The Spiral of Terror

Today in class we finished "The Spiral of Terror" worksheet. We left off on Friday with the Germans stealing food from the Ukrainians. Some German people agreed that this policy of treating the Ukrainians like sub-humans and stealing from them was natural and just. Still others thought that it was a mistake to treat the Ukrainians this way and instead the Germans should try to get Ukrainian support and use the people before killing them. We then learned about a Russian group of resistance fighters called the partisans. They would sabotage the German troops, especially at major trade lines. In addition to terrorizing the German army, they also stole food from the Russian citizens. In order to get rid of these partisans the Germans would kill thousands of innocent people assuming all of them were involved. Only an handful of the people killed were actually involved in the fighting. Both Hitler and Stalin believed that people could only be controlled by the use of terror. This meant that both leaders were continuously trying to terrorize the other causing an endless cycle of terror known as the "spiral of terror".

Russia and Germany

Late night post... still a little disappointed by the way the Russians had done so poorly during the war.They sure didn't have the right strategy to efficiently take on the Germans but they did have strength in numbers.Even with that advantage if they Germany had not been too slow to reach Moscow before winter WWII may have panned out much differently as the U.S would be left to take on Japan and Germany.

Allied Progress

As time moved on Germany had grown. Its empire now extended from France to part of Russia to Africa. With this large territory came a great amount of responsibility to hold it. Germany was also receiving oil and materials from outside this landscape to fuel its army and future conquests. From our homework video we now know that the Allies attacked from the south. They tricked the Germans into thinking they were going to invade at Sardinia, but infiltrated the German lines at Sicily. The Americans on the West of Italy and the British on the East, they made steady progress and soon took Italy. During this time Mussolini had been overthrown and killed, later to be hung in the street for all to see. The events indicated that Hitler's Germany was now weak and falling back and soon the United States would not only be fighting the Germans, but Japan as well.

Germany Turns on Russia

Today we spent most of class learning about how Germany invaded Russia. The Germans and Russians already shared a hatred towards each other, just did not see an ideal time to attack until, the Germans made a move. They would gain resources and oppose there biggest threat. At first Stalin was doubtful that Hitler would attack because he would risk a two front war and he was tied up with the British, but he soon learned that he made a mistake not listening to his intelligence. The Germans began to attack using the "blitzkrieg" method that had been successful before. The Nazi's advanced with resistance. The period ended just as we began conversing how Germany would reach Moscow.  

President Roosevelt

Today we watched the remainder of the video and answered all of the questions given to us on the worksheet.

 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933 and held this title until his death in 1945. He was the only president to ever serve 4 terms. Before he became Mayor of New York and was diagnosed with polio, he was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and founded the United States Navy Reserve. He played a very large role in the politics of our history, in particular, WW2. The video that we watched today showed us the moves FDR took before the US entered the war. On May 16, 1940 he asked for $1,182,000,000.00 in national defense funds. During this time he had already expanded the branches of the US military and supported countless projects that all lead towards war. A draft or lottery of men took place for service and numerous naval ships and planes were being built, some given to Britain in exchange for payment latter on. On December 8, 1941, Roosevelt declared war on Japan in response to the attack of Pearl Harbor.

Britain at Bay Day 1

Today during CWI we had started watching a video about Britain being forced up against a wall while facing the Germans.We also had our notebooks passed back today along with us being assigned to read Ch 6 in A Short History Of WWII and answer the questions in our notebook.A short recap of what we had seen from the video includes Britain being pushed back to its homeland where it had to defend itself against the German army which had nearly outnumbered them 2 to 1.The 50 or so British divisions had to face the German army of roughly 80 strong. To the Germans Britain's navy had been far too powerful to take on Hitler then wanted to attack by air and could have very easily won if British scientists had not been able to develop radars to gain an advantage.The Luftwaffe had eventually bombed London by accident causing the RAF to start dropping bombs on Berlin.The bombing of cities had stalled the Germans long enough so that the RAF was able to recover and get back into the fight.The Germans had then gotten worried about how the Luftwaffe had not been able to break Britain and so their mission also known as Operation Sea Lion had been cancelled and we wait to finish the rest of the video tomorrow

Lightning War, Continued

On Friday in CWI, we finished watching the Lightning War documentary. We learned about how the Germans basically trapped the French and British in at Dunkirk. The Germans decided to take a break for two days because their tanks and men all needed a rest, so they figured why not stop? However, during those two days the British and French were able to get 300,000 of their men off of the beaches- which was about 41% of the total soldiers. They called in any boats that could possibly take men off the beach, and tons of boats showed up. Ultimately, they were able to save their men, but they had to leave behind all their tanks and weapons. So, the men were safe, but Germany had just taken over France. The end of the video leaves us thinking that Germany has just won this war. At that time he had taken over the majority of Europe, but we'll have to see what happens...

Lightning War

Today in CWI, we watched a documentary about the start of World War 2. We learned that the Germans used a 'pincer' attack to attack Poland. The pincer attack was designed to surround and essentially crush the enemy. The Germans were able to surround and capture Poland in about four weeks. Next, the Germans went on to attack Great Britain. This went on to be called the "Phoney War" or "sitzkreig. It's called 'phoney' because nothing really happens in the winter except training the armies and trying to stay warm. The British kept using their strategies from World War 1, which obviously didn't work and needed improvements. Likewise, the British thought the Germans would use the same strategies from World War 1, which they most definitely were not doing. Something that confuses me is, wouldn't the British know about Germany conquering Poland by using new tactics? So, wouldn't they know to be prepared for the Germans to use those tactics in trying to conquer them(the british)?

Tuesday, September 3rd

Today in CWI, we learned how to access the book we will be starting to read. On Edmodo, you go into the WW2 folder and scroll to the bottom where you will find the documents attached. Tonight, our homework is to begin reading chapters 1-5 and answer the corresponding questions in our notebooks. After that, we discussed all of the deaths that were caused by WW2. We saw that the axis powers experienced a lot of deaths. This was likely because the war was fought mainly on their land. So, not only would they have many soldiers dead, they would also have innocent civilians thus increasing the number of deaths in those countries.