Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Talk:Holocaust

2008-10-05T01:22:37Z

KatanaGeldar: /* Where is Darwin? */

The "Criticism" section could be a major black eye if it's not carefully watched. --[[User:John|John]] 22:52, 7 March 2007 (EST)

==Where is Darwin?==
I think we should add a section on evolution and how it caused the holocaust. A picture of Darwin should also be added.
--[[User:All4Him|All4Him]] 11:26, 16 September 2008 (EDT)

Not evolution per se, eugenics as that was more relevent at the time. [[User:KatanaGeldar|KatanaGeldar]] 21:22, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

== Reverts ==

You can revert back to the biased version if you insist, but you could at least have kept the correct spelling of "occurrence". [[User:AppliedFaith|AppliedFaith]] 16:13, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

:Why were some of the following Conservative facts [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Holocaust&curid=3340&diff=357620&oldid=357619 removed]? Surely no one is of the opinion they are not true?

::Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi war machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves because the Nazis first disarmed their victims through use of [[gun control]] they were left defenseless. "Genocide would be impossible, or nearly impossible, against an armed group of millions of victims". [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Talk:Gun_control&diff=357551&oldid=357545].

:[[User:CillaHunt|CillaHunt]] 14:48, 24 December 2007 (EST)
::It was reverted because you're inserting today's subject of gun control into a period of time and place where that wasn't an issue. It's also speculation; it is fine for the talk and debate pages, but not for the main article. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 14:54, 24 December 2007 (EST)

:::Andy is adamant that it is true, and certainly not speculation. Surely you're not saying he got it wrong? [[User:CillaHunt|CillaHunt]] 15:32, 24 December 2007 (EST)

== Evidence ==
I think (from a pedantic view of English grammar) that there is a small contradiction between the wording that the number of those killed is an estimate because incomplete records have been recovered and the fact the holocaust denial is unjustified because the Germans kept accurate records. Perhaps someone could reword this. [[User:Erasmus|Erasmus]] 16:44, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

== Total Dead ==

I've changed the upward value for loss of life from 12 million to 14 million, the value provided by the Encyclopedia of Military History. I thought I better state this in case someone gets upset, as this whole subject can have a tendency to be more touchy than most. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 19:30, 8 May 2007 (EDT)
:We need to decide if we are going to apply the term "Holocaust" to non-Jewish vicitms. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 20:58, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

::Traditionally it has been that way. It's only over time that the non-Jewish dead started to be, for lack of a better word, forgotten. I would say keep it to include everyone who died under Hitler for no reason other than their inconveniance to him. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 21:15, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

:::This may need some research on what various respected historians on the Holocaust have said. Simply because it's so-called "common usage" is no reason for us to repeat. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 21:17, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

==Expanding the article==
As you can see, I've begun expanding it today, and will be done by tomorrow. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 19:02, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
::Very nice. But why does it only mention Gypsies, Jehovas witness and homosexuals? More Slavs were victims than all these groups combined.[[User:Bohdan|Bohdan]] [[User talk:Bohdan|Talk]] 19:04, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
::It isn't done yet, but it should list the groups of people who were targeted for slavery as well as those targeted for extermination. But as a rule, ''holocaust'' as a term should be restricted to the persecution of the Jews in Europe by the Nazis. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 19:22, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
::::No argument there.[[User:Bohdan|Bohdan]] [[User talk:Bohdan|Talk]] 19:25, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
::::::Glad my suggested article improvement drive is working! [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 19:31, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
:::::::Yer welcome! Now for the rest of the articles on the list... [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 19:41, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

==Dawidowicz==
Here is the citation moved from the Adolf Hilter page. This link is from the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] and reads,
{{Cquote|Postwar historians of the Holocaust, especially those asserting the exclusivist view that the Holocaust was a historical experience unique to the Jewish people, have taken a similar position. Thus [[Lucy S. Dawidowicz]], a leading exclusivist, has dismissed as '''not worthy of mention''' the '''"prostitutes, homosexuals, perverts, and common criminals"''' incarcerated by the Nazi.2 }}

with the footnote

{{Cquote|Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge, MA, 1981), p. 8. Ironically, this stance echoes the alibi voiced in crypto-Nazi writings of the postwar period that the inmates of the concentration camps were mainly black marketeers and other criminals who later posed as innocent victims of the regime; for example, Brigitte Pohl, Fastnacht der Damonen: Erlebnisse einer Wienerin (Leoni am Stamberger See, 1963), p. 45 [published by the Druffel-Verlag]. Pohl is a frequent contributor to the farright monthly Nation Europa, published in Coburg. }}

http://web.archive.org/web/20010121143900/http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/books/annual7/chap12.html

Dawidowicz is the Author of ''A Holocaust Reader'', and ''The War Against the Jews'', two definitive works we certainly will be citing in this article. Dawidowicz's credentials are impecable. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 21:49, 24 May 2007 (EDT)
:Use that as a reference, and add material as appropriate. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 15:38, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

So far I have touched the beginnings of World War II. As it stands, what I have put in is merely an article in general terms; detail can be added as needed. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 15:41, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

==Done==
The structure is pretty basic, but ready for new material. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 11:35, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

== Bombing the railroad ==

Many historians have debated the question of why the Allies did not attempt to stop the operations at Auschwitz by bombing the railroad into the camp - or whether they could or should have. Is that relevant to this article? [[User:Sevenstring|Sevenstring]] 12:24, 30 May 2007 (EDT)
:Yes it is. Perhaps a new subsection called "Allied responses" or something similar, in which it is described what the Allies did, could have done, or didn't do during the war. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 12:41, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

Your edit of the word Nurnberg is fine, however it's spelled. What I wanted to do is to get as close as possible to the German spelling, but the mark above the letter "U" in the word is a bit of a trouble to insert. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 15:49, 30 May 2007 (EDT)
:Found the German version of the word, with the inflection. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 15:54, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

==This is an excellent article==

This is a very well done and researched article. [[User:DanH|DanH]] 13:33, 8 July 2007 (EDT)

Someone has posted a photograph on top of the statistics in the Aftermath section of the article. Can this be removed?[[User:Needleman|Needleman]] 12:01, 17 August 2007 (EDT)

I see once again someone has pasted a photograph on top of the statistics in the Aftermath section of the article. Can this be removed?[[User:Needleman|Needleman]] 21:08, 26 August 2007 (EDT)

I don't understand; I don't see a photograph there. [[User:DanH|DanH]] 21:14, 26 August 2007 (EDT)

It's 12:35 PM on August 31, 2007. Take a look again at the statistics box. It's partially blocked by a photograph.[[User:Needleman|Needleman]] 12:37, 31 August 2007 (EDT)

==Two changes I would like to offer==
I'd like to second the comment by DanH on the quality of this article. Well done, editors!

That said, I'd like to make two comments:

1) Purpose of article
The article begins with "The Holocaust is a word...". This suggests that the article is one discussing the word itself, rather than the event related to the victims of Nazi Germany, which is actually the main thing being discussed.

