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U.S. Position Regarding war in Europe
Anti-communism
Many Americans believed Britain to be doomed and that the fate of Britain was not vital to American national interests.
Lend Lease Act, Passes by US Congress, March 11 1941
Authorized the president to transfer munitions and supplies “to the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the U.S.”
Allies would repay the United States not in money (but by returning the goods, or repaying in kind with details to be worked out later)
Atlantic Charter, August 1941
Common declaration of dual aims and principles (not a treaty). Public statement about democratic solidarity. Vision of postwar world. System of general security.
Free trade
Disarmament
Neither country to seek territorial aggrandizement
No territorial changes that did not accord with the wishes of people concerned
Rights of people to choose their own governments.
What does Weinberg argue is critical to understand the war in the Pacific
This war was different because of the evolution of technology, the economy, medicine, etc.
The Japanese advance through halted throughout the pacific theater delayed the American operations in the mediterranean
The Japanese navy and industry was vulnerable and couldn’t be exploited until well into the war.
How does Bess intervene in traditional narratives of the Pearl Harbor attack
Challenging the traditional telling of the war, he wanted to give more context of the war
western people were forcing things on Japan
The attack on pearl harbor was not part of the larger context but was an immediate reaction
“Out of the blue” he challenged it by talking about the 10 years of aggression that was leading up to it; this is not out of the blue it goes back 250 years to when Japan was forcibly opened by the Americans; merely doing the same thing that Europe was doing to us (they used western strategy)
The treaty of Japan was 1858 modeling after western strategy
What is the main factor that led to US victory in the Midway battle, according to Bess
The interception of the Navy and their way
The moral character, luck, courage.
What is the legacy of this battle
The turning point that gave the Americans hope in the war
The Japanese navy never really recovered from this battle
This was the last point that the Japanese were on the attack, everything became defensive maneuvers.
What does this battle tell us about the nature of the war’s unfolding
Luck, self-sacrifce, miscalculations, personal courage, moral choices, intentions, preparations (preparing for 3 years)
Russian Fronts
The majority of the fighting of the war took place on the Eastern Front
Nazi Germany Invaded USSR
June 22 1941
Initial German successes, colossal Soviet defeats
Summer of 1941 (July 1941: beginning of genocide of Jews)
Germans halted outside Moscow
Fall 1941
Germans laid siege to Leningrade
Sept 1941 - Jan 1943
First Soviet Counter offensives
Dec 1941
Summer Campaign
1942
Battle of Stalingrad (Germans defeated at Stalingrad; enormous turning point)
August 1942 - Jan 1943
Nazi Plans for USSR
Destruction of Soviet Union
Elimination of Communist threat to Germany
Seizure of Prime land
Long-term settlement
Larger Germany on the Future
Bialystock (Poland)
Soviet prisoners from the encirclement at Biastock
Effect in Belarus on civilian population of 9 million
2 million dead
1.5 million fled
2 million forcibly resettled
3 million left homeless
5,000 villages wasted and depopulated
Reasons for Soviet survival and revival December 1941
The Soviet army held the front
Territory not occupied by Germans still functioned
The Soviets had developed industrial capacity beyond the Ural Mountains in the 1930s. Served as a base or continued production. They evacuated equipment and specialists to this area.
The Japanese attacked south (Malaya, Dutch East Indies, U.S.) rather than North
Material aid came from Britain
Why We Fight Film
Purpose: to justify to U.S. involvement in the war
Made to be shown to U.S. soldiers
Films on Russia also shown to civilians in commercial theaters
Films series directed by Hollywood director Frank Capra
Bloodlands (Timothy Snyder, 2012)
mass murders committed before an during WW2 in territories controlled by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Lend-Lease Act
Proposed in late 1940
Passed March 1941
Permitted the American President to "sell, transfer title, exchange, lease, lend or otherwise dispense to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article
Mobilization of Soviet Home Front
Siege of Leningrad, Sept 1941 - Jan 1943 (seventeen month siege)
Soviet Counter Offensives
December 1941 - January 1942
Genocide
Origin: term coined after WW2 to describe Turkish slaughter of Armenians in 1911 and Nazi annihilation of the Jews during WW2
Definition: “The deliberate and systematic extermination…of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group..”
In the context of WW2: genocide means the murder carried out against the Jews by the Nazis.
Holocaust
Burnt Offering
Shoah
Catastrophe
Judeocide
Killing of the Jews
Defining characteristics of the Shoah
Jews were the primary target. Their annihilation to be complete [not the case for other groups the Nazis attacked].
use of biological criteria to define the enemy.
carried out by a modern, bureaucratic state.
Alternatives of Annihilation
Marginalization
Sterilization
Selective murder (also on a mass scale)
Phases of the Genocide
Exclusion (Nuremberg Laws, 1935)
Ghettoization (1939 - 1941)
War of annihilation against Soviet Union, 22 June 1941 initiates “The Shoah by Bullets”. `941-1944
January 1942. Decision to implement a “final solution” to the Jewish question. Wannsee Conference
1942-1943 peak killing years, Building of killing centers
Shoah by Bullets
Mass shooting operations carried out from mid 1941 - early 1944. 40% of Jewish victims of the Holocaust killed in mass shootings.
