WORLD WAR IIA Brief-ish Lesson

Learning Targets• TASK:

Students will explain the root causes of World War II in Europe, analyze the events of the war, and evaluate the effect that the war had on European nations.

• CONDITION: Given a classroom environment with highly motivated students who are ready to learn.

• STANDARDS:B.12.3 Recall, select, and analyze significant historical periods and the relationships among them

B.12.11 Compare examples and analyze why governments of various countries have sometimes sought peaceful resolution to conflicts and sometimes gone to war

Agenda• The Seeds of Discontent• Fashionable Fascism• Battlefield: Earth• On the Home Front• Total Victory?• Legacy of the

Second World War

The Seeds of Discontent• Germany lost World War I, and signed the Treaty of Versailles• Versailles punished the

Germans heavily• Many Germans felt that

their honor had been taken away

• Meanwhile, the French and British were weary of fighting and wary of another drawn-out war

L to R: Lloyd George of Britain, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France, and Wilson of the United States

More Seeds• Further, the United States wasn’t happy about getting involved in a costly European affair• After all, war was

expensive, and the Europeans had started it

• Many Americans felt it hadn’t been their place to get involved

American Isolationism in the 1920s:

• Immigration Quotas• Protectionist Tarriffs• Refusal to join the League of

Nations• Unpaid German War Debts

Gerald Nye (R-ND), Isolationist Senator

Review of the -Isms• Socialism• Communism• Nationalism• Capitalism• Liberalism

Joe Louis of the USA defeats Max Schmeling of Germany in a 1938 rematch. Both later fought in World War II for their respective countries.

Some Vocabulary• Reparations: • compensation in money, material, labor, etc., payable by a

defeated country to another country or to an individual for loss suffered during or as a result of war.

• Hyperinflation:• extreme or excessive rise in the general level of prices

related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency

Germany, 1923• Germany was governed by the Weimar Republic, a

parliamentary democracy imposed by Versailles• Weimar printed far too much money trying to pay back

reparations, and Germany had massive hyperinflation• Desperate people

were looking for both a hand up and a scapegoat

• Enter Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler• Austrian by birth• Fought for Germany in World War I

• Beer Hall Putsch, 1923• Wrote Mein Kampf while in prison

• Became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 by completely legal means

Hitler: The First “National Socialist”1. The term “Nazi” is an abbreviation for “National German

Socialist Workers’ Party. Why did the Nazis call themselves “Socialists” when they clearly were not?

2. Why did they call themselves “Nationalists?” What is Nationalism?

3. Why would a doctrine of “National Socialism” appeal to Germans?

4. Which German classes would have benefitted most from Nazi doctrine?

5. Which classes would have benefitted least?

Facism: The Basics• Reaction to upheaval caused by the end of World War I• Eastern Europe had little tradition of parliamentary

democracy• Some members of the middle class looked to an

authoritarian state (with limited participation/voice from the masses) to maintain “the old system”

• In Germany , Fascism was billed as “National Socialism”• Combined “Nationalism” which appealed to sensibilities about a

German nation-state, with “Socialism,” which, despite the fact that it wasn’t really Socialism, was popular

• Socialism was supposedly a panacea to uplift the masses, and after World War I, the German masses needed some uplifting

• National Deutsche Socialist Workers Party: “NAZI”

Fashionable Fascism• Fascism became the government du jour in the 1930s• Authoritarian or Fascist governments took root in:

• Italy (Benito Mussolini)• Germany (Adolf Hitler)• Spain (General Francisco Franco)• Portugal (Antonio Salazar)• Poland (Joseph Pilsudski)• Yugoslavia (King Alexander I)• Hungary (Admiral Miklos Horthy)• Romania (Corneliu Codreanu)• Greece (General John Metaxas)

Germany Makes Hay• Germany committed these violations of international

agreements• Withdrew from the League of Nations• Began building an air force and navy; instituted draft to exceed limit

of 100,000 soldiers• Reoccupation of the Rhineland• Intervened in the Spanish Civil War on Franco’s behalf• Massive increase in military spending• Annexation of Austria (1938)• Annexation of the Sudetenland (1938)

