Two World Wars and the Holocaust

Many countries entered the First World War, also called World War I. It lasted from 1914 to 1918. Fighting spread across continents and oceans. People living through it often called it the Great War.

Tensions before the shooting

Europe's powerful countries had competed for years. Remember four causes with MAIN:

• Militarism: countries built stronger armies and navies and prepared for war. Britain and Germany competed to build battleships.
• Alliances: countries made promises to help one another. France and Russia had a military alliance. Britain had friendly agreements with both, called the Triple Entente together. Britain's agreements did not require it to fight.
• Imperialism: countries extended their power over other lands and peoples. Competition for colonies and trade increased their rivalries.
• Nationalism: strong loyalty to a nation could create hostility toward others. Some peoples also wanted freedom from empires ruling them.

Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy belonged to the Triple Alliance before 1914. But Italy later fought on the opposite side. An agreement before a war does not always tell you who eventually fought together.

The trigger and the choices that followed

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo. Princip wanted Bosnia freed from Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war on July 28.

Follow the widening circle. Russia prepared its army to support Serbia. Germany supported Austria-Hungary and declared war on Russia, then France. German troops entered neutral Belgium on August 4 to attack France. Neutral means a country has not taken sides. Britain declared war on Germany after this invasion; Britain had promised to protect Belgium.

The shooting was the trigger, the event setting off the crisis. The rivalries were long-term causes, pressures built over years. Saying only “a shooting caused the war” leaves out why other governments joined.

Who fought?

The Allies included Britain and its empire, France, Russia, Belgium and Serbia. Italy joined in 1915; the United States joined in 1917. The Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Colonies supplied soldiers, workers and goods too. Some countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, remained neutral.

Many volunteers expected a short war. Instead, the fighting lasted more than four years.

By late 1914, Germany's advance in France had stopped. Soldiers on both sides dug trenches, long ditches offering protection from enemy fire. The Western Front stretched from Belgium's coast to Switzerland. Other fighting took place in eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and at sea.

A trench was part of a system

Front-line trenches faced the enemy. Support and reserve trenches lay behind them. Communication trenches linked the lines, allowing supplies and soldiers to move. The trenches zigzagged so gunfire could not travel along an entire line.

Sandbags strengthened the edges. Duckboards covered parts of the muddy floor. Dugouts offered shelter. Between enemy lines lay no man's land, dangerous open ground, often covered with barbed wire.

Daily life involved keeping watch, carrying supplies and repairing walls. Soldiers stood ready for attacks at dawn and dusk. Much work happened at night, when darkness gave some cover. Rats, lice, wet clothes and cold made life miserable. Wet feet could develop trench foot, a painful injury. Dry socks helped protect them.

Soldiers rotated between the front, support lines and rest areas. Letters, food parcels and time away from the front mattered greatly.

Why moving forward was so difficult

Machine guns fired rapidly. Artillery fired explosive shells from far away. Soldiers leaving cover could face both. Barbed wire slowed them further. Neither army could easily break through: this was a stalemate.

Poison gas added danger from 1915. Gas masks offered protection. Tanks first entered battle in 1916. Airplanes watched enemy positions and later fought in the air.

At the Somme in 1916, Allied guns bombarded German defenses before an attack. Follow why the plan failed on the first day:

1. Many German soldiers survived inside deep dugouts.
2. Much barbed wire remained uncut.
3. Attacking soldiers faced machine guns while crossing open ground.

The British army suffered about 57,000 casualties that day; about 19,000 were killed. Casualties include people wounded, missing or captured, as well as those killed. After months of fighting, the Allies had gained only about 6 miles (10 kilometers).

People from around the world

Soldiers came from India, Canada, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Chinese workers built roads and unloaded supplies. ANZAC soldiers from Australia and New Zealand fought at Gallipoli in 1915.

Some enemies briefly met peacefully during the Christmas Truce of 1914. These local pauses did not end the war.

A soldier needed food, clothing, weapons and transport. Millions of soldiers needed huge supplies. The home front meant the people and work away from the battlefields. Governments organized factories and farms to keep their armies going. This was total war, involving whole societies.

New work and new dangers

Women made shells in munitions factories, drove buses and trams, and worked on farms. Nurses cared for wounded soldiers near the fighting. Factory chemicals and accidents made some jobs dangerous.

