World War 2

Project by Ginny (P6) Date:22.02.10

 Introduction

• World War II involved ¾ of the

world's population i.e. 61
countries and 1.7 billion people.

• 100’s of millions people were

injured and 50 million people
lost their lives.
This man was selling newspapers in
Britain on 3 September 1939. How
do you think people felt when they
saw the headlines ?
Introduction cont/

• WW2 was fought in Europe, Russia, North

Africa and in Asia.

• About 40 million who died were just civilians.

(normal people)

• World War Two in Europe began on 3rd

September 1939, when the Prime Minister of
Britain, Neville Chamberlain declared war on
Germany.

Children as well as adults were affected by the war.

Who fought in the Second World War

2 groups fought.

1.Axis Powers –They

included . Germany, Italy
and Japan.

2.Allies - They included

Britain, France, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand,
India, the Soviet Union,
China and the United
States of America.
This poster shows Allied men marching
together. They include men from Czechoslovakia,
Poland, France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway
(all countries occupied by the Nazis).
Adolph Hitler and the Nazi’s

• Germany was ruled by a man called

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Political Party.

• Hitler wanted Germany to control

Europe. Japan wanted to control Asia
and the Pacific. In 1937 Japan attacked
China. In 1939 Germany
invaded Poland.

• This is how World War 2 began.

• Some countries did not join the war,

but stayed neutral (on neither side).
Spain, Sweden and Switzerland were
neutral countries. So was Ireland,
though many Irish people helped the Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was
Allies. 'Der Führer' (German for 'the
leader') of Nazi Germany
The war spreads
Britain and France initially went to war with
Germany in September 1939.

They wanted to help Poland after it was

invaded, but they were too late. Poland
was occupied by the Nazis.

By 1940 the Nazi’s had conquered Holland,

and bombed Rotterdam, killing civilians
and levelling buildings.

Dutch forces surrendered on May 15.

Queen Wilhelmina and other government
officials went into exile in England.

Then the Nazi’s invaded Belgium, France,

Denmark and Norway.

Enemy planes dropped bombs on cities in

Britain. Allied ships were sunk by
submarines.

In 1941 the Soviet Union (Russia) was German bombers fly to attack Britain.
attacked by Germany. These planes are two-engined Heinkel
IIIs, photographed during the Battle of
Britain in 1940
 This map
shows the
movements
of both the
Allies and the
Axis forces.
Map

In 1941 America finally also joined the war, after Japan attacked
the American naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
Many Children were affected by the war

Children
were
affected by
the
Holocast,
civilian
children and
children of
the
Allied
forces.

Families
were
separated
and some
children
were
orphaned
and never
saw their
brothers, These Polish children had to leave their homes,
sisters or
A farewell kiss -A soldier kissing his after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Notice
parents
daughter goodbye before he leaves again. the horse-drawn carts, piled with refugees'
Britain belongings
The Holocast, Anti-
Anti-Semitism

• The Holocaust is a term generally used to describe the genocide of

approximately 6 million European Jews during World War II, during a
programme of state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany.

• The definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis'

systematic murder of millions of people in other groups,
including ethnic Poles, Romani (gypsies), Soviet civilians (Russian
people), Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, Jehovah's
Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents.

• By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims would be

between 11 million and 17 million people.
Protecting British civilians during the war

• Children and some women were evacuated from the

big cities into the countryside.

• People carried gas masks to protect themselves

against a possible gas attack.

• People built air raid shelters in their gardens.

• All windows and doors were blacked out to make it

harder for the enemy planes to spot where they lived.
The effect of the war on people?

• World War II brought a lot of suffering and hardship to

thousands of people.

• German bombers made terrifying night raids.

• Families were broken up as men were sent to the front lines to

fight, some never to return.

• Children were sent out of the cities to stay with strangers, away
from the bombing.

• Shops were half empty of things to buy and what was available
was often rationed.

• The peaceful routine of everyday life was shattered.

 Conscription in Britian
• At the start of the war, some 875,000 men volunteered to join the
army.

• Other allied countries were able to raise much larger armies due to
compulsory enrolling in the army.

• So early in WW2 all men aged 18 – 41, not working in 'reserved

occupations' were told that they could be called to join the armed
services.

• Soon after men aged 20 - 23 had to register to serve in either the

army, the navy or the air force.

