WORLD WAR 2
The holocaust
The word Holocaust,from the Greek words holos and kaustos ,was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the antiSemitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s final solution now known as the Holocaust came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.
Adolf Hitler
Born in Austria in 1889, Adolf Hitler rose to power in German politics as leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and served as dictator from 1934 to 1945. His policies precipitated World War II and the Holocaust. Hitler committed suicide with wife Eva Braun on April 30, 1945, in his Berlin bunker.
Franklin D Roosevelt
Born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921. He became the 32nd U.S. president in 1933, and was the only president to be elected four times. Roosevelt led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II, and greatly expanded the powers of the federal government through a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal. Roosevelt died in Georgia in 1945.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin 1878-1953 was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Born into poverty, Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin 1870-1924 died, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party.
The Manhattan Project
The Manhattan project was a research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World war 2.When Einstein learned that the Germans might succeed in solving these problems, he wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt with his concerns. Einstein's 1939 letter helped initiate the U.S. effort to build an atomi bomb, but work proceeded slowly at first. Two other findings in 1940 and 1941 demonstrated conclusively that the bomb was feasible and made building the bomb a top priority for the United States: the determination of thecritical mass of uranium needed and the confirmation that plutonium could undergo fission and be used in a bomb. In December 1941, the government launched the Manhattan Project, the scientific and military undertaking to develop the bomb.
The Eastern Front
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Northern,southern and central and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945.
The Western Front
The Western Front of the European theatre of World War II encompassed Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany.