March 4, 2016 - Holocaust

Homework - Use the following source materials on the Holocaust to answer the assigned questions.

Source # 1- Video on World War Two and the Holocaust - click here

Source # 2 - Video of the Warsaw Ghetto and Invasion of the Soviet Union - click here



Source # 3 - Video of Nazi Holocaust Plans for Eastern Europe - click here



Source # 4 - Video on the Holocaust in Lithuania - click here



Source # 5 - Video on Einsatzgruppen - click here
You will have to be signed into you BHS Google account to watch

Biography - Vassily Grossman

Vassily Grossman was born to a Jewish family in Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1905. He supported the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. He began writing short stories while he was an engineering students at Moscow State University. His early stories got the attention and support of high ranking Soviet leaders and by the early 1930’s, he became a full time writer.

In 1937, during the period of the Great Purge, Grossman had his first confrontation with the Soviet authorities when his wife was arrested because she had not denounced her first husband after he had been arrested as an “enemy of the people”. In response to his wife’s arrest he took the risky move of writing the head of the NKVD (the secret police) to complain that his wife was being held responsible for a man she had left. Surprisingly, his wife was released by the NKVD.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Grossman became a war correspondent for a Soviet newspaper. In this role, he reported on many of the major battles of the war such as the battles for Moscow, Stalingrad and Berlin. Grossman preferred to report on the lives and struggles of many of the ordinary Soviet soldiers and he spent a lot of time at the front lines of battles. His articles became a favorite read among the Soviet soldiers.

The Nazi Holocaust had a major affect on Grossman and he was one of the first reporters to bring the issue of the Holocaust to the world's attention. Grossman wrote about what the Soviet army encountered as it pushed the German army out of the Soviet Union. For example, when the Soviets liberated the region of Ukraine (which had one of the highest Jewish population in pre-war Europe), Grossman wrote, “There are no Jews in Ukraine… All is silence. Everything is still. A whole people have been murdered.” It was as the Soviet army advanced into Ukraine that he learned that his mother had been murdered along with 30,000 other people when her village had been captured by the Germans.

Grossman was the first journalist to arrive at the Nazi death camp of Treblinka in 1944.  Grossman interviewed the survivors and the people who lived around the camp to write his article “Hell of Treblinka”. This article was used as evidence against the Nazi leadership at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Grossman went on to gather more evidence of Nazi crimes in the Soviet Union that he was compiled into a “Black Book”. However, following the war, Stalin wanted to downplay the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and focus on the general suffering of the Soviet people and ordered that Grossman’s work be supressed. This turned Grossman against the Soviet government.

Grossman turned his wartime experience into his major novel Life and Fate, which told the story of the war on the Eastern Front, but is focused mostly on the battle of Stalingrad and the events of the Holocaust.  The novel tells the story on an epic scale that tells the story of many different characters from both the Soviet and German sides of the war as they fought in Stalingrad and suffered the Holocaust. Grossman finished the manuscript for the book in 1959. However, because the book was openly critical of the Soviet system, the government decided that it would not be published. In fact, the Soviet government considered it dangerous. The secret police raided Grossman’s house and confiscated all the copies of the manuscript, including the typewriter ribbons he used when writing the book. Grossman wrote to Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, to complain about how his book had been “arrested” and that he was “requesting freedom for my book”. A government official responded to Grossman letter by saying that the book could not be published for “two or three hundred years”.

A few years later, in 1964, Grossman died bitter over his treatment and the loss of his book. However, one copy of the manuscript of Life and Fate had escaped the Soviet authorities. Grossman had lent it to a friend who hid it at his country house. This copy of the manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and was published in Europe in 1980. The novel was later published in Soviet Union in 1988 as the country opened up under Gorbachev’s policy of Perestroika.

Source # 6 - Excerpt from Life and Fate - this scene captures the thoughts of on of the novel's characters, Sofia Livinson as she dies in the gas chamber at Auschwitz with David, a young orphan met and befriends in the cattle car to death camp.

David watched the door close: gently, smoothly, as though drawn by a magnet, the steel door drew closer to its steel frame. Finally they became one.

High up, behind a rectangular metal grating in the wall, David saw something stir. It looked like a grey rat, but he realized it was a fan beginning to turn. He sensed a faint, rather sweet smell.

The shuffling quietened down; all you could hear were occasional screams, groans and barely audible words. Speech was no longer of any use to people, nor was action; action is directed towards the future and there no longer was any future. When David moved his head and neck, it didn’t make Sofia Levinson want to turn and see what he was looking at.