A decision seems necessary on whether the article discusses the word (under which the definition and etymology is important) or the historical event. I think the more likely reason people visit this page is the later.

I believe the etymology should be moved to its own section farther down in the article. I also think there should be a deliberate reference to the [[Genocide]] article, rather than just having a category.

2) Displaced gravity of the article
The end of the definition contains the following language: "when Jews were ... and ultimately targeted for extermination". My problem is only with the use of the word "targeted", which suggests that extermination may not have actually occurred. The actual subject should be front and center, and not left as an item to be discussed in the body of the article.

[[User:NepotisMonachus|NepotisMonachus]] 13:43, 30 November 2007 (EST)

== Nanking ==

let's be historically specific: The Holocaust was about the elimination of European Jews. Nanking/Nanjing was an atrocity, but besides a broad temporal association, it had nothing to do with the Holocaust.[[User:BillyR|BillyR]] 13:23, 1 October 2008 (EDT)
::textbooks often group together the Holocaust and other wartime atrocities, and students should know about both. [[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 15:45, 1 October 2008 (EDT)
:::That is true, but the Holocaust is specific to European Jewry. What would be appropriate here would be separate articles connected by the "see also" subtopic, including the Sudan genocide, the rape of Nanking, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, etc. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 16:02, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Holocaust

2008-10-05T01:21:07Z

KatanaGeldar: /* The killing centers */

[[Image:Warsaw ghetto.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Jewish families are forced from the Warsaw Ghetto in the aftermath of its destruction by the S.S. in 1943. Their final destination was the killing center at Treblinka.]]
The '''Holocaust''' was systematic destruction by the [[Nazis]] of [[Jews|Jewish culture]], society, and, in ''die Endlösung'' (the '''Final Solution'''), the lives of all Jews, 1933-1945. Before Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933 they demonized the Jews as subhuman and the cause of all Germany's troubles. In power, the Nazis first removed the Jews from power and prestige; from 1938-41 they imposed severe restrictions on Jews in Germany (many of whom fled). The killing started in 1941, as the [[SS]] under [[Heinrich Himmler]] systematically rounded up all the Jews the Nazis could reach, and killed them in extermination camps.

The Holocaust was known but downplayed 1945-60, but since 1960 has become one of the central memories and horrors of [[World War II]], shaping policies by and towards [[Israel]] and profoundly shaping the modern conceptions of guilt and evil.

==Origins==
After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through browbeatings and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in 1933, with [[Adolf Hitler]] as Chancellor, his ideology firmly entrenched within the party, and in the pages of his ''Mein Kampf'', a semi-biographical work containing his rambling political philosophy. In its pages Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.

Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 to lead a coalition government at the request of [[President]] [[Paul von Hindenburg]], and almost immediately he made moves to consolidate power to himself and the Nazi Party, as well as restrict or eliminate political opposition. Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott as soon as it began on April 1, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The [[Nuremberg Laws]] were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a [[German]] illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.

==Crystal Night==
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in [[Paris]] and upset over his family’s forced deportation to [[Poland]], shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in [[France]], who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the head of the S.S., [[Reinhard Heydrich]], later that evening, who specified that S.S. and S.A. units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 Synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. To further add insult to injury, the Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.

The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany, which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.

==Non-Jewish victims==
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution. <ref> It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews. [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/heinrich-himmler.shtml] </ref>
Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. [[Homosexual]]s were arrested; they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments. [[Gypsies]] as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.

The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the T-4 Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by S.S. general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.

Following the outbreak of World War II in [[Poland]], the Nazis killed Polish intelligentsia in territories under their control, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.

==World War II==
[[Image:Goeth.jpg|right|150px|right|thumb|Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plazow concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. A sadistic man, his recreation was to target and kill individual Jews in the camp with a hunting rifle from the balcony of his villa.]]
When World War II began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, go to a park, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation would be forbidden by 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing was mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland. By September 21, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer [[Hans Frank]], and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of ''Judenrates'' (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane things like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were made to be responsible for supplying thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], [[Belzec]], and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called [[Auschwitz]].

Thousands, nearly thirty percent of the total population of Warsaw, were crammed into just over 2 percent of the city’s total land area, a density of 200,000 people per square mile. Naturally disease and malnutrition would take its toll, but for the German overlords this was a minor inconvenience. The ghetto was a temporary place to hold all of Europe’s Jews until a final solution was determined, and when the Nazis invaded their former ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the killing began in earnest.

====The Einsatzgruppen====
[[Image:Babi Yar.jpg|right|150px|left|thumb|1943 German photo of Soviet POWs forced to dig up the thousands of Jews killed at Babi Yar two years before; the Nazis destroyed the evidence by burning the bodies.]]
Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army. These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of [[Soviet]] occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities. Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, [[Lithuania]]; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near [[Kiev]], [[Ukraine]], between [[September]] 28-29, 1941 [http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm]; 9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children. On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves. When the Soviets threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes. The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a bare minimum of one million.

==Endlösung==
[[Image:Heydrich.jpg|right|150px|thumb|''Obersturbanfuhrer'' Reinhard Heydrich, the man who convened the Wannsee Conference with the intention of determining a "final solution to the Jewish question".]]
:''To Gruppenführer Heydrich:''
:''Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.''
:''Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.''
:''I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question.'' (Order from Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941)

====Wannsee Conference====
On January 20, 1942 at a lakeside villa near Berlin named Wannsee a conference was convened by Heydrich to implement methods and ideas for a "final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). At the conference were fifteen men, among them Heydrich’s head of Jewish affairs, [[Adolf Eichmann]], who would be instrumental in providing the logistical plans for removing the Jews to the camps. The men present were highly educated, and represented government agencies, such as the Gestapo, the Race and Resettlement Office, the S.S., as well as a representative from the General Government in Poland. As Heydrich himself explained near the beginning of the conference, ideas were bartered about as to relocating Jews:

:''“Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration—i.e., evacuation of the Jews to the east…Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.”''

The minutes of the meeting were kept, but had been edited by Heydrich. The language it contains euphemisms in place of what was really said. ''Evacuation of Jews to the east'' and ''resettlement'' meant relocation to the concentration and extermination camps in Poland; ''special handling'' regarded the killing of Jews, either through slave labor in which the Jew was worked to death, or being killed immediately on arrival. The ''final solution'' was put into practice within a few months of the conference, as the bullets of the machine guns and the exhaust of carbon monoxide were replaced by the more efficient killing methods installed in the first gas chambers.

====The death camps====
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Selektion'' of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
In the early years of Nazi Germany concentration camps were built with the expressed purpose of housing political prisoners; this was quickly expanded to Jews and other people the Nazis considered undesirable. But by 1942 new camps were built in eastern Poland as death camps; the victims, once targeted by the Einsatzgruppen coming to them, had been rounded up by units of the Army and Waffen S.S., and forced to travel to their own destruction. The victims were packed tightly into cattle cars - so tight in fact that many would die standing up – and transported by rail to the new extermination camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, [[Majdanek]], and Belzec. The camps were essentially factories which specialized in death, making the process from arrival to counting to shower to disposal coldly efficient.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers. Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland - Auschwitz - was perhaps the most notorious. Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau). The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths. Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

The number of Jews put to death were staggering. Beginning in the summer of 1942 a bare minimum of 960,000 were believed killed at Auschwitz during its three years in operation. At Treblinka, between 750,000-900,000 Jews were killed within 17 months, considering the staff and guards there numbered 120. 600,000 Jews died at Belzac within 10 months by a staff numbering 104. In the eighteen months of its operation, Sobibor killed 250,000.