Women's work challenged old ideas about what women could do. Many lost their wartime jobs when men returned. Voting rights nevertheless widened in several countries after the war. Germany granted women voting rights in 1918, the Netherlands in 1919, and the United States in 1920. Britain's change in 1918 covered many women over 30, not all adult women.

Supplying an army could mean shortages at home

Britain's navy blocked supplies reaching Germany. German submarines, called U-boats, attacked ships supplying Britain. A failed potato harvest made Germany's winter of 1916–1917 especially hard. People ate turnips in place of foods they could no longer get.

Rationing limited how much scarce food each person could buy. Britain introduced food rationing in 1918. A fixed allowance aimed to share limited supplies; it did not mean shops had no food at all.

Messages, children and families

Governments used propaganda to encourage support. Posters might urge men to join the army or families to save food. A picture and a short slogan could stir pride or fear while leaving out hardships.

Try reading a poster step by step. First, notice who made it. Next, ask what action it wants. Finally, notice what it leaves out. A recruiting poster praising adventure may say little about wounds or long separation.

Children collected materials for war supplies and waited for family news. Some boys lied about their ages to enlist. Sidney Lewis joined Britain's army at 12 and fought at the Somme at 13 before being sent home.

Home could be dangerous too. German airships called Zeppelins bombed British towns. Occupation placed civilians under enemy rule in Belgium and northern France. Many Belgians fled as refugees. In occupied Brussels, nurse Edith Cavell helped Allied soldiers escape. German authorities executed her in 1915.

The fighting stopped in 1918. Agreeing on the peace took longer. Two words help you keep these events separate: armistice and treaty.

Why Germany could not keep fighting

The United States joined the Allies in April 1917. Large numbers of fresh American troops arrived in 1918. Russia left the war after revolution and signed peace with Germany in March 1918.

Germany's spring attack in 1918 failed to win the war. From August, the Allies pushed its army back. Germany's partners surrendered, supplies ran short, and people rebelled. Kaiser Wilhelm II gave up his throne. Germany became a republic, without a king or emperor.

An armistice is an agreement to stop fighting. This one took effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918. A peace treaty sets out terms after a war.

What Versailles required

The winners met in Paris in 1919. The leaders of France, Britain and the United States had the strongest voices. Germany could not negotiate the terms. It signed the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

Remember four main terms: blame, pay, land and army.

The Rhineland had to remain free of German troops. Reparations were set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks. Germany lost about 13 percent of its European territory. Alsace-Lorraine returned to France; other areas went to Belgium and Poland.

Many French people wanted protection after huge destruction. Many Germans felt humiliated by terms they had not helped decide. Those different experiences help explain the disagreement.

A changed world

Around 10 million military personnel had died, alongside millions of civilians. Wounded survivors needed care. Some suffered mental injuries then called shell shock. Homes, farmland and towns lay ruined.

The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires broke up. Countries including Poland and Czechoslovakia appeared on the new map. The League of Nations began in 1920 to settle disputes peacefully. The United States never joined.

The treaty's terms fed anger that Hitler later used. But a peace treaty alone cannot explain the next war. Economic crises, Nazi aims and later decisions also mattered.

After 1918, Germans could vote for their parliament, the Reichstag. Their new democracy became known as the Weimar Republic, after the town where its constitution was written. Both men and women aged 20 and over could vote.

Blame and a false story

Many people blamed democratic leaders for accepting Versailles. Another claim said Germany's army had been betrayed at home. This was a myth, a widely believed false story. It wrongly blamed Jews and socialists. Germany's army leaders had themselves asked for an armistice because Germany could not keep fighting.

A difficult situation can make a simple blame story attractive. But blaming a group does not explain what really happened.

When money stopped holding its value

Inflation means prices keep rising. Hyperinflation means they rise extremely quickly. In 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr after Germany failed to meet reparation payments. Germany's government printed huge amounts of money. Its value collapsed.

Imagine your savings still contain the same number of marks. Yesterday they bought food for several days. Today they buy much less. The number has stayed the same, but its buying power has fallen.

The bread-price example shows the scale: a Berlin loaf costing about 250 marks in January 1923 cost about 200 billion by November. Workers rushed to spend wages before prices rose again. A new currency helped end this crisis in November 1923.

A second crisis brought mass unemployment

Germany's economy improved between 1924 and 1929, helped by American loans. The Great Depression, a worldwide economic crisis, began after the 1929 stock market crash. American banks demanded loan repayments. German factories closed and workers lost jobs. By 1932, about six million Germans were unemployed.

Keep the two crises in order. The 1923 problem was money rapidly losing value. The later Depression closed businesses and destroyed jobs. They happened years apart.

As families struggled, parties in parliament argued over solutions. More voters supported extreme parties that wanted to end democracy. The Nazis promised work and national strength. Communists also gained support.

Hard times helped the Nazis attract listeners. They did not force Germany to become a dictatorship. Voters and political leaders still made choices, and those choices mattered.

Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party. He promised a strong Germany and an end to Versailles. Nazi ideas combined aggressive nationalism, racism and hatred of Jews. Antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. Nazi claims that some “races” were superior were false.

Winning support and frightening opponents

Hitler's attempt to seize power in Munich failed in 1923. Later, the Nazis sought votes. They used posters, radio, huge meetings and slogans promising jobs. Their SA squads attacked political opponents.

In July 1932, the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the vote. They became the largest party, but that is less than half. The Nazis never won a majority in a free national election.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor, the head of government. Conservative politicians thought they could control him. Appointment to that job did not give Hitler the right to destroy democracy. He used the position to do so.

Removing the ways people could challenge him

Follow the steps:

1. After the Reichstag fire in February 1933, an emergency law removed freedoms, including free speech.
2. In March, the Enabling Act let Hitler make laws without parliament.
3. Free trade unions were shut down in May. By July, all political parties except the Nazis were banned.
4. After Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler combined leadership roles and called himself Führer, meaning leader.

Each step removed a way to oppose him. Without free newspapers, people could not openly challenge official claims. Without rival parties, voters could not choose a different government.

Democracy and dictatorship

Calling Hitler “elected dictator” mixes up different events. More voters supported the Nazis during the Depression. Hindenburg then appointed Hitler chancellor. Hitler and his supporters destroyed democratic freedoms afterward.

Nazi plans also reached beyond Germany. Hitler wanted to conquer land in eastern Europe, using the phrase “living space” to justify taking other people's homes and freedom.

The Nazis wanted control over what people did and believed. They used both fear and carefully chosen messages. Children met those messages at school and in youth groups.

Fear and control of information

The Gestapo, the secret police, could arrest people without a trial. The Nazis opened Dachau concentration camp in March 1933. Early prisoners included Communists, Social Democrats and trade union members. People could be imprisoned for opposing Nazi rule.

Joseph Goebbels led the propaganda ministry. It controlled newspapers, radio and films. Propaganda promoted Nazi messages. Censorship stopped unwanted ideas from reaching people. The two worked together: one spread the approved message; the other blocked criticism.

In May 1933, Nazis and students publicly burned books by Jewish writers and other authors they opposed. Cheap radios helped government speeches reach many homes.

Shaping children's lives

Schools praised Hitler and taught false ideas about human “races.” Teachers who disagreed could lose their jobs. The Hitler Youth for boys and League of German Girls combined camping and sports with Nazi teaching. Boys prepared for soldiering; girls were directed toward motherhood and housework. Membership became compulsory in 1939.

Some young people resisted. The Edelweiss Pirates rejected Nazi control, met secretly and sang banned songs. Their actions show that joining in was not everyone's choice.

Different experiences in the same country

Government building projects and weapons production created jobs. Some Germans supported Hitler because their own lives improved. But workers lost independent trade unions, and open criticism became dangerous.

Jews and other targeted groups lost jobs, access to places and basic rights. The Nazis persecuted Roma and Sinti, Black Germans, disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, gay men and political opponents too.

Consider a school in late 1938. A non-Jewish pupil might still attend and take part in official activities. A Jewish child was barred from German public schools after November 15. Separate Jewish schools continued until the Nazis closed them in 1942. The school rule was persecution, backed by government power.

Some Germans agreed with the Nazis, some benefited, some were afraid, and some resisted. Those differences matter when you explain people's actions. “Every German was a Nazi” hides them.

Hitler wanted to overturn Versailles and conquer land. The Second World War, also called World War II, grew from those aims and the failure to stop aggression. Its usual dates are 1939 to 1945, although war in Asia began earlier.

Taking more, step by step

Germany left the League of Nations in 1933. In 1935, Hitler openly built up armed forces forbidden by Versailles. German troops entered the Rhineland in 1936. Germany took over Austria in March 1938.

Next, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia with many German-speaking people. At Munich in September 1938, Britain, France and Italy agreed to let Germany take it. Czechoslovakia was excluded from the meeting.

This policy was appeasement: giving an aggressive country concessions to avoid war. Many people remembered the terrible losses of 1914–1918. Britain and France also needed time to prepare their forces. Some leaders believed the Versailles settlement had been too harsh.

In March 1939, Germany occupied the rest of the Czech lands. Hitler's actions showed that his demands went beyond uniting German speakers. Britain and France now promised to defend Poland.

Poland is invaded

Germany and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact in August 1939. Publicly, they promised not to attack each other. Secretly, they agreed to divide Poland.

Follow the dates:

1. September 1: Germany invaded Poland from the west.
2. September 3: Britain and France declared war on Germany.
3. September 17: the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.

Poland was defeated and divided. The war in Europe had begun.

Looking beyond Europe

Japan seized Manchuria in China in 1931 and began a full war against China in 1937. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The League of Nations failed to stop these attacks. These events help explain why this became a world war.

To explain its causes, connect several ideas. Versailles created anger that the Nazis used. The Depression weakened trust in governments. Nazi ideas encouraged conquest. Appeasement and a weak League failed to stop the aggression. Hitler still chose to invade.

Pearl Harbor belongs later in the timeline. Japan's December 1941 attack brought the United States into a war already underway.

The main Axis powers were Germany, Italy and Japan. Their opponents were the Allies. Britain, France, Poland and China were among the Allies. The Soviet Union joined after Germany attacked it in June 1941. The United States joined in December 1941.

Fast victories in Europe

Germany used Blitzkrieg, meaning lightning war: planes, tanks and troops attacked together quickly. In 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, then the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

At Dunkirk, ships and small boats evacuated about 338,000 British and French troops. Saving them mattered, but it was a retreat. France signed an armistice in June 1940. Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces continued fighting with the Allies.

An occupied country is controlled by an enemy army. Many Europeans now lived under German occupation, facing shortages, harsh rules and persecution.

Britain holds out

In the Battle of Britain, Germany's air force tried to defeat Britain's Royal Air Force. Radar helped spot approaching aircraft. Pilots from many countries helped the RAF resist. Germany failed to gain control of the skies and abandoned its planned invasion.

Bombing of British cities, called the Blitz, continued from September 1940 to May 1941. Later, Allied bombing destroyed homes and killed civilians in German and Japanese cities too.

Two new Allied powers

Germany broke its pact with the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, by invading it. The Soviet Union then fought beside the Allies. In December, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and other territories across Asia and the Pacific. The United States declared war on Japan. Germany and Italy soon declared war on the United States.

The main Allied leaders included Churchill in Britain, Roosevelt in the United States and Stalin in the Soviet Union. Fighting now crossed Europe, Africa, Asia and both great oceans.

Turning points

A turning point changes the direction of a struggle. Three Allied victories weakened the Axis:

• Midway, June 1942: the US Navy checked Japan's advance in the central Pacific.
• El Alamein, late 1942: British-led forces defeated Axis forces in Egypt.
• Stalingrad, February 1943: a trapped German army surrendered to Soviet forces.

These victories did not end the war immediately. They made further Allied advances possible. In 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily. Italy surrendered that September, although German forces kept fighting in Italy.

A child could be far from a battlefield and still face war. Bombing destroyed homes. Food became scarce. Families separated. In the Second World War, more civilians than soldiers died.

Preparing for air raids

An air raid is an attack by aircraft. Sirens warned people to seek shelter. British families used garden shelters, cellars or Underground stations. A blackout meant covering windows and switching off streetlights at night. Darkness made towns harder for enemy aircraft to find.

