The 1930s are remembered for the tremendous economic hardship countries faced around

the world. This spread rapidly after the American stock market crashed in October 1929 and
grew into a worldwide economic depression.

During this period, countries across the globe saw their citizens protest or revolt to change or
overthrow their systems of government. Several nations turned to authoritarian rulers or
militaristic dictatorships to bring some semblance of structure.

Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union are among those who saw dictators rise to power
between World War I and World War 2.

After World War I ended and the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, the new German
government was called the Weimar Republic. It quickly found itself with deep economic
problems. Borrowing during the war combined with massive reparations payments to the
Allied nations sent the German Mark (its currency) into hyperinflation.

Inflation occurs when the price of goods increases and purchasing power decreases. A loaf of
bread that cost about 160 Marks in Berlin in 1922 cost 200 billion Marks by late 1923. This led
to bitter political instability.

The Nazi Party was steadily gaining support by blaming the country’s financial troubles on
Jewish people and other scapegoats.

Adolf Hitler was open with these antisemitic feelings in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf.
He gained popularity by blaming the Treaty of Versailles and others for Germany's problems
and was named Chancellor in 1933.

He assumed the title of "Führer" the next year and Germany became a dictatorship under his
control.

Repeating some of the steps from World War I, Germany later entered into another war time
alliance. This time, it was with Japan and Italy, and they were known as the Axis Powers.

Italy would follow a similar journey to that of Germany. Fascism was a political ideology that
gained traction in the 1920s, especially with the rise of the National Fascist Party.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian political ideology. It is characterized by an authoritarian

figure who utilizes nationalism, militarism, and forcible suppression of opposition to control the
country.

Benito Mussolini came to power during this decade with the intention of restoring the country
to the glory of the Roman Empire. In the 1930s, Italy would go on to invade Ethiopia and
Albania, later joining the Axis Powers in the 1940s.
The third Axis Power, Japan, saw militarists take control of the country in the 1920s. Japan’s
economy during the 1920s and 30s was a rocky one, plagued by instability and attempts at
restructuring.

Industrialization helped the country emerge from the Depression but made its economic
system dependent on raw materials from other countries. In the 1930s, Japan invaded China
for coal and oil, and shortly after, invaded Korea and Manchuria.

In the 1940s, Japan invaded Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. For this, the U.S. responded by
imposing an oil embargo on Japan, which increased tension between the two countries.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. naval base in Hawaii, which
would bring America into World War 2.

Joseph Stalin took power in the Soviet Union following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924.
Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution created a communist one-party state. Stalin consolidated power
to create a dictatorship.

At the end of the decade, Stalin instituted five-year plans to industrialize the country. To
maintain a hold on power, Stalin relied on secret police and the Great Purge, in which anyone
who questioned the government would be killed.

In late 1939, Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact, in which they promised not to
attack the other or use military force for the next ten years. This allowed Stalin to invade
eastern Europe without fear of a German reprisal. Soviet armies then annexed Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania.

The political influence of Germany's Nazi Party spread rapidly in the 1930s. The
head of the extremist, far-right party was Adolf Hitler, who was open about his
anti-Semitism and opposition to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Though World War I had ended almost 20 years earlier, many Germans were still
upset over how they had been treated. There was lingering tension on the part of the
Germans toward Great Britain and France.

Instead of forcefully standing up to Hitler and the brewing conflict, the two Allied
nations practiced appeasement, a policy of giving in to demands in hopes of
avoiding conflict.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came to power in 1937 and was widely
popular. However, in the face of Hitler, he became weak and succumbed to the
Führer's demands.
Chamberlain understood that his country wanted to avoid a war at all costs. He
recognized that World War I had been devastating. He couldn’t imagine that Hitler
would want another war, as well. Rather than escalate the situation and keep Hitler
in check, Chamberlain instead gave in.

In 1938, Chamberlain and the French prime minister met with Hitler and Italy's
leader Benito Mussolini. They signed the Munich Agreement, which allowed
Germany to annex, or take, the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia.

Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler would lose him significant political support as a

result. He was seen as a weak pushover who would give anything up to avoid
another war.

Hitler, on the other hand, was seething over the humiliation he thought Germany
suffered at the hands of Great Britain and France after World War 1. The Treaty of
Versailles put the blame for that war squarely on Germany and forced a series of
humiliations upon it.

