Exam 26: The Second World War

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While British scientists had begun the research into splitting the atom,they lacked the resources to pursue the process.The United States had those resources and as America entered the war,the British passed on their theories and technical information to American scientists.A group of physicists were set to work on the project,including many refugees from fascist regimes such as Enrico Fermi.Although the United States and Germany were both racing toward building the bomb,Germany suffered several setbacks that opened the way for American success.First and foremost,the Germans hampered their own war effort as many of their best specialists were Jewish and were working for the Americans.

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Germany was not alone in its anti-Semitism.French,Dutch,Polish,Swiss,and Russian peoples had come to believe there was a "Jewish problem." Jews were forced to be specially identified,as in the French Vichy regime,where Jews were required to wear identifying stars.Throughout Europe,Jews had also endured restrictions on marriage and property ownership.In Hungary,for example,officials dragged their heels in deporting the Jews en masse,but did little to stop the Germans when they attempted to take direct control and began a policy of mass deportation.On a local basis,the architects and engineers of the camps,gas chambers,and crematoria,the municipal officials of cities from which people were deported,train drivers and local residents of villages near the camps-all knew what was happening,but did little to nothing to stop the persecution.Many ignored what they had witnessed,and some who continued to support the Nazis did so out of personal opportunism or because they opposed communism and wanted order restored.The extermination of the Jews was just part of the larger process.The greatest problem for the Jews was that many Europeans,for racial or religious reasons,ceased to see Jewish Europeans as members of their own national communities and instead viewed them as "foreign" and hence not their problem.

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The Japanese sought to establish themselves as the dominant power in Asia and extend their empire into the colonies of European empires in Asia.The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor was a very well planned and executed first strike against the American Pacific fleet.After a number of victories in the Pacific,though,by 1943 the United States and the Allies had stymied Japan's advances and begun a slow process of reconquering lost territory through strategic bombing and a campaign of "island hopping." Eventually,the United States seized islands close enough to begin a campaign of bombing the Japanese home Islands.The dropping of the Atomic bomb resulted and the Japanese surrendered.