So if you have any comments or suggestions or if you see any new links on World War II added to this site, please e-mail us.
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Whoever lights the torch of War in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.
Adolf Hitler, May 21 1935

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The World at War, history of WW 1939-1945

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The World at War, history of WW 1939-1945 Page maintained and created by A Military Historical Website Wilfried Braakhuis Completed: 1 Januari 1998. Address: http://www.worldwar-2.eu This site is best viewed in high color mode and 1152*864 resolution. Since 1/1/1998 you are person number Simple message board, I have designed amessage board for WW II enthusiasts to post messages or responding messages.

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Redesigned and refactored by

Brigadier General John S. Brown, USA (Ret.)

Chief Historian/Writer

Produced and directed by

Original design by

United States President Woodrow Wilson and others spoke of World War I as "the war to end all wars" or "to make the world safe for democracy." In the twenty years that followed, these high ideals ran afoul of a flawed and retributive peace treaty, the unwillingness of the United States and other non-European powers to assume responsibilities for maintaining peace, newly established dictatorships, national ambitions, and world economic collapse. As horrific as World War I was, it proved the prelude and groundwork for an even more appalling conflict, a world wide struggle that would take the lives of over 60 million people ... World War II.

Early in World War II the Allies committed to the principles of the Atlantic Charter as a definition of their war aims. These principles included national self determination, territorial changes only with the consent of those affected, freedom from want and fear, freedom of the seas, the reduction of trade barriers, global economic and social cooperation, and disarmament. Victory in World War II was a pre-condition to achieve these lofty goals, but much work remained to be done.

Developments through the forty years following World War II, in particular the general advance of democratic governance, greatly justified the sacrifices made by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and civilians during World War II.

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World War II Timeline Experience - American Battle Monuments Commission

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An interactive World War II timeline of events with descriptions, videos, and photos

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Pact of Locarno: Pact of Locarno, (Dec. 1, 1925), series of agreements whereby Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Italy mutually guaranteed peace in western Europe. The treaties were initialed at Locarno, Switz., on October 16 and signed in London on December 1.

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WWII Home Pearl Harbor Home

The 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash and the failure of important European banks plunged the entire world into an economic depression. Japan was hit especially hard. With practically no natural resources, the nation had to import oil, iron, steel, and other commodities to keep its industry and military forces alive. But to buy these things, it had to export goods for sale abroad. This became harder to do in the early 1930s as nation after nation, including the U.S., raised tariffs (taxes on imports) to protect their own struggling industries.

As Japan's economy grew worse, the country became more aggressive. One way Japan could gain greater access to raw materials and markets was to increase the amount of territory under Japanese control. Generals and admirals, working together with leading industrialists and financiers, dreamed of a Japanese empire that would bring "the eight corners of the world under one roof." They campaigned against politicians who stood in their way.

In 1931, Japanese Army officers seized the resource-rich region of Manchuria in the north of China. The government in Tokyo didn't approve of the plot, but the Army went ahead anyway. Within a year, Japan controlled Manchuria.

Pearl Harbor Activity Station

What did the Japanese militarists mean when they spoke of "bringing the eight corners of the world under one roof?" What are the eight corners?

How would a Depression affect your life today? How do you think a bank failure in Europe can affect the lives of Americans?
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Pearl Harbor Story |Time Line |Relive Pearl Harbor |Meet the Eyewitnesses
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Pearl Harbor Timeline | 1929: Great Depression Begins

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WWII Home Pearl Harbor Home The 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash and the failure of important European banks plunged the entire world into an economic depression. Japan was hit especially hard. With practically no natural resources, the nation had to import oil, iron, steel, and other commodities to keep its industry and military forces alive.

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WWII Home Pearl Harbor Home

The 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash and the failure of important European banks plunged the entire world into an economic depression. Japan was hit especially hard. With practically no natural resources, the nation had to import oil, iron, steel, and other commodities to keep its industry and military forces alive. But to buy these things, it had to export goods for sale abroad. This became harder to do in the early 1930s as nation after nation, including the U.S., raised tariffs (taxes on imports) to protect their own struggling industries.

As Japan's economy grew worse, the country became more aggressive. One way Japan could gain greater access to raw materials and markets was to increase the amount of territory under Japanese control. Generals and admirals, working together with leading industrialists and financiers, dreamed of a Japanese empire that would bring "the eight corners of the world under one roof." They campaigned against politicians who stood in their way.

In 1931, Japanese Army officers seized the resource-rich region of Manchuria in the north of China. The government in Tokyo didn't approve of the plot, but the Army went ahead anyway. Within a year, Japan controlled Manchuria.

Pearl Harbor Activity Station

What did the Japanese militarists mean when they spoke of "bringing the eight corners of the world under one roof?" What are the eight corners?

How would a Depression affect your life today? How do you think a bank failure in Europe can affect the lives of Americans?
Top of Page
Pearl Harbor Story |Time Line |Relive Pearl Harbor |Meet the Eyewitnesses
Interview with the Eyewitnesses |Teacher's Guide

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Pearl Harbor Timeline | 1929: Great Depression Begins

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WWII Home Pearl Harbor Home The 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash and the failure of important European banks plunged the entire world into an economic depression. Japan was hit especially hard. With practically no natural resources, the nation had to import oil, iron, steel, and other commodities to keep its industry and military forces alive.

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Why did the U.S. pressure the British to end their 20-year alliance with Japan?

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Answer (1 of 4): Although the question implies the US and Britain one sidedly ended the alliance the Japanese were the ones who initially insisted on ending the alliance. The main reason Japan decided to end the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was due to the foreign policy Japan had at the time.

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The League of Nations was established at the end of World War I as an international peacekeeping organization.

Although US President Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiastic proponent of the League, the United States did not officially join the League of Nations due to opposition from isolationists in Congress.

The League of Nations effectively resolved some international conflicts but failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.

The experience of the First World War

World War I was the most destructive conflict in human history, fought in brutal trench warfare conditions and claiming millions of casualties on all sides. The industrial and technological sophistication of weapons created a deadly efficiency of mass slaughter. The nature of the war was thus one of attrition, with each side attempting to wear the other down through a prolonged series of small-scale attacks that frequently resulted in stalemate.

Though the origins of the war were incredibly complex, and scholars still debate which factors were most influential in provoking the conflict, the structure of the European alliance system played a significant role. This system had effectively divided Europe into two camps, based on treaties that obligated countries to go to war on behalf of their allies.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, American and European leaders gathered in Paris to debate and implement far-reaching changes to the pattern of international relations. The League of Nations was seen as the epitome of a new world order based on mutual cooperation and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.

The establishment of the League of Nations

The Treaty of Versailles was negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and included a covenant establishing the League of Nations, which convened its first council meeting on January 16, 1920.

The League was composed of a General Assembly, which included delegations from all member states, a permanent secretariat that oversaw administrative functions, and an Executive Council, the membership of which was restricted to the great powers. The Council consisted of four permanent members (Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy) and four non-permanent members. At its largest, the League of Nations was comprised of 58 member-states. The Soviet Union joined in 1934 but was expelled in 1939 for invading Finland.

Members of the League of Nations were required to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all other nation-states and to disavow the use or threat of military force as a means of resolving international conflicts. The League sought to peacefully resolve territorial disputes between members and was in some cases highly effective. For instance, in 1926 the League negotiated a peaceful outcome to the conflict between Iraq and Turkey over the province of Mosul, and in the early 1930s successfully mediated a resolution to the border dispute between Colombia and Peru.

However, the League ultimately failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War, and has therefore been viewed by historians as a largely weak, ineffective, and essentially powerless organization. Not only did the League lack effective enforcement mechanisms, but many countries refused to join and were therefore not bound to respect the rules and obligations of membership.

The United States and the League of Nations

US President Woodrow Wilson enunciated the Fourteen Points in January 1918. The Fourteen Points laid out a comprehensive vision for the transformation of world politics. Wilson believed that affairs between nations should be conducted in the open, on the basis of sovereignty, self-determination (the idea that all nations have the right to choose their own political identity without external interference), and the disavowal of military force to settle disputes. Wilson's vision for the postwar world was hugely influential in the founding of the League of Nations.

President Wilson's intense lobbying efforts on behalf of US membership in the League of Nations met with firm opposition from isolationist members of Congress, particularly Republican Senators William Borah and Henry Cabot Lodge. They objected most vociferously to Article X of the League's Covenant, which required all members of the League to assist any member threatened by external aggression. In effect, Article X would commit the United States to defending any member of the League in the event of an attack. Isolationists in Congress were opposed to any further US involvement in international conflicts and viewed Article X as a direct violation of US sovereignty. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and the United States never became a member of the League of Nations.

Though the League had failed to prevent the outbreak of another world war, it continued to operate until 1946, when it was formally liquidated. By this time, the Allied powers had already begun to discuss the creation of a new successor organization, the United Nations. The United Nations, which is still in existence today, was based on many of the same principles as the League of Nations, but was designed specifically to avoid the League's major weaknesses. The UN boasts much stronger enforcement mechanisms, including its own peacekeeping forces, and the membership of the UN is substantially larger than that of the League even at its peak.

What do you think?

Why did the United States refuse to join the League of Nations?

How effective was the League of Nations as an international peacekeeping organization?

Do you think the League of Nations could have prevented the outbreak of the Second World War if the United States had joined?

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The League of Nations (article) | Khan Academy

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The League of Nations was established at the end of World War I as an international peacekeeping organization. Although US President Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiastic proponent of the League, the United States did not officially join the League of Nations due to opposition from isolationists in Congress.

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On September 27, 1940, the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. This formalizing of the alliance was aimed directly at "neutral" America-designed to force the United States to think twice before venturing in on the side of the Allies.

The Pact also recognized the two spheres of influence. Japan acknowledged "the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe," while Japan was granted lordship over "Greater East Asia."

A footnote: There was a fourth signatory to the Pact-Hungary, which was dragged into the Axis alliance by Germany in November 1940.

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The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany, Italy and Japan | September 27, 1940 | HISTORY

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On September 27, 1940, the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war.

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Italian Campaign - World War II - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Italian Campaign, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Please look at the excellent article Italians in WWII, by Justin Demetri

The years from 1940 to 1945 in Italy, as well as in many other countries of the world, were those of the Second World War. The Italian military effort in those years has been often criticized: while the army of Italy was thought to have poorly performed during the war, this was mainly because of the circumstances at the time.

The Attack on France

The Italians launched their first attack on France in June, 1940. After being successful initially, they stalled at the Alpine Line. France surrendered to Germany in the same month, and Italy captured a few areas of France along the Italian-French border.

In November 1942, the Italian army invaded again South-eastern France and Corsica. From the following month, an Italian military government was established on the east side of Rhone River. This continued until September when Italy decided to quit the war against France.

North African Campaign

Italy never really experienced any achievements in North Africa. Within a week of declaring war in 1940, the British had seized Fort Capuzzo in Libya. Throughout its permanence on North African soil, the Italian army experienced several sets back and numerous logistic issues, often solved only by the intervention of better equipped and better lead German troops.

Battle of Britain

All of the equipment used by the Italian Air Corps was obsolete and could not match to that of Britain or Germany. Due to this, Italy did not gain much success during the battle.

East Africa

Along with several other well known battles in 1940, the Italians also started their East African campaign in June. The front had been opened from their colonies in East Africa: Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia. Like in Egypt, the Italian forces joined hands with the native army and outnumbered the British troops. However, Italian East Africa was far away from the mainland: this resulted in the forces being cut off from their supply, causing the ultimate halting of operations in the area.

During the early East African attacks, two different methods were adopted: first, attacks were held both towards Kenya and Sudan. Later, in August, Italian troops advanced in Somalia, a land once owned by the British. After a few casualties, British troops were evacuated from the region by the Italian forces.

The Balkans

Even before Italy declared war, Mussolini had shown great interest to the lands of Albania. At the beginning of 1939, while the other countries were only focused on Hitler's advances on Czechoslovakia, Italian troops attacked Albania in April. In spite of a strenous resistance from the natives, Italy was able to quickly take control of the country.

Invasions of Italy

However, Italy proved not to be an easy target for the forces. Due to the rugged mountain terrain the Italian troops had excellent positions for defense; however, it did ignore the advantage that the allies had in terms of mechanized and motorized weapons and units.

The final victory of the allies over the axis in Italy did not happen until the spring of 1945. This happened when the allies had crossed the Gothic Line. This resulted in the surrender of all German forces on Italian soil. With this, the Second Word War finally ended for Italy.

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Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right) Please look at the excellent article Italians in WWII, by Justin Demetri The years from 1940 to 1945 in Italy, as well as in many other countries of the world, were those of the Second World War. The Italian military effort in those ...

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ww2dbaseAlthough Italy emerged victorious from World War 1 and gain territories from the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the country paid a heavy price. Over 600,000 were killed, and the economy and political environments remained unstable. In 1922, Benito Mussolini seized power with the support of King Vittorio Emannuelle III, who feared a revolution. From 1925 on, Mussolini slowly gained more and more power until Italy became a totalitarian state enforced by a secret police organization. His dictatorship influenced fascist leaders who came on the scene later such as Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco. In 1929, Mussolini gained favors with the Vatican by granting it the status of an independent state.

ww2dbaseItaly invaded Abyssinia. The League of Nations imposed totally useless sanctions on Italy as a punishment, depriving Italy items such as aluminum (which was among Italy's chief exports), camels, and mules which she did not need. Britain attempted to threaten Italy with military action, but Mussolini correctly guessed that Britain was not ready for war, and called the bluff. Italy also got away lucky after Britain failed to realize by denying the Italians access to the Suez Canal the Abyssinian campaign could have been made difficult for the Italians, if not ending it. On 9 May 1936, Mussolini declared King Vittorio Emannuelle III the Emperor of Abyssinia.

ww2dbaseIn 1936, Italy and Germany entered into the Pact of Steel. The two nations grew closer together, with Italy supporting Germany's expansion into Central Europe and both nations supporting Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In Apr 1939, Italy occupied Albania. In Sep 1939, in a move that surprised Hitler slightly, Italy refused to enter the European War due to Italy's ill-preparedness for major military action. Mussolini did, however, declare war on the Western Allies in Jun 1940 after France had essentially fallen to the Germans. In Oct 1940, Italy invaded Greece but her army performed poorly and had to be bailed out by German intervention. Although Germany originally had no plans of an excursion into the Balkans, Hitler thought securing Yugoslavia and the Balkans would protect Axis Romania's oil fields, plus it would secure the southern flank of the upcoming campaign against Russia. Italy's war in North Africa, too, did not go as well as Mussolini had hoped. Once again, Germany had to reinforce Italian forces, most notably with Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps. The Axis forces in North Africa were eventually defeated by the Allies, and from there an invasion of Sicily was launched. The fall of Sicily was so devastating to Italian morale that Mussolini's regime was toppled in Sep 1943. Italy surrendered in Sep 1943. Germany immediately invaded Italy and established a puppet state under Mussolini in the northern part of the country while the Allies invaded and took control of the southern and central parts. Italy remained a bitter battlefield until Apr 1945.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, Italy lost some territory to France and Yugoslavia. The monarchy fell in 1946 and a close national referendum established a republic.

ww2dbase Source: Wikipedia.
Last Major Update: Apr 2007 People Events Taken Place in Italy Aircraft Ships Vehicles Weapons Territories, Possessions, and Nations Under the Influence of Italy Facilities Photographs See all 223 photographs of Italy in World War II Maps
Italy in World War II Interactive Map

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italy in world war ii | world war ii database

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ww2dbaseAlthough Italy emerged victorious from World War 1 and gain territories from the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the country paid a heavy price. Over 600,000 were killed, and the economy and political environments remained unstable. In 1922, Benito Mussolini seized power with the support of King Vittorio Emannuelle III, who feared a revolution.

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The German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 triggered WWII. Learn more about key dates and events, causes, and related Holocaust history.

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The German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 triggered WWII. Learn more about key dates and events, causes, and related Holocaust history.

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Polish collective memory of World War II is shaped by such great events as the Battle of Monte Cassino or the Warsaw Uprising. But in reality, the most important Polish battle of the time was the everyday struggle waged by society to survive.

As the literary historian Kazimierz Wyka wrote, already at the start of the occupation Polish society was faced with a "simple dilemma: either accept what one is now allowed to eat and die from hunger, or figure out a way to survive." In German plans, occupied Polish territory was to primarily serve as a source of food and cheap human labor. Attaining the first was tied to a policy of starvation of the local population. City inhabitants found themselves in the worst situation, as did laborers and members of the intelligentsia, who were forced to work - often overworked - for pay that did not cover basic sustenance. For example in 1941, the daily wage of a laborer in Warsaw allowed for the purchase of 40 decagrams of bread on the black market, which people were forced to resort to as the official rations were not only negligible but also hard to come by. In order to survive, it was necessary to violate the imposed German laws, and risk the possibility of being killed or sent to a concentration camp. Worker's successfully "privatized" and robbed German factories, and illegal production and trade flourished. The countryside, even with large restrictive quotas applied on them, was able to produce enough surplus to allow cities to survive. The black market became a separate facet of the economy. It also wasn't uncommon to establish illegal businesses, which not only had their own transportation, but also a web of suppliers and distributors.

As was mentioned, Poland was also to supply Nazi Germany with necessary human labor. Forced labor was instituted both locally, as well as through the forced transportation of labors to Germany. For instance, the 400,000 Prisoners of War captured after the September 1939 Campaign had their status changed from POW to civilian laborers. During the course of the entire war, 2.8-3 million Polish citizens served as forced laborers, often made to work in the armaments industry. Strict discipline was enforced on all forced laborers, and even a small offense such as not wearing the insignia "P" or going to the movie theatre could result in whipping or being sent to a camp. Oftentimes living on the territory of the factory, the forced laborers frequently died during the factories bombardment. More varied was the experience of laborers employed in farming: some were treated as extended members of the family, others as subhuman.

Most of the forced laborers strived simply to survive, but many also took part in fighting, such as sabotage and intelligence gathering.

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Everyday life in occupied Poland | Poland and Poles in the Second World War

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Polish collective memory of World War II is shaped by such great events as the Battle of Monte Cassino or the Warsaw Uprising. But in reality, the most important Polish battle of the time was the everyday struggle waged by society to survive.

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How should a country remember its past? This universal question has been especially painful and complex in Poland, a country that suffered an extraordinarily brutal German occupation in World War II, followed by decades of Soviet Communist dominance that lasted until 1989. In the years after the war, Poles overwhelmingly viewed themselves as victims of Germany. Nazi ideology had portrayed Poles as subhuman Untermenschen ("inferior people"). During the war, German forces murdered at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and forced 1.5 million others into slave labor. At least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland were killed in the Holocaust. When the war ended in 1945, Poland's infrastructure was destroyed, its population was reduced by over 20%, and its capital of Warsaw was in ruins. In their memories of the war years, Poles focused on their suffering, on stories of Polish resistance to German power, and on the heroism of Polish Catholics who risked their own lives to rescue Jews.

In the 1990s, as the era of Communist rule came to an end and Poland made the transition to democracy, new perspectives on Polish experiences in World War II began to emerge. Revisiting the history of the war years and drawing on new research, historians began to portray Poles not only as victims of Nazism but also as collaborators in its crimes. Historian Jan Gross wrote a controversial book, Neighbors, about the 1941 massacre of 1,600 Jewish men, women, and children in the Polish village of Jedwabne. The Jews of Jedwabne were killed not by Germans but by their Polish neighbors. Gross calls his work "a confrontation with ghosts in the consciousness of Polish society."

This type of "confrontation" is painful and controversial. In 2016, as the conservative "Law and Justice" Party came to power in Poland, leaders took steps to emphasize once again the stories of Polish rescuers at new museums and historical sites. Some observers believed that these efforts were motivated not only by the desire to celebrate rescuers' heroism but also by the wish to counterbalance or even conceal the kind of Polish participation in crimes that Gross describes in his book. Government officials also proposed a new law that would make it a criminal offense to use the phrase "Polish death camps" in reference to German camps like Auschwitz, which were built within the boundaries of German-occupied Poland.

Amid these debates about national shame and national pride, some educators and activists are helping young Poles learn something that has been absent from their history lessons: the stories of Jewish life that flourished in their country in the centuries before World War II. Jews once made up about 10% of the Polish population; in some villages, they were a majority of residents. But few Jews live in Poland today, and outside the major cities, traces of Jewish life have disappeared. The Forum for Dialogue, a Polish organization that works to foster relationships between Polish Jews and non-Jews, created a program called the "School of Dialogue" to help Polish young people discover the lost Jewish history of their own hometowns. Forum for Dialogue board member Zuzanna Radzik describes their work:

We come to schools and work to capture the young people's interest. Together with them, we draw maps of the neighborhood-as it looks today and as it did before the war-so we can find out what the students know about history. Our instructors team up with the students to establish who used to live in the area. That is an opportunity for the young people to learn the meaning of words such as synagogue and mikveh [a bath used for Jewish ritual] and get to know what a Jewish cemetery looks like. In other words, they learn about the social and religious life of Jews. After the classes, the students can come up with their own projects to help commemorate Jewish history.

These projects, Radzik hopes, will help students understand that the Jewish heritage of their town is their history, too.

Michael Gawenda, a descendant of Polish Jews who lives in Australia, visited the Polish town of Sandomierz with students from the School of Dialogue in 2013. In an article for the Sydney Morning Herald, he gave a very personal account of what the visit meant to him:

Sandomierz is a beautiful little town in south-eastern Poland surrounded by apple orchards and verdant green fields. Once, before the war, many of its inhabitants were Jews. As we walked along the streets that were once Jewish streets, this group of American and Australian Jews, there were no signs, nothing at all, to suggest that the Jews of Sandomierz had a history going back hundreds of years . . .

The past sat in my heart like a stone. On the once-Jewish streets of Sandomierz, in these well-kept and pastel-coloured apartment buildings, lived Poles. I wondered whether they knew what had happened to the people who once lived here and, if they did know, did the ghosts of the dead Jews ever come to disturb their sleep?

I had not come to Poland to reclaim the past. The past was settled. I had been to Poland in 1985 when the communists were still in control. I came as a journalist and I met Solidarity leaders and leaders of the Polish democracy movement. Poland was alien. I felt no connection with the place. There was nothing to suggest that this had once been the home of millions of Jews, my parents included. I left knowing I would never return.

This time, at the front doors of the high school, we were greeted by the principal who ushered us into the staffroom, where we were offered tea. On the table were plates of Polish biscuits and small cakes. I knew the taste of these biscuits and these cakes.

Outside the room, the students we had come to see were waiting for us. They were holding posters and folios stuffed with papers and some of them were using their phones to take photos of us.

They were 16 and 17 years old and when they stood together at the front of their classrooms, in front of the portraits of Polish patriots who had fought for Polish freedom from the Russian and German occupiers who had divided Poland between them for centuries, I wondered how their parents and their grandparents, in particular, regarded the long-vanished Jews of Sandomierz.

In groups of two or three, the kids held up posters. On them were drawn maps of the streets where the Jews of their town had once lived. Some of the posters were photographs of buildings that had once been Jewish communal centres. Some of the kids leafed through bound folios of typed interviews with local people about the Jews of Sandomierz. What did they know about the Jews? Did they know what had happened to them?

These young people were full of a sort of defiant and boisterous joy, the sort that comes from discovering something that had been hidden from you. Lots of Jews had once lived here! Who were these people? What's a Jew anyway? And why did they leave?

Later, we walked with them through their town and they took us to the new markers of Jewish life in Sandomierz that I had thought did not exist. They stood in the rain to show us the places they had marked on their maps where the Jews had once lived.

They took me, these boys and girls unburdened by guilt or shame, to the archives office, where they had searched out the names of the Jews of their town. This building had once been the synagogue of Sandomierz and on the walls were what I thought were psalms in faded Hebrew lettering. The kids took photographs on their phones and when perhaps I looked too grim, a boy asked me to smile and I did smile and the stone in my heart felt smaller.

The rain came down harder on the walk to the little Jewish cemetery.

The graves were cracked and dirty grey, and in the centre of the cemetery there stood a sort of monument shaped like a pyramid that was constructed of old tombstones.

The kids had cleaned the tombstones and they had cleared the weeds from the paths. A girl called Agata came and stood beside me and asked if I would like to light a remembrance candle with her . . . perhaps I was just imagining this, but it seemed that in that moment, we knew that we were both connected to this place. We stood together in front of a moss-covered grave, the lettering on the tombstone long faded.

Later, at the café where we ate local apples and the cakes the kids had baked for us, Agata asked me how come I understood some Polish words. I told her my parents had spoken Polish when I was a child and they didn't want me to understand what they were saying.

"Where did they come from?" she asked. I told her my mother was from Lodz and my father from a small town called Lowicz.

"So you are Polish,'' she said.

I didn't know what to say. My parents, whose families lived in Poland for many generations, did not consider themselves to be Polish. For them, Poland was no more than a place of death. It was not just the years of genocide that had embittered them, though those years had coloured-and yes, distorted-their view of Poles and Polish anti-Semitism.

"I guess I am Polish in a way,'' I said. "Do you think I am Polish?'' I asked.

"Of course," she said, and smiled.

In schools across Poland, hundreds of kids are working on projects like the one in Sandomierz. I wondered what would last from these discoveries for these children who once had no inkling that Jews had lived in their towns. Their parents had never spoken to them about the Jews of their town. Neither had their grandparents. The communist regime had been determined to rid Poles of any memory of the country's Jews.

But as I travelled on in Poland, with the kids of Sandomierz somehow accompanying me, I thought that the past cannot be undone but perhaps it can be reclaimed.

1. Why do you think the Polish government has tried to influence how history should be remembered in Poland?

2. What is the purpose of the Forum for Dialogue's School of Dialogue? What impact did it have on Michael Gawenda? How did it shape his sense of identity and belonging? What impact did the School of Dialogue have on the students Gawenda met?

3. What does this reading suggest about the connection between history, national identity, and individual identity?

4. What is the value in learning the history of the place where you live, especially if that history is invisible or largely forgotten? What difference might knowing that history make?

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How should a country remember its past? This universal question has been especially painful and complex in Poland, a country that suffered an extraordinarily brutal German occupation in World War II, followed by decades of Soviet Communist dominance that lasted until 1989. In the years after the war, Poles overwhelmingly viewed themselves as victims of Germany.

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Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test.

How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here.

This was clearly seen last November with the premiere of the movie Poklosie ("Aftermath"), a fictional thriller that told the story of a Polish man who returns to his hometown and discovers a dark secret about its past.

During the war, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people, including his own father, rounded up the town's Jews, locked them in a building and set it on fire.

In the last 10 years or so it has become widely known that massacres like this actually happened in several Polish towns, most notably in Jedwabne, north-eastern Poland, where Poles at the instigation of the Nazis murdered more than 300 Jews.

Some right-wing critics and politicians branded the movie "anti-Polish", arguing that it paints a false picture of Poles as collaborators with Nazi Germany.

The history of Polish-Jewish relations is also controversial because there is a perception among some Poles that Jews in the eastern part of the country welcomed the Red Army and collaborated with the Soviet occupation forces.

'Incredible discussion'

The film's lead actor, Maciej Stuhr, was called a "Polish traitor", a "Jew" and "Adolf Hitler" on Internet forums. Its producer, Dariusz Jablonski, said he made the movie because he believes film is a good platform to raise this issue, especially with younger people.

The Holocaust
Why did the Nazis want to wipe out the Jews? Listen to stories of persecution
"During communist times we were told that Poles were always the noble knights of the Second World War. We were either victims or we fought against the Nazi occupation and were saving Jews.

"As in the life of any family, society or nation there are black holes along with the positive stories. This was our black hole. The discussion the film caused revealed how much still needs to be done," Mr Jablonski told me.

Poland did indeed suffer horribly from not one but two brutal occupations, Nazi and Soviet, during the war. More than five million of its citizens, three million of them Jews, were killed.

About as many Poles were killed in the bombing of Warsaw in 1939 as Germans killed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945.

Added to this is the fact that many more Poles are honoured by Israel for saving the lives of Jews during the war than any other nation.

After communism collapsed in 1989, academics were free to research the brutal reality of this war-time period, when the occupying Nazis induced Poles to give up Jews and forbade them to help their Jewish neighbours on pain of death.

The debate was blown open in 2001 with the publication of the book Neighbours by Polish emigre professor Jan Gross, which discussed Jedwabne.

"It unleashed an incredible national discussion. It went on for about a year. Almost every day there was something in the newspapers, journals, magazines, radio and TV.

"Ten years earlier Poles discovered that something horrible happened to Jews and 10 years later they said, 'Wait a second, you know, some of our own people helped'," Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, remembers.

"Under the communists one of the mantras was 'We Poles suffered under the Nazis', and now all of a sudden they're being told, yes you were persecuted but some of you were not only victims, some of you were even collaborators.

"That entails a change of a national image, which is very hard, and I have tremendous respect for Poles who were able to say we are not as perfect as we thought. For a country to do that is simply inspiring. There are still Poles today that don't want to admit it and that's a black stain on the soul of Poland," he added.

Jewish history

Staff at the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, built on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, expect its portrayal of this period to be the most controversial.

The museum, which took almost 20 years to get off the ground and will cost around $100m (£65m) once complete, will open its doors on the anniversary of the uprising for educational and cultural workshops. The core exhibition is expected to open early next year.

The museum will seek to educate and inform people about the long and rich history of Jewish life in Poland.

Jews first came to the country in the Middle Ages and settled in large numbers because of the relatively tolerant attitude towards them. It became the largest Jewish community in the world.

Ninety per cent of that community was wiped out in the Holocaust and today, there are only about 40-50,000 people with Jewish roots living in Poland.

"In Poland now the real issue is the lack of knowledge about Jewish life and what its importance is for Poles. Jews were living here for 1,000 years and as a result we have Hebrew and Yiddish words in the Polish language, Polish cuisine is filled with Jewish dishes.

"Children in every kindergarten learn poems written by Jewish poets. People drive Citroen cars without knowing it was a company established by Polish Jews. We are grateful to Polish Jews who emigrated to the US and created Hollywood. When we tell people this they open their eyes wide," museum spokesman Piotr Kossobudzki said.

Of course, anti-Semitic attitudes persist in Poland as they do in most European countries. But in the last 20 years, thanks to the late Polish pope, John Paul II, calling anti-Semitism a sin, progress has been made.

Jewish history and culture have also become increasingly popular among Poles. The country now has major Jewish cultural festivals and demand for Yiddish and Hebrew language classes has risen.

Poles are also helping the existing Jewish community to preserve its cemeteries. Earlier this week, around 100 volunteers took part in cleaning up Warsaw's Jewish cemetery.

"It's a shame. We used to have such a huge community of Jewish people here in Poland. There are lots of monuments, cemeteries and places connected to them, so it would be good if Polish people could do something to look after them," 28-year-old volunteer Katarzyna Regulska said.

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Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test. How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here.

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https://polska.pl/history/history-poland/99th-anniversary-regaining-independence/

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WWI Experience of Germany's WWII Commanders

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WWI Experience of Germany's WWII Commanders

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WWI shaped the German army of WWII. Bitterness at their loss encouraged Nazism among the Germans and created scores of highly driven soldiers. The experiences of WWI also affected the skills, abilities, and outlook of the men who commanded in WWII.

Here are just some of the experiences that shaped them.

Adolf Hitler

Germany's supreme commander in WWII had extraordinary experiences in WWI.

An Austrian with a strong sense of loyalty to Germany, he was allowed to join the Bavarian army at the start of WWI. He served Germany until the end of the war, most notably in the dangerous role of messenger between the trench lines. He was injured several times, including by artillery and gas; weapons of a distant and impersonal war. He survived the Massacre of the Innocents when many young Germans were killed in a costly and ineffective offensive.

Despite his suffering, the war was a positive experience for Hitler. He was decorated for his courage and respected by his peers. For the first time, he had access to the German middle class that he aspired to join. He saw war as a thing of comradeship and courage. It encouraged his idealization of violence and hatred of outsiders.

Heinz Guderian

Guderian was a junior officer in the German army when WWI broke out. Working in signals, he saw the potential of new communications technology, including radio and cryptography. He gained experience through being in a command center and completed his training to be a staff officer.

In the late stages of WWI, Guderian witnessed British tanks driving back German forces. Having seen the incredible power of those vehicles, he studied them after the war. Guderian became one of Germany's most innovative and valuable tank commanders, bringing his signals and staff experience to shaping a new way of war.

Albert Kesselring

When WWI broke out, Kesselring already had a decade of expertise in the Bavarian artillery. He spent the early part of the war with his artillery regiment, then became a staff officer. In that role, he showed his gift for military administration and logistics. He advanced through the ranks, while seldom seeing the dangers of war up close.

After the war, the army kept hold of Kesselring and his administrative skills. He argued for rebuilding the general staff and took part in Germany's secret rearmament. He was one of the most senior commanders of WWII.

Josef "Sepp" Dietrich

Like Kesselring, Dietrich started in the artillery. He fought at Ypres, one of the most hotly contested sectors of WWI. In November 1917, he was awarded an Iron Cross.

Three months later, he was transferred to the Bavarian Storm Tank Detachment. There he served as a gunner in a captured tank. During fighting at Chemin des Dames in June 1918, his tank became stuck. He was part of the demolition crew that destroyed it to stop the Allies recapturing it. He earned a Bavarian Military Service Cross.

Both his tank experience and the work of WWI Storm Troopers shaped Dietrich's career, as he went on to become an SS Panzer commander.

Kurt Student

Before WWI, Student was a young lieutenant in an army regiment. When the war broke out, he was sent on a pilot training course. It shaped his career.

At the start of WWI, combat between airplanes was unknown. The situation quickly changed, and countless young men died in the air war. During those four years of the war, the German Air Force was arguably the most innovative military institution in the world. Flyers such as Oswald Boelcke, Max Immelmann, and Manfred von Richthofen invented fighter combat as we know it.

