[Music] Total War is all-encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole populations with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transformed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduced cities to Rubble sieges doomed population to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of Total War [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the peace that followed the first world war people across the globe Roar and grieving hoped it had been the war to end all wars but a far more destructive War lay in their not too distant future in the 1920s and 30s The Fragile peace began to falter the the abian crisis the Sino Japanese War and the Spanish Civil War each in their own way provided glimpses of the war to come the nature of War had been shifting from limited Warfare towards Total War for many years military Scholars and philosophers sought a way to describe this new kind of warfare in the 1820s the influential Prussian General and Military scholar Carl Von clitz developed his concept of absolute war and in his mind an absolute war was a war where there was an unlimited political objective the entire destruction of the enemy's state if necessary the total eradication of their independence mon cwit thought absolute war was unlikely he thought the strain it would place and societies would cause them to collapse but of course he had not foreseen the development of enormous Nations states by the turn of the 20th century ft's theory of absolute War anticipated some of the realities of War almost 100 years after he wrote it but when the first world war introduced the world to Warfare dominated by the industrial strength of the combatants it was far more destructive than anything Von class Fitz could have imagined the scale is like nothing we've ever seen before in war and so are the casualties that follow but it's more than just the armies it's about how economies are mobilized for the first time you have major command economies in Europe where the government directs the production to support the war effort there's a huge change in how Society approaches the creation of economic wealth General Eric ludendorf nominally German first qu Master General and effectively overall commander dubbed the new kind of conflict Total War it was the first world war that alerted ludendorf and others to the possibilities of Total War but it was the second world war that would demonstrate its catastrophic potential the second world war fits the idea of a total war even more so than the first whereas in the first world war the states are though welld developed and able to put Millions into the field lacked certain features that the second world war states have in the second world war you have clearly totalitarian States Nazi Germany Soviet Russia even Imperial Japan who can mobilize their populations on a level never seen before Total War encompassed different dimensions elements of tot of War were to do with the level of technology and destruction that was deployed in military action others was to do with the way in which civilians were exposed to violence and different countries engaged in different aspects of that Total War to different extents exposure to the different aspects of Total War would depend on time and place when the war ended the cities of the United States were intact those of Germany in Ruins [Music] both Germany and Australia were combatants but the degree to which those living in each country experienced Total War varied immensely the citizens of Dresden saw their city destroyed the people of Melbourne were untouched the extent to which war dominated the economies of each country committed to the war effort also varied [Music] Germany for example actually didn't mobilize its economy very effectively in a total way until relatively late in the war Britain started that process much earlier the most complete mobilization of the home front was in the Soviet Union where the true nature of Total War was made clear by the German invasion it was a struggle for existence and a society had to go all in right from the beginning if you endorse a notion of Total War you are breaking down restrictions on the kind of means that can be used to achieve Victory I think Total War has several key features it is a war that is seen as an existential struggle the Nations that are involved see it as a question of survival or Annihilation any methods that are needed to win that struggle are considered to be [Music] legitimate Total War did not emerge spontaneously it evolved through the conflicts of the years between the wars which included and gathered together elements of total war with each conflict people across the world became accustomed to perhaps desensitized to the unrestrained violence of Total War when the second world war went Global in 1941 millions of people would become embroiled in the struggle for total Victory or total defeat the origins of the commitment to Total War and total defeat can be traced back to the Armistice of 1918 the first world war ended on November the 11th 198 at least in the west but in fact fighting went on longer in the East and I think that's something we should always remember what happened then is that the leaders of the Victorious allies had to meet and had to decide how to deal with what was a catastrophic situation in [Applause] Europe in 1919 Europe was chaotic the great Continental Empires that had For Better or For Worse ruled over Europe hapsburg hen zolan Romanov ottoman were gone the aftermath of the Great War had left parts of Europe starving it had globalized and industrialized Warfare on a scale never seen before and then at Versa leaders from nearly 30 nations came together to establish the terms of the peace I think they very much in their minds of those who went to the Paris peace conference in 1919 was to try and avert another catastrophe like the one they just come through the peace at the end of the first world war was in many ways an illusion the Treaty of Versa signed on the 28th of June 1919 was one of five treaties formulated in the Paris peace conference the terms of the treaty were seen as unnecessarily harsh the war guilt clause which placed the blame for the war squarely at German feet had numerous toxic consequences the payment of billions and reparations the loss of territory and population loss of all her colonies and restrictions on the size of the German Army and on the creation of weapons and Munitions among [Music] them Versa left a legacy of resentment in Germany that was to prove disastrously fertile it was surprising how many people during the making of the Treaty of their side were looking forward and saying well the Germans are going to be they're going to be vengeful there is going to be a new war in due course shocked by the severity of the terms many Germans believed its punitive measures were unfair the treaty became widely known as the dictat another Legacy of the loss that would have far-reaching consequences for the mobilization of the population for Total War and later insistence on total unconditional surrender was the DOL Doos legenda or stabbed in the back Legend the stab in the back myth was a belief that Germany had never actually been defeated in the first world war that her armies were still in the field and and and hadn't been overthrown by the Allied armies and that it was only those people at home the Socialists the Jews the you know the the elements who are effectively against the state who had brought Germany to a situation where they were forced to negotiated a peace this was a myth but it was a very convenient myth and this played out in a very powerful way in the rise of the right in the 1920s and 30s Hitler and the Nazi party capitalized on Rising resentment the abolition of the treaty was a key platform for the party [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I Hitler also vowed to create lianam living space for the German people Land Lost in the treaty would be regained and more added the ideological concept that Germany needed to expand its territory to thrive was not new when Hitler wrote about it in mine C it's actually turn of the century even late 19th century thinking about Empires and this idea that the future belongs to those powers that have the great spaces the mass populations and the industrial resources at hand but Hitler's beli that Germany's Destiny lay in expanding its territory to the east could only be done through Conquest the implications of the Treaty of asail on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s are clear but the Paris peace conference also had broader Global implications one of which was the formation of the League of Nations the idea of collective security was thought to offer protection against War a measure of protection against the possibility of another Great War the league was the brainchild of US President woodr Wilson and he petitioned for its inclusion in the Treaty of asai woodro Wilson put a great deal of faith in the League of Nations he felt it would provide a way of settling disputes of nations of the world World working together and also providing collective security so that an attack on one member of the League of Nations would be seen as an attack on them all and it was a very idealistic type of international institution but I think there was strong support for it at the time the league was established on the 10th of January 1920 despite popular support and President Wilson's enthusiasm for the league opposition in Congress from those who did not want America embroiled in another European crisis meant that the United States never joined now if the United States had joined the League of Nations we'll never know but the history of the 1920s and 1930s might have been a bit different the League's ability to enforce collective security was tested repeatedly during the inter War years one of the greatest tests it faced was Japan's invasion of [Music] manua the eurocentric view of the second world war is that it began in 1939 but war was being fought in the East long before Hitler invaded Poland the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was perhaps the first step on the long road to World War zarino the great historian at Cambridge calls the period from 1929 to 1933 the Hing years these are the years that make things different the Japanese military move into manua in 1931 in defiance of orders from their own civilian government and the civilians are increasingly helpless to stop the Japanese militarist Japan had a presence in Manchuria from the early 20th century when victory in the Russo Japanese war had secured for Japan control of the leadon peninsula and with it the South mansurian [Music] Railway the neutrality of the area was also important to Japan to serve as protection for their colonial interests in Korea which Japan had formerly annexed in 1910 The Manchurian Incident began with an explosion along a section of the South Manchurian Railway on the night of September 18 1931 the explosion was created as a pretext for Invasion by officers of the Japanese Quang Army acting independently from the authority of the government in Tokyo it had been planned by two relatively Junior officers but within the space of about 5 to 10 days they managed to occupy large parts of a region that is about the size of France and Germany combined so this was really one of the most daring military actions that has been seen really in the 20th century now many people asked why didn't the international structures why didn't the International Community do more at that time why didn't the Americans take action or the British or the League of Nations lack of food is causing great starvation and relief agencies give Aid as best they can Chen Kai shik head of the Nationalist government in China offered limited resistance believing the League of Nations would resolve the conflict may I for a few moments recall to your minds the history of the present crisis but we do appeal to you the league investig ated and labed Japan the aggressor but the International Community was not inclined to become actively involved all of Europe's great countries had gone through a deeply traumatic and terrifying experience with war on their doorstep the likelihood that they would threaten or go to war for a very far off country in East Asia which they didn't regard as a serious Ally was something that I think at the time few politicians would have ventured Japan rejected the league centure and refused to return Manchuria to China Japan however find it impossible to accept the report adopted by the assembly in March 1933 Japan abandoned the league clearly undermining its capacity for enforcing collective security and there is an international kind of almost Applause of what Japan is doing when we look at look at International magazines both British and Japanese that deal with the idea of Imperial development or colonialism there's constant British discussion of the excellent impact that Japan is having in East Asia Manchuria or manchukuo as it was renamed by the Japanese who set up a puppet regime under China's Last Emperor remained in Japanese hands until Japan's defeat in 1945 the invasion of Manchuria show Japan and other aggressive Nations that there would be minimal consequences for violating the League's [Music] rules and that was dangerous because Japan was not the only nation intent on expanding her borders in the [Applause] [Music] 1930s in October 1935 Italy invades Ethiopia and insists on doing it in a dramatically fascist fashion with a massive Army and with the use of massively Superior Air Force the Italian invasion of Ethiopia then known as abisinia fulfilled what Bonito musolini referred to as natural expansion uch believed Italy should be an imperial power and colonization of the independent Ethiopia offered a chance to build his Empire it also offered agricultural land in in the country's fertile cotton growing regions it's possible I think to argue that when musini decided to invade abisinia Ethiopia uh and conquered as part of the Italian Empire and the other powers failed to stop him that this is a turning point that once that's happened you're on the March now to Japanese aggression to German aggression and so on and you're on the March for second world war the pretext for the invasion was an incident at V in December 1934 when somalis serving musolini fired on the Ethiopians the Ethiopians returned fire and this was melini's Kasa belly for mobilizing his troops standing on a Roman balcony musolini announced the invasion of Ethiopia on the 2nd of October 1935 to our soldiers in East Africa who are about to start fighting King he sends a message and Italy and the world knew that meant war in Ethiopia civilians quickly became targets they were terrorized on the ground as well as from aerial [Music] bombardments which began within days of the opening of hostilities worse was to come on December 26th 1935 musolini agreed to the use of poison gas before the year was out villagers had been drenched with mustard gas women and children the frail and aged were intentionally targeted their skin burned livestock killed and Water Supplies poisoned musolini denied using gas against civilians melini claimed that the Fright wounds that the Ethiopians got from the poison gas that it was just a form of leprosy and they weren't really using poison gas against the Ethiopians at all the trouble was that the democracies tended to connive because they didn't want to force the issue into a a shooting war in fact we had retrieved from Ethiopia a canister of poison gas marked in Italian so we knew exactly what was going on and we therefore as I say in a sense colluded with uh the Italian atrocities in Ethiopia the more widespread use of gas against civilians in Ethiopia demonstrated that the moral boundaries protecting non-combatants were being obliterated unrestrained violence against civilians was becoming normalized civilians were fair game as part of military tactics and is the capital for Callis retribution and so in a way it's the Ethiopian war I think that turns musolini into a bad dictator when lots of people in 1932 would have still thought oh well for Italians at least he's a rather good dictator in Adis Ababa in February 1937 Italian Army and fascist paramilitary forces rampaged through the city in retribution for an attempt on the life of the fascist governor general Rulo graani which then produces a typical assault on the main sort of repos of Ethiopian history at a monastery called Debra labanos where the Italians destroy the monastery kill the monks and burn the history it's a classic example of Europeans saying well blacks can't have history only Europeans have history so bad luck at home musolini worked to mobilize the Italian economy for his war of civilization and Liberation one campaign called for wives to donate their wedding rings to the war effort many enthusiastically did Queen Elena made a ceremony of donating her ring queen Elena inaugurates Italy's wedding ring day and exhorts the women of Italy to sacrifice their rings for the Fatherland melini recognized that the need to mobilize the economy and win the support of the population at home were key elements of modern war but Italy was far from being an industrial power of the first Rank and the mobilization of resources for the Abyssinian adventure and for involvement in the Spanish Civil War fatally undermined melini's capacity to fight a total war in Alliance with Hitler's Reich the League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion but sanctions failed to make any real difference the import of mules and camels was banned but not Cars and lorries France and Britain tried to negotiate a plan with Ethiopia and Italy that would seed 2/3 of Ethiopia to Italy but both parties rejected it I think we need to remember that the great powers in this case Britain and France were Imperial Powers too and it was quite hard for them to say to musini hang on we've got big Empires but actually you can't have one they tried to stitch a deal with with him so he would have influence in abisinia and a bits of territory and so because they were quite used to carving up parts of Africa in their own interest the abisinia crisis following Japan's invasion of Manchuria further undermined collective security and The credibility of the league when the emperor Hy salassi abandoned Ethiopia he sought and was reluctantly granted asylum in London [Music] he made an appearance at the League of Nations and was greeted by jering Italian press and others who turned their backs in protest at his appearance finally when the scene settled he told those assembled you abandoned us to Italy this he asserted was a terrible precedent of bowing before force and a foreshadowing of things to come it is us today he told the league it will be you tomorrow I think we're so focused on Hitler in 1930s the impact he had on other politicians that we forget I think that melini was for many years a much more important figure he was a fascist dictator for 11 years before Hitler came to power he was generally viewed in 1920s and 1930s as a serious politician also a serious threat in some way in May 1936 musolini announced Victory to jubilant Italian crowds Italy had destroyed primitive Villages and intentionally targeted civilians with bombs and gas it used War to expand its territory draw on the agricultural resources of occupied land and mobilize its own economy to support the war [Music] effort Europe [Music] watched as musolini was declaring victory victory in abisinia Spain was falling into a brutal Civil War that would profoundly affect the lives of civilians and prepare the path towards Total War the conflict which Grew From a failed military coup was a complex struggle fought between centralism and regionalism nationalism and republicanism left and right an authoritarian and libertarian viewpoints tore the country apart what we can say in terms of the Spanish War and the international context is the Spanish Civil War was absolutely in its Origins a Spanish War a narrow domestic conflict and that held good both for the origins and for maybe the first two weeks of the Civil War and thereafter Spain became a battlefield in an international War Italy and Germany supported the nationalists the Republicans found support in the Soviet Union and both sides attracted adventurers idealists and Fanatics from all over the world most famously on the Republican side in the form of the international brigades now in terms of both Hitler and melini it's often said you know that what they did was ideological you know supporting another fascist that it was also about experimenting with new military equipment which to an extent it was but the key thing that was behind the thinking of both of them was to undermine Britain and France there were no simple alliances in this war and everyone including civilians were both targets and potential enemies one of the most terrible aspects of the Civil War is the arming of Youth at the school age the youngest Rebel in arms is lionized by his fellows when he leaves hospital at bargara the crowd stands to attention with a Fest salute as the 14-year-old veteran healed of his wounds comes out to report for Duty the concept of a fifth column emerged in this war nationalist General amelo mola vdal moving on Madrid with his four column Army described a fifth column of supporters already in Madrid undermining his opposition the idea of fifth columnists later fueled fear and the persecution of enemy aliens in the second world war in Spain Savage reprisals against opponents and suspected opponents were carried out by both sides campaigns of fear and Terror were intentionally employed threats of rape were broadcast over the radio and those whose families had fled were killed as nationalist forces moved through an area anyone perceived as having shown loyalty to the popular front government was in danger leftwing parties in Madrid set up Checkers revolutionary tribunals that held Trials of aort and shot those they convicted hanging their bodies in the street while on the right nationalists Purge committees executed those with liberal sensibilities the war not only endangered the lives of civilians it mobilized their labor and their homes the defense of Madrid involved large-scale civilian mobilization anticipating that which would be enacted in Leningrad and other cities during the second world war the community prepared for war women and children created barricades from rocks and stones buildings were requisitioned unions form battalion outside the city the government Army digs itself in and prepares for the assault of the rebels when the battle for the city turned to stalemate the nationalists resorted to Aerial bombardments almost all of the residential areas were bombed it was an ultimately fruitless attempt to break morale but a very instructive rehearsal for future action as far as Hitler was concerned his participation in the Spanish Civil War had been immensely beneficial they'd managed to trial a number of military tactics which would be used in The Blitz creig in Poland first and then in in France that had actually been used I mean the culmination if you like was gika that's when it all been trial the bombing of Gera began with a single bomber on the afternoon of Monday the 26th of April 1937 the main church bell rang out in warning of the Air Attack refugees troops and the town civilian population made their way to the refuges the German Condor Legion had more Firepower than all the air forces of the first world war combined and one bomber from its experimental Squadron reaped havoc on the center of town once it had passed people emerged from the shelters to help the wounded and were surprised when 50 later the full experimental Squadron flew over dropping its bombs then at 5:15 the town was carpet bombed by three squadrons operating in 20-minute relays for 2 and 1/2 hours incendiaries blanketed the city in Flames as in the skies above the precursor to the lofw rehearsed Destruction for the war to come a lot of military equipment high