WORLD WAR II

A Canadian Perspective

TIMELINE OF WORLD WAR II

http://encarta.msn.com/media_1481601301_761559200_-1_1/World_War_II.html

Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA) above

Winston Churchill (Britain) below

RISE OF DICTATORSHIPS

Josef Stalin leads the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – USSR) (Russia today)

1929 – 1953 totalitarian state by

Communist Party Estimates of those

arrested and executed from 1936 to 1938 in the Great Purge range between 1.5 million and 7 million

Benito Mussolini (Il Duce)

Italian Fascist dictator 1922 – 1943

Executed by Italian partisans April 1945

Mussolini on the cover of Life Magazine, 1939

Created ‘fascism’ “Believe, obey, fight”

Francisco Franco

Leader of the Nationalist forces overthrew Spain’s elected government

el Caudillo (the leader) ruled 1939 until his death in 1975.

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461549681_761572941_-1_1/Spanish_Civil_War.html

ADOLF HITLER

National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party)

Came to power democratically

Suspended civil liberties, violently silenced opposition

Opposition, mentally/physically handicapped, Jews, eastern Europeans, homosexuals

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461556192_761556540_-1_1/Rise_of_Adolf_Hitler.html

Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King

Over 21 years in office Longest running Canadian

Prime Minister Met Hitler and thought he was

‘pleasant,’ ‘affectionate,’ and ‘loves his fellow man’

"conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription."

Japanese-Canadian Internment

22,000 BC residents given 24 hours to pack

no evidence they were threat The federal government confiscated

and sold the property and belongings of the incarcerated Japanese at public auction

Japanese-Canadian Internment

After the war, King offered Japanese-Canadians the option of “repatriation" to a war-ravaged Japan, even though many had never been there and did not speak the language

not allowed back to coastal areas until his government fell several years later

THE HOLOCAUST

6 million Jews rounded up, and systematically imprisoned, starved, tortured, gassed, or died in other ways due to Nazi policies

Some confined to ghettoes at first, work camps, concentration camps

THE HOLOCAUST

‘Final Solution’ gassing experiments in Auschwitz (carbon monoxide, Zyklon-B)

Above, children in concentration camp

Right, naked women, with children, waiting to be executed in mass grave

Worst (sadly not last) genocide in history

THE HOLOCAUST

Left, prayer shawls from gassed Jews at Auschwitz

Right, human hair in warehouse, numbered for shipment

Martin Niemöller

– In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

– And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

– And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

– And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

ALL FOR WHAT?

Over 72 million people died because of World War II

47 million of those were civilians Allies lost 61 million, Axis 11 million