What is the difference between ww2 and the holocaust

At no point, however, was there a unified resistance movement within Germany. Despite the difficult conditions to which Jews were subjected in Nazi-occupied Europe, many engaged in armed resistance against the Nazis. This resistance can be divided into three basic types of armed activities: ghetto revolts, resistance in concentration and death camps, and partisan warfare. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt, which lasted for about five weeks beginning on April 19, , is probably the best-known example of armed Jewish resistance, but there were many ghetto revolts in which Jews fought against the Nazis.

Jewish partisan units were active in many areas, including Baranovichi, Minsk, Naliboki forest, and Vilna. While the sum total of armed resistance efforts by Jews was not militarily overwhelming and did not play a significant role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, these acts of resistance did lead to the rescue of an undetermined number of Jews, Nazi casualties, and untold damage to German property and self-esteem.

What was the Judenrat? The Judenrat was the council of Jews, appointed by the Nazis in each Jewish community or ghetto. According to the directive from Reinhard Heydrich of the SS on September 21, , a Judenrat was to be established in every concentration of Jews in the occupied areas of Poland.

They were led by noted community leaders. Enforcement of Nazi decrees affecting Jews and administration of the affairs of the Jewish community were the responsibilities of the Judenrat. These functions placed the Judenrat in a highly responsible, but controversial position, and many of their actions continue to be the subject of debate among historians.

While the intentions of the heads of councils were rarely challenged, their tactics and methods have been questioned. Among the most controversial were Mordechai Rumkowski in Lodz and Jacob Gens in Vilna, both of whom justified the sacrifice of some Jews in order to save others.

Leaders and members of the Judenrat were guided, for the most part, by a sense of communal responsibility, but lacked the power and the means to successfully thwart Nazi plans for annihilation of all Jews.

Its activities can basically be divided into three periods: 1. September, - June 22, The IRC confined its activities to sending food packages to those in distress in Nazi-occupied Europe. Packages were distributed in accordance with the directives of the German Red Cross. Throughout this time, the IRC complied with the German contention that those in ghettos and camps constituted a threat to the security of the Reich and, therefore, were not allowed to receive aid from the IRC.

June 22, - Summer Despite numerous requests by Jewish organizations, the IRC refused to publicly protest the mass annihilation of Jews and non-Jews in the camps, or to intervene on their behalf.

It maintained that any public action on behalf of those under Nazi rule would ultimately prove detrimental to their welfare. At the same time, the IRC attempted to send food parcels to those individuals whose addresses it possessed. The IRC did insist that it be allowed to visit concentration camps, and a delegation did visit the "model ghetto" of Terezin Theresienstadt.

The IRC request came following the receipt of information about the harsh living conditions in the camp. The IRC requested permission to investigate the situation, but the Germans only agreed to allow the visit nine months after submission of the request.

This delay provided time for the Nazis to complete a "beautification" program, designed to fool the delegation into thinking that conditions at Terezin were quite good and that inmates were allowed to live out their lives in relative tranquility. The visit, which took place on July 23, , was followed by a favorable report on Terezin to the members of the IRC which Jewish organizations protested vigorously, demanding that another delegation visit the camp.

Such a visit was not permitted until shortly before the end of the war. In reality, the majority were subsequently deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Moreover, in their occupied areas of France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, the Italians protected the Jews and did not allow them to be deported.

However, when the Germans overthrew the Badoglio government in , the Jews of Italy, as well as those under Italian protection in occupied areas, were subject to the "Final Solution. Despite pressure by their German allies urging them to take stringent measures against Jews, the Japanese refused to do so. Refugees were allowed to enter Japan until the spring of , and Jews in Japanese-occupied China were treated well.

In the summer and fall of , refugees in Japan were transferred to Shanghai but no measures were taken against them until early , when they were forced to move into the Hongkew Ghetto. While conditions were hardly satisfactory, they were far superior to those in the ghettos under German control.

Although he stated that the myths of "race" and "blood" were contrary to Christian teaching in a papal encyclical, March , he neither mentioned nor criticized antisemitism. Although as early as the Vatican received detailed information on the murder of Jews in concentration camps, the Pope confined his public statements to expressions of sympathy for the victims of injustice and to calls for a more humane conduct of the war.