Hitler had three main goals in mind after the Munich Agreement. He wanted to
change the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, consolidate all of the German speaking
territories into one, and conquer enough territory for that consolidation to happen.

He was exceptionally nationalistic, meaning he touted the importance of his country

above all the others. In the public eye, Hitler was thus seen as a bully who kept
taking and wanting more and more. His hunger for power and conquest made him a
danger to the whole of Europe.

In the late 1930s, Europe was bracing itself for another major conflict. Germany and
the Soviet Union signing a non-aggression pact in August 1939 did little to ease
fears of another war.

Adolf Hitler wanted to invade Poland without opposition. Joseph Stalin wanted to
keep peace with Germany while he built up the Soviet military. The two sides agreed
to split Eastern Europe between them and that neither government would ally with or
aid an enemy of the other.

A week after signing the pact, Hitler had his army invade Poland. The Nazi blitzkrieg
or "lightning war" used rapid, overwhelming force to conquer Poland. The Soviet
Union invaded from the east two weeks later and within a month the two countries
had divided and annexed Poland.

This marked the beginning of World War 2. France and Great Britain immediately
realized that their appeasement policy was a failure and declared war on Germany.

In May 1940, German armies invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The next month, Italy entered the war as a member of the Axis Powers and attacked
France.

France had spent years building up a fortified line of defense known as the Maginot
Line. However, the fast-moving German armored divisions went right around it. The
French army attempted a stand at the Somme, but German air superiority won a
quick victory.

The Fall of France came quickly and the German army occupied Paris, the French
capital, on June 14, 1940 and France signed an armistice a week later.

In July 1940, Hitler set his sights on Great Britain and had the Nazi Luftwaffe, or
German Air Force, begin bombing England's cities. The British Royal Air Force
(RAF) defended the country in the first major military campaign fought entirely in the
air.

The Battle of Britain, as it was known, continued for months until Germany called off
the campaign. The RAF used their new invention of radar and skilled, daring pilots to
give Nazi Germany its first defeat.

In June 1941, Germany terminated its nonaggression pact and invaded the Soviet
Union. The Soviet Union joined Great Britain on the Allied side. The German
invasion, code named Operation Barbarossa, would become the largest land
offensive in human history, with over 10 million combatants taking part.

In December of 1941, the United States was pulled into the war after the attack on
Pearl Harbor, a naval base in Hawaii. Japan attacked the base because it planned to
expand its military actions in Asia and the U.S. had previously set up a blockade,
preventing them from taking over more territory. The United States immediately
declared war on Japan and Germany, and joined the Allied Powers.
Germany had been seeing victories in the Soviet Union. However, the Battle of
Stalingrad, fought for nearly six months between August 1942 and February 1943,
ended any possibility of victory for Germany. It was the deadliest battle in history,
with an estimated two million casualties.

Germany still controlled Western Europe in 1944 and the Allies needed to invade if
they hoped to free France and its neighbors from Nazi control. That invasion began
with D-Day on June 6, 1944. American General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been
planning it for years.

Over 5,000 ships and 150,000 American, Canadian, and British troops took part in
the amphibious landing at Normandy Beach in France. It took time, but eventually
the Allies began the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi control. This
helped lay the foundations of the Allied victory in Europe.

At the same time, the United States was fighting Japan in the Pacific with a strategy
of "island hopping". This began with a major American victory over the Japanese
navy at the Battle of Midway in 1942. Over the next three years, U.S. forces pushed
closer to Japan, eventually winning battles on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa
in 1945.

In an attempt to finally end the war, President Harry Truman made the decision to
drop two atomic bombs on Japan. The first was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6,
1945. Three days later, the second was dropped on Nagasaki. This was done to
bring about a quick end to the war and prevent more American casualties. However,
in the process, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed, both at the
time of the bombing and in the months following due to radiation.

When Japan made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,

President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it as a "date which will live in infamy."
Over 2,400 American servicemen were killed in the devastating attack and America
was immediately brought into World War 2.

The U.S. would be fighting a war on two fronts: in Europe and in the Pacific. Despite
the Japanese attacking the U.S., America's leading generals thought defeating
Germany was the more pressing concern. That was where the majority of U.S.
forces went at first.
General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz were in charge of U.S.
forces in the Pacific. They devised a strategy of "island hopping" to defeat Japan.