Her eyes–which had read Homer, Izvestia, Huckleberry Finn and Mayne Reid, that had looked at good people and bad people, that had seen the geese in the green meadows of Kursk, the stars above the observatory at Pulkovo, the glitter of surgical steel, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, tomatoes and turnips in the bins at market, the blue water of Issyk-Kul–her eyes were no longer of any use to her. If someone had blinded her, she would have felt no sense of loss.

She was still breathing, but breathing was hard work and she was running out of strength. The bells ringing in her head became deafening; she wanted to concentrate on one last thought, but was unable to articulate this thought. She stood there–mute, blind, her eyes still open.

The boy’s movements filled her with pity. Her feelings towards him were so simple that she no longer needed words and eyes. The half-dead boy was still breathing, but the air he took in only drove life away. He could see people settling onto the ground; he could see mouths that were toothless and mouths with white teeth and gold teeth; he could see a thing stream of blood flowing from a nostril. He could see eyes peering through the glass; Roze’s inquisitive eyes had momentarily met David’s. He still needed his voice–he would have asked Aunt Sonya about those wolf-like eyes. He still even needed thought. He had taken only a few steps in the world. He had seen the prints of children’s bare heels on hot, dusty earth, his mother lived in Moscow, the moon looked down and people’s eyes looked up at it from below, a teapot without its head, where there was milk in the morning and frogs he could get to dance by holding their front feet–this world still preoccupied him.

All this time David was being clasped by strong warm hands. He didn’t feel his eyes go dark, his heart become empty, his mind grow dull and blind. He had been killed; he longer existed.

Sofia Levinton felt the boy’s body subside in her hands. Once again she had falled behind him. In mine-shafts where the air becomes poisoned, it is always the little creatures, the bird and mice, that die first. This boy, with his slight, bird-like body, had left before her.

“I’ve become a mother,” she thought.

That was her last thought.

Her heart, though, still had life in it; it still beat, still ached, still felt pity for the dead and the living. Sofia Levinton felt a wave of nausea. She was hugging David to her life a doll. Now she too was dead, she too was a doll.

Source # 7 - Video on Treblinka - click here



Biography - Samuel Willenberg

Samuel Willenberg was born in 1923 to a Jewish family in Poland. He volunteered for the army when the Germans invaded Poland in September, 1939. He was sent into combat to fight the Soviet army as it invaded Poland from the east.  Willenberg was wounded fighting the Soviet army and was taken prisoner. He escaped three months later and returned to his home in central Poland, then under German control. Willenberg was forced, along with his sisters and parents, to move into a Jewish ghetto. Willenberg worked as a forced laborer until his family was able to escape the ghetto with forged documents. However, the family was rounded up and forced into another ghetto. From here, Willenberg was sent to Treblinka when the ghetto was liquidated in 1942.

When he arrived at Treblinka, Willenberg was wearing paint-stained work clothes and the Germans thought is was a manual laborer.  Instead of sending him to the gas chambers to be killed, they selected him to do work at Treblinka. He was the only one on his train not sent to the gas chambers. He was sent to work sorting through the belongings of the people killed in the gas chamber. While doing this work, he found the cloths that his sisters had been wearing on their way to Treblinka.

Willenberg conspired with the other prisoners to revolt against the Nazis. In August 1943, they rose up in rebellion. Most of the prisoners were killed, but Willenberg was able to escape with a few other prisoners. He travelled to Warsaw where he joined the Polish Home Army and participated in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans in September 1944. He was captured at the end of the battle for the city when the Germans put down the rebellion. However, he escaped the prison train and hid in the countryside until the Soviets liberated the region.

After the war, Willenberg joined the Polish army and worked to help Jewish families find their children who had been hidden by non-Jewish Polish families. However, life for Jewish people in post-war Communist Poland was very difficult and Willenberg immigrated to Israel where he worked as an engineer and studied art. He focused his art on memorializing the victims at Treblinka. He also wrote and spoke about his experiences. He died in February 2016

Source # 8 - Fate of German Jews - click here

March 2, 2016 - War on the Eastern Front

Source # 1 - Video about Nazi goals and the attack on the Soviet Union - click here



Source #2 - This video clip from the German movie Generation War. This clip shows the fighting on the Eastern Front (in the Soviet Union) from the perspective of German soldiers. This clip shows the war in 1941 as the Germans are invading the Soviet Union.  The two main characters are Lieutenant Wilhelm Winter and Private Friedhelm Winter, who serve in the same unit of the German army - click here
Note - you will need to be signed into you BHS Google account to watch this video


Source # 3 - Video about the experience of how experience of the people of the Soviet Union during the war and the Battle of Leningrad - click here



Biography - Lyudmyla Pavlychenko

Lyudmyla Pavlychencko was born outside of city of Kyiv, Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1916. She joined a shooting club when she was young after she heard a boy in her neighborhood talk about how he was such a good shot. She said started shooting to “show that a girl could do as well.” Even though she described her own school years by saying that she was “unruly in the classroom”, she enrolled at Kyiv University to be a teacher. While in university she also worked in a military factory.