Despite the lack of response by Pope Pius XII, several papal nuncios played an important role in rescue efforts, particularly the nuncios in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey. It is not clear to what, if any, extent they operated upon instructions from the Vatican. In Germany, the Catholic Church did not oppose the Nazis' antisemitic campaign. Church records were supplied to state authorities which assisted in the detection of people of Jewish origin, and efforts to aid the persecuted were confined to Catholic non-Aryans.

While Catholic clergymen protested the Nazi euthanasia program, few, with the exception of Bernhard Lichtenberg, spoke out against the murder of the Jews. In Western Europe, Catholic clergy spoke out publicly against the persecution of the Jews and actively helped in the rescue of Jews.

In Eastern Europe, however, the Catholic clergy was generally more reluctant to help. Jozef Tiso, the head of state of Slovakia and a Catholic priest, actively cooperated with the Germans as did many other Catholic priests. The response of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches varied. In Germany, for example, Nazi supporters within Protestant churches complied with the anti-Jewish legislation and even excluded Christians of Jewish origin from membership.

Pastor Martin Niem"ller's Confessing Church defended the rights of Christians of Jewish origin within the church, but did not publicly protest their persecution, nor did it condemn the measures taken against the Jews, with the exception of a memorandum sent to Hitler in May In occupied Europe, the position of the Protestant churches varied. In other countries Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia , some Orthodox church leaders intervened on behalf of the Jews and took steps which, in certain cases, led to the rescue of many Jews.

How many Nazi criminals were there? How many were brought to justice? We do not know the exact number of Nazi criminals since the available documentation is incomplete. Those who committed war crimes include those individuals who initiated, planned and directed the killing operations, as well as those with whose knowledge, agreement, and passive participation the murder of European Jewry was carried out.

Also included are hundreds of thousands of members of the Gestapo, the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, the police and the armed forces, as well as those bureaucrats who were involved in the persecution and destruction of European Jewry.

In addition, there were thousands of individuals throughout occupied Europe who cooperated with the Nazis in killing Jews and other innocent civilians.

We do not have complete statistics on the number of criminals brought to justice, but the number is certainly far less than the total of those who were involved in the "Final Solution. Afterwards, the Allied occupation authorities continued to try Nazis, with the most significant trials held in the American zone the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings.

In total, 5, Nazi criminals were convicted between in the American, British and French zones, in addition to an unspecified number of people who were tried in the Soviet zone. In addition, the United Nations War Crimes Commission prepared lists of war criminals who were later tried by the judicial authorities of Allied countries and those countries under Nazi rule during the war.

The latter countries have conducted a large number of trials regarding crimes committed in their lands. The Polish tribunals, for example, tried approximately 40, persons, and large numbers of criminals were tried in other countries. In all, about 80, Germans have been convicted for committing crimes against humanity, while the number of local collaborators is in the tens of thousands.

Special mention should be made of Simon Wiesenthal, whose activities led to the capture of over one thousand Nazi criminals. Courts in Germany began, in some cases, to function as early as By , almost 80, Germans had been investigated and over 6, had been convicted.

In , the Federal Republic of Germany FRG; West Germany established a special agency in Ludwigsburg to aid in the investigation of crimes committed by Germans outside Germany, an agency which, since its establishment, has been involved in hundreds of major investigations. One of the major problems regarding the trial of war criminals in the FRG as well as in Austria has been the fact that the sentences have been disproportionately lenient for the crimes committed.

Some trials were also conducted in the former German Democratic Republic GDR; East Germany , yet no statistics exist as to the number of those convicted or the extent of their sentences.

What were the Nuremberg trials? The term "Nuremberg Trials" refers to two sets of trials of Nazi war criminals conducted after the war. It consisted of the trials of the political, military and economic leaders of the Third Reich captured by the Allies.

While the judges on the NMT were American citizens, the tribunal considered itself international. Twelve high-ranking officials were tried, among whom were cabinet ministers, diplomats, doctors involved in medical experiments, and SS officers involved in crimes in concentration camps or in genocide in Nazi-occupied areas.

The Soviets put up a strong resistance. Having experienced losses against the Germans almost continuously for the previous year, the Soviet Army saw Stalingrad as an ideological and moral battle as well as a tactical one. In addition to continuous air bombing, fighting in the rubble of the city was characterised by hand-to-hand combat with daggers and bayonets, as each side ambushed the other under the cover of darkness.

By November , Marshal Georgy Zhukov , the Soviet general, had gathered over a million men with several tank armies. Zhukov encircled Axis troops in the north-west of the city.