The "island hopping" plan involved winning battles on Pacific islands to gain military
bases and moving across the Pacific Ocean and closer to Japan. This strategy
would span three years and would take U.S. forces in almost a full circle around the
Pacific.

In many ways, the Battle of Midway was the turning point in which the U.S. began
putting this plan into action. In June 1942, the U.S. Navy won an important victory
over the Japanese and inflicted devastating damage on its fleet. Aircraft carriers
proved to be the most important resource in the Pacific and Japan lost four of them
at Midway.

From August 1942 to February 1943, American forces fought the Japanese during
the Guadalcanal Campaign in the southern Solomon Islands. This campaign was
the first major offensive on land against the Japanese. It was mostly led by the U.S.
Marines, who captured an important Japanese airfield.

U.S. forces pushed closer to Japan throughout 1943 and 1944, scoring hard-fought
victories at Tarawa, the Philippines, and Guam. In 1945, America fought two last
major battles close to the Japanese home islands.

The first was the Battle of Iwo Jima in which the U.S. Navy and Marines took on
over 20,000 heavily fortified Japanese soldiers dug into positions across the island.
The battle took 36 days across February and March, with the Japanese fighting
nearly to the last man. The U.S. also saw high casualties with over 6,000 Marines
losing their lives in the battle.

The aftermath of the battle is famous for a photograph of five Marines and one Navy
corpsman raising the American flag at the top of Mount Suribachi.

From April to June of 1945, American and Japanese forces engaged in the brutal
82-day Battle of Okinawa. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties
on both sides in the Pacific and was nicknamed the "kotetsu no hageshi kaze" or
"typhoon of steel". In desperation, Japan utilized suicide kamikaze attacks and
eventually saw over 100,000 killed.
The U.S. planned to use the island as a staging area and airbase for a planned
invasion of Japan. However, the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki made that unnecessary.

Asian Americans faced bigotry and hostility since their first arrival in the United
States, especially on the West Coast. As a result, the American government took
actions against them. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion banned immigrants from China.
After anti-Asian race riots across the Pacific Coast in 1907, a Gentleman's
Agreement between Japan and the U.S. effectively ended Japanese immigration.
The Immigration Act of 1924 banned all immigration from Japan and other
"undesirable" Asian nations.

In 1941, there were about 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental
United States. Most were on the West Coast and well over half were "Nisei" or
second generation, American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, American public opinion initially stood by their
Japanese American neighbors. Many Americans believed that their loyalty to the
United States was unquestionable. However, as the war effort ramped up, racial
prejudice led public opinion to turn against Japanese Americans.

They often became victims of glaring racism. Neighborhood signs threatened them
to "keep out" and many Japanese-owned businesses were vandalized.

Some feared that Japanese Americans would work as spies for the Japanese
government. These unfounded rumors spread and soon President Franklin D.
Roosevelt was impelled to act. On February 19, 1942, the President signed
Executive Order 9066. This authorized military commanders to designate the West
Coast as a "military area ... from which any or all persons may be excluded."

Eviction from the West Coast began in late March, when Civilian Exclusion Order
No. 1 gave 227 Japanese American residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington just
6 days to prepare for their "evacuation" directly to Manzanar, one of the
concentration camps set up in California.

Eventually, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans would be sent to one of 10 different

concentration camps in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho,
and Utah. The government called them “War Relocation Camps” and most sent to
one were held until World War 2 ended in 1945.
The conditions within the camps were horrible. They were located in remote areas,
with an inadequate food supply, and often overcrowded. They featured makeshift
schools, barracks for housing, and work facilities.

Over 17,000 of those forcibly relocated to camps were children under the age of 10.
Growing up in the internment camps, young children felt isolated and singled out
simply because of their ethnicity.

It most certainly felt like a prison to them and they came to realize as they got older
that they had been let down by their country.

One of those interred was Fred Korematsu. He was born in Oakland, California in
1919 to Japanese parents who immigrated to the United States in 1905. He refused
to go to a relocation center and was arrested. After being found guilty of defying the
order he was sent to Topaz concentration camp, where he and his family were held
from 1942-1945.

