7.8 Mass Atrocities & 7.9 Causation in Global Conflict

What did Adolf Hitler use to justify his mass killing of Jews? 

He referred to the Armenian annihilation 

Atrocities in Europe and the Middle East

What is Armistice Day? 

On November 11, 1918, Germany surrendered as the Allies advanced towards the Central Powers

How many soldiers died in war? How many were wounded? 

8-9 million died, 21 million wounded

How many civilians died in war? 

6-13 million

Armenian Genocide

How many Armenians were killed in Turkey by the Ottoman Government? 

600,000 - 1.5 million were killed

Define Genocide. 

The attempted killing of a group of people based on their race, religion, or ethnicity

Why did the Ottoman Empire target the Armenians during WWI? 

The Ottoman Empire believed that the Armenians were cooperating with the Russian army ( Ottoman Enemy ) 

What did the Ottoman Empire do to the Armenians and how did many of them die? 

They deported Armenians into camps in Syria, where they would die from starvation, disease, or exposure to elements. Turkish troops executed others.

Does the Turkish government believe this was a genocide? 

No, they believe it was a result of the war, ethnic conflicts, and disease.

Why did the flu spread so rapidly in 1918? 

With the millions of soldiers returning home from war, they would have contact with their loved ones & friends which spread the flu.

How many died? 

It had killed 20 million people in Europe, the U.S., and/or the entire world. India had lost 7 million alone.

Suffering and Famine

What is the “Lost Generation”? 

A term used to describe American expatriate writers living in Paris after the war

What caused the famines in Ukraine? (Why were peasants upset, what did they do?) 

Peasants strongly resisted Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture; they hid or deatroyed their crops and killed their livestock rather than turning them over to state control. 

Why did industry grow despite the famines? 

The government fed industrial workers the crops or used them in the industry.

Casualties of WWII

How many died in WWII and where did most of them come from? 

Around 40-150 million, half possibly from the Soviet Union and the others from Germany, Poland, China, and Japan. What were US casualty numbers? 

290,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, and 600k of them were wounded (U.S.)

The Nazis

What kind of policies did Heinrich Himmler oversee? 

Germany forcefully removed Slavic people, as well as one million Poles and Rom,a from their homes in pursuit of territory.

What groups of people did the Nazis send to the camps? 

Political opponents, people with disablities, and gay people to the camps. The biggest group being the Jews.

The Nuremberg Laws said: 

1.  Banned Jews from certain professions

2.  Banned Jews from certain schools

Jews were forced to live in sections of cities called ghettos. 

What was the Nazi “Final Solution” 

To kill all of the Jews in Europe

How many were killed in the camps

• Jewish People - 6 million

• Non - Jewish People -  5 million

Japanese

What was the result of the “Asia for Asiatics” program put on by Japan? 

Forced the people they conqured into labor programs

Where did people have to complete forced labor? 

The military, public works projects, and farms reduced the food  shortage in Japan

What did men do to women in Korea, Japan, and China? 

They forced them to become ‘comfort women’, which are prostitutes 

The Allies

Where did the US use firebombing and how many people (mostly civilians) did it kill? 

German cities, Hamburg and Dresden, both caused large casualties with 50k dead in Hamburg and 25k dead in Dresden.

What were some effects of the first use of the atomic bomb? 

It brought fear about future war destruction with nuclear missiles, and caused high casualities.

Genocide and Human Rights

Yugoslavia was home to the following ethnic groups. Please list their religion

• Serbians - Eastern Orthodox Christians

• Croats and Slovenes - Catholic

• Bosnia and Kosovo - Muslim

What did this mix of religious groups cause? 

Drove the Genocide

The Soviet Union collapsing led to the collapse of Yugoslavia. Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro declared independence and defined citizenship based on what? 

Based on terms of ethnic background and religion

Who did Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo target in their acts of ethnic cleansing? 

Muslims from Bosnia and Kosovo

How many died in his region? 

300k

Define Balkanization: 

Disintegration into separate states.

 Rwanda

Which ethnic group was the minority in Rwanda? 

Tutsis

Which was the majority? 

Hutus

Who was favored by the Belgian colonizers? 

Tutsis was treated better than Hutus by the Belgians

Who won control of an independent Rwandan government? 

The Hutu won control

How did this group treat the Tutsi? 

They discriminated the Tutsi

What “lit the flames of genoice” in Rwanda despite previous efforts at peace? 

When Rwanda’s president, a Hutu, was killed in an airplane crash supposedly shot down by rebel forces.

How many civilians were killed in the next 3 months? 

500k-1Mil or even higher

How did the UN react to the genocide in Rwanda? What did it show? 

They were instructed to not use force to restore order, only a few peacekeepers were sent to protect ALL Rwandans, but even the U.S. left after the Belgian peacekeepers were killed. The UN failed to evacuate any Rwandans, this brought attention to the lack of leadership in the international community and showed the UN needed to think about its role in conflicts if it wanted to save lives.

Sudan

Who controlled the government of Sudan in 2003? 

Arab Muslims

Who were the Janjaweed and why were they released? 

Government Arab militants were released as a result of Two Darfur rebel groups composed of non-Arabs took arms against the Sudanese government in response to attacks from nomads.

How many were killed? How many displaced? 

Destroyed hundreds of villages throughout Darfur, slaughtering more than 200k people and displacing 100 million creating a refugee crisis.

What illustrated the failure of the international community? 

The fact they were made to defend human rights after the Jewish Holocaust yet millions of lives and human dignity was lost.