Kurt Student was given command of a squadron in October 1916. In 1917, he was wounded in the fighting. By the end of the war, he had proven his ability as a commander. He had also spent years surrounded by men who encouraged innovative thinking and who demonstrated the power of aircraft. Bringing together those strands, he went on to create the Luftwaffe's paratrooper forces and lead them in WWII.

Hyazinth von Strachwitz

At the start of WWI, cavalry was still considered an important part of the military. One of its most important uses was in scouting out enemy positions.

Hyazinth von Strachwitz, a 21-year-old lieutenant in the Guards Cavalry Corps, volunteered to lead one of six dangerous long-range cavalry patrols. Together with 16 hand-picked men, he swept around behind the French army, gathering information on its location and condition. They also cut telegraph lines and blew up rail tracks. Meeting up with the other patrols, they pooled their intelligence, then made their way back to headquarters to report their findings.

For six weeks, Strachwitz led his men around France, gathering information and causing chaos. Troops were diverted to hunt them down. Fear stirred in Paris at the presence of Germans behind French lines. Along the way, Strachwitz found food for his men at local farms, always insisting on paying for it.

They had several close run-ins, losing their horses and then most of their uniforms. When they were eventually captured, they were tried as spies and almost faced the death penalty.

Late in the war, Strachwitz escaped from a prisoner of war camp. Trying to cross the Alps into Switzerland, he fell and was severely injured. He had to give himself up.

Strachwitz's boldness and proven mastery of mobile warfare stood him in good stead. He became a tank commander in WWII, referred to as the Panzer Count.
Charles Rivers Editors (2014), The Red Baron: The Life and Legacy of Manfred von Richthofen John Keegan (1987), The Mask of Command James Lucas (1996), Hitler's Enforcers: Leaders of the German War Machine 1939-1945 David Rooney (1999), Military Mavericks: Extraordinary Men of Battle

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The WWI Experience of Germany's WWII Commanders

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WWI shaped the German army of WWII. Bitterness at their loss encouraged Nazism among the Germans and created scores of highly driven soldiers. The experiences of WWI also affected the skills, abilities, and outlook of the men who commanded in WWII. Here are just some of the experiences that shaped them.

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World War II: Maps The Holocaust took place in the broader context of World War II. Still reeling from Germany's defeat in World War I, Hitler's government envisioned a vast, new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German dominance in Europe, its leaders calculated, would require war.

1939

After securing the neutrality of the Soviet Union (through the August 1939 German-Soviet Pact of nonaggression), Germany started World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. Within a month, Poland was defeated by a combination of German and Soviet forces and was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

1940

The relative lull in fighting which followed the defeat of Poland ended on April 9, 1940, when German forces invaded Norway and Denmark. On May 10, 1940, Germany began its assault on western Europe by invading the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), which had taken neutral positions in the war, as well as France. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany, which provided for the German occupation of the northern half of the country and permitted the establishment of a collaborationist regime in the south with its seat in the city of Vichy.

With German encouragement, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states in June 1940 and formally annexed them in August 1940. Italy, a member of the Axis (countries allied with Germany), joined the war on June 10, 1940. From July 10 to October 31, 1940, the Nazis waged, and ultimately lost, an air war over England, known as the Battle of Britain.

1941

After securing the Balkan region by invading Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, 1941, the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in direct violation of the German-Soviet Pact. In June and July 1941, the Germans also occupied the Baltic states. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin then became a major wartime Allied leader, in opposition to Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. During the summer and autumn of 1941, German troops advanced deep into the Soviet Union, but stiffening Red Army resistance prevented the Germans from capturing the key cities of Leningrad and Moscow. On December 6, 1941, Soviet troops launched a significant counteroffensive that drove German forces permanently from the outskirts of Moscow. One day later, on December 7, 1941, Japan (one of the Axis powers) bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States immediately declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States as the military conflict widened.

1942-43

In May 1942, the British Royal Air Force carried out a raid on the German city of Cologne with a thousand bombers, for the first time bringing war home to Germany. For the next three years, Allied air forces systematically bombed industrial plants and cities all over the Reich, reducing much of urban Germany to rubble by 1945. In late 1942 and early 1943, the Allied forces achieved a series of significant military triumphs in North Africa. The failure of French armed forces to prevent Allied occupation of Morocco and Algeria triggered a German occupation of collaborationist Vichy France on November 11, 1942. Axis military units in Africa, approximately 150,000 troops in all, surrendered in May 1943.

On the eastern front, during the summer of 1942, the Germans and their Axis allies renewed their offensive in the Soviet Union, aiming to capture Stalingrad on the Volga River, as well as the city of Baku and the Caucasian oil fields. The German offensive stalled on both fronts in the late summer of 1942. In November, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive at Stalingrad and on February 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets. The Germans mounted one more offensive at Kursk in July 1943, the biggest tank battle in history, but Soviet troops blunted the attack and assumed a military predominance that they would not again relinquish during the course of the war.

In July 1943, the Allies landed in Sicily and in September went ashore on the Italian mainland. After the Italian Fascist Party's Grand Council deposed Italian premier Benito Mussolini (an ally of Hitler), the Italian military took over and negotiated a surrender to Anglo-American forces on September 8. German troops stationed in Italy seized control of the northern half of the peninsula, and continued to resist. Mussolini, who had been arrested by Italian military authorities, was rescued by German SS commandos in September and established (under German supervision) a neo-Fascist puppet regime in northern Italy. German troops continued to hold northern Italy until surrendering on May 2, 1945.

1944

On June 6, 1944 ( D-Day), as part of a massive military operation, over 150,000 Allied soldiers landed in France, which was liberated by the end of August. On September 11, 1944, the first US troops crossed into Germany, one month after Soviet troops had crossed the eastern border. In mid-December the Germans launched an unsuccessful counterattack in Belgium and northern France, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Allied air forces attacked Nazi industrial plants, such as the one at the Auschwitz camp (though the gas chambers were never targeted).

1945

The Soviets began an offensive on January 12, 1945, liberating western Poland and forcing Hungary (an Axis ally) to surrender. In mid-February 1945, the Allies bombed the German city of Dresden, killing up to 25,000 civilians. American troops crossed the Rhine River on March 7, 1945. A final Soviet offensive on April 16, 1945, enabled Soviet forces to encircle the German capital, Berlin.

As Soviet troops fought their way towards the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies at Reims and on May 9 to the Soviets in Berlin. In August, the war in the Pacific ended soon after the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 120,000 civilians. Japan formally surrendered on September 2.

World War II resulted in an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide. It was the largest and most destructive conflict in history.

Last Edited: Mar 14, 2007

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

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Germany started World War II in Europe on September 1, 1939, by invading Poland. War would continue until 1945. Learn more about WWII and genocide in Europe.

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How the Children of 🤬 Germany Remember WWII

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How the Children of 🤬 Germany Remember WWII

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The memories have the patina of childhood: fragmented, vivid, without resolution. They place us, as readers, immediately there. And next to them, portraits of the elderly people whose childhoods we're glimpsing. These are the Kriegskinder, or 'war children': so-called because they grew up in Nazi Germany during World War Two.

"One day I am at the Wilhelmsaue, a small pond in Berlin," remembers Brigitte, who was born in Dortmund in 1937. "A dead woman is floating on the water, face down. Her skirt has ballooned, wind blowing into it and she is sailing across the pond."

Forty-four photos and accompanying anecdotes are gathered in the new book Kriegskinder. Photographer Frederike Helwig captured the images and Anna Waak collected the memories, some of them spoken for the first time; viewed through the filter of a child's eyes, they are by parts humdrum and shocking. The glowing tip of a cigarette; the clatter of pebbles being thrown into a dead man's mouth; two tomato plants on the balcony of a home that has been destroyed. Small details that bypass the intellect, offering a different way into a subject widely covered by historians.

"My access to this subject was on the emotional side, not through history or statistics - the numbers, and what they did and how they did it, which we all grew up with and know," Helwig tells BBC Culture. "The problem with that is the perpetrators are always 'the others' - we're trying to establish that this happened in most German families, and how can that happen?"

One of her subjects has had to confront that more than most. Born in 1939, Niklas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, and he travelled through Europe with the human rights lawyer Philippe Sands in the acclaimed documentary My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did. His memory in Kriegskinder is from a childhood shopping trip with his mother and nanny. "We are driving through the Krakow Ghetto where my mother buys her furs and scarfs for a price of her own choosing. I am standing in the back of the Mercedes, my nanny Hilde sitting next to me, in front next to the driver my mother," he recalls. "I am wearing a black and white Pepita suit.

"The people look on sadly. I stick out my tongue to an older boy. He turns around, walks off, I feel like I won. I laugh triumphantly, but Hilde pulls me silently back into my seat." Although it describes a juvenile encounter, it's a disturbing memory. "Most of the first-hand accounts in the book are quite anecdotal," says Helwig. "What they say is interesting - but also what they don't say."

Many describe death in the only way they could comprehend it, as children. "One day a hanged man is lying in front of our house in Berlin. A German. He had tried to hide from the war in a ruined building and they hung him from the crossbar of the lamp post," says Werner. "When he was dead they cut him loose. He lies there for days with his mouth open and we children throw pebble stones into it.

"Eventually they take him away and bury him on the side of the road. Because no dead bodies can lie in the city streets trucks arrive, dig him and others up and throw them onto the trucks. We children watch. Then we have to go and have lunch. It's maize porridge for lunch, but I can only think of the corpses with their tattered clothes and bones sticking out and I feel sick."

Replayed through their senses, remembered via taste or sound or smell, the memories of the Kriegskinder bring past events into the present. "To this day, many remember the air raid shelters, the bombing raids, the fear of the adults around them, the dead and wounded, the hanged and the suicides, the bombed houses and playing in the rubble," writes Alexandra Senfft - the grand-daughter of a Nazi war criminal, and author of The Long Shadow of the Past: Descendants Face their Nazi Family History - in the foreword for Kriegskinder. "Clear or hazy, many have images of flight, and of the 'Russians'; they still feel the hunger and taste the chocolate given to them by American soldiers."

To read these memories is to be brought closer to a place of understanding: by seeing them as children, even as we look at them as old people, we acknowledge the ambiguities of who they are. "To recognize perpetrators in one's father or mother and to reconcile this recognition with one's love towards them is an act full of ambivalence and unbearable tensions," writes Senfft. "Often, the concealed crime weighs so heavily on the descendants' psyche that they can hardly process it: how can a beloved and loving father have been a murderer at the same time?

"A minority manage to differentiate between the perpetrator and the loved parent and to integrate both, to let each stand alongside the other. Yet the majority either deny the misdeed or break with their parent." Although a generation has passed since the war, what took place lives on in family dynamics.

"What the Kriegskinder did not come to terms with they passed onto us grandchildren," writes Senfft. "Psychologists have found that many grandchildren internalized their grandparents' experience even if the Nazi era was never spoken of. Grandchildren thus often possess the family memory without having experienced the events themselves."

Helwig found this when she had children herself. "It took me becoming a parent to actually be able to really empathise with my parents having witnessed World War Two at the ages of five and six," she says. "The idea for this book came when I was talking to my friends, asking them how are we going to teach our children about this history, and how do we keep them interested in it - or how do we teach them the responsibility which comes with it?

"Through those conversations with my peers, came also the realisation that our parents were probably a little bit odd at times, and they have these behavioural patterns which show us that they grew up during the war. It opened up a whole dialogue between us."

This was her real aim - initiating a conversation. "Every German knows about the Holocaust, we're educated with it, it's been documented at large, but what hasn't really been talked about in German families is what did the great-grandfather do, or what exactly happened - there still seems to be a taboo there."

That isn't necessarily because the Kriegskinder want to remain silent. "That generation is now at a time where they've carried all this for a long time and a lot of the people we interviewed were actually quite open about it, but said that many people were not really interested in what they had to say."

Helwig hopes that by bringing together recollections from childhoods in Nazi Germany with portraits of a generation whose memories will soon vanish, her book can help change that. "There's an emotional process happening, and through that emotional process hopefully it creates a curiosity to ask more questions and to have frank conversations, to be able to access that time," she says. "It's not about victimising this generation, it's important to try and encourage the generations to start talking to each other."

The book ends with a quote from Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On: "Violent conflicts create zones of silence in a society. The deeds and responsibility of the perpetrators are concealed. Thus also the suffering of the victims, the role of the spectators... The silence is often passed on to the next generation."

Kriegskinder is published in a climate that gives a renewed urgency to these conversations. "The book wants to raise a certain awareness that, yes, it was a long time ago but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again," says Helwig. "When we started this project in 2014, we lived in a very different world from today. I told friends in Germany that I was doing this book about the Kriegskinder, and the response was 'oh interesting, but do we need to talk about that still? Look at Germany today' - it was at the height of Merkel and Obama - and suddenly, two years later, Germany and Europe and America are faced with very different scenarios."

In her foreword, Senfft acknowledges how collective silence can infect wider groups. "Research ... has shown that trauma and severe stress can be hereditary; that which is not dealt with can be passed on to the next generation." And it leaches out beyond the family. "What is not brought to light and engaged with individually and within the family finds its way into society and politics."
The exhibition Below is a selection of six portraits from the book, which is out now, published by Hatje Cantz. Kriegskinder is on view at F3, Berlin from 2 February to 8 April 2018.
"Because I'm malnourished I am sent to my great aunt in Switzerland. She is married to an upholsterer; it has a nice smell of leather, but ants run through the apartment. My aunt puts down herring heads to divert the ant trails. In the apartment, there is a gorgeous sofa and on it are some small booklets. Because my aunt is often in Zurich during the day I've got time to look at them. I suffer the worst shock when I realize that they are about concentration camps and that those camps were in Germany. Those pictures...One time in the middle of the street in the village someone slaps me in the face and yells: 'You nasty German!' and I cry."

"The Russian soldiers - they are really small and ride ponies - occupy the farm where we live. They shoot the big Keeshond who lives there with us because he barked. He was my friend. One of the soldiers places me on his horse and rides with me through the village. On my birthday in 1945, my mother decides to try and flee to the West with us children, my grandmother and a few other relatives.

"In the rush she mixes up my left and right shoe. We walk the entire day, for miles, and she does not hear what I am trying to tell her. Dead people and horses lie on the roadside, all mixed up. We sleep in barns, abandoned factories, in trains, in camps where they have delousing showers and thin soups from field kitchens. Sometimes they bomb us. In the course of this my grandmother and other relatives die. Only my mother, my sister, and I survive."

"When the Russians come, our girl Lisbeth climbs into a box full of Hitler-pictures. All the glass panes shatter. My mother sits with us children in a sand pit at a playground because she thinks this way nothing is going to happen to her. When a soldier comes out of the basement I grab his trouser leg and shout: 'You damned Russian, let my Lisbeth alone!' He doesn't do anything to me.

"In the villa opposite we hear a tremendous noise so my grandmother walks over resolutely. There the mother and daughter lie on the bed, naked, raped with their throats cut. My grandmother shouts at the drunken Russian until they leave. My mother, who's a doctor, declares both women dead and buries them in the garden."

"Already for days people have been passing by on the road in front of our house. When we hear on the radio that Silesia must be vacated we join the crowd heading east. Every evening when it gets dark the road must be vacated and everyone has to look for somewhere to sleep.

"One evening we find shelter with an elderly woman who's got many cats. We are sitting with her at dinner when the animals jump wildly across the table and chairs. My grandmother finds cats disgusting and is appalled. But the woman forces us out of the apartment and into an old mine. Panic breaks out when the air raid sirens go off. More and more people push into the mine, some fall and are stamped to death. The cats have warned and saved us."

"My mother has a stomach ache but she waits so long that a neighbour has to bring her into hospital. The doctors can only observe that the appendix has burst and the pus has already reached the abdominal cavity. They say the only thing that may help is Penicillin. This is only available on the black market. My youngest aunt somehow manages to secure the medicine, but it is too late.

"My mother is pushed about between corridor, bathroom and some other small rooms in the hospital. She is enveloped in a smell of putrefied flesh. When she says she is thirsty I run from one bar to the next in tears to buy her lemonade. Soon after she dies."

"The winter is so cold that ice floes drift on the Rhine. The city lies in ruins, an adventure playground. On the way to school I pass the Gereonskirche. One of the two steeples is destroyed, in the other the bells still hang. Near the central station I walk beneath the railway bridge. Everything is in ruins. My mother tells me that here used to be the hospital in which I was born. Only the exterior walls are still standing; the same is true for our house in Blumenthalstrasse in which we lived prior to the war. I discover the remnants of my pram in the iron skeleton of the balcony.
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"The Cologne Cathedral does not seem to be damaged much. Only in one spot a bomb or grenade must have hit it. They've inserted a brick filling there to keep the tower from collapsing. Hohenzollern Bridge is completely destroyed and lies in the Rhine. At the bastion, American soldiers have built an auxiliary bridge, the so-called Patton Bridge. Patton was an American general. When cars go over it, especially lorries, the wooden planks rattle and create a lot of noise. I take the tram to school. The doors are open, inside it's crammed and outside people stand on the footboard, me too. There is a new O-bus line. It seems a miracle that an omnibus can drive quietly without engine noise. It only rattles a bit when it drives over potholes."

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How the children of Nazi Germany remember World War Two

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The memories have the patina of childhood: fragmented, vivid, without resolution. They place us, as readers, immediately there. And next to them, portraits of the elderly people whose childhoods we're glimpsing. These are the Kriegskinder, or 'war children': so-called because they grew up in Nazi Germany during World War Two.

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Blitzkrieg: Definition, London & World War II - HISTORY

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Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” is a method of offensive warfare designed to strike a swift, focused blow at an enemy using highly mobile ground and air forces.

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On 12 March 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria. Later that year they marched into the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, and on 15 March 1939 the German army invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. This brought over half a million Jews under German control.

The German invasion of Western Poland on 1 September 1939 led to the start of the Second World War. Between 1939 and June 1941 the German army invaded and occupied many countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Greece, Norway and Western Poland. By this stage of the war many millions of Jews were living in territories under German control.

The experience of Jews in countries that were invaded and occupied by the Nazis was in some ways quite similar to that of the Jews within Germany. However, one thing that was different was the speed at which the Nazis brought in anti-Jewish measures.

This section will highlight the key events and features of the Jewish experience in countries that were occupied by the Nazis.

On 12 March 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria. Later that year they marched into the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, and on 15 March 1939 the German army invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. This brought over half a million Jews under German control.

The German invasion of Western Poland on 1 September 1939 led to the start of the Second World War. Between 1939 and June 1941 the German army invaded and occupied many countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Greece, Norway and Western Poland. By this stage of the war many millions of Jews were living in territories under German control.

The experience of Jews in countries that were invaded and occupied by the Nazis was in some ways quite similar to that of the Jews within Germany. However, one thing that was different was the speed at which the Nazis brought in anti-Jewish measures.

This section will highlight the key events and features of the Jewish experience in countries that were occupied by the Nazis.

The following section provides a detailed overview of the events that followed the German invasion or control of a number of countries. These countries are:

France - Invaded by Germany on 10th May 1940.

The Netherlands - Invaded by Germany on 10th May 1940.

Poland - Invaded by Germany on 1st September 1939.

Romania - Allied to Germany from 5th July 1940.

The expansion of the Holocaust

After Hitler came to power many German Jews began to move to the Netherlands as they believed that its neutrality during WWI, would mean it would be a safe place to escape the Nazi's antisemitic policies. Many of those who entered the country did so illegally. The Dutch governement set up a series internment camps including one in the north-east at Westerbork. After the outbreak of the Second World War Westerbork would play a significant role in the transportation of Dutch Jews to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor.

Invasion of the Netherlands

On 10 May 1940, the German Army invaded the Netherlands. Within four days, after witnessing the bombing of Rotterdam and receiving a threat of the same in Amsterdam, the Dutch army surrendered. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fled to Great Britain, where she established a government-in- exile. Very soon, Hitler ordered the establishment of a German civil administration in the Netherlands under the command of the SS. Many Austrian-born Nazis supervised the work of the Dutch civil service.

The Dutch Jewish Council

The Netherlands had a Jewish population of 140,000, 75,000 of whom lived in Amsterdam. Many Jews attempted to escape the country. However, a series of anti-Jewish measures made this extremely difficult. In September 1940, Jewish newspapers were closed down. Then, during November, Jewish civil servants were sacked and the assets of all Jewish businesses were registered.

In December 1940, the Jewish community in the Netherlands established the Jewish Coordinating Committee as a defensive measure against the Nazis. Two months later, the Nazi regime set up a Judenrat; the Joodse Raad, to administer orders of the SS concerning the lives of Jews in the Netherlands.

In January 1941, all Jews living within the Netherlands were ordered to register. A total of 159,806 persons registered, including 19,561 born of mixed marriages. The total included some 25,000 Jewish refugees from the German Reich.

General strike in the Netherlands

A confrontation in a cafe between Jews and the German police resulted in 389 young people being sent to Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. Many Dutch citizens publicly criticized the Nazi measures. In response to the deportations, Dutch workers called a general strike on 25 February 1941. These strikes brought factories, public transport and public services to a standstill. However, the Germans brutally suppressed the strike within three days. Whilst Nazi policy hardened, they realised that it would not be easy to convert the whole of the Dutch population to Nazism.

Put on trial

Despite the brutality of the Arrow Cross reign of terror, many thousands of Jews in Budapest were saved by the Relief and Rescue Committee. Other Jewish activists, such as Zionist youth movement members, forged identity documents and provided them with food. Foreign diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg, from Sweden, and Carl Lutz, from Switzerland, helped Jews achieve safety through international protection.

Hungary was liberated by the Soviet army during April 1945. However, by this time 568,000 Hungarian Jews had perished during the Holocaust.

ADVANCED CONTENT

After invasion, the Jews of each country were subjected to various anti-Jewish measures. (see above for examples of regulations established by the Nazis in Poland.)

Jews were dismissed from employment; especially those in positions of influence. In addition, Jewish-owned property, businesses and assets were confiscated. Jewish students were dismissed from school and universities.Freedom of movement was severely restricted. Jews were banned from visiting public places, subjected to nightime curfews and travel restrictions.In many countries, especially in the east, Jews were forced to live in certain areas of towns or cities, known as ghettos.Many Jews were arrested and used for forced labour. Many thousands of Jews were the victims of random punishments that resulted in their deaths.Despite the fact that they might have previously been friends or colleagues, local citizens often took part in attacks and killings against their Jewish neighbours.

By the early 1940s many millions of Jews were living in territories under German control.

The experience of Jews in countries that were invaded and occupied by the Nazis was often quite similar to that of the Jews within Germany. However, what was different was the speed at which the Nazis enacted anti-Jewish measures. Watch the videos on this page to gain an understanding of life through the eyes of a Survivor.
Freddie
Freddie was an Austrian Jewish boy born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. In this video he talks about what happened when the Nazis marched into Vienna during early 1938. He also talks about what he witnessed on Kristallnacht, 9-10 November 1938.
Jack
In this video Jack remembers the German invasion of Novogrudek. Jack was only 12 years old, when the Nazis invaded, but remembers vividly how the Nazis established anti-Jewish laws. He also remembers the terrible atrocities committed by the Nazis and their accomplices.
Joan
In this video Joan talks about what happened to her family under Nazi occupation. Watch and learn how the family managed to move from Belgium to France.

What happened to Joan's father?
Simon
In 1939 Radyviliv was invaded by the Soviet Union. Life didn't change too much under the Russians. However, in 1941 the German army invaded the area. Life changed dramatically for the Jewish population.

Watch Simon's testimony and learn what happened when the Nazis invaded.

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On 12 March 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria. Later that year they marched into the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, and on 15 March 1939 the German army invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. This brought over half a million Jews under German control.

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Sections

The social historian, Richard Grunberger, has argued in A Social History of the Third Reich (1971) that when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he inherited a very conservative educational system: "The influence of Germany's educational system on her national fortunes invites comparison with that of the playing-fields of Eton on the Battle of Waterloo. It was in the classrooms that the foundations were laid for Bismarck's victories over Danes, Austrians and French abroad and over German parliamentarians at home." (1)

Hitler held very strong opinions on education. The only teacher he liked at secondary school was Leopold Potsch, his history master. Potsch, like many people living in Upper Austria, was a German Nationalist. Potsch told Hitler and his fellow pupils of the German victories over France in 1870 and 1871 and attacked the Austrians for not becoming involved in these triumphs. Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German Empire, was one of Hitler's early historical heroes. (2)

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1925): "Dr. Leopold Potsch... used our budding nationalistic fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor. By this alone he was able to discipline us little ruffians more easily than would have been possible by any other means. This teacher made history my favorite subject. And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that I became a little revolutionary. For who could have studied German history under such a teacher without becoming an enemy of the state which, through its ruling house, exerted so disastrous an influence on the destinies of the nation? And who could retain his loyalty to a dynasty which in past and present betrayed the needs of the German people again and again for shameless private advantage?" (3)

Changes to the School Curriculum
Hitler immediately made changes to the school curriculum. Education in "racial awareness" began at school and children were constantly reminded of their racial duties to the "national community". Biology, along with political education, became compulsory. Children learnt about "worthy" and "unworthy" races, about breeding and hereditary disease. "They measured their heads with tape measures, checked the colour of their eyes and texture of their hair against charts of Aryan or Nordic types, and constructed their own family trees to establish their biological, not historical, ancestry.... They also expanded on the racial inferiority of the Jews". (4)

As Louis L. Snyder has pointed out: "There were to be two basic educational ideas in his ideal state. First, there must be burnt into the heart and brains of youth the sense of race. Second, German youth must be made ready for war, educated for victory or death. The ultimate purpose of education was to fashion citizens conscious of the glory of country and filled with fanatical devotion to the national cause." (5)

A German student taking part in "race education" classes. (c. 1935)

The Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, claimed that the idea that history teaching should be objective was a fallacy of liberalism. (6) "The purpose of history was to teach people that life was always dominated by struggle, that race and blood were central to everything that happened in the past, present and future, and that leadership determined the fate of peoples. Central themes in the new teaching including courage in battle, sacrifice for a greater cause, boundless admiration for the Leader and hatred of Germany's enemies, the Jews." (7)

Hitler appointed the loyal Bernhard Rust as Minister for Education. Rust lost his job as a schoolteacher in 1930 after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a student. He was not charged with the offence because of his "instability of mind". Rust's task was to change the education system so that resistance to fascist ideas were kept to a minimum. (8)

Children in a German primary school (1939)

At school the students were taught to worship Adolf Hitler: "As the teacher entered the class, the students would stand and raise their right arms. The teacher would say, For the Führer a triple victory, answered by a chorus of Heil! three times... Every class started with a song. The almighty Führer would be staring at us from his picture on the wall. These uplifting songs were brilliantly written and composed, transporting us into a state of enthusiastic glee." (9)

All school textbooks were withdrawn before new ones were published that reflected the Nazi ideology. Additional teaching materials were issued by Nazi teachers' organizations in different parts of the country. A directive issued in January 1934 made it compulsory for schools to educate their pupils "in the spirit of National Socialism". Children were encouraged to go to school wearing their Hitler Youth and German Girls' League uniforms. School noticeboards were covered in Nazi propaganda posters and teachers often read out articles written by anti-semites such as Julius Streicher. (10)

A frontispiece in a Nazi schoolbook. "Who wants to live has to fight, and
whoever refuses to fight in this world of eternal challenge has no right to live." (c. 1940)

In every schoolbook was an illustration of Hitler with one of his sayings as a frontispiece. Tomi Ungerer claims that his schoolbooks were strewn with pages of sayings from the Führer: "Learn to sacrifice for your fatherland. We shall go onwards. Germany must live. In your race is your strength. You must be true, you must be daring and courageous, and with each other form a great and wonderful comradeship." (11)

Marianne Gärtner went to a private school in Potsdam and noticed a lot of changes after Hitler gained power: "None of my neatly dressed, well-behaved primary-school mates questioned the new books, the new songs, the new syllabus, the new rules or the new standard script, and when - in line with national socialist educational policies - the number of PT periods was increased at the expense of religious instruction or other classes, and competitive field-events added to the curriculum, the less studious and the fast-legged among us were positively delighted." (12)

Illustrations from The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

In his autobiography, A Childhood under the Nazis (1998), Tomi Ungerer commented that one of the textbooks that he was forced to use was the anti-Semitic book, The Jewish Question in Education, which contained guidelines for the "identification" of Jews (13). Written by Fritz Fink, with an introduction by Julius Streicher it included passages such as the "Jews have different noses, ears, lips, chins and different faces than Germans" and "they walk differently, have flat feet... their arms are longer and they speak differently." (14)

Some students began to question the way that Jews were portrayed in the classroom. Inge Scholl, later recalled what happened on a trip with the German League of Girls. "We went on trips with our comrades in the Hitler Youth and took long hikes through our new land, the Swabian Jura.... We attended evening gatherings in our various homes, listened to readings, sang, played games, or worked at handcrafts. They told us that we must dedicate our lives to a great cause.... One night, as we lay under the wide starry sky after a long cycling tour, a friend - a fifteen-year-old girl - said quite suddenly and out of the blue, Everything would be fine, but this thing about the Jews is something I just can't swallow. The troop leader assured us that Hitler knew what he was doing and that for the sake of the greater good we would have to accept certain difficult and incomprehensible things. But the girl was not satisfied with this answer. Others took her side, and suddenly the attitudes in our varying home backgrounds were reflected in the conversation. We spent a restless night in that tent, but afterwards we were just too tired, and the next day was inexpressibly splendid and filled with new experiences." (15)

Teachers in Nazi Germany
In 1933 all Jewish teachers were dismissed from German schools and universities. Bernhard Rust explained the reasons for this decision: " As a consequence of the demand thus clearly formulated by the Nuremberg Laws, Jewish teachers and Jewish pupils have had to quit German schools, and schools of their own have been provided by and for them as far as possible. In this way, the natural race instincts of German boys and girls are preserved; and the young people are made aware of their duty to maintain their racial purity and to bequeath it to succeeding generations. " (16)

On her first day at school Elsbeth Emmerich, a Jewish girl, took her teacher flowers. However, her teacher, Frau Borsig, was not impressed: "Frau Borsig... threw the flowers in the bin... One thing she did like to receive from us was Heil Hitler! Every day we had to greet her, and other grown-ups, with the salute. I was used to doing this, but it still embarrassed me. On my way to school one day I went into a busy shop without making the greeting, thinking no one would notice. But a shop assistant pounced on me, saying angrily, Don't you know the German greeting? She made me walk out and come back into the shop again, using the right greeting. I must have blushed to the roots of my long plaited hair as I held my arm out and said, Heil Hitler! in a pretend grown-up voice. Then she started talking loudly to the other customers about children's bad manners nowadays." (17)

Hans Massaquoi was only seven years old when Hitler came to power. His mother was German but his father was African: "In 1933, my first teacher was fired for political reasons. I don't know what her involvements were. Gradually, the old teachers were replaced with younger ones, those with Nazi orientations. Then I began to notice a change in attitude. Teachers would make snide remarks about my race. One teacher would point me out as an example of the non-Aryan race. One time, I must have been ten, a teacher took me aside and said, When we're finished with the Jews, you're next. He still had some inhibitions. He did not make that announcement before the class. It was a private thing. A touch of sadism." (18)

Vaughn Shoemaker, Chicago Daily News (1938)

Teachers who did not support the Nazi Party were sacked. One girl who successfully left Nazi Germany when she was sixteen later wrote: "Teachers had to pretend to be Nazis in order to remain in their posts, and most of the men teachers had families which depended on them. If somebody wanted to be promoted he had to show what a fine Nazi he was, whether he really believed what he was saying or not. In the last two years, it was very difficult for me to accept any teaching at all, because I never knew how much the teacher believed in or not." (19)

Effie Engel, who went to school in Dresden, pointed out: "The progressive teachers in our school all left and we got a number of new teachers. In my last two years of school, we got some teachers who had already been reprimanded. The fascists allowed them to be reinstated if they thought they were no longer compromised by anything else. But I also knew two teachers who never got a job again in the entire Hitler period.... One of the new teachers was in the SA and came to school in his uniform. I couldn't stand him. In part, we couldn't stand him because he was so loud and crude." (20)

It has been estimated that by 1936 over 32 per cent of teachers were members of the Nazi Party. This was a much higher figure than for other professions. Teachers who were members, wore their uniforms in the classroom. The teacher would enter the classroom and welcome the group with a 'Hitler salute', shouting "Heil Hitler!" Students would have to respond in the same manner. It has been claimed that before Adolf Hitler took power a large proportion pf teachers were members of the German Social Democratic Party. One of the jokes that circulated in Germany during this period referred to this fact: "What is the shortest measurable unit of time? The time it takes a grade-school teacher to change his political allegiance." (21)

Josef Capek, Principles of
German Education (May 1933)

By 1938 two-thirds of all elementary school teachers were indoctrinated at special camps in a compulsory one-month training course of lectures. What they learned at camp they were expected to pass on to their students. (22) Headmasters were instructed to dismiss teachers who were not supporters of Hitler. However, some anti-Nazi teachers survived: "I am trying through the teaching of geography to do everything in my power to give the boys knowledge and I hope later on, judgment, so that when, as they grow older, the Nazi fever dies down and it again becomes possible to offer some opposition they may be prepared. There are four or five masters who are non-Nazis left in our school now, and we all work on the same plan. If we leave, Nazis will come in and there will be no honest teaching in the whole school. But if I went to America and left others to do it, would that be honest, or are the only honest people those in prison cells? If only there could be some collective action amongst teachers." (23)

Hitler Youth and Education
By 1938 there were 8,000 full-time leaders of the Hitler Youth. There were also 720,000 part-time leaders, often schoolteachers, who had been trained in National Socialist principles. One teacher, who was hostile to Hitler, wrote to a friend: "In the schools it is not the teacher, but the pupils, who exercise authority. Party functionaries train their children to be spies and agent provocateurs. The youth organizations, particularly the Hitler Youth, have been accorded powers of control which enable every boy and girl to exercise authority backed up by threats. Children have been deliberately taken away from parents who refused to acknowledge their belief in National Socialism. The refusal of parents to 'allow their children to join the youth organization' is regarded as an adequate reason for taking the children away." (24)

Teachers constantly feared the possibility that their Hitler Youth students would inform on them. Herbert Lutz went to a school in Cologne. "My favorite teacher was my math teacher. I remember that one day he asked me a question. I was wearing my uniform, and I stood up, clicked my heels, and he blew up." The teacher shouted: "I don't want you to do this. I want you to act like a human being. I don't want machines. You're not a robot." After the lesson he called Lutz into his office and apologized. Lutz later recalled: "He was probably afraid that I might report him to the Gestapo." (25)

For example, a 38-year-old teacher in Düsseldorf told a joke to her class of twelve-year-olds, that was slightly critical of Adolf Hitler. She immediately realised that she had made a mistake and pleaded with the children not to tell anybody about it. One of the children told his parents and they promptly informed the Gestapo. She immediately lost her job and sent to prison for three-weeks. (26)

Tomi Ungerer claims that his teachers encouraged his students to inform on his parents. "We were promised a reward of money if we denounced our parents or our neighbours - what they said or did... We were told: Even if you denounce your parents, and if you should love them, your real father is the Führer, and being his children you will be the chosen ones, the heroes of the future." (27)

Irmgard Paul went to school in Berchtesgaden. "Fräulein Hoffmann, a slender, short woman of indeterminate age, welcomed me and assigned me a seat. After the first morning I knew that she was not the ogre that Fräulein Stöhr had been but that she too was a Nazi fanatic, more dangerous, it turned out, than Stöhr... Monday mornings each pupil had to weigh in with at least two pounds of used paper and a ball of smoothed-out silver aluminum foil to help with the war effort."

