germany 1940s
Cards (12)
- Final solution1941 - 1945
- Final solution details*The Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews*It was the last stage of the Holocaust
- Wansee conference1942
- Wansee conference details*At this meeting it was agreed that all Jews under German occupation would be brought to Poland, where those fit enough would be worked to death and the rest exterminated*This led to the horror of the Nazi death camps, six of which were built specifically to murder those brought to them
- Area Bombing1942
- Area bombing details*This was the strategy of the British Air Force from 1942 onward*Instead of trying to hit specific targets, they bombed whole cities*Over the next 3 years: 61 German cities, with a combined population of 25 million, were attacked; 3.6 million homes were destroyed; 7.5 million people were made homeless; 300,000 - 400,000 Germans were killed in the raids; and 800,000 people were wounded
- White Rose Group1942 - 1943
- White Rose Group details*Formed by students at Munich University*Led by brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl.*They published anti-Nazi leaflets and marched through the city in protest at Nazi policies*Its leaders were eventually arrested and sentenced to the guillotine
- July Bomb Plot1944
- July Bomb Plot details*A group of army officers tried to assassinate Hitler. A bomb was planted by Colonel Stauffenberg at a meeting attended by Hitler*It exploded, but Hitler survived*In retaliation, Stauffenberg was shot the same day and 5,000 people were executed in the crackdown on opposition that followed*The great German general Field Marshal Erwin van Romell was implicated in the plot and was forced to commit suicide as punishment for his involvement
- Germany's defeat1945
- Germany's defeat details*The first German defeat in Europe came at Stalingrad in February 1943*Later, in 1945, Germany was invaded from both the east and west. The allied forces in the west, led by American divisions, crossed the Rhine into Germany from the beginning of March*By April the Soviet forces had encircled Berlin in the east, and Hitler committed suicide there on April 30*Germany surrendered to the Allies a few days later*Germany was then occupied and divided into four military zones, each controlled by one of the four allied powers: USSR, USA, Britain and France. Its capital Berlin was similarly divided amongst the occupiers.