Britain distributed gas masks, including special equipment for babies. Poison gas was not dropped on British towns, but people had prepared for that danger.

Moving children away

Evacuation moved people from places at risk to safer areas. Britain's organized evacuation began in September 1939. About 1.5 million people moved in the first days, including about 800,000 schoolchildren. Most schoolchildren traveled with teachers, leaving parents behind. Host families cared for them in the countryside.

Safer surroundings did not mean every child felt happy. Some enjoyed new friendships; others were homesick or badly treated. Children elsewhere moved too. Many Finnish children were sent to Sweden.

Imagine a child from a port city staying with a rural host family. Sleeping away from the docks reduces the risk of bombing. Missing home remains painful. Both experiences can be true at once.

Sharing scarce supplies

Ration books held coupons for limited goods. Buying a rationed item required money and the right coupon. Britain rationed bacon, butter and sugar from January 1940. The United States rationed goods such as sugar and gasoline in 1942, adding meat in March 1943.

Families grew vegetables in yards and parks. They repaired clothing and collected reusable materials. Rationing aimed to share shortages; a coupon did not create extra food.

War work and unequal dangers

Women built aircraft and ships, farmed, nursed and worked as drivers, radio operators and codebreakers. Soviet women also served as soldiers and pilots. Children collected scrap metal and paper, knitted clothing and saved for the war effort.

Occupation brought curfews, arrests and forced work. Jewish children faced persecution because they were Jewish. Children in Germany and Japan also suffered bombing and hunger. Understanding those civilian experiences does not change who planned aggression or persecution.

The Holocaust, also called the Shoah, was Nazi Germany's persecution and murder of about six million European Jews, with help from its allies and collaborators. It developed between 1933 and 1945. It began with exclusion and lost rights, before the mass murder during the war.

Jewish life before Nazi rule

About 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe before the Holocaust. They had many languages, jobs, beliefs and ways of life. Families lived in cities and villages. Children attended school, made friends and played games. Poland had Europe's largest Jewish community.

Jews are a people with a shared history, culture and religion. They are not a separate human “race,” as the Nazis falsely claimed. About 100,000 German Jews had served Germany in the First World War. Nazi blame stories attacked their own neighbors and fellow citizens.

Persecution became government policy

Persecution is repeated cruel and unfair treatment because of who people are. In April 1933, Nazis organized a boycott of Jewish shops. They pressured customers to stay away. Jews began losing government jobs and teaching positions.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jews of German citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews. Signs excluded Jews from public places. Laws gave prejudice the force of government.

On November 9–10, 1938, Nazis organized attacks across Germany and Austria. This was Kristallnacht, often called the Night of Broken Glass. Attackers wrecked shops and homes, burned synagogues, murdered Jews and sent about 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

On November 15, Jewish children were barred from German public schools. Separate Jewish schools remained until the Nazis closed them in 1942.

Why escape was difficult

Leaving required money, papers and another country's permission to enter. Nazi rules stripped families of property. Many countries refused more refugees. Families who wanted to leave could be trapped.

The ship St. Louis left Germany in May 1939 with 937 passengers, nearly all Jewish refugees. Cuba admitted only a few. The United States and Canada also refused to admit the passengers. The ship returned to Europe, where Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands accepted them. Nazi conquest later trapped many again; 254 passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

A bystander sees harm and does nothing. Many people looked away while persecution grew. Officials and other people made choices at each stage. The progression from hateful messages to laws and violence was not an unavoidable natural process.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929. Her parents were Otto and Edith; Margot was her older sister. As Nazi persecution grew, the family moved to Amsterdam. Anne joined them there early in 1934. She enjoyed school, friends, reading and writing.

Occupation changed her life

Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Anti-Jewish rules followed. Jews lost access to public places and transport. Anne had to attend a separate Jewish school in 1941. From May 1942, Jews aged six and older had to wear a yellow star.

For her thirteenth birthday, Anne received a book she used as a diary. She later addressed many entries to an imaginary friend, Kitty.

When Margot received an order to report for a supposed labor camp, the family hid. On July 6, 1942, they entered rooms behind Otto's business. These rooms became known as the Secret Annex. A movable bookcase later concealed the entrance.