One day Irmgard asked her grandfather asked if she could take some of his old journals to school to help Germany win the war. "He looked at me as if he had not quite understood my question and then said in a calm, icy tone that not a sliver bf any of his magazines would go to support the war of that scoundrel Hitler... How dare he not support the war that we were told every day was a life-and-death struggle for the German people? I left the workshop without the journals but what I felt would be a permanent resentment against my grandfather."

Soon afterwards Fräulein Hoffmann invited Irmgard Paul to her home "to have a special treat of hot chocolate and cookies at her house". It was not long before Irmgard discovered why she had been asked to visit her teacher: "After a few polite words she asked point-blank what my grandfather thought about Adolf Hitler and what he said about the war. I was still angry with my grandfather but stalled, sitting uncomfortably on the moss green, upholstered chair in Fräulein Hoffmann's living room, weighing my feelings against my answer. On the one hand, grandfather was withholding paper for the war effort... On the other hand, he was my grandfather. I knew the twinkle in his eyes when he was amused and had seen tears running down his face when one after another the messages arrived that both his apprentices had been killed on the eastern front... After much too long a pause I came to the decision that I liked this nosy teacher less than my grandfather."

Irmgard Paul commented in her autobiography, On Hitler's Mountain: My Nazi Childhood (2005): "Although I did not know it that day, Fräulein Hoffmann was a Nazi informer, and my telling the truth would have sent grandfather to a concentration camp. Something had made me protect my grandfather, but it took a long time before I realized how lucky I (and he) had been in making that decision. On that particular day, though, I felt thoroughly sick of these conflicts forced on me by adults." (28)

Hildegard Koch was a member of the League of German Girls (BDM), the female branch of the Hitler Youth movement. She later recalled how the students controlled the curriculum: "As time went on more and more girls joined the BDM, which gave us a great advantage at school. The mistresses were mostly pretty old and stuffy. They wanted us to do scripture and, of course, we refused. Our leaders had told us that no one could be forced to listen to a lot of immoral stories about Jews, and so we made a row and behaved so badly during scripture classes that the teacher was glad in the end to let us out." (29)

"The German Student Fights for the Führer and the People"

Erich Dressler played an active role in getting rid of teachers he considered not to be supporters of the Nazi Party: "In 1934, when I had reached the age of ten, I was sent to the Paulsen Realgymnasium. This was still a regular old-fashioned place with masters in long beards who were completely out of sympathy with the new era. Again and again we noticed that they had little understanding for the Führer's maxim - the training of character comes before the training of intellect.They still expected us to know as much as the pupils used to under the Jewish Weimar Republic, and they pestered us with all sorts of Latin and Greek nonsense instead of teaching us things that might be useful later on. This brought about an absurd state of affairs in which we, the boys, had to instruct our masters. Already we were set aflame by the idea of the New Germany, and were resolved not to be influenced by their outdated ideas and theories, and flatly told our masters so. Of course they said nothing, because I think they were a bit afraid of us, but they didn't do anything about changing their methods of teaching."

It was decided to get rid of the Latin teacher. "Our Latin master set us an interminable extract from Caesar for translation. We just did not do it, and excused ourselves by saying that we had been on duty for the Hitler Youth during the afternoon. Once one of the old birds got up courage to say something in protest. This was immediately reported to our Group Leader who went off to see the headmaster and got the master dismissed. He was only sixteen, but as a leader in the Hider Youth he could not allow such obstructionism to hinder us in the performance of duties which were much more important than our school work.... Gradually the new ideas permeated the whole of our school. A few young masters arrived who understood us and who themselves were ardent national socialists. And they taught us subjects into which the national revolution had infused a new spirit. One of them took us for history; another for racial theory and sport. Previously we had been pestered with the old Romans and such like; but now we learned to see things with different eyes. I had never thought much about being well educated; but a German man must know something about the history of his own people so as to avoid repeating the mistakes made by former generations." (30)

Teachers encouraged members of the Hitler Youth to inform on their parents. For example, they set essays entitled "What does your family talk about at home?" According to one source: "Parents... were alarmed by the gradual brutalisation of manners, impoverishment of vocabulary and rejection of traditional values... Their children became strangers, contemptuous of monarchy or religion, and perpetually barking and shouting like pint-sized Prussian sergeant-majors." (31)

Ilse Koehn started high school in 1939. She found that the young teachers were strong supporters of Adolf Hitler. "Dr. Lauenstein was the only male teacher. Young and tall, handsome too, he was quite a contrast to the ladies, who were all in their fifties. He alone wore the Nazi Party button, shouted Heil Hitler when he entered the classroom and spent the next fifteen minutes expounding on the Führer's Blood and Soil philosophy. Old German soil soaked with German blood, as he put it. He was unbearably bombastic when he talked about the superior Aryan race. When he finally turned to Goethe, there was always a sigh of relief. No one, certainly not I, had any idea what he had been talking about." (32)

Irmgard Paul first went to her Berchtesgaden school in April 1940. "From the day mother delivered me into Fräulein Stöhr's clutches it was obvious that this woman was a fanatical Nazi. A true believer. Surely she had become a teacher not because she had an affinity for children but because she wanted to tyrannize them. The Nazi doctrines designed to raise citizens wholly obedient to the Führer's bidding captivated and excited her... The war had already eaten into resources and materials, as well as the supply of male teachers, most of whom were drafted. As a result, Fräulein Stöhr got to sink her fangs into one hundred children belonging to three different grades. We were huddled together in her stark, whitewashed classroom learning the basics by rote plus a bit of local history, needlework for the girls, and geography."

Her father was killed in France on 5th July, 1941. "People in Berchtesgaden reacted in two different ways to his death - our friends, relatives, and neighbours, with sadness and compassion; the Nazi officials in our lives with pompous, irrelevant condolences. My father's boss, Herr Adler, who for unknown reasons was not drafted, came by - in his S.A. uniform, no less - a few days after the news arrived and said in an oily voice to my stricken mother, Chin up, Frau Paul, chin up. He died for the Führer."

"The morning after we got the death notice, my teacher, Fräulein Stöhr, a fanatical Nazi, ordered me to stand up in front of the class and tell everyone how proud I was that my father had given his life for the Führer. I stood before those hundred children, my face burning, my hurt heart thumping. I clenched my fists and swallowed hard, determined not to cry or otherwise show anyone how I felt. I forced myself to drain all emotion from my voice, even forcing my mouth into a grin, and said, Yes, we heard yesterday that my father died in France for the Führer. Heil Hitler. My face was flushed, but I made sure to walk calmly back to my seat." (33)

According to one report the activities of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi government was slowly destroying the education system in Germany. "Everything that has been built up over a century of work by the teaching profession is no longer there in essence... They have been wilfully destroyed from above. No thought any more of proper working methods in school, or of the freedom of teaching. In their place we have cramming and beating schools, prescribed methods of learning and... learning materials. Instead of freedom of learning, we have the most narrow-minded school supervision and spying on teachers and pupils. No free speech is permitted for teachers and pupils, no inner, personal empathy. The whole thing has been taken over by the military spirit." (34)

School Textbooks
New mathematic textbooks were introduced and included "social arithmetic", which "involved calculations designed to achieve a subliminal indoctrination in key areas - for example, sums requiring the children to calculate how much it would cost the state to keep a mentally ill person alive in an asylum." (35) Other questions used in mathematics revolved around artillery trajectories and fighter-to-bomber ratios. This was a typical question from a mathematics text: "An airplane flies at the rate of 240 kilometers per hour to a place at a distance of 210 kilometers in order to drop bombs. When may it be expected to return if the dropping of bombs takes 7.5 minutes?" (36)

H. Dobhenysk, A Pure-Blooded Aryan, Chicago Daily News (1937)

Geography textbooks were produced that "propagated concepts such as living-space and blood and soil, and purveyed the myth of Germanic racial superiority". (37) Biology textbooks emphasized Hitler's views on race and heredity. One popular textbook used had been written by Hermann Gauch: "The animal world can be classified into Nordic men and lower animals. We are thus able to establish the following principle: there exist no physical or psychological characteristics which would justify a differentiation of mankind from the animal world. The only differences that exist are those between Nordic men, on the one hand, and animals... including non-Nordic men." (38)

Art was Tomi Ungerer favourite subject. His teacher praised him for his work and he was told: "The Führer needs artists - he himself is one." The government had taken complete control of the art world. "Under the Nazis, painters and sculptors were paid a monthly salary from the state." Textbooks used in the classroom were very hostile to modern art, something that was considered to be degenerate. Below is a school textbook that provides a comparative study between modern paintings and deformed humans. For example, the Amedeo Modigliani (plate 126) is compared to a person with Down's Syndrome. (39)

A double-page spread of a Nazi textbook on art (c. 1940)

At school Irmgard Paul was brainwashed into accepting Nazi views on the Jewish race. "We used a book with page after page showing the physical differences between Jews and Germans in grotesque drawings of Jewish noses, lips, and eyes. The book encouraged every child to note these differences and to bring anyone who bore Jewish features on the attention of our parents or teachers. I was horrified by the crimes Jewish people were being accused of - killing babies, loan-sharking, basic dishonesty, and conspiring to destroy Germany and rule the world. The description of the Jewish people would convince any child that these were monsters, not people with sorrows and joys like ours." (40)

Nazi Elite Schools
Bernhard Rust introduced a Nazi National Curriculum. Considerable emphasis was placed on physical training. Boxing was made compulsory in upper schools and PT became an examination subject for grammar-school entry as well as for the school-leaving certificate. Persistently unsatisfactory performance at PT constituted grounds for expulsion from school and for debarment from further studies. In 1936 timetable allocation of PT periods was increased from two to three. Two years later it was increased to five periods. All teachers below the age of fifty were pressed into compulsory PT courses. (41)

Rust also establishment of élite schools called Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (Napolas). Selection for entry included racial origins, physical fitness and membership of the Hitler Youth. These schools, run by the Schutzstaffel (SS), had the task of training the next generation of high-ranking people in the Nazi Party and the German Army. (42) The syllabus was that of ordinary grammar schools with political inculcation in place of religious instruction and a tremendous emphasis on such sports as boxing, war games, rowing, sailing, gliding, shooting and riding motor-cycles. Only two out of the thirty-nine Napolas constructed over the next few years catered for girls. (43)

After leaving school at the age of eighteen students joined the German Labour Service where they worked for the government for six months. (44) Some young people then went on to university. Bernhard Rust claimed that the new education system would benefit the children of the working-class that made up 45 per cent of Germany's population. This promise was never fulfilled and after six years in office, only 3 per cent of university students came from working-class backgrounds. This was the same percentage as it was before Adolf Hitler came to power. (45)

Women's Education
One of the objectives of the Nazi government was to reduce the number of women in higher education. On 12th January 1934, Wilhelm Frick ordered that the proportion of female grammar school graduates allowed to proceed to university should be no more than 10 per cent of that of the male graduates. (46) That year, out of 10,000 girls who passed the Abitur entry examinations, only 1,500 were granted university admission. In the year before the Nazis came to power there were 18,315 women students in Germany's universities. Six years later this number had fallen to 5,447. The government also ordered a reduction in women teachers. By 1935 the number of women teachers at girls' secondary schools had decreased by 15 per cent. (47)

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink was placed in charge of the Nazi Mother Service. The organization issued a statement explaining its role in Nazi Germany: "The purpose of the National Mother Service is political schooling. Political schooling for the woman is not a transmission of political knowledge, nor the learning of Party programs. Rather, political schooling is shaping to a certain attitude, an attitude that out of inner necessity affirms the measures of the State, takes them into women's life, carries them out and causes them to grow and be further transmitted."

Joseph Goebbels pointed out in a speech in 1934: "Women has the task of being beautiful and bringing children into the world, and this is by no means as coarse and old-fashioned as one might think. The female bird preens herself for her mate and hatches her eggs for him. In exchange, the mate takes care of gathering the food and stands guard and wards off the enemy. Hope for as many children as possible! Your duty is to produce at least four offspring in order to ensure the future of the national stock." (48)

As Richard Evans, the author of The Third Reich in Power (2005) has pointed out: "The reorganization of German secondary schools ordered in 1937 abolished grammar-school education for girls altogether. Girls were banned from learning Latin, a requirement for university entrance, and the Education Ministry did its best instead to steer them into domestic education, for which a whole type of girls school existed... The number of female students in higher education fell from just over 17,000 in 1932-33 to well under 6,000 in 1939." (49)

Problems in Education
One of the major problems for schools in Nazi Germany was attendance. School authorities were instructed to grant pupils leave of absence to enable them to attend Hitler Youth courses. In one study of a school in Westphalia with 870 pupils showed that 23,000 school days were lost because of extra-mural activities during one academic year. This eventually had an impact on educational achievement. On 16th January, 1937, Colonel Hilpert of the German Army complained in Frankfurter Zeitung, that: "Our youth starts off with perfectly correct principles in the physical sphere of education, but frequently refuses to extend this to the mental sphere... Many of the candidates applying for commissions display a simply inconceivable lack of elementary knowledge." (50)

By 1938 it was reported that there was a problem recruiting teachers. It was claimed that one teaching post in twelve was unfilled and Germany had 17,000 less teachers than it had before Adolf Hitler came to power. The main reason for this was the fall in teacher's pay. Entrants to the profession were offered a starting salary of 2,000 marks per annum. After deductions, this worked out at approximately 140 marks per month, or twenty marks more than was earned by the average lower-paid worker. The government tried to overcome this problem by introducing low-paid unqualified auxiliaries into schools. (51)

Second World War
Tomi Ungerer has pointed out that after the outbreak of the Second World War the first hour of school was dedicated to history, especially to the rise of the Nazi movement and the latest news of military victories. "We had a special copybook for this. Indoctrination was daily and systematic. Jazz, modern art, and comic strips were considered degenerate and forbidden. I could easily imagine Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, or Superman and their likes dutifully arrested by the Gestapo to serve in some hard labour squad... We had special classes building model airplanes (to make us future pilots in the Luftwaffe, of course." (52)

A Nazi Copybook (1940)

The first thing that Tomi Ungerer had to write in his copybook had to be memorized: "Our Führer is named Adolf Hitler. He was born the 20th of April 1889 in Braunau. Our Führer is a great soldier and tireless worker. He delivered German from misery. Now everyone has work, bread, and joy. Our Führer loves children and animals." His first homework was to draw the swastika flag and copy out the following quote from Hitler: "In the swastika lies the mission to fight for the victory of the Aryan race, as well as the triumph of the concept of creative labour, which always, in itself, was anti-Semitic, and always will be." (53)

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Primary Sources

In my great educative work," said Hitler, " I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them I can make a new world.

"My teaching is hard. Weakness has to be knocked out of them. In my Ordensburgen a youth will grow up before which the world will shrink back. A violently active dominating, intrepid, brutal youth - that is what I am after". Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey. Strong and handsome must my young men be. I will have them fully trained in all physical exercises. I intend to have an athletic youth - that is the first and the chief thing. In this way I shall eradicate the thousands of years of human domestication. Then I shall have in front of me the pure and noble natural material. With that I can create the new order.

"I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin to my young men. I would have them learn only what takes their fancy. But one thing they must learn - self-command! They shall learn to overcome the fear of death, under the severest tests. That is the intrepid and heroic stage of youth. Out of it comes the stage of the free man, the man who is the substance and essence of the world, the creative man, the god-man. In my Ordensburgen there will stand as a statue for worship the figure of the magnificent, self-ordaining god-man; it will prepare the young men for their coming period of ripe manhood."

The whole organization of education, and training which the People's State is to build up must take as its crowning task the work of instilling into the hearts and brains of the youth entrusted to it the racial instinct and understanding of the racial idea. No boy or girl must leave school without having attained a clear insight into the meaning of racial purity and the importance of maintaining the racial blood unadulterated. Thus the first indispensable condition for the preservation of our race will have been established and thus the future cultural progress of our people will be assured.

A reform of particular importance is that which ought to take place in the present methods of teaching history. Scarcely any other people are made to study as much of history as the Germans, and scarcely any other people make such a bad

use of their historical knowledge. If politics means history in the making, then our way of teaching history stands condemned by the way we have conducted our politics. But there would be no point in bewailing the lamentable results of our political conduct unless one is now determined to give our people a better political education. In 99 out of 100 cases the results of our present teaching of history are deplorable. Usually only a few dates, years of birth and names, remain in the memory, while a knowledge of the main and clearly defined lines of historical development is completely lacking. The essential features which are of real significance are not taught. It is left to the more or less bright intelligence of the individual to discover the inner motivating urge amid the mass of dates and chronological succession of events.

The subject matter of our historical teaching must be curtailed. The chief value of that teaching is to make the principal lines of historical development understood. The more our historical teaching is limited to this task, the more we may hope that it will turn out subsequently to be of advantage to the individual and, through the individual, to the community as a whole. For history must not be studied merely with a view to knowing what happened in the past but as a guide for the future, and to teach us what policy would be the best to follow for the preservation of our own people.

The systematic reform of Germany's education system was started immediately after the coming into power of National Socialism. If these far-reaching changes were to materialize, teachers had first to be made capable of introducing them. Numerous courses, camps and working communities have been arranged to provide the necessary instruction, which includes the teaching of the philosophy of National Socialism in addition to the strictly educational subjects.

The influence of Germany's educational system on her national fortunes invites comparison with that of the playing-fields of Eton on the Battle of Waterloo. It was in the classrooms that the foundations were laid for Bismarck's victories over Danes, Austrians and French abroad and over German parliamentarians at home. It could be said of the teachers that they had travaille pour le roi de Prusse both in the metaphorical and the purely literal sense of the phrase: they earned meagre salaries and inculcated an ethos of Prusso-German patriotism.

This they largely contrived to do even when the Empire had followed the Kingdom of Prussia into the limbo of history. Though after 1918 some (mainly elementary) teachers supported the Social Democrats or middle-of-the-road political parties, the schools in general acted as incubators of nationalism under the Weimar Republic. The choice of Hans Grimm's Volk ohne Raum ( People without Space) as a standard matriculation text reflected a virtually nation-wide consensus among teachers of German language and literature, while schoolboys would inject new topicality and frisson into the game of Cowboys and Indians by calling it "Aryans and Jews"; by 1931 Jewish communal newspapers were publishing lists of schools where children suffered less exposure to anti-Semitism so that parents could arrange transfers....

Denunciation also constituted an ever-present occupational hazard for teachers, since low marks or adverse comments on essays lifted verbatim from articles in the Nazi Press could be construed as evidence of political opposition. In actual fact, however, the teaching profession represented one of the most politically reliable sections of the population. Ninety-seven per cent of all teachers were enrolled in the Nazi Teachers' Association (the Nationalsozialistische Lehrerbund or NSLB), and as early as 1936 (i.e. before the moratorium on Party recruitment after the seizure of power was lifted) 32 per cent of all NSLB members belonged to the Nazi Party; this incidence of Party membership was nearly twice as high as that found among the Nazi Civil Servants' Association .

Fourteen per cent of teachers compared to 6 per cent of civil servants belonged to the Party's political leadership corps. This remarkable commitment to the regime was exemplified in the highest ranks of the Party hierarchy by seventy-eight District Leaders and seven Gauleiter (and deputy Gauleiter) who had graduated from the teaching profession. It also found expression in the schoolmasterly, moralizing tone which - as we have noted elsewhere - informed so many Nazi utterances. The Party image also benefited from the presence of many teachers at the grass-roots level of its organization, where they acted as "notabilities" (Respektspersonen), masking the more disreputable elements entrenched in the local apparatus.

(5) Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, wrote a prayer that had to be said by school children before meals.

Fuehrer, my Fuehrer given me by God,

Protect and preserve my life for long.

You rescued Germany from its deepest need.

I thank you for my daily bread.

Stay for a long time with me, leave me not.

Fuehrer, my Fuehrer, my faith, my light

Hail my Fuehrer.

(6) One of the books used to study racial science in Nazi Germany was Heredity and Racial Biology for Students by Jakob Graf.

The Aryans (Nordic people) were tall, light-skinned, light-eyed, blond people. The Goths, Franks, Vandals, and Normans, too, were peoples of Nordic blood.

It was Nordic energy and boldness that were responsible for the power and prestige enjoyed by small nations such as the Netherlands and Sweden. Everywhere Nordic creative power has built up mighty empires with high-minded ideas, and to this very day Aryan languages and cultural values are spread over a large part of the world.

When Klauss got back from school at five o'clock he bullied me into helping him with his homework. Glancing through his school books, I noticed again how different they are from those I had had only a few years ago. The change has been particularly marked since Streicher became head of his Institute of Political Instruction at Berlin University.

Here is a maths problem, picked out at random: "A Sturmkampfflieger on take-off carries twelve dozen bombs, each weighing ten kilos. The aircraft makes for Warsaw, the centre of international Jewry. It bombs the town. On takeoff with all bombs on board and a fuel tank containing 1,500 kiios of fuel, the aircraft weighed about eight tons. When it returns from the crusade, there are still 250 kilos of fuel left. What is the weight of the aircraft when empty?"

Here is another one I had to solve for Klauss: "The iniquitous Treaty of Versailles, imposed by the French and the English, enabled international plutocracy to steal Germany's colonies. France herself acquired part of Togoland. If German Togoland, temporarily under the administration of the French imperialists, covers fifty-six million square kilometres, and contains a population of eight hundred thousand people, estimate the average living space per inhabitant."

There is, indeed, twofold evidence to show that something was wrong with education. In the first place, the high level of popular enlightenment had failed to protect the German people against the poisonous effects of Marxist teaching and other false doctrines. Large masses of people had fallen victims to them, whilst other sections - more especially those of higher education - had been unable to take up an effective stand against the spread of the poison. If they had, the events of 1918 and the succeeding period of national disintegration and deterioration would have been prevented.

In the second place, a careful study of the situation shows that the German people are sound to the core and are gifted with just as much national sentiment as any other. Hence, the temporary lowering of their previous high standards could not have been the result of any innate inferiority, but the reason must be sought in a faulty system of education, which - notwithstanding its high intellectual achievements - tended to impair the healthy spirit of the nation, men's energies and their soundness of judgment, and to produce selfishness and a deficient sense of national solidarity.

The attainment of high intellectual standards will certainly continue to be urged upon the young people; but they will be taught at the same time that their achievements must be of benefit to the national community to which they belong. As a consequence of the demand thus clearly formulated by the Nuremberg Laws, Jewish teachers and Jewish pupils have had to quit German schools, and schools of their own have been provided by and for them as far as possible. In this way, the natural race instincts of German boys and girls are preserved; and the young people are made aware of their duty to maintain their racial purity and to bequeath it to succeeding generations. As the mere teaching of these principles is not enough, it is constantly supplemented, in the National Socialist State, by opportunities for what may be called "community life". By this term we mean school journeys, school camps, school "homes" in rural neighbourhoods, and similar applications of the corporate principle to the life of schools and scholars.

History insists that every biological race deterioration coincides with the growth of big towns, that these latter exercise a paralysing effect upon community life, and that a nation's strength is rooted in its rural elements. Our National Socialist system of education pays due regard to these important considerations, and makes every effort, to take the young people from the towns to the country, whilst impressing upon them the inseparable connection between racial strength and a healthy open-air life.

(9) Students also studied racial science at university. One of the most popular textbooks used at university to study the subject was a Short Ethnology of the German People by Hans Gunther, the professor of racial science at the University of Jena.

The Nordic race is tall, long-legged, slim, with average height, among males, of about 1.74. The face is narrow, with a rather narrow forehead, a narrow, high-built nose, and a narrow lower jaw and prominent chin. The hair colour is blond.

The relatively great number of Nordic people among the famous and outstanding men and women of all Western countries is striking, as also is the relatively low number of famous men and women without noticeable Nordic strain.

(10) Dr. Schuster, geography teacher, writing in 1938.

I am trying through the teaching of geography to do everything in my power to give the boys knowledge and I hope later on, judgment, so that when, as they grow older, the Nazi fever dies down and it again becomes possible to offer some opposition they may be prepared. There are four or five masters who are non-Nazis left in our school now, and we all work on the same plan. If we leave, Nazis will come in and there will be no honest teaching in the whole school. But if I went to America and left others to do it, would that be honest, or are the only honest people those in prison cells? If only there could be some collective action amongst teachers. But we cannot meet in conference, we cannot have a newspaper.

(11) Milton Mayer, an American journalist, interviewed teachers in Germany for his book, They Thought They Were Free (1955)

"I might have got by without joining," he said more than once. "I don't know. I might have taken my chances. Others did, I mean other teachers in the high school."

"How many?"

"Let me see. We had thirty-five teachers. Only four, well, five, were fully convinced Nazis. But, of these five, one could be argued with openly, in the teachers' conference room; and only one was a real fanatic, who might denounce a colleague to the authorities."

"Did he?"

"There was never any evidence that he did, but we had to be careful around him."

"How many of the thirty-five never joined the Party?"

"Five, but not all for the same reason. Three of the five were very religious. The teachers were all Protestants, of course, but only half a dozen, at most, were really religious these were all anti-Nazi, these half-dozen, but only three of them held out. One of the three was the history teacher (now the director of the school), very nationalistic, very Prussian, but a strong churchman. He stood near the anti-Nazi Confessional Church, but he couldn't join it, of course, or he'd have lost his job. Then there was the theology teacher, who also taught modern languages; he was the best teacher in the school; apart from his religious opposition, his knowledge of-foreign cultures made him anti-Nazi. The third was the mathematics teacher, absolutely unworldly but profoundly pietistic, a member of the Moravian sect."

"And the two who were non-religious and didn't join?"

"One was a historian. He was not an atheist, you understand, just a historian. He was a non-joiner, of anything. He was nonpolitical. He was strongly critical of Nazism, but always on a detached, theoretical basis. Nobody bothered him; nobody paid any attention to him. And vice versa The other nonbeliever was really the truest believer of them all. He was a biologist and a rebel against a religious background. He had no trouble perverting Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' into Nazi racism - he was the only teacher in the whole school who believed it."

"Why didn't he join the Party?"

"He hated the local Kreisleiter the County Leader of the Party, whose father had been a theologian and who himself never left the Church The hatred was mutual. That's why the biologist never joined. Now he's an anti-Nazi.''

(12) Hans Massaquoi was born in Germany in 1926. His mother was German but his father came from Africa. Studs Terkel interviewed Massaquoi about his experiences during Nazi Germany for his book, The Good War (1985)

In 1932, when I started school, I was six years old. In 1933, my first teacher was fired for political reasons. I don't know what her involvements were. Gradually, the old teachers were replaced with younger ones, those with Nazi orientations. Then I began to notice a change in attitude. Teachers would make snide remarks about my race. One teacher would point me out as an example of the non-Aryan race. One time, I must have been ten, a teacher took me aside and said, "When we're finished with the Jews, you're next." He still had some inhibitions. He did not make that announcement before the class. It was a private thing. A touch of sadism.

There was a drive to enroll young kids into the Hitler Youth movement. I wanted to join, of course. My mother took me aside and said, "Look, Hans, you may not understand, but they don't want you." I couldn't understand. All my friends had these black shorts and brown shirts and a swastika and a little dagger which said Blood and Honor. I wanted it just like everybody else. I wanted to belong. These were my schoolmates.

In 1936, our class had a chance to go to Berlin to watch the Olympics. Not all Germans were sold on this Hitler nonsense. Jesse Owens was the undisputed hero of the German people. He was the darling of the 1936 Olympic games. With the exception of a small Nazi elite, they opened their hearts to this black man who ran his butt off. I was so proud, sitting there.

It's clear to me that had the Nazi leadership known of my existence, I would have ended in a gas oven or at Auschwitz. What saved me was there was no black population in Germany. There was no apparatus set up to catch blacks. The apparatus that was set up to apprehend Jews entailed questionnaires that were mailed to all German households. The question was: Jewish or non-Jewish? I could always, without perjuring myself, write: non-Jewish.

(13) Schoolteacher, letter to a friend (December, 1938)

In the schools it is not the teacher, but the pupils, who exercise authority. Party functionaries train their children to be spies and agent provocateurs. The youth organizations, particularly the Hitler Youth, have been accorded powers of control which enable every boy and girl to exercise authority backed up by threats. Children have been deliberately taken away from parents who refused to acknowledge their belief in National Socialism. The refusal of parents to "allow their children to join the youth organization" is regarded as an adequate reason for taking the children away.

(14) Angriff (27th October, 1939)

All subjects - German Language, History, Geography Chemistry and Mathematics - must concentrate on military subjects - the glorification of military service and of German heroes and leaders and the strength of a regenerated Germany. Chemistry will inculcate a knowledge of chemical warfare, explosives. Buna, etc., while mathematics will help the young to understand artillery calculations, ballistics etc.

In 1934, when I had reached the age of ten, I was sent to the Paulsen Realgymnasium. This was still a regular old-fashioned place with masters in long beards who were completely out of sympathy with the new era. Again and again we noticed that they had little understanding for the Führer's maxim - the training of character comes before the training of intellect.They still expected us to know as much as the pupils used to under the Jewish Weimar Republic, and they pestered us with all sorts of Latin and Greek nonsense instead of teaching us things that might be useful later on.

This brought about an absurd state of affairs in which we, the boys, had to instruct our masters. Already we were set aflame by the idea of the New Germany, and were resolved not to be influenced by their outdated ideas and theories, and flatly told our masters so. Of course they said nothing, because I think they were a bit afraid of us, but they didn't do anything about changing their methods of teaching. We were thus forced to "defend" ourselves.

This was rather simple. Our Latin master set us an interminable extract from Caesar for translation.We just did not do it, and excused ourselves by saying that we had been on duty for the Hitler Youth during the afternoon. Once one of the old birds got up courage to say something in protest. This was immediately reported to our Group Leader who went off to see the headmaster and got the master dismissed. He was only sixteen, but as a leader in the Hider Youth he could not allow such obstructionism to hinder us in the performance of duties which were much more important than our school work. From that day onwards the question of homework was settled. Whenever we did not want to do it we were simply "on duty," and no one dared to say any more about it.

Gradually the new ideas permeated the whole of our school. A few young masters arrived who understood us and who themselves were ardent national socialists. And they taught us subjects into which the national revolution had infused a new spirit. One of them took us for history; another for racial theory and sport. Previously we had been pestered with the old Romans and such like; but now we learned to see things with different eyes. I had never thought much about being "well educated"; but a German man must know something about the history of his own people so as to avoid repeating the mistakes made by former generations.

Gradually, one after the other of the old masters was weeded out.The new masters who replaced them were young men loyal to the Führer. The new spirit had come to stay.We obeyed orders and we acknowledged the leadership principle, because we wanted to and because we liked it. Discipline is necessary, and young men must learn to obey.

School was the serious side of life, never meant to make a child happy. From the day mother delivered me into Fräulein Stöhr's clutches it was obvious that this woman was a fanatical Nazi. A true believer. Surely she had become a teacher not because she had an affinity for children but because she wanted to tyrannize them. The Nazi doctrines designed to raise citizens wholly obedient to the Führer's bidding captivated and excited her. I began first grade at Easter 1940, but since Hitler changed the beginning of the school year to the fall shortly afterward, I am not quite sure whether my first year was very short or very long. At any rate, the war had already eaten into resources and materials, as well as the supply of male teachers, most of whom were drafted. As a result, Fräulein Stöhr got to sink her fangs into one hundred children belonging to three different grades. We were huddled together in her stark, whitewashed classroom learning the basics by rote plus a bit of local history, needlework for the girls, and geography.

The curriculum did not include anything like "political education", but Fräulein Stöhr knew how to use occasions like my father's death, Hitler's birthday, good or bad news from the front, or the visit of a prominent local Nazi to indoctrinate us.... Hitler found the brown eyes and dark hair dominant among the valley's people not to his liking, suspecting undesirable Italian or even Slavic influences, and accordingly, Fräulein Stöhr seemed to prefer the Nordic-looking children...

Prussian obedience, order, and discipline as well as blind submission to Nazi ideology were Fräulein Stöhr's undisputed forte. In these efforts she was aided by two canes cut from a filbert bush, one thin and one thick. She used them for slight infractions.... Over the course of two years she used her filbert canes on my hands at least four times, three times for whispering answers to kids she had called on. Each time I had to leave my crowded bench and walk, embarrassed and infuriated, to the front of the classroom and onto the podium to receive a couple of stinging lashes on my outstretched hand.

There had been a lot of changes in school, too (after 1933). Some had been barely noticed, others had been introduced as though with drums and trumpets. None of my neatly dressed, well-behaved primary-school mates questioned the new books, the new songs, the new syllabus, the new rules or the new standard script, and when - in line with national socialist educational policies - the number of PT periods was increased at the expense of religious instruction or other classes, and competitive field-events added to the curriculum, the less studious and the fast-legged among us were positively delighted.

The rector spelled it out for us. "Physical fitness is everything! It is what the Führer wants for you. It is what you want in order to grow strong and healthy!"

In class, Frau Bienert, our form teacher, explained why a healthy mind could only be found in a healthy body, and - instead of two PT periods a week - the revised time-table featured a daily class and a compulsory weekly games afternoon. Running, jumping, throwing balls, climbing ropes, swinging on the bars or doing rhythmic exercises to music, we fitted smoothly into the new pattern of things, into a scheme which, for most of us, appeared to be an attractive feature of national socialism, for an hour spent in the gym or on the sports pitch seemed infinitely preferable to sweating over arithmetic or German grammar.

I loved the new physical-fitness programme, but not the loud, aggressive songs we had to learn, the texts of which our music teacher would rattle off in a funereal voice. But then, Fraulein Kanitzki had been born in the Cameroons and suffered from bouts of malaria, which, in our eyes, entitled her to some form of eccentricity. And it was no secret that she never raised her arm in the "Heil Hitler!" salute at the beginning of class or in the school corridors; she was always conveniently hugging sheets of music or books under her right arm, which prevented her from performing the prescribed motion. The new greeting was, after all, a bore. Arm up, arm down. Up, down. But it was the formal salute in Germany now, and everyone did as they were told, including my father.

The common people spoke Alsatian, a German dialect, and had no trouble switching. But I, from a bourgeois background, spoke only French. My brother gave me a crash course, allowing me, three months later, to return to school... It was now obligatory for children to be sent to the local school. All Alsatian teachers were sent to Germany for Umschulung (retraining)... They were replaced by young teachers, some in Wehmacht uniforms... they were easy-going missionaries. In every class hung a portrait of the Führer, and every room was fitted with a Volksender, the word used for radio, on which we listened to Adolf Hitler every time he spoke....

As the teacher entered the class, the students would stand and raise their right arms. The teacher would say, For the Führer a triple victory, answered by a chorus of Heil! three times... Every class started with a song. The almighty Führer would be staring at us from his picture on the wall. These uplifting songs were brilliantly written and composed, transporting us into a state of enthusiastic glee...

The first hour of school was dedicated to history, especially to the rise of the Nazi movement and the lastest news of military victories. "We had a special copybook for this. Indoctrination was daily and systematic. Jazz, modern art, and comic strips were considered degenerate and forbidden. I could easily imagine Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, or Superman and their likes dutifully arrested by the Gestapo to serve in some hard labour squad....

We were promised a reward of money if we denounced our parents or our neighbours - what they said or did... We were told: Even if you denounce your parents, and if you should love them, your real father is the Führer, and being his children you will be the chosen ones, the heroes of the future...

Athletics, gymnastics, swimming, playing, and boxing were priorities. Then came German, history, geography, art, and music; after that biology, chemistry, physics, and math, and last, foreign languages.

There are for me four possibilities for the future and I must add I am very lucky because for most of my colleagues there are only two possibilities since they have no opportunities to go abroad, and having no money they cannot retire.

First then, I may decide that it is impossible to remain in this country where there is no longer any intellectual freedom and where education is being degraded by political interference. I can argue that all I believe about true education is now at stake and that it is quite impossible for me to allow political agents, often ignorant and stupid men, to interfere with my teaching of geography. Some of them don't seem to realize that any countries exist except Germany.

I have now an opportunity to go to America where I have been before. Shall I go? In many ways it would be a wonderful escape. My headmaster, who is new and young and a very keen Nazi - in fact he would not have this post if he were not a Party man - greatly hopes that I will leave. That is obvious, for he will get high praise if he can quickly obtain an all-Nazi staff.

The second way is for me to attempt to escape this revolution in my country altogether, by resigning from the school, digging in my garden and writing books. I could even begin to prepare books on the teaching of geography and history which will be much in demand when this disease of National Socialism is over. Perhaps I might even, in informal ways, help to challenge the Nazi teaching, since, if I leave the school, I should not be under authority.

The third way is to stay in my school but to defy the headmaster and refuse to give Nazi lessons on race. This would soon end in an outburst - I might even try to do it in front of the whole school and denounce Hitler and all his works. That would mean prison, and of course some of my colleagues are already there. Again the headmaster would be very happy, and you will understand what I mean when I say I doubt if my witness would have any value for the boys. A few might be influenced and later, perhaps more, but at the moment this new young headmaster has made a great impression on the majority of the boys. His predecessor was a bit elderly and conventional and the boys feel there is new life and action, and it is natural that they applaud this attack on scholarship, since It means they do not have to work so hard.

Perhaps I should take this third choice, go to prison and let a young Nazi take my job in the school. But let me tell you what I have done so far for this is the fourth possibility. I must add I am not happy and there is a constant strain. I remain on the staff and I pay lip service to all the Nazi school ceremonies and I do not show any open hostility, at least not enough to 'get the sack' but quite enough to make my position precarious and at times most unpleasant. I am trying through the teaching of geography to do everything in my power to give the boys knowledge and I hope later on, judgement, so that when, as they grow older, the Nazi fever dies down and it again becomes possible - to offer some opposition, they may be prepared. I never refer to the Party or to its teaching directly, and the boys are, I think, mostly unaware that I am trying deliberately to undermine it. There are four or five masters who are non-Nazis left in our school now, and we all work on the same plan. If we leave, four Nazis will come in and there will be no honest teaching in the whole school. 'Honest', did I say - are we being honest, I sometimes wonder? It is very exhausting as well as dangerous to live under the strain of a deliberate compromise with evil, and unless we remain all the time sensitive to its perils, we may so easily become dishonest with ourselves, and then we are no good to the boys or to anyone else. But if I went to America and left others to it, would that be honest, or are the only honest people those in prison cells? What do you think is honest - what would you do yourself?"

(20) Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy at the University of Munich was executed for his criticism of the government of Nazi Germany. This is an extract from his final speech in court (20th February, 1943)

As a German citizen, as a German professor, and as a political person, I hold it to be not only my right but also my moral duty to take part in the shaping of our German destiny, to expose and oppose obvious wrongs.

What I intended to accomplish was to rouse the student body, not by means of an organization, but solely by my simple words; to urge them, not to violence, but to moral insight into the existing serious deficiencies of our political system. To urge the return to clear moral principles, to the constitutional state, to mutual trust between men.

A state which suppresses free expression of opinion and which subjects to terrible punishment - yes, any and all - morally justified criticism and all proposals for improvement by characterizing them as "Preparation for High Treason" breaks an unwritten law, a law which has always lived in the sound instincts of the people and which may always have to remain.

You have stripped from me the rank and privileges of the professorship and the doctoral degree which I earned, and you have set me at the level of the lowest criminal. The inner dignity of the university teacher, of the frank, courageous protester of his philosophical and political views - no trial for treason can rob me of that. My actions and my intentions will be justified in the inevitable course of history; such is my firm faith. I hope to God that the inner strength that will vindicate my deeds will in good time spring forth from my own people. I have done as I had to on the prompting of my inner voice.

There was one Jewish girl in our class and we sent her to Coventry. Nobody spoke to her. Whenever she came into the playground, we all went into the opposite corner. My friend's father was high up in the Nazi Party and I was as bad as all the rest.

I was 11 and we were going to collect for the winter relief with the Hitler Youth when it was announced in the school hall that I would not be able to go. "Why not?" I asked. "Because your father is a Jew," they said. "It's impossible," I said. I had been taught that a Jew was the lowest form of life, my wonderful father could not be a Jew. Then I found out that my mother was a Jew too so I was classified as a full Jew.

We were having daily lessons in Race Knowledge, learning about the superiority of the German race. We were told that the... Jews had descended from Negroes. Miss Dummer, my form teacher, who was a patient of my father, took me aside after the first lesson and said: "Please ignore the rubbish I am forced to teach you."

Everything changed from then on. My father had to leave the hospital - two years earlier, on his 60th birthday, the Lord Mayor had written to him saying: "We hope Berlin will still have many, many years of your valuable service. But in 1934, all Jews had to leave public service and now a letter came telling him that he was forbidden to enter the hospital again.

Student Activities
Adolf Hitler's Early Life ( Answer Commentary)

The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ( Answer Commentary)

Heinrich Himmler and the SS ( Answer Commentary)

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler ( Answer Commentary)

Trade Unions in Nazi Germany ( Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler v John Heartfield ( Answer Commentary)

Hitler's Volkswagen (The People's Car) ( Answer Commentary)

Women in Nazi Germany ( Answer Commentary)

German League of Girls ( Answer Commentary)

Kristallnacht ( Answer Commentary)

The Political Development of Sophie Scholl ( Answer Commentary)

The White Rose Anti-Nazi Group ( Answer Commentary)

The Hitler Youth ( Answer Commentary)

Night of the Long Knives ( Answer Commentary)

British Newspapers and Adolf Hitler ( Answer Commentary)

An Assessment of the Nazi-Soviet Pact ( Answer Commentary)

Lord Rothermere, Daily Mail and Adolf Hitler ( Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch ( Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler and the First World War ( Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler and the German Workers' Party ( Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler the Orator ( Answer Commentary)

Sturmabteilung (SA) ( Answer Commentary)

Who Set Fire to the Reichstag? ( Answer Commentary)

Appeasement ( Answer Commentary)

Subjects in History
The Middle Ages
The Normans

The Tudors
The English Civil War Industrial Revolution
First World War

Russian Revolution
Nazi Germany United States: 1920-1945

References
(6) Wilhelm Frick, directive issued on 9th May, 1933

(19) Anonymous, Six Years Education in Nazi Germany (1945)

(23) Dr. Schuster, geography teacher, writing in 1938.

(24) Anonymous schoolteacher, letter to a friend (December, 1938)

(46) Wilhelm Frick, order issued on 12th January, 1934.

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Sections The social historian, Richard Grunberger, has argued in A Social History of the Third Reich (1971) that when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he inherited a very conservative educational system: "The influence of Germany's educational system on her national fortunes invites comparison with that of the playing-fields of Eton on the Battle of Waterloo.

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BBC - WW2 People's War - A Childhood in Nazi-Occupied Italy

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Some prisoners were recaptured by the Germans and sent to Germany, but many joined the rapidly forming ...

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The Fourteen Points

In a speech to Congress in January 1918, Wilson laid out his idealistic vision for the world after World War I, which was at the time sometimes referred to as "the war to end all wars."

In addition to specific territorial settlements based on an Allied victory, Wilson's so-called Fourteen Points emphasized the need for national self-determination for Europe's different ethnic populations.

Wilson also proposed the founding of a "general association of nations" that would mediate international disputes and foster cooperation between different nations in the hopes of preventing war on such a large scale in the future. This organization eventually became known as the League of Nations.

When German leaders signed the armistice ending hostilities in World War I on November 11, 1918, they believed Wilson's vision would form the basis for any future peace treaty. This would not prove to be the case.

Paris Peace Conference

The Paris Peace Conference opened on January 18, 1919, a date that was significant in that it marked the anniversary of the coronation of German Emperor Wilhelm I, which took place in the Palace of Versailles at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Prussian victory in that conflict had resulted in Germany's unification and its seizure of Alsace and Lorraine provinces from France. In 1919, France and its prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, had not forgotten the humiliating loss and intended to avenge it in the new peace agreement.

Treaty of Versailles Terms

The " Big Four" leaders of the victorious Western nations-Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France and, to a lesser extent, Vittorio Orlando of Italy-dominated the peace negotiations in Paris. Germany and the other defeated powers-Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey-were not represented at the Paris Peace Conference. Also absent was Russia, which had fought as one of the Allied powers until 1917, when, following the Russian Revolution, the country's new Bolshevik government concluded a separate peace with Germany and withdrew from the conflict.

The Big Four themselves had competing objectives in Paris: Clemenceau's main goal was to protect France from yet another attack by Germany. He sought heavy reparations from Germany as a way of limiting German economic recovery after the war and minimizing this possibility.

Lloyd George, on the other hand, saw the rebuilding of Germany as a priority in order to reestablish the nation as a strong trading partner for Great Britain. For his part, Orlando wanted to expand Italy's influence and shape it into a major power that could hold its own alongside the other great nations.

Wilson opposed Italian territorial demands, as well as previously existing arrangements regarding territory between the other Allies; instead, he wanted to create a new world order along the lines of his Fourteen Points. The other leaders saw Wilson as too naive and idealistic, and his principles were difficult to translate into policy.

In the end, the European Allies imposed harsh peace terms on Germany, forcing the nation to surrender around 10 percent of its territory and all of its overseas possessions. Other key provisions of the Treaty of Versailles called for the demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, limited Germany's army and navy, forbade it to maintain an air force, and required it to conduct war crimes trials against Kaiser Wilhelm II and other leaders for their aggression.

Most importantly, Article 231 of the treaty, better known as the " war guilt clause," forced Germany to accept full responsibility for starting World War I and pay enormous reparations for Allied war losses.

How Did the Treaty of Versailles Lead to World War II?

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, sparking the outbreak of the war. Though the treaty included a covenant creating the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preserving peace, the harsh terms imposed on Germany helped ensure that peace would not last for long.

Germans were furious about the treaty, seeing it as a diktat, or dictated peace; they bitterly resented the sole blame of war being placed at their feet. The nation's burden of reparations eventually topped 132 billion gold Reichsmarks, the equivalent of some $33 billion, a sum so great that no one expected Germany to be able to pay in full; in fact, economists like John Maynard Keynes predicted the European economy would collapse if it did.

Keynes was not the only prominent critic of the Treaty of Versailles: The French military leader Ferdinand Foch refused to attend the signing ceremony, as he thought the treaty didn't do enough to secure against a future German threat, while the U.S. Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and later concluded a separate peace with Germany. The United States would never join the short-lived League of Nations.

November Criminals

In the years following the Treaty of Versailles, many ordinary Germans believed they had been betrayed by the "November Criminals," those leaders who signed the treaty and formed the post-war government.

Radical right-wing political forces-especially the National Socialist Workers' Party, or the Nazis-would gain support in the 1920s and '30s by promising to reverse the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty.

With the onset of the Great Depression after 1929, economic unrest destabilized the already vulnerable Weimar Republic government in Germany, setting the stage for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's fateful rise to power in 1933.

Sources

The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles. U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian.
"The Treaty of Versailles: An Uneasy Peace," WBUR.org (excerpt from Michael Neiberg, The Treaty of Versailles: A Concise History), August 13, 2017.
Treaty of Versailles. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Treaty of Versailles, 1919. Chateau de Versailles.

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Treaty of Versailles: Definition, Terms, Dates & WWI - HISTORY

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The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 and set harsh terms for Germany's surrender to Allied powers after World War I, setting the stage for World War II.

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Stock Market Crash: 1929 & Black Tuesday | HISTORY

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The Stock Market Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, as some 16 million shares were traded on Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, wiping out many investors.

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Description of the Army About the Records Index
How to obtain copies of the records once an entry is found in the index

About the PGSA Library Research Policy

Returning Soldiers
Recruitment poster for the Polish Army in France by the graphic artist, W. Benda. Image used with permission of the Polish Museum of America, Jan Lorys, Curator.

Description of the Army

An estimated 20,000 Polish persons answered the call to fight for freedom and the opportunity to regain Poland's independence during World War I in the Polish Army in France (in Polish, Armia Polska we Francyi). They were recruited from among the Polish immigrants who came to America to fight with France.

The Polish Army in France was also called "Haller's Army," after the general who commanded it, or the "Blue Army," for the blue uniforms the soldiers wore.

For more information, see:

Polish Genealogical Society Newsletter, Vol. X, #1, Spring 1987, pages 1, 3-4.
"World War I Polish American Military Records," by Joseph T. Hapak, a brief history of the Polish Army in France

Searchers, the Newsletter of the PGS of Western New York, #8, January 1993, pp. 17-20. "Buffalonians in Polish Army," compiled by Ted Smardz, a listing of Buffalo recruits.

About the Records Index

The city and state give the place the person was from when volunteering. This is helpful to narrow the choices if the person of interest has a common name. The last column is labeled "Form" but serves as a location code. It describes which record group the information will be found in.

There are three groups:

Group A is a collection of form A papers (described below).
Group C is a collection of form C papers.
Both of these collections are bound into volumes. To locate the record, the page number, volume, and record group must be provided.

Group L is a collection of loose papers. They are duplicates of those in Group A and Group C. If you order Group L you do not have to order Group A and C.
The page column of the index tells you which forms you can expect to find among the loose papers. A single individual might appear in the index three times- having paperwork in each collection.

Form A is an intention to volunteer and contains the name, address, age, and marital status. See an English translation of a blank Form A.
Form B is a medical examination report for the volunteer.
Form C is the final commitment paper and the most genealogically significant for researchers. Form C includes date and place of birth and usually the name and address of a parent or other close relative. See an English translation of a blank Form C.
The forms are typically carbon paper copies of the original and in some cases do not provide a quality photocopy.

Returning Soldiers

The following ship manifests provide listings of returning Haller's Army soldiers to the US in the 1920s.

SS Antigone (from Danzig - April 18, 1920)
SS Latvia (August 17, 1922)
SS Pochontas (from Danzig - June 16, 1920)
SS Princess Matokia (from Danzig - May 23, 1920)

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Description of the Army About the Records Index How to obtain copies of the records once an entry is found in the index About the PGSA Library Research Policy Returning Soldiers Recruitment poster for the Polish Army in France by the graphic artist, W. Benda.

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On this day in 1939, in an effort to mimic Hitler's conquest of Prague, Benito Mussolini's troops, though badly organized, invade and occupy Albania.

Although the invasion of Albania was intended as but a prelude to greater conquests in the Balkans, it proved a costly enterprise for Il Duce. Albania was already dependent on Italy's economy, so had little to offer the invaders. And future exploits in neighboring nations, in Greece in particular, proved to be disastrous for the Italians.

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On this day in 1939, in an effort to mimic Hitler's conquest of Prague, Benito Mussolini's troops, though badly organized, invade and occupy Albania. Although the invasion of Albania was intended as but a prelude to greater conquests in the Balkans, it proved a costly enterprise for Il Duce.

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 The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period

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 The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period

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encyclopedia Britannica

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance, (1902-23), alliance that bound Britain and Japan to assist one another in safeguarding their respective interests in China and Korea. Directed against Russian expansionism in the Far East, it was a cornerstone of British and Japanese policy in Asia until after World War I.

The alliance served Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) by discouraging France, Russia's European ally, from entering the war on the Russian side. It was renewed in 1905 and again in 1911 after Japan's annexation of Korea. On the basis of its tie with Britain, Japan participated in World War I on the side of the Allies.

After the war the British no longer feared Russian encroachment in China and wished to maintain close ties with the United States, which tended to view Japan as its rival in the Pacific. Following an unsuccessful attempt to bring the U.S. into the alliance at the Washington Conference of 1921-22, Britain allowed it to lapse. It was specifically terminated by the Four-Power Pacific Treaty (1921), a vaguely worded agreement that left the Japanese without allies until the conclusion of their Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940.

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance | Russo-Japanese War, Imperialism & Diplomacy

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance, (1902-23), alliance that bound Britain and Japan to assist one another in safeguarding their respective interests in China and Korea. Directed against Russian expansionism in the Far East, it was a cornerstone of British and Japanese policy in Asia until after World War I.

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On this day in 1940, Mussolini's forces finally cross the Libyan border into Egypt, achieving what the Duce calls the "glory" Italy had sought for three centuries.

Italy had occupied Libya since 1912, a purely economic "expansion." In 1935, Mussolini began sending tens of thousands of Italians to Libya, mostly farmers and other rural workers, in part to relieve overpopulation concerns. So by the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, Italy had enjoyed a long-term presence in North Africa, and Mussolini began dreaming of expanding that presence-always with an eye toward the same territories the old "Roman Empire" had counted among its conquests. Chief among these was Egypt.

But sitting in Egypt were British troops, which, under a 1936 treaty, were garrisoned there to protect the Suez Canal and Royal Navy bases at Alexandria and Port Said. Hitler had offered to aid Mussolini in his invasion, to send German troops to help fend off a British counterattack. But Mussolini had been rebuffed when he had offered Italian assistance during the Battle of Britain, so he now insisted that as a matter of national pride, Italy would have to create a Mediterranean sphere of influence on its own-or risk becoming a "junior" partner of Germany's.

As the Blitz commenced, and the land invasion of Britain by Germany was "imminent" (or so the Duce thought), Mussolini believed the British troops in Egypt were particularly vulnerable, and so announced to his generals his plans to make his move into Egypt. Gen. Rodolfo Graziani, the brutal governor of Ethiopia, another Italian colony, disagreed, believing that Italy's Libya forces were not strong enough to wage an offensive across the desert. Graziani also reminded Mussolini that Italian claims of air superiority in the Mediterranean were nothing more than propaganda.

But Mussolini, a true dictator, ignored these protestations and ordered Graziani into Egypt-a decision that would disprove the adage that war is too important to leave to the generals.

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On this day in 1940, Mussolini's forces finally cross the Libyan border into Egypt, achieving what the Duce calls the "glory" Italy had sought for three centuries. Italy had occupied Libya since 1912, a purely economic "expansion." In 1935, Mussolini began sending tens of thousands of Italians to Libya, mostly farmers and other rural workers, in part to relieve overpopulation concerns.

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https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history

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The Avalon Project : Summary of the Three-Power Pact Between Germany, Italy, and Japan, Signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940.

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The governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace that all nations of the world be given each its own proper place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one another in regard to their efforts in greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned.

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The Avalon Project : Summary of the Three-Power Pact Between Germany, Italy, and Japan, Signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace that all nations of the world be given each its own proper place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one another in regard to their efforts in greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Avalon Project : Summary of the Three-Power Pact Between Germany, Italy, and Japan, Signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940.

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The governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace that all nations of the world be given each its own proper place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one another in regard to their efforts in greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned.

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A. EAST CENTRAL EUROPE: POLAND, HUNGARY, AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, 1919-1939 [Czechoslovakia split into the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1991. Today the whole region is considered part of Central Europe along with Germany and Austria].

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Race to the coast

A potentially decisive counterattack by two high quality French armoured and motorised divisions fizzled out into some fierce, but ultimately inconclusive fighting. Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead. They began to race towards the Channel coast, aided by the German aircraft that ruled the skies.

With the bulk of the Allied forces fighting in Belgium, there was little to stop the German forces as they sliced across the Allied supply-lines. The German spearheads reached the English Channel on 20 May.

Lacking a centrally placed strategic reserve, the Allies tried to pull their armies out of Belgium to respond to the new threat emerging in their rear. And the Germans did not have it all their own way, as French forces under Charles de Gaulle showed how vulnerable the flanks of the German forces were to bold counterattacks.

Then at Arras on 21 May, a scratch force of British tanks and infantry gave a rough reception to Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division. Yet this was all too little, too late. With German forces pushing through Belgium and the Panzers looping up from the south and west, the Allies were encircled. The Belgian army surrendered on 28 May, leaving a gaping hole on the British flank of the Allied forces.

Allied high command seemed paralysed. General Weygand replaced General Gamelin as French commander-in-chief, but it made no difference. Then General Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), on 23/4 May took the morally courageous decision to abandon his role in a projected Anglo-French counterattack, and fell back on the Channel ports.

The French, not surprisingly, regarded this as a betrayal, but Gort's decision saved the BEF. Between 26 May and 4 June, a hastily organised evacuation by sea, code-named Operation Dynamo, lifted 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk.

That the German forces failed to press their attack on Dunkirk was largely thanks to grim defence of the Dunkirk perimeter by British and French troops, and the efforts of the much-depleted RAF.

Although as Churchill, who had become Prime Minster on 10 May rightly commented, 'wars are not won by evacuation', Dynamo was a victory of incalculable importance for the BEF. The return of the troops, even without much of their equipment, gave Britain a basis on which to rebuild the Army, sheltering behind the Navy and the RAF. It also strengthened the credibility of Churchill's insistence that Britain would fight on, thus influencing the neutral USA at a time when American aid was vital.

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A potentially decisive counterattack by two high quality French armoured and motorised divisions fizzled out into some fierce, but ultimately inconclusive fighting. Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead.

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Race to the coast

A potentially decisive counterattack by two high quality French armoured and motorised divisions fizzled out into some fierce, but ultimately inconclusive fighting. Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead. They began to race towards the Channel coast, aided by the German aircraft that ruled the skies.

With the bulk of the Allied forces fighting in Belgium, there was little to stop the German forces as they sliced across the Allied supply-lines. The German spearheads reached the English Channel on 20 May.

Lacking a centrally placed strategic reserve, the Allies tried to pull their armies out of Belgium to respond to the new threat emerging in their rear. And the Germans did not have it all their own way, as French forces under Charles de Gaulle showed how vulnerable the flanks of the German forces were to bold counterattacks.

Then at Arras on 21 May, a scratch force of British tanks and infantry gave a rough reception to Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division. Yet this was all too little, too late. With German forces pushing through Belgium and the Panzers looping up from the south and west, the Allies were encircled. The Belgian army surrendered on 28 May, leaving a gaping hole on the British flank of the Allied forces.

Allied high command seemed paralysed. General Weygand replaced General Gamelin as French commander-in-chief, but it made no difference. Then General Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), on 23/4 May took the morally courageous decision to abandon his role in a projected Anglo-French counterattack, and fell back on the Channel ports.

The French, not surprisingly, regarded this as a betrayal, but Gort's decision saved the BEF. Between 26 May and 4 June, a hastily organised evacuation by sea, code-named Operation Dynamo, lifted 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk.

That the German forces failed to press their attack on Dunkirk was largely thanks to grim defence of the Dunkirk perimeter by British and French troops, and the efforts of the much-depleted RAF.

Although as Churchill, who had become Prime Minster on 10 May rightly commented, 'wars are not won by evacuation', Dynamo was a victory of incalculable importance for the BEF. The return of the troops, even without much of their equipment, gave Britain a basis on which to rebuild the Army, sheltering behind the Navy and the RAF. It also strengthened the credibility of Churchill's insistence that Britain would fight on, thus influencing the neutral USA at a time when American aid was vital.

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A potentially decisive counterattack by two high quality French armoured and motorised divisions fizzled out into some fierce, but ultimately inconclusive fighting. Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead.

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Benito Mussolini declares Italy's entry into World War 2 HD Stock Footage

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Hitler rose to power during a time of economic and political instability in Germany. Learn more about how and when Hitler came to power.

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Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919-eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I -called for stiff war reparation payments and other punishing peace terms for defeated Germany. Having been forced to sign the treaty, the German delegation to the peace conference indicated its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen. As dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany's military forces were reduced to insignificance and the Rhineland was to be demilitarized.

In 1925, at the conclusion of a European peace conference held in Switzerland, the Locarno Pact was signed, reaffirming the national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles and approving the German entry into the League of Nations. The so-called "spirit of Locarno" symbolized hopes for an era of European peace and goodwill, and by 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland.

However, just four years later, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized full power in Germany, promising vengeance against the Allied nations that had forced the Treaty of Versailles on the German people. In 1935, Hitler unilaterally canceled the military clauses of the treaty and in March 1936 denounced the Locarno Pact and began remilitarizing of the Rhineland. Two years later, Nazi Germany burst out of its territories, absorbing Austria and portions of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
READ MORE: Did WWI Lead to WWII?

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Hitler reoccupies the Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles

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Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919-eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I-called for stiff war reparation payments and [...]

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On 7 March 1936 German troops marched into the Rhineland. This action was directly against the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out the terms which the defeated Germany had accepted. This move, in terms of foreign relations, threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion. What should they do about it?

These documents reveal the motives and attitudes of the British government as they discuss their options. They are all extracts from the minutes of the Cabinet meeting on 11 March 1936.

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister was Stanley Baldwin.

Tasks

1. This is a document where the Foreign Secretary describes a meeting he has had with the French, Belgian and Italian governments.

What clues are there that the British Cabinet thought the situation was serious?

What was British policy for dealing with the crisis?

How did this policy go down with our allies?

Why do you think they reacted in this way?

What did Anthony Eden expect the allies to do next?

Why would this put Britain 'in an impossible position'?

2. This is another section from the document seen in Source 1. What does this tell us about Baldwin's attitude to:

How might each of these worries affect how Britain would deal with the crisis?

3. According to this document, why was Britain unready to go to war with Germany over the Rhineland?

How would this affect our readiness to go along with what France wanted?

4. Look at Source 4. What arguments are put here for and against economic sanctions against Germany?

5. The Foreign Secretary puts forward his suggestion for dealing with the situation:

What deal does Anthony Eden want to offer Germany?

What do you think were Eden's motives in making this offer to Germany?

Did this deal abide by the terms of the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno?

Why do you think he didn't consult the League of Nations?

6. British policy towards Germany at this time is called appeasement.

Use your answers to questions 2(a), 3(a), 4 and 5(a) to describe what appeasement was and why Britain took this line

Do you think Eden could have handled the situation differently?

Background

According to the Treaty of Versailles, the Rhineland, a strip of land inside Germany bordering on France, Belgium and the Netherlands, was to be de-militarised. That is, no German troops were to be stationed inside that area or any fortifications built. The aim was to increase French security by making it impossible for Germany to invade France unawares. Other terms restricted the German army to 100,000 men and the navy to just 36 ships. Germany objected to the terms of the treaty but were told to sign it or the war would begin again.

The Treaty of Versailles also set up the League of Nations, an international peace-keeping organisation. It was based on the idea of collective security, that is, the nations of the world would act together (collectively) to preserve peace. Unfortunately, one of the most powerful, the USA, did not join the League.

Germany in the 1920s was keen to get back on normal terms with other nations and signed the Treaty of Locarno. By this treaty Germany agreed to accept the terms of the Versailles Treaty, at least on her western borders. France continued to worry about their safety against Germany particularly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He had always declared his firm intention of overthrowing the Treaty of Versailles and uniting all Germans in one country, even if it led to war. Germany began to re-arm. Could France trust collective security, or should they find military allies?

In May 1935 France signed a treaty of friendship and mutual support with the USSR. Germany claimed the treaty was hostile to them and Hitler used this as an excuse to send German troops into the Rhineland in March 1936, contrary to the terms of the treaties of Versailles and Locarno. It was a gamble on his part and his generals were nervous about it. German re-armament had not yet reached a point where they felt ready to take on a well-armed nation like France.

Following the discussions described in the documents, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, did indeed meet the German ambassador and make his proposals. Hitler refused to withdraw his troops, and put pressure on the League of Nations to act. France was on the verge of a general election and would not act without Britain's support. However the British people felt that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair on Germany and was over-restrictive, and so partly because of this, the British government decided to do nothing. Hitler moved on from the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, to the annexation of Austria and the seizure of the Sudetenland in 1938, to the take-over of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and then Poland in September 1939.

We know that those men sitting round the Cabinet table in Downing Street in March 1936 had no idea that they were only three and a half years away from war. We must not judge them with hindsight.

Teachers' notes

The amount of background information on the treaties and the League and the need to juggle information about several countries and their attitudes all make this lesson hard. It also has to be understood that, at that time, as Eden says in Source 1: 'our influence was greater than that of any other nation.'

However, appeasement is an important phase in British foreign policy; it helps to explain why the Second World War broke out when and how it did. It also traumatised a generation of British politicians into trying to redeem themselves, from Suez in 1956 to the Falklands in 1982.

The extracts from the Cabinet minutes show how little room for manoeuvre British politicians actually had. It was going to be re-played again over Czechoslovakia in 1938, but all the key issues are mentioned here:

horror of war

unpreparedness for war

belief that communism was an evil to be avoided an any cost

mistrust of our key allies

weakness of the League of Nations

recognition that the Treaty of Versailles may have been wrong in parts and readiness to revise it

assumption that Hitler was a reasonable politician with reasonable demands and should be dealt with as such

For this reason, a study of the Rhineland crisis is an excellent case study of British appeasement policy.

Sources

Sources 1-5 FO 371/19892 - Minutes from the Foreign Office meeting on the Treaty of Locarno in 1936

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German occupation of the Rhineland - The National Archives

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On 7 March 1936 German troops marched into the Rhineland. This action was directly against the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out the terms which the defeated Germany had accepted. This move, in terms of foreign relations, threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion.

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The History Place - Triumph of Hitler: Nazis March into the Rhineland

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March 1936: Nazis March into the Rhineland

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On September 15, 1935, the Nazi regime announced two new laws related to race:

The Reich Citizenship Law

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

These laws informally became known as the Nuremberg Laws or Nuremberg Race Laws. This is because they were first announced at a Nazi Party rally held in the German city of Nuremberg.

Why did the Nazis enact the Nuremberg Race Laws?

The Nuremberg Race Laws The Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, because they wanted to put their ideas about race into law. They believed in the false theory that the world is divided into distinct races that are not equally strong and valuable. The Nazis considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They saw the so-called Aryan German race as the strongest, and most valuable race of all.

According to the Nazis, Jews were not Aryans. They thought Jews belonged to a separate race that was inferior to all other races. The Nazis believed that the presence of Jews in Germany threatened the German people. They believed they had to separate Jews from other Germans to protect and strengthen Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were an important step towards achieving this goal.

What was the Reich Citizenship Law?

The Nazi Party had always promised that, if they came to power, only racially pure Germans would be allowed to hold German citizenship. The Reich Citizenship Law made this a reality. This law defined a citizen as a person who is "of German or related blood." This meant that Jews, defined as a separate race, could not be full citizens of Germany. They had no political rights.

What was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor?

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was a law against what the Nazis viewed as race-mixing or "race defilement" (" Rassenschande "). It banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people "of German or related blood." The Nazis believed that such relationships were dangerous because they led to "mixed race" children. According to the Nazis, these children and their descendants undermined the purity of the German race.

Who was Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws?

According to the Nuremberg Laws, a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. A grandparent was considered Jewish if they belonged to the Jewish religious community. Thus, the Nazis defined Jews by their religion (Judaism), and not by the supposed racial traits that Nazism attributed to Jews.

The laws also categorized some people in Germany as " Mischlinge " ( "mixed-race persons"). According to law, Mischlinge were neither German nor Jewish. These were people who had one or two Jewish grandparents.

The Nazi regime required individuals to prove their grandparents' racial identities. To do so, people used religious records. These included baptism records, Jewish community records, and gravestones.

Did the Nuremberg Laws apply to other groups?

Yes. While initially focused on Jews, the Nazi government clarified that the Nuremberg Laws also applied to Roma (also called Gypsies), Black people, and their descendants. They could not be full citizens of Germany. Nor could they marry or have sexual relations with "people of German or related blood."

What were the consequences of the Nuremberg Laws?

The Nuremberg Laws changed the everyday lives of Jews in Germany by making Jews legally different from their non-Jewish neighbors. In the years that followed, the Nazi regime enacted more and more anti-Jewish laws and decrees. These later laws relied on the definition of "Jew" as defined in the Nuremberg Laws. Examples of these other laws or decrees include:

The Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names (August 1938)

The Decree on Passports of Jews (October 1938)

The Police Regulation on the Marking of Jews (September 1941)

The Nuremberg Laws were an important step in the Nazi regime's process of isolating and excluding Jews from the rest of German society.

Key Dates
August 17, 1938
Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names October 5, 1938
Decree on Passports of Jews September 1, 1941
Police Regulation on the Marking of Jews
On August 17, 1938, the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names sets new name requirements for Jews in Germany. This law states that Jews can only be given specific Jewish first names. New Jewish parents must choose a name from a government-approved list. Also, any Jew who does not already have a name from this list, must add an additional first name: "Israel" (for men) and "Sara" (for women). Individuals have to report their new names to government offices. They also have to use both their given and added first names for business transactions.

The Nazi regime invalidates the German passports of all German Jews. For their passports to become valid again, German Jews must submit them to a passport office so that they can be stamped with the letter "J." The decree specifies that this applies to the passports of German Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws.

Beginning in September 1941, all Jews in Nazi Germany are required to wear a special yellow badge in public. The badge must be a palm-sized, yellow six-pointed star with black lines outlining the Star of David. The star must have the word " " (German for "Jew") written in the middle. It must be visible anytime a Jew appears in public. Specifically, Jews are required to sew this yellow star onto the left breast of their clothes. This order applies to all German Jews (as defined by the Nuremberg Laws) who are six years old and older. Germans categorized as Mischlinge do not have to wear the star.

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The Nazi regime's Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935 made Jews legally different from their non-Jewish neighbors. The laws were the foundation for future antisemitic measures .

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Background & Overview of the Nuremberg Laws

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Background & Overview of the Nuremberg Laws

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The Nuremberg Laws were anti-Jewish statutes enacted by Germany on September 15, 1935, marking a major step in clarifying racial policy and removing Jewish influences from Aryan society.

These laws, on which the rest of Nazi racial policy hung, were written hastily. In September 1935, Adolf Hitler decided that the time was ripe for more restrictions on Germany's Jews, especially since many Party militants had expressed their disappointment with the Arierparagraph. He therefore outlined new laws for the protection of German blood and honor which would "regulate the problems of marriage between 'Aryans' and 'non-Aryans.'"

Poster used by Nazi Party to explain regulations of Nuremberg Laws

On September 13, 1935, Hitler called on the desk officer for racial law in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (RMI), Bernhard Loesener, and on others, among them state secretaries Hans Pfundtner and Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, to formulate the legal language of the laws. Hitler wanted to present these new laws at the Nuremberg Party rally on September 15, leaving only two days to write them. Much preliminary work had been done for the drafting of such laws prior to September 13, but the men still had to agree on their severity and language. They wrote notes at mealtimes on menu cards as they threw together the laws that would decide the fate of millions.

Hitler had asked these men to translate racial ideology into law. Remarkably, the head of Reich Office for Genealogy Research, Dr. Kurt Mayer, heard about these new laws for the first time when they were officially announced. He openly expressed his anger, humiliation and surprise at not having been consulted during the drafting process.

Hitler made no pretense of basing these laws on any "scientific truths" discovered by his "racial scientists." His driving force was not reason but rather the need for an enemy. Hitler had said that if the Nazis had not had Jews, they would have had to invent them. Since Hitler believed he was the sole authority on racial policy, he had the final say about what the law stated.

The laws issued on September 15, 1935, approved by Hitler personally, deprived Jews of German citizenship, prohibited Jewish households from having German maids under the age of 45, prohibited any non-Jewish German from marrying a Jew and outlawed sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Hitler claimed during a Reichstag session that the Nuremberg Laws would actually help the Jews by creating "a level ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation with the Jewish people." Hitler's statement was a "blatant deception, aimed at the outside world."

Regardless of what Hitler said, he implemented these laws to ostracize, discriminate and expel Jews from German society. This was quickly gleaned from his speech when he next said that if this "tolerable situation" was not found, and if the Jewish agitation both within Germany and abroad continued, then the position must be reexamined. In other words, Hitler would then implement further laws and policies to persecute the Jews. The Nuremberg Laws, according to Hitler, were just a precursor to other more degrading decrees. To create his homogeneous and harmonious Aryan society, Hitler had first to discard the Jews, a "people" incompatible with "true Germans." The Nuremberg Laws helped Hitler take the first step toward getting rid of "these parasites" and imposing racial conformity on society.

Interestingly, the law prohibiting marriages between Jews and Germans failed to specify who was counted as a Jew. Years of German-Jewish assimilation made this a difficult question to answer and debate raged for several months. Hitler wavered between declaring half-Jews the same as Jews or keeping them separate as half-Jews amd ,any issues about Mischlinge (partial Jews) and intermarriage were discussed. Dr. Gerhard Wagner, the Reich's doctor and a fanatical anti-Semite, had many talks with Hitler during the drafting of the racial laws - he wanted to equate all half-, quarter-, and one-eighth-Jews with full Jews. Such extremists argued that partial Jews were more dangerous than full Jews because their mix of German and Jewish blood would enable them to lead the state's enemies with the skill of Aryans.

The racial theorist Dr. Achim Gercke in the RMI introduced another argument when he wrote in September 1935 that Mischlinge could really be disguised Jews. He maintained that anyone who mathematically defined "50 percent, 25 percent, 12.5 percent, 6.25 percent, etc., Mischlinge" had not understood Mendel's laws of genetics. Gercke warned that Mischlinge could also "mendel out pure Jews." At this time, Hitler refused to give his decision on whether to declare half-Jews as Jews. Hitler's wavering was typical of his style of rule. He often avoided giving a final decision that involved choosing different options proposed by two or more of his trusted underlings. And being the good politician that he was, Hitler probably did not declare half-Jews as Jews because he did not want to alienate the Aryan families of Mischlinge too much.

The Nazis not only persecuted people of Jewish descent, but Aryan Germans with Jewish spouses as well. Stuckart in the RMI argued that anyone who married a Jew was an inferior German. Any children born to such parents did not deserve any better treatment than Jews, since their German half was not really worth protecting. Julius Streicher, the editor of the notoriously antisemitic and vulgar newspaper Der Stürmer, tried to convince Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Interior, that Jewish semen permanently polluted an Aryan woman to such an extent that later, although married to an Aryan, she could not bear "pure-blooded Aryan babies." Men like Loesener, who were responsible for drafting these laws, did not take Gercke's or Streicher's beliefs too seriously.

Throughout this process of defining Jewishness, Loesener realized the problems inherent in labeling as un-German people who felt German, thereby marking them for persecution. Loesener feared the disastrous social repercussions that would result from branding as Jews several highly decorated half-Jewish World War I veterans (one a Pour le Mérite recipient) and distinguished supporters of the Nazi movement. Loesener argued that since most felt German and rejected Judaism, their suicide rate would climb dramatically if the government labeled them as Jews. Loesener also cautioned that if they treated half-Jews as Jews, the armed forces would probably lose 45,000 soldiers. He felt that the "laws transformed dissimulation into an established fact [and] would minimize racial hatred," and he "stressed that legal segregation meant legal protection."

After the war, Loesener explained his reasoning: "One could no more achieve any movement on the Jewish question in the narrow sense, i.e., the full-Jews, than one could move a mountain. It would also have been tactically the most stupid thing I could possibly have done because it would have removed any further possibility of making use of my position [in helping half-Jews]." He knew the Jews were doomed but felt that he could save the Mischlinge from meeting the same fate if he could prevent the authorities from labeling them as Jews. In this battle between the Party, led primarily by Wagner, and the RMI, led by Stuckart and Loesener, the RMI won. Hitler had been content to let these two factions fight it out. Hitler apparently allowed the RMI to enact its version of the law because he feared the unrest in society that the harsh law of the Party fanatics would cause. According to historian Nathan Stoltzfus, Hitler was only concerned "for his popularity" in permitting RMI to get its way.

As Raul Hilberg pointed out, the task of explaining the laws and fully articulating them was left to the bureaucracy. On November 14, 1935, the RMI issued a supplement to the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, which created the racial categories of German, Jew, half-Jew (Jewish Mischling first degree), and quarter-Jew (Jewish Mischling second degree), each with its own regulations. Apparently, Hitler decided for the time being to keep half-Jews as such rather than treating them as full Jews. Full Jews had three to four Jewish grandparents. According to Hitler, when someone was more than 50 percent Jewish, he was beyond the point of saving and was evil ( uebel). Half-Jews had two Jewish grandparents, and quarter-Jews had one Jewish grandparent. The Nazis had to resort to religious criteria to define these racial categories, ultimately determined by birth, baptismal, marriage, and death certificates. Often stored in churches and courthouses, these records indicated what religion one adhered to or had left. When a Mischling belonged to the Jewish religion or was married to a Jew, the Nazis counted him as a full Jew. Jews could only marry Jews or half-Jews, and half-Jews could only marry Jews or other half-Jews. Quarter-Jews could only marry Aryans, although in practice they experienced difficulties in doing so. Marriages between a Jew and an Aryan that had occurred before 1935 were called "privileged mixed marriages" and provided some protection for the Jewish spouse. Most Jews who survived the Holocaust in Germany were married to non-Jews. At the same time, Hitler allowed some Mischlinge to apply for exemptions under section 7 of the supplementary decrees of November 1935. In some cases, if Hitler approved, the Mischling was allowed to call himself or herself an Aryan.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 laid the foundation for the next 10 years of racial policy. Subsequent official documents usually replaced the term non-Aryan with the more specific "Jewish Mischling first or second degree" and Jew. Although, by 1938, Hitler felt the Nuremberg Laws had been too "humane," he never changed them.

As Loesener had predicted, these laws calmed many individuals of Jewish descent by clarifying their situation somewhat. Half-Jew Peter Gaupp, who called the time from 1933 until the racial laws of 1935 the "lawless years," said:

In 1935, the laws came out, the Nuremberg Laws. That was the first time you knew where you stood legally.... Before it was all guesswork. You could meet a Nazi in some office and he could exterminate you or you could meet a Nazi that was very human and he could help you.... Before 1935, before the laws came out of Nuremberg, you swam your way through.... You know, there was no regulations. The laws of Nuremberg was the first, ah, form, legal shape where you knew where you stood.

Mischlinge felt oppressed, but at least they knew where they belonged. Some Jews welcomed the laws because they felt that now they could live an "orderly existence." Moreover, for a few years after these laws, most Mischlinge continued to live fairly "normal" lives - that is, they were able to study, date, serve in the armed forces, and so on. Most felt pleasantly surprised that the majority of their Aryan friends and acquaintances did not treat them differently after the issuance of these laws. Ian Kershaw wrote, "Between the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws and the summer of 1938, it would not be going too far to suggest that the 'Jewish Question' was almost totally irrelevant to the formation of opinion among the majority of the German people." Many people did not take the new laws seriously. "[The Nuremberg Laws] appear to have passed by much of the population almost unnoticed." It seems that those who did know about these laws, including Mischlinge, accepted them without objection.

Stuckart and his assistant, Dr. Hans Globke, in the RMI claimed that Nazi racial laws differed little from Jewish law: "The German people want to keep their blood pure and their culture together just like the Jews have done since the prophet Ezra ordered them to do so." Regardless of what Nazi officials said, these laws inflicted humiliation and suffering on Jews and Mischlinge. Quarter-Jew Hans Ranke said, "I was shocked [by these laws]. I no longer felt like a worthy German." The Reichstag felt it had secured the purity of blood essential for the German people's future existence. Lammers wrote Frick on February 20, 1936, that Hitler's goal in Mischling politics was to make the "mixed race disappear" and to force Mischlinge to lose their citizenship rights. The Nazis used these Nuremberg Laws to define, control, and dehumanize Jews and Mischlinge and eventually to expel them from "Aryan" society.

Bibliography:

Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP: Rekonstruktion eines verlorengegangenen Bestandes, Bundesarchiv (Akten- NSDAP), Microfiches, hrsg. v. Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, 1983; BA-B (Bundesarchiv-Berlin), Bestände aus der Zeit von 1867 bis 1945: Zivile Behoerden und Einrichtungen des Deutschen Reiches; BA-B, R 18/5514; BA-B, 15.09/52; BA-MA (Bundesarchiv/Militaerarchiv - Freiburg), RH 53-7/627; BA-MA, BMRS (Bryan Mark Rigg Sammlung), interview Peter Gaupp; BA-MA, BMRS, interview Hans Koref; BA-MA, BMRS, interview Hans Ranke; Das Reichsbürgergesetz vom 15.09.1935 ( RGBl. 1935, Teil I, Nr. 100, p. 1,146); Erste Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz vom 14.11.1935 ( RGBl, Teil I, 1935, Nr. 125, pp. 1,333-36); Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte (IfZ), N-71-73. SECONDARY SOURCES: H.G. Adler, The Jews in Germany (1969); W. Benz, The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide (1999); Y. Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (1982); N.H. Baynes (ed.), The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. 2 (1942); D. Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (1994); C. Essner, Die " Nuernberger Gesetze" oder Die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns 1933- 1945 (2002); S. Friedlaender, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933- 1939 (1997); H. Globke and W. Stuck-art, Kommentare zur Deutschen Rassen gesetzgebung (1936); Heeresadjutant bei Hitler, 1938- 1943. Aufzeichnungen des Majors Gerhard Engel, Hrsg. u. kommentiert v. Hildegard von Kotze (= Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte Nr. 29; 1974); R. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1961, 1985, 2003); A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (1971); The Holocaust, vol. 1, Legalizing the Holocaust - The Early Phase, 1933- 1939, intr. by John Mendelsohn (1982); H. Kammer and E. Bartsch (eds.), Nationalsozialismus: Begriffe aus der Zeit der Gewaltherrschaft, 1933- 1945 (1992); M.A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998); I. Kershaw, Hitler, 1889- 1936: Hubris (1999); idem, Hitler, 1936- 1945: Nemesis (2000); idem, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (1987); idem, "Popular Opinion in the Third Reich," in: J. Oakes (ed.), Government, Party, and People in Nazi Germany (1980); idem, Profiles in Power: Hitler (1991); B. Lösener, "Als Rassereferent im Reichsministerium des Innern," in: Das Reichsministerium des Innern und die Judengesetzgebung, Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, vol. 9 (1961); J. Noakes, "The Development of Nazi Policy towards the German-Jewish ' Mischlinge,' 1933-1945," in: Leo Baeck Yearbook, 34 (1989); R. Pommerin, Sterilisierung der Rheinlandbastarde. Das Schicksal einer farbigen deutschen Minderheit, 1918- 1937 (1979); F. Redlich, Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (1998); B.M. Rigg, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (2002); idem, Rescued From the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (2004); N. Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (1996); R. Vogel, Ein Stueck von uns (1973); L. Yahil, The Holocaust (1987).

Sources: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, Documents on Nazism 1919-1945, (NY: Viking Press, 1974), pp. 463-467;
The Nizkor Project;
EncyclopaediaJudaica, © 2008 The Gale Group All Rights Reserved.

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Background & Overview of the Nuremberg Laws

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The Nuremberg Laws were anti-Jewish statutes enacted by Germany on September 15, 1935, marking a major step in clarifying racial policy and removing Jewish influences from Aryan society. These laws, on which the rest of Nazi racial policy hung, were written hastily.

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On March 12, 1938, German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich.

In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, learning of the conspiracy, met with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the hopes of reasserting his country's independence but was instead bullied into naming several top Austrian Nazis to his cabinet. On March 9, Schuschnigg called a national vote to resolve the question of Anschluss, or "annexation," once and for all. Before the plebiscite could take place, however, Schuschnigg gave in to pressure from Hitler and resigned on March 11. In his resignation address, under coercion from the Nazis, he pleaded with Austrian forces not to resist a German "advance" into the country.

The next day, March 12, Hitler accompanied German troops into Austria, where enthusiastic crowds met them. Hitler appointed a new Nazi government, and on March 13 the Anschluss was proclaimed. Austria existed as a federal state of Germany until the end of World War II, when the Allied powers declared the Anschluss void and reestablished an independent Austria. Schuschnigg, who had been imprisoned soon after resigning, was released in 1945.
READ MORE: How Did the Nazis Really Lose World War II?

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On March 12, 1938, German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany.

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Before World War II, Jews played an important role in Austria's economic and cultural life. In 1938, Austria had a Jewish population of about 192,000, representing almost 4 percent of the total population. The overwhelming majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna, the capital, an important center of Jewish culture, Zionism, and education. Jews comprised about 9 percent of the city's population. However, by December 1939 their number had been reduced to just 57,000, primarily due to emigration.

The Anschluss: The German Annexation of Austria

After a prolonged period of economic stagnation, political dictatorship, and intense Nazi propaganda inside Austria, German troops entered the country on March 12, 1938. They received the enthusiastic support of most of the population. Austria was incorporated into Germany the next day. In April, this German annexation was retroactively approved in a plebiscite that was manipulated to indicate that about 99 percent of the Austrian people wanted the union (known as the Anschluss) with Germany. Neither Jews nor Roma (Gypsies) were allowed to vote in the plebiscite.

Following the Anschluss, the Germans quickly extended anti-Jewish legislation to Austria.

The Camp System in Austria

The Mauthausen concentration camp was established in the summer of 1938, after the German incorporation of Austria. Mauthausen became the main Nazi camp in Austria. It was built near an abandoned stone quarry, along the Danube River, about 12.5 miles southeast of Linz. The Germans designated the Mauthausen concentration camp a category III camp, indicating that it was a special penal camp with a harsh regimen. Inmates in the punishment detail, for example, were forced to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. The steps became known as the "Stairway of Death."

During the war, forced labor using concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important to German armaments production. In the summer and fall of 1944, subcamps under the administration of Mauthausen were established near armaments factories throughout northern Austria. The staff at Mauthausen administered more than 60 subcamps, including Gusen, Gunskirchen, Melk, Ebensee, and Amstetten. Thousands of prisoners were worked to death.

In addition to Mauthausen and its subcamps, other camps in Austria extended from Lochau in the west to Strasshof in the east.

The Kristallnacht Pogroms in Austria

The November 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms were particularly brutal in Austria. Most of the synagogues in Vienna were destroyed, burned in full view of fire departments and the public. Jewish businesses were also vandalized and ransacked. Thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to the Dachau or Buchenwald concentration camps. Jewish emigration increased dramatically in response to the German incorporation of Austria and to Kristallnacht. Between 1938 and 1940, 117,000 Jews left Austria.

Deportations from Austria

During World War II, German policy regarding the Jewish population shifted from one of expropriation and Jewish emigration to one of forced deportation. The Nazis deported thousands of Jews from Austria to occupied Poland and elsewhere in occupied eastern Europe.

Systematic mass deportations from Vienna, as elsewhere in Greater Germany, began in October 1941. The Nazis established centers where Jews were to be assembled before deportation. About 35,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to ghettos in eastern Europe, mostly to Minsk, Riga, and Lodz, and to ghettos in the Lublin region of Poland. Most Jews sent to Minsk and Riga were shot by detachments of the Einsatzgruppen shortly after arrival. Over 15,000 Viennese Jews were deported to Theresienstadt. Thousands of Jews were also sent to concentration camps in Germany. By November 1942 only about 7,000 Jews remained in Austria, mostly those married to non-Jews. Some Jews remained in hiding.

Soviet and American forces occupied Austria in April and May 1945.

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Before World War II, Jews played an important role in Austria's economic and cultural life. In 1938, Austria had a Jewish population of about 192,000, representing almost 4 percent of the total population. The overwhelming majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna, the capital, an important center of Jewish culture, Zionism, and education.

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Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass

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Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass

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The widespread violence of Nov. 9-10, 1938 signaled an escalation in the Nazi reign of terror.

The unprecedented pogrom of November 9-10, 1938 in Germany has passed into history as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Violent attacks on Jews and Judaism throughout the Reich and in the recently annexed Sudetenland began on November 8 and continued until November 11 in Hannover and the free city of Danzig, which had not then been incorporated into the Reich. There followed associated operations: arrests, detention in concentration camps, and a wave of so-called Aryanization orders, which completely eliminated Jews from German economic life.

The November pogrom, carried out with the help of the most up-to-date communications technology, was the most modern pogrom in the history of anti-Jewish persecution and an overture to the step-by-step extirpation of the Jewish people in Europe.

Jews Leaving Germany

After Hitler's seizure of power, even as Germans were being divided into "Aryans" and "non-Aryans," the number of Jews steadily decreased through emigration to neighboring countries or overseas. This movement was promoted by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration established by Reinhard Heydrich (director of the Reich Main Security Office) in 1938.

In 1925 there were 564,378 Jews in Germany; in May 1939 the number had fallen to 213,390. The flood of emigration after the November pogrom was one of the largest ever, and by the time emigration was halted in October 1941, only 164,000 Jews were left within the Third Reich, including Austria.
READ: Sept. 16, 1935: Nazi Laws on Jews Put Into Effect
The illusion that the legal repression enacted in the civil service law of April 1, 1933, which excluded non-Aryans from public service, would be temporary was laid to rest in September 1935 by the Nuremberg Laws - the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor. The Reich Citizenship Law heralded the political compartmentalization of Jewish and Aryan Germans.

Economic Exclusion

The complementary ordinances to the Reich Citizenship Law, dated November 14-28, 1935, sought to define who was a Jew; it also created a basis for measures limiting the scope of Jewish occupations and the opportunities for young Jews to get an education. Following the March 1938 annexation ( Anschluss) of Austria, which brought 200,000 Austrian Jews under German domination, exclusion of Jews from the economy began first through the removal of Jewish manufacturers and business chiefs and their replacement by "commissars" in charge of "aryanization," the expropriation of Jewish businesses.
READ: Feb. 14, 1934: Jewish Agents Thrown Out of Reich System
Within a short time, from January to October 1938, the Nazis aryanized 340 middle-sized and small industrial enterprises, 370 wholesale firms, and 22 private banks owned by Jews. The November pogrom was the peak of a series of events intended to expel the Jews from economic life and to force a hurried emigration.

A sequence of normative legislation in 1938 heralded economic despoliation. Under the Law Concerning the Legal Position of the Jewish Religious Community (March 28, 1938), the state subsidy for the Jewish community was withdrawn. Under the decree of April 22, 1938 against "continuing concealment of Jewish business activity," Jews were obliged to declare their assets-an indication that their possessions might be seized.

The Fourth Decree (July 25, 1938) under the Reich Citizenship Law deprived Jewish doctors, as of September 30, of their practices among Jewish patients. An edict by the police president of Breslau dated July 21 ordered that shops and businesses belonging to Jews should bear a notice: "Jewish Firm." Air Ministry political-economic guidelines of October 14, 1938 were accompanied by a recommendation, summed up by Hermann Goring (then head of the ministry): "The Jewish question must now be grasped in every way possible, for they [Jews] must be removed from the economy."

Goring also said that he was in favor of the creation of Jewish ghettos in German towns. His words gave notice of a general anti-Jewish offensive in the coming weeks. The most favorable opportunity for unleashing the attack was afforded by the fatal wounding of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7th 1938 in Paris by the 16-year-old Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan.
READ: Nov. 8, 1938: Polish-Jewish Youth, 17, Shoots Nazi Embassy Official in Paris
A Top-Down Pogrom

Ernst vom Rath's death gave the signal to the Reich propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, to unleash the pogrom against the Jews. The news of the death was received by Adolf Hitler during the traditional dinner for the "old fighters" of the Nazi movement, held in the assembly room of the Old Town Hall in Munich on the anniversary of the bloody march on the Feldherrnhalle and the unsuccessful putsch of November 9, 1923.

The atmosphere for announcements of victory or incitements to hate and revenge was optimal, not only in Munich but also among Nazi organizations throughout the country, where Germans awaited the radio transmission of the customary memorial celebration and Hitler's speech. The signal for retaliation had already been given by Goebbels (with Hitler's agreement) in an unusually aggressive speech, which Hitler did not attend. The political propaganda initiative and management of the pogrom was in Goebbels' hands, though he held no written authority from Hitler.

While the Fuhrer went to his Munich apartment, the propaganda minister told the Nazi notables and old fighters present that there had already been acts of revenge on November 8 in Kurhessen and Magdeburg against State Enemy No. 1 - the Jew. Synagogues and shops belonging to Jews had, he said, been destroyed.

His words were understood by his audience to signify "that while the party would not openly appear as the originator of the demonstrations, in reality it would organize them and carry them through" (secret report of supreme party judge Hans Buch to Hermann Goring, February 13, 1939). These intimations were immediately passed on by telephone to the headquarters of the various districts and were followed by telegrams from the Gestapo. Heydrich's secret order, sent by teleprinter to all Gestapo offices and senior SD sections, was transmitted at 1:20 a.m. on November 10.

Once Goebbels had given the Nazi district leaders the impetus to unleash a massive pogrom, the further initiative lay in their hands. The execution of the pogrom, under direction of the highest Nazi party leaders, was entrusted to police and state agencies, to units of the SS, and in part to SA members. By means of the latest communications technology - telephone, teleprinters, police transmitters, and radio - within a few hours the pogrom had reached almost every part of the Reich without meeting any resistance.

Desecrated Synagogues, Looted Shops, Mass Arrests

During the night of November 9-10, 1938 Jewish shops, dwellings, schools, and above all synagogues and other religious establishments symbolic of Judaism were set alight. Tens of thousands of Jews were terrorized in their homes, sometimes beaten to death, and in a few cases raped. In Cologne, a town with a rich Jewish tradition dating from the first century CE, four synagogues were desecrated and torched, shops were destroyed and looted, and male Jews were arrested and thrown into concentration camps.

Brutal events were recorded in the hitherto peaceful townships of the Upper Palatinate, Lower Franconia, Swabia, and others. In Hannover, Herschel Grynszpan 's hometown, the well-known Jewish neurologist Joseph Loewenstein escaped the pogrom when he heeded an anonymous warning the previous day; his home, however, with all its valuables, was seized by the Nazis.

In Berlin, where 140,000 Jews still resided, SA men devastated nine of the 12 synagogues and set fire to them. Children from the Jewish orphanages were thrown out on the street. About 1,200 men were sent to Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen concentration camp under "protective custody." Many of the wrecked Jewish shops did not open again.

Following the Berlin pogrom the police president demanded the removal of all Jews from the northern parts of the city and declared this area "free of Jews." His order on December 5, 1938 - known as the Ghetto Decree - meant that Jews could no longer live near government buildings.
READ: Dec. 5, 1938: Nazis Take Drivers' Permits from Jews, Ban Use of Central Berlin
The vast November pogrom had considerable economic consequences. On November 11, 1938 Heydrich, the head of the security police, still could not estimate the material destruction. The supreme party court later established that 91 persons had been killed during the pogrom and that 36 had sustained serious injuries or committed suicide. Several instances of rape were punished by state courts as Rassenschande (social defilement) in accordance with the Nuremberg laws of 1935.

At least 267 synagogues were burned down or destroyed, and in many cases the ruins were blown up and cleared away. Approximately 7,500 Jewish businesses were plundered or laid waste. At least 177 apartment blocks or houses were destroyed by arson or otherwise.

It has rightly been said that with the November pogrom, radical violence had reached the point of murder and so had paved the road to Auschwitz.

Reprinted with permission from The Holocaust Encyclopedia (Yale University Press).

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Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass | My Jewish Learning

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The widespread violence of Nov. 9-10, 1938 signaled an escalation in the Nazi reign of terror. The unprecedented pogrom of November 9-10, 1938 in Germany has passed into history as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).

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Introduction

On the night of November 9, 1938, violent anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Nazi officials depicted the riots as justified reactions to the assassination of German foreign official Ernst vom Rath, who had been shot two days earlier by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year old Polish Jew distraught over the deportation of his family from Germany.

Over the next 48 hours, violent mobs, spurred by antisemitic exhortations from Nazi officials, destroyed hundreds of synagogues, burning or desecrating Jewish religious artifacts along the way. Acting on orders from Gestapo headquarters, police officers and firefighters did nothing to prevent the destruction. All told, approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were plundered, and 91 Jews were murdered. An additional 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Nazi officials immediately claimed that the Jews themselves were to blame for the riots, and a fine of one billion reichsmarks (about $400 million at 1938 rates) was imposed on the German Jewish community.

The Nazis came to call the event Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night," or, "The Night of Broken Glass"), referring to the thousands of shattered windows that littered the streets afterwards, but the euphemism does not convey the full brutality of the event. Kristallnacht was a turning point in the history of the Third Reich, marking the shift from antisemitic rhetoric and legislation to the violent, aggressive anti-Jewish measures that would culminate with the Holocaust.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to materials about the Kristallnacht pogrom that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Primary Sources

Hill, Jeff, compiler. "Kristallnacht." In The Holocaust, 109-123. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2006. (D 804.19 .H55 2006) [ Find in a library near you]

Collects seven primary sources, in translation, related to the events of November 9-10, 1938. Includes the text of police decrees, personal accounts, and Nazi memoranda. Part of the Primary Sourcebook series.

Background Information

Herschel Grynszpan

Roizen, Ron. " Herschel Grynszpan: The Fate of a Forgotten Assassin." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1, no. 2 (1986): 217-228. (D 810 .J4 H6428 v.1) [ Find in a library near you]

Survey of the available sources on Herschel Grynszpan, specifically those that contend he survived the war and settled in Paris. Reflects on the meaning of Grynszpan's actions in the overall context of Holocaust history.

Historical Accounts

Loewenberg, Peter. "The Kristallnacht as a Public Degradation Ritual." Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 32 (1987): 309-323. (DS 135 .G3 A262 v.32) [ Find in a library near you]

Examines Kristallnacht as an act of "public humiliation" designed to transform German Jews into outcasts from society. This essay also appears in The Origins of the Holocaust, edited by Michael Marrus, p. 582-596. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989 (Reference D 810.J4 N38 1989 v.2).

Aftermath and Reactions

Hilberg, Raul. "Kristallnacht, Germany, and German Jews: An Interview with Raul Hilberg." Dimensions 4, no. 2 (1988): 11-16. (D 804.15 .D56 v.4) [ Find in a library near you]

Provides the text of an interview with eminent historian Raul Hilberg about the causes and effects of Kristallnacht. Part of a special issue of Dimensions with essays and personal testimonies marking the 50th anniversary of the event.

Film and Video

Museum Web Resources

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the subject file labeled "Kristallnacht, 1938" containing newspaper and periodical articles.

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on the Kristallnacht pogrom, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations:

Kristallnacht, 1938

Kristallnacht, 1938-Austria

Kristallnacht, 1938-Germany

See all Bibliographies

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On the night of November 9, 1938, violent anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Nazi officials depicted the riots as justified reactions to the assassination of German foreign official Ernst vom Rath, who had been shot two days earlier by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year old Polish Jew distraught over the deportation of his family from Germany.

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France at the end of the 1920s had apparently recovered its prewar stability, prosperity, and self-confidence. For a time it even seemed immune to the economic crisis that spread through Europe beginning in 1929; France went serenely on behind its high-tariff barrier, a healthy island in a chaotic world. By 1931, however, France in its turn succumbed to the effects of the Great Depression, and the impact was no less severe than elsewhere.

In 1932 the right-wing parties lost control of the Chamber to the Radicals and Socialists. The Radical leader Édouard Herriot returned to the premiership, with Socialist support but not participation. During the next two years Herriot and a series of successors groped for a solution to the deepening crisis. French nervousness was increased by the surge of Nazi power across the Rhine, culminating in Adolf Hitler's accession to the chancellorship in January 1933. Right-wing movements in France-some openly fascist, others advocating a more traditional authoritarianism-grew in size and activity. By 1934 the shaky coalition was at the mercy of an incident-the Stavisky scandal, a sordid affair that tarnished the reputations of several leading Radicals. Antiparliamentary groups of the far right seized the occasion to demonstrate against the regime; on February 6 a huge rally near the Chamber of Deputies degenerated into a bloody battle with armed police, during which 15 rioters were killed and 1,500 injured. Premier Édouard Daladier, confronted by a threat of civil war, resigned in favour of a national union cabinet under former president Gaston Doumergue. The regime survived the crisis, but serious stress persisted. Right-wing agitation was countered by unity of action on the left, grouping all the left-wing parties and the CGT; even the Communists participated in this effort, which culminated in 1935 in the formation of the Popular Front.