Carried our by Nazi SS, German police forces, german military units, locally-recruited collaborators.
2 million + Jews residing in the Soviet Union killed
Priority placed on annihilating Soviet Jews but also included prominent Communists; anyone suspected of sabotage; Roma people; and asylum inmates murdered —but not as systematically.
Shoah by Bullets
Of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, 40% were killed in mass shootings
Mass shootings were carried out by Nazi SS, German police forces, German military units (including Waffen SS), locally-recruited collaborators
Witnessed by local public and neighbors. Pressed into service as clerks, grave diggers, wagon drivers, cooks.
Wannsee Conference
January 1942
Evolution of Camp System
1933: first camp open for detention/internment
1938: Austrian and German Jews arrested
After invasion of SU: Labor camps, POW camps built. They became concentration camps.
1942: Killing centers built
75% of Jews murdered in the Shoah killed 1942-1943
Names of Killing Centers Peak Killing Years: 1942 - 1943
Chelmno (Near Lodz)
Belzec
Sobibor
Treblinka
Majdanek (Near Lublin)
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Near Cracow)
Forms of occupation
direct annexation (example: Austria 1938, northern Poland, Czech part of Czechoslovakia, Alsace and Lorraine in France)
direct rule (southern Poland: General Gouvernement)
Military Rule (Soviet Union, Belgium)
Direct rule with intermediaries (here is where we begin to encounter collaboration)
Nominally independent regimes (France).
Resistance/resistance
actions that take with the intention of thwarting Nazi Germany’s war goals
actions that carried the risk of punishment
note the uance between resistance (small r) and Resistance (capital R). R refers to a social movement that went beyond individual action for the sake of people in one’s own entourage.
Accommodation
Adjusting to foreign occupiers without making a formal commitment to the occupier’s ideology or policies
One measure of rates of accommodation: shifting popularity of learning foreign languages.
Examples of Resistance activity
intelligence gathering
defiance: final uprising in Warsaw ghetto, April 1943
Rescue: example, hiding Jewish children. Village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (France).
The White Rose 1942
a non-violent resistance group formed by students and a professor at the University of Munich in Nazi Germany
French Resistance
External Resistance: Free French, led by Charles de Gaulle, based in London and in Africa
Internal Resistance: In metropolitan France (France on the European continent)
Maquis
Underground guerilla group in rural areas
Maquisards
member of a maquis group
Strategic Bombing
A strike at the enemy’s capacity and willingness to fight
The Plan
Use long-range bombers to strike deep into enemy territory to bomb industrial facilities as well as urban areas.
Area bombing
Use “Concentrated incendiary method” i.e. firebombing
Bombed-out Cologne
1945
Firebombing of Tokyo
March 9-10, 1945
Red Army reached Majdanek and Lublin
Late July 1944
Massacre at Katyn Forest 1940
Poland
April-May 1940
NKVD
Warsaw Uprising
Warsaw ghetto uprising April 1943
Warsaw uprising of the Polish Home Army August 1, 1944 - October 4, 1944
Sam Fuller Movie
“Falkenau, the Impossible” about the US army liberating the Flakenau death camp. The Czech locals denied they knew anything about a genocide.
Forms of Justice
Juridical Trials (Nuremberg, 1945-1946)
Summary Justice (example: Sam Fuller showed in the big red one, shows how the war itself can be summary justice)
Vigilante Justice: punishing without legal authority
Administrative Purges
Instrumental purges: a purge serving political purposes other than the ones stated.
Nuremberg Laws
only those who were german could be considered citizens
Nuremberg Trials (1945-46)
The architects of the Nuremberg trials consciously sought to break new legal ground. Aimed for these tirals to be a source and a test of international law.
They created the International Military Tribunal to carry this out.
texts that embodied the laws of war
Geneva Convention 1864
Hague Convention 1899
“Red Cross” Convention 1906
Geneva Convention 1929
Charges
Crimes against peace: planning, preparation, initiation of war of aggression
war crimes: violation of customs of war
crimes against humanity: a notion established for the postwar trials at Nuremberg
Crimes Against Humanity
Murder, Extermination, Enslavement, Deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations….
Key Concepts
Conspiracy
Guilt of organizations
Innovations codified at Nuremberg
Eliminated two central defenses to culpability: “act of state defense” and “due obedience” defense.
Established the notion of an unjust war
Crimes against humanity codified for the first time
Genocide
Genocide defined as a crime that could be committed by a state against its own civilians
Nuremberg made a state’s treatment of its own civilians an international matter.
Term coined by Raphael Lemkin
Collective Memory
Concept proposed by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the 1920s
Basic idea: we always remember the past in a social context
In short, we need others to remember
Commemoration: remembering in public with others.