Korematsu appealed his guilty verdict all the way up to the Supreme Court.
However, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that relocation and internment was justified
during circumstances of "emergency and peril".

It is now widely agreed that the internment of the Japanese Americans was not
justified and was based solely on racism. Japanese Americans did not pose any
credible threat to the country. In fact, more than 12,000 Nisei served in segregated
Japanese American combat units, most famously the 442nd Nisei Infantry Regiment.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for Japanese internment and
authorized a payment of $20,000 to each living former detainee. Legislation admitted
that the government's actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a
failure of political leadership." More than $1.6 billion was paid in reparations to
82,219 Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated.

While thousands of Japanese American citizens were sent to concentration camps

in the American West Coast, others served the country with distinction in combat or
as translators.

Nisei is a Japanese term for a person born in America whose parents emigrated
from Japan. They were American citizens, often spoke two languages, and only
knew life in America.
The army interviewed 5,000 Nisei to act as translators in the war. Those accepted
were ironically sent to a special school in Minnesota to better comprehend the
customs and language of Japan. Eventually, 3,700 Nisei graduates from the school
served in the Pacific, saving many American lives.

Many Nisei also earned distinction in combat during World War 2. An estimated
33,000 Japanese Americans served, mostly in the Army.

In the Philippines, the Nisei provided a valuable service by translating documents

obtained from the enemy. When the U.S. was ready to invade the Philippines, the
translations had helped the Army garner a comprehensive understanding of the
Japanese plans.

A small group of Nisei served in Burma and China in the famous 5307th regiment
known as “Merrill's Marauders”. They served as spies, eavesdropped and translated
enemy plans, and earned their comrades' admiration for their valor.

Two all-Nisei regiments were formed during World War 2. The first was the 100th
Infantry Battalion of Hawaii, which was made up mostly of former members of the
Hawaii Army National Guard.

The 100th saw heavy combat in Italy, starting in September 1943 and earned the
nickname the Purple Heart Battalion due to how many members of it were awarded
the decoration.

The 442nd Infantry Regiment was another segregated unit of Nisei soldiers and later
merged with the 100th. It included over 1,500 volunteers from Japanese internment
camps and eventually over 10,000 men. Beginning in 1944, the 442nd saw brutal
combat in Italy, southern France, and Germany.

The 442nd is best known as the most decorated regiment in U.S. military history.
The 442nd and 100th combined to earn over 18,000 awards in less than two years,
including 4,000 Purple Hearts and 4,000 Bronze Stars.

Included among them was Daniel Inouye, who lost his arm fighting in Italy. He went
on to serve as a U.S. Senator from Hawaii for almost 50 years.
Although Japanese Americans were targets of hostility and persecution at the start
of World War 2, as the war progressed American attitudes towards them were
changed, due in a large part to the distinguishable military service of the Nisei.

On the dramatic day during World War 2 when Marines raised the American flag at
Iwo Jima, the first word of this momentous news crackled over the radio in odd
sounding noises. Throughout the war, the Japanese were repeatedly baffled and
infuriated by these seemingly inhuman sounds. They conformed to no linguistic
system known to the Japanese.

The curious sounds were the military’s way to give tactics and strategy that Tokyo's
master cryptographers were unable to decipher. This perfect code was the language
of the Navajo tribe. Its application in WW2 as a covert system of communication was
one of the war’s best-kept secrets.

The military was desperate for a way to open clear lines of communication among
troops that would not be easily intercepted by the enemy.

In the 1940s, there was no such thing as a secure line. All talk had to go out onto the
public airwaves. Standard codes were an option, but the cryptographers in Japan
could quickly crack them.

There was also another problem. The Japanese were proficient at intercepting
short-distance communications, on walkie-talkies for example, and then having
well-trained English-speaking soldiers sabotage the message or send out false
commands to set up an ambush.

The solution was conceived by the son of missionaries in the Navajo Nation, a
former Marine named Philip Johnston. His idea: station a native Navajo speaker at
every radio. Since the Navajo language had never been written down or translated, it
was an entirely self-contained human communication system restricted to Navajos
alone. It was virtually indecipherable without Navajo help.