==Clandestine aid==
In territory occupied by the Germans the situation was bleak for Jews. Their allies were few and resources were meager. Despite this, many put their lives on the line to provide aid and comfort, as well as putting them in hiding or through a network of underground units to get them to safety. In Poland it was punishable by death to aid Jews, yet a “council for the aid of Jews” known as the Zegota rescued about 5,000 men, women, and children, providing hiding places and forged identity papers. A similar number was hidden by French Huguenots in the little town of Le Chamblon-sur-Lignon. Although criticized by many for his silence about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Pope [[Pius XII]] hid several hundred inside the Vatican, away from Mussolini and German occupiers and quietly worked behind the scenes to do what they could. The Vatican estimates they were able to save upwards of 150,000 Jews during this horrible time. For those who say the Vatican should have done more to save Jews, it should be noted that they weren't even able to stop the killing of Polish Catholics, of whom more than a million lost their lives, so how could they stop the killing of Jews?

Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenburg]], in an attempt to save the last remaining Jews in Hungary, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and working with neutral diplomats and the Vatican, secured the release of several thousand; his efforts at the rescue of Jews would total well over 100,000 by war’s end. A Nazi businessman who took advantage of the slave labor conditions to make a personal profit, [[Oskar Schindler]], would use that profit to bribe camp guards and Nazi officials at the Plazow camp to ensure that the workers he had grown to love and admire would survive the end of the war; among the individuals he played cat and mouse with for their lives was the camp's commandant, Amon Goeth, a sadistic man who shot Jews for target practice from his villa and tortured a captured escapee by shooting the prisoners around him. These men and women, who hid Jews out of a sense of common humanity, would not be forgotten: the state of Israel would recognize them with honorary citizenship several years later.

==Resistance==
Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi war machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves. Further, the Nazis took great care to prevent their victims from knowing their true plans right up to the moment of their deaths; at Babi Yar many had believed they were being transported to a “family work camp” right up to the point of standing before their own mass grave. There was also the fear of reprisals against large numbers of Jews within the ghettos, which also prevented resistance. But word of the unbelievable atrocities of the death camps filtered into places like Warsaw, and as the trains were leaving packed with Jews many saw that resistance was preferable to the death that awaited them.

Nine months after the Warsaw deportations had commenced, and after confirmation that their destination was the Treblinka extermination camp, 24-year-old [[Mordecai Anielewicz]] and his Jewish Resistance began the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943, which lasted just over a month. Jews would fight alongside partisans elsewhere in France, the Balkans, and Soviet Russia during the last three years of the war. Uprisings also occurred in two of the death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor; the latter was closed as a result and the site razed to hide the evidence.

But the killing continued unabated, even to the last week of the war. As territory was regained by Soviet forces, the death camps were evacuated of survivors and destroyed as much as possible in a futile attempt to hide the evidence. The survivors were moved west into Germany, usually in hellish death marches, and interned in concentration camps where death still awaited them; such killing by the S.S. took priority over military matters at times.

==Aftermath==
{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="450" style="margin-left:5px"
|-
!colspan="5" align="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: yellow no-repeat scroll top left;"|Jewish Death Statistics during the Holocaust
|-
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Country
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Prior Jewish Population
!align ="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: red no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number Killed
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Percentage of Total
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number of Survivors
|-
|'''Poland'''
|3,300,000
|'''3,000,000'''
|91%
|300,000
|-
|'''Germany'''
|566,000
|'''200,000'''
|36%
|366,000
|-
|'''USSR'''
|3,020,000
|'''1,100,000'''
|36%
|1,920,000
|-
|'''Hungary'''
|800,000
|'''596,000'''
|74%
|204,000
|-
|'''Lithuania'''
|168,000
|'''143,000'''
|85%
|25,000
|-
|'''Estonia'''
|4,500
|'''2,000'''
|44%
|2,500
|-
|'''Latvia'''
|95,000
|'''80,000'''
|84%
|15,000
|-
|'''France'''
|350,000
|'''77,320'''
|22%
|272,680
|-
|'''Austria'''
|185,000
|'''65,000'''
|35%
|120,000
|-
|'''Netherlands'''
|140,000
|'''100,000'''
|71%
|40,000
|-
|'''Belgium'''
|65,700
|'''28,900'''
|45%
|36,800
|-
|'''Romania'''
|342,000
|'''287,000'''
|84%
|55,000
|-
|'''Bohemia Moravia'''
|118,310
|'''71,150'''
|60%
|47,160
|-
|'''Greece'''
|77,380
|'''67,000'''
|87%
|10,380
|-
|'''Czechoslovakia'''
|88,950
|'''71,000'''
|80%
|17,950
|-
|'''Yugoslavia'''
|78,000
|'''63,300'''
|81%
|14,700
|-
|'''Italy'''
|44,500
|'''7,680'''
|17%
|36,820
|-
|'''Bulgaria'''
|50,000
|'''0'''
|0%
|50,000
|-
|'''Denmark'''
|7,800
|'''60'''
|.8%
|7,740
|-
|'''Finland'''
|2,000
|'''7'''
|.03%
|1,993
|-
|'''Norway'''
|1,700
|'''762'''
|45%
|938
|-
|'''TOTAL'''
|'''9,508,340'''
|'''5,962,129'''
|'''63%'''
|'''3,546,211'''
|
|}
[[Image:Ike at Ordruf.jpg|left|150px|thumb|General Dwight D. Eisenhower saw for himself the carnage wrought by the Nazis when he toured the Ordruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. These prisoners were executed prior to the camp's liberation.]]
More than nine million people were discovered by the [[Allies]] to have been displaced throughout the European Theater of the war; of these, six million were returned to their native lands. One million refused, citing either a fear of communist persecution or a fear of being discovered to have collaborated with the enemy. The remainder, more than three and a half million Jews, had nothing. For these survivors, life after the war meant searching for loved ones, as well as recovering from the severe effects of malnutrition and disease at the hands of the Nazis.

As to the future of finding homes for the surviving Jews, that was solved in part by both covert and well-publicized efforts to pressure [[Great Britain]] into relinquishing control of [[Palestine]] for the purpose of a Jewish homeland, as well as the relaxing of American immigration laws in 1948 which allowed a large influx of Jewish refugees. So shocking was the Holocaust to the Jewish mindset that it caused a determination of survivors to speed the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in May, 1948, vowing that a repeat of the Holocaust, as well as previous pogroms against the Jews in the past, would not happen again. Since 1948, Israel has fought in four major wars against their neighbors bent on eradicating it, and each time Israel has emerged victorious.