Doumergue's government had meanwhile disintegrated when Radical ministers resigned over the premier's increasingly authoritarian tone. Doumergue was soon replaced by Pierre Laval, a former socialist who had migrated toward the right. Laval embarked on a vigorous but unpopular attempt to combat the Depression through traditional techniques: sharp cuts in government spending and increased taxes. These policies wrecked his cabinet early in 1936 and became campaign issues in the parliamentary election that spring. That election, probably the most bitterly contested since 1877, gave the Popular Front a narrow majority of the popular vote and a large majority in the Chamber. The Socialists for the first time became the largest party; but the greatest proportional gain went to the Communists, who jumped from 10 to 72 seats.

Blum, the Socialist leader, became premier. An intellectual, Blum was the first French premier of Jewish origin. His ministers were mostly Socialists and Radicals; the Communists refused his urgent invitation to participate. At the very outset, a wave of sit-down strikes spread throughout the country, expressing workers' pent-up resentment toward past governments and their determination to get what they considered to be justice. Blum persuaded industrial leaders to grant immediate wage increases, which ended the strike. Then he pushed additional reforms through parliament: the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, collective bargaining, and the seminationalization of the Bank of France. Many other reform bills, however, were stalled in committee or in the Senate, which remained much more conservative than the Chamber.

Blum's social reforms were costly and controversial and were not buttressed by a program of economic reforms that might have stimulated production and restored confidence. Production surged briefly, then lagged again; unemployment remained high, rising prices offset wage gains, a flight of capital set in. When Blum attempted to impose exchange controls, the Senate rebelled and overthrew his cabinet (June 1937). The Popular Front held together for another year, but the Socialists and Radicals were irretrievably divided on economic policy. In April 1938 France returned once more to the usual pattern of unstable centre coalitions, with the Socialists in opposition. The Radical Daladier served as premier in 1938-40; his finance minister, Paul Reynaud, suspended most of the Popular Front reforms and sought economic recovery through more orthodox policies favoured by business.

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France - Great Depression, Political Crises

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France - Great Depression, Political Crises: France at the end of the 1920s had apparently recovered its prewar stability, prosperity, and self-confidence. For a time it even seemed immune to the economic crisis that spread through Europe beginning in 1929; France went serenely on behind its high-tariff barrier, a healthy island in a chaotic world.

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Major Alliances during World War II

There were two major alliances during World War II: the Axis and the Allies.

The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of continental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranean Sea; and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific.

The Allied Powers were led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

Formation of the Axis Alliance

Although the Axis partners never developed institutions to coordinate foreign or military policy as the Allies did, the Axis partners had two common interests:

Territorial expansion and foundation of empires based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post-World War I international order; and

The destruction or neutralization of Soviet Communism.

On November 1, 1936, Germany and Italy, reflecting their common interest in destabilizing the European order, announced a Rome-Berlin Axis one week after signing a treaty of friendship. Nearly a month later, on November 25, 1936, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan signed the so-called Anti-Comintern Pact directed at the Soviet Union. Italy joined the Anti-Comintern Pact on November 6, 1937. On May 22, 1939, Germany and Italy signed the so-called Pact of Steel, formalizing the Axis alliance with military provisions. Finally, on September 27, 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, which became known as the Axis alliance.

Preceding Conflicts

Even before the Tripartite Pact, two of the three Axis powers had initiated conflicts that would become theaters of war in World War II. On July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China to initiate the war in the Pacific. The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, unleashed the European war. Italy entered World War II on the Axis side on June 10, 1940, as the defeat of France became apparent.

Germany Pressures other States to Join the Axis

In July 1940, just weeks after the defeat of France, Hitler decided that Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union the following spring. In order to secure raw materials, transit rights for German troops, and troop contributions for the invasion from sympathetic powers, Germany began to cajole and pressure the southeast European states to join the Axis. Nazi Germany offered economic aid to Slovakia and military protection and Soviet territory to Romania, while warning Hungary that recent German support for Hungarian annexations of Czechoslovak and Romanian territory might change to the benefit of Slovakia and Romania.

Italy's failed effort to conquer Greece in the late autumn and winter of 1940-1941 exacerbated German concerns about securing their southeastern flank in the Balkans. Greek entry into the war and victories in northern Greece and Albania allowed the British to open a Balkan front against the Axis in Greece that might threaten Romania's oil fields, which were vital to Nazi Germany's invasion plans. To subdue Greece and move the British off the European mainland, Nazi Germany now required troop transport through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

Hungary
After the Italo-Greek front opened on October 28, 1940, German pressure on Hungary and the Balkan States intensified. Hoping for preferential economic treatment, mindful of recent German support for annexation of northern Transylvania, and eager for future Axis support for acquiring the remainder of Transylvania, Hungary joined the Axis on November 20, 1940.

Romania
Having already requested and received a German military mission in October 1940, Romania joined on November 23, 1940. The Romanians hoped that loyal support for a German invasion of the Soviet Union and faithful oil deliveries would destroy the Soviet threat, return the provinces annexed by the Soviet Union in June 1940, and win German support for the return of northern Transylvania.

Slovakia
Both politically and economically dependent on Germany for its very existence as an "independent" state, Slovakia followed suit on November 24.

Bulgaria
Bulgaria, whose leaders were reluctant to get involved in a war with the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, which was nominally an ally of Greece, stalled, resisting German pressure. After the Germans offered Greek territory in Thrace and exempted it from participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria joined the Axis on March 1, 1941.

Yugoslavia
When the Germans agreed to settle for Yugoslav neutrality in the war against Greece, without demanding transit rights for Axis troops, Yugoslavia reluctantly joined the Axis on March 25, 1941. Two days later, Serbian military officers overthrew the government that had signed the Tripartite Pact.

Independent State of Croatia
After the subsequent invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria in April, the newly established and so-called Independent State of Croatia joined the Axis on June 15, 1941.

Finland
On June 26, 1941, four days after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Finland, seeking to regain territory lost during the 1939-1940 Winter War, entered the war against the USSR as a "co-belligerent." Finland never signed the Tripartite Pact.

After Japan's surprise attack on the United States fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and the declaration of war on the United States by Germany and the European Axis powers within a week, the Atlantic and Pacific wars became a truly world war.

Allied Victory

The Allied Powers, led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, defeated the Axis in World War II.

Italy
Italy was the first Axis partner to give up: it surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, six weeks after leaders of the Italian Fascist Party deposed Fascist leader and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Romania
On August 23, 1944, following the overthrow of dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania switched sides: Romanian troops fought alongside Soviet troops for the remainder of the war.

Bulgaria
After the Soviets rejected its offer of an armistice, Bulgaria surrendered on September 8, 1944, as the Communist-led Fatherland Front seized power from the Axis government in a coup and then declared war on Nazi Germany.

Finland
On September 19, 1944, Finland signed an armistice with the Soviet Union.

Hungary
The German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 succeeded in its primary purpose: to prevent the Hungarian leaders from deserting the Axis as the Romanians would later do. Hungary never surrendered; the war ended for Hungary only when Soviet troops drove the last pro-Axis Hungarian troops and police units and the members of the Arrow Cross government across Hungary's western border into Austria in early April 1945.

Slovakia
Slovakia, which German troops occupied in the summer of 1944 to suppress the Slovak uprising, remained in the Axis as a puppet state until the Soviets captured the capital, Bratislava, in early April 1945.

Croatia
Fanatical remnants of the Croat Ustasa remained in Croatia until Tito's Partisans captured or drove them across the border into German-occupied Slovenia and Austria itself in the last days of April 1945.

Japan
On May 7, 1945, seven days after Hitler committed suicide, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Japan fought on alone, surrendering formally on September 2, 1945.

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There were two major alliances during World War II: the Axis and the Allies. The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German domination over most of continental Europe; Italian domination over the Mediterranean Sea; and Japanese domination over East Asia and the Pacific.

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THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN FRANCE (1929-1938)

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, Université d'Orléans et DELTA. Publié dans D. Glasner (ed.) Business Cycles and Depressions: an encyclopedia, Garland, 1997, pp.39-42

The great Depression in France was unique: it began more slowly than in the other industrial countries, was less severe but lasted longer. The main reasons for these special features are the evolution of the exchange rate (under and later overvalued), policy errors, exposure to foreign competition, and dependence on foreign markets.

The French economy grew rapidly in the 1920s. The volume of industrial production, which had fallen to 55 in 1921 (indices are in constant prices, 1913=100), reached 140 in 1930. Exports had great role in this growth: they reached 148 in 1928, representing 30 percent of manufacturing production. The constant depreciation of the franc (falling 80 percent in terms of gold from 1914 to its de facto stabilization in 1926) favored exports, since it was always ahead of the price variations, keeping the franc below the purchasing-power-parity level. After a small crisis in 1927, due to the stabilization, a recovery occured in 1928-29, and even the Wall Street crash did not seriously lessen the optimism: on November 8, 1929, Prime Minister Tardieu said the time had come for a "prosperity policy." Noone thought the country was entering a major depression.
Dating the downward turn precisely is difficult. It is usally given as later than in the U.S. (the depression being considered as imported from there) (Néré 1973). Manufacturing production and investment reached their peak in the first half of 1930; there was almost no unemployment at the end of 1929, and even a year later only 190,000 were receiving unemployment assistance. The French economy was insulated from the deteriorating international situation by an undervalued Franc until England left the gold standard in September 1931 (Sicsic 1992), by the repatriation of capital (and the consequent monetary expansion until 1931), and by the stimulation of the economy by Tardieu's spending of the budget surpluses accumulated in the Poincaré period (Kindleberger 1986). Others cite the rise in the retail price index until the end of 1930 which indicates that domestic demand was growing to replace a falling foreign one (Asselain 1984); finally, the growth of private investment until 1930 was facilitated by the absence of public borrowings on the financial market, consequence of three years of public budget equilibrium (Eichengreen & Wyplosz 1988).
However, some analysts (primarily the Regulation School) contest the thesis of the imported depression, arguing that the crisis started before 1930 (Marseille 1980, Boyer & Mistral 1978). They show that unemployment was underestimated, at least at the beginning of the depression, and that the official index of manufacturing production gave excessive weight to protected industries whose entry into the depression was delayed. More even, many indices (wholesale prices, stock prices and issues, production in various fields) began falling in France before they did in the U.S.. According to these analysts the French depression was autonomous and resulted from under consumption and over investment caused by an increasingly unequal distribution of income, and from the subsequent growing gap between the growth of investment- and consumption-goods industries (50 vs 10 percent from 1913 to 1929). Only continuous devaluation of the franc would have permitted enough export growth to have delayed the depression; and the depression would have followed the stabilisation of 1926 and the resulting end of the exchange-rate speculation of the 1920s.
The Regulation approach shows that the depression began before 1930 (the high level of investment in 1930 reflects only the completion of ongoing infrastructure projects) and casts doubt on the efficiency, in the long run, of an excessively export-led growth. But it does not explain the crisis itself: after a little reconversion crisis in 1927, caused by the stabilisation of the Franc, growth was undoubtly rapid in 1927-29, driven by a rise in wages (Dubois in Levy-Leboyer & Casanova, 1991) as well as by investment (according to Dubois, the coefficient of capital is at the same level in 1929 as in 1896 and 1913). So, if the internal economy was not in crisis, the role of the international economy in starting the depression cannot be contested. The depression began with a sharp fall in exports (from 52 billion francs in 1929 to 20 in 1932, in current prices), concentrated in the industries most dependent on foreign trade (in traditional quality goods like textiles it began in 1928) and spread from there to the whole economy (Braudel & Labrousse, 1980).
The timing debate then raises substantial questions about the sources of the depression: the regulation approach sees the depression as a structural crisis that causes the regulation of capitalism to change from competitive to monopolistic and Fordist (with state- or monopoly-managed prices and high wages supporting domestic demand). Its opponents consider the downturn in 1929 as the beginning of an ordinary cyclical crisis that simultaneously affected many countries. This crisis would have turned into a great depression only because of the devaluation of the British Pound, of policy errors and the rise of protection.

The second characteristic of the Great Depression in France is its relative mildness. Maximum unemployment was reached in winter 1934-35 and in summer 1936 (one million people according to the broadest estimation, less than 5 percent of the workforce in 1930) and was far below US or German levels.
The relatively limited unemployment is partly explained by the fall in the workforce caused by a change in its age structure (a consequence of a stagnant population and a result of the Great War), by the return home of numerous women (500,000 between 1931 and 1936), and by the departure of many immigrant workers (350,000). On the other hand, the return to the countryside, which has offen been suggested as a cause of reduced unemployment, is a myth: the importance of agricultural activity (more than 30% of the workforce) limited the visibility and not the magnitude of unemployment. Increases in employment in commerce and public administrations had more effect. But the most important reason that visible unemployment was understated is the great increase in part-time work, especially in traditional industries. Part-time work is estimated, for mid-1935, as the equivalent of 1,300,000 unemployed.
The fall in production was also relatively moderate. In commerce and manufactures, it never reached 20 percent of the 1929 peak output; real GNP, less well known, could not have fallen by more than 10 percent. Household consumption didn't decline much, despite a 14 percent reduction in activity, because nominal wages were maintained while prices fell sharply.
Conditions varied sharply among industries. Modern industries protected from international competition (paper, rubber, electricity, oil refining) soon restored production and even profits. Cartels supported by the government limited the recession in others (sugar refining, shipyards, coal mining). But non-protected industries, like metallurgy or textiles, faced falling prices and sales in their export markets, and stable prices from their (protected) suppliers; many of them could not even allow for depreciation of equipment, especially the most modern and capital-intensive ones that had invested heavily in the preceding years.
Finally, the relative mildness of the depression can be attributed to the mildness of the banking crisis of 1931-33 in France, which was the consequence both of limited foreign financial commitments in 1931 and the traditional caution of most major banks in their relationships with manufacturers. Only one major bank (the BNC) failed, and a rescue operation organized by the Treasury, the Bank of France and the other banks succeeded in avoiding a panic.

If the French depression was relatively mild, it was also unusually long. In many industries, production did not reach its lowest point until 1935 or even later. The overall industrial production level of 1930 was not equalled before the war, and unemployment was still near its maximum in spring 1939.
In the regulation school's neo-marxist approach, this long duration corresponds to important structural changes, particularly in the regulation of the labor force (Salais & al. 1986). But these changes weren't more important in France than elsewhere. The persistance of the depression might then be explained by a succession of external events (devaluation of the Pound and the Dollar) and policy errors that blocked several incipient recoveries (early in 1931, from mid-1932 to mid-1933, 1936).
Several explanations are probably necessary. The most important seems to be the overvaluation of the franc after the pound was devalued in 1931 (Sauvy 1984; Eichengreen & Sachs 1985), which blocked the recovery of exports until 1936. The difference between French and English prices fluctuated around 20 percent, a gap that no deflationary policy could overcome. It was psychologically impossible to devalue before 1934, since the French were proud of their stabilized currency and of the international speculationin its favor. But in 1934, after speculation changed direction when the dollar was devalued, hostility to a devaluation remained unanimous (with the exception of Paul Reynaud). The reasons invoked were national honor, honesty, and mainly fear of inflation since inflation had resulted from the depreciation of the franc in the 1920s. Inflation had then ruined small investors, the great manufacturers thought it had depressed investment, while the socialists considered it had lowered real wages, so nobody could defend a devaluation (Mouré 1991). The franc was devalued in September 1936 only under the pressure of speculation and renewed inflation (a consequence of monetizing the budget deficit). It was too late: world prices were already rising, and the devaluation contributed mainly to accelerating inflation.
The great fall in investment (more than 30 percent from the 1930 level to its minimum) also prolonged the depression. It was the macroeconomic corollary of the stability in consumption. In a microeconomic view, it was due to the drop in confidence and to the fall in profits; new issues became impossible in a declining stock market, and rising real interest rates and public-sector borrowings displaced private bond issues (the public budget returned to a growing deficit from 1931, and the corresponding issues represented more than 50 percent of total issues in 1932-1935) (Saint-Etienne 1984).
Inconsistent government policies also deepened the depression. Several governments sustained depressed industries by setting prices or organizing cartels, while forcing prices reductions in other markets; in 1935, the deflationary policy of Pierre Laval (who cut by 10 percent all public expenses and many prices) was inconsistent with the obligatory discounting of Treasury bills by the Bank of France (in order to finance the budget deficit without raising tax). Under the pressure of a growing trade deficit and of domestic manufacturers, protectionnist quotas and clearing agreements covered 57 percent of French imports by 1935. Protection could have been seen as the condition for an internal demand-driven recovery, but even the socialists refused to improve the exchange control as would have been necessary, because it would have meant joining the dictatorships. As a consequence, protection mainly caused more inequalities among industries.
The rigid and sudden reduction of the work week to 40 hours in 1936 also seems to have caused bottlenecks in many industries, which blocked the beginning of recovery (Sauvy 1984; Baverez and Villa in Boyer 1991). The great fall in investment in the early 1930s was responsible too: the manufacturing industries had old equipment and insufficient capacity to meet a surge in demand (Braudel & Labrousse 1980). Nor did they have funds available to buy intermediate goods and rebuild stocks, because of the banking system's excessive caution and the Bank of France's rising discount rate (Levy-Leboyer in Levy-Leboyer & Casanova 1991). The great rise in the labor cost under the Popular Front (around 45 percent) and the need for a reconstitution of profits in order to finance investment jointly helped produce inflation after 1936.
Further, social cohesion vanished with the Laval government's wage cuts in 1935 and with the Popular Front in 1936 (Kindleberger 1986). Unstable governments discouraged investment and led to capital exports that reduced the money supply.

France provides an example of a Great Depression with no violent crisis. The length of the depression resulted from the conjunction of a great international crisis, rapid structural change in an economy that had preserved its traditional characters too long, and governments with limited courage and no clear understanding of the appropriate policies. Thus in 1939, the country was divided and poorly prepared for war. But the depression also helped achieve transformations in minds, social relations, and production methods that prepared the postwar growth.

Pierre-Cyrille HAUTCOEUR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asselain, Jean-Charles. Histoire économique de la France du XVIIIème siècle à nos jours. Paris: Seuil, 1984.
Boyer, Robert (ed.) Paradoxes français de la crise des années 1930, Le Mouvement Social, n°154 (special issue), 1991.
Boyer, Robert & Jacques Mistral. Accumulation, inflation, crises. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978.
Braudel, Fernand & Emile Labrousse (eds) Histoire économique et sociale de la France, IV, vol. 2. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1980.
Eichengreen, Barry, & Jeffrey Sachs. "Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s", in The Journal of Economic History, 45 n°4, 1985, pp.925-946.
Eichengreen, Barry, & Charles Wyplosz, "The Economic Consequences of the Franc Poincaré", in E. Helpman & al. (eds), Economic Effects of the Government Budget. Cambridge (Ma): MIT Press, 1988.
Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929-1939. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 (1st ed. 1973).
Levy-Leboyer, Maurice & Jean-Claude Casanova (eds) Entre l'Etat et le marché. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.
Marseille, Jacques. "Les origines "inopportunes" de la crise de 1929 en France", in Revue Economique, 31, n°4, 1980, pp.648-684.
Mouré, Kenneth. Managing the Franc Poincaré. London, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Néré, Jacques. La crise de 1929. Paris: Armand Colin, 1973.
Saint-Etienne, Christian. The Great Depression, 1929-1938. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1984.
Salais, Robert. "Why Was Unemployment so Low in France in the 1930s ?", in B. Eichengreen & T.J. Hatton (eds) Interwar unemployment in international perspective. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988, pp. 247-288.
Salais, Robert, Nicolas Baverez & Bénédicte Reynaud. L'invention du chômage. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986.
Sauvy, Alfred. Histoire Economique de la France entre les deux guerres. Paris: Economica, 1984 (1st ed. 1975).
Sicsic, Pierre. "Was the Franc Poincaré Deliberately Undervalued ?", in Explorations in Economic History, 29, 1992, pp.69-92.

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THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN FRANCE (1929-1938) Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, Université d'Orléans et DELTA. Publié dans D. Glasner (ed.) Business Cycles and Depressions: an encyclopedia, Garland, 1997, pp.39-42 The great Depression in France was unique: it began more slowly than in the other industrial countries, was less severe but lasted longer.

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Treaty of Versailles | Definition, Summary, Terms, & Facts | Britannica

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Treaty of Versailles, peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied powers and Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920. Learn more about the Treaty of Versailles here.

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THE purely idealistic reasons for joining the League of Nations have been dwelt upon in abundance of detail; and, with arguments of equal loftiness, certain very great nations have declared that if they did not join it was solely in order that they might preserve their liberty and thus render still more service to humanity. These assertions have their value. But as the League of Nations has been at work for five years is it not pretty nearly time to come down to earth and ask each country--whether it is a member of the League or not --to give a frank answer to one of these questions: Do you think it is worth your while belonging to the League? Or, on the other hand, why are you glad that you do not belong? If as the outcome of these heart-searchings it should be shown that the League of Nations has stirred deep feeling, satisfying some while disappointing others, would not this be the best proof that it is a reality, not a utopia, and that much may be expected from it? So far as France is concerned, I shall now try to reply to the question. I hope that the Editors of FOREIGN AFFAIRS will put the same question to representatives of other countries.

I

By taking up or refusing to take up certain matters the League has disappointed or disturbed a good many nations. For example, it has disappointed some because it thought its powers did not justify it in taking up the question of racial equality, because it has not exerted itself to communize the consumption of raw materials, or again because it has paused in the face of the exclusive competence of nations in their own domestic concerns. It has made others uneasy because when the Protocol was under discussion certain members predicted that the advance of international law would encroach little by little upon the rights that had been reserved--thus revealing the suspicion that the Council might

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THE purely idealistic reasons for joining the League of Nations have been dwelt upon in abundance of detail; and, with arguments of equal loftiness, certain very great nations have declared that if they did not join it was solely in order that they might preserve their liberty and thus render still more service to humanity.

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Imperial Japan joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in World War II to engage Great Britain and the United States.

By Blaine Taylor

On the evening of September 26, 1940, American radio announcer and journalist William L. Shirer noted in his later famous Berlin Diary that the next day Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano would arrive there from Rome, adding that most people thought it was for the announcement that Francisco Franco's Spain was entering the war on the side of the Axis. Indeed, Spanish Foreign Minister Ramon Serrano Suner was already in Berlin for that expected ceremony, Shirer concluded.

Spain did not join the Axis, but something else of even greater importance did take place that day. Hitler and Mussolini pulled off another surprise. At 1 pm in the Reich Chancellery, Japan, Germany, and Italy signed a military alliance directed against the United States. Shirer candidly admitted that he had been caught off guard, and Suner was not even present at the theatrical performance the fascists of Europe and Asia staged in his absence.

Japan's Decision to Join the Axis Powers

The formal signing of what became known as the Tripartite Pact, another milestone on the road to global war, was preceded by a top secret meeting in Tokyo on the 19th. The meeting was termed a Conference in the Imperial Presence that had been called by Japanese Emperor Hirohito. It was held in Paulonia Hall of the Outer Ceremonial Palace with everything planned and rehearsed in advance.

Reportedly, Hirohito sat motionless before a golden screen at one end of the audience chamber and said nothing while the other 11 participants at two long tables delivered their set speeches back and forth across the Imperial line of vision.

The real deliberations had already occurred during September 9-10, when Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka sat down with German ambassador to Tokyo Heinrich Stahmer to hammer out all the details. The Japanese wanted a free hand in Southeast Asia, and they should have it. The Third Reich desired pressure put upon the British fleet that still maintained naval supremacy in the Straits of Dover. Matsuoka vowed to supply it by having the Japanese Navy attack the British Far Eastern bastion of Singapore.

On Friday, September 13, an unlucky day as it turned out for the emperor, Hirohito allegedly studied their joint document word by word since it undoubtedly would lead in the end to war between the United States and the Imperial Japanese Empire. He approved the text but made one editorial change, striking out the five words "openly or in concealed form" from the type of attack that might launch Japan's participation in World War II. His Imperial Majesty believed that they were too explicit, too close to the truth of the actual event being prepared even then by his naval staff planners.

Thus were secretly sown the future seeds of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but as a prudent ruler, the emperor was hedging his bets in case the empire lost the war and had to regroup in a new era of enemy occupation and uneasy peace.

During the meeting of September 19, Prince Fushimi asked on behalf of the Naval General Staff that, since it was likely that such a naval war would be quite long, what the prospects were for Japan's maintenance of her imperial strength? The prime minister, Prince Konoye, answered on behalf of the cabinet that they should be able, in the event of a war with the United States, to supply military needs and thus withstand such a protracted war.

One crucial economic item that affected all deliberations in Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington was oil for the Imperial Japanese Fleet. The Navy was acutely aware that it was dependent on both Britain and the United States for this indispensable commodity.

If the Dutch East Indies could be taken, this problem would be solved, but both the British and the Americans stood in the way. Hence a preemptive war was being considered in earnest to remove them if necessary.

Then, too, there was another consideration. As Matsuoka pointed out, the object of the pact with Germany and Italy was to prevent the United States from encircling Japan. Summing up for the admirals, Prince Fushimi asserted that the Naval Section of Imperial Headquarters agreed with the government's proposal that the Japanese could conclude a military alliance with Germany and Italy, but warned that every conceivable measure should also be taken to avoid it.

Privy Council President Hara made a prepared statement on behalf of Emperor Hirohito himself. He asserted that, even though a Japanese-American clash might be unavoidable in the end, the emperor hoped that sufficient care would be exercised to ensure that it would not come in the near future. He added that there would be no miscalculations and thus gave his approval on that basis. Through his proxies, Hirohito had spoken.

Germany Prepares For a Long War

Meanwhile in Berlin, Shirer witnessed the signing ceremony, noting its showy setting, with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ciano, and Japanese Ambassador Saburo Kurusu looking bewildered as they entered the gala hall of the Reich Chancellery. Kleig lights blazed away as the scene was recorded for posterity. Indeed, the entire staffs of the Italian and Japanese embassies were turned out in force, but no other diplomats attended. The Soviet ambassador was invited but had declined.

The three men sat down at a gilded table. Ribbentrop rose and motioned to the German Foreign Office interpreter, Dr. Paul Schmidt, to read the text of the pact, following which they all signed while the cameras ground away.

Then came the climactic moment, or so the Nazis thought. A trio of loud knocks on the giant door were heard, followed by a tense hush in the great hall. The Japanese held their breath, and as the door swung slowly open Hitler strode in. Ribbentrop bobbed up, and formally notified him that the Tripartite Pact had been duly signed.

"The Great Khan," as Shirer mocked the Führer, nodded approvingly, but did not deign to speak. Instead, Hitler majestically took a seat at the middle of the table while the two foreign ministers and the Japanese ambassador scrambled for chairs. Then they popped up, one after another, and gave prepared speeches that Radio Berlin broadcast around the globe.

In his account, Shirer also noted that German Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, in the fall of 1939 had ridiculed even the remote possibility of American aid reaching Europe before the issue of the war had been decided. The Germans thought, moreover, that the war would be over by the fall of 1940 and that American aid could not possibly arrive before the spring of 1941, if at all.

Now, all of that was changing. Shirer opined that Hitler would not have promulgated the Tripartite Pact if he thought that the war was coming to an end before winter, as there would have been no need. It was going to be a long war after all.

Flaws in the Tripartite Pact

Shirer was also on target in noticing the pact's hidden flaws, mainly that the signatories could not lend the slightest economic or military help to one another between Europe and Asia due to great distance and the presence of the Royal Navy, Great Britain's mistress of the world's oceans.

By the time he had researched and published his epic tome The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960, Shirer had discovered a great deal more about what he called "the turn of the United States," asserting that to keep America out of the war Nazi Germany had secretly resorted to actual bribery of American congressmen. Hitler would "deal" with the Americans after he had first defeated both the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

Indeed, in Basic Order No. 24 regarding collaboration with Japan issued on March 5, 1941, Hitler stated that the common aim of the conduct of war was to be stressed as forcing England to her knees quickly, and thereby keeping the United States out of the war altogether. The commander of the German Navy, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, backed an attack on the British naval base at Singapore by the Imperial Japanese Navy as a sure means of accomplishing this.

The Japanese then stunned everyone on April 13, 1941, by concluding a treaty of their own in Moscow on Russo-Japanese neutrality with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Hitler and Ribbentrop were alarmed as were their American counterparts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. All of them believed that this new effort would release Japanese troops earmarked for a possible war with the Soviet Union for a strike south against the British and Americans instead. In the end, they were right.

In effect, the Nazis had been hoodwinked, paid back in like coin for their own August 1939 secret nonaggression pact with Stalin that the Germans had concluded without informing the pro-Axis Japanese ambassador to Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima.

The Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and six days later urged the Japanese to do the same from the Far Eastern frontier, but to no avail. Despite persistent entreaties to do so until the very end of the war, the Japanese never broke their treaty with Stalin. Rather, it turned out to be the other way around in August 1945.

Hideki Tojo's Rise to Power

Meanwhile, the admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy were ready for their strike south and war with America, Britain, China, and the Netherlands, while Hitler hoped to capture Moscow and force the surrender of the Soviet Union in December 1941.

Hitler and Ribbentrop were in for yet another nasty surprise from the Far East. The Nazi chancellor had constantly urged the Japanese to avoid a direct conflict with America and concentrate instead on Britain and the Soviet Union, whose resistance was stopping him from winning his war. It never dawned on the Nazi rulers that Japan might give first priority to a direct challenge to the United States as a determinant of its wartime goals.

On the other hand, ironically, the Nazis had feared in early 1941 that Japan and the United States might in fact settle their differences amicably and that prospects for war between Japan and the United Kingdom in the Far East would then disappear. This did not come about. In July 1940, the Japanese Army invaded French Indochina, and talks between envoy Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura and Secretary Hull were broken off.

A proposed meeting between Premier Konoye and Roosevelt never materialized, and on October 16, 1941, the prince's government fell and a new cabinet was appointed by his successor, General Hideki Tojo, nicknamed "the Razor." Under Tojo's government, Japan demanded a free hand in Southeast Asia, ensuring that eventual war with the United States was a certainty.

"This Means War"

On November 15, Special Envoy Kurusu, who had signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin, arrived in Washington to aid Admiral Nomura in negotiations with the Americans. Four days later, a secret message came from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington that war was imminent. On the 23rd, Ribbentrop became aware of this also but did not believe that the United States would be attacked.

On the 28th, Ribbentrop called in Ambasador Oshima and seemed to reverse Hitler's earlier policy of urging Japan to avoid war with the United States. If Japan reached a decision to fight Britain and the United States, Ribbentrop was confident that not only would that be in the interest of Germany and Japan jointly, but it would also bring about favorable results for Japan.

Not sure that he had heard correctly, the tense little Japanese general asked if Ribbentrop was indicating that a state of actual war was to be established between Germany and the United States. Now Ribbentrop hesitated. Perhaps he had gone too far. He answered that Roosevelt was a fanatic, so it was impossible to tell what he would do.

In Washington, the talks between Nomura, Kurusu, and Hull broke down because the Japanese diplomats refused to repudiate the terms of the September 27, 1940, Tripartite Pact. On December 3, the Japanese in Rome asked Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini also to declare war on America, and Ciano recorded in his diary on the 4th that Mussolini was enthusiastic about the idea. This was a decision that would doom him in 1943, since it brought the U.S. Army to Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy.

Over the course of December 4-5, Hitler appeared to approve a Japanese attack on the United States that the Germans would then back, but Japan feared that a quid pro quo would be demanded by the Third Reich in the form of a Japanese attack against the Soviet Union through Siberia to help relieve the pressure on the German Army then just outside Moscow.

At 9:30 pm on Saturday, December 6, President Roosevelt was at the White House with top aide Harry Hopkins reading the first 13 parts of a long decoded message from Tokyo to its embassy in Washington when he said flatly, "This means war."

Attack on Pearl Harbor

The next morning, December 7, 1941, aircraft and midget submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked U.S. military installations in the Hawaiian Islands, allegedly catching both the Nazis and Roosevelt off guard. As Ribbentrop later testified on the witness stand at Nuremberg, the attack came as a complete surprise to the German leadership that had considered the possibility of Japan's attacking Singapore or perhaps even Hong Kong, but never considered an attack on the United States as being to their advantage.

From his unique vantage point as the man who served as interpreter to most of the top Nazis, Dr. Paul Schmidt well remembered the scene at the Wolf's Lair when the Pearl Harbor political bombshell burst. He recalled in his 1951 memoirs that during the night of December 7-8, 1941, the Reich Foreign Ministry's broadcast monitoring service was first to receive the startling tidings of the Japanese sneak attack on America in the Pacific, but it was only when a second report confirmed it that Ribbentrop was duly alerted.

At first, the Reich Foreign Minister refused to believe it, asserting that they were nothing more than unverified reports and a propaganda trick of the British to which his gullible press section had fallen prey. He did, however, order that further inquiries be conducted and furnished to him later on December 8.

Dr. Schmidt recalled that both Hitler and Ribbentrop had been taken by surprise by their Asian allies in the very same way as they had often informed their Italian ally, Mussolini, of new German invasions of various countries. Now the shoe was on the other foot.

Dr. Schmidt commented wryly among his own associates within the Foreign Ministry that it seemed to be the fashion among dictators and emperors to behave that way.

The Axis Powers Go to War With the U.S.

Hitler returned to Berlin from East Prussia on December 8 and at length decided to honor his pact with Japan, which he did not have to do since he had not been informed of the Japanese intent to attack Pearl Harbor and the U.S. had not overtly attacked the Reich despite the secret naval war then going on in the North Atlantic.