tech military equipment had been tested in Spain so for Hitler the the consequences were positive as far as molini was concerned it was a much more complicated issue at one level he' gained um you know the the foreign policy and the propaganda triumphs but at a huge cost Italy had sent maybe 80,000 troops there a high number of casualties it had used about half of its naval fleet and almost all of its of its Air Force l large amounts of equipment were left behind when the Italians left Spain for the rest of the world Spain offered a glimpse of the total war to come it was a war fought with the labor of the people marked by destruction they did not discriminate between combatant and non-combatant Battlefield and Suburban Street the consequences of Total War were also becoming clear the situation for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled Spain was Dire France offered some Asylum but conditions in the hastily assembled camps were terrible no running water or the train in some camps refugees dug holes in the ground for shelter the cost of supporting refugees was in the millions of Franks per day and the French government faced opposition from those opposed to admitting refugees France faced a foreshadowing of of the crisis that would overrun Europe at the end of the second world war in the Pacific 2o a humanitarian crisis was unfolding Japan's war against China paused following the annexation of Manchuria in 1937 it flared catastrophically when Japan launched a full-scale Invasion World War II broke out on the 7th of July 1937 this is not a date that European historians generally attribute to this event but I think there is a very strong case that actually the Second World War began in Asia and particularly with shooting between locally garrisoned Chinese and Japanese troops at a bridge called Lugia known in the west as the Marco Polo Bridge when ceas fire discussions failed China mobilized for war against Japan a war that would temporarily hold the Civil War being fought between Chinese nationalists and communists who came together to form a united front against Invasion I think it's fair to say that chanai Sheek and the nationalists were well aware that an invasion was very likely and increasingly in the mid 1930s they had made preparations however they were significantly outnumbered and outgunned uh by the Japanese the Japanese had a huge advantage in terms of mechanized divisions in terms of artillery and particularly in terms of uh air power Japan hoped to move quickly to neutralize and contain the conflict in northern China this worked initially Bing as Beijing was then called and tangin fell quickly after intense aerial bombardments they expected it to be a quick lightning war that would probably end either with a collab aist Chinese regime doing their will or even a fullscale Invasion and occupation of China so they were greatly surprised and angered when the initial phase of fighting took rather longer than they had thought chanek the leader of the Chinese government had never believed that a war with Japan would be quick or easy and he had made plans for an extended protracted war that would probably involve withdrawal into the interior of China for quite a long period of time until intern assistance could be persuaded to come China's way chenai shik chose Shanghai as the place where he would make a stand against the Japanese once a small fishing Village by 1937 Shanghai had become a vibrant International Center for commercial Affairs it was home to universities European Banks and foreign owned factories on the 14th of August Black Saturday bombers of the Chinese Air Force set out to Target Japanese Naval assets including the Japanese ship isumo but two pilots inadvertently dropped their bombs on the wrong targets hitting one of the busiest civilian areas of the city the Palace Hotel and the shopping district Avenue Edward iith were hit the international settlement thought to be safe was a scene of Destruction soon enough Japanese aerial bombardment also began with attempts to capture the city leading to fighting on the streets on the 20th of October the international settlement suffered again when a Japanese bomb hit a tram car the fighting in Shanghai demonstrated to the International Community the indiscriminate nature of aerial Warfare International concession areas were not specifically targeted but nonetheless suffered casualties after further fighting around sucho Creek and following the landing of a Japanese amphibious Force at HCHO Bay Chang realized his troops could not hold the city the fighting in Shanghai was terribly brutal Japanese losses were about 40,000 uh soldiers and Chinese losses were probably around the 200,000 Ark but when the Japanese landed in hjo just south of Shanghai they broke through the lines and advanced very very quickly towards Nanjing Nanjing also known as Nan King was a culturally significant City for China renowned for its architecture it had been China's capital under numerous Empires and in 1937 was the Nationalist Capital under the leadership of Chen kek but cultural significance would offer no protection in Total War an awful lot has been written by Chinese Japanese and Western Scholars about the nangi masar it really stands out as the most egregious example of Japanese atrocities in China of which there are many on the 7th of December Chen recognizing the inevitability of losing the city left for the country's interior in the days leading to its fall panic in Gulf Nanjing residents fled to the public buildings and colleges in the designated safety zone in anticipation of the Japanese [Applause] Advance the 12th of December was a clear and relatively peaceful day artillery was firing but there were no Air Raids but by Nightfall the city was in Flames the Chinese defense had buckled and the defending troops had been given orders to abandon the city before leaving the troops set many buildings Al light a common practice in Total War by the time the Japanese Army entered the capital it was already [Music] burning when Japanese troops arrived a new level of brutality and violence erupted getting from Shanghai to nanin was not particularly Pleasant so there is an argument that the brutality of War breathes further brutality and makes these actions more likely I think it's fair to say that there was probably a breakdown in certain areas of Japanese command During the period from the first hours until the middle of January 1938 the people of Nanjing endured unrestrained violence homes were repeatedly invaded women raped men suspected of being soldiers mutilated and killed corpses lined the streets few in the city were safe one witness wrote that up to 1,000 women and girls were assaulted in one night I think where we are with the n m as I think where we are with many other similar events around the world is not perhaps to look at the massacre as a whole but to think about why would a soldier or group of soldiers commit certain actions because it's one thing to execute several thousand prisoners of War because you've been told to do so it's another thing to go around raping women and killing children [Music] in the Japanese case I think there's an intersection of both ideology and a certain kind of military governance the Japanese military were immensely powerful and had incredibly racist denigratory attitudes towards the peoples of East Asia over which they were gradually annexing territory Nan Jing was a foraste of the impact Japan's Imperial Ambitions would have on civilians in occupied territory as the continued it also demonstrated the influence the military had achieved over Japan's governing structures by 1937 it's important to remember Japan's wars were part of a long run expansion of Japanese influence throughout the East Asian uh region but over the course of the inter War period as military control over Japan was increased and became more radicalized and the willingness to give a military essentially abusive free Reign Over a civilian population did not seem problematic and it didn't seem that it would threaten Japan's reputation in a modern wartime environment in a world in which all the PO seemed willing to see Warriors encompassing these kind of strategies there are no definitive casualty figures for the number of people who died in ning the scale of Slaughter can only be tallied in estimates most Scholars now would accept that between 200 and 300,000 people died the fact is we will we will never know we simply don't have accurate records 2003 300,000 is the accepted figure in naning the line between combatant and non-combatant was erased violence was used as a deliberate weapon of war against the civilian population an element of Total War that would soon be employed elsewhere in the asia-pacific region and in Europe after the fall of n Jing the Chinese nationalists moved to Wuhan the Japanese Advance through China continued and by June 1938 the position at Wuhan was under threat considering his options for defense of the temporary capital Chen Kai Sheek made a decision that profoundly affected the people of Hunan Anway and jiangu [Music] provinces he ordered the Chinese nationalist armies to breach the dikes of the Yellow River they would use water instead of soldiers to defend the city the floods that followed have been described as perhaps the single most environmentally damaging Act of warfare in World History it wasn't possible to warn the Chinese population in advance chaek was concerned that there were Japanese spies across the countryside the flood eventually affected something like 54,000 square kilometers it killed up to half a million people with four to 5 million refugees created by this flood the diversion of the river delayed the Japanese advance but it did not defeat it the Chinese defense is Resolute this impedes but doesn't stop the Japanese who cross the stream tanks and all it brought the Nationalist government time to withdraw and relocate its capital to Southwest China in the city of Chong Shing Wuhan fell in October 1938 the flooding of the Yellow River shows the extent to which strategy can ignore the fate of civilians the soo Japanese war previewed numerous aspects of the total war that Europe would experience another example is the bombing of Shong Shing as the Japanese Advanced people fled their homes in search of safety many fled to shangqing remote enough for Chang to have made it his Capital remote but not safe if we want to see a place that best represents Total War in China Chongqing is is is probably that place at the beginning of the war the Japanese targeted factories munition infrastructure they were interested primarily in weakening the ability of the Chinese to respond to their attacks when it became apparent that China was not going to surrender that changet was not going to come to the negotiating table and the war became more protracted Japanese tactics changed and they embarked on the type of Terror bombing that we see like later on in the war the attacks on the 3rd and 4th of May 1939 marked the beginning of a campaign of Terror from the air the estimates are throughout the whole period that chonging was under attack something like 9,500 aircraft dropped over 20,000 bombs on the city and something like 15,000 people were killed the Japanese refined the strategy of gika in their strategic bombing raids but where the bombing of gica lasted a day Chongqing endured repeated attacks over a period of 2 years fear was Amplified by incendiary bombs and delayed fuses and it spread to Europe in 1932 British prime minister Stanley Baldwin had spoken of the fear of the air the direct threat to civilians that bombers posed the bomber he had famously said will always get through and it seemed that the experience of Madrid of gica Shanghai and proved bold when [Music] right when people look today at newsreal footage or photographs of the War in China in its first 2 or 3 years 1937 to 39 I think what might strike them is not so much its strangeness but its familiarity the city of Chongqing the temporary capital of China being bombed the digging of trenches in the streets of Shanghai during the desperate battle for that City the sending of refugees from the vulnerable cities to the interior the Eerie thing is these things were happening in China before they happened in the west and therefore when we think about the experience that we associate with the war in the west even something as iconic as the Blitz in London we should remember that those experiences were not just shared in China but often the Chinese were there first when the second world war broke out in Europe many aspects of Total War were already familiar the abisinia crisis the Spanish Civil War and the Sino Japanese war Had Each acted as portance of the total war to come the world had borne witness to terab bombing campaigns unrestrained violence against civilians to incalculable numbers of refugees displaced by War born Witness and if it had not exactly shrugged its shoulders it had resigned itself to one fact this is what war now meant as the 1930s wore on and the inability of the League of Nations to maintain collective security became clear hopes for a lasting peace disintegrated musolini took power Stalin took power Spain erupted Hitler and the Nazi party Rose to power and Japan's Imperial intentions became increasingly clear economies and populations across the globe began to mobilize for a war that the years between the wars had shown would be decided on the battlefield and at Sea and in the cities and in the factories and down the mines and in the homes and classrooms and on the streets and on the farms it would be Total War Total War is all-encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole populations with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transformed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduce cities to Rubble sieges doomed populations to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of Total War [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to fight a total war Munitions Industries had to be revitalized populations mobilized and economies refocused towards War attempts were made in the 1920s and early 1930s to maintain peace but as treaty after treaty was violated it became clear that total war was increasingly probable by the mid 1930s Nations began to mobilize in Earnest so right through the inter War years people are very aware that a new Total War will require Mass mobilization indeed this is one of the fears people had that another Great War would have tremendous economic as well as political and ideological consequences the threat of Total War sparked an arms race for ever greater numbers of technologically advanced weapons Total War would be fought in the factories as well as on the battlefields by workers as well as soldiers many believed Victory would be one by whichever Nation could produce and deploy the greatest number of weapons this understanding of the strain that Total War would put on Nations inspired rounds of peace agreements in the 1920s and early 1930s a series of conferences and agreements were created in the hope of maintaining peace and preventing an arms race though some of these packs met with initial success the momentum towards Total War steadily increased as each agreement faltered there were high hopes for the disarmament conferences in Geneva in February 1932 and 1933 representatives from 6 countries attended but negotiations failed when Germany sought military parity with other Western powers and rejected any plan that didn't deliver it the hope of a world with fewer weapons was finally dashed when both Germany and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 it is now clear that the disarmament conference will not fulfill what is its sole object namely General disarmament the German government is accordingly compelled to leave the disarmament conference one by one as these numerous Promises of Peace were broken Total War looked more and more likely Nations across the globe began to prepare I think we need to think in terms of what at the time Statesmen Scholars military thinkers of all ideological Shades thought mobilization meant and what they really thought it meant at core war was the mobilization of the power of the state to affect the economy markets to put people in jobs and positions in uniform with ever greater [Music] force Hitler began planning for rearmament as early as 1933 but kept his activities secret from the International Community until 1935 thereafter as he openly defied the conditions of the Treaty of versailes Hitler's path to Total War became increasingly clear to the International Community by about 1936 you're seeing the globe being to arm what's interesting is that there was an assumption that those States that had dictatorships that had State controlled economies had a lead in rearmament the reich's law for the construction of the Armed Forces reintroduced conscription included plans for the expansion of the Navy Ian Army for the Army to reach 580,000 Men by 1939 Vera had kept the Army at 100,000 the new Air Force would combine with the Navy and army to create the Fairmont Hitler's 4-year plan launched in 1936 laid out his aims for rearmament in 4 years Hitler demanded the German Army must be ready for combat and the German econom must be capable of war the heart of the plan was self-sufficiency or orari the German Armed Forces often talked about having some sort of economic dictator someone who would come in and subordinate the aircraft manufacturers the armored fighting vehicle manufacturers petroleum industry and so on to create an independent self-sufficient economy externally it looked like Nazi Germany was mobilizing to some sort of Grand Machiavellian plan that it was all going to be perfect and Outsiders tended to assume this so French and British Military Intelligence assumed that the Germans were doing everything efficiently and beautifully the truth is it was disorder and Chaos on the inside one example of such inefficiency was the lack of standardization across German industry at one point German factories were producing 425 different kinds of airplanes 151 types of trucks 150 different motorcycles when Germany went to war this diversity which made staggering demands on the spare parts inventory was to prove disastrous when we think about guring running the 4-year plan I mean he may have been once a great Aviator but did he understand the fundamentals of running the German economy I don't think so [Music] in response to the increasing threat at War Britain followed a dual strategy of rearmament and appeasement these diplomatic Solutions sometimes came at a cost to others Germany invaded Austria in March 1938 the union or anlos was confirmed a month later by orchestrated pleas site returning a vote 99.7% in favor Britain did not see the anelos as a threat so did not oppose it the S region had also been returned to Germany following a pleite in 1935 Jo day in the S Germany exalts in reunion with her divorced Province Hitler was taking tentative steps towards his goal of a greater Germany and finding little opposition [Music] leanr living space which meant expansion to the east must [Music] follow the sacrifice of the San land in the Munich agreement was the most cynical example of Britain's appeasement policies in action the sedan region of Czechoslovakia included about 3 million people of German origin Hitler began planning for the occupation of Czechoslovakia in May 1938 as the situation escalated and War looked imminent British prime minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler to negotiate after a series of negotiations a four- power Conference was held to decide the issue in September 1938 the leaders of Britain and France complied with Hitler's demands the sedan land was surrendered to Germany in exchange for a hollow promise of Peace Britain was very much influenced by its experience in the first world war the cost in Blood and treasure had been so great that there was a feeling that if in any way they could negotiate a war away that is appease Hitler in particular they would do it the Munich agreement and the appeasement strategy did not secure peace for our time as Chamberlain claimed but it did buy time enough for Britain to continue to scale up preparations for war what's important to understand about the arms race from 1936 to 1941 is that it's not simply about building up forces not building ships not just about building tanks or or men it's about expanding the economic base regimenting people and securing the resources you need to wage toward War as Nations Edge closer to Total War and every increasing amount of the British national budget was being allocated to defense in 1935 the British royal Navy was the largest in the world and the Royal Air Force was among the most powerful it was only the army that remained relatively small as part of a strategy that sought to fight Total War at arms length what does this mean it means uh no conscription either in the United Kingdom or in the rest of the Empire it means a focus on attacking not enemy Armed Forces but enemy populations and enemy industry and the means to do this were what we might call today high-tech weapons a very powerful Royal Navy and a very powerful Air Force centered on bombing now the aim of this was to achieve offensive power at a low cost both a financially low cost and a low cost in terms of the non-militarization of British Society [Music] the French invested in defense work began on the magino line in 1930 this heavily fortified defensive barrier running parallel to the border with Germany would repel an invasion and prevent repetition of the catastrophic losses of the first world war so long as the Invaders were obliging enough the come in the expected Direction the magino line was defense based on the lessons of trench warfare and in the event would be no match for the mobility of the blitz Creek in the war to come but the French were Allied to a country that was thanks to its Empire a true superpower the two greatest empires in the world the French Empire and the British Empire were United and could quite reasonably anticipate emerging Victorious over Germany should there be a war with Germany in the Soviet Union Stalin anticipated a future War knowing his nation was not as prepared as it could be the Soviet Union expected War for a very long time and they knew that they were behind they had lost the first world war they assumed that one of the reasons they lost was that they were not adequately prepared by implementing a series of 5-year plans ruthless programs of collectivization and industrialization Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into an industrialized socialist State there's a very drastic appreciation of the potential dangers of living in what they perceived as capitalist encirclement that is the only socialist country and the perception was that everybody wanted to invade them collectivization gathered individually owned Farms inter state Collective Farms the plan aimed to free laborers for work in factories the implementation was brutal an estimated 5 million supposedly wealthier peasants known as kulacs were killed or deported the 5-year plans also nationalized industry and services a large share of the investment was directed into heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods this command economy help prepare the nation for Total War the 5-year plans shattered the lives of millions they also militarized the Soviet Union so that it was better prepared to fight a total war than it might otherwise have been for example in 1927 the Soviet Union produced only 500 motor vehicles 13 years later in 1940 they're producing 200,000 it says a lot about the 5year plans that Stalin initiates and just how heavily focused they were on heavy industry and on armaments this is key to surviving the German invasion of the Soviet Union when the Germans launched their invasion of the Soviet Union operation Barbarosa the gaps in Soviet preparations for war became clear [Music] but we must also be careful in looking at