The Allies were just as shocked over the conditions which prevailed at the Nazi death camps, and set up military tribunals as a result. The most famous was the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal|Nürnberg Trials]], taking place 1945-1946 near the site of the Nazi mass rallies. For the first time in history, an international tribunal would try the 22 major living Nazis for crimes against humanity; all but one would be found guilty, and more than half would suffer death by hanging.

Many Nazis would flee justice, seeking solace in many counties which sympathized with them. [[Adolf Eichmann]], a chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured while hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, brought to Israel, and put on trial in 1961. He was found guilty, and suffered the first and only death penalty carried out Israel’s history. Other Nazis would eventually be brought to trial: [[Klaus Barbie]], the “Butcher of Lyon”, was tried in France in 1987, as well as [[Maurice Papon]] a decade later for collaborating with the Nazis. These trials brought to new generations an awareness of the Holocaust.

==Etymology==
The word '''Holocaust''' comes from the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god); the [[Hebrew]] word ''hurban'' (destruction) was also used, and and survivors have used both to refer to what seemed to be the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, specifically in the crematoria of the [[concentration camps|extermination camps]] built for that purpose. In Hebrew, the Holocaust is known by the word "''Shoah''."

==Books and film==
*''[[Schindler's List]]''

==See also==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Römische Campagna.jpg|thumb|Römische Campagna by Lovis Corinth; returned to the heirs of a Jew in 2007.]]
* [[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holocaust Memorial Day]]
*[[Kindertransport]]

{{Clear}}

==Bibliography==
===Surveys and victims===
* Bloxham, Donald and Kushner, Tony. ''The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches.'' (2005). 238 pp.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
** '' Hitler's War Against the Jews: A Young Reader's Version of the War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz'' (1978) [http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-War-Against-Jews-Dawidowicz/dp/0874412226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979155&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust'' (2001).
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Friedman, Saul S. ''A History of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 494 pp.
* Gilbert, Martin. ''Never Again: The History of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Holocaust-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0789304090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War'' (1987) [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-History-Europe-During-Second/dp/0805003487/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)[http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Atlas-Holocaust-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415281466/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lacqueur, Walter, ed. ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' (2001).
* Landau, Ronnie. ''The Nazi Holocaust'' (2002)
* Marrus, Michael A. ''The Holocaust in History'' (1989)
* Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99854126&oplinknum=4 online edition]; [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289191002135231 online review]
* Rosen, Philip. ''Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology.'' (1997)
* Rothkirchen, Livia. ''The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust.'' (2006). 447 pp.
*Yahil, Leni. ''The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry'', (1990).

===Perpetrators===
* Browning, Christopher. ''Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers'' (2000)
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' 2000. 864 pp., stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
* Friedlander, Henry. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.'' (1995) 445 pp. ISBN 978-0-8078-2208-1. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=2249957902770 online review]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)), the standard scholarly history
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gaunt, David; Levine, Paul A.; and Palosuo, Laura, eds. ''Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.'' (2004). 519 pp.
* Goldhagen, Daniel Joseph. ''Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' (1997).
* Graml, Hermann. ''Antisemitism in the Third Reich'' (1992).
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Johnson, Eric A. ''Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Terror-Gestapo-Ordinary-Germans/dp/0465049087/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-13 excerpt and text search]
* Lewy, Guenter. ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Gypsies-Guenter-Lewy/dp/0195142403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979549&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Levy, Richard, ed. ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'' (2005)
* Lower, Wendy. ''Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.'' (2005). 307 pp.
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps," ''European History Quarterly,'' 4 2006; vol. 36: pp. 247 - 278. fulltext in Sage; historiography
* Wistrich, Robert S. ''Hitler and the Holocaust.'' (2001). 295 pp.

===Memory===
* Bartov, Omer. ''Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity.'' (2000). 310 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-507723-0. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23289980364228 online review]; [http://www.amazon.com/Mirrors-Destruction-Genocide-Modern-Identity/dp/0195151844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979627&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bloxham, Donald. ''Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory.'' (2001) 292pp ISBN 978-0-19-820872-3. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122091071198412 online review]
* Carrier, Peter. ''Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Véd'Hiv' in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.'' (2005) 267 pp.
* Douglas, Lawrence. ''The Memory of Judgment: The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://books.google.com/books?id=hiU2C0maeAMC&pg=PP1&dq=intitle:The+intitle:Memory+intitle:of+intitle:Judgment+inauthor:douglas&num=30&as_brr=0&sig=MiETAxY1KKnru9emnC0x3IXWJIE excerpt and text search]
* Greenspan, Henry. ''On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History.'' (1998) 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-275-95718-6. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3035937424750 online review]
* Haggith, Tony and Newman, Joanna, ed. ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television.'' 2005. 317 pp.
* Mikhman, Dan. ''Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches, and Fundamental Issues'' (2003)
* Roseman, Mark. ''A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Past-Hiding-Memory-Survival-Germany/dp/031242065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979685&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Rosen, Philip. and Nina Apfelbaum. ''Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Witness-Literature-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0313310769/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195980447&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Stone, Dan, ed. ''The Historiography of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 573 pp
* Waxman, Zoe Vania. ''Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Holocaust-Representation-Historical-Monographs/dp/0199206384/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981167&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Wiesel, Elie, and Robert Franciosi. ''Elie Wiesel: Conversations'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Conversations-Literary/dp/1578065038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979990&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Weisel, Elie. ''Night'' (1999).

===Reactions and memory in U.S.===
* Abzug, Robert H. ed. ''America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/America-Views-Holocaust-1933-1945-Documentary/dp/0312218192/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981035&sr=1-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945'' (1993). [http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-American-Coming-Holocaust/dp/0029191610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979711&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Newton, Verne W., ed. ''FDR and the Holocaust'' (1996). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Franklin-Roosevelt-Institute-Diplomatic/dp/0312122268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979739&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Novick, Peter. ''The Holocaust in American Life'' (1999). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-American-Life-Peter-Novick/dp/0618082328/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979766&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Wyman, David. ''The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945.'' (1984). [http://www.amazon.com/Abandonment-Jews-America-Holocaust-1941-1945/dp/159558174X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979795&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]

===Primary sources===
* Greene, Joshua M, and Shiva Kumar, eds. ''Witness: Voices from the Holocaust'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/WITNESS-Holocaust-Joshua-M-Greene/dp/0684865262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979830&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Klemperer, Victor. ''I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1942-1945-Diary/dp/0375756973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979856&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Kremer, S. Lillian, ed. ''Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work'' (2002).
* Siedlecki, Janusz Nel, et als. ''We Were in Auschwitz'' (2000).
* Szpilman, Wladyslaw. ''The Pianist'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Pianist-Read-Great-Movie/dp/0752864297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979914&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]

==International Justice==

* Pritchard, R. John, “War Crimes, International Criminal Law, and the Postwar Trials in Europe and Asia.,” Iin Loyd E. Lee ed., ''World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes,'' edited by Loyd E. Lee (19987).