Dr. Schmidt added after the war that he personally knew of no such understanding with the Japanese that would have compelled the Nazi Führer to declare war on the United States. He declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, in the Reichstag. In a single stroke, he had neatly solved one of Roosevelt's own pressing political problems. Germany had not attacked the United States, so on December 8 in a joint session of Congress Roosevelt had only asked for a declaration of war against Japan, not the Third Reich as well.

Ironically, Hitler had feared that the hated Roosevelt would declare war on him first and had thus made his own decision on the 9th to forestall that possibility. This was duly confirmed in 1951 by Dr. Schmidt, who had gotten the distinct impression that Hitler, with a well-known desire for prestige at the expense of others, had been expecting an American declaration of war and was itching to get his oar in the water first.

The Japanese, naturally, were ecstatic, and so was Admiral Raeder. Hitler asked him if there was any possibility that the United States and Britain would abandon East Asia for a time in order to crush Germany and Italy first. The admiral did not think so, unaware that even then President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were meeting at the White House to decide just that wartime policy: defeat Germany and Italy first, then Japan.

In Japan, Eri Hotta reported in 2013 that December 8, 1941, dawned as a cold day when its people awoke to astonishing news after 7 am on the radio that their nation was at war with both the United States and Great Britain, the very nations that had been her allies during the World War I, the latter her Navy's model.

The die had been cast.

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Axis Powers: The Infamous Tripartite Pact

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By Blaine Taylor On the evening of September 26, 1940, American radio announcer and journalist William L. Shirer noted in his later famous Berlin Diary that the next day Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano would arrive there from Rome, adding that most people thought it was for the announcement that Francisco Franco's Spain was entering the war on the side of the Axis.

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The League of Nations was established at the end of World War I as an international peacekeeping organization.

Although US President Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiastic proponent of the League, the United States did not officially join the League of Nations due to opposition from isolationists in Congress.

The League of Nations effectively resolved some international conflicts but failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.

The experience of the First World War

World War I was the most destructive conflict in human history, fought in brutal trench warfare conditions and claiming millions of casualties on all sides. The industrial and technological sophistication of weapons created a deadly efficiency of mass slaughter. The nature of the war was thus one of attrition, with each side attempting to wear the other down through a prolonged series of small-scale attacks that frequently resulted in stalemate.

Though the origins of the war were incredibly complex, and scholars still debate which factors were most influential in provoking the conflict, the structure of the European alliance system played a significant role. This system had effectively divided Europe into two camps, based on treaties that obligated countries to go to war on behalf of their allies.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, American and European leaders gathered in Paris to debate and implement far-reaching changes to the pattern of international relations. The League of Nations was seen as the epitome of a new world order based on mutual cooperation and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.

The establishment of the League of Nations

The Treaty of Versailles was negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and included a covenant establishing the League of Nations, which convened its first council meeting on January 16, 1920.

The League was composed of a General Assembly, which included delegations from all member states, a permanent secretariat that oversaw administrative functions, and an Executive Council, the membership of which was restricted to the great powers. The Council consisted of four permanent members (Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy) and four non-permanent members. At its largest, the League of Nations was comprised of 58 member-states. The Soviet Union joined in 1934 but was expelled in 1939 for invading Finland.

Members of the League of Nations were required to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all other nation-states and to disavow the use or threat of military force as a means of resolving international conflicts. The League sought to peacefully resolve territorial disputes between members and was in some cases highly effective. For instance, in 1926 the League negotiated a peaceful outcome to the conflict between Iraq and Turkey over the province of Mosul, and in the early 1930s successfully mediated a resolution to the border dispute between Colombia and Peru.

However, the League ultimately failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War, and has therefore been viewed by historians as a largely weak, ineffective, and essentially powerless organization. Not only did the League lack effective enforcement mechanisms, but many countries refused to join and were therefore not bound to respect the rules and obligations of membership.

The United States and the League of Nations

US President Woodrow Wilson enunciated the Fourteen Points in January 1918. The Fourteen Points laid out a comprehensive vision for the transformation of world politics. Wilson believed that affairs between nations should be conducted in the open, on the basis of sovereignty, self-determination (the idea that all nations have the right to choose their own political identity without external interference), and the disavowal of military force to settle disputes. Wilson's vision for the postwar world was hugely influential in the founding of the League of Nations.

President Wilson's intense lobbying efforts on behalf of US membership in the League of Nations met with firm opposition from isolationist members of Congress, particularly Republican Senators William Borah and Henry Cabot Lodge. They objected most vociferously to Article X of the League's Covenant, which required all members of the League to assist any member threatened by external aggression. In effect, Article X would commit the United States to defending any member of the League in the event of an attack. Isolationists in Congress were opposed to any further US involvement in international conflicts and viewed Article X as a direct violation of US sovereignty. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and the United States never became a member of the League of Nations.

Though the League had failed to prevent the outbreak of another world war, it continued to operate until 1946, when it was formally liquidated. By this time, the Allied powers had already begun to discuss the creation of a new successor organization, the United Nations. The United Nations, which is still in existence today, was based on many of the same principles as the League of Nations, but was designed specifically to avoid the League's major weaknesses. The UN boasts much stronger enforcement mechanisms, including its own peacekeeping forces, and the membership of the UN is substantially larger than that of the League even at its peak.

What do you think?

Why did the United States refuse to join the League of Nations?

How effective was the League of Nations as an international peacekeeping organization?

Do you think the League of Nations could have prevented the outbreak of the Second World War if the United States had joined?

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The League of Nations (article) | Khan Academy

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The League of Nations was established at the end of World War I as an international peacekeeping organization. Although US President Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiastic proponent of the League, the United States did not officially join the League of Nations due to opposition from isolationists in Congress.

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Campagne de Cilicie, Franco-Turkish war (1919-1921): naissance de la Turquie de Mustapha Kemal

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France, coming to help Armenians, is facing Turk Revolution and Armenian massacres. Au cours de cette Campagne, la France venue aider les Arméniens, se trouve face à la révolution Turque.

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Turkish War of Independence - All About Turkey

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Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal after World War I has brought the country to become the Republic of Turkey.

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Poland Overview of economy, Information about Overview of economy in Poland

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The worldwide effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the devastating consequences of World War II hampered Polish economic growth in the first half of the 20th century. Freed from Nazi occupation by the spring of 1945, the country then fell into the sphere of the Soviet Union's influence.

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The History Place - Rise of Hitler: Great Depression Begins

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Part 17 of a complete online history, The Rise of Adolf Hitler - From Unknown to Dictator of Germany, at The History Place.

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Intro

Through the 1920s, Britain's economy was already struggling to pay for the effects of World War I. Then, in 1929, the US stock market crashed. World trade slumped, prices fell, credit dried up, and many countries protected their domestic market by taxing foreign imports. The value of British exports halved, plunging its industrial areas into poverty: by the end of 1930, unemployment more than doubled to 20 per cent.

Public spending was cut and taxes raised, but this depressed the economy and cost even more jobs. Finally in 1931 the pound was devalued by 25 per cent, helping exporters by making their goods cheaper abroad, and helping to start the recovery.

Through the 1930s, poverty and unemployment blighted large areas of Wales and northern England. Around London, however, some parts of the economy thrived: the suburbs enjoyed a building boom, helped by cheap interest rates.

In this recording, the equivalent of a party political broadcast in the days before television, Labour party leader Ramsay Macdonald (1866-1937) spoke about the two outstanding issues that were to dominate the next decade: world peace and unemployment.

This photograph shows the poor in Covent Garden, London in April 1929, a few months before the Wall Street crash. Copyright Getty Images.

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Through the 1920s, Britain's economy was already struggling to pay for the effects of World War I. Then, in 1929, the US stock market crashed. World trade slumped, prices fell, credit dried up, and many countries protected their domestic market by taxing foreign imports.

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How Britain Avoided the Worst of the Great Depression

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How Britain Avoided the Worst of the Great Depression

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For the last month or so, I've been talking about the Great Depression - the run up to it, the unfolding of the Crash of 1929, and the aftermath.

But clearly, it's mostly been US-focused. And maybe you're wondering, what was going on in Britain at this time? How come we don't really have the same folk memory of the Great Depression?

Well, there's a very good reason for that.

The truth is that for Britain, the Great Depression really wasn't especially Great, or particularly Depressing...

There was no booming Britain in the 1920s

The 1920s was a boom era for the US. For Britain, though, the 1920s were hardly roaring. Things weren't tough all over; London was swinging, as ever, but in the industrial areas (pretty much everywhere else), life was hard and unemployment was high.

This is the first key point to grasp about Britain's relatively mild experience in the Great Depression - we didn't have a massive bust because we didn't have a massive boom either.

The US was the big winner from the First World War. Europe, on the other hand, was now broke. And of all the major powers, Britain was most committed to repaying its debts and regaining its pre-war financial position - in effect, we wanted to restore sterling as the global reserve currency.

That meant maintaining relatively tight monetary and fiscal policies. As Liaquat Ahamed puts it in is book, Lords of Finance, "Britain had pursued the most orthodox and prudent financial policies of any European power, and had been rewarded with the highest unemployment rate in Europe and a limping economy."

Then, in 1925, under the chancellorship of Winston Churchill, Britain went back onto the gold standard. In other words, the value of the pound was fixed to gold at a specific level. And because America owned most of the gold, we were in effect locked into a fixed exchange rate against the US dollar.

It's worth noting that Churchill - not a man who could ever be accused of fiscal responsibility himself - was never keen to go back onto the gold standard. And he later saw it as one of the biggest mistakes he ever made.

As Ahamed explains, Churchill had a pretty good grasp of the situation, even although he had no economics background. But Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, was wedded to the idea of returning to gold. Norman won.

A pound was now valued at $4.86 - the pre-war exchange rate. The idea of the pound ever being worth nearly $5 is quite staggering now, and the reality is, it wasn't worth it then either. America was on its way to being the pre-eminent power, and Britain was passing the baton. We were overvalued, and they were undervalued.

It's tough exporting goods when your currency is too high. And it's hard to get out of debt - and we were very indebted at the time - when the "real" value of your debt keeps rising because of rampant deflation (Britain was stuck with deflation from around 1926 to 1934).

This made the misery in the industrial parts of Britain even worse, and meanwhile, the national balance sheet continued to deteriorate. Efforts to balance budgets merely made things worse. And the crash of 1929 and resulting collapse in global trade was the last straw.

Something had to give. So in 1931, amid much political upheaval, Britain came off the gold standard (the US would do something very similar in 1971).

Everyone thought it'd be the end of the world. In terms of how it looked, it was embarrassing for the country. And it certainly rattled global markets.

Indeed, to get a flavour of how unthinkable it was, I'll give you a passage from Piers Brendon's excellent book on the 1930s, The Dark Valley. When a journalist had suggested the idea of abandoning the gold standard:

"Sir Warren Fisher, head of the Civil Service and permanent secretary to the Treasury, 'got to his feet, his eyes flashing, his face flushed with passion' and said that 'any such suggestion is an affront to national honour' and 'quite unthinkable'".

A week later, the deed was done. As the saying goes, never believe anything until it's officially denied.

How Britain evaded the worst of the Great Depression

But really, despite the histrionics, in abandoning the gold standard, Britain was simply rectifying its earlier error. The outcome was very similar to what happened in 1992, when Britain left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Once sterling's link with gold was severed, Britain was able to cut interest rates, the threat of deflation was eliminated, and exports picked up too, because the value of sterling cratered. Monetary policy was easy, whereas in the US for example, it was tight.

And yet, because the rest of the world was struggling too, import prices still fell, despite the drop in sterling. This meant that "real" wages actually rose in the UK, which enabled higher consumption to offset the fall in exports.

Of course, that's not to say for a minute that everything was fine. The same groups who suffered pretty much everywhere else continued to suffer in Britain - industry was in decline and the 1930s were particularly hard in the North, central Scotland and in Wales (this is when George Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier). Efforts to improve the welfare state and to introduce specific schemes to try to stimulate growth in these areas were just sticking plasters.

Yet, even so, compared to pretty much every other major global economy, Britain had a relatively easy ride in the 1930s. Indeed, the recession of the 1930s was shorter (in Britain) than the one we've just been through.

All change is traumatic

If there's a lesson to take from this, it's the same one that we've been reminded of time and time again - when a government cannot make good on its financial promises, it will change the terms. A developing economy will out and out default. But a developed one will too - just in a sneakier way.

That's what quantitative easing is. And I'm not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing. Given the choice between a depression and cheating - well, maybe cheating is best.

On the other hand, we all know what happened at the end of the 1930s. All those pressures end up coming out somewhere. Britain's exodus from gold triggered a domino effect. Another 25 countries abandoned the gold standard immediately, and others followed - Japan dumped it in December that same year.

It makes no sense to stick to an outdated, damaging system of values. However, if you upturn the whole thing, then you have be aware that as everyone is left scrabbling around for a new set of values, you don't know what'll come crawling out of the woodwork.

Brendon observes: "The collapse of the international standard of valuation bred greater disillusionment with capitalism." Isn't this what's happening right now?

The abandoning of the gold standard led people to question how they could place value on anything. Today, the sight of central banks printing money from thin air raises similar questions.

What is money? Does it have any intrinsic value? Or any value at all? If it does, then from where does its value derive? And if it doesn't, then why are we spending most of our lives in the pursuit of this thing that a central bank can print from thin air?

This leads to a lot of confused thinking and leaps of logic. Against what other backdrop could something like the bitcoin phenomenon arise? Or the idea of a universal basic income, paid to an idle serf class by their benevolent tech industry overlords?

I'm hopeful that the geopolitical backdrop is healthier than in the 1930s. But make no mistake, we are currently going through a similar period of economic, political and monetary soul-searching. And the contours of what will emerge are far from clear.

With so much uncertainty, there's never been a more important time to secure your financial future. Try out MoneyWeek today and find out how to make the most of what you have.

The British gambling sector has been hit by taxes and tighter regulation. But the depressed share prices have yet to factor in the compelling long-term growth outlook, says Stephen Connolly.

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How Britain avoided the worst of the Great Depression - MoneyWeek

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For the last month or so, I've been talking about the Great Depression - the run up to it, the unfolding of the Crash of 1929, and the aftermath. But clearly, it's mostly been US-focused. And maybe you're wondering, what was going on in Britain at this time?

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The 1930s economy was marked by the effects of the great depression. After experiencing a decade of economic stagnation in the 1920s, the UK economy was further hit by the sharp global economic downturn in 1930-31. This lead to higher unemployment and widespread poverty. However, although the great depression caused significant levels of poverty and hardship (especially in industrial heartlands), the second half of the 1930s was a period of quiet economic recovery. In parts of the UK (especially London and the South East), there was a mini economic boom with rising living standards and prosperity.

It is worth bearing in mind that statistics don't tell the full story. Unemployment rates in the 1930s were barely higher than unemployment rates we've experienced in the 1980s and 2000s. However, there is a big difference. In the 1930s, unemployment benefit was minimal - to be unemployed left workers at the real risk of absolute poverty. In the current period, unemployment benefits are relatively meagre, but they enable absolute poverty to be avoided. In that sense, the depression of the 1930s created more economic poverty than the current recession.

Nevertheless, the UK was able to recover relatively quicker than many other developed economies, why was this?

The 1930s recession was shorter than the great recession of 2008 - see recessions compared.

The UK economy in the 1920s

In the 1920s, the UK economy struggled with low growth, high unemployment and deflation. This was due to factors such as:

A decision to return to the gold standard in 1925, at a rate which many believe was 10-14% overvalued. This overvaluation of Sterling reduced demand for exports, leading to lower economic growth. Many heavy industries, such as steel and coal become less competitive in this period.

Deflation. The overvaluation of Sterling and relatively high real interest rates contributed to periods of falling prices. This deflation increased the burden of debt and reduced spending.

Tight fiscal policy. In the aftermath of the First World War, UK debt reached up to 180% of GDP. To reduce debt to GDP in a period of deflation was difficult and required high primary budget surpluses. This required strict budgets, but also because of deflation and low GDP growth, it proved very difficult to reduce debt to GDP ratios.

See more details at UK economy in the 1930s

Stock market crash and great depression 1929-31

The stock market crash of 1929 precipitated a global recession. The US was particularly badly affected by the stock market crash because of the growth in credit in the years leading up to it. The UK was more insulated because it had experienced no real credit boom in the 1920s. In fact, the UK was already in a prolonged economic stagnation of low growth. Because the UK economy relied heavily on trade, the decline in global demand, hit the UK economy, and with lower exports, the UK economy went into recession. 1931 was particularly damaging, with real GDP falling 5%. See more on Causes of Great Depression

The 1931 Crisis

1931 was a pivotal year for the UK economy. A European financial crisis (failure of German and Austrian banks) threatened to harm the UK's financial system. More pressingly, the economy was stuck in a deep recession, with unemployment a real problem. The UK's membership of the gold standard also looked under threat. Many felt the UK was overvalued and so Sterling was under pressure. To keep the value of the Sterling in the gold standard, there was pressure to:

Reduce budget deficit through fiscal consolidation

Increase bank rates to attract money into the UK and keep the Pound at its target rate in the gold standard.

1931 Budget

In 1931, the government was under great pressure. There was a risk of a global financial crisis spilling over into London markets. The Pound was overvalued and there was a fear, the government would be unable to maintain the value of Sterling. The real economy was also in bad shape, with record levels of unemployment and growing social unrest at the extent of the recession. The Treasury put great pressure on the government to pursue fiscal austerity and reduce the budget deficit. (see: Treasury view) It was felt it was essential to balance the budget and restore confidence in the Pound.

In the 1931 budget, the chancellor Lord Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald accepted the necessity to implement budget cuts. Unemployment benefits were cut and public sector wages were also cut. This split the Labour party, and MacDonald formed a coalition of mostly Conservative MPs to pass the budget.

1931 Leaving the Gold Standard

Ironically, the budget cuts failed to protect the pound anyway. One important reason is that real interest rates were already crippling high at over 8%. The Bank of England was reluctant to further increase rates, given the depth of the recession. By September 1931, Britain had left the gold standard and devalued the Pound.

Recovery from 1932

After 1932 - significant cut in bank rate and real interest rates

Leaving the gold standard enabled the government to pursue more expansionary monetary policy. The Treasury was able to:

Cut interest rates

Target higher inflation. In 1932, the chancellor, Chamberlain, targeted returning to the 1929 price level and ending deflation.

The cut in interest rates and higher inflation enabled a rapid drop in real interest rates. Short-term real interest rates fell from 9% in 1931 to 0.6% in 1933.

Devaluation of the Pound. Against the dollar, the Pound was devalued 28% between 1930 and 1932. This devaluation helped UK exports and boost domestic demand, providing an economic stimulus.

This more accommodative monetary policy enabled an increase in the money supply of 34% between 1932 and 1936. (This contrasts to the US, were bank failures caused a contraction in the money supply). This increased UK money supply and fall in interest rates created a motivation to increase private sector investment and consumption. For example, the late 1930s saw a significant growth in housing construction (especially around London and the South East). The 1930s were a period of growing suburbia, epitomised by the growth of 'Metroland'. New homes were built in the London countryside, with direct rail links to Central London. For many in the south, living standards rose in the late 1930s.

Uneven Recovery

The rates of economic growth from 1934 onwards look relatively impressive. There was also a significant fall in the unemployment rate from 15% in 1932 to 8% in 1936. However, the great depression was only partly averted. Certain regions of the UK were badly affected, especially in Wales, the north and industrial areas. In certain areas, regional unemployment rates were cripplingly high, with few employment prospects. In the 1930s, the meagre unemployment benefits meant unemployment was a time of real economic hardship. It was this economic hardship which motivated the famous "Jarrow Crusades" of unemployed workers marching to London.

There is also the likelihood, the unemployment figures below, masked the scale of unemployment. Some estimates put unemployment rates higher, reaching a peak of 22%, rather than 15%.

However, compared to other countries, the experience of the UK in the great depression was relatively mild. Helped by being one of the first countries to leave the gold standard, economic growth rates were relatively higher in the UK than many other European countries. The UK avoided the social and political upheaval often seen in other countries. Extremist parties made little headway in the UK. If the recession had been deeper, the political situation may have been very different.

In the late 1930s, a gradual re-armament programme also began a belated fiscal stimulus. This provided an additional boost to demand and economic growth. But, it was only the onset of full-scale war in 1939, that saw a return to full employment.

Unemployment

Unemployment was high even before the Great Depression, but unemployment rates fell from its 1932 peak due to a moderate recovery.

Inflation

In the early 1930s, the UK had serious deflation. This was due to

The gold standard - which led to an overvalued exchange rate,

very high real interest rates

Fall in demand

Global recession and fall in commodity prices.

The cut in interest rates in 1932 helped deflation change to moderate inflation.

Interest rates

Real Interest rates are calculated by subtracting nominal bonds from a three year backwards looking weighted average of actual inflation rates.

Years of austerity failed to make a dent in national debt as a % of GDP.

The higher economic growth and inflation rate towards the end of the 1930s enabled a small decline in debt to GDP ratios. But, the UK's debt to GDP ratio was mostly stagnant in 1920s and 30s - despite years of 'austerity'
Related External links

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The UK economy in the 1930s - Economics Help

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The 1930s economy was marked by the effects of the great depression. After experiencing a decade of economic stagnation in the 1920s, the UK economy was further hit by the sharp global economic downturn in 1930-31. This lead to higher unemployment and widespread poverty.

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Lloyd George was one of the great reforming British chancellors of the 20th century and prime minister from 1916 to 1922.

David Lloyd George was born in Manchester on 17 January 1863, son of a schoolmaster. His father died when he was young and his mother took him to Wales to be raised. He became a lifelong Welsh nationalist. He qualified as a solicitor and in 1890 was elected Liberal member of parliament for Caernarvon, a seat he held until 1945. He quickly became known for his radicalism and earned notoriety for his opposition to the Boer War.

In 1905, the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, appointed Lloyd George as president of the Board of Trade. In 1908, he was named chancellor of the exchequer in the government of HH Asquith. Lloyd George's 1909 budget has been called the 'people's budget' since it provided for social insurance that was to be partly financed by land and income taxes. The budget was rejected by the House of Lords. This, in turn, led directly to the Parliament Act of 1911 by which the Lords lost their power of veto.

Lloyd George remained chancellor of the exchequer through the early years of World War One. In 1915 he was appointed minister of munitions in Asquith's wartime coalition government. In July 1916 he became secretary of state for war, but was increasingly critical of Asquith. In December 1916, with the support of the Conservative and Labour leaders, he replaced Asquith as prime minister. Lloyd George's achievements in the last two years of the war included persuading the Royal Navy to introduce the convoy system and the unification of the Allied military command under the French general Ferdinand Foch.

At the successful conclusion of the war, Lloyd George was Britain's chief delegate to the Paris Peace Conference that drafted the Versailles Treaty. He remained prime minister, although now dependent on Conservative support. In 1921 he secured the settlement that established the Irish Free State. In the summer of 1922, Lloyd George was involved in a scandal involving the selling of knighthoods and peerages. In October, the Conservatives withdrew from the coalition over their opposition to Britain's foreign policy in Turkey. Lloyd George resigned as prime minister.

He remained in parliament, but was marginalised politically. In 1944 he was made Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor. He died on 26 March 1945 at Ty Newydd, Llanystumdwy, Wales.

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Lloyd George was one of the great reforming British chancellors of the 20th century and prime minister from 1916 to 1922. David Lloyd George was born in Manchester on 17 January 1863, son of a schoolmaster. His father died when he was young and his mother took him to Wales to be raised.

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On the House of Lords: "...a body of five hundred men chosen at random from amongst the unemployed."

David Lloyd George was one of the 20th century's most famous radicals. He was the first and only Welshman to hold the office of Prime Minister.

Lloyd George, although born in Manchester, grew up in Caernarvonshire under the care of his uncle, who was a cobbler. Partly self-taught, he excelled in his studies at the village school, learning Latin and French in order to qualify for legal training.

He is remembered as a man of great energy and an unconventional outlook in character and politics. In 1890 he was elected Liberal MP for Caernarvon, aged 27. His scathing wit made him a dreaded - but respected - debating opponent in the House.

In 1906 he was made President of the Board of Trade, and became recognised as a very able politician. Herbert Henry Asquith later promoted him to Chancellor and he became one of the great reforming chancellors of the 20th century, introducing state pensions for the first time and declaring a war on poverty.

To pay for wide-ranging social reforms, as well as naval expansion, he intended, controversially, to tax land. He responded to the resulting outcry with passionate condemnation of landowners and aristocrats.

His reforming budget only passed after the 1911 Parliament Act greatly weakened the power of the House of Lords to block legislation from the Commons. During the war, he threw himself into the job of Minister for Munitions, organising and inspiring the war effort.

Lloyd George accepted an invitation to form a government in December 1916. His dynamism made sure he was regarded as the right man to give Britain's war a much needed boost, yet despite his success at centralising the government machine, the army remained beyond the reach of his reforming efforts. With the end of the war in 1918 on Armistice Day he declared: "This is no time for words. Our hearts are too full of gratitude to which no tongue can give adequate expression."

He was acclaimed as the man who had won the war, and in 1918 the coalition won a huge majority. It was the first election in which any women were allowed to vote. In 1919 he signed the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations and the war reparations settlement.

He was troubled by domestic problems, though. His agreement to the independence of the South of Ireland was reluctant, and he presided over a period of depression, unemployment and strikes. There were also concerns that he was eager for war in Turkey, and serious allegations that he had sold honours. As a result of the many scandals he had attracted his popularity faded.

When the Conservatives broke up the coalition, he handed in his resignation.

Lloyd George remained a very controversial figure; his own party could not decide whether to support him or abandon him. He largely disregarded the problems facing the party, preferring to work for himself. As a result, one of the greatest Liberal leaders was also largely responsible for the party's downfall.

The Liberal party never ran the government again. Lloyd George later sped up the fall of Neville Chamberlain by attacking his wartime failure in Norway in 1940. In the meantime, he had spent the 1930s with journalism and travel, and the writing of his memoirs.

In 1944 he was created Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, and died the following year aged 82. He is buried on the banks of the River Dwyfor.

More from the GOV.UK history blog

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On the House of Lords: "...a body of five hundred men chosen at random from amongst the unemployed." David Lloyd George was one of the 20th century's most famous radicals. He was the first and only Welshman to hold the office of Prime Minister.

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David Lloyd George & The Treaty of Versailles

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David Lloyd George & The Treaty of Versailles

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Citation: C N Trueman "David Lloyd George"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . .

David Lloyd George was born in 1863 and died in 1945. Lloyd George was the major British politician present at the Treaty of Versailles and while at Versailles it was Lloyd George who tried to play the middle role between the total retribution of George Clemenceau and the seemingly mild rebuke of America's Woodrow Wilson.

Lloyd George was born in Manchester but he was brought up in Criccieth in north Wales. He was articled to a solicitor at Porthmadoc. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Caernarvon boroughs in 1890 and he served this constituency as MP for 55 years. Lloyd George was a member of the Liberal Party - north Wales being one of the last strongholds of the Liberals as it declined in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

His talents, especially as a speaker, soon brought him the notice of the Liberal hierarchy. Though he had been tainted as being pro-Boer during the Boer War, he was made President of the Board of Trade in 1905 and promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1908.

Lloyd George is very much associated with reforms that benefited the majority of society. Reforms such as the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 and the National Health Insurance Act of 1911 did much to aid the poorest in society and, therefore, the most vulnerable.

Lloyd George also helped to set-off the clash between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. His 1908 'People's Budget' planned to introduced a super tax on the rich to help pay for more reforms that would be used to advance the lifestyles of the poor. The Lords rejected the budget and lead to the clash between both bodies that resulted in the passing of the Parliament Act of 1911 which stated that the Lords only had the power to delay any act passed by the Commons - the Lords could reject a passed act by the Commons three times, but after this it became law anyway. Lloyd George remained chancellor until 1915. After this, he was appointed Minister of Munitions to deal with the crisis that was seriously affecting the British Army fighting on the Western Front - lack of ammunition, shells etc.

The leader of the Liberals at this time was Herbert Asquith. He was deemed by both Lloyd George and the Conservatives to be a leader who lacked energy during the war. In December 1916, Asquith was replaced as Prime Minister by Lloyd George who lead a coalition government that was heavily supported by the Conservative Party. Though Lloyd George was not on good terms with the generals fighting the campaign on the Western Front, they respected the energy he brought into the political side of the campaign.

Lloyd George was Britain's senior representative at the Versailles settlement. He had put himself into a difficult political position. On the one hand, his public image was that Germany should be smashed and that those responsible for waging war should be held to account. This fitted in with the huge anger directed against the Germans that was felt in Britain at this time. However, he was also extremely concerned by the Russian Revolution of 1917. The last thing Lloyd George wanted was for the revolution to spread west and he saw Germany as the only country that could possibly act as a barrier against the Communists. Therefore a devastated Germany was not his private option as this would play into the hands of the Communists. Therefore, he had to be at his political best at Versailles. The final treaty had to come across as tough on the Germans but it also, from his point of view, had to leave Germany sufficiently strong to combat any Russian expansion west.

Lloyd George was also Prime Minister when the Government of Ireland Act was passed in 1920.

The very public humiliation of Britain at Chanak in the Chanak Crisis of 1922 lead to the Conservatives withdrawing their support of his coalition government. Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister in October 1922 and 1922 is the year of his last major input into politics in the sense that he was in a position to do something.

Lloyd George only became leader of the Liberal Party in 1926 after the retirement of Asquith. However, many in the party were highly suspicious of Lloyd George as they saw him as betraying Asquith in 1916. By 1926, the Liberals were no longer a major political force in Britain and Lloyd George became a solitary figure in politics. He was shunned by some in his own party and condemned by many when he spoke out in support of German grievances in the 1930's. In September 1936, he visited Hitler but by the time of the Munich Agreement, he was an opponent of appeasement.

Lloyd George remained a popular figure in north Wales. He was very keen to bolster Welsh culture and preferred to speak Welsh when staying in Caernarvon. Lloyd George had his critics, but to many in Wales he remains a hero.

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David Lloyd George - History Learning Site

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David Lloyd George was born in 1863 and died in 1945. Lloyd George was the major British politician present at the Treaty of Versailles and while at Versailles it was Lloyd George who tried to play the middle role between the total retribution of George Clemenceau and the seemingly mild rebuke of America'sWoodrow Wilson.

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Letter to New Prime Minister from David Lloyd George

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Letter to New Prime Minister from David Lloyd George

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Visit the Living Heritage section on the UK Parliament's website.

After David Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister in 1922 he remained active in political life, devoting his energies to social reforms. He did not become involved in political discussion about the Second World War until 8 May 1940, when he made a speech in the House of Commons attacking Neville Chamberlain's leadership. This played a significant role in forcing Chamberlain's resignation just two days later when Winston Churchill then took up the position of Prime Minister.

Less than a month after Churchill became Prime Minister, he asked Lloyd George to become a member of the war cabinet. This is the letter from Lloyd George to Winston Churchill declining the offer for the present.

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Living Heritage: Letter to the New Prime Minister from David Lloyd George - The International Churchill Society

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Visit the Living Heritage section on the UK Parliament's website. DLG to WSC, 29 May 1940After David Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister in 1922 he remained active in political life, devoting his energies to social reforms. He did not become involved in political discussion about the Second World War until 8 May 1940, when he ...

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History

The Conservative Party is the heir, and in some measure the continuation, of the old Tory Party, members of which began forming "conservative associations" after Britain's Reform Bill of 1832 extended electoral rights to the middle class. The name Conservative was first used as a description of the party by John Wilson Croker writing in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The first Conservative government was formed by Sir Robert Peel, whose program, set out in the Tamworth Manifesto (1834), stressed the timely reform of abuses, the necessity of law and order, an orderly system of taxation, and the importance of both landed interests and trade and industry.

Prospects of an extended period of Conservative rule disappeared in 1846 when the party split over the repeal of protectionist regulations known as the Corn Laws, and for most of the next 30 years they were out of government. The party was reorganized by Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister for a few months in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880. The Conservative Central Office, a professional organization established by Disraeli in 1870, and the newly formed National Union, which drew together local voluntary associations, gave the party additional unity and strength. At the same time, Disraeli's emphasis on social reform to reduce the enormous disparity in the living conditions of rich and poor, combined with a strong, activist imperial and foreign policy, helped the party to transcend class barriers. Disraeli's contribution was to transform the party from one that spoke primarily for landed interests to one that could draw supporters from the middle class and from newly enfranchised workers.

The Conservative Party was further strengthened in 1886 when it allied with the Liberal Unionists, a faction of the Liberal Party that opposed the policy of Home Rule in Ireland put forward by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone. Thus reinforced, the Conservatives held office for all but 3 of the next 20 years, first under the leadership of Lord Salisbury and then under Arthur Balfour. A split over tariff policy caused them to lose the election of 1906 in a disastrous landslide, and they did not regain power until they joined a wartime coalition with the Liberals in May 1915. In the election of 1918, most of the candidates elected to support the coalition were Conservatives.

In 1922 Conservative backbenchers forced the party's withdrawal from the coalition and thereby precipitated the resignation of party leader Austen Chamberlain. The rebellion owed much to the revulsion felt by many backbenchers toward the Liberal leader and prime minister, David Lloyd George, and to their unease over some of the more interventionist reforms introduced by Liberal ministers. A surprise election called in December 1923 by Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin proved to be a miscalculation that briefly reunited the ailing Liberal Party and opened the way to a minority Labour Party government, though the Conservatives remained the largest single party and were able to regain power the following year. Apart from another brief Labour administration in 1929-31, the Conservatives dominated national office until 1945. Baldwin emerged as a popular figure and the architect of what he called the "new Conservatism," an attempt to appeal to the middle class through a modest movement away from the laissez-faire economic policies that the party had advocated since 1918.

