Holocaust |
Ann Frank |
The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), 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 by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic 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.
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Ann Frank was diarist and writer. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her wartime diary The Diary of the Young Girl has been the basis for several plays and films. Born in the city of Frankfurt in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Born a German national, Frank lost her citizenship in 1941. She gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published. It documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
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BlitzkreigBlitzkrieg is an anglicised term, describing a method of warfare whereby an attacking force spearheaded by a dense concentration of armoured and motorized or mechanized infantry formations with close air support, breaks through the opponent's line of defense by short, fast, powerful attacks and then dislocates the defenders, using speed and surprise to encircle them. Through the employment of combined arms in maneuver warfare, blitzkrieg attempts to unbalance the enemy by making it difficult for them to respond to the continuously changing front and defeating them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht
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Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was Austrian-born German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Futhrer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As effective dictator of Nazi Germany, Hitler was at the Centre of the World War II in Europe and the Holocaust. Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I. He join the Precursor of the NSDAP, the German Workers' Party, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power.
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Axis Powers versusThe Axis grew out of the diplomatic efforts of Germany, Italy and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the treaty signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936. Mussolini declared on November 1 that all other European countries would from then on rotate on the Rome-Berlin axis, thus creating the term "Axis".
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Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922.He subsequently manage to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through suppressing Lenin's criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained general secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, concurrently serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 onward.
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