The Holocaust from the eyes of a German

When I was researching what about the Holocaust I wanted to blog about, I was thinking about my Grandma who grew up in Germany during the time. I came up with a question, should she have to take the blame for what her country did? I think that even since she lived there, she should take the blame because of what some of the people in her country did. She was not involved and did not want anything to do with it. But usually when people say they are German the first thing that comes to mind is the Holocaust. How can these people take the blame if they had nothing to do with it. However the actions that Hitler took to exterminate the Jews was to a certain extent of being endlessly cruel and not needed. When talking to my grandma about this she said that the time during the Holocaust was so sad and depressing she didn't know how to go on living normally. She said all the test they did to find out if the people were jewish or not was unnecessary and horrible. One time they measured her nose, but her blond hair and blue eyes meant she was a dominate German(I think they checked her records too). To this day she has the horrible image of the Jews being taken away to camps and then hearing about what they did. However she still is proud of the fact that she is German but wished the Holocaust never occurred.

War Crimes

The Holocausts, around 1933-1945, were one of the biggest war crimes ever committed throughout history. The killing of about 6 million innocent Jews just because of prejudice is not fair at all. The way many of these people died is also a big crime. Burning someone, or starving someone to death is really unethical and torturous. All of this was done to satisfy only one person which is the worst part of this all.

The Atomic Bomb was also a war crime because it murdered thousands of innocent civilians. It would have been better for the US to just fight them without the use of this bomb, because Innocent women and children would have most likely been safe. If the US would have just fought them without the bomb, they would have avoided the extensive Cold War that came as a result of them dropping the bomb.

War Crimes

War is a brutal thing that has no positive result. Sure politicians may brag and say how the war was a great thing, but there are thousands, even millions of people who die throughout the war. Overall the war is brutal, and shouldn't go any farther than necessary. Unfortunately, they sometimes do, and that is called a war crime. Killing off citizens is a horrible thing. The citizens are unarmed, and may even be against the war. Unless they take up arms against you, they are very little threats to you. And murdering a helpless person is just wrong. The holocaust was ridiculous, and a war crime to the highest extent. The Natzis took millions of Jews, and murdered them in gas chambers and ovens. Both of them are horrible ways to go. The Natzis did all of this for the small reason that they decided to hate Jews. It was a brutal mutilation of a race of people who had done nothing at all, and had no reason to be persecuted. The Holocaust was possibly the biggest war crime in history, because of all the horror that they caused for no apparent reason.

Who is responsible in a war crime?

I researched more when I got home about who is responsible in war crimes and why more people should feel bad for the actions that they pursue in a crime. War crimes were happening all over the world during World War II and many followers of the Nazi Party took place in the killing of the Jews. We read a document written in the point of view of one of the Nazi commanders. He states that he was in great pain seeing these children and men suffering and having to be burned alive and dying in the gas chambers. If he felt any sympathy towards them, he would be killed as well. Back to the idea of who is responsible for the war crime, I would say that anyone who lets or does the duty of killing is considered responsible. It doesn't matter if you didn't help with the actual killing, but if you witnessed the scene you are held responsible. The Nazi commander did not think he was responsible for anything since he just gave the order to have someone kill the Jews, but in reality he could have stopped this and it wouldn't have been a war crime anymore.

War Crimes

It is not always easy to identify a war crime or a war criminal. However, when we do, I find it interesting that we are always trying to justify this action. No matter what happens, if someone commits a war crime, they always justify it by saying it was in aid of their country or it was going to help finish the war. Whether or not that is true, it is still a war crime the people who commit them, at some point, must pay for their actions. I'm talking about all countries, the U.S. included. The bombardiers who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima themselves are war criminals. They dropped the bomb, committed the crime, and killed many people that day. The same goes for the Japanese in the Rape of Nanking. Every single one of those Japanese soldiers are war criminals for their actions. They committed heinous crimes again humanity.