• As the war continued men from the other age groups received their
'call-up' papers requiring them to serve.

• In 1941, even single women 20 - 30 were also conscripted. Women did

not take part in the fighting but were required to take up work in
reserved occupations - to allow men to go into the services.

Men who were too old, young or not completely fit joined the Home Guard,
known as Dad's Army.
 cont/

The persecution / genocide were carried out in stages.

• Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was started years
before World War II.

• Concentration camps were established, in which inmates were used

as slave labour until they died of either exhaustion or disease.

• Where the Third Reich (Nazi’s/Hitler) conquered new territory in

eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen also
murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.

• Jews and Romani were confined in overcrowded ghettos before

being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if
they survived the journey, the majority of them were systematically
killed in gas chambers.
Every arm of Nazi Germany was involved in the logistics of the mass murder.
 The Holocast

• It's thought 6 million Jews were killed.

Among the victims were many children.

• One young girl left a diary of her life in

hiding, before she was captured. Her
name was Anne Frank. She died, aged 15,
in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen prison camp.
Explaining the Gas Chambers
1.The railway carriages were unloaded, one after
another.

2.After leaving their luggage, Jews had to pass

individually in front of an SS doctor, who decided if
they were fit enough for work.

3.Those fit enough were taken off into small groups.

The rest were taken to the gas chambers, the men
being separated from the women.

4.After undressing they went into the gas chambers,

which were furnished with showers and water pipes
and looked like a real bath house.
 Concentration Camps
After Hitlers rise to power, he began
the creation of these concentration
camps.

At first they were designed for political

prisoners (enemies), criminals and
security risks.

Conditions were horrible and the

death rates high from malnutrition,
typhus and exhaustion that the
disposal of corpses became a serious
problem.

By the late 1930s there were 100’s of

camps throughout Germany, with the
Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia,
Austria, Poland, Holland and France,
camps were established throughout
the Reich.
In Dachau, one of the largest camps in
Germany - proper, crematoria were
constructed for disposal of corpses. There
was also a gas chambers constructed at
Dachau;
 Auschwitz
Auschwit - The Death Camp

• Auschwitz-Birkenau, is the
most well known of all the Nazi
death camps.

• But it was just 1 of 6

‘extermination’ camps, it was
also a labour concentration
camp, extracting prisoners'
"value" from them, in the form
of hard labour, for weeks or
months.

• As the prisoners weakened

from disease, or the starvation
rations, or overwork, they were
selected to be taken to the gas
chambers.
Auschwitz-Birkenau cont/

• By January 1944, 27,000 women

were at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

• Small kids were killed immediately

because they were too young to
work.

• Mothers who held their babies in

their arms were
gassed. Grandmothers that were
with their grandchildren were killed,
too.

• The prisoners couldn’t drink the

water because it was to
contaminated.
Auschwitz - How Many Were Murdered?
Total Registered
Prisoners Gassed
Arrival Total Died Survive Deaths
Nationalit d
y
Jews 890,000 205,000 95,000 110,000
985,00
Poles 10,000 137,000 64,000 73,000 0
74,000
Romany 2,000 2,000 21,000 2,000 21,000
Soviet 3,000 12,000 12,000 ------- 15,000
POWs
Other 25,000 12,000 13,000 13,000

Totals 905,000 400,000 202,000 198,000 1,208,0

00
 Terrible Food and Hard Work

• The food they got was watery soup with rotten vegetables or meat, a few
ounces of bread, a bit of margarine, tea or a bitter drink resembling coffee.

• The forced labourers inside the camp worked in the kitchen or as barbers.

• Women often sorted the piles of shoes, cloths and other prisoners’
belongings.

• Day as a life as a prisoner was divided in a long series of duties and

commands.

• This is their daily routine- ordinary day- wake up at dawn, straightening their
bed, morning roll call, and journey to work hours of hard labour.

• Then standing in a line for a meal, return to camp, block inspection, and
evening roll call. “In a camp, a small time unit, a day for example, filled with
hourly tortures appeared endless.” said a survivor called Victor Frank.
 The largest graveyard!

• Auschwitz was the largest graveyard in human history.

• Early in the morning Roll- call occurred and late

afternoon, when prisoners came back from work.

• Sometimes even in the middle of the night they had roll-

call. The prisoners had to stand there in cold, rain, and
snow and if they moved they were sent to be gassed.