===Video===
* “Schindler’s List” (DVD and VHS) (1993).
* [http://college.usc.edu/vhi/ USC Shoah Foundation], largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses,

==Notes==
<references/>

==External Links==
:[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ Holocaust Encyclopedia]
:[http://www.ushmm.org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]
:[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm ''Babi Yar'', poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko]
:[http://www.hmh.org/ Houston Holocaust Museum]
:[http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/ Florida Holocaust Museum]
:[http://www.va-holocaust.com/ Virginia Holocaust Museum]
:[http://holocausteducationcenter.org/ Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum]
:[http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Nuremberg/Nuremberg.html#search Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg]
:[http://www.holocaustcentre.net/ Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England]
:[http://www.mhmc.ca/ Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum]
:[http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust]
:[http://www.amcha.org/ AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors]

[[category:European History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Genocide]]
[[Category:Holocaust| ]]

Talk:World War II

2008-10-05T01:19:00Z

KatanaGeldar: /* Holocaust */

==Discussion==

This needs a huge amount of work. It is rather euro-centris at present, I would many American contributors would be able to add discussion on the war in Asia [[User:stevendavy|stevendavy]] 11:33, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Didn't World War II begin when Germany invaded Poland on 9/1/39? [[User:Testing|Testing]] 15:35, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
:Well, not quite, it actually pretty much started when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Austria. Still, huge mistake. I'll fix it.--[[User:Elamdri|Elamdri]] 15:38, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
::Wrong war. WWI was started with the death of Ferdinand. It was September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Polan that started WWII.[[User:NSmyth|NSmyth]]15:40, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
:::Oops. yeah, your right. Haha, silly me. Still, we do need to fix the main article.--[[User:Elamdri|Elamdri]] 15:40, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
::::I did a small fix that should work for now, but anything that you or anyone can add to it, please do.[[User:NSmyth|NSmyth]]15:41, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
:::::If you want to get hyper-technical, you could make the case it started with the Japanese invasion of China. But I don't think we need to get that in-depth, at least for now.--[[User:Dave3172|Dave3172]] 15:55, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

It says: "relatively weak United Kingdom." This would be incorrect, considering it still owned the world's largest empire, ever, at or around its peak at the start of the war.
:Britain had a large Empire, but like a modern Monarch it had little power. Canada's alligence ot Britain is to their credit as they could have stayed out. India and Australia had little choice as they were involved by the war in Asia. Most of the remaining British possessions were in southern and eastern Africa will less direct involvement.
[[Image:India5.jpg|right]]
Two mistakes in the above paragraph. (1) The so-called Empire: the dominions, ie Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand were completely free to make their own decisions by 1939. (Statute of Westminster 1931, says something like: ".....no law hereafter passed by the Parliament of Great Britain shall extend to any of the said dominions otherwise than at the request and with the consent of that dominion.") (2)The Australians were not involved in any "war in Asia" until after Pearl Harbor. Australian forces were in action against the Axis by 1940, and heavily engaged against Rommel, and in Greece and Crete. Aust. forces were recalled to fight Japan, much against Churchill's wishes. I also know that East African troops were involved in 1940-42) (Can't cite that one...my mother nursed them, though, and had anecdotes). Japan did not attack south east Asia, Dutch East Indies etc. until AFTER Pearl Harbor.[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 22:45, 4 June 2007 (EDT)
:Interesting; maybe we can fit this image in the text somewhere to clarify India volunteers fighting to liberate themselves from the British Empire. [[User:RobSmith|Rob Smith]] 22:35, 19 November 2007 (EST)

== Where are the sources? ==

Where are the sources? This article needs sources and is part of our article improvement drive listed on the main page. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 23:24, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

==Overhaul needed==
This article needs an overhaul, and my suggestion would be to separate it into sections according to year, similar to my [[American Civil War]] series of articles. In short, I would gut this one, rename it "World War II: Prelude in Europe", then go into detail about the conditions which led to that war, and follow it by "World War II: Europe, 1940"; "1941", etc, with a separate series of articles concerning the Pacific Theater. It would be more than a dozen separate articles, which would take a lot of time, but it would be worth it in the end. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 01:44, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

==Idea?==
I think the article could be improved if World War II had a symbol of some sort like the [[American Civil War]] has. Just an idea. [[User:Additioner|Additioner]] 15:50, 5 May 2007 (EDT)

== Britain staying in the war ==
I added a fact tag on the following line:
<blockquote>
Indeed it would appear that the, seemingly foolish, decision of the relatively weak United Kingdom to continue the war took the Axis powers off guard
</blockquote>

I don't believe that there was ever any expectation that Britain would not remain in the war. Hitler and his generals understood that Fortress Europa would not be tenable without the conquering of Britain. If you have information to the contrary, I would like to see a cite about it.
*I will have to come back to you on this. However, there were incidents such as soldiers discarding their guns once evacuated from Dunkirk , they thought the war was over and they had lost. Equally, one of Churchills famous speeches at this time was telling people that the war was still on, as it was far from clear. [[User:Stevendavy|Stevendavy]] 00:49, August 2007 (EDT)

*Please sign all posts, and I reverted your last change due to misleading edit notes. If you state you add a citation, do so, but do not make other key changes in the article. --[[User:TK|Sysop-TK]] [[User_talk:TK|/MyTalk]] 12:54, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

Sorry, forgot to sign the talk page. I thought that I did comment on each of the changes to show what each was. I also added a citation to the change of Alliance to Non-Aggression pact, which it certainly was. Germany and the Soviet Union never had any sort of alliance. I will unwatch the article and leave it alone, as apparently making good edits and adding citations are less important than signing a talk page post (which I was correcting as you undid my edits, btw.) [[User:Boomcoach|Boomcoach]] 12:59, 4 June 2007 (EDT)
:*''Germany and the Soviet Union never had any sort of alliance.''
::*Huh? [[User:RobS|RobS]] 00:49, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

*Goodbye. You "thought" nothing of the sort, as your last edit clearly shows many changes, not just the addition of citation. Your argumentative tone here, clearly reveals your intentions. Troll somewhere else. --[[User:TK|Sysop-TK]] [[User_talk:TK|/MyTalk]] 13:01, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

The Battle of Britain and The Blitz were sort of contemporanious although the Blitz lasted longer.Put simply; the B of B was the attempt by Germany to wipe out the RAF, so opening the way for invasion. The Blitz was the saturation bombing of London and other major cities. They overlapped. Sept 7 1940 is the day Goering assumed command and ordered the switch from airfields to cities. Yet the B of B went through October. The Blitz never refers to Allied raids into Germany. (I'm scanning Churchill's memoirs here.)[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 17:55, 4 June 2007 (EDT)
*''opening the way for invasion''
::yes and no; Germany simply never had enough ships to put the size of a force needed across the Channel, neither was it in the budget to do so. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 12:22, 5 June 2007 (EDT)
:The English would know that. They were aware of "Sea Lion" and the build up across the channel; and Whilst Churchill stated his increasing confidence that an invasion would not take place, or would not then succeed; if the RAF had been wiped out there was real danger of it being on the cards. The opening sentence of Chapter XVI "The Battle of Britain" in Volume II is: "Our fate now depended upon victory in the air." [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 01:18, 5 June 2007 (EDT)
::Yes, this is all the "coulda woulda shoulda" school of historiography. In the final analysis, it was obvious when Hitler allowed the Brits to escape at Dunkirk he had no intention of ever invading England with land forces; what sense did it make to allow them to escape, when they had their back to the wall on the shores of Dunkirk, only to go fight them again on their home turf? If the Germans had destroyed the British forces on the beaches of Dunkirk, or captured them all, yes, then an invasion of Britain with limited manpower was possible. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 14:31, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