Japanese War Crimes

So I decided to research a little about the Japanese war crimes and a big one was the Rape of Nanking. They had a hard time finding enough solid evidence to prove it was horrific and a war crime. They now have found that the US may have had some of the more convincing evidence to help the Japanese not be convicted. But why they would do that I am not sure. They think they may have done it so that Japan could move on and continue running smoothly. The Japanese were not as severely punished as the Germans so that is what has lead some people to think that all the facts and evidence may not have been revealed. I think that the German's war crime was horrific because so many were killed in so many horrific ways. The Japanese however invaded without being in much of a war already. I am not saying that what the Germans did is justified but I think that the Japanese should have been suffered a little more and should have received more consequences for their actions. They raped many innocent people for a reason that wasn't very justified especially from the people's view who were somehow connected to the even whether they had someone close who was killed or whether they witnessed part of it. I read about this in a couple essays all in one document from a couple people who decided to investigate and discover more about it.

Research:

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf

War Crimes

Awhile back in class we were talking about war crimes and we were deciding if certain events in WWII were war crimes. I decided to do some research on the definition war crimes and how the government came to terms in what a war crime is. Searching for a definition of war crimes, I found this definition:

war crime
n. Any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare.

There were many other definitions since there isn't one solid definition. However I believe that this definition didn't elaborate on what were the conventions of warfare. I found that there was a diplomatic conference which came together to discuss the idea of protecting the wounded and the sick on land. This was the First Geneva Convention and was signed by many, later on there were three others which were drawn. The Geneva Convention set rules to war on what couldn't be done and breaking these would be considered a war crime. The Geneva Convention came to be due to Henry Dunant who started the Red Cross. The red cross on a white background became an emblem that became known as neutral. As you can see we probably won't be able to find an exact definition that can explain what war crimes are, without going into specificity. The closest we have though are the Geneva Conventions which aid us into deciding what is and isn't a war crime.

"war crime." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 13 Apr. 2010. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/war crime>.

Geneva Convention. <>.

In WWII, nuclear weapons were the foundation for ending the war. We raced against Hitler in an attempt to beat him to the atomic bomb. If he we had not beaten him, I would be speaking German right now and free speech would be limited. The atomic bomb is one of the most lethal weapons to date, and the pure imagining of your enemy having this weapon should be enough to end a war. If you really think about it, the atomic bomb is a metaphor for a war itself. The bomb is created, which is the creation of an army. The side threatens war with the bomb, which is the threat of war. The bomb is then dropped, which is the insertion of the army. The bomb explodes, which is the fighting of war. And the ashes, rubble and radiation remaining is the impact of war itself. The atomic bomb is a small war altogether, but only now does war fly a thousand times faster.

Nuclear Radiation

Even though nuclear bombs are very devastating weapons, often the radiation from these bombs can be even more devastating. About 5% of the energy from the bomb is transmitted into gamma radiation. This number may seem very small, however nuclear bombs are some of the most powerful items on the face of the planet so this 5% energy is still very lethal. After exposure from radiation, effects will kick in within the next 30 days for an "average" human. After intial exposure, an "average" human will have a 50% chance to live, depending on your bodies internal structure and the amount of radiation you recieve. If one goes under more then 2,000 r.a.d (radiation absored dose) then you will face instant death. In order to undergo this much r.a.d it is equivelent to surviving the blast of a nuclear bomb but inhaling the air just after the bomb is dropped. So not only can the bomb do damage with the blast, but the after effects make it one of the most lethal weapons in the world. As you can see from the picture, the radiation peels away the skin and burns it up.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/radiation.htm

War Crimes

crime   [krahym] Show IPA
–noun
1.
an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state and that is legally prohibited.

Crimes are normally determined by laws. If a law is broken it is a crime. In order for there to be war crimes there have to be war laws. The world has not created a complete list of war laws so it is difficult for us to know what exactly is a war crime. The war laws are created based on past battles or fights where they believe sides have had unfair advantages or killed unnecessarily. So the laws are normally created afterwards. Once people realize that one side did something unfair they decide that they never want that to happen again so they create a rule. It is sort of like a late whistle in a sports game. Everyone is led to believe that the call wasn't going to be made and then after the fact they end up calling it. These possibly unknown laws might not have been intentionally broken. If the sides knew about the laws they were possibly going to break they might not have broken them. In order to correctly punish people for war crimes we need to get a set list of rules before the war has begun.

This probably doesn't make much sense.