Pavlychenko was vacationing in the coastal city of Odessa when the Germans invaded in the Soviet Union in June 1941. She volunteered to join the army, but enlistment officers wanted to make her a nurse. When Pavlychenko insisted that she was good with a rifle, they forced to prove her ability during the battle of Odessa as the Germans attacked the city. They brought her to the front and handed her a rifle and ordered her to shoot two enemy soldiers on a nearby hill. They were her first two kills. However Pavlychenko did not include them in her battlefield tally because “they were test shots”.

After the Germans captured Odessa, Pavlychenko was assigned to the defense of the Sevastopol in Crimea. It was in the brutal battle to defend Sevastopol that Pavlychenko demonstrated her effectiveness as a sniper. She killed 309 enemy soldiers, including 100 German officers. Because of her ability, she was assigned to be a counter-sniper, which meant that she had to hunt enemy snipers on the battlefield. Operating as a counter-sniper was extremely dangerous since it required her to stay in position in the center of battlefield for hours, and sometimes days. She killed 36 German snipers. She said that killing Germans did not bother her because, “Every German who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German, I am saving lives.”

After the Germans captured Sevastopol, the Soviet army took Pavlychenko out of combat because she was too valuable to lose. She had already been wounded four times and the Germans had specifically begun to try to find and kill her. The Soviet Union honored her by putting her on a postage stamp.

In 1942, Pavlychenko was sent by the Soviet government to United States to get American support for the war against Germany. She was the first Soviet citizen to be a guest at the White House and went on to tour the United States with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Pavlychenko became friends and Roosevelt helped her with silly comments from the American media such as the New York Times which called her the “girl sniper” and said that she “wore no lip rouge, or makeup of any kind” and that “there isn’t much style to her olive-green uniform”. Pavlychenko replied to such comments by replying that “I wear my uniform with honor” and “who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?”

When she returned to the Soviet Union she became an instructor for snipers and then served as a researcher in the Soviet Military after the war. She and Roosevelt remained friends and met again in 1957 when Roosevelt visited the Soviet Union. Pavlychenko died in 1974 in Moscow.

Source # 4 - Video from the Russian-Ukrainian film  Battle for Sevastopol about Lyudmyla Pavlychenko. This video clip shows Pavlychenko in training to be a sniper and her first experience in battle - click here
Note - you will need to be signed into you BHS Google account to watch this video


Biography - Gregory Zhukov

Georgy Zhukov was born in 1896 to a family of peasants. In 1915, Zhukov was drafted into the Russian army and fought in World War One. He was awarded for his bravery and was badly wounded in battle. After the October Revolution, Zhukov joined Lenin's Bolshevik Party and became an officer in the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. After the Civil War, Zhukov became an army commander of the Soviet Army in Siberia (far eastern Russia). Because he was so far away from the capital of Moscow, Zhukov was able to survive Stalin's "Great Purge" of the army (When Stalin ordered the secret police to arrest and kill the leaders of the army). As the commander of the Soviet Army in Siberia, Zhukov defeated the Japanese is a short war between the Soviet Union and Japan over the region of Mongolia in 1939. Stalin rewarded Zhukov by making him a commander of the overall Soviet Army in January 1941.

When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin ordered Zhukov to attack the Germans and not retreat. While he disagreed with Stalin's orders, Zhukov obeyed the orders and the result heavy Soviet losses. Stalin removed Zhukov from command when Zhukov argued against defending the city of Kyiv and instead recommended that the Soviet Army retreat. Stalin ignored Zhukov's advice and the Germans captured 600, 000 Soviet soldiers when they captured Kyiv. After the loss of Kyiv, Stalin changed his mind about Zhukov and put Zhukov in command of the defense of Moscow, the Soviet capital. By December of 1941, the Germany army was closing in on Moscow and it looked as if they might capture the city. Even Stalin made plans to evacuate the city.