Utter rubbish, Hitler knew he had to conquer the British. I agree that Dunkirk was more down to the Luftwaffe wanting to destroy the BEF on the ground than anything else, but the main victory at Dunkirk was the initing of the British people in a common belief that despite the lack of ANY help from anywhere, we must carry on the fight against Hitler and win the war. With the USA still seeking to appease Hitler in anyway they could, the British people assumed we would fight alone. [[User:Scrumpy|Scrumpy]] 15:31, 12 Dec 2007 (GMT)

:*''the main victory at Dunkirk was the initing of the British people in a common belief that despite the lack of ANY help from anywhere, we must carry on the fight...''
::*Huh? Main victory? A total route is a main victory. Yes, recycling wartime propaganda for domestic consumption once again. Fact: Hitler spared the lives of these soldiers. Is that utter rubbish, too? [[User:RobSmith|Rob Smith]] 16:08, 12 December 2007 (EST)

Good morning. Yep...Hitler hesitated. That's been chewed over many times by people infinitely more knowledgable and better recourced than I am. And smarter. Hitler did beeall for six weeks after Dunkirk. He didn't want to invade. He hoped the Brits would yield. He gave them every chance to. Yet, on July 16 he issued "War Directive No. 16", ordering preparations for an invasion - in effect initiating 'Sealion". He still hoped that Britain would sorta, um, disappear. The effectiveness of the RAF over Dunkirk had given everyone pause for thought. Was Sealion and all the memos and diary entries and directives some gigantic feint, or hoax? Within weeks the Germans were grabbing barges from as far away as the eastern Baltic and anything else that could carry troops across the Channel. I think he had to have a go. As much as he could hope that America would stay away, he realised that the "Bases for Destroyers" deal would strengthen Britain and sooner or later America would become an active belligerant. And at the same time he was desperately working towards a "Tripartite Agreement" (Germany, Italy, Japan) to keep the US looking over its shoulder, and working just as hard at persuading Spain to join up. (But let's not mention Portugal -:)) Yeah. Hitler was ambivalent about an invasion, but all the preparations were put in train, and also....why would he have unleashed such a storm at the RAF and the Channel installations if no invasion was planned. I can see a bit of both sides min this. Maybe i'm a shoulda woulda shoulda sorta bloke. I like the "on the other hand" view of history.(Oh and one more thing. My mother was in a medical unit in the BEF and was strafed more than once on the way to the coast. She was taken off with the last of the wounded a few days (I think) before the final evacuation. Two or three weeks later she was at the set up of one of those great manors as a hospital for the sick relatives of VIPs. A month after it was operational it was suddenly abandoned, and everyone ended up in the Midlands somewhere. News of an impending invasion? Or just of an impending air war? Probably neither, but who knows. [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 17:22, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

:Continuing the "coulda woulda shoulda" school, Sea Lion was all bluff, and diversionary. Hitler overruled the Generals who recommended finishing off the British forces at Dunkirk, cause otherwise it might turn around bite you in the butt, which it eventually did. But Hitler was fighting a propaganda campaign; he knew Britain did not want War, the people did not, Chamberlain didn't, nor the Duke of Windsor. To Hitler at this point, the skirmish was a "frisch, froelich krieg" with Britain, and the two would eventually see eye-to-eye on Soviet Bolshevism. He already had the continental French manpower which made up the SS Charlemagne Division, among others, working for him. Hitler did not anticipate the stubbornness of a Churchill, who would risk [[total war]] to the finish. Until the day Hitler went down in the basement and blew his brains out, he never understood why Britain opposed him. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 17:39, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

::[[User:RobS|RobS]], where did you get the expression "frisch, froelich krieg" from? You used more than once, but I have never encountered this phrase anywhere else before. It reminds me of the mood at the beginning of WWI, but not exactly of WWII. If you have a source for this expression, I'd be more than grateful. [[User:Order]] June 7.

:::I think I first heard it regarding the regarding the [[Battle of Sadowa]], probably in Gordon Craig's, ''Politics of the Prussian Army'', a book I'd recommend to any serious student. And even if I recall correctly, Craig says the term or idea was fluent in Prussian military thinking prior to Sadowa. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 20:03, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

:::Correct spelling should be "frisch, froehliche krieg", also "frisch-froehliche krieg" is found in some search engines. [http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=%22frisch%2C+froehliche+krieg%22][http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=5163652657573392149] This may be a good subject for an entry. Also [[sabre rattling]] is another I'd like to do; the newspeak use of it doesn't have a clue what its original meaning is, and is distorted. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 20:20, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

:::Order, you are absolutely correct. Look at this babelfish translation, for example, from a German language article entitled "First World War",
:::*''On 28 June 1914 Franz Ferdinand and its wife were shot in Sarajewo by conspirator hand. That became the trip the First World War. I do not want to describe its process here, but to mention nevertheless three things: 1. It did not become the dreamed of '''short, freshmerry war''''' [http://www.maffersdorf.de/chronik/band_05/maffersdorf_anhang_12.htm] [[User:RobS|RobS]] 20:28, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

You may well be right. I would have to do a lot of research to catch up with your knowledge. The thing is though...what should a Consevapedia article give as the causes of or the reson for The Battle of Britain? [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 17:52, 6 June 2007 (EDT)
:Causes? Whew...I'm still just shooting from the hip off the top of my head decades old knowledge I haven't studied in awhile...I'd say Germany's attempt to bring England under submisssion after England decided to continue the war under Churchill, but I'd need good sources to explain that. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 18:04, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

I am almost tending towards the scenario wherein Hitler says to the Luftwaffe: "OK then, have a go. If you're successful we may invade. I'll get things going in case". One thing I saw was something about him giving them 8 days to wipe out the RAF. (Almost a "famous last words thing", eh?)I think later the Luftwaffe was thinking two weeks to a month. And certainly he would have considered that id he was successful and the RAF was destroyed, he would not have to invade....England may have yielded then. Cheers[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 19:05, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

:I think the whole matter of Hitler wanting to invade England (or for that matter the United States) is exaggerated. It never was in the cards. And the events at Dunkirk prove it. Had Hitler taken prisoners at Dunkirk rather than allow them to escape, he could have launched an invasion using basically a naval flotilla similiar to the one the Brits used to escape Dunkirk, to occupy Britain, probaly with less less 80,000 men. But the truth is, they simply did not have enough ships to mount a Normandy style invasion, under fire, against Britain. Hitler viewed it as a propaganda war, and always fully expected Britain to join the alliance against the Soviet Union, which in fact it did, after Hitler's death. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 19:32, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

I don't know. Sure, there was no way the Staes were under threat from him. But Britain? I don't know. I don't know enough, and it would take me too long to read up sufficiently. Some where between the two of us is the answer. Gotta go.[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 19:39, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

:Hitler viewed it basically as a propoaganda campaign. He wrote a whole chapter on propaganda in ''Mien Kampf'', marvelling and admiring how effective British propaganda, without bullets, was in WWI. This was given high priority in Nazi Germany, Goebbels Ministry was built on, and modeled after British propaganda (state run BBC). Hitler could never understand why Britain didn't make common-cause with Germany against the USSR, always couldn't understand what they expected to gain. Many Brits as well, never thought the War was worth the effort expended, during it and after. And Britain had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to loose. In fact, while being a victor, they lost everything, i.e. the British Empire.