Without some key or way into a language, translation is virtually impossible. Not long
after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the military dispatched 29 Navajos to begin a test
program. These first recruits had to develop technical terms for military artillery,
since the Navajo had no words for tanks or missiles.
According to Chester Nez, one of the original code talkers: “Everything we used in
the code was what we lived with on the reservation every day, like ants, birds, or
bears. Thus, the term for a tank was turtle, a tank destroyer was tortoise killer. A
battleship was a whale. A hand grenade was potato, and plain old bombs were
eggs. A fighter plane was a hummingbird, and a torpedo plane a swallow. Hitler was
translated to 'Crazy White Man.'”

It didn’t take long for the original 29 recruits to expand to an elite corps of 425
Navajo Marines all from the American Southwest. Each Talker was so valuable, he
traveled with a personal bodyguard.

In the event of capture, the Talkers had solemnly agreed to commit suicide rather
than allow America’s most valuable war code fall into the hands of the enemy.

The language of the Code Talkers, their mission, and every detail of their messaging
apparatus was a secret they were all ordered to keep, even from their own families.

It wasn’t until 1968 that the military felt convinced that the Code Talkers would not be
needed for any future conflicts. Then, America finally was allowed to learn of the
incredible contribution a handful of Native Americans made to winning history’s
biggest war.

The Navajo Code Talkers, sending and receiving as many as 800 errorless
messages at fast speed during the fog of battle, are widely credited with giving U.S.
troops the decisive edge at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

In 1942, the War Advertising Council was created to mobilize America's advertising
industry to support the country through World War 2. Some of its early campaigns
encouraged people to enlist, purchase war bonds, and conserve war materials.

Its campaign encouraging women to take on jobs in war industries became the most
successful advertising recruitment campaign in American history.

The face of that campaign was Rosie the Riveter, a fictional character immortalized
on posters and in a catchy song.

With millions of American men heading off to war, the nation was desperate for
workers to staff the manufacturing plants needed for the war effort.

The campaign helped recruit more than two million women into the workforce.
In December 1941, about 13 million American women were at work. By February
1943, that number rose to 15 million, but there was still a massive need for more
industrial labor.

Until this time, the majority of American women never worked outside their home.
The idea of working in a factory was entirely new, and like all new ideas, required
explanation.

The nation's major magazines devoted their September 1943 covers to portrayals of
women in war jobs, creating approximately 125 million advertisements.

Motion pictures, newspapers, radio, trade press, employee publications, and in-store
displays all tied in importantly. Even museums participated, with the Museum of
Modern Art in New York conducting a contest for the best magazine covers.

The underlying theme was that this important social change was a patriotic
responsibility for women and an opportunity for employers to support the wartime
economy.

Those ads led to a tremendous change in the relationship between women and the
workplace. As a result, employment outside of the home became socially acceptable
and even desirable.

Women took on work in heavy construction, lumber and steel mills, airplane and
munitions factories, and much more. Many women discovered they enjoyed the
autonomy these jobs provided them with.

Rosie’s image graced postage stamps and the cover of Smithsonian magazine and
before long Rosie the Riveter became a nickname for women working in wartime
industries.

The iconic image most people think of today for Rosie the Riveter is the "We Can Do
It!" poster by J. Howard Miller. However, this one was actually rarely seen during the
war and did not gain attention until the 1980s.

Norman Rockwell's painted version of Rosie the Riveter was featured on the cover
of the Saturday Evening Post in 1943 and was widely distributed across the country.

In May of 2002, Rockwell's painting of Rosie the Riveter was auctioned by Sotheby's
for nearly $5 million.
Towards the end of 1944, Allied victory seemed assured and the War Advertising
Council reversed its propaganda campaigns for women. Ads then urged women to
return back to working in the home.

When World War 2 ended in 1945, many women were quickly laid off from their
factory jobs. Later, many women who wanted to return to work were forced to accept
"traditional" jobs in clerical or administration positions.

America's armed forces were still segregated in World War 2. Like the Jim Crow
laws that restricted the lives of Black people in the South, African Americans who
served in the military were often restricted in the roles they could take on.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the expansion of the Air Corps
that allowed new training programs at Black colleges. Soon after, the Tuskegee
Institute, founded 60 years earlier by Booker T. Washington in Alabama, created a
flight school for Black pilots.