• Those who selected to die were undressed and shoved

in the chamber.

• It takes 20 minutes for all the prisoners in a group to die.

More prisoners and forced tattoo’s
• July 12, 1944, 92,208 prisoners were
in Auschwitz.

• Newly arriving people were taken to

special buildings called Badeanstulten.

• The prisoners had to undress and took

to the “Barbers” where their hair was
shaved off.

• They took ice-cold or boiling hot

showers and washed with bad smelling
blue-green liquor.

• After that they were tattooed. The

tattoo that was on the arm was sewed
on the left arm of their clothes, too.

• The men had to wear rags that were

striped black and white. The women
had to wear black and white work
dresses.
Buchenwald Tattoo
 There were also Death Marches…

• In the beginning of 1945 almost 60,000 prisoners,

mostly Jews, were forced on death marches to a place
called,Wodzislaw.

• SS guards (Nazi’s) shot prisoners who could not keep up.

Prisoners were provided with no food or very little food
on death marches.

• Most were killed on the marches. Some were even

murdered before they left the camp.
 Terrifying Experiments

• At Auschwitz they did

horrible medical
experiments using
prisoners and even
children as the guinea
pigs.

• An example of A very bad man was Dr. Josef Mengle

and his favourite experiments were on
experiments in “Block 10 twins. Experiments were also done on
horrors is that prisoners dwarfs. Hypothermia experiments were
carried out using Gypsies as the main
we given skin injections subjects.
for reactions to
He was finally arrested in 1955 and died
substances. mysteriously in his cell in 1957.
 Winston Churchill
1874 - 1965

Churchill was a
politician and
wartime prime
minister who led
Britain to victory in
World War Two.
 Winston Churchill’s speech 4 June 1940

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,

we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in
the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,

we shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;

we shall NEVER surrender !

 The war ended….
• By 1943 the Allies were winning. One
reason was that Allied factories were
building thousands of tanks, ships
and planes. In 1944, a huge Allied
army crossed from Britain to liberate
(free) France. Then Allied armies
invaded Germany.

• By May 1945 the war in Europe was

over.

• The Pacific war went on until August

1945. There was fierce fighting on
Pacific islands and big naval battles at
sea. Finally, the Allies dropped atomic
bombs on two Japanese cities,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The
damage was so terrible that Japan
surrendered.

World War 2 had ended !

 Survivors
The following eye-witness account
of the gas chamber in Bergen-
Belsen was published in the
Montreal Gazette:
August 5, 1993
Surviving the horror

As an 11 year-old boy held captive

at the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp during World
War II, Moshe Peer was sent to
the gas chamber at least six times.
Victims at the Bergen Belsen concentration
camp.
Each time he survived, watching
with horror as many of the women Dr. Fritz Klein, standing center, selected
and children gassed with him victims for the gas chambers.
collapsed and died. To this day,
Peer doesn't know how he was In this picture, he was forced to move
able to survive. "Maybe children victims to a mass grave after the camp was
liberated by British soldiers.
resist better, I don't know," he said.
Remembrance Day / Poppy Day
Remembrance Day is on 11
November. It is a special day
set aside to remember all those
men and women who were
killed during the two World
Wars and other conflicts. At
one time the day was known
as Armistice Day and was
renamed Remembrance
Day after the Second World
War.
The "Last Post" is traditionally played to
Wreaths are layed beside war introduce the two minute silence in
memorials by companies, clubs Remembrance Day ceremonies.
and societies.
It is usually ' played on a bugle. (In military
life, 'The Last Post' marks the end of the day
People also leave small and the final farewell.)
wooden crosses by the
memorials in remembrance of
a family member who died in
war.
 References:
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/world_at_war/
• http://us.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01/11/obit.miep.gies/index.html
• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_were_gas_chambers_in_World_War_
2
• http://www.kawvalley.k12.ks.us/schools/rjh/marneyg/03_holocaust-
projects/03_Brown_Auschwitz.htm
• http://www.scrapbookpages.com/BergenBelsen/BergenBelsen04.html
• http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/02/of_fallibility_and_i
mmorality.html
• http://www.presentationmagazine.com/winston_churchill_speech_fight_
them_on_beaches.htm
• http://www.life.com/image/53370400/in-gallery/22978/wwii-liberation-of-
the-camps
• http://www.footnote.com/document/29019904/