Baldwin's successor as party leader and prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was forced from office in May 1940 by his own backbenchers because of his poor leadership in the early months of World War II. Chamberlain was replaced by another Conservative, Winston Churchill, who formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. Although Churchill led the country to victory in the war, he failed to lead his own party to success in the first postwar election in 1945. The party's stunning defeat can be attributed to the electorate's desire for social reform and economic security, as well as its inclination to blame the Conservatives for not having done enough in the 1930s to alleviate mass unemployment or to thwart the aspirations of dictators. While in opposition, the party reformed its policies and organization. It created a new youth movement (the Young Conservatives) and an education wing (the Conservative Political Centre), revived the party's research department, and undertook a drive to increase party membership. The party returned to power in 1951 and maintained office until 1964. Under the leadership of Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Alec Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party came to accept the key tenets of the "postwar consensus" with Labour-that is, it recognized the state's responsibility for maintaining full employment and endorsed the use of techniques of economic-demand management, based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, to achieve that objective. Moreover, the party did not seek to reverse the welfare measures nor most of the public ownership of industry that had been introduced by Labour in 1945-51. The Conservative government did embark on an extensive house-building program and was able to reduce income taxes while increasing spending on the National Health Service. In the early 1960s, however, an economic downturn and a series of scandals-one of which involved an adulterous affair between the secretary of war and an alleged Soviet spy-undermined the party's support.

From 1964 to 1979 the Conservatives held power alternately with the Labour Party. Under the prime ministership of Edward Heath (1970-74), the party pursued policies designed to deregulate finance and industry. Economic problems led to confrontations with the trade unions, especially the National Union of Miners, and to internal party dissension. Heath called an election in 1974 and the party lost, allowing Labour to form a minority government. After losing a second national election to Labour in 1974, Heath was succeeded as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, who during her four years as leader of the opposition (1975-79) frequently stated her determination to pursue deregulation and supply-side economic reforms.

As prime minister after the Conservatives' victory over Labour in 1979, Thatcher attempted to "roll back the state" in the economic sphere, weaken the power of the trade unions, and reduce welfare programs. She combined this ambitious economic agenda-which included the privatization of several state-owned industries and the sale of more than 1.5 million council houses (publicly owned houses) to their tenants-with moral traditionalism and skepticism toward further European integration through the European Economic Community (ultimately succeeded by the European Union). Critics both inside and outside the Conservative Party contended that the "cult of the market" did much to disintegrate the social order, yet Thatcher was able to lead her party to resounding victories in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, owing in part to her decisive leadership in the Falkland Islands War (1982) and to deep divisions in the opposition. Her eventual resignation as party leader (and therefore as prime minister) in 1990 reflected the combined impact of a number of factors, including public protests over a proposal to finance local government through a flat-rate "poll tax," a series of bitter conflicts with some of her senior ministers, her strident and authoritarian style, and a growing sense among backbenchers that she might prove unable to withstand the electoral challenge of a newly united and considerably reformed Labour Party.

Thatcher's successor, John Major, had held senior ministerial office for only a brief period prior to his selection as prime minister. His less charismatic political style did not prevent him from winning the general election of 1992, but he had to contend with a prolonged economic recession, internal party conflict over the question of European integration, and dismally low opinion-poll ratings. The party's economic policies were questioned after Britain was forced to leave the European exchange-rate mechanism and devalue the pound in 1992. Further hampered by a series of personal scandals involving prominent officials of Major's government and facing a rejuvenated Labour Party under Tony Blair, the Conservatives suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of 1997, losing more than half their seats in the House of Commons.

Soon after the 1997 elections, Major resigned as party leader. With some potential leaders suddenly ineligible because they had lost their parliamentary seats, William Hague, former secretary of state for Wales, was elected party leader. Like Disraeli more than a century earlier, the 36-year-old Hague-the youngest Conservative leader in 200 years-set out to reform the party's organization, reestablish its appeal outside traditional Conservative strongholds, rebuild its image, and end the factional strife that had plagued the Conservatives during their last years in power. Despite those efforts, Hague's tenure was marked by continued discord, and in 2001 the party suffered a second consecutive landslide defeat to the Labour Party. In 2005, under former home secretary Michael Howard, the Conservatives won some 30 additional seats in the House of Commons but remained well shy of a parliamentary majority. Howard promptly resigned as party leader, and David Cameron presided over the gradual ascent of the Conservatives over the next five years. Having captured 307 seats in the general election of 2010, the Conservatives became the largest party in the House of Commons, but their failure to win an outright majority led to a hung Parliament. Conservative and Labour Party leaders met with the Liberal Democrats over the ensuing days in an effort to secure enough seats to form a new government. When it appeared that those talks would result in a formal "Lib-Con" coalition, Brown announced his resignation and Cameron was confirmed as prime minister of Britain's first coalition government since World War II. In midterm local elections in 2012, however, neither the Conservatives nor their coalition partners fared well, with the Conservatives losing more than 400 seats in England, Scotland, and Wales. That trend continued in the May 2014 elections for the European Parliament, in which the Conservatives lost seven seats to finish not only just behind Labour but in third place; the United Kingdom Independence Party finished in first place. Opinion polling before the May 2015 U.K. general election promised more of the same, with the Conservative and Labour parties seemingly in a dead heat as late as the eve of the election. In the event, however, the Conservatives pulled off a stunning victory-winning 331 seats, a gain of 24 seats over their showing in the 2010 election-that allowed Cameron to form a majority government.

For several years disaffection had been growing within the party over Britain's continued membership in the European Union. In 2013 Cameron first promised a national referendum on the issue, and in February 2016 he succeeded in winning concessions from EU leaders that were aimed at pleasing Euroskeptics. The party divided in the lead-up to the referendum in 2016, with Cameron leading the "Remain" side and former London mayor Boris Johnson heading up the "Leave" side. In the event, voters chose to leave the EU, and Cameron announced his intention to resign as prime minister and party leader. In July 2016 he was replaced by his home secretary, Theresa May, who became the second woman in British history to serve as prime minister.

Seeking a mandate to bolster her hand in negotiations on the British exit from the EU (" Brexit"), May called a snap election for June 2017. Opinion polling had led her to anticipate big gains in the House of Commons. However, instead of increasing their presence in the Commons through the election, the Conservatives lost their legislative majority, falling to 318 seats. May was forced to enlist the support of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to empower a minority government. May failed in repeated efforts to win approval from Parliament for the exit agreement that she had negotiated with the EU, and, as a result, she was eventually forced to resign as party leader. Boris Johnson triumphed in the campaign to replace her as leader and became prime minister in July 2019.

Initially, Johnson also failed to push Brexit across the finish line, but, when he turned to British voters in a snap election in December 2019, he was rewarded with a historic landslide victory in which his party won 365 seats, a gain of 47 seats, the biggest triumph for the Conservatives since their Margaret Thatcher-led landmark victory in 1987. Johnson finally succeeded in overseeing Britain's formal exit from the EU on January 31, 2020, but in short order he was confronted with a new challenge, leading the U.K.'s response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Johnson's status as Conservative leader became tenuous in the wake of the so-called "Partygate" scandal, which involved social gatherings that were attended by Johnson and his staff in violation of pandemic-related public health restrictions. Although he survived a vote of confidence in his leadership of the party on June 6, 2022, Johnson was forced to resign on July 7 when his apparent prevarication regarding his awareness of allegations of sexual misconduct against a senior Conservative Party official shattered his already fragile support within the party. In September he was replaced as party leader by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who was chosen in a vote by party members over the other final candidate, former chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. After her proposed economic plan panicked the financial markets, Truss was forced to resign as party leader in October after only some six weeks in office. She was replaced by Sunak.

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Conservative Party | History, Facts, Policy, & Structure

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Conservative Party, U.K. political party whose guiding principles include promoting private property and enterprise, the maintenance of a strong military, and the preservation of traditional cultural values. Since World War I the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have dominated British politics.

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Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party from 1918-1945

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Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party from 1918-1945

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Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918-1945 | Reviews in History

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Ball makes the point well that this was very much an era of Conservative strength. The inter-war period saw the rise of competing ideologies, and, in Britain, the rise of the Labour party. But the fact remains that the Conservatives achieved a plurality of votes at all seven of the general elections held between 1918 and 1935.

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Full print version, including charts and tables
Mass political party membership became a phenomenon in Britain only after 1945.

The Labour Party first formed in 1900, but only started collating its membership figures from 1928. The Conservative Party is a less centralised affiliation of local associations and estimates of total membership are available only sporadically. There are no firm figures for membership of the Conservative Party prior to 1945, but it was probably 1m to 1.5m during the inter-war years.

Membership of political parties has been declining from its peak in the early 1950s. At that time, there were around 2.8m Conservative Party and 1m Labour Party members. Members of trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party and of the Socialist and Cooperative parties boosted the total Labour Party movement by 5m to 6m in the years after 1945 until the early 1990s, since when they started to decline to around 3.5m today.

Changes in political party membership are just one indicator of civic participation. Another, which has also been in decline, is church attendance. In the early 1960s, typically around 2m people attended weekly Catholic Mass in England and Wales; and there were a similar number taking communion at Church of England Easter Sunday services. The latest data show both these figures have fallen below 1m.

By contrast, some membership organisations, particularly those associated with the environment, have seen their numbers grow. The National Trust, for example, had half a million members in 1975, a figure which has grown to 4m today. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had 7,850 members in 1945; by 1960 the figure was still only 10,000, but it reached 1.1m by 2011, more than twice as many as the three main political parties combined.

Card carriers
The chart shows membership of the three main political parties since 1928. Note: The yellow dotted line represents predecessor parties to the current Liberal Democrats.

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Full print version, including charts and tables Mass political party membership became a phenomenon in Britain only after 1945. The Labour Party first formed in 1900, but only started collating its membership figures from 1928. The Conservative Party is a less centralised affiliation of local associations and estimates of total membership are available only sporadically.

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Description

The document presented here is the archival copy of the treaty concluded by the governments of Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy in the city of Locarno, Switzerland, on October 16, 1925. The final page contains the diplomatic seals and the signatures of the representatives of the five signatory powers, who included Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann of Germany, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of Great Britain. The text is in French. Also known as the Locarno Pact, the treaty guaranteed Germany's western frontier, which the bordering states of France, Germany, and Belgium pledged to treat as inviolable. As signatories of the agreement, Britain and Italy committed themselves to help to repel any armed aggression across the frontier. The Rhineland, a part of western Germany occupied by the victorious Allied Powers after World War I, was permanently demilitarized and occupying forces withdrawn. The agreement was to come into force only when Germany was admitted to the League of Nations with a seat on the Council, which occurred in 1926. Locarno marked the end of the war period and the beginning of a hopeful new era of peace and cooperation in Europe, but one that did not survive the economic and political crisis of the 1930s. In 1936, Adolf Hitler denounced the Locarno Pact and sent German troops back into the Rhineland. The document shown here is in the archives of the League of Nations, which were transferred to the United Nations in 1946 and are housed at the UN office in Geneva. They were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2010.

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Locarno Treaties: Treaty between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy

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The document presented here is the archival copy of the treaty concluded by the governments of Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy in the city of Locarno, Switzerland, on October 16, 1925.

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In the event of Poland or France suffering from a failure to observe undertakings arrived at this day between them and Germany, with a view to the maintenance of general peace, France and, reciprocally, Poland, acting in application of Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, undertake to lend each other immediate aid and assistance, if such a failure is accompanied by an unprovoked recourse to arms.

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Poland and America: The Economic Connection 1918-1939

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Poland and America: The Economic Connection 1918-1939

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Poland Forms New National Army (Poland's Contribution)

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Poland Forms New National Army (Poland's Contribution)

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Polish contribution to the Allied victory in World War 2 (1939-1945)

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Polish losses in combat against Germans (killed and missing in action) amounted to ca. 70 000. 420 000 were taken prisoners. Losses against the Red Army added up to 6000 to 7000 of casualties and MIA, 250 000 were taken prisoners.

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Poland's Army on the Eve of Germany's Invasion

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Poland's Army on the Eve of Germany's Invasion

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Over 260 photographs taken in the summer of 1939, have gone on display at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland.

The unique photographs taken by pre-war photographer Henryk Poddębski, show key elements of the Polish army participating in war-manoeuvres just weeks before Hitler invaded.

Karol Nawrocki, head of the museum, said: "The photographs that make up Mr Poddębski's exhibition, show an army which we will never see again.

"An army, which led a heroic fight from September 1 1939, was defeated and driven all across Europe's fronts to fight for a free Europe, a unified and democratic Europe and a strong and independent Poland."

Hitler's Germany invaded Poland on the morning of September 1, 1939, under the false pretence of Polish sabotage actions along the border.

Two days later Britain joined the fight, declaring war on Germany. What followed was the valiant but unsuccessful September Campaign to drive out the aggressors.

On September 17, Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union from the east and the country was brought down to its knees on September 27.

Photographer Mr Poddębski first came to prominence for his landscape and photo-journalistic work in the 1930s with the German-made Leica camera.

It is likely he was one of several photographers commissioned to document the war games by the Polish Armed Forces Ministry.

Sadly the photographer died in 1945 at the German Veihingen concentration camp.

The museum's historians assume the photographs have remained a secret for nearly 80 years, because Mr Poddębski never had the chance to get them developed before the war broke out.

Miraculously the negatives survived a raging fire in the tragic 1944 Warsaw Uprising, when the Germans systematically reduced the city to rubble.

They were then bought by the museum from Mr Poddębski's daughter Krystyna Kukieła in 2014.

And the unearthed pre-war photographs hold a significant historical value, because they debunk several myths about the Polish army in 1939, claimed a museum expert.

Marcin Westphal, argued the photos challenge the widely held assumption that the Polish army was undermanned and ill equipped for war.

He said: "The photos also debunk the myth of the Polish cavalry, which claims it attacked German panzer divisions with lances and sabres.

"You can clearly see on the photographs that the horses were used by the cavalry only as a means of transport, and that they used machine-guns for combat."

The photographs that make up Mr Poddębski's exhibition, show an army that we will never see again

Karol Nawrocki, World War 2 Museum in Gdańsk

The photographs have been praised for their preserved quality and attention to detail achieved by the famed photographer.

One of the more stunning photographs on display shows a heavily armed cavalry unit charging across a field in an exercise drill.

And other pictures show a group of smiling soldiers huddled around a Vickers tank, in what appears to be a moment of quiet downtime in the summer sun.

In another a group of soldiers were snapped resting on the side of ditch, helping themselves to a meal.

Elsewhere a squadron of PZL P.11 fighter planes were photographed in an open field, tended to by engineers.

None of the photo negatives were accompanied by notes or descriptions about their whereabouts, which posed a challenge for historians.

But a scrupulous study of the soldier's fatigues and equipment, helped them decipher the manoeuvre's locations. Most were taken between July and August at military training grounds around Warsaw, Okęcie, Legionowo and Minsk Mazowiecki.

The photos will remain on exhibition until March 15 2018 .

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Never seen before WW2 photos reveal Polish army on the eve of Hitler's invasion

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Over 260 photographs taken in the summer of 1939, have gone on display at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland. The unique photographs taken by pre-war photographer Henryk Poddębski, show key elements of the Polish army participating in war-manoeuvres just weeks before Hitler invaded.

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100th anniversary of the founding of the Polish Army in France

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One of the key events in the process of Poland securing its independence was the creation of the Polish Army in France. On June 4, 2017 we celebrate the 100th anniversary of it being established.

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On September 17, 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the "fine print" of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact -the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.

Hitler's troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month. The Polish army began retreating and regrouping east, near Lvov, in eastern Galicia, attempting to escape relentless German land and air offensives. But Polish troops had jumped from the frying pan into the fire-as Soviet troops began occupying eastern Poland. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-aggression Pact, signed in August, had eliminated any hope Poland had of a Russian ally in a war against Germany. Little did Poles know that a secret clause of that pact, the details of which would not become public until 1990, gave the U.S.S.R. the right to mark off for itself a chunk of Poland's eastern region. The "reason" given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its "blood brothers," the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland. Now Poland was squeezed from West and East-trapped between two behemoths. Its forces overwhelmed by the mechanized modern German army, Poland had nothing left with which to fight the Soviets.

As Soviet troops broke into Poland, they unexpectedly met up with German troops who had fought their way that far east in a little more than two weeks. The Germans receded when confronted by the Soviets, handing over their Polish prisoners of war. Thousands of Polish troops were taken into captivity; some Poles simply surrendered to the Soviets to avoid being captured by the Germans.

The Soviet Union would wind up with about three-fifths of Poland and 13 million of its people as a result of the invasion.

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Soviet Union invades Poland | September 17, 1939 | HISTORY

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On September 17, 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the "fine print" of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact-the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland. Hitler's troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month.

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September 1939 is mostly remembered for the German invasion of Poland, the event that triggered the Second World War in Europe. But Germany wasn't the only power that invaded Poland that month. The Soviets were also on their way.

Propaganda Preparations

Germany and the Soviet Union were unlikely allies. Hitler's Nazi ideology included repeated condemnation of Communism. The Nazi party itself gave capitalist businesses the sort of free hand that Communists detested.

But as the Second World War repeatedly showed, realpolitik could be more powerful than ideology. The two countries secretly agreed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a deal in which they would divide Poland between them along a pre-agreed border.

When the Germans invaded Poland at the start of September 1939, the Soviets didn't immediately react. They were dealing with a conflict with Japan on their eastern border and needed time to mobilize.

On the 15 th of September, Soviet troops began massing along the Polish frontier. Officers were gathered for briefings on the coming campaign. These briefings weren't just about practical plans for the invasion but also contained a large propaganda element. According to commanders, this would be not an invasion but a liberation, freeing the Polish workers from the unjust rule of the landowners.

On the 16 th, commissars went out among the men, providing more of the same briefing. The plight of the Polish workers, including their starvation and torture by landowners, was depicted in lurid detail to fire the men up to fight.

First Clashes

On the 17 th, the invasion began. At five in the morning, mechanized cavalry crossed the frontier, soon followed by the rest of the army.

The Poles were poorly prepared for a Soviet invasion. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a secret, while the threat from Germany had been clear for months. Most Polish forces had been focused in the west even before the Germans attacked, and the fighting there had drawn more troops away. The eastern border was poorly defended.

The Polish army was large and courageous, but it was already dealing with the chaos of the war in the west. As the massed forces of the Red Army advanced, they swept all before them. Defensive positions were quickly overcome. Polish troops were captured or brushed aside, inflicting only minor losses on the invaders.

During the first day, the Soviets advanced up to 60 miles. It wasn't long before Eastern Poland was theirs.

A Ragged Army

At the sound of rumbling tanks and tramping boots, Poles emerged from their homes, frightened and bewildered, to see what was happening.

What they saw was less than impressive. Many of the Soviet soldiers were carelessly dressed or missing parts of their uniforms. Rear units trailed out along the roads. Supply services were poorly organized. Tanks, tractors, and other vehicles had to be left by roadsides due to lack of fuel.

Far from finding impoverished peasants, the Soviet troops found a country apparently wealthier than their own. Twenty-five years later, Colonel G. I. Antonov still remembered troops disobeying the orders of their superiors to rush into shops and buy everything they could, making the most of a favorable Soviet-set exchange rate.

Dispirited Polish civilians, unable to resist, could only accept this sudden upheaval.

Confrontation

Within days, the Soviets were approaching the new border they had agreed with the Germans for the division of Poland.

Before the invasion, the Soviet troops had been ordered to avoid fighting with the Germans when they met them, settling any disputes peacefully. But as they drew close to the German lines, there were inevitably clashes. Both armies were in a war zone, facing unfamiliar forces. If shots were sometimes fired before questions could be asked, confrontations could easily escalate.

This led to a number of casualties in the new border region. But officers understood their role in this strange new situation, stepping in to resolve disputes even when their men had been injured or killed.

In places, the Germans had passed the new border and were occupying territory meant to go to the Soviets. This sometimes led to tense discussions before the Germans withdrew, taking portable property with them.

On the whole, the two armies cooperated well. The Germans handed Brest fortress over to the Red Army, then the two forces held a joint military parade in the town.

While small enclaves of Polish troops kept fighting a doomed fight and thousands more followed their government abroad to keep up the fight, the Soviets settled in.

Sovietization

Now began the process of "Sovietization", transforming occupied Poland so that it could follow the same political and economic model of the USSR. Led by the Soviet Union's interior ministry, the NKVD, this transformation would bring ruin for many Poles.

Economic change came fast. Monetary reforms saw the Soviet ruble replace the Polish zloty, depriving Poles of their existing wealth. Goods disappeared from the shelves of stores, forcing many to pay extortionate prices on the black market.

Private businesses were closed down, to be replaced by ones run by the government. There was no smooth transition. Instead, people were left without basic necessities like bread while the new systems were put in place.

An investigation by the Central Committee of the Communist Party eventually recognized the existence of a food crisis and moved to tackle it. But the Polish workers the Red Army had come to liberate were still worse off than they had been under the much-demonized landowners.

One Man, One Vote

The greatest symbolic act came with elections to the Supreme Council of the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic, as the region was renamed by the Soviets. After six weeks of intense propaganda, voters found only one option for the first member of the council - Joseph Stalin.
Read another story from us: Blitzkrieg Tactics: Lightning Conquest of Poland
The Soviets had quickly conquered half of Poland, bringing in a ruinous regime. Only when the Germans came again two years later would the Poles learn that things could be even worse.

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September 1939 is mostly remembered for the German invasion of Poland, the event that triggered the Second World War in Europe. But Germany wasn't the only power that invaded Poland that month. The Soviets were also on their way. Germany and the Soviet Union were unlikely allies.

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THE GERMAN-SOVIET INVASION OF POLAND, 1939

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Soviet Red Army entering the Polish city of Wilno (Vilnius) after the joint German-Russian aggression against Poland, 5 October 1939.

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Japanese Economy During the Interwar Period

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Japanese Economy During the Interwar Period

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The first shock hit at 11:58 a.m., emanating from a seismic fault six miles beneath the floor of Sagami Bay, 30 miles south of Tokyo. A 60- by 60-mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy. Down at the docks of Yokohama, Japan's biggest port and its gateway to the West, hundreds of well-wishers were seeing off the Empress of Australia, a 615-foot luxury steamship bound for Vancouver. "The smiles vanished," remembered Ellis M. Zacharias, then a young U.S. naval officer, who was standing on the pier when the earthquake hit, "and for an appreciable instant everyone stood transfixed" by "the sound of unearthly thunder." Moments later, a tremendous jolt knocked Zacharias off his feet, and the pier collapsed, spilling cars and people into the water.

The date was September 1, 1923, and the event was the Great Kanto Earthquake, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. The initial jolt was followed a few minutes later by a 40-foot-high tsunami. A series of towering waves swept away thousands of people. Then came fires, roaring through the wooden houses of Yokohama and Tokyo, the capital, burning everything-and everyone-in their path. The death toll would be about 140,000, including 44,000 who had sought refuge near Tokyo's Sumida River in the first few hours, only to be immolated by a freak pillar of fire known as a "dragon twist." The temblor destroyed two of Japan's largest cities and traumatized the nation; it also whipped up nationalist and racist passions. And the quake may have emboldened right-wing forces at the very moment that the country was poised between military expansion and an embrace of Western democracy, only 18 years before Japan would enter World War II.

The 9.0 earthquake that struck the northeast coast of Honshu this past March is not likely to have such an impact on Japan's history. Nevertheless, there are parallels. Like the 1923 quake, this one unleashed secondary disasters: a tsunami that washed away dozens of villages; mudslides; fires; and damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that emitted radiation into the atmosphere (and constituted the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986). In both instances, the toll was considerable, with estimated deaths in the 2011 quake approaching 30,000 and damage that could go as high as $310 billion. Fuel, food and water were hard to come by weeks after the earthquake, and the Japanese government acknowledged that it had been ill-prepared for a calamity on this scale. Traditional figures offered words of solace: Crown Prince Hirohito 88 years ago; his son, Emperor Akihito, in 2011.

Before the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, Japan was full of optimism. No center symbolized the country's dynamism more than Yokohama, known as the City of Silk. Founded as Japan's first "Foreign Settlement" in 1859, five years after U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced the shogun to open Japan to the West, Yokohama had grown into a cosmopolitan city of half a million. Attracting entrepreneurs, fugitives, traders, spies and drifters from every corner of the world, the port rose "like a mirage in the desert," wrote one Japanese novelist. From the waterfront promenade, known as the Bund, to the Bluff, the hillside neighborhood favored by foreign residents, Yokohama was where East met West, and liberal ideas-including democracy, collective bargaining and women's rights-transfixed those who engaged them. Nobel nominee Junicho Tanizaki, who spent two years in Yokohama writing screenplays, marveled at "a riot of loud Western colors and smells-the odor of cigars, the aroma of chocolate, the fragrance of flowers, the scent of perfume."

The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon. According to survivors, the initial quaking lasted for about 14 seconds-long enough to bring down nearly every building on Yokohama's watery, unstable ground. The three-story Grand Hotel, an elegant Victorian villa on the seafront that had played host to Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham and William Howard Taft, collapsed, crushing hundreds of guests and employees. Twenty expatriate regulars at the Yokohama United Club, the city's most popular watering hole, died when the concrete building pancaked. Otis Manchester Poole, a 43-year-old American manager of a trading firm, stepped out of his largely still-intact office near the Bund to face an indelible scene. "Over everything had settled a thick white dust," he remembered years later, "and through the yellow fog of dust, still in the air, a copper-coloured sun shone upon this silent havoc in sickly reality." Fanned by high winds, fires from overturned cookstoves and ruptured gas mains spread. Soon, the entire city was ablaze.

Meanwhile, a wall of water surged from the fault zone toward the coast of Honshu. Three hundred people died in Kamakura, the ancient capital, when a 20-foot-high wave washed over the town. "The tidal wave swept out a great section of the village near the beach," wrote Henry W. Kinney, a Tokyo-based editor for Trans-Pacific magazine. "I saw a thirty-foot sampan [boat] that had been lifted neatly on top of the roof of a prostrated house. Vast portions of the hills facing the ocean had slid into the sea."

Although the shock waves had weakened by the time they reached through the Kanto region to Tokyo, 17 miles north of Yokohama, many poorer neighborhoods built on unstable ground east of the Sumida River collapsed in seconds. Then, as in Yokohama, fires spread, fueled by flimsy wooden houses and fanned by high winds. The quake destroyed the city's water mains, paralyzing the fire department. According to one police report, fires had broken out in 83 locations by 12:15. Fifteen minutes later, they had spread to 136. People fled toward the Sumida River, drowning by the hundreds when bridges collapsed. Tens of thousands of working-class Japanese found refuge in an empty patch of ground near the river. The flames closed in from all directions, and then, at 4 p.m., a 300-foot-tall "fire tornado" blazed across the area. Of the 44,000 people who had gathered there, only 300 survived. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3.

As the evening of the quake approached, Kinney observed, "Yokohama, the city of almost half a million souls, had become a vast plain of fire, of red, devouring sheets of flame which played and flickered. Here and there a remnant of a building, a few shattered walls, stood up like rocks above the expanse of flame, unrecognizable....It was as if the very earth were now burning. It presented exactly the aspect of a gigantic Christmas pudding over which the spirits were blazing, devouring nothing. For the city was gone."

The tragedy prompted countless acts of heroism. Thomas Ryan, a 22-year-old U.S. naval ensign, freed a woman trapped inside the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, then carried the victim-who had suffered two broken legs-to safety, seconds ahead of a fire that engulfed the ruins. Capt. Samuel Robinson, the Canadian skipper of the Empress of Australia, took hundreds of refugees aboard, organized a fire brigade that kept the ship from being incinerated by advancing flames, then steered the crippled vessel to safety in the outer harbor. Then there was Taki Yonemura, chief engineer of the government wireless station in Iwaki, a small town 152 miles northeast of Tokyo. Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. Yonemura tapped out a 19-word bulletin-CONFLAGRATION SUBSEQUENT TO SEVERE EARTHQUAKE AT YOKOHAMA AT NOON TODAY. WHOLE CITY ABLAZE WITH NUMEROUS CASUALTIES. ALL TRAFFIC STOPPED-and dispatched it to an RCA receiving station in Hawaii. For the next three days, Yonemura sent a stream of reports that alerted the world to the unfolding tragedy. The radio man "flashed the news across the sea at the speed of sunlight," reported the New York Times, "to tell of tremendous casualties, buildings leveled by fire, towns swept by tidal waves...disorder by rioters, raging fire and wrecked bridges."

Yonemura's bulletins helped to galvanize an international relief effort, led by the United States, that saved thousands from near-certain death or prolonged misery. U.S. naval vessels set sail from China on the evening of September 2, and within a week, dozens of warships packed with relief supplies-rice, canned roast beef, reed mats, gasoline-filled Yokohama Harbor. From Washington, President Calvin Coolidge took the lead in rallying the United States. "An overwhelming disaster has overtaken the people of the friendly nation of Japan," he declared on September 3. "The cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, and surrounding towns and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant appalling loss of life and destitution and distress, requiring measures of urgent relief." The American Red Cross, of which Coolidge was the titular head, initiated a national relief drive, raising $12 million for victims.

The wave of good feeling between the two countries would soon dissipate, however, in mutual accusations. Japanese expressed resentment toward Western rescuers; demagogues in the United States charged that the Japanese had been "ungrateful" for the outpouring of help they received.

The earthquake also exposed the darker side of humanity. Within hours of the catastrophe, rumors spread that Korean immigrants were poisoning wells and using the breakdown of authority to plot the overthrow of the Japanese government. (Japan had occupied Korea in 1905, annexed it five years later and ruled the territory with an iron grip.) Roving bands of Japanese prowled the ruins of Yokohama and Tokyo, setting up makeshift roadblocks and massacring Koreans across the earthquake zone. According to some estimates, the death toll was as high as 6,000.

My own view is that by reducing the expatriate European community in Yokohama and putting an end to a period of optimism symbolized by that city, the Kanto earthquake accelerated Japan's drift toward militarism and war. Japan scholar Kenneth Pyle of the University of Washington says that conservative elites were already nervous about democratic forces emerging in society, and "the 1923 earthquake does sort of begin to reverse some of the liberal tendencies that appear right after World War I....After the earthquake, there's a measurable increase in right-wing patriotic groups in Japan that are really the groundwork of what is called Japanese fascism." Peter Duus, an emeritus professor of history at Stanford, states that it was not the earthquake that kindled right-wing activities, "but rather the growth of the metropolis and the emergence of what the right wing regarded as heartless, hedonistic, individualistic and materialist urban culture." The more significant long-term effect of the earthquake, he says, "was that it set in motion the first systematic attempt at reshaping Tokyo as a modern city. It moved Tokyo into the ranks of world metropolises."

University of Melbourne historian J. Charles Schencking sees the rebuilding of Tokyo as a metaphor for something larger. The earthquake, he has written, "fostered a culture of catastrophe defined by political and ideological opportunism, contestation and resilience, as well as a culture of reconstruction in which elites sought to not only rebuild Tokyo, but also reconstruct the Japanese nation and its people."

Though they may dispute its effects, historians agree that the destruction of two great population centers gave voice to those in Japan who believed that the embrace of Western decadence had invited divine retribution. Or, as philosopher and social critic Fukasaku Yasubumi declared at the time: "God cracked down a great hammer" on the Japanese nation.

Regular contributor Joshua Hammer is the author of Yokohama Burning, about the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

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The powerful quake and ensuing tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized a nation and unleashed historic consequences

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With the massive quake and tsunami that struck Japan last week, the specter of another devastating event has returned: The 1923 Kanto earthquake, which shook the region around Tokyo, was the country's last "big one." The 7.9-magnitude quake reduced much of Tokyo to rubble, and as refugees tried to leave, firestorms swept through the city. More than 100,000 people died during the Kanto quake and its aftermath. These archival images, drawn from the U.S. Geological Survey, AP, and Brown University's Dana and Vera Reynolds Collection, show the horrifying wreckage. They're a reminder that Japan has faced brutally difficult rebuilding efforts before, and succeeded in building back better. [ See also, from the January 1924 edition of the Atlantic Magazine: Earthquake Days. ] ( Alexis Madrigal and Alan Taylor)

View this page Hints: full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.

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1923 Kanto Earthquake: Echoes From Japan's Past

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With the massive quake and tsunami that struck Japan last week, the specter of another devastating event has returned: The 1923 Kanto earthquake, which shook the region around Tokyo, was the country's last "big one." The 7.9-magnitude quake reduced much of Tokyo to rubble, and as refugees tried to leave, firestorms swept through the city.

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1923 Great Kanto Earthquake Stock Photos and Pictures | Getty Images

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Find the perfect 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Download premium images you can't get anywhere else.

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance, (1902-23), alliance that bound Britain and Japan to assist one another in safeguarding their respective interests in China and Korea. Directed against Russian expansionism in the Far East, it was a cornerstone of British and Japanese policy in Asia until after World War I.

The alliance served Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) by discouraging France, Russia's European ally, from entering the war on the Russian side. It was renewed in 1905 and again in 1911 after Japan's annexation of Korea. On the basis of its tie with Britain, Japan participated in World War I on the side of the Allies.

After the war the British no longer feared Russian encroachment in China and wished to maintain close ties with the United States, which tended to view Japan as its rival in the Pacific. Following an unsuccessful attempt to bring the U.S. into the alliance at the Washington Conference of 1921-22, Britain allowed it to lapse. It was specifically terminated by the Four-Power Pacific Treaty (1921), a vaguely worded agreement that left the Japanese without allies until the conclusion of their Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940.

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance | Russo-Japanese War, Imperialism & Diplomacy

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Anglo-Japanese Alliance, (1902-23), alliance that bound Britain and Japan to assist one another in safeguarding their respective interests in China and Korea. Directed against Russian expansionism in the Far East, it was a cornerstone of British and Japanese policy in Asia until after World War I.