The second world war

1 – War is going on – axis first victories

-         1939 Hitler attacks Poland

- The French and the British could see no further than fighting a defensive war, in which they would protect themselves against air attack and weaken Germany by naval blockade. They thought that their greatest strengths were their defences ( the Maginot line and the English channel). In contrast, the Germans were to become aggressors, and to suit their strategy of conquest, they had developed the new technique of ‘Blitzkrieg’- lightning war.

The essence of Blitzkrieg was surprise, speed and weight of attack. Its novelty was in the way it made use of modern weapons : tanks and airplanes.

- British and French forces remained on the defensive in the West, despite their guarantees of support to the Poles. The British called it the ‘Phoney war’, the French ‘la drôle de guerre’.

- Winston Churchill became prime minister on the day that Hitler’s armies invaded the Netherlands and Belgium.

- Battle of France (disaster).The Germans occupied the whole of the North and the Atlantic coast: Marshal Pétain was left with a rump state which Hitler allowed him to govern from the town of Vichy.

- Battle of Britain started on 10 July 1940, when Luftwaffe attacked convoys in the Channel. British victory. But the Blitz still went on. London was subjected to intensive bombing. (over 13000 people killed).

- In September 1940, Germany signed a tripartite pact with Japan and Italy, in which each country promised to support the others if they were attacked by any new enemy (the one they had in mind was of course the USA. But to the small states of Eastern Europe, the extension of Russian territory (that had absorbed Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Soviet Union in august 1940) was a much more alarming threat, and a number of them decided to ‘secure’ German protection by asking to join the Tripartite Pact.(Hungary, Slovakia and Romania would all become members by November).

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MAP ABOUT MILITARY OPERATIONS
 SECOND WORLD WAR - VOCABULARY

War operations:

The axis powers (Germany, Japan, Italy…). - military occupation  - blockade -  assault, offensive - incorporated territories -  invasion - operation Barbarossa - To hold a vast empire - Subject people - Expelled people, People on the move,  exodus - Half casualties were civilians – To surrender -  To bomb a place, Bombings, to drop bombs – To retreat – to open a front – defeat – Red army (Russian army), Soviet forces – a target – To flee – Air-raids, Air-raid shelter.

Nazi ideology – Final solution:

To wipe out the Jews – gypsies : they were also regarded as inferior beings – ‘Racial health’ of the German population - Concentration camps – extermination camps – Death camps – gas chambers – cremation -  ‘Living space’ (Lebensraum) – Einsatzgruppen = ‘Special action sqads’ (3000 men) : their job was to hunt down and kill all Jews as well as any communist who had not retreated with the soviet forces – To shelter Jewish refugees – Mass murder-

 The major Nazi leaders were tried (trial) at Nuremberg for ‘crime against humanity’ – Most of them were executed or sentenced to long prison terms – SS  : protection sqads (Himmler) – SA: Stormtroopers (Rohm, assassinated on crystal night)- Swastika.

The so-called Aryan people: blond, blue-eyed Germans : ‘Master race’. Hitler believed that Many of Germany’s past problems had been created because Germany was not run by racially pure Aryans. He decided to get rid of racial minorities by removing them from positions of power.

War effort :

Across the Atlantic, the American economy thrived on a war that the American people had wanted so much to avoid. The Depression vanished like a bad dream as industry tooled itself up, and delivered the goods for making war in both the West and the East. By the autumn of 1943, America had achieved full employment of her labour force. (great reserve of manpower, energy supplies and sources of raw material).

Manhattan project : Its purpose was to find a way of setting up nuclear reaction.

Germany was geared up for war under the direction of Alfred Speer, minister of armaments and munitions, whose Central Planning Board was in complete control of the economy by 1943.

The Russian relocated much of their heavy industry in the East.

As governments mobilized the economy of their nations, so they employed the mass-production techniques of modern industry to create the weapons for the mass destruction of human beings, that’s the mark of modern war.

Collaboration – Resistance:

In Greece, by the end of 1944, the two main wings of the resistance, the communists and th royalists were fighting a bitter civil war to decide who would rule their liberated land.

Communist resistance groups : tightly disciplined – Communists were beyond the pale.

To work undercover – Resisters – Resistance networks -

Collaborator - active collaborator – passive collaborator – collaborationist -

In May 1968 France experienced a political and social upheaval that shook the regime to its foundations. Student unrest in the late 60's was a world-wide phenomenon, fuelled by American protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam and by sympathy for Latin American revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra.

In France, the 'baby boom' resulted in a student population in the 1960's 10 times larger than that on the eve of the Second World War. The children of the bourgeoisie wanted an education that would guarantee them employment. French students also had grounds for complaint in the overcrowded classes in which they were taught, the lack of access to teachers, and the inflexible, centralized, bureaucratic university administration. Failure rates were high, with only 30 per cent graduating in the Arts and Law faculties.

The Rector of the Sorbonne, fearing violent confrontations between left-wing and right-wing students, suspended classes, and called in the police to prevent disorder. That was a fatal decision. When the police arrested demonstrators they were attacked by other students and responded with brutality, flailing their batons and using tear gas liberally.

This incident quickly developed into a major confrontation: barricades went up; street fighting broke out; the Sorbonne was occupied by students and converted into a huge commune. The unrest spread to other universities and then to the factories; a wave of strikes rolled across France, involving ten million workers and paralysing the nation.

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A Chronology of 'May '68'

Dates and Principal Events

Paris:- Sunday, 3. May 1998:- This informal chronology of the 'Events of May 1968' in France begins in November 1996 with students who were demanding the 'internationale situationniste,' taking control of the leadership of the association of students in Strasbourg.

In April of the following year the government asked parliament for the authorization to govern by 'ordinances' - concerning economic and social matters. This was followed by two major strikes and in June the Senate refused to sanction the special powers. The Senate refused a second time, but the measure was passed by the National Assembly before the Senate could reject it a third and final time. The laws were adopted in December, but the necessary enabling decrees were never passed.