Soviet production the material itself does not account for military Effectiveness in other words we shouldn't confuse the two you need a full system of War to truly utilize all of this production and that means good Doctrine good training and good command culture the leadership of the Red Army had been severely compromised by the 1937 purges in which some of the red Army's greatest leaders had been charged with involvement in a Nazi Soviet plot thousands were executed and tens of thousands discharged from their positions the Great Purge seriously weakened the Army as the nation prepared for Total War but the Soviet Union was able to hold against the German invasion because it mobilized its resources and population so effectively [Music] because it drew the Invaders into enormous territory stretching supply lines because the Russian winter was a powerful Ally and because the Red Army did not stop fighting for the Soviet case it's I think nearly an ideal typical Total War the activities of the state Focus nearly completely and exclusively on mobilization to war and on provision of the Red Army to the extent that they give up a lot of things they had done about controlling civilian consumption distribution and basically lets locals deal with it the United States abstained from mobilizing for war altogether in the 1930s weary of European Wars and equally wary of bankers and Munitions dealers who sought to make their Fortunes in war the focus remained on neutrality for as long as possible weapons manufacturers were also reluctant to get involved again when the Armistice came into effect at the end of the first world war government Munitions contracts had been abruptly terminated tax laws prevented companies from writing off machines which were not worn out or obsolete factories across the country were demolished including what was at the time the biggest rifle manufacturing plant in the world on the other hand as Europe darkened over the 1930s you had an increasing group of people who thought that the safety of the United States was very much tied up with keeping Europe out of war and so therefore the difficulty of the United States in the 1930s was with the depression when onethird of the country was out of work for considerable time and the fact because of this the US didn't really have a foreign policy in the 1930s no one really knew what they wanted to do or if they did know what they wanted to do they weren't sure they could actually accomplish it so moving towards the second world war in the United States you had a lot of confusion in September 1939 one poll suggested that at least 2/3 of the population had no desire to provide Aid to the allies but within a few short years the United States was transformed from an isolationist Nation intent on neutrality to the arsenal of democracy to create the Arsenal President Roosevelt ramped up the defense budget we must increase production facilities for everything needed for the Army and Navy for National Defense the most prominent examples was the second Naval expansion act signed by the president in July 1940 which granted $4 billion towards construction for the [Music] Navy in December 1940 a year before the United States declared war president Rosevelt made it clear that to preserve American Independence against the Nazi threat American production had to mobilize rearmament was essential providing weapons to the Nations fighting against the Nazis would Rosevelt hoped enable the us to stay out of the fight the distribution of the Arsenal began with lendle lendle was put in place because President Roosevelt and then gradually other members of the administration the Congress decided if the United Kingdom and indeed the empire was not supported it was going to go under one of the isolation laws had said no one could buy anything unless they bought it with cash and carried it back in their own ships well increasingly Britain didn't have any [Music] cash aware of the need to remain neutral in law if not in thought President Roosevelt sought a solution if Britain could not pay for supplies the United States would lend them with payment later in the form of a consideration rather than cash US Congress passed the land lease act in early 1941 so our country is going to be what our people have proclaimed it must be the arsenal of democracy it would have been very difficult for the United Kingdom extremely difficult for them to pay for ships to pay for men to pay for for whatever the accoutrements of War might be and of course Russia was in that sense the same the United States gave food and it gave Munitions it gave steel it gave all sorts of things that these countries could not have produced lindle ultimately extended some $50 billion in assistance to as many as 40 Nations including Great Britain the Soviet Union China and British Commonwealth countries but the policy was not purely altruistic the thing is although Churchill called it the most unsorted act in history and in a sense it was on the other hand the United States during the war used Len lease to impose a lot of policies on the United Kingdom for one that were very hurtful Len le as far as I'm concerned was also for the United States a weapon a real weapon to try to replace the pound with the dollar and replace Britain as the major Financial power in the world with the United States and of course it [Music] worked as the arms race developed through the 1930s the total war to come was in a sense already being fought the outcome of the war was determined as much on the factory floor as on the battlefield production was vital for victory as the major Powers prepared for war in Europe production increased exponentially factories went into overdrive in 1933 for instance Britain produced 633 aircraft Germany 368 and France produced none at all the Soviet Union in comparison produced 2595 aircraft by the last year of the decade France produced over 2,000 aircraft Germany had caught up to the Soviet Union's level of production with both producing over 10,000 aircraft each Britain produced the greatest number that year with over 15,000 aircraft manufactured once the United States entered the war its factories and Factory workers made a significant difference to the Allied war effort if Total War relied on the factory the American factories were willing and able to deliver victory the United States until after the second world war didn't believe in huge standing armies and navies they could be a threat and they cost money so the mobilizing both militarily in terms of the Navy in terms of industry and in terms of Manpower really all began once the United States was in the [Music] war Americans are preparing with all possible speed to take their places on the battlefronts workers in the Mills and the mines are laboring long hours under great pressure to turn out the weapons and the equipment without which the war cannot be won over the course of the war American manufacturers shifted their focus to war production us manufacturers produced in excess of 300,000 aircraft compared to Germany's 111,000 and Japan's 76,000 American factories produced over 88,000 tanks contrasted with German output of some 46,000 and Japan's 2,500 the significance of the contribution of United States production to the war effort becomes increasingly clear perhaps most startling was the number of military trucks which rolled off the United States assembly lines some 2.38 million compared to around 345,000 for Germany and 165,000 for Japan by 1943 the US was said to be producing a tank every 5 minutes an aircraft every half hour and an aircraft carrier every week when Britain mobilized it drew not only on its own national resources and population but those of its Empire this belies the common exception that Britain stood alone against the Axis powers in 1940 after the second world war many Britains prided themselves on having mobilized more than any other Nation that's to say the United Kingdom had a higher proportion of soldiers plus arms workers to total population of any belligerent nation in fact that is a very misleading statistic the reason the United kingom was able to mobilize so much was that the British Empire in the United States wanted it so mobilized and supported it with raw materials and with food so that it could do precisely that Canadian industry contributed Vehicles weapons ships and aircraft over the course of the war Canadian factories produced more than 800,000 military transport vehicles and 16,000 military [Music] aircraft the extent to which the the United Kingdom could wage total war was contingent upon the efforts and commitment of the people of the British Empire if one looks at the case of the Soviet Union or indeed Nazi Germany there we see a much greater commitment to war but the extent of mobilization in terms of people at the front or in the arms factories is limited by the fact that these countries have to grow their own food they have to produce their own raw materials Germany also relied on the work of forced laborers to sustain its war effort the number of slave laborers Germany pressed into service in 5 years was at least equal to the number that crossed the Atlantic during almost 400 years of the slave trade food and raw materials were vital to waging Total War for Nations which relied on Imports for food supply this could present considerable problems really the root cause the war start way back in the 1870s when the European population start to shift away from a grain-based diet towards a meat and milk based diet and that means you have to import a lot more fodder to feed the animals to produce the meat and the milk and so on and for Britain that's fine but that was a real problem for Germany in Germany the raw materials took priority over Food Supplies ging was quite serious when he said we've chosen Guns Over butter because they didn't want to spend money on importing fodder from Denmark or bacon or milk or whatever to feed the working classes they want to spend it on iron from Sweden to rearm that makes them aggressive that makes them look to the east that's always the plan that they will invade Russia and take over Eastern Europe in order to grow food for the German population access to resources was a great strength for the British war effort it did not have to rely solely on internal resources to prosecute the war but it also made the nation vulnerable Imports traveled by sea the support offered by the us through lendle would have come to nothing if Maritime supply lines were compromised the German Navy sought to use OTS to blockade star and ultimately defeat Britain the fight to secure the supply lines against German newos was known as the battle of the Atlantic it was the vital logistic Battle of the war whether it failed or succeeded on either side really determined the course of the war and how well it was going profoundly influenced what each side could be doing in other campaigns bman ubo Commander Admiral Carl duritz fought the Battle of the Atlantic with Total War in mind but he also face competition from other arms of the German military for men and resources durit saw the battle of the Atlantic as a tonnage War a race between the number of ships SE submarines or OTS could sink and the speed with which the Allies could bring new ships and Crews into production it's usually thought that the main impediment to British Imports were the submarines that were attacking Merchant ships in the in the Atlantic in fact really the main impediment was the lack of merchant ships more and more Merchant ships were needed because trade routs have become very much uh longer and the threat of submarines meant you had to Convoy ships together in large numbers which delayed the movement of ships so it's not the submarines themselves that are significant it's the the the potential effect of of of of submarines at the height of the ubo campaign the wolf packs stalked Allied convoys and ravaged ships the Allies lost 575 ships to the uots in the last 6 months of 1942 the British understood the dire threat the uots posed the campaign had the potential to starve both War Industry R and the population it had the potential to bring the nation to its knees in 1943 Winston Churchill asserted in a statement to the House of Commons that the ubo Warfare takes the first place in our thoughts in May the German admiralty made Extreme exertions to meet this the British American and Canadian Forces of the sea and air H their strength upon the ubo the the Allies fought the uots with a combination of radar aerial patrols convoys and M Lane the turn of the tide was the result of a whole combination of things it was the result of the continuing evolution of the intelligence system it was the result of the increase in strength of the escort forces it was the result of technological developments Coastal command hunted the uots from the air dropping depth charges if and when they encountered their enemy searching miles and miles of ocean for a shadow beneath the waves was a monotonous task which required significant physical and mental endurance for the crew to keep alert for hours at a time the German OT campaign ultimately failed although the Royal Navy and Merchant Marines suffered considerable losses Britain's supply line was never completely cut Germany realized too late that the campaign could have been a winning strategy it was a constant Battle of offense versus defense and developing technology on both sides but fundamentally all these things together with perhaps the most important which was the provision of long range aircraft and air support to the convoys which created a system which was able to reduce the ubot threat the merchant ships delivering supplies across the Atlantic the aircraft protecting convoys from above or hunting U boats to secure the supply lines all relied on labor labor is a necessity of Total War without it the voracious war production machine would be starved not only at sea but on land and in the sky women's labor was vital to the successful execution of Total War but the extent to which it was used in different nations at different times in the war varied considerably women increasingly filled the gaps in the fields and on the factory floor left by men on active service Sometimes women took these roles by choice sometimes they were compelled to do so you've got this massive involvement of the civilian population in a way that has never happened before being a citizen was no longer about just doing your own thing and voting every 5 years or something it was about what are you doing to help the war effort in Britain the number of women in the workforce Rose from 6, 250,000 in 1939 to 7,750 th000 at the peak of mobilization in 1943 the expansion was not only in numbers but in the variety of roles [Music] undertaken in the interwar Years women's work had been regarded as unskilled labor married women were discouraged from entering the workforce but now the nation needed them when war broke out and labor shortages developed women no longer confined to traditional roles were actively encouraged to leave home to work they were drawn into manufacturing and Agriculture and worked in factories and shipyards across the country mining was one of the few fields that remained a male domain initially the British government hoped women would volunteer setting up War Work Week exhibitions around the country to draw women into employment but recruitment fell far short of the target set the exhibition in Worster for example secured 100 volunteer workers it had aimed for 2,000 for some women balancing work and family was a sticking point the jobs on offer rarely cated for part-time hours nonetheless to sustain the war effort the nation needed workers and volunteers from all quarters of society if you think about the war effort you know the absolutely massive amount of production for the uni forms and meals and weapons and it's just not enough people going into industry as the war progressed various pieces of legislation mandated women's work in December 1941 the national service number two Act was implemented all single women between 20 and 21 were called up married women were exempt but could volunteer the powers were extended in February 1942 to all women between 20 and 30 who could be employed only through the employment exchange this it was hoped would ensure that their labor was directed to the war effort so they directed you you had to go and I think people don't appreciate what that actually means because you were placed in a factory you have no power to leave because you're committing an offense if you leave and of course that's why some women took time out or they were very slow at what what they did because they didn't really want to be there balancing the needs of Total War and the needs of family at home was a point of tension for many women but for others the war provided an opportunity to undertake roles they could not normally do economic motivation was also common many women with children did go into the war effort because you see the government PID these things called separation allowance so a wife would probably only get 30 Shillings a week and that was not enough to pay rent and bring up your children so most women had to work anyway some women found having to work yielded attractive benefits because the government had taken away your civil rights in return you got an awful lot you got Factory cens hot midday meals for almost nothing and there were nurseries uh masses of nurseries I mean anywhere you want them you can have a nursery kind of things so they've got a lot of power there full employ it's not like the inter War years where women were much more differential and cowed into submission because of in areas where there was unemployment you [Music] know the propaganda created around the experiences of women on the home front sought to depict in a positive light the varied roles being undertaken to help the war effort one poster for the women's land Army offered women a healthy happy job this kind of propaganda was essential in mobilizing women for Total War you know there all various kind of tropes or stereotypes which were pushed about the most obvious one is the long-suffering housewife who's got multiple children she's juggling everything all the time because she's she's got to manage on these rations and so on and then there's the kind of Rosie the river type the Munitions worker who is in the factories and she may be taking on work similar to what men did and she's a kind of tough cookie and then you've got the girlfriend glamorous you know it's Beauty before Duty so she's not going to let the war drag her down and she's going out and enjoying [Music] herself it was in the Soviet Union that the contribution of women to the war effort was the most extensive both on the home front and on the battlefield the Soviet Union fought the War on a scale and intensity unmatched by other nations it fought against a war of annihilation and needed every member of society to work together in defense of the motherland throughout the 1930s as the Soviet Union mobilized women were actively encouraged to consider themselves equal members of Soviet Society this included playing a role in the military it was very common in fact for women to be encouraged to acquire physical skills and Military skills including parachuting skiing shooting skills and so forth so that in any forthcoming War they could participate equally with men in armed conflict propaganda in films and newspapers actively promoted women as full participants in the military following the German invasion the Red Army Recruitment centers were inundated with women volunteering to do their bit though they were not always welcomed they found they would encounter let's say male military recruiting officers who would just tell them as the phrase went war is not women's business so the social reality versus the imagery of what women could really achieve in the Soviet Union at that time was well it was a long way apart despite the attitude of some military men the Soviet Union was fighting a total war and it needed women somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million women served in the military many in traditional roles such as nursing but others served in units which shattered gender stereotypes in October 1941 with a ve marked at the gates of Moscow three women's regiments were created in secret they were at the time and probably still are in many respects a unique phenomenon in the annals of Warfare out of that came the best known of those regiments the night witches air bomber regiment the night witches were all volunteers drawn from Moscow State University they were the educated Elite these women conducted the nighttime Air Raids where they literally dropped Bombs Over the sides of these tiny planes [Music] they won proportionately more Heroes of the Soviet Union the Gold Award the Pinnacle of awards than just about any other unit of the of the Red Army if the night witches were shattering gender expectations from above snipers were doing the same on the ground expertly trained they took on a dangerous and difficult task they would go through rigorous training and then be deployed to usually all male units as a group of women or with other male snipers on the front line their task was to kill point blank as many of the enemy as they could and there's a most famous emblematic figure again who comes out of this a Woman by the name of pavlenko who was credited with killing 309 enemy soldiers she was a crack shot they played an important role in the military but women's labor was also in great Demand on the home front with 34 million men conscripted into the Red Army women were needed to fill the gaps they volunteered and were later conscripted into jobs in the industrial Workforce and agriculture in construction and transport in contrast to Britain women soon worked in the Soviet coal mines by 1942 over a quarter of all coal miners were women girls as young as 12 worked in the factories in extremely harsh conditions we're talking about circumstances where food was in desperately short supply where you were expected to work 10 12 hours a day in a Factory 7 days a week if need be to produce Munitions or equipment or whatever was required for the military food was so scarce rations were so poor that people were dying in the factories from overwork all of this while they were expected to attend to their children tend to the elderly tend to the sick labor was also extremely scarce in the agricultural sector machinery and horses had been commandeered for the war effort women's labor powered the plow and ensured food supplies for the armed forces and the urban population with no guaranteed rations for themselves so on their shoulders really the home front effort certainly depended again in the most arduous circumstances in Germany the needs of Total War conflicted with the Nazi ideology under the principle of Kinder Kusha kers children kitchen Church women were to remain at home in their traditional sphere despite the ideology millions of women were already working in Germany When The War Began in May 1939 14, 626,000 women were working the number did not increase substantially in 19 19 44 4,897 th000 were at work the impact was less in the numbers recruited than the type of work undertaken between 1939 and 1941 the number of women working in heavy armaments increased women also drove trains and buses in the postal service and on the land replacing men who had been conscripted they did their year of Duty and helped ensure the the hom front carried on as the war progressed and the VM Mar's losses steadily increased women were recruited to replace men but even in such circumstances they remained within relatively defined gender roles they worked as typists As radio and search light operators they were assistants on the AA guns but they had no military status and they did not fire weapons in addition to being ideologically driven this reluctance to fully mobilize women was also reflective of Hitler's broader reluctance to embrace Total War Hitler interestingly enough I think was