Just under 1,000 men trained as pilots and earned their wings at the Tuskegee Army
Air Field.

In 1941, the War Department and the Army Air Corps created the 99th Pursuit
Squadron, America's first all-Black flying unit.

The 99th Squadron was deployed to North Africa in 1943. Their first combat mission
was to attack the small but strategic volcanic island of Pantelleria in the
Mediterranean Sea in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

The first Black flying group, the 332nd Fighter Group, was deployed to Italy in early
1944.

Eventually, both groups would fly more than 1,500 missions over North Africa and
Europe during the war. The units made ground attacks, patrolled coastlines, and flew
179 bomber escort missions.

The Tuskegee Airmen were initially equipped with P-40 Warhawks, but later
switched to the airplane that they would become most identified with, the P-51
Mustang.

In January 1944, German fighter-bombers raided Anzio, but eleven Tuskegee

Fighter Squadron's pilots shot down 13 enemy fighters.
After pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group painted the tails of their P-47s red, the
nickname "Red Tails" was coined. The red markings that distinguished the Tuskegee
Airmen included red bands on the noses as well.

The red tails were a welcome sight to the bomber crews that they protected. Bomber
groups often specifically requested Redtail escorts when possible.

Flying escort for heavy bombers, they racked up an impressive combat record. The
Luftwaffe awarded the Airmen the nickname, “Schwarze Vogelmenschen,” or “Black
Birdmen.”

In over 1,500 missions during WW2, the Tuskegee Airmen were credited with 112
Luftwaffe aircraft shot down and the destruction of numerous fuel dumps, trucks and
trains. Of the 992 pilots trained at Tuskegee, 68 were killed in action during the war.

Tuskegee Airmen were awarded several Silver Stars, 150 Distinguished Flying
Crosses, 8 Purple Hearts, 14 Bronze Stars, and 744 Air Medals.

Known as the “night of broken glass,” Kristallnacht was a sudden and widespread
assault on Jewish people and their property in Germany prior to World War 2.

It is also described as a "pogrom", which is a Russian word for an organized

massacre or assault on an ethnic or religious group.

It was the Nazi's first widespread use of massive force against their Jewish
population. The attack foreshadowed Adolf Hitler’s later attempt to exterminate
European Jews through the so-called “Final Solution”.

Kristallnacht took place the night of November 9th and 10th, 1938. The impetus for
the attack stemmed from the assassination of a German government official in
France.

Herschel Grynspan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee in Paris, learned that his family
had been deported. The Grynszpan family was among 12,000 Polish Jews arrested
by the Gestapo, stripped of their property, and herded aboard trains to Poland.

Furious at what the Nazis did to his family, Grynspan purchased a gun and killed
Ernst von Rath, a Nazi official at the German embassy in Paris.
After learning of the news, the German government whipped up increased public
anti-Semitism. Joseph Goebbels, the public minister of information for the Nazi
regime, organized a widespread pogrom against German Jews. A special unit of the
Nazi political machine, known as the Sturmabteilung (SA), led groups of civilians
across urban centers of Germany, where they sacked more than 500 Jewish homes,
synagogues, and storefronts.

When the violence ended, at least 90 Jewish people lay dead and over 30,000
Jewish men were taken into “protective custody” at Nazi labor camps or prisons.
During the attack, German men also raped Jewish women and stole any valuables
they could find.

The term Kristallnacht itself reveals the rampant anti-Semitism that fueled the
violence. So many Jewish synagogues and storefronts had been smashed that
Hermann Goering described the shattered glass as so many Jewish “crystals” or
“diamonds.”

Two days after the attacks, Goering ordered the enactment of statutes to punish the
Jewish community. Jews were disallowed from owning stores, working as
independent skilled workers, or attending concerts, movies, or other forms of public
entertainment. They were even prohibited from driving cars.

Another harmful aspect of Goering's new laws for Germany's Jewish population was
the freeing of German insurance companies from paying for claims resulting from
the destruction of Jewish property. As a further insult, Goering ordered that the
Jewish community be fined $400 million for the attack. Not surprisingly, over 150,000
Jews left the country in the wake of Kristallnacht.