:This brings us to a discusssion of the [[Arsenal of Democracy]], and Churchill's "give us the tools, and we'll finish the job" speech. In 1940, the US was adament about remaining neutral. The Arsenal of Democracy, for US domestic consumption, meant the US would get invovled in building weapons, but not supply manpower, i.e. bloodshed. This was extremely controversial at the time. Churchill's speech was intended as a reassurance, if the US would amend the Neutrality Act, and allow Lend Lease shipments, Britain had the manpower (which survived Dunkirk), but only needed the tools (weapons) from American factories (the Arsenal of Democracy). This was the propaganda sold to the American public, that the US could take sides, arm Britain, yet not expend any manpower or bloodshed of its own. Hitler evidently believed it as well, never thinking American troops would assemble in Great Britain to invade someday. Or if it did happen, it would take years and years to build the ships, ship the material and manpower, and finally mount an invasion.

:That is why, in 1940, Hitler let the British Expediationary Force slip away at Dunkirk. To him, it was only a "brisk, jolly little war", like a game of touch football where nobody gets hurt. And Total War against Britain was not in his mind. Total War against the USSR was, but he would have liked to have Britain as an ally in such a venture. And whether or not Britain was an ally, didn't disrupt his plans. And truth be told, Hitler always admired and respected Great Britain, but could not figure out why they would destroy themselves and their Empire to gain nothing. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 21:09, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

Portugal was neutral but benevolent TOWARDS Britain. Indeed, the oldest extant defence treaty is that between Portugal and England, made in 1373. At about the same time that America declared a demarcation line between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres with US patrolling the Western and keeping GB aware of all Axis sightings, (April 1941) Britain was organising, in response to requests from Portugal, a takeover of the Azores, with further plans for Cape Verde Islands and Grande Canary; all Portuguese territories that neither Portugal nor Britain wanted to fall into German hands. (Refer SBS World Book (Portugal) and Churchill’s War Memoirs: Vols. II & III.)[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 00:46, 5 June 2007 (EDT)
*Sure. Everybody was on the winning side once the War was over, even the neutrals. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 00:53, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

Um...in 1943 Churchill himself visited Lisbon...not a place to be if it is pro-German. That is well over a year before the war finished and before an Allied Victory was assured. Before the Americans came in, Portugal had given the Allies "use" of their Atlantic islands. I am not sure what you are getting at. These pro-English gestures, and others were not "once the war was over".

:::Portugal was neutral and the seat of much espionage and disinformation activity. When the Goebbels wished to transmit a line of disinformation, Lisbon newspapers were always targerted knowing the Allies would pick it up in hopes it had some degree of credibility. Portugal figured prominently into the "Double Cross" cross system. The famous case how British intelligence handcuffed a briefcase with supposed invasion plans to a corpse and let it wash up on shore in Portugal, knowing the disinformation would get back to Berlin after Portugeese investigators examined the corpse is well known. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 12:37, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

Agreed. And the Actor Leslie Howard died when a plane was targeted by the Germans between Lisbon and London as Churchill may have been on board. Lisborn was walking a fine line between London, Berlin, and Madrid. And many in authority were pro-Nazi. But the Portuguese Gov't did offer Britain the use of the Azores - of immense strategic value like Iceland. If you wish to revert my removal, do so, but surely a "pro-Axis leadership would preferred Germany to have their Atlantic territories, instead of Britain. Now, its not yet 5 am and the coffee has stopped gurgling. Cheers[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 14:57, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

:Yes that's all true. I don't recall all the details how the Allies got to use the Azores, but after Stalingrad, virtually everybody in the know knew which way the wind was blowing and who was going to win anyway. Besides, the Germans never had sufficient naval forces to hold the Azores, the only interesting question would be was it before Stalingrad or after? and if before, what impact did it have in facilitating transport of troops & material for the North African campaign, and to what extend was Allied occupation of the Azores visiable (by visable, I mean that the Germans ''knew'' it was done with the consent of Protugal, OTOH, was it forcible in that Portugal was powerless to prevent it) so the Germans basically knew Portugal was abetting the Allies.

:In ''Goebbels Diaries'', speaking from memory, I recall one entry where Goebbels was all aflutter becuase some Lisbon newspaper picked up some disinformation they were trying to get Britain to act upon, but I don't recall the specifics. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 15:29, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

You are no doubt right again. I am looking at books I have hardly opened in 40 years! In a memo from "Prime Minister to Foreign Office" dated 11 Aug. '41, discussing talks with Roosevelt on the Atlantic Charter he writes (inter alia): ".....he (Roosevelt) would be willing to ''come to the aid of Portugal'' in the Atlantic islands...." (My italics) This implies Portugal desiring that aid. This is after the invasion of Russia but well before the rot set in.

Can we agree to differ on this. You seem to be anti Portugal. I suppose I am trying to balance that. Certainly, many Portuguese, including Government, were pro-German. Many weren't. We can go back and forth for ever. As I said; if you want to revert.....[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 16:08, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

:I'm just carrying this all off the top of my head, and have never really delved into the intricacies of Portugese neutrality. Certainly it was a popular vacation spot for continental Europeans during the Nazi occupations elsewhere to get away from the War, and more easily accessible than it was for Allies. Portugal I would assume was incapable of militarily defending the Azores if the Allies really needed it for the North African campaign, so they may have allowed the Allies to pretend to take it forcibly, while at the same time claiming neutrality. I rather doubt there was a back room agreement to allow it before the disaster for the Germans at Stalingrad, but it is plausible, I suppose. OTOH, the Germans certainly would have wanted Portugal for U-boat operations, but they saw certain advantages to respect neutrality. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 16:17, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

Yes, yes, yes and , um, yes. I am trying to finish an article on King John before the day gets going and family takes over. (We all know ''he'' was a villain.) All I know is Churchill considered Portugal onside. As early as 1940 he was discussing Portugal as, if not exactly a friend but at least not an enemy. Portugal were also incapable of defending their Atlantic islands if Germany decided to invade - which they planned to do, but I don't know when. AhHA! Same letter as above (Aug. '41)says: "The President has received a letter from Dr. Salazar, in which it is made clear that he is looking to the Azores as a place of retreat for himself and his Government in the event of German aggression against Portugal, and that his country's age-long alliance with England leads him to count on British protection during his enforced stay on these islands". That can be considered in various ways, I suppose.[[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 17:01, 5 June 2007 (EDT)