quite wary about Total War in theory you know he was in favorable Gobles was pressing most for Total War he had some success but Hitler kept trying to modify having that and Gobles wanted to close the theaters and horse racing and so on Hitler said we must leave people entertainment you know so Hitler was not a radical in the total war he he went along with it in the sense that he realized that more people had to be mobilized Hitler resisted mobilizing for Total War until July 1944 when it was arguably too late [Music] as was the case in Germany Japan struggled with the dichotomy between women's traditional gender roles and the needs for mobilization in Total War women were initially encouraged to support the war effort through traditional supportive roles fundraising in home front groups and were not mobilized until late in the war the women and children in Japan are mobilized but they're not mobilized as soldiers they are mobilized as supporters of the Imperial project and therefore unless they're living outside of Japan itself or near the front where they will see what's happening the news is so winnowed the news is so carefully constructed within Japan that that sort of History won't have found its way in eventually the demands of Total War and mounting losses meant the nation was forced to draw women into the labor market we do see mobilization of young women who will ultimately by 1943 44 because of Labor shortage be moved into Factory so there is an industrialization of the younger female labor force and of course moving them from school into the factories where they're U making bombs and whatnot by March 1945 close to a half a million Japanese women had joined the volunteer labor Corps societal pressure meant it became difficult for women to resist signing up yet women were still encouraged to Mar Harry if given the opportunity and were immediately exempt from service if they did so as a raids on Japan became common and defeat seem more and more likely women were drawn into Home Defense [Music] we don't see the weaponization of the female side of the Japanese population until late 1944 1945 where almost a kind of last ditch effort will take place and we see these in the front of magazine covers where women who are literally only armed with bamboo Spears or some sort of gardening tool almost are being trained but one wonders if it's not just for the visual impact or the idea of you need to defend the motherland if it had actually happened it would have been an immense Slaughter whether they were mobilized by compulsion or contributed to the war effort voluntarily few on the home front could avoid some kind of interaction with a war that stretched across the globe although Japan was slow to mobilize women's labor the mobilization of the economy was more reflective of a total war effort the amount of the government budget committed to defense Rose from 69% in 1931 to 85% in 1944 the extent to which nations mobilized four and fought a total war varied when resources were scarce within their borders leaders looked beyond them for raw materials and populations which could feed a total war mobilization significantly changed the lives of people at home but these experiences of Total War paled in comparison to those who lived in the path of advancing armies for those who experienced it occupation was a brutal shock many were killed or assaulted by advancing armies displaced or forced to flee their homes some endured as best they could and others gathered together to resist the advance of tot [Music] war total war is all-encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole populations with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transformed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduced cities to Rubble sieges doomed populations to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of Total War [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] total war engulfs the lives of those in its path and in its wake it brings Invasion and occupation As Cities towns and Villages fall the occupying forces face those determined to resist the boundaries between Soldier and non-combatant are blurred as Villages and homes are burned to the ground as warning or reprisal in the second world war combatant Nations Drew upon the labor food and raw materials of the lands they occupied in order to fuel their war effort people starved people died in the name of total Victory the war in Europe began with the German invasion of Poland on the 1st of September 1939 that found Poland ill [Music] prepared warned by Britain and France that mobilization might provoke an attack troops were not mobilized until August the 30th by then it was too late only a third of Polish troops were in position on the 1st of September Britain and France make clear that any attack on Poland and any assault on polish territorial sovereignty would be a kazus belly would be a reason for them to go to war honoring their commitment to protecting Poland Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September at the Chamber of deputies in Paris scenes are tense jarms on guard a sense of fateful decision among the people as France declares war on Germany [Music] on the 17th of September the Soviet Union allied with Germany under the molotov ribon trop non-aggression pact invaded Poland 10 days later warsa surrendered the Polish Army resisted until early [Music] October prisoners of War more than 100,000 of them captured when the city fell elsewhere in Poland the Germans took myriads of prisoners and the interminable lines trudging along symbolize the Swift destruction of a Nation the tragedy of [Music] Poland Poland was cliffed in two divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the secret provisions of their pact the years of occupation that followed profoundly affected the fabric of Polish Society after the invasion of Poland the momentum of the war slowed winter stored plans for a further German advance and the sits CRI or sitting War as it was known in Germany [Music] began but for these brief months the nations in Germany's path were safe they did not stay safe for long lightning War cracked over Europe in April 1940 Norway and Denmark were invaded Denmark was quickly occupied Norway held out until June Luxembourg was occupied on the 10th of May 1940 the Netherlands surrendered on the [Music] 14th Belgium on the 28th one after another Nations fell to the sweeping German Advance the extent to which Blitz GG was a revolutionary idea can be debated but it was certainly unusual in the speed with which it was Unleashed and for France and the low countries their armies Holland Belgium France and indeed the British expeditionary Force were all uniquely vulnerable to this type of attack [Music] anticipating trench warfare the French had prepared the defensive magino line but the attack had not come from the predicted Direction the Germans moved their armored divisions through the ardens forest a feat the French had thought impossible there are a number of reasons that underpinned German success first of all we have to to accept that the German Army was very good at what it was intended to do which was to fight rapid in circulent operations whereby armor and motorized mechanized infantry would encircle slower moving infantry formations with some degree of motorized artillery and with air support as well after a brief campaign France signed an armus agreement with Germany on the 22nd of June [Music] 1940 I think there was a great sense of humiliation and shock France which had you know emerged Victorious from the first world war had been overrun in 6 weeks on the other hand there was a sense of relief they say their reaction was o thank God thank God we're not going to be in a 4-year trench war like we were the last time so there was a sense of humiliation but a sense of relief what happened then was an attempt to return to normal life but those under occupation had to adjust to a new kind of normal when the Germans arrived the clocks for example were set to German time there were regulations and curfews there were schw stickers on all the public buildings so people had to adjust and they had to learn how to deal with a new way of life you came across Germans on the streets in cafes and bars in shops there was a notion that you had to avoid their gays if you pass them in the street you would ignore them and yet people had to get on with them people did business with them they were buying things France became locked into the the German war economy under the terms of the Franco German army France was divided into two zones a German occupied Zone in the north that included the Atlantic and channel coast and a French Zone in the South under the control of a regime that took its name from The Spar town where it was headquartered vichi the Germans needed France in 1940 it needed France's cooperation it needed it to be quiet to be a Ed and the best way of getting that was by working through a national government but it was not a democratic government the vishi government was a dictatorship the vishi government abolished the parliament parties didn't function it was a dictatorship with all powers concentrated in in one man uh Marshall Peta the vichi regime imposed a new set of values on the nation life even outside the German occupied Zone was different the great motto of the vishi regime was work uh family and Fatherland and there was also a kind of exclusion so there were the good people and the bad people and the bad people were basically Jews Communists and freem and if you happened to be one of those you would be purged from public life and run a risk of being imprisoned the occupation of France was planned The Invasion and occupation of Greece however was not part of Hitler's plan Italy invaded Greece from Albania in October 1940 the Italians expected an easy Victory but Greek forces pushed the Italians back the British supported their efforts bombing Albania and neutralizing the Italian Navy Hitler needed the region to be stable before he could launch his assault on the Soviet Union and so reluctantly he moved to support his faltering Ally in April 1941 German divisions invaded Greece and Yugoslavia despite their best efforts the Allied troops could not hold out against the Germans back at their base after to the heroic fight in Greece RAF Personnel Australian troops and troops from Britain look anything but downhearted by June 1941 Greece had fallen and was under a tripartite German Italian and Bulgarian occupation Greek resources were soon put to use to fuel Germany's Total War Greece was also compelled to pay for the costs of occupation in some parts of the country the farmers had to give 60% of the week crop to the Germans the eggs the meat everything this resulted in hyperinflation a black market prices going up severe unemployment and incredible famine the 1941 famine killed as many as 100,000 people as a result of all the measures brought in by the Germans Greeks were dying in the streets in Athens there were lots of body one count was there were 300 bodies found a day in Greece bloated and black from famine just dropping dead where they were in the streets Germany withdrew from Greece in October 1944 the Italians had signed an armas in September 1943 but the withdrawal did not bring peace the occupation created political division in 1946 Greece fell into a Savage Civil War [Music] at 4:00 in the afternoon of the 26th of September troops known as land forces Adriatic went ashore unopposed anyway we can well imagine how glad the Greeks were to see [Music] them the cynical alliance between the Soviet Union and Germany was shredded in June 1941 operation Barbarosa the German invasion of the Soviet Union was ideologically motivated it was underpinned by Hitler's desire for leanr living space that would make room for Germans in the Soviet Union and drive Jewish and Slavic populations from their land despite the 1939 German Soviet pact Stalin was well aware Germany would turn against the Soviet Union and had been preparing for war Stalin was surprised by how fast the Germans were able to basically defeat uh the Western powers and how quickly the French succumbed he understood that the Soviet Union needed more time to mobilize and be ready to meet a German attack the irony of course is the balance of forces was much more in favor of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 when Germany attacked from the outset it made clear the war against the Soviet Union was different it was a war of annihilation on the 30th of March 1941 he told his generals that the war against Russia cannot be conducted in a nightly fashion rather it was to be fought with unprecedented unmerciful and unrelenting harshness now after this conference Helder the chief of the army general staff sets to work implementing Hitler's version of this new war and the two most important orders are the Marshal jurisdiction decree and the commissar order now the martial jurisdiction decree stipulates that German soldiers cannot be prosecuted for war crimes in the East that is a fundamental change and it basically grants them cut on blanch to do as they wish in the East the other one is the commissar order and the commissar order stipulates that as low as a lieutenant not only can he must kill Soviet commissars when they are captured as the Germans Advanced civilians in the Soviet Union were confronted with destruction and brutality at the hands of the Soviet government as well the Red Army enacted a scorched Earth policy as they withdrew resources which might be of use to the advancing Germans roads Railways Food Supplies were destroyed hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and agricultural products were burned as a result of the policy denying Food Supplies not only to the advancing Germans but the civilians Left Behind Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union served a purpose beyond the annihilation of Communism and Soviet jury a victory in the Soviet Union would secure more land and raw resources Total War requires raw materials occupation of defeated Nations was an effective way to obtain them there was a strategic calculus in there and the Strategic calculus was we're running out of uh raw materials the United States eventually will come into the war the idea then was well we take over the entire Soviet Union that will make us strong enough to then conduct war against the United States but that whole calculus assumes that you can simply take over the Soviet Union that was a completely crazy idea the Germans really never had a chance the Soviet industrial capacity was also a potential resource for Germany the Soviet Union undertook a massive uation of the factories without these vital resources the Soviet Union's total war effort May well have been lost the move also inhibited Germany's opportunity to use them this is very much an ad hoc crisis management response and they do that fairly successfully although of course a lot of waste is is produced as one could imagine uh but this is the sort of stuff the stalinist regime was very good at um emerging Mercy measures uh large scale improvised often very chaotic to give you some idea of just how big the evacuation is in the course of 1941 the German Army will take over a huge portion of the western Soviet Union this incorporates about 32,000 Industrial Enterprises now of those 32,000 only 25,000 will actually be evacuated but of that 22,000 1,500 are what we would class major Industrial Enterprises and they are overwhelmingly military production the fighting did not pause while the evacuation took place the war raged on while the Soviets tried to coordinate moving innumerable factories and entire workforces it's extremely chaotic they don't know where the Germans are striking next and although they don't have a highly developed strategic capacity they're still knocking out railroads destroying trains trains are lost it's incredibly chaotic because if there's one thing that the Red Army needs and the evacuation depends on is Soviet rail 1,360 major industrial plants were ultimately moved staffed by some 16 1.2 million workers they worked 11 and 1/2 hour days 6 days a week on starvation rations the evacuation of people and Industry allowed the Soviet Union to not only maintain but increased its war production by the end of 1942 when the Germans occupied more than a million square miles of territory Soviet production thrived tank and artillery production increased 5-fold compared to 1941 the output of rifles quadrupled invasion of the Soviet Union was also to open up a potential source of food a hunger plan was developed to redirect Soviet Food Supplies to German soldiers and civilians the hunger plan is the dream child of a food official called Herbert Bea who is your typical shsh teer he sits there in his little uniform at his desk and comes up with really gruesome plans and this is very typical of the way the National Socialist policy worked a memo on the hunger plan outlined that food harvested in the Ukraine would be diverted from towns and cities in Northern and Central Russia to German troops and civilians in the Reich and then in the orders that are given out to the Army who are supposed to implement this plan they're told you must Harden your heart against the suffering that you will see because it's for the German citizens at home who going to be fed enough you mustn't give even a piece of bread read to the starving Russians they understood the implications of the plan people would starve to death another SS officer writes in sort of euphoric terms about the way in which we're going to see Mass hunger and mass starvation and mass death on a scale that you've never seen it before so they quite coldly and calculatedly intend to murder many more millions of people than were actually murdered you know in the Holocaust the hunger plan was not the only policy created to starve occupied Nations for the benefit of the Reich the general plan for the East and its implementation beginning in Poland led to widespread eviction of Polish people from their homes it sounded innocuous on paper ethnic Germans would move into agricultural towns live in German style houses with cottage gardens filled with German plants and trees some would work in agriculture the remainder is Craftsman or in the public or commercial sector supporting the agricultural sector but to achieve this apparent Utopia a program of dispossession Terror and violence would be implemented on the people people already living in the East language plays a significant role in Total War labeling certain groups as different makes it easier to commit acts of violence against them that was certainly the case in Poland where it was the ension as the Germans referred to them who would be subject to resettlement evacuation or germanization we know for example that if you frame uh violence was conducted against individuals who are given very visual humanized representation people will find that violence very morally troubling if on the other hand you use say collectivized frame so you just talk about people as groups or you even talk about them as was done a lot in World War II euphemistically if you do that people are much less troubled morally they sense psychologically the reality of violence much less easily so consequently the way in which we describe these terms are very important in practice those implementing the plan knew it could mean the death of millions the destruction of existing towns and Villages would provide a blank campus those who were deported were given mere minutes to gather what Essentials they could and leave home a home that had sometimes been in the family for centuries they were shoved into un Railway cars sometimes beaten sometimes shot the general plan reveals the brutality of policy and bureaucracy in war Germany was not alone in exploiting the resources of occupied lands Japan had implemented a very similar system in its invasion of the Chinese region of manua in 1931 like Germany in Japan the push for living space motivated a program of [Music] relocations poor Japanese farmers were resettled from rural Japan to Manchuria as with the German planners those planning the Japanese relocations promised an idealic lifestyle for those who moved the Japanese policy was known as the settlement of 1 million households the conquest of Manchuria doubled the size of the Japanese [Music] empire the plans differed in the methods used to remove the indigenous Farmers from the land where the Germans considered annihilation of the population a viable option the Japanese undervalued the land and paid unfair compensation to indigenous populations to move on the scheme was not successful industrial expansion and the immigration of rural laborers to Manchuria exacerbated labor shortages back in Japan in preparing for war Japan recognized the need for resources to fight Total War again if you going to wage total war you need factories you need uh Food Supplies you need stability in sense thinking about Total War particularly drives the Japanese Army's desire for Continental spaces Continental resources throughout the war Japan exploited the resources of occupied lands to feed the war effort Japanese soldiers were expected to live off the land in the US military in the Pacific each combat Soldier was supported by 18 logistical Medical and other Personnel in the Japanese military the ratio was 1: one in the occupied territories of course they see southeast Asia as their rice basket and they try to pull out as much rice as possible and in places like what's now Vietnam the Army go into the villages and requisition the rice and then either feed the soldiers actually stationed there and also put it in warehouses to send back to Japan but also to other Japanese troops stationed all around the Pacific where it rots because of course there's not enough shipping to take it anywhere meanwhile the villagers who have been absolutely stripped of food star when Japan invaded French Indochina in July 1941 the United States imposed a trade embargo this created a potential oil crisis as Japan purchased virtually all of its oil from the US Japan sought to solve this issue by drawing oil from its occupied territories but fac difficulties transporting it to Japan unimpeded other valuable economic resources acquired during the Japanese Advance included malaya's tin and muba and Southeast AG's rice [Music] fields occupying for forces sought more than arable land resources and living space from the defeated Nations labor is vital to the conduct of Total War and occupied populations proved to be an attractive source of Labor to the axis war effort the use of slave labor in Germany in the second world war represented the culmination of total warfare that began with the tentative use of compulsory labor in the first world war prominent Nazi frit SA had served as a seaman during the first world war and was captured and held as a prisoner in France for the remainder of the war in World War II the coin of Fate turned as Chief commissioner for the utilization of Manpower SLL was responsible for depriving civilians in occupied territory of their Liberty so that they may work for the benefit of the Reich the work of prisoners of War also fell within his pview s was ultimately tried at nurburg and hanged for his crimes the policy of force labor was introduced quite quickly the concept of Blitz permitted the German at the beginning once they had invaded the country to immediately incorporate all economic resources into the German economy in other words the more German occupied territories the stronger their War economy but from the the beginning there was a major problem in the German economy which was the demand for labor millions of Civilian foreign laborers were forced from their homes to contribute to the German war effort Italy allied with Germany also sent thousands to work in the Reich they worked in agriculture mining manufacturing construction and on railroads the so-called recruitment of workers could be brutal hous and Villages were set a light when volunteers weren't