Many decades in history are known for many horrific events or spectacular feats. The “Roaring Twenties” is known for prohibition and the thirties are known for The Great Depression. One of the most influential decades was the forties. Throughout this course of ten years, there were problems with countries getting along. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany and he felt the need to invade Poland in 1939. Germany was the country blamed for establishing World War II. World War II was a battle hard fought by many countries. The countries involved formed alliances to protect themselves. The nineteen forties is a riveting decade because of the inhumane Adolf Hitler leading Germany’s involvement of the persecution of Jews during World War II, which influenced the way the world treats Jews today.
Everyone has heard the name Adolf Hitler. Hitler was the German leader from the early thirties to the mid-forties. He was known for persecuting Jews and sending them to concentration camps and creating the Nazi regime. “Nazi leaders called a conference to coordinate the final solution to the Jewish question- what comes to be known as The Holocaust, the systematic genocide of Jews and other minorities that do not fall within Hitler’s concept of a master Aryan race” (World Events). Jews were a huge fraction of the German population. Throughout his dictatorship he sent his Nazi soldiers to invade the homes of Jews. “In Europe, Germany forced 5,000 Jewish people in Paris to labor camps and isolate Jews in Warsaw, Poland, into a walled ghetto. Jews were prohibited from appearing in public without wearing a star and they could not leave residential areas without police permission” (World Events). Jews couldn’t do anything about this because Hitler had Nazis everywhere. Nazis were Hitler’s servants. They were soldiers that were forced to do whatever Hitler told them. Hitler held all power over them and they could never disobey their leader. Hitler was hated by many and today schools still teach the story of Hitler’s crucial leadership.
Jews were not in the standards of a person in the eyes of Hitler. He grew up in a very strong anti semitic (anti-Jew) family. Since he was born into these anti-Jew customs, he believed in everything that had to do with hurting Jews. When he came to power in 1933, he put these beliefs into full effect. Hitler sent out Nazi’s to hunt down every Jew in Germany and all the surrounding areas. After being found hiding in their homes, he would take them and send them to concentration camps. There, they would work many hours and at the end of the work shift, they would be thrown in a small, rusty boxcar where they would sleep. A huge percent of the Jews died of malnutrition, starvation, overworking conditions, and disease. Hitler had got what he wanted- watching the suffering on innocent Jews.
Germany is the source of World War II. They started off the war with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. “The German conquest of Poland in September 1939 was the first demonstration in war of the new theory of high-speed armoured warfare that had been adopted by the Germans when their rearmament began” (Royde-Smith).
Deciding to start off a war with the invasion of a huge country was probably not the brightest choice. Poland had lots of alliances that reacted in a negative way. As the war went on, Germany got more and more powerful and tried to destroy as many countries as they could. On December 7, 1941, Japan, Germany’s ally, had launched an attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base in Hawaii. Killing many American soldiers gave Germany an even worse label. Some of the United States allies knew they had to destroy Germany. Britain planned bombing raids killing many people in Hamburg. As the war came to its closing years the tables started to turn: Germany’s allies were surrendering and the other countries had too much power. “In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options” (Taylor). Germany had eventually surrendered and their involvement in war was over. Germany ended up to be the losers in the war even after starting out strong.
World War II was the worst part of the 1940s. The first countries involved included Germany, Britain, France, and many others. They formed alliances to help split the war into two divisions: Axis Powers and Allied Powers. The soldiers from all these countries had to travel all around the world to fight for their country. Most of the war was fought in Europe, but at one point the men had to fight in North Africa. They fought long and hard battles and never thought they would see the end of the war. After about two years, the U.S. got involved. Japan had bombed the U.S., and Franklin Roosevelt had decided to send his troops to Europe. The U.S. had joined the Allied Powers and became very helpful in the battle. As the war went on and the years passed, the war came to an end. “When the war began in the late 1930’s, the world’s population was about two billion. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis and the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths-killing off about 4% of the whole planet” (Taylor). Many countries ran out of supplies and on May 8, 1945, the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) had surrendered. The war was finally over after five and a half years and people could live their normal lives once again.
The nineteen forties is a decade most people will never forget because of the second world war, Hitler’s persecution of Jews, and Germany’s horrible attacking of other countries. The reason everyone learns the backstory of this historic course of ten years is because of its influential events from the start, all the way to the end of the decade. In the beginning, Hitler was a powerful leader with many horrible plans. However, in 1945, Hitler had decided to take his own life. He did this because all of his dreams of creating his own world, had come to a dead end. Likewise, Germany too was powerful in the beginning, but eventually couldn’t withstand its enemies. The 1940s is a decade that had made a huge impression on the way we treat everything in this day and age.