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What was the impact on World War 2?

What was the impact on World War 2?

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What was the impact on World War 2?
Around 60 million people died in WWI. Partly responsible for this horrendous toll were the new technologies of warfare - heavy bombers, jet fighters, missiles, and atomic weapons. Nowhere was that blurring more complete than in the Soviet Union, which accounted for more than 40 percent of the total deaths in the war probably around 25 million, with an equal number made homeless and thousands of towns, villages, and industrial enterprises destroyed. German actions fulfilled Hitler's instructions to his leading generals: "The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion; the struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, - millien wi unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law... will be excused." In China as wellI, perhaps 15 million people died and uncounted numbers became refugees as a result of prolonged Chinese resistance and the shattering Japanese response, including the killing of every person and every animal in many villages. Within a few months, during the infamous Rape of Nanjing in 1937-1938, some 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed and often mutilated, and countless women were sexually assaulted. German bombing of British cities and the Allied firebombing of Japanese and German cities likewise reflected the new morality of total war, as did the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which in a single instant vaporized tens of thousands of people. Atomic bombs are much deadlier than previous weapons because they use volatile nuclear materials to generate disastrous explosions. A few nuclear weapons could feasibly make the earth uninhabitable. This was total war with a scale, intensity, and indiscriminate brutality that exceeded even the horrors of World War I. We Can Do k! As in World War I, though on a much larger scale, the needs of the war drew huge numbers of women into both industry and * Copyright: Achievement First. Unless otherwise noted, all of the content in this resource is licensed under a Creative Com BY) license the military. In the United States, "Rosie the Riveter" represented those women who now took on heavy industrial jobs, which previously had been reserved for men. In the Soviet Union, women constituted more than half of the industrial workforce by 1945 and almost completely dominated agricultural production. Soviet women also participated actively in combat, with some 100,000 of them winning military honors. much smaller percentage of German and Japanese women were mobilized for factory work, but a Greater Japan Women's Society enrolled some 19 million members, who did volunteer obilized Figure - Rosie the Riveter work and promised to lay aside their gold jewelry and abandon extravagant weddings. As always, war heightened the prestige of masculinity, and given the immense sacrifices that men had made, few women were inclined to directly challenge the practices of patriarchy immediately following the war. Among the most haunting outcomes of the war was the Holocaust. The outbreak of that war closed off certain possibilities, such as forced emigration, for implementing the Nazi dream of ridding Germany of its Jewish population. It also brought millions of additional Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union under German control and triggered among Hitler's enthusiastic subordinates various schemes for a "final solution" to the lewish question, From this emerged the death camps that included Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. Altogether, some 6 million Jews perished in a illion lou technologically sophisticated form of mass murder that set a new standard for buman human depravity. Millions more whom the Nazis deemed inferior, undesirable, or dangerous – Russians, Poles, and other Slavs; Gypsies, or the Roma; mentally or physically handicapped people; homosexuals; communists; and Jehovah's Witnesses - likewise perished in Germany's efforts at racial purification.
Transcribed Image Text:Around 60 million people died in WWI. Partly responsible for this horrendous toll were the new technologies of warfare - heavy bombers, jet fighters, missiles, and atomic weapons. Nowhere was that blurring more complete than in the Soviet Union, which accounted for more than 40 percent of the total deaths in the war probably around 25 million, with an equal number made homeless and thousands of towns, villages, and industrial enterprises destroyed. German actions fulfilled Hitler's instructions to his leading generals: "The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion; the struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, - millien wi unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law... will be excused." In China as wellI, perhaps 15 million people died and uncounted numbers became refugees as a result of prolonged Chinese resistance and the shattering Japanese response, including the killing of every person and every animal in many villages. Within a few months, during the infamous Rape of Nanjing in 1937-1938, some 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed and often mutilated, and countless women were sexually assaulted. German bombing of British cities and the Allied firebombing of Japanese and German cities likewise reflected the new morality of total war, as did the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which in a single instant vaporized tens of thousands of people. Atomic bombs are much deadlier than previous weapons because they use volatile nuclear materials to generate disastrous explosions. A few nuclear weapons could feasibly make the earth uninhabitable. This was total war with a scale, intensity, and indiscriminate brutality that exceeded even the horrors of World War I. We Can Do k! As in World War I, though on a much larger scale, the needs of the war drew huge numbers of women into both industry and * Copyright: Achievement First. Unless otherwise noted, all of the content in this resource is licensed under a Creative Com BY) license the military. In the United States, "Rosie the Riveter" represented those women who now took on heavy industrial jobs, which previously had been reserved for men. In the Soviet Union, women constituted more than half of the industrial workforce by 1945 and almost completely dominated agricultural production. Soviet women also participated actively in combat, with some 100,000 of them winning military honors. much smaller percentage of German and Japanese women were mobilized for factory work, but a Greater Japan Women's Society enrolled some 19 million members, who did volunteer obilized Figure - Rosie the Riveter work and promised to lay aside their gold jewelry and abandon extravagant weddings. As always, war heightened the prestige of masculinity, and given the immense sacrifices that men had made, few women were inclined to directly challenge the practices of patriarchy immediately following the war. Among the most haunting outcomes of the war was the Holocaust. The outbreak of that war closed off certain possibilities, such as forced emigration, for implementing the Nazi dream of ridding Germany of its Jewish population. It also brought millions of additional Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union under German control and triggered among Hitler's enthusiastic subordinates various schemes for a "final solution" to the lewish question, From this emerged the death camps that included Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. Altogether, some 6 million Jews perished in a illion lou technologically sophisticated form of mass murder that set a new standard for buman human depravity. Millions more whom the Nazis deemed inferior, undesirable, or dangerous – Russians, Poles, and other Slavs; Gypsies, or the Roma; mentally or physically handicapped people; homosexuals; communists; and Jehovah's Witnesses - likewise perished in Germany's efforts at racial purification.
Although the Holocaust occurred mostly in Germany, its significance in twentieth- century world history has been huge. It has haunted post-war Germany in particular and the Western world in general. How could such a thing have occurred in a Europe - where both Christianity and the Enlightenment flourished? More specifically, it sent many of Europe's remaining Jews fleeing to Israel (thought to be the homeland of Jewish people in the Middle East) and gave urgency to the establishment of a modern Jewish nation in the ancient Jewish homeland. That action outraged many Arabs, some of whom were displaced (driven off their land) by the arrival of the Jews, and has fostered an enduring conflict in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Holocaust defined a new category of crimes against humanity – genocide, the attempted elimination of entire peoples. Universal condemnation of the Holocaust, however, did not end the practice, as cases of mass slaughter in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan have demonstrated. 2
Transcribed Image Text:Although the Holocaust occurred mostly in Germany, its significance in twentieth- century world history has been huge. It has haunted post-war Germany in particular and the Western world in general. How could such a thing have occurred in a Europe - where both Christianity and the Enlightenment flourished? More specifically, it sent many of Europe's remaining Jews fleeing to Israel (thought to be the homeland of Jewish people in the Middle East) and gave urgency to the establishment of a modern Jewish nation in the ancient Jewish homeland. That action outraged many Arabs, some of whom were displaced (driven off their land) by the arrival of the Jews, and has fostered an enduring conflict in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Holocaust defined a new category of crimes against humanity – genocide, the attempted elimination of entire peoples. Universal condemnation of the Holocaust, however, did not end the practice, as cases of mass slaughter in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan have demonstrated. 2
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