forthcoming people were captured and held in monasteries and schools until transportation to Germany at the beginning they tried to encourage them to volunteer that didn't work then they gradually introduced more and more terroristic measures they reduced their unemployment benefits and then from 1942 43 onwards they introduced harsh policy arrest round up Force deportation and sending these Force laborers to Germany at the end of 1944 there were some 8 million forced laborers working in Germany which amounted to one3 of the entire labor force the use of Polish civilian labor in German industry was a traumatic one There Were Striking differences between forced laborers from Western Europe there were somewhat better treated than those recruited from Poland and the Soviet Union in most cases polish forc labor were marked with the Insignia of P which stands for pole the use of Jewish Force labor was also widespread and often Jewish Force laborers were worked literally and intentionally to [Music] death as losses mounted Germany turned to France for its labor needs in 1942 Hitler demanded 350,000 workers from France Germany needed France to fight its Total War it needed its agriculture its industry and its labor initially they came up with schemes to encourage French workers to work in Germany they offered a system of relief as they called it so if France sent a certain number of workers to work in Germany then Germany would release a certain number of French prisoners of war in 1940 in those six weeks in which France fought but lost the war Germany took 1 and a half million French prisoners and it kept them essentially as hostages to encourage cooperation the vichi government was inclined to agree to German demands or in some cases act in anticipation of them power was very complex in vishi the vishi government and elements within it who were more Procol collaborationist than others pushed to give more and more to the Germans as the war went on the Germans also demanded more and in order to hold on to the scraps of power that it retained the vichi government cooperated more and more with what the Germans wanted when the scheme to release prisoners in exchange for labor failed the vishi government implemented a more drastic plan the big change comes at the beginning of 1943 they passed a law called the compulsory service law stto and all young men of military age that is to say age around 20 are eligible to be taken off to Germany to work in in the factories there initially it works quite successfully but increasingly young men refuse to go some of them take to the hills and mountains and they become What's called the macki the kind of rural Guerilla force that is sort of mobilized at the moment of the Alli Landing Hitler was initially hesitant to employ Soviet labor fearing both sabotage and a racial threat to Germany but the shortage of Labor forced his hand the first Soviet workers and prisoners of War were sh to Germany from early 1942 forc laborers from the Soviet Union war in marking in sign with the initial OST Arbiter Eastern workers and they were subjected to a very harsh policy of racial suppression thousands died and most of them if not all were incarcerated in concentration camps or false labor camps which were set up often by German industrial firms there were allog together some 30,000 forc labor camps in Germany confining and exposing forc laborers uh to a terroristic uh policy regardless of nationality hunger was an everpresent aspect of life for those who were forced to work for the Reich squalled bug-infested living conditions fostered Illness but the experience and the levels of V violence Vari depending on location the size of a camp religion and gender and Nazi categorization like Germany Japan also looked to occupy territory to maintain its Total War labor force after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the Japanese Advanced quickly across the Pacific within a matter of months Malaya Hong Kong Singapore the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies had fallen to the Japanese in occupying these territories Japan found labor for their Total War conscripted laborers ramusa as they were known in Japanese worked in Coal Mines constructed airfields built railroads and ports they endured heat and beating illness and other privations perhaps one of the best known projects on which they worked was the Burma Thailand Railway a construction scheme on which Allied prisoners of War also worked hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian laborers are estimated to have died the exact figure will never be known they are what one historian calls the uncounted dead of the war between 200,000 and 400,000 women dubbed Comfort women by the Japanese were forced into lives as sexual slaves these Chinese women they were taken with the soldiers they' been forced to accompany the troops in an obvious capacity Total War by its very nature draws civilians into its orbit some who could endure the occupation of their country no longer or fought against Nazi forces from within Germany itself stood against the tide of war in Asia and the Pacific there was also resistance to Japanese Occupation in some cases this resistance was not limited to the axis forces but extended to resistance against Colonial Powers the undertook Guerilla attacks against Japanese forces in Vietnam from late 1943 when the Japanese surrendered the Viet men continued their fight for vietn enemies independence from France in France the resistance movement took many forms some resistance was passive this might be as small an act as reading an illegal newspaper others listen to BBC broadcasts or ignored anti-jewish legislation more explicit and more dangerous expressions of passive resistance included refusing to hand over individuals to the occupying power in many ways it was determined by external factors did you have an opportunity to resist you might also ask what resistance actually was if you are turning around road signs when the Germans are driving through is that an act of resistance in many ways it is if you're talking about active resistance though that's quite different it's estimated that only 1% of the population were engaged in active resistance active resistance was equally varied it might be gathering intelligence Distributing Allied propaganda rescuing downed Allied Pilots carrying out acts of sabotage or even assassinations [Music] then there's underground or clandestine resistance which is secret which is dangerous the first thing they're trying to do is to send intelligence to the Allies so there are little networks of people some with radio transmitters tracking where the German troops are what the movements are what the movements of their ships are on the Atlantic coast and trying to get those messages to the Allies these were courageous and highly dangerous Acts those who carry them out risk not only their own lives but also the lives of family members who may be targeted in retribution for example in 1944 as some of the SS units were retreating from Southern France back towards Germany resistance attacks on those units led to massive reprisals in the town of tul the Germans selected all 400 male inhabitants they hanged 90 seven of them from every single lampost in the village and the remainder they deported reprisals as a result of resistance activity were not limited to those who committed the act of resistance in the summer of 1941 a communist takes a shot at a German office and then all hell breaks loose because you know the the Germans start to round up people and they exercise collective reprisals in a very brutal way and that's very divisive to go actually says I will tell you when the moment comes to resist in this way but it's not [Music] now resistance existed within Germany as well Hans and Sophie Shaw were among those who carried out active resistance in Germany and paid the price leaders of the White Rose Circle they were caught Distributing flies condemning the Nazi regime Hans and Sophie were convicted of high treason and beheaded Hans was 24 Sophie 21 they were among thousands convicted and executed for treason in 1943 alone the year Sophie and Hans were killed 3,000 338 Capital sentences were handed down by the People's Court in [Music] Berlin partisan war in Soviet occupied territory was the epitome of Total War neither side recognized a distinction between combatant and non-combatant the Soviet Union expected its civilians to fight the people's War so the Soviet partisans come in at least three variants there are surrounded Red Army uh units who basically uh continue fighting behind the front there are communist party and nkvd officials who basically in the last moment are told go underground and organize partisan resistance finally there are also Red Army and nkvd troops who get sent behind the lines as diversionist in sabotage and scouting operations so you have a variety of these armed groups who are lumped together as partisans but who are organizationally quite distinct for their part the Germans were unrestrained in their treatment of suspected partisans the Army had suspended prosecution for crimes against inhabitants of occupied territories in fact in July 1941 Hitler noted the advantages of partisan War it was an opportunity to annihilate all opposition retribution against partisan activities was brutal entire Villages suspected of harboring partisans were burned the inhabitants killed in December 1942 over 5,000 civilians were killed in the region of slen the Germans sought to exploit the resources of occupied territory for the war effort the partisans did whatever was necessary to ensure they could not do [Music] so Stalin demanded the partisans blow up Bridges and Roads damage Telephone and Telegraph lines set fire to forests stores and transports there was no distinction between Homefront and Battlefield both sides occupiers and Defenders were fighting Total [Music] War women undertook multiple roles in the partisan movement as the armies of occupation Advanced their savagery against women served as a focal point for recruitment to the movement as partisans themselves women served as propagandists seur Scouts and and spies finally Fallen women partisans served a mythical role as Martyrs for the total war propaganda effort penka Zoya Cosmo demaya and Lisa chikina were both caught tortured and killed as a result of their contribution to the partisan movement Zoya in particular became a national icon after her death she was I would say the Soviet Union's Joon of Arc her primary role like a lot of these partisans was actually to either harass enemy forces Andor for example apply scorched Earth policies burning huts and things to prevent the enemy getting hold of them so zoos Mana was captured by the Germans and subsequently tortured and and eventually hung details of her death were provided in both text and images to an unprecedented degree but probably the most Vivid and shocking image was of her semi naked tortured body with atrocities committed on her corpse the shocking nature of zoya's death played into Soviet propaganda in death the Soviet Union made Zoya a mar the participation of women in the partisan movement has been estimated at most 3% but their incorporation into Soviet mythmaking should not be [Music] underestimated Total War impacts on the lives of civilians in occupied countries in many ways through targeted attacks on Villages retribution for resistance and policies that intentionally displace or star populations to serve the war effort Siege Warfare is another way in which war claimed the lives of civilians sieges are indiscriminate blockading supplies to enemy forces and the civilian population equally the siege of Leningrad is perhaps the best known of the second world [Music] war for close to 900 days Leningrad endured a siege that has become infamous a combin bined Finnish and German Force blockaded the [Music] city the people of Leningrad mobilized to defend their city building anti-tank fortifications but the greatest threat came not from the German tanks but from the blockade which prevented supplies reaching the town what people are often unaware of is that the Germans had no intention even if they had conquered Leningrad of feeding that population the plan was that you would leave them to starve to death anyway a rationing system was put into place blue collar workers those who contributed to the industrial output were allocated the most food white collar workers the second largest share finally the most vulnerable the dependents received the smallest refugees who had arrived from the baltics and other countries received no rations at all bread made with saw dust shavings became a staple in the depths of winter in January 1942 the food distribution system completely collapsed for a week Ordinary People had no access to food with no heating electricity light or water in the city the people of Leningrad endured -30° C temperatures and cannibalism became almost Common Place reports were suppressed at the time but in 2002 secret police files revealed that some 1,400 people had been imprisoned for [Music] cannibalism some relief came with supplies delivered by truck and sled across the ice Road on lake loger in Winter and by barge in summer by 19 43 the vegetable gardens that covered most of the open ground eased starvation level [Music] rationing an estimated 650,000 lenen graders lost their lives in 1942 alone the siege of Leningrad revealed a number of elements of Total War the imperatives of mobilizing the civilian population to defend their homes the effectiveness of the use of suppli blockades to starve a population rationing of Food [Music] Supplies but the siege did not deliver total victory for Germany the people held out their morale remarkably did not crack a successful Soviet offensive ultimately endered The Siege in January 1944 few who live their lives in the path of Total War escaped untouched for those who lived under occupation the idea of home was either destroyed or profoundly changed not all who lived in occupied countries resisted the occupation some collaborated and others sought to strike a balance of neutrality in a precarious situation but occupation did not go unopposed and as the Allies came closer to Victory partisan and resistance movements strengthened Invasion and occupation disrupted and destroyed the lives of millions across the globe even for those who did not suffer occupation Total War meant that there was no guarantee of safety at home German boots may not have been mudded with British soil but the UK was not Beyond Hitler's reach there was always the everpresent threat from [Music] above from Sheffield to Shanghai aial bombing lought death and destruction on the lives of civilians in unprecedented ways it was aerial bombing which demonstrated that no corner of the globe was safe from the fires of of total [Music] war total war is all-encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole populations with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transform formed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduced cities to rumble sees doomed populations to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of to to war [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] on the 27th of July 1943 a firestorm raged through the German city of Hamburg the heat was so intense that some people caught outside sunk into the molten asphalt or were sucked into the fire and incinerated The Firestorm was the first of its kind created by Allied area bombing it was not the last over the course of the war Allied bombing policy shifted from one of avoiding attacks on civilian targets to an area bombing strategy designed in the words of Britain's bomber command to UNH housee civilians and destroy the war making capacity of an enemy Nation making the moral of the people a viable Target acts which US President Franklin D Roosevelt once said sicken the hearts of civilized man and woman soon enough became Allied policy the second world war was not the first time civilians had been targeted in bombing raids there was a huge change in the way in which policies towards civilian were uh implemented by the different powers what's often called a process of communative radicalization occurred in the policies of almost all the major belligerence in the war to some degree though a lot of the groundwork for that thinking had been laid before the war's opening rather than occurring during the war itself for aerial bombing for example the large scale bombing of civilians by the Allied Powers senior policy makers have been calling for that kind of strategy since the end of World War I during the first World War when people saw those Zeppelins coming over intending to drop bombs on their cities they realized that war was no longer somewhere else it was now being brought straight to your front door and in the second world war you know we see that on a much larger scale in the inter War years the fear of the bomber grew as Nations across the world refined their policies so-called area policing of villages in Iraq in the 1920s by the British the Japanese bombing of Shanghai and Chong shin and the bombing of gerer in the Spanish Civil War demonstrated to the world the destructive power and devastating consequences of aerial Warfare as Stanley bwin said to Parliament in the mid 1930s the bomber will always get through and this belief was really held more as a matter of Faith than on the basis of Hard Evidence but at the time it was thought that because bombers could not be stopped the offense in particular against civilian populations who were thought to have weaker morale and be the vulnerable point of Modern War War economies seemed like it would be likely to be an effective strategy the bomber was increasingly seen as more than a threat it was viewed as potentially a war-winning weapon fear of the bomber hope for the transformative power of of of the bomber was really very important particularly in Britain which invest did so much in the ability of the bomber to deliver Victory and War relatively cheaply both sides recognize the potential area bombing had to S the morale of an enemy's population if a nation could be bought to surrender through aerial boning alone the cost of fighting another war in the trenches would be averted When The War Began Britain had no stated intention of targeting civilians in aerial raids assurances had been given to President Franklin D Roosevelt that civilian populations and unfortified cities would not be [Music] targeted the British also feared retaliation any Air Attack on German civilians might invite Terror from above on their own population the British were acutely aware of their vulnerability this vulnerability became even more evident in bomber command's early operations small daylight raids carried out during the phony war against German warships proved fatal for many crews on the 18th of December 1939 24 wellingtons flew over vilhelms Haven half was shot down revealing weak points in the aircraft and The Perils of daylight raids now very quickly the British who are trying to bomb German industrial targets by day they find that daylight bombing is just too costly the first large attack on German soil occurred on the night of the 11th of May 1940 each Speck of light a blazing German building easy enough to realize the catastrophe the concentrated chaos that is overwhelming the city below the perspective on bombing civilians began to shift a few days after this attack the Luft wafer attack on the Dutch Port City of Rotterdam on the 14th of May 1940 killed 900 civilians and destroyed much of the old city German attempts to abort the attack when it became clear the Dutch were preparing to surrender failed the British war C cabinet considered this an atrocity and authorized bombing raids in the rure industrial and transport targets were the focus of the raid and the bombers were instructed to avoid civilian casualties but the lines were becoming blurred the Strategic bombing campaign of Rise is originally as a strategy of desperation almost Britain Cally stands alone with the support of of the Commonwealth all of its European allies have have gone the the United Kingdom wants the support of the United States in the war he wants to draw them in to the war it needs to demonstrate that it is still a viable Ally that is still fighting so it needs to take the war to the Germans Relentless British Air Raids over urban and rural Targets in Germany between May and September 1940 forc civilians into [Music] shelters the civilian casualties were not high but the bombing was unpredictable and fostered desire among the German population for retaliatory strikes against British [Music] cities the German bombing campaign when it came was more than retaliation more broadly the attacks were designed to weaken British morale and British defenses in preparation for an invasion the first luw bombs were unintentionally released over civilian Targets in London on August the 24th 1940 Britain retaliated sending bombers over Berlin here are some of the lads who have actually been over Berlin recently they do not drop their bombs at random the aial Warfare escalated and raid by raid decision by decision civilians moved into the firing line people in their homes became inevitable collateral damage and then with the Advent of area bombing they became legitimate targets the British strategic bombing campaign against Germany began in 1940 and continued throughout the war in Europe later the United States Air Force joined the British efforts conducting daylight raids over Germany as well as occupied Europe and Italy the campaign is estimated to have inflicted approximately 1 million fatal casualties on Germany to the American Airmen Britain was a huge aircraft carrier anchored off the flank of Europe very quickly they began to play their part in a bombing offensive against Germany which increased in volume every [Music] month from the British perspective the aerial Warfare undertaken by the German air force between July and October 1940 is known as the Battle of Britain the campaign between September 1940 and may 1941 is called the blitz for Germany this was one campaign they called it the England War the England war was a fight for Air Supremacy to secure the way for the planned German land invasion of Britain Germany had hoped Britain would agreee to peace terms following the fall of France when this did not eventuate planning began for operation SE line air superiority was Paramount they were going to come by water so obviously if you've got landing craft and you have a viable Air Force that is going to attack it they weren't going to take that risk they had to knock out the Air Force [Music] for the United Kingdom the Battle of Britain was the vital defensive Battle of the war between July and October 1940 the men of fighter command those Churchill called the few defended the skies above Britain against the [Music] lwaa among the crews were men from across the Commonwealth and others from occupied Europe American Pirates were also among those who joined the fr even though you think of it as British it really was an international Force because you had Australia for instance we had 30 or so Pilots you had poles Czechs who had come from Fallen Europe you even had five Americans flying in there a couple of Jamaicans it was an international Force designed dedicated to defending Britain these are a few of the American fighter pilots based on Britain now engaged in some of the greatest air battles the world has yet seen every kill is chalked up magnificent work is being done all honor to the men who are doing it in addition to fighter command bomber command Crews also flew operations in defense against a German invasion they were ordered to Target The Invasion Fleet being assembled attacking ships barges and ports in occupied Europe 10% of barges and other vessels which had been assembled were destroyed by bomber command Coastal command carried out anti-invasion patrols gathered Intelligence on German positions and bombed German shipping