17.5: The Aftermath

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Forms of genocide** have occurred since the ancient world. However, the Holocaust had the distinction of being much more industrialized. During the 1930s and throughout World War II, the Nazis of Germany systematically murdered European Jews, Romani (gypsies), and thousands of ideological “enemies". Altogether, over 6 million people were killed in this event. Some historians estimate that approximately two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, and one-third of the entire global Jewish population, met their death at the hands of Nazi Germany.

The overall death toll of the war was unprecedented, with civilians accounting for most of the dead. Millions more were left homeless and displaced, especially in central and eastern Europe. As a whole, Europe was in shambles, with whole cities destroyed, and even the victorious Allied nations were economically crippled. In addition, the world was forced to grapple with the fact that human beings now had the ability to extinguish all life on earth through atomic weapons. These two traumas - the Holocaust and the Bomb - forced the global community as a whole to rethink its own identity in the aftermath.

**A genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

Image Citations (Wikimedia Commons):

Chamberlain and Hitler - Creative Commons License

Maginot Line - Creative Commons License

Pearl Harbor - Public Domain

Eastern Front Map - Gdr

Mushroom Cloud - Public Domain