Life in hiding and help from outside

Eight people eventually shared the hiding place: the Franks, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. They had to stay quiet during working hours and could not go outside. Anne studied, argued, made friends and wrote about her thoughts and hopes.

Helpers including Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler brought food, books and news. They risked arrest by helping. The people in hiding depended on this continuing support.

In 1944, Anne heard a radio appeal to save wartime diaries. She began rewriting hers as a book. She hoped to become a published writer.

Arrest and the diary's survival

Police discovered the Annex on August 4, 1944. Why they found it remains uncertain. The eight were arrested and taken to camps. Anne and Margot went through Westerbork and Auschwitz-Birkenau before being moved to Bergen-Belsen. Both died there of typhus in February 1945. Anne was 15. Edith died at Auschwitz.

Otto was the only one of the eight who survived. Miep had saved Anne's papers and later gave them to him. He published the diary in 1947. Readers around the world can now hear Anne's own voice.

Keep her journey in order: Germany → Amsterdam → hiding → arrest → camps. Anne died at Bergen-Belsen, not Auschwitz. Her diary shows one person's experience, hopes and fears. Other Jewish people faced different experiences, and many had no chance to hide.

As Germany conquered more countries, millions more Jews came under Nazi control. Persecution became organized mass murder. The Nazis and their helpers murdered about six million Jews. Each was a person with a name, family and life.

Ghettos and murder across occupied Europe

The Nazis forced Jews into ghettos, overcrowded areas cut off from the rest of a town. Food was scarce and disease spread. The Warsaw Ghetto held more than 400,000 people.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units and local collaborators murdered Jewish families near their homes. In January 1942, Nazi officials met at Wannsee to coordinate the murder of Europe's Jews. Their phrase “Final Solution” hid a plan for mass murder already underway.

Deportation meant forced removal. Trains carried Jewish people away from their homes and ghettos to camps and killing centers.

Different places had different purposes

These purposes could overlap within a larger camp system. Auschwitz included both concentration camps and the Birkenau killing center. Other killing centers included Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka, all in German-occupied Poland. Nazis murdered people in gas chambers there. Many people were also murdered elsewhere, outside camps.

Hana Brady's story

Hana Brady was born in Czechoslovakia in 1931. Her parents ran a shop. Nazi persecution broke up her family. Hana and her brother George were sent to the Terezín ghetto in 1942. She attended secret art classes; some drawings survived.

In October 1944, Hana was deported to Auschwitz and murdered, aged 13. George survived and later lived in Canada. In 2000, an education center in Tokyo received a copy of Hana's suitcase. Its director, Fumiko Ishioka, investigated her name and found George. A name on an object helped people recover a child's story.

Other victims and responsibility

The Nazis also persecuted and murdered Roma and Sinti and disabled people. They killed millions of Polish and Soviet civilians. Soviet prisoners of war faced deadly treatment. Political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses and gay men were imprisoned and persecuted.

Genocide means acts intended to destroy all or part of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Nazi officials planned the Holocaust; police, soldiers, officials and collaborators helped carry it out. Responsibility belongs to people's actions and choices, not to every person of one nationality.

Resistance meant acting against Nazi rule. Rescue meant helping persecuted people escape or survive. Both could be dangerous. Most people did not become rescuers; those who helped were a minority.

Children escaping

The Kindertransport brought about 10,000 children to Britain between December 1938 and September 1939. Most were Jewish. They traveled without their parents and stayed with foster families or in hostels. Many never saw their parents again.

Nicholas Winton helped organize trains from Prague that brought 669 children to Britain in 1939. Other people arranged documents, homes, funding and travel. Rescue required practical work by many people.

Help took several forms

People hid families, shared food, made false identity papers and helped refugees cross borders. Miep Gies and the other Annex helpers supplied eight people for more than two years.

In October 1943, warnings reached Denmark's Jews before planned arrests. Danes helped about 7,200 Jews reach neutral Sweden, many by fishing boat. In France, people around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon sheltered Jewish children and adults. Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara issued travel visas in Lithuania that helped Jews escape.

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, honors non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews as Righteous Among the Nations. The title recognizes particular actions to save people.

Jewish resistance

Jewish people resisted in many ways. Fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto rose against the Germans in April 1943 and held out for almost four weeks. Prisoners rebelled at Treblinka and Sobibór. Partisans fought from forests.

