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Nazi's Final Solution
Hitler's "Final Solution" was genocide; the willful annihilation of a racial, political, or cultural group. He opened his first concentration camp where members of specially designated groups were confined. Some early camps included Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Ravensbruck. The camps were designed not to kill the prisoners, but to turn them into "useful members" of the Third Reich. They also imprisoned political prisoners and anyone who spoke out against Hitler. -
Concentration Camps
Nazi's tattooed numbers on the arms of prisoners and dressed them in vertically striped uniforms with triangle insignias. There were no restraints on sadistic guards who killed and tortured prisoners without fear of reprisal. They could do whatever they pleased and not get in trouble. Death by starvation and disease were an everyday occurence. Doctors performed experiements on prisoners that either killed them or left them deformed. Bodied were mutilated without anesthesia. They died in agony. -
Death Camps
Death camps were where prisoners were systemically exterminated. Reinhard Heidrich was a SS leader who put in a plan to kill 11,000,000 Jews in Polish death camps at the Wannsee Conference. The largest death camp was Auschwitz in southern Poland. Prisoners were transported to these camps by train and murdered. They were forced in death chambers and were killed with poisonous gas. Cramped showers released insecticide Zyklon B. Camps without chambers simply shot and buried prisoners in ditches. -
Nazi's Begin the Persecution
Hitler persecuted Jews. He started by urging Germans to boycott Jewish owned businesses. He also banned Jews from jobs in civil service, banking, the stock exchange, law, journalism, and medicine. The Nuremburg Laws were created which denied German citizenship to Jews, banned marriage of Jews and non-Jews, and segregated Jews at every level of society. He then thought of his "Final Solution" which would cause more violence against Jews. -
Kristallnaacht
Acts of violence against Jews were common. The most serious attack was known as Kristallnaacht or "The Night of Broken Glass". Nazi officials ordered attacks on Jews in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Secret police and military units destroyed more than 1,500 synagogues and 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses. They also killed 200 Jews and injured more than 600 others. -
The Manhattan Project
"The Manhattan Project" was the codename for the making of the atomic bomb. Tens of thousands of people were hired for the project. The two primary leaders were Leslie Groves, who was in charge of buliding the facilities, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of the scientific aspects. Oak Ridge, Tennessee was a city that was a big part in making the bomb. The first test run of the bomb was seen for 180 miles and heard 100 miles away. -
Valkyrie
Colonel Claus von Stauffenbers attempted to assassinate Hitler. He planted a bomb at Hitler's headquarters. His headquarters was called the "Wolf's Lair". The bomb killed and wounded 20 people. Hitler was not one of those 20. He escaped and survived. -
Iwo Jima & Okinawa
Iwo Jima was one of the fiercest battles of the island hopping campaign. The Japanese were dug in along the 5 mile island that was only 650 miles from Tokyo. 23,000 marines were killed but they took the island. Okinawa was an even deadlier fight. It contained a vital airbase, necessary for the attack on Japan. It involved 500,000 troops and 1,213 warships. The United States lost 50,000 troops. -
Hitler Dies
By the time the Americans, British and Russians reached Berlin, Hitler was a mess. He was shaken by tremors, paranoid from drugs, and kept alive by mad dreams of final victory. No one would follow any orders Hitler gave and no one fought in the campaigns he set up. He and a few of his closest men committed suicide on this day and he even killed his dogs too. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
U.S. pilots dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Within 2 minutes, 60,000 people were killed. Over the next 3 days, Japan didn't know whether or not to surrender. The U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki afterwards and killed an additional 35,000 people. The Enola Gay was the name of the plane that dropped these bombs. 95,000 in total were killed.