One of the most far-reaching changes wrought by Kristallnacht was a general shift in
Nazi policy toward the Jews. Prior to Kristallnacht, the German government had
compelled Jews to emigrate voluntarily to other nations. After Kristallnacht, the
German government took a more direct approach that ultimately resulted in the
Holocaust—a massive genocide of Jews and other people deemed undesirable by
the Nazi regime, both in Germany and in occupied countries.

The Holocaust, also known as “the Shoah” was the mass murder or genocide of
about six million Jewish people and other groups during World War 2.
It was known as the "Final Solution" and was a systematic program of
state-sponsored murder by Nazi controlled Germany. It was led by Adolf Hitler and
his Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945.

As Germany invaded and conquered much of Europe during this period, this meant
the murder of Jewish people, Gypsies, and others extended to Poland, Denmark,
Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

Of the 9 million Jewish people who lived in Europe before the Holocaust,
approximately two-thirds were killed.

A connected network of over 40,000 concentration camps in Germany and

German-occupied territory were used to concentrate, hold, and kill Jews and other
victims. Thus, these are often referred to as death or extermination camps and
included Chelmo, Treblinka, and the most infamous: Auschwitz.

Besides Jewish people, other groups killed during the Holocaust include Gypsies,
Romanians, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, and
thousands of civilian dissenters from across Europe.

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. It began with an event
known as “Kristallnacht” or the “Night of Broken Glass” in November 1938. This
was a pogrom, or coordinated series of attacks against Jewish businesses and
people throughout Germany.

A series of laws were put in place to remove Jews from German society. The most
prominent of these were the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade marriages between
Jews and non-Jewish Germans and also denied citizenship to Jews, Romani, and
Black people.

When World War 2 began, specialized German units called Einsatzgruppen

murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings across the territory
Germany conquered in Europe.

The Holocaust finally ended when Allied soldiers liberated camps as they advanced
into Germany in 1945. Allied soldiers from the United States, Great Britain, Canada,
Australia, and the Soviet Union were horrified by what they saw.
The camp guards and Nazi leaders who were captured were put on trial at
Nuremburg after the war. The Nuremburg Trials were the first time perpetrators of a
genocide were tried for their crimes. Some were given the death penalty, while
others received prison terms.

Though it might be difficult to believe that there are rules for warfare, today countries
do have to abide by humanitarian laws when they go to war.

One of the first international agreements regarding war in 1863 led to the creation of
the Red Cross. Updates and agreements were later held in 1907 and 1929.
However, wartime atrocities and misconduct continued, especially during World War
2.

Countless appalling massacres and war crimes occurred in just a short span. The
Holocaust, in which millions of Jewish people were killed at the hands of the Nazi
regime; the Rape of Nanking, a mass homicide and mass rape on the part of the
Japanese soldiers in China; the Bataan Death March, in which Japanese soldiers
forced Allied prisoners of war along a brutal 60 mile march to a prison camp on the
Bataan Peninsula in 1942; and the other documented incidents of horrendous torture
and treatment of prisoners.

Following the end of World War 2, two major trials brought greater attention this
widespread brutality.

The Tokyo Trials, which convened in 1946, were an attempt to hold Japan
accountable for the violent acts committed during their campaigns in Asia. Japan
was seen as the aggressor and therefore in violation of humanitarian rules that the
convention sought to create.

The Nuremberg Trials in Germany were held for nearly a full year between 1945 and
1946. The aim of the trials was to prosecute any government leaders and military
personnel involved in the Holocaust and concentration camps. Smaller trials in
various cities and zones also took place to ensure justice would be served.

In 1949, a series of conferences were held known as the Geneva Conventions.

These led to a series of agreements that dictated what was considered humane and
what was considered unacceptable during war.
One of the main goals of the meetings, named for the city in Switzerland where they
were held, was to ensure that prisoners of war would be treated fairly.

The Geneva Conventions defined the basic rights of wartime prisoners. They also
established protections for the sick and wounded on the battlefield, and provided
protections for civilians in and around war-zones.

Once ratified, all countries who signed the agreements were expected to follow the
rules of warfare. In total, 196 countries ratified the agreements.

As a result of the Geneva Convention and these trials, Japan was held accountable,
as the defendants were convicted of war crimes and punished. After Nuremberg,
executions of Nazi war leaders took place.

From these trials and the convention, concepts such as “war crimes” and “crimes
against humanity” gained greater international attention.