Secret lessons, prayer, drawings and diaries also defended people's culture and dignity. This is often called spiritual resistance. Hana's art and Anne's writing help you see forms of resistance beyond weapons. Keeping a child's education going challenged a system seeking to destroy that child's future.

Some Germans resisted too. The White Rose students, including Hans and Sophie Scholl, distributed leaflets against Hitler. Nazi authorities caught and executed them in 1943. Army officers tried to kill Hitler in July 1944; their attempt failed.

When studying a rescue, look for three parts: what help was given, what it made possible, and what risk the helper faced. Finding shelter required a hiding place, food and continuing protection. One brave act often needed many more to keep someone alive.

The Allies pushed toward Germany from different directions. Liberation meant freeing people or places from enemy control. Ending Nazi rule was urgent, but freedom did not immediately repair people's lives.

The last year in Europe

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, about 156,000 Allied soldiers reached Normandy in France. About 133,000 landed on the beaches; about 23,000 arrived inland by parachute or glider. The invasion opened a major route into western Europe. Paris was liberated in August and Brussels in September. Soviet forces advanced from the east.

Allied soldiers reached the camps. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. British and American troops freed other camps that spring. Survivors often needed urgent medical care. Many had lost relatives, homes and whole communities.

Soviet troops entered Berlin in April. Hitler killed himself on April 30. Germany's unconditional surrender took effect on May 8, 1945: VE Day, Victory in Europe Day. Unconditional surrender meant the defeated government could not demand terms of its own.

The war continued in Asia

Japan was still fighting. In August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing huge numbers of people, mostly civilians. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8.

Japan announced its surrender on August 15. The formal signing took place on September 2, 1945. Keep both endings in view: May ended the war in Europe; Japan's surrender ended the wider war. V-J Day is marked on different dates in different countries.

Most estimates place the war's deaths between about 60 and 85 million. Most were civilians. Bombing, hunger, persecution and genocide caused terrible losses.

Justice and a different future

Leading Nazis faced international trials at Nuremberg in 1945–1946. The trials addressed crimes including crimes against humanity, such as large-scale murder and persecution of civilians. Defeat did not erase responsibility for those crimes.

Millions of people were displaced. Germany was divided into four Allied occupation zones. Europe's later division between western democracies and eastern Communist countries began to take shape.

In 1945, 51 countries founded the United Nations to work for peace. In 1948, it adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing rights belonging to every person. An international agreement that year also made genocide a crime. From 1948, the Marshall Plan supplied American help to rebuild western Europe, including western Germany.

Remembrance means honoring people who died or suffered and learning what happened. It takes many forms: names on a memorial, a family story, a museum or a moment of silence.

Names and places

War memorials often list local people who died. Cemeteries near former battlefields hold soldiers from many countries. Tyne Cot in Belgium contains nearly 12,000 graves. Some headstones mark people whose names could not be recovered.

Memorials to an unknown soldier honor those who were never identified. Britain, France and the United States each have one. At the Menin Gate in Ypres, buglers play the Last Post each evening.

Try reading a memorial carefully. Look first at its dates. Then read individual names. Two sets of dates may show that names from a second war were added. A name connects the scale of war to one person and community.

Different days have different meanings

Britain also marks Remembrance Sunday in November. Australia and New Zealand mark Anzac Day on April 25. Jewish communities and Israel mark Yom HaShoah in the spring. Countries and communities connect remembrance to their own histories.

The red poppy grew into a remembrance symbol after the First World War. John McCrae wrote about poppies on the battlefields in “In Flanders Fields.” Moina Michael helped spread the practice of wearing one. It honors people who died; it is not a celebration of war.

Keeping Jewish lives and history in view

The Anne Frank House, Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum preserve people's stories. Small brass sidewalk plaques called Stolpersteine name victims near their former homes. A name, birth date and fate help restore a person's place in a neighborhood.

Diaries, photographs, official records, trial evidence and survivors' accounts document the Holocaust. Holocaust denial spreads false claims that reject or distort this evidence.

Remembering includes learning how prejudice and exclusion grew, and noticing the choices people made. Recorded voices and preserved objects carry those stories to people born long after the wars.