The Battle of Moscow was one of the largest and most crucial battles of the whole war. Zhukov had to organize the defense of the capital of the Soviet Union with a badly beaten army with not enough weapons or supplies - some units went in to battle with only one rifle for every ten soldiers. Zhukov was able to bolster the defense of Moscow by convincing Stalin to move the Soviet army in Siberia to the defense of the city. The Siberian soldiers were equipped and experienced with fighting in winter conditions. They were able to stop the German advance and pushed the Germany army back 150 miles - saving Moscow from being captured. This was the first major defeat for the German army in the war and destroyed Germany's chance for a quick victory in the war. However, the cost of the battle was enormous - the Soviet lost more than 1.9 million soldiers. When Zhukov's deputy showed him the numbers of losses he told him to "hide it and don't show it to anybody!"

After the successful defense of Moscow, Zhukov was put in command of organizing the defense of the city of Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad was one of the most important battles of World War Two. Zhukov developed and led and attack on the German army at Stalingrad that surrounded the Germans and forced them to surrender in February 1943 - which eliminated an entire German army. The in the summer of 1943, Zhukov lured the German army into the battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war, which was another crushing defeat for the Germans. The combined defeats of Stalingrad and Kursk broke the power of the German army.

After the victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, Zhukov lead the Soviet Army as it drove the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Stalin was so pleased with Zhukov's military ability that he gave him the special distinction of leading the Soviet attack on the Nazi capital of Berlin in 1945. After a ferocious battle to capture the city, which ended when Hitler committed suicide before the Soviets could capture him, Zhukov oversaw the surrender of the remains of the Nazi German government.

After the war, Stalin was threatened by Zhukov's popularity with the Soviet military and the general population. Ever paranoid, Stalin removed Zhukov from his position as supreme military commander and assigned him to run the military in region in the southwest of the Soviet Union. After Stalin died, Zhukov was elevated to the position of defense minister in the Soviet Union. He died in 1974.

Source # 4 - Video clip from the opening scene from the movie Enemy at the Gates about the Battle of Stalingrad. This was one of the most important battles of World War Two and was the first major defeat for Germany in the war. This scene follows a Soviet soldier as he arrives at Stalingrad and is sent into the fighting - click here
Note - you will need to be signed into you BHS Google account to watch this video

Source # 5 - Video about the Battle of Kursk - American aid for Soviet war effort - click here



Source # 6 - Video clip from the German movie "Generation War which shows the war in 1943, after the Germans have lost the Battle of Stalingrad, and follows a group of German soldiers has they participate in the Battle of Kursk - click here
Note - you will need to be signed into you BHS Google account to watch this video

February 26, 2016 - World War Two Begins

Important Note - The quiz on the second half of the World War Two reading notes (beginning with Invasion of Soviet Union) will be on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

Homework - Use the following source materials on the beginning of World War Two to answer the assigned questions.

Source # 1 - Video of Nazi Germany's takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia - click here

Source # 2 - Graphic describing the tactic of Blitzkrieg

Source # 3 - Video of German victory against France and the Battle of Dunkirk - click here




Biography - Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle was born in 1890 in France. His father was a math teacher who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War which ended in defeat for France (it was at the end of the war the Otto von Bismarck had the King of Prussia crowned the Emperor of Germany at the Palace of Versailles). De Gaulle's father greatly influenced De Gaulle's life-long goal of restoring France to be the most powerful country in Europe.

In 1909, De Gaulle enrolled in a student in a military academy and graduated in 1912 a lieutenant in the French army. He led a frontline unit in World War One and awarded medals for bravery in battle. He was badly wounded in the battle of Verdun and was left for dead. However, he revived when his body was collected by the Germans to be buried. The Germans took him prisoner, and despite many escape attempts, he was held in a German maximum security prison for the rest of the war.

After the war de Gaulle returned to the French military. However, he got in trouble for constantly criticizing his superiors. They supported the ideas of trench warfare, which had been used in World War One. In contrast, De Gaulle thought the French army should become more modern in using armored tanks and in a strategy of mobile war (similar to the Blitzkrieg tactics designed by the Germans). The French military ignored De Gaulle's ideas - the Germans read them.

When Germany attacked France in 1940, De Gaulle was put in command of a tank unit which was able to slow the German attack. However, because other parts of the French army retreated, De Gaulle was also forced to retreat. After six weeks of fighting, the French government and military decided to surrender to the Germans instead of continuing to fight. However, while he was not a top French commander, De Gaulle refused to surrender. He said, "France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war." De Gaulle fled to England where he began to organize the Free French and support the British in their war against Germany by organizing soldiers from French colonies to fight on the Allied side. From England, De Gaulle was able to lead the French resistance to the German occupation of France and he spoke to the French people by radio broadcast from England.

After the Allied D-Day invasion of France in June 1944, De Gaulle returned to France as a hero and was elected the premier, or leader, of the country. However, De Gaulle often fought against the other national leaders, many of whom had worked with the Germans while they occupied France. In 1946, he resigned his position. However, he remained an active force in French politics and became the president of France from 1958 to 1969. He died in 1970.