and Industrial Targets on occasion the L attacked the channel convoys the Southeast coast um and installations there they wanted to knock out the aircraft industry radar major aerody drumes if the aerody drumes are out the Air Force obviously is going to be in a lot of trouble but they had a weakness the lwaa lacked heavy bombers and The Limited operational range of the fighters meant they could stay over their targets for only a few minutes it made for a difficult campaign the defense against these attacks involved men and women on the ground as well as in the air hundreds of thousands of women worked in the auxiliary territorial service the women's auxiliary air force or the women's Royal Naval service among their varied roles were some which directly contributed to air defense say the bombs are coming over and the Army are using radar to plot where the bombs are coming they can then Target a bomb to try and knock them out before they drop the bomb on the plane and the women did all the plotting and everything for that but because of the taboo on women being involved in combat they weren't allowed to press the button which fired the gun so the man had to do that the air defense network was able to rapidly use information on raids collected by The Observer Corp to direct Fighters ground Crews ensured aircraft were maintained and repaired as quickly as possible fighting above home soil meant the British could rescue down Airmen and repair aircraft which the Germans could not search light operators lit the night sky exposing approaching aircraft in the factories men and women work to ensure production continue this was Total War not only because civilians were being specifically targeted in the raids but because they were actively mobilized against them the Battle of Britain was a decisive defensive Victory the Luft waer was unable to defeat the RAF and secure the Air Supremacy needed for the planned Invasion to proceed the German air force was losing pilots and aircraft faster than it could replace them British aircraft factories were out producing German factories the Germans lacked the heavy bombers they needed on the 19th of September 1940 Hitler postponed operation Seine indefinitely the LT waffer turned its attention to London and other cities in what the British called The Blitz between September 1940 and may 1941 people in London and other British cities endured Relentless bombing the fear of the air of which Stanley Baldwin had warned in the previous decade became a feature of everyday life London is a good case in point because it's so big back in 1934 I think it was Winston Churchill described London as this huge this tremendous fat cow all tied up waiting to be attacked by a beast of prey so London because it was a capital city because it was full of iconic buildings such as the houses of Parliament Buckingham Palace and Paul's Cathedral was a deliberate Target for the lift weer and it suffered very badly the destruction of Civilian morale was not the sole objective of the German air attacks military and Industrial targets remained important this was also an economic War a blockade focused on destroying ports and blocking the delivery of us supplies 141 of the 171 major German attacks between August 1940 and June 1941 aimed at British ports the intent of the bombing campaign was of little consequence to those who lay in the path of the bombs and intent did not always align with outcome the attack on Coventry in November 1940 which Drew much sympathy from the still neutral United States was aimed at a cluster of factories but also hit workers residential areas over 500 tons of explosives fell on the city incendiary bombs set centry Al light St Michaels which had been built in the 12th century and designated a cathedral in 1918 was gutted centry was so badly damaged in the course of just a relatively short bombing campaign that the Germans actually quined a term for it centration I believe it's pronounced or centration which basically means the rapid destruction of an entire city center through bombing the cathedral SP and the font Remain the rest is Rubble but all that the cathedral represented and the spirit of this centuries Old City lives on back in London night after night German aircraft released their bombs houses turn to Rubble people sought shelter in the underground stations there they waited out the attacks waited to see if their homes had survived the blasts between August 1940 and June 1941 London endured 79 major night raids there were a few nights when the weather and various other adverse conditions meant that the lffa didn't come but broadly speaking London suffered one of the longest continuous bombing campaigns in the 20th century but it was not the only city to endure the raids Liverpool Bristol Southampton Glasgow Manchester and Belfast were among the cities which suffered multiple night raids an estimated 43,000 civilians were killed 139,000 wounded public morale wavered Under The Strain but it did not break by by September 1941 Churchill was forced to concede that it is very disputable whether bombing by itself will be a decisive factor in the present [Music] War the government compiled Home Intelligence weekly reports on morale because it was very keen to sort of take the temperature read the themometer of morale during Air Raids and in their aftermath and it's clear that you know some people people did Panic some people were upset there were episodes of what was called trekking where people would leave the city of a night and go out to stay with relatives in the countryside or in the far-flung suburbs of the capital city they didn't want to be in the East End of London when the docks were being bombed effectively so morale broadly speaking remained intact but there are examples of where it wavered and fluctuated in May 1941 Germany turned its attention toward operation Barbarosa the invasion of the Soviet Union it could not fight on two fronts as Germany shifted Focus Britain's boning War also began to change the concept that's come in recent times of what we call Supreme emergency is this idea that if a state is faced with a really terrible situation if they have been the victim of aggression they're about to lose a war and the consequences of losing that war would be absolutely terrible that in those sort of circumstances they're actually justified in throwing away some of the usual rules of War not that it's excusable not that it's understandable that they do these things but it's actually the right thing to do in July 1941 Bama command received a new directive one which specifically included reference to destroying the morale of the civilian population as a whole industrial workers in particular sraa Harris bomber Harris as he came to be known took charge of bomber command in February 1942 he believed in the effectiveness of area bombing and soon put the instruction on targeting the civilian population into effect there are a lot of people who say that boming can never win a war well my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet and we shall see but there was more to area bombing than just catching strategic targets simply bombing cities to terrorize the population also became a feature and these included bombing raids on Berlin um Frankfurt Hamburg targets which had limited Military value but was sought out for area bombing to carry out that duty of terrorizing the population in March Harris sent the bombers over the city of Lubec incendiary bombs set the old medieval Timber buildings Al light an estimated 1,000 people lost their lives the bombs destroyed the cultural Heart of the City they also terrified the people on the ground Britain was targeting morale Paris accused the third rank of laboring under what he called the childish delusion that they could bomb other people but that no one would bomb them a strange dichotomy that Britain had endured the Blitz and the blitz was seen as actually drawing the British people together and uniting them in defiance and yet two years later it was assumed that an even heavier form of bombing campaign on Germany would break their morale the evidence for this was quite simply non-existent it was based on pre-war theories which took a rather dim view of the civilian populations of Nations and thought they would be terrorized and they would hate these stresses and strains area bombing placed on them three raids in April 1942 destroyed 70% of rosock another old German trading City both cities had military or strategic targets but they were also places of cultural and historic significance both had been founded in the 12th century and were htic cities both bombing raids provided insight into the effectiveness of incendiary bombing the luwa retaliated in kind targeting Norwich bath exiter and York in the so-called BCA raids raids which targeted cities of cultural significance cities that appeared in the BCA tourist guide as the war escalated as bombing stretch Beyond military and Industrial targets Total War destroyed the cultural and historic hearts of cities but the factories and the nearby homes where the workers lived remained important targets most of those workers it was known that they lived in areas reasonably close to these factories so we'll attack these civilian areas that are close to the factories knowing that we're likely to be actually doing significant damage to the factory workers the use of incendiary bombs escalated as the bomber command campaign wore [Music] on the thousand bomber raid over cologne in May 1942 used a mixture of incendiary and high explosive bombs the operational order for the first 1,000 bomber raid said simply object to destroy the city of Cologne the British thought that it was pointless to try and Target uh factories or or martial in arts at that point in the war one simply had to hit cities The Raid destroyed 8 square miles of the city 45,000 people were made homeless in one night the gas water electricity and transport of cologne was severely disrupted when the storm bursts over Germany they will look back to the days of Lubec and rosta and cologne as a caught in the blasts of a hurcan will look back to the gentle zeph of last summer civilian deaths were not the only measure of the impact of Total War destruction and displacement also served to demonstrate that the battle lines were now irrevocably blurred the efforts of bomber command were not confined to Germany in 1942 his fighting intensified in in North Africa obac command focused on Targets in Italy including Genoa tyin and Milan the Allied bombing of the monastery ATP Monte Casino in 1944 is an example of how civilians were caught in the crossfire of Total War both sides had promised the Pope that the sacred building would be protected but the promise did not hold now the Germans said it's a Benedictine Monastery it's a lovely old building but the Allies believed that the Germans were using it as an observation post and maybe they were but the fact is that in the 15th of February the US Air Force came over and destroyed the monastery to no effect because they turned it into a pile of rubel that the German power troops were able to defend [Music] superbly the destruction of the monastery had no real significance I mean it's a terrible moral blot on the Allies respect for cultural Integrity but it's a massive cost for a relatively minor obstacle some 2,000 civilians from Casino had been Sheltering in the vicinity of the Abbey 230 were killed the bombing occurred in the context of a larger battle and was not specifically aimed at civilians or the culturally significant monastery it is nonetheless an example of the devastation caused when boundaries between Battlefield and Homefront are obliterated in 1943 the air War over Europe escalated considerably the terror of firestorms became a reality operation Gamora a series of six raids on Hamburg between July and August 1943 was a combined Royal Air Force and United States Air Force effort large portions of the city were destroyed and some 45,000 people lost their lives the night of the 27th of July was particularly destructive the combination of the Heat and low humidity fanned the Flames into a firestorm that engulfed the city and sent burning human bodies whirling into the air 900,000 people were made homeless 22 Square kilm were destroyed creating almost 43 million cubic M of rubble 42,000 people were killed in four nights between the 24th of July and the 3rd of August by February 1945 the bomber offensive had reached its peak but by 19 1944 and 1945 the rate of bombing of Germany and other occupied territories by the RAF and the United States Air Force was stupendous it was on a much much larger scale than the bombing even of 1942 or 1943 there was massive Overkill by the Allies by the end of the second world war at the yter conference on the 4th of February 1945 the Soviets requested assistance in the form of Allied air attacks on communication centers suggesting Berlin as a potential target attacks on communication centers would impede German Supply and reinforcement of their forces as the Soviets pressed on with their offensive which was closing on the German border aitz had been liberated on January 27th Allied planners ultimately chose Dresden which contained important industrial and transportation targets between the the 13th and 14th of February 1945 close to 3,000 RAF and US bombers carried out night and day raids over Dresden by this time with the Allies advancing on Germany refugees were among those Sheltering in the town a firestorm engulfed the city priston was a beautiful city admired for its architecture and art it was known as the Florence of the Elber and then it was Rubble tens of thousands of people lost their lives and a once beautiful city was reduced to Ash and Rubble for arguably little military [Music] gain while the massive material strength of the Allies was pounding German cities Germany was placing its faith in Wonder Weapons the V1 and V2 Rockets the V Waffa Revenge weapons these weapons severely tested British morale after May 1941 when the Germans turned their attention to Soviet Russia there was a kind of decline in public anxiety about Air Raids but it all comes back again in 1944 to 1945 when you have the so-called Vengeance weapons being launched from Nazi occupied Europe against London and other British cities the terror of these weapons lay in their unpredictability the apparent randomness of the attacks the distinctive buzzing sound of the V1 earned the name buzz bomb or doodle Bugs as they were commonly known the V2 weapons climbed to the edge of space before returning to Earth at Super Sonic speeds the V2 was an incredibly fast missile it's the birth of the rocket effectively and when that started smashing into London killing many people destroying very large buildings the government was almost in denial at the start of that and it was only because it was obvious something awful was happening that the government was forced to admit that London was again under attack in the face of area bombing over Germany the Revenge weapon served a different purpose than the earlier Blitz Terror was now a clear aim civilian morale a target an added cruelty of the Revenge weapons were their construction slave laborers were forced to work on the construction of the weapons an estimated 20,000 died in the process the creations of the weapons also Drew in scientists one of whom Verna Von Brown made a major contribution to the United States Space Program in the decades after the [Music] war over 10,000 flying bombs were launched over the English Coast close to 4,000 of those were shot down before reaching their target some 2,400 made it to London the rocket attacks were not confined to Britain antor was also targeted the offensive ended in March 1945 as the Allied Advance overran the launch [Music] sites bombs began and ended the war for the United States the aerial bombardment of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 drew the us into the war as everybody knows America's reaction to Pearl Harbor was instantaneous gone were doubts and hesitations there began one of the most colossal War efforts in history detonating little boy and fat man over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought it to a close these two bombing attacks illustrate the evolution of aerial Warfare in a time of Total War the aerial attack on PO Harbor which took place on the morning of December 7th 1941 shocked the American public it was done in the understanding that in the long term the Americans had the capacity to build up sufficient military power to create a terrible threat to Japan but it was done in the hope that Japan could achieve sufficient success that the Americans would feel it wasn't worthwhile going on America's preference for neutrality was dissolved by the attack 49 civilians were killed but they were not the intended target the some 360 Japanese planes which flew over aahu that day aimed their attack on the US Pacific Fleet the destruction was considerable numerous ships were capsized sunk or destroyed as were some 180 Aircraft the attack accounted for more than 3,400 US military casualties including more than 2,300 killed this was aerial Warfare aimed at destroying the military capacity of an enemy Nation the operation was a partial tactical success with the carve out that the wrong targets were attacked it was a strategic failure of the worst order the nature of that attack was the thing most calculated to create in the United States a collective will to respond in a way that I don't think anything else would have December 7th 1941 a date which will live in infamy United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by Naval and Air Forces of the Empire of Japan [Music] since the unprovoked and dastardly attack a state of War has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire no matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated Invasion the American people in their Righteous Mind will win through to [Applause] Absolute by the time the US bombing of heroshima and Nagasaki occurred aiel Warfare had become a different Beast altogether the bombing of these two cities represented the ultimate application of area bombing civilians and civilian morale had by this point become legitimate indeed the only [Music] [Music] Targets in its bombing campaign over Japan the United States Air Force shared its pre-war policy shifting from precision to area bombing there were a number of reasons for this the weather over Japan particularly cloud cover and high winds made high altitude Precision bombing impossible the Americans come to the campaign and I think yes the bomber will always get through we can fly through to our targets we have the nordon bomb site which is a very precise high technology piece of kit for its day that will allow us to put bombs on the Target and not go in any of this area bombing stuff now the Americans very quickly find that they can't bomb as accurately and in many senses they essentially revert to an area bombing campaign of sorts as well the b29 bombers were better suited to carrying higher bomb loads at lower altitudes the industrial infrastructure of Japan was also spread out with feder factories located in urban areas some distance from the main factories [Music] the wood and paper houses made Japanese cities vulnerable using incendiary bombs the bombers created great fires that spread across cities reaching the dispersed industrial targets it also targeted civilian morale the firebombing of Tokyo and other major cities was carried out in the hope of forcing Japan to surrender after Pearl Harbor and over the course of the war the antipathy toward Japan grew to the point that few in the US object to the kind of Civilian destruction which accompanied area bombing this message to the Warlords of Japan we have not forgotten and our b-29s will remind you again and again and again the Japanese in my opinion will never crack they will never surrender they have got to be beaten until they know they are beat and then there was fear fear that the war would continue that Japan would refuse to surrender fear of the US military casualties which might occur as the result of a land campaign in Japan in October 1943 American intelligence reported on the vulnerability of the Japanese cities to incendiary [Music] attack the fate of the civilian population was factored into this research the destruction of industry and Military establishments would be the Direct effects of such an attack but the study acknowledged that indirect effects would include casualties among workers damage damage to Transportation facilities damage to Public Utilities diversion of resources to reconstruction and lowered Japanese [Music] morale American Military planners had to make a decision some historians believe the decisions taken were unavoidable confronted by the expectation of enormous casualty figures if the battle was carried to Japan's home Islands the military plan is considered drastic action to form the surrender others argue that by this stage the Allies were not facing a condition of supreme emergency when you're talking about the US bombing Japan particularly with widespread use of incendiary bombs in bombing Japanese civilians I really think you're talking about a very different sort of argument you can perhaps make a supreme emergency argument about Britain engaging in area bombing or Terror bombing of civilians in 1940 1941 when you're talking about bombing Japan in 1945 those arguments just don't apply you can't say that the US and its allies were about to lose World War I that was obviously not the case so it's impossible to make a supreme emergency argument for that sort of bombing I do think that what you're talking about is this idea well this is what they called a total war everything is considered to be acceptable at this point the United States had the resources to execute a total war against Japan there were few restrictions on the extent to which they could carry out bombing raids the Allies had by the end of the war an incredible capacity to to deliver ordinance on a on a global on a global scale they had seen this as the as the means to to Victory and they were in a position to bomb really without opposition well not very much opposition by them and of course they wanted to bring the War uh to a close as as quickly as possible and deployed all these all these resources in 1945 b29 stalked the Skies of Japan at night one night in particular has become infamous the night of the 9th of March 1945 the oil gelled and gasoline gelled bombs dropped that night were designed to set the city Ablaze this they did some 300 bombers dropped more than 2,000 tons of incendies over Tokyo the wind fanned a firestorm beyond all previous imagining estimates of the civilian deaths range from 80 to 100,000 with tens of thousands more injured 16 square miles of the city were destroyed it was an unparalleled level of aerial destruction worse was to follow the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 was the ultimate expression of Total War this kind of weapon was not designed to make a distinction between a factory and a high school between a factory worker contributing to the war effort and a child on their way to [Music] school President Truman weighed the cost of a land campaign against the use of the weapons he considered the potential lives lost in both scenarios and determined that the atomic weapons were the lesser of two evils at 9:15 the bomb has dropped the aircraft Banks away at high speed the fight to take control of the small islands of Okinawa and iojima have been intense and extremely costly and these were relatively small locations so actually conquer the Japanese Mainland was estimated to cost the American Army at least half a million dead never mind the wounded and the missing and that's not incorporating the Allied contribution there was little stomach to carry out this type of land Campaign which could grind on for years and would certainly cost millions of casualties both alloyed and Japanese the atomic bomb seemed to offer a way out of