NAZI WORLDVIEW

1933: Hitler withdrew Germany from League of Nations

1935: Announced the creation of a new airforce, and began drafting to increase the army to five times its size

1936: Germany in alliance with Italy and Japan; Nazis in control in Austria

1938: Germany formally annexed Austria

1938: Munich Conference “agreed” to let Germany occupy Sudetenland (NW Czechoslovakia). Within a month, Hitler occupied Czech lands and set up a puppet state in Slovakia

1939: Hitler signs non-aggression pact with Stalin over Poland (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and eastern Poland were already under Soviet influence

Sept 1, 1939: Hitler attacks Poland. Blitzkrieg

By April-May 1940: Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France

1940: Churchill replaces Chamberlain; end of “appeasement” policy; Hitler’s unsuccessful attempt to block Suez (oil) traffic

1941: Germany invades Greece and Yugoslavia, and later Soviet Union. Declares war on the US. By December, Germany was beginning to show signs of faltering.

War in Asia began in 1937: Japan invaded China. Later, it got into a conflict with Britain over India, Burma, Malaya. By 1942, Japanese expansion was contained

Dresden, 1945View from the city hall over the devastated inner city. Photo by Richard Peter.

Source: Images of War: 130 Years of War Photography by Rainer Fabian and Hans Christian Adam (1983)

HOME FRONT

Britain: civilian “war work” – women in civil services, agriculture, Grow Your Own Food campaigns, regulation of industries

Soviet Union: supercentralization; women formed more than 60% of the work force

United States: race problems because of African American migrations and mobilization. Discrimination against Japanese Americans

Japan: Hiroshima – 140,000 died by the end of 1945. Another 50,000 died by 1950

Germany: Divided into four occupation zones at 1945 San Francisco Conference

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/wit/rosie.htm

Hiroshima, 1945A shadow on the wall is

all that is left of this Japanese civilian

Source: Images of War: 130 Years of War Photography by Rainer Fabian and Hans

Christian Adam (1983)

“Embedded” journalism

Okinawa, 1945. In order to be able to take pictures from a dive bomber, war photographer David Duncan had a special container

mounted under the wings of this combat aircraft.

Source: Images of War: 130 Years of War Photography by Rainer Fabian and Hans Christian Adam (1983)