Source # 4 - Video on the Battle of Britain - click here
Note - You will have to log into your BHS Google Account to access the video

Biography - Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 in England. His father was a member of the British Parliament and his mother was an American heiress. Churchill was sent to a military school where was popular, but not a good student and had a tendency to get in trouble. He went on to study at the Royal Military Academy and graduate to become a military officer. After graduating, Churchill traveled to Cuba, India, Sudan and South Africa as a war reporter for a British newspaper.

When he was 25, Churchill returned to England and was elected to British Parliament. As a young Member of Parliament, Churchill was very outspoken and active, working to both reduce taxes and improve the lives of the poor. As a result of his hard work, in 1911, he was promoted to be the First Lord of the Admiralty, which meant that he was in charge of the British Navy. Churchill was worried that the Germans were building a navy to be stronger than the British Navy and so he spent the next three years working to build up the strength of the British Navy. As a result, the British Navy was prepared for war when World War One began in 1914.

As the First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill was involved in planning the British strategy in World War One. The first significant setback in his life was his plan to attack the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Gallipoli. The Ottoman Empire was seen as being weak and Churchill thought it was would be easy to defeat them. However, the Ottoman defense to the British attack was strong and Churchill's plan turned into a military disaster for the British. Churchill was forced to resign his position in the government. Out of government, Churchill joined the British Army and served as the commander of a unit on the Western Front in France. While he did not participate in any major battles, he did spend a significant amount of time on the front line. In 1917, he returned to government and was made Minister of Munitions (weapons).

After World War One, Churchill was a leader in the Conservative Party and held different positions in the British Government. However, he spent more time on personal interests such a writing books, painting and even learning how to do masonry (build with bricks).

In the late 1930’s, Churchill began to speak out against Hitler and said that Britain needed to stand up to Nazi Germany. Churchill argued that the British policy of giving in to Hitler’s aggression would make Hitler stronger and would lead to war. The war Churchill feared began in 1939 when Germany attacked Poland. Churchill’s stance against Hitler and Nazi Germany made him very popular with the people of Britain.

After Germany attacked France in May 1940, Churchill became the Prime Minister and began to rally the British people to a long war against Germany. He gave many speeches to Parliament, such as his famous “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech to inspire the British to keep fighting against a seemingly invincible enemy. After the defeat of France, Britain was alone in its war against Germany. It was a time when Britain doggedly fought on against Germany even though seemed to be winning and German air force was bombing British cities in the Battle of Britain. It was during this period that Churchill proved to be a strong leader by telling the British people that Britain would “never surrender”. Churchill became known as the "British Bulldog".

In 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and declared war on the United States. After these events, Britain no longer stood alone against Nazi Germany.  From this point forward, Churchill worked closely with Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, to coordinate that Allies’ war against Nazi Germany. However, Churchill never fully trusted Stalin and tried to prevent Stalin from gaining too much territory at the end of the war.

As the war ended, Churchill saw that Britain was weak and was no longer the world power it had been before World War One. This realization caused Churchill to tried to get the United States to take on the role of standing up to Stalin and the Soviet Union. In 1946, Churchill visited the United States and famously used the term “Iron Curtin” to describe how the countries of Eastern Europe were now controlled by the Soviet Union and forced to become communist.

Churchill also argued for more unity among the countries of Europe to prevent another war. He said that the countries should form a “United States of Europe” and supported many of the early parts of building the European Union.

After the war, Churchill, who was then 70, resigned as Prime Minister. However, six years later, he was again elected Prime Minister and served until he was 80 years old, when because of poor health he had to retire. He continued to be very active, spending his time writing, speaking and painting. In his later life he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was made a honorary citizen of the United States. He died in 1965 from a stroke.

Source # 5 - Except from Winston Churchill speech "Never Surrender" delivered to British Parliament on June 4, 1940

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…

Source # 6 - Cartoon of Winston Churchill published on June 8, 1940

February 25, 2016 - Hitler & Nazis Take Over Germany

Homework - Use the following source materials about Adolf Hitler and the Rise of the Nazis to answer the assigned questions.
Biography - Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, in Austria (a country south of Germany) to an extremely domineering father. After his father’s death in 1903 Hitler became rebellious and began failing at school. He dropped out of school and with dreaming of becoming an artist, he moved to Vienna to become a painter. However, he failed to be accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts and ended up living a lonely life as a poor street artist painting post cards. Antisemitism was common in Vienna, and it is believed that this is where Hitler first developed his extreme hatred toward Jewish people.