this military conundrum you could defeat Japan at a stroke without any need to actually land on their beaches and fight their way Inland but the decision was not unanimous we actually know now for example Eisenhower was actually against the dropping of the bombs on hoshima and Nagasaki the particular scientists who created the bombs actually wrote to Truman and asked him not to dro the bombs we know from Truman's Diaries his letters to his wife his conversations with Churchill that there was no real military justification it was more a political one President Truman did not make his decision in a political vacuum in using the bombs to destroy Japan's ability to wage war he also delivered a warning to potential future opponents the three allies are that they were United to defeat the axis were likely to become rivals in a post-war World Britain was in Decline America felt it had little to fear from Britain but the Soviet Union was in the ascendant and would become America's Next Great foe potentially by dropping the atomic bomb the United States sent a very clear message to Stalin and the Soviet Union that the United States was in possession of a new and terrible weapon and was prepared to use it against its enemies a short time ago an American a plane dropped one bomb on hirosima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy that bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT 70,000 people were killed instantly when the bomb fell over Hiroshima the total of deaths had risen to 100,000 by the end of the year between 35 and 40,000 were killed in Nagasaki a few days later in the decades that have followed many have questioned the morality of dropping these bombs it's very very difficult to make an argument saying that the dropping of the first bomb was necessary I think it's impossible to make an argument that the second bomb was militarily necessary in the terms of World War II Japan surrendered on the 14th of August for many in Allied Nations the dropping of the atomic bombs brought relief they entered the war saved the lives of prisoners of the Japanese and military personnel who may have been killed in a land campaign the bombs brought total victory for some their cost was worth it others including some scientists feared the future if there is another world war this civilization may go under we need to ask ourselves whether we're doing all we can to avert that we need I think to learn to understand the realities of Life abroad not so much in terms of slogans as in terms of the lives of men the dropping of the atomic bombs the ultimate expression of total war created a new kind of war the Cold War decades removed from the aerial Warfare of the second world war historians and commentators seek to understand how the war shifted the moral compass of the world actions which seemed Unthinkable before the war slowly but surely became policy beneath the leaders making policy and the bombers carrying it out were the civilians who lay in the path of the bombs cities engulfed in the darkness of enforced blackouts night after night people forced to shelter underground for hours or days people buried beneath Rubble people incinerated in firestorms or suffocated in shelters Total War by its very nature obliterates moral boundaries scientific and Industrial progress creates ever more sophisticated weapons of Destruction in Total War the question of morality becomes secondary to the means which will achieve Victory the story of aerial Warfare campaigns in Europe Asia and the Pacific show that faced with defeat faced with a perceived Unstoppable enemy decisions which are morally repugnant in a time of Peace will often be made in a total [Music] war total war is all encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole populations with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transformed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduced cities to Rubble sieges doomed populations to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of Total War [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] many who endured the second world war had lived through the first some had fought on the battlefields others had felt the anxiety of waiting at home many had lost friends and loved ones their grief still palpable years later they understood that a global war meant destruction they were men real men who lived and might be living still today but for luck The cral Stroke of chance impelling death their way we the spared of War May Wonder under Heaven why weren't there but this did not mean that people were prepared for the extent to which the second world war devastated civilians essentially all wars up until World War II you had a situation where even if there were huge numbers of casualties there were largely military casualties World War II was really where that changed things became much more flexible civilians couldn't get out of the way so they were going to get hurt lines of Advance changed very rapidly the front line changed very rapidly so civilians tended to get caught up in things a lot more than they had done in the past there was a huge change in the way in which policies towards civilians were implemented by the different powers what's often called a process of cumulative radicalization occurred in the policies of almost all the major belligerant in the war total war saw a shift in the corridors of power towards policies which allowed for violence against civilians the most grou esque example of violence endorsed against civilians occurred under Hitler's regime in Germany it began in the 1930s and grew to its unimaginable Zenith with the annihilation of millions in the [Applause] [Music] Holocaust Hitler and the Nazi party Rose to power against the background of economic crisis and the great depression when people ask me you know how in Earth did the nazist come to power I always say well you have to understand that Germany in the late 20s early 30s was in a massive crisis political crisis an economic crisis a social crisis the system you know was breaking down Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 193 Tre by February the Reich stag was in Flames Hitler now chancellor has announced that the fire was the work of Communists and was intended to be the signal for a Bist Uprising throughout the country in consequence Germany has been placed under a system of Martial law by March Hitler was consolidating his powers and using them against civilians and in the same month dakal the first Nazi concentration camp was established the concentration camps were initially for political dissidents so the first people to fill them were Communists um the Nazis used the burning down of the r stag as an excuse to bring in a law that essentially gave them the right to lock up anyone indefinitely but as it got closer to the war and the war progressed then they changed by the 24th of March 1933 with a passage of the enabling act Hitler had obtained the legal authority to govern by decree and civil liberties were suspended for 4 [Applause] years basically he took over everything which gives a state the power to exercise power and he used it very ruthlessly they made it clear that anybody who resisted them was going to have a nasty time that very quickly established their authority never underestimate the weapons of the state to dominate a population and control of population Now unchecked by Democratic restraint Hitler had the power he needed to wage legislative war on the people who had always been his Target people he believed were a threat to his Thousand-Year Reich Jewish people made up less than 1% of the population but Hitler was intent on removing any Jewish influence on German Society new laws enable the dismissal of Jewish professionals from government positions in September under the direction of Joseph gerbal Jews working in the media and Publishing were dismissed removing their voices from German cultural life in 1935 the passage of the nurenberg laws enshrined persecution in law Jews and gypsies were no longer citizens of the Reich marriage and extramarital relations with arens was also forbidden the nber laws paved the way for all subsequent laws and Regulation and there were more than 1,000 anti-jewish laws they all went back to the nberg laws and these legal process more or less also paved the way for the final aim of the Nazis to exterminate the Jews the laws paved the way for the persecution which Total War enabled it normalized violence and persecution violence against Jewish people had been Rife throughout the 1930s but the most well-known incident was crystal KN the night of the broken glass when on November 9th 1938 over 7,000 Jewish stores were looted nearly 200 synagogues destroyed 91 Jews killed and 30,000 transported to concentration camps for Jews had has had a deep impact on their Consciousness and their memory because most Jews realized experiencing the burning of their synagogues the destruction of their homes the arrest of 30,000 males the murder of Jews and the terror in Straits and symbolized the end of a German Jewish relationship of what was also called the German Jewish symbiosis and most Jews gave up their hope or their notion that they're still had a r to doil in Germany the plight of Jewish children driven from Germany has stirred the sympathy and conscience of the rest of the world here is the first group arriving at harage every child has a label giving particulars labels that emphasize the pthos of the picture for many of these Innocents don't even know the whereabouts of their parents let alone their fate what follows after Crystal night is a mess Escape most if not all Jews after Crystal night were determined to leave their country of birth the fact that there were still 200,000 Jews left and were trapped in Germany had something to do the fact that they didn't find a country which was willing to accept them as [Music] migrants on Mayday 1936 Germans gathered to listen to their fur speak rejoice in life was the theme of the celebration and Hitler spoke of [Applause] peace I do not need to win Respect by a glorious act claiming millions of dead he [Music] said but in a few short years Millions were dead and it became all too clear that Hitler did not mean that every everybody should rejoice in life some were considered simply Unworthy of life children were prominent in the 1936 celebrations Hitler considered them as he stated in mine Camp the most valuable possession a people can have but those who may inherit a genetic illness were not among the valued in his Memoir Hitler had argued for the sterilization of men and women with a hereditary Disease by the time of the 1936 Mayday celebrations as the crowds cheered the force sterilization program had already begun and before the Thousand-Year right collapsed between 300,000 and 400,000 people had been legally sterilized [Music] absurd tests were introduced things like what they call feeble-mindedness and the assessment of feeble-mindedness was often socially and politically prejudiced so if somebody was um an alcoholic or you know sort of or whatever he would be asked questions about did he know who was the chancellor of Germany or whatever and then be designated as being feeble-minded and so sterilized so it was a totally arbitrary actual um assessment procedure but thousands of people were um in fact hundreds of thousands of people were sterilized under this system the quest to purify the Aran race of hereditary diseases did not stop at sterilization soon after the War Began Hitler ordered a program that would rid the Reich of those who were considered unworthy of Life the so-called Youth and Asia program and I think this is critical for our understanding of the whole Nazi project that it was a racial project in the broadest sense that Hitler and leading Nazis saw Germany as a kind of body and they therefore saw weaknesses in the body what do you do with weaknesses in the body you eliminate them but even before this program had been created the Reich was experiment ING with youth in Asia its subjects the most vulnerable members of society newborn babies on the 18th of August 1939 it became compulsory to report newborns With A congenital illness children's units were established and children with Down Syndrome intellectual disabilities and other congenital conditions were killed by of drugs and [Music] starvation having trial their techniques with children the Nazis moved on to adults targeting those in asylums who were considered unworthy of life this became known as the T4 program relatively few doctors in Nazi Germany actually took Parts in the so-called euphanasia program or action T4 the medical profession as a whole was far more complicit in the earlier law to sterilize eugenically dubious German Nationals which had already begun really from 933 so many of the future victims of euphanasia program had in fact already been sterilized for their psychiatric illnesses and so therefore were already known to to to to to the local medical authorities the program was envisaged and endorsed by Hitler and was carried out by Ordinary People bureaucrats under the direction of Physicians chose the victims and authorized the death of those considered useless eaters people who would not contribute to the economy vulnerable people with physical or intellectual impairments were targeted and often betrayed by people charged with their care not all Physicians agreed with the program some challenged the ethics and legality of the practice and when that failed tried to warn families initially victims were shot in the back of the head then a so-called medical method of lethal injection was used finally the Nazis Came Upon a method they would employ much more widely the use of poison gas both in gas Chambers disguised as shower rooms and in Mobile Gas Vans by 1940 gas Vans were already in operation in occupied Poland using bottled carbon monoxide it wasn't until the summer of 1941 that the SS developed gas Vans using petrol engines this evolved after an experiment in the ballaran town of moev when psychiatric patients were murdered by the SS to sort of test out this new technology the T4 program was a testing ground in which were perfected the techniques for Mass killing that would occur and be used in the war is estimated that around 500 Personnel took part directly in action T4 of whom only a small number were actually doctors it's also worth noting that at the end of 1941 after the easia action had been suspended but nearly a 100 Personnel from the T4 operation uh was sent to Poland to work as part of action Reinhardt operating the extermination camps of BC soore and trinka War had been declared following Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 it did not take long for the persecution of the Jewish people to be ramped up the attack and the invasion of Poland in September of 39 more or less exported the persecution of the Jews from Central Europe to Poland and later to other occupied territories in Europe and from the very beginning the Nazis the German and Poland pursued a policy what they called of germanization a ruthless policy of occupation fighting and murdering all people and groups labeled as enemy of the rise in October deportations to Lublin began Jews were forced out of Germany Czechoslovakia and Austria and into slums in cities like Dublin Deportes were often betrayed by neighbors and people they had considered friends after a second world war we found in archives lists of polls to be deported which were prepared by ethnic Germans living in yoin Neighbors were preparing for invasion of Germans and were determining who got to be kicked out it was extremely of course disappointing because they went to the same school quite often they were friends the first wave of deportations ceased in March 1940 and the search for a new location for deportation began the French colony of Madagascar was considered But ultimately [Music] abandoned deportation was replaced by ghettoization at its height in the period between October 194 40 and April 1941 Jews and roma were forced to leave their homes and live in segregated residential districts called ghettos the word was not new it originated in Venice a term for the part of the city to which Jews were restricted they varied in size from a building to an entire neighborhood some were open this meant people could move in and out in controlled ways sometimes they could find work outside the ghetto or go to the market at designated times both were vital in avoiding starvation the ghettos were absolutely appalling places and as the war progressed they became worse and worse first of all there was massive overcrowding the Warsaw Ghetto contained about half a million people and they were housed in an area of 1.3 square miles that means that there were approximately seven people to every available room closed ghettos were encircled by a barb wire or a wall which prevented occupants from leaving and allowed the Nazi administrators or their delegates to control the flow of food and other supplies when ghetto was closed the most severe oper ression started because juice couldn't go out couldn't bring food the food was given by coupons so it was allocated and the daily dose of calories was about 400 calories per person per day later it was reduced to 200 calories so it was enormously low as you would expect there was basically denial of all civil liberties all properties were confiscated now there was very very little difference between concentration camps and ghetto sections of the city were designated as the ghetto area those who were not Jewish were instructed to leave the area the largest ghetto was in the Polish Capital warsa Germans started bringing transports of Jews from various different cities but also a few thousand Jews from Germany were brought to or GH so total number of people which were there was about 450 460,000 people at its peak but the death rate was extremely high the estimates were about between 3 and 1 half to 5,000 per month because simply of lack of food because of typhoid because of other illnesses so the population was smaller getting smaller and smaller in the wood ghetto 40% of all deaths were the result of tuberculosis an airborne disease TV spread rapidly in overcrowded [Music] ghettos but the ghettos were not an end in themselves but it was a kind of Transit vehicle to confine to incarcerate ghettos to concentrate them to destroy the context between Jews and non-jews to isolate them and to expose them to conditions where they later once they were not required as false laborer could be exterminated and sent to the killing centers physically separating Jewish people from The Wider community helped to reinforce their status as different as other cruelty followed wherever ghettos were set up the Prisoners the inmates were exposed to appalling conditions in other words inmates of ghettos lived on borrowed time until the situation or the date when the decision was made to liquidate the ghettos but some inside the ghettos fought against the oppression there were Jewish resistance movements within the ghettos between 1941 and 1943 it is estimated that as many as 100 resistance organizations were formed the best known Uprising occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto the Jewish fighting organization was established in July 1942 in response to Mass deportations to the trinka killing Center the organization called on people to resist deportation on April 19 1943 the warsa uprising began there was about 3,000 up to 5,000 Germans uh well equipped with uh not only heavy machine guns but also with military vehicles with some chemical weapons uh fighting around thousand of Defenders who usually were equipped with a pistol some ammunition and some grenades they of course had moloto cockes they also produced whole range of other explosives so it was very unequal fight the fact that the fight lasted 27 days I think shows very much to bravery of the people the uprising ended with brutal destruction reducing the ghetto to Rubble stban stop who was the general in charge of destruction of ghetto was extremely brutal uh when the small weapons created significant losses on German side they changed the tactic and they were simply burning quarters of the city after the quarters of the city with such tactics the Nazi liquidation of the ghetto crushed most of the resistance coming from within about 20,000 people were killed during the fight and at that stage there was only 40,000 of people left in ghetto the other 20,000 12,000 will sent to Treblinka concentration camp rest to some camps and very small number of people escape and they join polish underground either in waro or in the forest near wo but destruction was total when German finished there was no one building standing there it was totally flattened the ghetto was reduced to Rubble but the Nazis kept a record of the destruction a particularly famous example is a photo album that was commissioned by Jurgen stro who was the commandant in charge of the clearing of the warau getus the title stro gave to this album was the end of Jewish life in Eastern Europe so that for him was a momentous part in the Nazi regime achieving its core mission that he wanted documented through photography one album he dedicated to himler the person in charge of Nazi racial policy in the occupied East one to Hitler himself and the third one disturbingly to the historians of the [Music] future the use of concentration camps to enact the so-called Final Solution emerged during the war there's always a question in the scholarship did Hitler always intend to kill all the Jews of Europe and was just waiting for the right time to do it or did the pressures of the war and to some extent Solutions being put forward from the Bottom by people trying to please HIM lead to the decision to kill all the Jews the decision was probably made in the Autumn of 1941 the final solution began with the deportation schemes and evolved into genocide in in 1939 the Nazis planned to resettle the Jews of Germany and Poland into the so-called Lublin reservation by the Nazi Soviet Border in 1940 after the fall of France they dreamed up the well-known Madagascar plan to ship the Jews of Western and Central Europe to the French Colonial island of Madagascar in 1941 before operation Barbarosa the Nazis had the idea that they would Deport Jews to Siberia after defeat of the Soviet Union so in fact it was actually the failure to defeat the Soviet Union that led to plan D which was to deport Jews to extermination sites in Poland there were many thousands of camps across Germany and occupied Europe which sered different purposes and imprisoned a range of people the Nazis considered enemies out ofit birkenau one of the most notorious compris three camps a prison a labor camp and an extermination camp other camps like soore and trinka 2 were constructed specifically as killing centers miden was initially used to hold Soviet prisoners of war and later used as a killing Center the extermination camps were built specifically to kill the Jews and also to kill the other groups who were considered to be racially inferior so Roma and cinti and a few other groups like homosexuals Jehovah's Witnesses but they were specifically built as major industrial complexes to kill Jews because it wasn't quick enough to kill them through either ghettoization or in concentration camps the fate of those sent to the camps resided initially with those charged with selection when they arrived usually on the railway platforms they were subject to sorting essentially so they separated some people who could work who could keep the camp going from people who were obviously going to be useless women with young children and children and in those instances they were sent to undressing stations told they were having showers and they were usually killed very rapidly ashford's banau was the largest of the extermination processes and it could kill and dispose of 12,000 people a day the Nazis killed millions in the Holocaust Millions ripped from their families Millions denied the chance to contribute to our world