• This was all allowed in the name of “Appeasement”

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937

Battlefield: Poland• Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, officially starting World War Two

• The French and British declared war on Germany two days later

• Poland fell in less than a month: Blitzkrieg

Battlefield: EarthCountries Hitler Invaded:• Poland• Denmark• Norway• Belgium• Holland• France• Luxembourg• Yugoslavia• Greece• USSR

Peak of Axis power in Europe, 1942

Vichy France• Germany swept over France (May 1940) but couldn’t occupy the whole country for want of men

• Result: Vichy France• Marshal Petain, hero of Verdun (WWI) as Prime Minister

• Collaborationism in France• German occupation in 1942

The Battle of Britain• After taking France, Hitler set his eyes on Britain

• Luftwaffe and “The Blitz” of London

• (2nd) Rise of Churchill• Failure to crush Britain• Total war & civilian casualties

Operation Barbarossa• On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Wehrmacht launched an invasion of Russia• Violated terms of the

Molotov-von Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact

• Made quick advances through Western USSR

• Soviet soldiers suffered heavy casualties

Stalingrad: The Gamble• At the outset of 1942, Hitler decided to push toward Stalingrad and the rich oilfields in the Russian Caucasus• The German Sixth Army,

commanded by von Paulus, was detailed to take the city

• It didn’t go so great… for either side

Enemy at the Gates (Part I)

Enemy at the Gates (Part II)

Germany in Retreat• The Germans ended up surrendering at Stalingrad, the

first time a German Field Marshal had ever surrendered• From then on, Germany was in retreat on the eastern

front• Exception: Kursk (1943)

• Russian troops eventually made their way to Berlin in April of 1945, leaving a trail of rape and pillage behind them

• Meanwhile, the Western allies invaded occupied France in June 1944 and pushed east

• From there on out, it was only a matter of time• Germany surrendered in May 1945

On The Home Front• New Weapons in World War II = spike in casualties

• Total war on a massive scale

• Civilian as well as military casualties

• Specter of the Holocaust

• Mass conscription for both Allied and Axis powers

• Production shifted to war material instead of consumer goods

• Strict rationing was common

Home Front: Britain• Most thorough wartime mobilization of all combatant nations

• 1944: 55% of British are engaged in “war work” or the military

• Women became workers to replace the men off fighting

• Strict rationing

Home Front: USSR• 40% of all casualties in WW2 were Soviets

• Factories shipped east of the Ural mountains

• 900-day siege of Leningrad

• Civilian food consumption reduced by 40% during war

• Female combatants

Home Front: Germany• Slow to convert from consumer goods to producing war materiel

• Albert Speer, 1942• Too late to achieve total mobilization

• Very few women did war work

• Slave labor

Home Front: USA• “Arsenal of Democracy”

• Few civilian casualties• A-bomb research• Massive Female Mobilization: Rosie the Riveter

• 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned in camps

Death Tolls

Total Victory?• Germany surrendered May 1945; Japan in August of that year

• Postwar Planning: Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam

• Roosevelt recast as Woodrow Wilson

• FDR’s Death and the rise of bipolar Europe

Onset of the Cold War• Rather than an era of peace, mutual good feelings, and

economic prosperity, the world plunged from World War II into the Cold War

• Pitted nations aligned with the Western Allies against USSR-backed Warsaw Pact countries

• Germany remained divided for over forty years• Some believe that Truman and Churchill sacrificed places

like Poland and East Germany to appease the Soviets• As Stalin pointed out, the Soviets had done a majority of the dying

during the war, and they deserved this new sphere of influence• The Cold War will come to dominate global geopolitics for

most of the rest of the 20th century

Legacy of the Second World War• Rebuilding Europe

• Marshall Plan• United Nations & EU• Social Welfare

• Clem Attlee & the UK• Women at Work• Anti-Collaborationism• Death Knell of Fascism• GI Bill

Activity Time!

Activity Directions1. Break up into groups of 4.2. Each person in the group answers one of the 4

questions on the handout.3. Share your answer with your group. It is okay (and even

encouraged) for members of a group to disagree.4. Once each group has worked through the questions,

we’ll reconvene and discuss the questions as a class.