WWII, Change

World War 2 definitely changed the definition of war and how it was fought. World War 1 was a war of attrition where all troops hid in tenches for months at a time and fought each other until either side ran out of troops. Machine guns and poison gas were key inventions during World war 1, and when used together they were one of the deadliest combinations. But when World War 2 comes, things change greatly. Armies begin to fight with a faster pace, and battles become much shorter. Blitzkrieg becomes popular, which is a type of fast warfare involving planes, ships, tanks, and other automobiles. Troops begin to fight, and are motivated by the goal of being the strongest in the world. Cities are invaded and countries are conquered. Automobiles, ships, airplanes and tanks end up playing a large role in the war in many wars. They increase the mobility of the troops and the speed they can move at, and they become dangerous weapons. Planes begin to be used to provide air support for the troops, and drop bombs. This has a huge impact on the war, and ends up leading to the deaths of many. Firebombing begins to happen using incendiary bombs to destroy large portions of cities, and kills hundreds of thousands. Then the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, devastating Japan, and showing how dangerous an atomic bomb can be, and how much power it can give to an country. The atomic bomb was a weapon that could completely change the course of a war in seconds, and it did. These are just a few ways that WWII changed war.

The History of the Atomic Bomb

Sixty five years ago, the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and dicated war against Japan. The bomb was so forceful that Japan's government decieded to raise a white flag and give up. The era of the bombings were the first of using extremly more powerful weapons then guns and cannons. This bomb destroyed Hiroshima and almost all of its citizens. The controversy of the bombings were based on killing so many people. If you think about it, it isnt that much worse than two countries at war, it wipes out many more people at one time, but in war, killing is not so fast but still a lot of people are murdered. In reality it is all bad but by wipping out all of the citizens at once was extremely more powerful and sent out a message to people not to mess with the US because their weapons are MUCH stronger than guns and knives.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm

The Evolution of War

I think that war has completely changed after WWII. Almost every single aspect of the war has been changed varying from the battles, the diplomacy's, and the after effects of the war. If you look at WWI and how people prepared and fought during the war, it had almost nothing in common with WWII. Armies would sit in trenches for months seeing which army could last the longest, however this was the opposite in WWII. Armies were charging cities fighting with almost a sense of urgency. This made it much easier to conquer territories in a faster time, however the were more consequences. Also, both the naval and air force academies became HUGE factors in WWII. As we see with the Japanese-American fights in the Pacific, these both played major roles. However before, neither of these were used other then transportation of ammo and food. These two aspects almost determined the end of the war as we saw with the bombing in Japan. Another difference was the implications of the war. Millions died and it left nations in shambles and others trembling. This was the case with the US after they dropped the bomb. People around the world couldn't believe that they had that much power. It left nations in constant fear and would lead to the cold war. It was one of the first times in history where a weapon developed in war had such a psychological grip on the world. Overall, WWII changed both the concept and idea of modern warfare.

WWII Changing War

World War II definitely changed the definition of war. Almost every aspect of war changed, from the weapons used to the strategy and tactics. There was a huge difference between World War I and WWII. In World War I, most of the soldier sat in trenches and would come out only to immediately get shot by the opposing side. Compared to WWII, where the use of bombs became a new tactic. Also, instead of trenches on opposite sides, soldiers would storm cities and fight there. This allowed them to control areas more quickly. This is shown by the amount of cities that were destroyed in Japan by American forces.

The atomic bomb played a huge role in WWII. Not only did it show the power of the US but it devastated Hiroshima and Japan as a whole. It left the people in fear of what was to come and brought a new aspect to war itself. In my opinion, the atomic bomb was the biggest difference in the war and eventually changed future wars.

World War II's change on the definition of war

World War II introduced a new way of fighting and new weapons. The nuclear bomb was introduced and used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Firebombing also occurred. Both of these methods were very effective in the fact that they killed large amounts of people without much of a risk in doing it for the soldiers because most were done by air. This was very sad because many of the killings were used to demonstrate their power and how much destruction they could do so easily. Some who saw these killings that was thought of them as unnecessary considering how much damage was caused. Others saw it as necessary because they thought that they needed to make a statement and assure themselves that the place they bombed or burned would no longer be a threat. World War II had many killings but in large numbers rather than wars of attrition with killings but one by one being shot or killed in the trenches like in WWI. WWII was very traumatizing because having so many people who aren't necessarily directly connected to the war and were innocent civilians were killed. Whole cities were taken out and very few survived. The ones who did survive were traumatized for life because they saw their families and friends and just about everyone around them killed either by the bombs or burned to death. Trauma was a common result from war because it resulted a lot and was more commonly called shell shock in World War I.