When World War I began in 1914, Hitler volunteered to enlist in the German army and fought on the Western Front. Hitler said he found acceptance and accomplishment fighting the war where he won several awards for bravery, including the highly respected Iron Cross First Class, and was wounded several times. Hitler was in a military hospital recovering from his wounds when he heard that Germany had signed the armistice that ended the war.

Like many German soldiers, Hitler had a difficult time readjusting to life after the war in the chaos of post-war Germany. He got a job in the army keeping track of radical political organization. This is how he first came in contact with the National Socialist German Workers Party, called the Nazis. He joined Nazi Party and soon became its most well known speaker. Hitler’s speeches drew more people into the Nazi Party and, in 1921, Hitler became the Fuhrer, or leader, of the party.

In 1923, Germany suffered terrible hyperinflation (a period where money quickly loses its value) and many Germans were unhappy with the democratic government in Germany. Hitler believed he could use this to take power in Germany. Hitler organized the Nazi Party to violently overthrow the government. However, the rebellion was quickly put down by the local police and Hitler was charged with treason and sentenced to a year in prison. It was during his time in prison that Hitler wrote his book, Mien Kampf or “My Struggle” which described his goals of expanding Germany to make an empire and to make it a racially pure society – it would only be for Germans. After his release from prison, Hitler continued to lead the Nazi Party, but it was a marginal party in German politics.

It was the economic crisis of the Great Depression in the early 1930’s that made the Nazi Party a major political force in Germany. By 1932, the Nazi Party was one of the largest political parties in Germany. The other large party was the communist party. Many Germans supported Hitler and the Nazis because they feared the communists. In 1932, Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. When the President of Germany died in 1934, Hitler used Emergency Powers to make himself Fuhrer, or leader, of Germany. After taking power, Hitler moved ruthlessly to eliminate other political parties by having their leaders arrested and even had many of the leaders of the Nazi Party who could challenge him killed in an event called the Night of the Long Knives.

Once Hitler had full control over Germany, he began to prepare Germany for wars of conquest to enlarge Germany. He put millions of unemployed people to work on rebuilding the German military. In addition, he began to turn Germany into racially pure country by forcing Jews to leave the country. He did this by enacting laws that banned Jews from doing professional work and from attending school. He also allowed his supporters to attack Jews openly in the Night of Broken Glass.

Hitler began to take over other countries to achieve his goal of gaining “living space” for the Germans. He envisioned a future German Empire that would cover most of Europe in which the other peoples of Europe would either be killed or forced to work as slave labor for Germans. In the late 1930’s, Hitler took over Austria and Czechoslovakia without having to fire a single shot. Then, in 1939, he began World War Two by attacking Poland. Then the next year he conquered France and began to bomb Britain. The year after that, he attacked the Soviet Union and his army got all the way to Moscow, the Soviet capital city. By the end of 1942, it looked to the world as if Hitler might achieve his goal of building a Nazi Empire. In the areas that Germany had taken over, Hitler ordered the Nazi forces to round up people to be used as slave labor and sent out death squads to kill Jews.

However, at that point the war began to turn against Hitler. First, he had not fully defeated Britain and the Soviet Union. Both of these countries recovered from their earlier defeats and began to push back the German army. Second, Hitler had declared war on the United States and now the United States joined with Britain and the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1943, the Allies began to win victories on all fronts and began to push the Nazi forces back. However, even in the face of defeat, Hitler did not give up his dream of creating a racially pure Germany and ordered the speeding up of killing Jews in specially built death camps.

As the war turned against Hitler, he became more isolated. He did not appear in public, he refused to listen to his military advisers and began to put resources into "super" weapons that he believed would give him victory. In 1944, a group of military officers tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. After this, Hitler became increasing paranoid and determined to fight to the bitter end of the war, even if it meant the total destruction of Germany in the process. Under the slogan of "total victory or total ruin," Hitler ordered German army destroy everything as it retreated and that all men, even school boys and old men, be drafted into the army. Hitler’s secret police were ordered to kill any German who opposed these actions. Hitler spent the last few months of his life living in a bunker in the center of the bombed out ruins of Berlin, still desperately believing that he could win the war and build his Nazi Empire. However, as Russian soldiers attacked Berlin, Hitler recognized that all was lost and wrote his will in which he blamed the Jews for starting the war. After this, he married his long-time mistress Eva Braun and then committed suicide.

