Andrews University



EUROPEAN POLITICS BEFORE 1939

US had left Europe on its own.

England wanted to stay out of continental politics.

France was left by itself to enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

France allied itself with Belgium (1920), Poland (1921) and the Little Entente (military alliance between Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania (1924-1927)

League of Nations was weak. The Spanish Civil War demonstrated that “collective security” was only a fantasy.

In March of 1939, Britain signed a pact with Poland that it would help if Germany attacked.

See Germany's preparations for the war. See andrews.edu/~wheelerj/wh/exam2/nazis.pdf

WWII IN EUROPE

On September 1, 1939, the German armies crossed the German-Polish border.

April-June 1940, Germany invaded Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

Paris was conquered on June 14, 1940.

The Battle of Britain began in September 1940.

German attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa.

The Battle of Stalingrad (October '42 – February '43) was the turning point in the war.

In November of 1942, Allies invaded North Africa.

In Summer of 1943, Americans and British landed in Italy.

November 1943, Stalin, Churchill, and FDR met in Tehran.

Stalin demanded that a second front in Western Europe be opened.

Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan 90 days after surrender of Germany

Thus Germany was made the priority.

On June 6, 1944, The Americans and British (with some Canadian troops) invaded Normandy in Operation Overlord.

February 1945, FDR, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta.

May 8, 1945, Germany accepted unconditional surrender.

WWII IN PACIFIC

December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

May-June 1942, Battle of Coral Sea and Battle of Midway—turning points of the war.

June 1944, Battle of the Phillipine Sea.

August 6 an 9, 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombed.

August 15, 1945, Japan signs unconditional surrender to US.

THE COST

Estimated 64 million deaths (28 million Soviets, and 6 million Jewish)

Introduced atomic age, and divided the world between two superpowers.

Well's comments:

Human confidence was shaken during first world war and received an almost received fatal blow during Second World War

Christians always accepted the origins of their faith, but this did not neccesarily translate into positive feelings for the Jews.

Factors that led to antisemitism

Middle Ages

Jewish rejection of Christ

Business success of the Jewish people in commerce and in trade

Perverse reading of Darwinian biology by Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany was not alone in its disdain for the Jews.

Although it did not invent antisemitism, it did more than any other nation in history to force an answer to the “Jewish problem.”

After the War commenced in 1939, what came to be known as the Holocaust began.

The figure 6 million referring to the number of people killed in the concentration camps is incorrect. The actual figure is 9 million: 6 million Jews and at least 3 million gypsies, communists, deformed people, and homosexuals, who did not “fit” into the scheme of the Nazi new order.

Franc'ois Mauriac said, “The concentration camps had killed the dream. What was the dream? 'The dream which western man concieved in the 18th century whose dawn he had theought he saw in 1789, and which, until August 2, 1914, had grown stronger with the progress of the Enlightenment and the discoveries of science.' In short, what died in the camps along with the Jews was hope.” that is, “hope, as conceived for humankind in the post-enlightenment west”

Hiroshima was a city largely unknown in prior history to the west. It's name forever after will be remembered as the place where the nuclear age began. A team was brought together to work on the Manhattan project. The bomb was finished, tested, and ready for deploy after April 1945. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945, with a similar bombing at Nagasaki 3 days later.

In John Hersey's Hiroshima he depicts a vivid account of the lives of six individuals after the bombing of Hiroshima. Names include: Dr. Masakasu Fujii, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, Mrs. Hatsayo Nakamura, Ms. Toshiko Sasaki, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto.

The sentence inscribed on the memorial cenotaph is: “Rest in peace, for the mistake shall not be repeated.”

The politicians of the world should come to Hiroshima and contemplate the world's political problems on their knees before this cenotaph.

President FDR said that the bombing of Pearl Harbor would forever live in infamy. Surely August 6, 1945, the bombing of Hiroshima, when the Nuclear terror began will also live in infamy.

In short, a generation arose in this century for whom, Gertrude Steim said, “All gods were dead, all faiths shaken.”

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