Source:

In Class/Ms. Xia

WWII Definition

I think that the definition of war has changed a bit due to WWII because of the new technology. Over time we have developed from swords to guns and now we have bombs and other machinery that allows us to fight from a far and are even more deadly. WWII was the beginning of the first nuclear weapon and firebombing these weapons are deadly methods of destruction. This was a lot to lay on the USA, it gave them a lot of power over what they could do. They decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing many civilians. I think that after looking at the effects the bombing caused and the harm it changed what people thought of war. The idea of bombing harmless civilians seemed immoral and not beneficial all it brought was anger and fear from the enemy. Before this war there weren't that many rules because there was not much one could do in war that caused this much damage or gave one of the sides this much power. With the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an imaginary line was drawn in what was good and bad in other words this caused a strong emphasizes in what was war crimes. In my opinion, war is fighting with in certain boundaries. Even though the civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and countless others were affected and in a way became part of the war, I don't believe it was a total war. This is because, not everyone in Japan didn't all help. I don't mean it literally when I say everyone but instead that all men, women, children, and elders could help. Unlike in Italy where they are fascists and they say a women can help by working in the factories and build weapons, or a farmer can produce food for the troops or look at the sky for any signs of invasions, the Japanese didn't place emphasizes on everyone as a whole helping in the war. WWII changed war then what it used to be.

Citations:
Notes from class

Causes of World War II

World War II was a war not started by numerous countries at the beginning. I believe the war was started when Germany invaded Poland and gradually captured and took away all of the Jews. Because of that, Britain and France were immediately forced to help Poland since they were "assigned" to be allies with Poland. I actually believe that World War II started because of what happened to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. They got the least amount of good things happen to them and weren't well off in the 1920s just like how every other country involved in World War I was. Since Germany did not get all of these nice things, their government was corrupt and didn't have any money to import or export goods. As Hitler arose as the new leader, he put the blame on anyone who wasn't part of the Aryan race. He mainly scapegoated the Jewish people and since most of the Jews at the time lived in Poland; that was why they attacked that country first. In the end, I would 100% blame Hitler and his clan for starting World War II.

A Cause of WWII

I believe that World War II started partially due to the division of territory on September 16th 1939 but there were also many other steps that lead up to World War II. On September 16th Russian joined Poland's territory and spilt it up to territories of Germany vs. Britain and France. But this was all located in Poland, so Poland was over loaded with people and the French and British declared war. But then Russia moved in, and no war was declared. It all had to do with the soviet Union because when they entered Poland all hell broke lose, and the Soviet Union started capturing the polish and being shit disturbers. So if all the nations stayed in their own regions a world war II may have never been caused.

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-2/ww2.htm

Causes of WWII

I think the biggest cause of World War II was no one standing up to Germany and Italy. At the end of World War I, Germany got 10% of their land taken away, their military was cut down, and they had to pay for the reparations. Italy on the other hand got nothing out of the Treaty of Versailles. At the beginning Germany followed what the Treaty of Versailles said however, when Hitler came into power he increased the military and stopped paying the reparations. But no one protested. The war had just ended and no one wanted to fight again so they didn't say anything. Germany then annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other German speaking parts. This was against the Treaty of Versailles and yet no one did anything. Britain and France had a small conference with Germany asking them to stop increasing their land, which Germany did not follow through. As you can see France and Britain didn't even try stopping them and this caused Germany to break loose and do as they pleased. If someone would have stood up to Germany and put an end to it, I don't think the events would have happened as they did.

Sources:
Notes
Strayer 645-649
"Long Term Causes of World War II" <>

Major Cause of WWII

I think that the major cause of WWII was because of the result of WWI. Britain and France (with some others) created the Treaty of Versailles and it took everything away from Germany and put the blame on them for the war. This cause Germany's anger and this made them want to fight. Then they started taking over Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Then when they all gave in and let Hitler take over those parts, then he grew and gained more power. This lead to later fighting against America and causing the second world war. Back to WWI, not ending up with a relatively even and peaceful closing to that war left Germany enraged because they wanted to get bak at France and Britain and somehow get back what they took. It wasn't a fair ending and so not having the war's end conflict resolved only lead to WWII because of left over anger.

Sources:

Ms. Xia (in class 3-15-10)