On 19 November , the Russians overwhelmed Romanian armies who were supporting the Germans in the north west of the city. The Germans reacted slowly, and quickly became encircled. Despite General Paulus repeatedly requesting permission to surrender or retreat from Hitler, this was denied. The , German soldiers that were surrounded by the Soviet Army quickly ran out of ammunition and food in the midst of the Russian winter. Of the 91, German troops that surrendered, just eventually returned to Germany.

Most died from illness, starvation or exhaustion. It was a series of four offensives carried out by Allied troops in central Italy who was a key ally of Germany in an attempt to breakthrough the Winter Line and occupy Rome. Monte Cassino was the mountain above the town of Cassino where the Germans had installed several defences in preparation for the Allied invasion. An Abbey sat on top of the mountain. One of the primary routes to Rome ran through the town of Cassino at the bottom of the mountain.

Other routes to Rome had become impassable due to flooding and the difficult terrain made worse by the winter weather. However, due to the German defences above, passing along the Monte Cassino route was impossible without first defeating the German troops on the mountain. Allied troops landed in southern Italy in September , but only had limited progress due to the harsh winter and Axis defences.

The first attack at Monte Cassino started on 17 January as British Empire, American and French troops fought uphill against the strategic German defences. The German defences were extremely well integrated into the mountainside, and, following large losses, the Allies pulled back on 11 February. The Allies suspected that the Germans were using the Abbey which was situated at the top of a large hill and protected as neutral territory under the Concordat of as a military observation point.

In response, the Allies bombed the Abbey, starting the second offensive of the battle, on 15 February Following the bombing, German troops used the ruins of the Abbey as a fortress and observation post. The third attack was launched from the north on 15 March. After a large bombing campaign, Allied troops advanced through the town of Cassino. The defences were tough and both sides experienced heavy losses. The German parachute divisions held on to the Abbey. The Allies fell back, and planned Operation Diadem — the fourth and final battle.

The battle involved attacks on four fronts, and took two months to get all the troops in place. The attack started on the evening of 11 May By 17 May, the Polish corps broke through the German defences. On 4 June , the Allies captured Rome, the capital of Italy.

Despite this success, the Battle had come at a cost. There were over 55, casualties for the Allied troops in comparison to 20, German casualties. By the summer of , the Allies had enough coordinated strength to consider an invasion of France. This invasion became known as D-Day. On the evening of 5 June , under the cover of nightfall, British, French, American and Canadian troops started to cross the English Channel, landing in Normandy.

These troops were supported by paratroopers who were dropped behind enemy lines. The next morning, on 6 June , the attack began. With a huge concentration of troops defending the eastern front in the Soviet Union and the decoy measures implemented, resistance from the Germans was initially weaker than expected. Despite this, the Allied troops experienced over 10, losses on the first day.

Despite these losses, the Allied troops made small but significant progress. By 7 June , the Allies had managed to capture the naval port of Cherbourg. This acquisition allowed Allied troops to flood in to France, fighting their way slowly across France, pushing back the German troops. The Germans had, by this point, received reinforcements, but they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of Allied troops. Fought between 22 June and 19 August, the attack resulted in huge casualties for German troops and destroyed their front line on the Eastern Front.

This pushed the remaining German troops back into Poland. They were being defeated and pushed back towards Germany, slowly, by both fronts. Following D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy, the Germans were fighting a defensive war on two fronts. At this stage in the war, the Germans did not have the resources to sustain this. They were quickly pushed back in France, and retreated into Germany.

By March , the Allied troops had crossed the River Rhine. On the Eastern Front, following the Battle of Stalingrad in and , the German Army had been pushed into retreat. By 17 January , Soviet troops had liberated Warsaw, the capital of Poland. On 27 January the Soviets liberated the Auschwitz Camp complex, which included Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi extermination camp.

On 16 April , the Soviet troops started the offensive to capture Berlin, the German capital. Led by Marshal Zhukov, who had successfully commanded the Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet troops encircled Berlin, and started their advance inward.

On 30 April , Hitler took his own life in his bunker underneath the Reich chancellery. On 2 May, Berlin was surrendered to the Allies. On 7 May , the German army commanders surrendered all forces to the Allies. This surrender ended the war in Europe. However, the World War was not yet over, and continued in Pacific against the Japanese. On 6 and 9 August , two atomic bombs were dropped over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing over , people.