::When I was looking for some information about the German opinions about Britain staying in the war, I found an interesting discussion about a book by Lidell Hart. He interviewed some of the German generals at Nurenburg. Several of them said that Hitler held the Germans back at Dunkirk, when the generals wanted to move in and finish off the Expeditionary Force. According to them, Hitler thought that, with France defeated, Britain might be willing to join with Germany against Russia. While these were comments made well after the fact, BLH points out that when awaiting trial, it would make more sense for the generals to put themselves in the position of saving the British troops, instead of giving that role to Hitler. I know that before the war broke out, there was a small group of Britons that supported the idea of fascism being preferable to communism. I wonder if Hitler, who clearly had agents in pre-war Britain, made a complete misread of this position.
:::As a side note, there were Nazi sympatheizers in high circles in Britain. Hitler himself had strong connections in Britain. This would certainly make sense. Also, in Hitler's way of thinking, way would Britain oppose Italy, Germany, USSR etc.... it would be and it would be easier to control the country quietly (as France or Denmark) rather than undertake an very awkward and possibly difficult (that was never test, of course) to control nation.[[User:Stevendavy|Stevendavy]] 10 August 2007

::::I hate to cite WP, but read their entry on Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (later the Duke of Windsor). This is why Rudolf Hess flew to England. Many Nazi's bosses thought they had enough influence in Britian to keep them out from continuing the war. As you cited above about Dunkirk, you're not really addressing the major historical question around that event: Why did Hitler allow them to escape? Why did Hitler counter the advise of his General's ''an not'' take them '''all''' POW's? Hitler never could understand in his mind why Britain took sides with the Soviet against the united powers of Western Europe. Contrary to what is taught in the history books, under the Third Riech, every single nation of Western Europe contributed ''both'' its manpower, and its defense budgets to fighting Soviet Communism ''in the Soviet Union''. When the War ended of course, we know what happened; they all blamed the Germans and claimed they were all part of the Resistance. The facts are, France contributed more to the Nazi war effort from 1940-1944 than it did to defend itself from 1939-1940. [[User:RobS|Rob Smith]] 12:07, 11 August 2007 (EDT)
::I do not have the BLH book mentioned, and I don't want to add something to an article based on a second hand quote, but I thought it was an interesting discussion. [[User:Boomcoach|Boomcoach]] 07:35, 5 June 2007 (EDT)
:::Liddell Hart is ''the'' primary source we should be using for this article. And yes, Hitler never reconciled in his mind why the English, racial cousins, would not join in the fight against Soviet Bolshevism. (In fact, there was an SS legion made up of Englishmen, the Legion of St. George, had about 50 English speaking Brits who fought in Russsia).

:::One of the interesting things in Liddell Hart's book regards the occupation of Norway; Hart points out how the charge of "waging aggressive war" against Norway at Nuremberg was hypocritical, given that Britain at the exact moment itself was moving to occupy an indenpendent, neutral country, only the Germans got there first. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 16:26, 5 June 2007 (EDT)
::::...and given the choice the Brits would have been welcomed with open arms, I would suggest. Britain did take over the Faroes and, whilst they took their guns with them, they were not unwelcome (as opposed to places where the British stayed longer...)[[user:stevendavy|Stevendavy]]

== Immediate Causes ==

"The immediate causes of World War II are generally held to be the Japanese attacks on China, the United States..."

What? How is the Japanese attack on the United States an immediate cause of WWII? Is this some kind of joke?

According to the insular American view, WW2 only happened because Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Although remember they hid for 2 years, 3 months & 4 days from the original start of war, and were more than happy to appease Nazi Germany even after 7th December.

Despite the sinking of the Reuben Jones the US never wanted war with Hitler. It was Hitler who declared war on the USA.

==Outline==
Perhpas we need to develop a larger outline for the war. What appears here, is larely what can be referred to as the [[untied front]], i.e. it only discusses the united front against axis powers, and moreless ignores the Soviet invasions of Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, etc. No discussion of the Soviet-Japanese front, Moaist and Comintern activities in the Far East, etc.

The [[united front]], as far as the Anglo-American schools go, date the war from the beginning of Great Britian's involvement, Sept. 3, 1939, although the United States was not an active belligerent power in either Europe or the Far East. So, what I would propose is an opening section which briefly lists all the various major belligerencies that occurred since the war to end all wars, i.e. WWI & the failed Treaty of Versailles. This would be various Japanese wars, what we have finally come to call the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ethiopia, Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, Treaty of Munich, Communazi pact, Finnish War, etc. [[User:RobS|Rob Smith]] 01:24, 23 August 2007 (EDT)

== What about australia? ==

It seems you have no information on Australia during WW2, this is quite dissapointing seeing as Australia comitted around 300 thousand troops to the war and at one stage held 1/3 of the line in europe against nazi germany, they also fought in africa against italy, as well as in the pacific against japan. Where was the information about the battle for PNG where 800 australian soldiers defeated 10 000 japanese?

Yours truly Ben.

True. I am Australian and hearing this, I'm not happy, I'm sure there should have been something about that a long time ago! --[[User:Mssb57|Mssb57]] 00:11, 9 December 2007 (EST)

:Then add it. Easy.
::Number one: Please sign your posts by typing <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> after your post. Number two: I would add it, but unfortunately I do not know enough about WWII to add any half-decent information in. --[[User:Mssb57|Mssb57]] 16:26, 14 December 2007 (EST)

== Main image ==

Seems a little daft simply having a map of France as a representative image of WW2. Surely a picture of Hitler, the Blitz, Churchill or Pearl Harbour would be more symbolic and appropriate? I would have replaced it but I don't have media upload rights. [[User:Ajkgordon|Ajkgordon]] 08:45, 9 January 2008 (EST)
:Amended. [[Image:User Fox.png|10px]] [[User:Fox|Fox]] ([[User talk:Fox|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Fox|contribs]]) 09:06, 9 January 2008 (EST)
::Much better, thanks. [[User:Ajkgordon|Ajkgordon]] 08:51, 15 January 2008 (EST)

==Far Eastern Theatre==
I'll be working to improve this section, but I have to say, it's really disappointing as is. One paragraph to sum up the entire 3 1/2 year campaign against Japan, and three paragraphs on Soviet duplicity? C'mon.--[[User:Frey|Frey]] 09:47, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

==Holocaust==
Nothing about the Holocaust? Nothing? How can we just write nothing about it? [[User:Daphnea|Daphnea]] 14:38, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

And nothing about the course of the Eastern Front? [[User:Daphnea|Daphnea]] 14:40, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

The Holocaust was a HUGE part about WWII and it made it the most henious war that has ever been or ever will be, and it's not there? [[User:KatanaGeldar|KatanaGeldar]] 21:19, 4 October 2008 (EDT)