USM Open Source History Text: The World at War: World History 1914-1945Main MenuIntroduction: A Mural as WindowOn Diego Rivera's Detroit IndustryThe World Around 1914, Part I: the Journey of Young GandhiThe World Around 1914, Part II: The Era of Nationalism and Imperialism (1848-1914)The First World WarThe Long Russian Revolution (1917 – 1929)The Decline of the West? Europe from 1919 – 1929A New Middle East: The Rise of the Middle East State SystemChina Between Qing Collapse and WWIILatin America Between Boom and Bust (1911-1929)Africa Under Colonial Rule: Politics and Race from 1914‐1939The United States from The First World War to the Great DepressionThe Great DepressionThree Varieties of Radicalism in the 1930s: Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Imperial JapanThree Responses to Modernity: Ho Chi Minh, Ibn Saud, and Getulio VargasThe Second World WarSeth Rogoff5f001fc099cd635507b143be056702764af6929c
WWII: Introduction
12017-07-17T22:41:58-07:00Seth Rogoff5f001fc099cd635507b143be056702764af6929c192372plain2017-09-19T11:39:04-07:00Seth Rogoff5f001fc099cd635507b143be056702764af6929cWhile the First World War might have more or less bequeathed to us the world map, the Second World War, more than any other “event” in modern times, has imprinted itself on the consciousness of the world. Moral choices, usually reserved for individuals, became tests of whole nations. Nazi Germany carried out what would be called the first genocide in history, murdering six million Jews. Stalin mercilessly continued to send his own people to die in the Gulags just as the Nazi war machine was annihilating millions of Russians on the front. An estimated 20 million Russians failed to see the end of the war and the Russian Red Army taking Berlin block by bloody block. Even the democracies faced hard moral choice. The British and Americans took to fire-bombing German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in a mass effort to demoralize the German population. The United States government, under pressure from xenophobic elements in society, rounded up and interned thousands of Japanese Americans. At the end of the war, in an attempt to crush Japanese will and to signal its global power the United States dropped the only two atomic bombs ever used in the history of warfare. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians perished either immediately or in the weeks following the atomic attacks.
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12017-09-19T11:38:08-07:00A Russian Village in Flames (January 10, 1944)1"On February 14, 1943, after the Germans experienced a devastating defeat on the Eastern Front, Hitler ordered his retreating army to leave nothing but “scorched earth” behind them – the idea being that this would slow the Red Army’s advance. As this picture shows, numerous non-military structures (i.e., civic buildings and private homes) and even entire villages were destroyed in accordance with the order." GHDI http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=3158plain2017-09-19T11:38:08-07:00