Germany had four key fatal weaknesses in the Second World War. These were: the lack of productivity of its war economy, the weak supply lines, the start of a war on two fronts, and the lack of strong leadership. However, they did so on very slow, overextended, supply lines. These supply lines hindered the German advance, and eventually led to a huge lack of supplies on the front line.

This, alongside key Soviet advances, contributed to the German retreat. Throughout the war, Germany became desperately short of fuel, coal and food.

It was not until Albert Speer became Minister of Armaments and War Production in that Germany started moving towards a total mobilisation of the economy for war, although this was still with mixed success. In mid, the economy peaked. For Nazi Germany, in retreat with a defensive war being fought on two fronts, this was too late.

The old, the very young, and the physically weak—those unable to work—were killed first. When the strong grew weak and unable to work they were exterminated. But by mid, almost all Jews who arrived at a death camp were put to death immediately. Charlotte Weiss recalled that when she arrived at Auschwitz in with her sisters, they saw mountains of eyeglasses, shoes, and clothing belonging to the victims. An aerial photograph of part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, taken August 25, There were valorous efforts to resist the Holocaust.

A number of armed uprisings in the ghettos and camps surprised the Nazis, but all were put down with fanatical brutality. Some Jews escaped ghettos and joined partisan movements fighting against the Nazis from forest enclaves.

Within the ghettos and the killing camps, acts of defiance, small or large, were suppressed and the brave dissidents savagely punished. When the Allies began to close in on Germany in late and early , the Nazis forced the surviving prisoners on long marches to camps believed to be out of the way of the advancing enemy armies. Hundreds of thousands died of exposure, violence, and starvation on these death marches.

Some 13, Jews including 4, children were rounded up by French police forces, taken from their homes to the "Vel d'Hiv", or winter cycling stadium in southwestern Paris, in July of They were later taken to a rail terminal at Drancy, northeast of the French capital, and then deported to the east. Only a handful ever returned.

In August of , Anne, her family and others who were hiding from the occupying German Security forces, were all captured and shipped off to a series of prisons and concentration camps. Anne died from typhus at age 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but her posthumously published diary has made her a symbol of all Jews killed in World War II. The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in by Lili Jacob.

Czeslawa Kwoka, age 14, appears in a prisoner identity photo provided by the Auschwitz Museum, taken by Wilhelm Brasse while working in the photography department at Auschwitz, the Nazi-run death camp where some 1. Within three months, both were dead. Photographer and fellow prisoner Brasse recalled photographing Czeslawa in a documentary: "She was so young and so terrified. The girl didn't understand why she was there and she couldn't understand what was being said to her.

So this woman Kapo a prisoner overseer took a stick and beat her about the face. This German woman was just taking out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful young girl, so innocent. She cried but she could do nothing. Before the photograph was taken, the girl dried her tears and the blood from the cut on her lip.

To tell you the truth, I felt as if I was being hit myself but I couldn't interfere. It would have been fatal for me. A victim of Nazi medical experimentation. A victim's arm shows a deep burn from phosphorus at Ravensbrueck, Germany, in November of The photograph shows the results of a medical experiment dealing with phosphorous that was carried out by doctors at Ravensbrueck.

In the experiment, a mixture of phosphorus and rubber was applied to the skin and ignited. After twenty seconds, the fire was extinguished with water. After three days, the burn was treated with Echinacin in liquid form. After two weeks the wound had healed. This photograph, taken by a camp physician, was entered as evidence during the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg. Jewish prisoners in Buchenwald concentration camp, after the liberation of the camp in American soldiers silently inspect some of the rail trucks loaded with dead which were found on the rail siding at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, on May 3, A starved Frenchman sits among the dead in a sub-camp of the Mittelbau-Dora labor camp, in Nordhausen, Germany, in April of Bodies lie piled against the walls of a crematory room in a German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.

The bodies were found by U. Seventh Army troops who took the camp on May 14, Three U. Photo taken in an unidentified concentration camp in Germany, at time of liberation by U. This heap of ashes and bones is the debris from one day's killing of German prisoners by 88 troopers in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar in Germany, shown on April 25, Prisoners at the electric fence of Dachau concentration camp cheer American soldiers in Dachau, Germany in an undated photo.

Some of them wear the striped blue and white prison garb. They decorated their huts with flags of all nations which they had made secretly as they heard the guns of the 42nd Rainbow Division getting louder and louder on the approach to Dachau.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American officers in the Ohrdruf concentration camp, shortly after the liberation of the camp in April of