Source # 1 - Nazi poster from 1930 election.  "National-Sozialistische Deutsche-Arbeiter-Parti" means "National Socialist German Worker's Party". The red words coming from the snake are: usury, Versailles, unemployment, war guilt lie, Marxism, Bolshevism, lies and betrayal, inflation, Locarno, Dawes Pact, Young Plan, corruption, Barmat, Kutistker, Sklarek [the last three Jews involved in major financial scandals], prostitution, terror, civil war.

 























Source # 2 - Graphs showing the unemployment rate in Germany and the popularity of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920's and 1930's

Source # 3 - Excerpt from the graphic novel Berlin: City of Smoke that shows the street conflicts between the Nazis and communists in Berlin - click here (You need to be logged into your BHS Google account to access this source) 

Source # 4 - Video of Nazi Rule of Germany in the 1930's - click here



Source # 5 - Video of Nazi ideology and programs - click here

February 22, 2016 - Overview of World War Two

Homework - Answer the questions for the assignment "Overview of World War Two" and "Geography of World War Two".  The assignment sheets are on the class web page.

Geography of World War Two - Interactive map of World War Two in Europe - click here
Note - click "show/hide map" to show national borders on map

Reading - Overview of World War Two - click here

Video - The human cost of World War Two - click here

February 5, 2016 - Stalin's Soviet Union

Homework - Look at the following source materials about the Russian Revolution and answer the assigned questions.

Biography - Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 in Georgia (a country on the southern border of Russia) to a peasant family. His father was an abusive drunk who died when Stalin was young. His mother paid close attention to Stalin, who was the only one of her children to not die as an infant. As a teenager, Stalin studied to be a priest and learned to speak Russian (he would always speak Russian with a thick accent). However, in 1898 he was expelled from his religious school because of his interest in communist ideas. After this, Stalin became a revolutionary. He joined Lenin’s Bolshevik party and would spend several years exiled in Siberia after being arrested by the secret police for revolutionary activities.

Stalin participated in the October Revolution and became a member of the Politburo, the Bolshevik leaders who worked with Lenin to run the Soviet Union. In 1922, became General Secretary of the Soviet Union, which was one of the highest positions in the country. Holding this position made it easier for Stalin to take over the government when Lenin died. Soon after taking power, Stalin used the secret police force created by Lenin to have the other Bolshevik leaders who could challenge his power arrested and either killed or exiled from the Soviet Union. After this, Stalin used the secret police and control of all the media (newspapers and radio) to make himself a totalitarian dictator who controlled all parts the lives of the people in the Soviet Union. Stalin used this control to turn the Soviet Union into a command economy that would make the country into a communist society. Stalin would order millions of people killed to make this happen. In the 1930’s, Stalin ordered the Great Purge in which many of the communist and army leaders were arrested and killed. He even had all of the leaders of the secret police arrested and shot by other members of the secret police. Nobody was safe.

Stalin’s brutality extended to his own family. In the 1930’s, Stalin’s son attempted suicide after being treated badly by this father. However, he only wounded himself. Afterward, Stalin made fun of him by saying, "Ha! He couldn’t even shoot straight!" Soon after that, Stalin’s wife did commit suicide (there is some evidence that Stalin had her murdered).

The largest challenge Stalin faced in the 1930’s was Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Hitler spoke of a hatred of communism and plans to take over Russia in a future war. In 1939, Stalin signed a treaty with Hitler to give him some time to rebuild the Soviet Army after the Great Purge. However, in 1941, Hitler broke the treaty when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was a horrifically violent war that killed 20 million Soviet citizens. Stalin was ruthless in this war, issuing the order “Not one step back” to his soldiers – to enforce this rule, behind the Soviet soldiers were secret police men who would kill any soldier who tried to retreat.

During World War Two, Stalin and the Soviet Union was allied with the United States and Great Britain. The leaders of all three countries worked closely together to defeat Nazi Germany. However, Stalin distrusted the United States, which he believed was an enemy and as the war against Nazi Germany ended, Stalin used the Soviet Army to take over and set up communist governments in the countries of Eastern Europe. In addition, Stalin supported the expansion of communism into China and North Korea. The growth of communism after World War Two resulted in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Stalin died in 1953 from a brain hemorrhage (bleeding).

Source # 1 - Video about Stalin's building projects in the Soviet Union - click here



Source # 2 - Graphs showing how the Soviet Economy Grew under Stalin's Rule

Source # 3 - Soviet Propaganda Poster that reads "Glory to Stalin, Great Big Communism!"

Source # 4 - Soviet Propaganda Poster that reads "Great Stalin - Light of Communism!" (in the picture, Stalin is ready a book written by Lenin)

Source # 5 - Video about Collectivization and Famine in the Soviet Union - click here



Source # 6 - Video about the Great Purge and the GULAG labor camps - click here



Source # 7 - Population of GULAG during Stalin's rule of Soviet Union

Source # 8 - Map showing the location of GULAG labor camps in the Soviet Union and sources of natural resources.

Source # 9 - Video clip from the movie "The Way Back" that shows what the conditions were like in a GULAG camp - click here

(You will have to be logged into you BHS Google Account to watch the video clip)

Source # 10 - The graph below shows the results to a survey of Russians about their thoughts on Joseph Stalin.  You can read about the survey results and look at how Russians' view of Stalin have changed in this article in the Moscow Times.

February 3, 2016 - Russian Revolution

Homework - Look at the following source materials about the Russian Revolution and answer the assigned questions.

Source # 1 - Video about Czar Nicholas and Russia before the Revolution - click here

Source # 2 - Video about February Revolution in Russia - click here



Biography - Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin was born in Russia in 1870 to a well educated family, his father worked for the government inspecting schools. As a child, Lenin was a gifted student. Lenin’s interest in revolutionary politics was formed when his older brother was arrested and executed by secret police for being part of a revolutionary group that planning to execute the Russian czar or emperor of Russia. After this, Lenin began to work in political groups that were opposed to the rule of the czar. The secret police ordered Lenin to live in a rural village to keep him from working with other revolutionaries. With little to do in the village, Lenin read Karl’s Marx’s books and, in 1889, Lenin declared that he was a Marxist communist.

In 1892, Lenin was allowed to move to small city in central Russia where he worked as a lawyer trying to protect the rights of poor peasants. Seeing how badly the government treated the peasants made Lenin want to work to overthrow the czar. A few years later, he moved to the St. Petersburg, the Russian capital city, and joined up with revolutionary groups. However, he was only in St. Petersburg for a little while when he was arrested by the secret police and exiled for three years to Siberia. After returning from Siberia, Lenin was forced into exile outside of Russia for his continuing revolutionary activities. Lenin would spend the next twenty years mostly living in exile in Europe working with other Russian revolutionaries. In 1912, he was recognizes as the leader of the Bolsheviks, one of the most radical groups of Russian revolutionaries.

Lenin was living outside of Russia when World War One began. He believed that the war could result in the revolution he had been working for his whole life. In the spring of 1917, the Russian people, exhausted from the war, overthrew the czar. Still living outside of Russia, Lenin was unable to participate in this revolution. Lenin was able to return to Russia with help from the Germans, who wanted to create chaos in Russia to force it to drop out of the war. After returning to Russia, Lenin opposed the new Russian government and began to organize the Bolsheviks to overthrow it and make Russia a communist country. Within a few months of Lenin’s return, the Bolsheviks overthrew the government in the October Revolution. After overthrowing the government, Lenin and Bolsheviks fought a three year civil war for control of Russia. It was during the civil war that Lenin ordered the ruthless policies of War Communism and the Red Terror. In 1918, Lenin was nearly killed in an assassination attempt.

By 1921, Lenin and Bolsheviks had won the civil war. The Russia they ruled had been devastated by both World War One and the civil war – it was deeply impoverished and was suffering a terrible famine. This forced Lenin to delay his plans to turn Russia into a communist society because he believed it was first necessary to rebuild the country. Lenin ordered the New Economic Policy which allowed farmers and businesses to sell their goods in markets and keep the profits so as to help the country recover. The next year, Lenin suffered two strokes and his health began to fail. In the last year of his life he spoke of his regret that the Soviet Union had become so dictatorial and that he did not think that Joseph Stalin would be a good ruler. However, by this point he was too weak to have much effect on events in the Soviet Union. In January 1924, Lenin died and after a power struggle Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin ordered that Lenin’s body be preserved and put on permanent public display in Red Square at the center of Moscow. His body is still on display in Moscow, long after the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism.

Source # 3 - Video about the October Revolution in Russia - click here



Source # 4 - Soviet Poster that reads "Comrade Lenin Cleans the Earth of Filth"

Source # 5 - Soviet Poster that reads "Death of Capitalism or Death Under Capitalism"

Source # 6 - Soviet Poster that reads "Are you Enlisted"

Source # 7 - Map of Russia during the Revolution and Civil War

Source # 8 - Soviet Poster in support of the Red Army

Source # 9 - Soviet Poster that reads, "Soviet Union Under Siege - All to the Defense!"

Source # 10 - Video about the way Lenin and the Bolsheviks used Terror to win the Russian Civil War - click here



Source # 11 - Video about the early Soviet Union under Lenin - click here



Source # 12 - Soviet Poster that reads "We Destroyed Our Enemies with Weapons. We will now Earn Our Bread with Work, Comrades"