Millions stripped with their humanity and dignity Millions burned to Ash or tossed into pits they were killed by ordinary men and women sometimes doctors or nurses overseeing deaths by gas or lethal injection in asylums Nelson had been guarded by SS men and SS women these are some of them and according to the prisoners they had practiced many cruelties upon women and children in the camp sometimes by members of the i group and mobile task forces of ss and police responsible for security in the rear of the German Army the Isis grion were actually already first used in the aneles in 1938 Isa griin accompanied the German Army into Poland in 1949 and there were even small units of security police and Garo that went West in 19 1940 but in 1941 hyri the head of the Gusto created four large units of is grippin totaling around 3,000 officers of men and they were essentially tasked given vague orders as to what exactly they would be doing in yeast but the Insiders the senior officers were more or less told that they should be aiming to carry out a more systematic solution to the so-called Jewish question those who carried out these massacres were not the the Nazi Elite they were ordinary individuals who slaughtered by gunfire as many as a million and a half innocent people hundreds sometimes thousands of men women and children at a time massacres like that carried out at a ravine called babiya on the outskirts of Kiev we must understand that mass violence of all kinds whether against civilians or not emerges not out of homogeneous populations but by binding different groups of people together into a campaign of violence there was no one profile of a Nazi perpetrator instead you needed to get people of different degrees of belief in the dominant ideology to work together and the advantage of a lot of these justifications a lot of this language is that they could mean different things to different people but by doing these different things to different people you could mobilize large numbers of ordinary human beings to engage in quite extraordinary forms of violence the atrocities commed in the Holocaust occurred at a local level in villages towns and cities across occupied Europe it was possible because Ordinary People did not act against it or actively took part in it consequently what happens on the ground depends even in a really strongly coercive Society like Nazi Germany a lot on the attitudes of local policy makers one of the reasons why the Holocaust was so intense is because because local policy makers often bought in to the justifications of the violence uh very heavily Total War also exacerbated the Holocaust by expanding the number of possible victims in the genocide the senior assess leaders hyrich and himla both toured the Eastern Front visiting the SS and a griin commanders on the ground and they often then egged them on encouraged gave further orders on an ad hoc basis the fact that the German Army did not intervene uh on a on a serious way to stop the early massacres and executions and increasingly collaborated with the SS meant that himler and hydrick saw that they now had kind of all systems go a green light to to actually escalate things and and ramp ramp things up as each country fell to Nazi invasion an ever increasing number of people became victims of Nazi persecution the Holocaust stands apart from other attacks on civilians in the second world war it was both connected to and separate from the total war being fought people were imprisoned killed and used a slave labor not because they were a threat to the war effort but because they did not fit within the distorted Nazi ideology in a total war civilian lives are under threat from starvation shell fire advancing armies and aerial bombardment civilians are often targeted by the enemy because they are mobilized in order to contribute to the war effort but there may also be civilians who work against the war or against their own country and the fear of that possibility led to decisions in Allied Nations to in potential fifth columnists the idea of a fifth column enemy supporters working within a nation's borders emerged in the Spanish Civil War General Mohler commanding four nationalist columns advancing on Madrid boasted that he had a fifth column working inside the city but civilians as potential internal enemy predated that conflict one way in which the government sought to reduce the risk of fifth columnists was by rounding up those deemed to be enemy aliens the International Red Cross estimates that during the first World War 2 million civilians were intered in camps for several years most of those intered were living in Nations at war with the countries of their birth during wartime it's a recognized Convention of war that when you you have civilian enemy aliens so they're individuals who were born in the nation that you're at war with that you can intern them and it's up to the country to decide the rules of internment I think where it becomes more applicable to the total war idea is where you actually have this idea that because somebody looks different they can actually be intered regardless of their citizenship and say that's taking the idea of National Security and Total War and then moving it into an area that is completely inappropriate at the outbreak of the second world war 70,000 Germans and austrians living in the UK became enemy aliens they became subject to a classification system they set up a series of tribunals where enemy aliens would go before a magistrate and a court and they would have their classification so if they were deemed to be an immediate threat then they would be given classification of a and immediately intered if the magistrate wasn't sure or they just didn't like foreigners they'd give them a classification of B where they were still at Liberty but they had to register with the police and they were under a curfew and if they were deemed C that meant that there is a classification of a genuine Refugee and say potentially they could remain at Liberty but the application of the classification system was not always consistent which sometimes led to arbitrary decisions there was a big difference in classification so it was sort of very much a postcode lottery in the sense that you could live in different parts of the country and present the same evidence but come out with a different classification some of the magistrates believed that if an individual could speak English fluently then they were more likely to be trustworthy whereas if someone couldn't speak English at all they are more likely to be a spy which is an interesting set of logic most were classed as C gree sea and were not subject to interment or restrictions but in 1940 the fear of invasion saw increasing numbers of Germans and austrians living in Southern England being intered when Italy joined the war Italian residents in Britain were also intered this included some who were members of the fascist party but all those age between 16 and 1 who had lived in Britain less than 20 years could potentially be sent to the interment camps scattered across the UK the largest of them being on the aisle of man interment was particularly difficult for women and children in terms of women it was less Pleasant for them because they often ended up being taken to Holloway prison so they were treated much more like criminals initially the women would be separated from their children so some children were taken into care and then they would be reunited later on uh with their mothers on the AR of man as numbers increased thousands of interes were also deported overseas to Canada and Australia some of them are pretty slippery customers and the Dominion will be guarding them very carefully for the [Music] duration the story of one of the journeys to Canada aboard the arandora star had an unanticipated tragic outcome the liner packed well Beyond capacity with 1,300 German and Italian internees and their guards left Liverpool on the 1st of July 1940 the next day the ship was sunk by a German new boat it was not traveling in Convoy it didn't have any markings denoting the fact that it was carrying civilians and uh it was impossible for those on the lower decks to get out in time because of the the security features on the boat the community that was most affected by that was the British Italian Community because the majority of those who died were Italians as the Italians were on the lower decks their bodies washed up on Ireland's neutral Shores for a month afterwards known as the men that came in from the sea [Music] enemy aliens and those deported were considered to be Nazis or fascists a threat to the nation but some of those killed the arandora star had lived in Britain for years even decades and considered themselves British others were men like 28-year-old student Hans Muller a Jewish refugee who had fled Nazi Germany only to be intered as a possible Nazi sympathizer mul's body was found on the 29th of [Music] July British survivors from the arandora Star were cheerful enough in spite of their ordeal when a Nazi Yuber torpedoed the liner the death row was greatly increased by the Panic which spread among 1500 interes being taken to Canada the tragedy swayed public opinion on interment and internees began to be released by 1942 fewer than 5,000 remained intered most on the aisle of [Music] man when the United States joined the war aliens from Axis countries became enemy aliens travel restrictions and curfews were imposed enemy aliens were required to surrender prohibited items such as shortwave radios weapons explosives and cameras from February 1942 all German Italian and Japanese citizens or subjects over 14 were required to register for certificates of identification as in other Allied countries the United States ined civilians they considered a threat meaning that not all who were intered had been born overseas these Nazi prisoners are well housed clothed and fed in full Accord with the Geneva Convention and although not required to work many of them have volunteered as Lumber JS for which they paid 80 cents a day around about four bar not all enemy aliens were intered and not all nationalities were considered equally threatening an estimated 4,000 Italians were arrested or detained by authorities but most were questioned and released plans for Mass interment of Italians never eventuated relatively few were incarcerated for the duration of the war [Music] this was not the case for those of Japanese descent actor and activist George teay was among some 120,000 Japanese Americans intered teay was born in the United States he was an American citizen he was only 5 years old when he and his family were forced from their home living in a horse stable for weeks they were eventually transported by rail to Arkansas to a prison in which they would be forced to live there was no trial those ined had committed no crime Democratic process was abandoned to the demands of Total War there were seven permanent interment centers scattered across four states Texas New Mexico North Dakota and Montana Crystal City in Texas was a family interment Camp 2third of the inhabitants were of Japanese ancestry but the camp also included German Americans Crystal City also housed a lot of Germans who would been taken from Latin America in particular so the US believed in hemispheral security so they felt it was completely appropriate to ask Latin American countries to send them their Japanese and German and Austrian citizens so that they could be interned in the United States the Immigration and Naturalization Service sought to ensure the camps met the requirements of the Geneva Convention the government made an effort to ensure nutritious food clothing and Medical Care were all available it also betrayed the camp in a positive light in the US the media was very much used to give an idea of a very positive view of the camp saying this is actually not apart from the US ideal at all this is exactly what you'd expect which were complete Fabrications many Americans still believe to this day that it was a very positive experience for those of Japanese ancestry to be in the camps and that they didn't suffer they had everything provided for them they were in a new area on land that was raw Untamed but full of opportunity here they would build schools educate their children reclaim the [Music] desert but the women men and children in turn did suffer they were deprived of their freedom they suffered the loss of their homes and livelihoods their privacy and their dignity their time and talent wasted through no fault of their own B inmin policy that has been described as one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American [Music] history but deprivation of Liberty can be measured in many ways [Music] those interned in Allied Nations did not suffer the same inhumane treatment that many civilians ined by the Japanese endured or the enslavement that was the fate of those deemed alien or unfit by the Third [Music] Reich in every combatant nation Total War helped to create circumstances in which civil liberties were violated and they violation was tolerated in addition to those ined by the Allies as many as 130,000 civilian women children and men were interned by the Japanese in the second world [Music] war they were scattered across some 350 camps in the Far East where conditions were varied food and clothing were limited and overcrowding was widespread losses from disease and malnutrition were particularly high in the Dutch East Indies when the war ended those who had been intered in Allied countries were released to begin their lives again but the experience of interment of all that was last because of it remained a bitter memory for [Music] many those held captive by the Japanese were liberated many who had suffered from illness and starvation faced the challenge of regaining their health as well as mourning their years lost to [Music] captivity for the survivors of the Holocaust the trauma was total so many had lost their families their homes their livelihoods the response to the overwhelming loss naturally differed between individuals it cannot be contained in a simple summary but the impact of their experiences did not vanish with the end of the war the most shocking findings of the Holocaust of Holocaust research perpetrators on the whole murdered not only with impunity most of of them found it very easy of returning into their normal life so they were with few exception free of those symptoms of those experiences while the surviving Witnesses had to live with this experience until today and that is also an experience which we find in other genocidal campaigns the murderers normally find it much more easier in returning into their day-to-day life experience than the surviving victims they are traumatized they are punished until yeah the end the survivors Carri the aftermath of war with them guilt shame and Trauma Total War is everybody's War but not everybody is Born To Be A solder trained to kill to endure the violence of War when Total War had drawn all with the last drop of their resilience survivors had to find more in order to rebuild the shattered [Music] World Total War is all-encompassing a war without boundary or limitation in the second world war massive armies Advanced confronting whole population with impossible choices the manufacturer of weapons transformed industry in the workforce area bombing campaigns reduced cities to Rubble sieges doomed populations to starvation racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide at the heart of this conflict were ordinary people who would reveal both the best and worst of humanity people whose lives were lost or mortgaged to the demands of Total War [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1945 after years of fighting and destruction the Allies claimed their victory victory in Europe in May and victory in the Pacific in August Total War which had drawn all elements of society into the conflict had been won by those on the factory floor as well as those on the battlefield when we look at the second world war was actually the military planners of the 1920s the Forgotten ones were the ones that were right it was the big economy I that won the second world war it was those peripheral great Powers British Empire the United States and the Soviet Union that could absorb the initial attack the onslaught and then mobilize the resources they needed for the second stage of the war which was Victory the end of the war was greeted with euphoric celebrations in the streets of Allied Nations cheering civilians and servicemen and women swamp the streets relief and joy mixed with a grief for the millions whose lives have been taken by Total War but the celebrations bide the work that remained in the aftermath Total War devastated cities towns and Villages it took the lives of tens of millions of civilians and displaced Millions more those who survived faced the challenge of rebuilding a broken world the true depth of the war's brutality became apparent during the final advance to Victory as they moved through Europe Allied Forces began liberating survivors in Nazi concentration camps in January 1945 the Red Army liberated ashs now the Germans had evacuated the camp and they sent the inmates from there and all the other massive camps in the Far East on what were called forced Marchers to the west to try and hide what they had done but there was a great deal of evidence left of the mass extermination that had occurred massive piles of spectacles of suitcases clothing men's and women's suits massive piles of hair and of course crematoria some with bodies still in them British troops face similar scenes the British liberated Bergen bson and by the time they did Bergen bellson had become the depository of many of those thousands of people who were pushed into the death marches from the East so so this camp that was originally not designed to be an either extermination camp or even a big concentration camp was crammed full of 60,000 people most of whom were in a terrible State they were walking skeletons diseased when the British liberated it in mid April 1945 they were absolutely appalled and shocked overwhelmed with what they found 10,000 people died within the next 3 weeks they couldn't be saved in 1945 The Liberation of the camps shocked the world it was very clear that the Nazi regime had behaved with extreme brutality yet the specificity the kind of distinctiveness of the fate of the Jews was really underappreciated the Allies filmed the liberation of the s and showed the devastation that had been left behind in bval and bson and elsewhere and yet the documentary film they made Nazi concentration camps only mentioned the word Jew once the Allied Advance liberated the camps for many the approach of Liberation was the signal to rise in resistance to fight from Street to Street sometimes at tragic cost as the Red Army Advanced towards warsa the Polish capital in July 1944 Soviet authorities encouraged the underground to Rise Against the German occupation the homeg guard was wary of Soviet intentions but hoping to win Warsaw from the Germans before the Red Army could Liberate the city and capitalize on its Victory ordered the uprising the Polish homeg guard with some 50,000 troops was initially successful in the push against the German occupi in 3 days it had gained control of most of the city but when German reinforcements arrived the tide turned against the homeg guard the Red Army held back and the Allies failed to resupply the city the people of warsa suffered for the next 63 days Hitler ordered the city to be flattened and special demolition squads went out accompanied by experts to destroy any building or monument of cultural value the homeg guard surrendered on the 2nd of October 1944 an estimated 200,000 civilians had been killed a further 200,000 were deported to labor and concentration camps by the time the Germans abandoned the city in Janu January 1945 warsa had been almost completely [Music] destroyed as the Soviet Union moved through territory which had been occupied populations that had been drawn into Total War were feuded with suspicion so the whole question of finding Traders finding collaborators and filter ing to use the Soviet term the population becomes uh very important it's a huge operation of trying to find out who were collaborators and who were not as the front moves the other direction consequences for those identified as traitors varied there were very clear distinctions made between levels of punishment you would really have to had either caused the death of Soviet citizens helped in the extrem mination of the Jews uh or really being a major political collaborator with the Germans in France the Allied advance and Liberation also brought with it a mixture of joy and Terror Village after Village that lay in the path of Total War was shattered in the Quest for Liberation bombardments which were used to secure the beach head on D-Day and Beyond did not discriminate between civilians and the German contingents at which they were aimed lacking Precision the weapons made civilians unintended victims in their Liberation in the five Northern departments close to 20,000 French civilians lost their lives in the liberation of Normandy many of those who were not killed were forced to flee houses barns cattle crops roads and bridges were all lost in the Destro ction as the advancing allies fought to gain control the threats to civilians did not dissipate as the main Force moved on some members of rear support units caused unease through public drunkenness or shouting in the streets looting was common cases of robbery sexual assault and murder were all reported in the newly liberated lands patterns of damage following Liberation that were mirid in the Pacific now the war in the Far East is by no means an easy Affair the cost in human lives is appallingly heavy although the liberated civilians experienced destruction and darkness it was Joy celebration and gratitude to the liberating troops that [Music] dominated after Liberation France sought to create a story of Triumph that placed the resistance at its Center when the war ended Dore immediately began what became known as the resistance myth and that is that the vast majority of the French people had combined to resist German occupation and that only a small and insignificant minority had collaborated and that's not true the reason for the Go's narrative was France was defeated it was humiliated it was divided it it needed to Rise From the Ashes and it needed a story a good story to tell itself but the story of the resistance was more complex than the myth suggested less the story of French Resistance than of the resistance in France in fact the so-call French Resistance is full of Spanish Republicans polish hung Ian Romanian Jews Italian anti-fascists and indeed German antiaris who are quite prominent in the French Resistance so it's a much more diverse multicolored Cosmopolitan story than the one that's often told not all who joined the French Resistance were French and not all French men and women joined the resistance some had endured occupation and focused their energy on Survival as the war went on everyday survival was increasingly difficult in France some areas at the end of the war were suffering food shortages in in Paris for example by 1942 the meat ration was cut by 75% the bread ration by 50% some who actively collaborated in the Holocaust sought to silence their story after the war the fact that vishi had a role in the deportation of Jews from France not only foreign Jews but also a lot of French Jews who were caught up in the deportation and this was a big roundup of Jews in Paris in July 1942 and they were housed in this cycle stadium called the vum D and from there they went to DTI which was a kind of holding camp in a housing estate on the outside Paris and then they went to aitz and the French police you know was just responsible for riding them up despite attempts to conceal collaboration people thought to have collaborated with the German occupiers were openly attacked in the streets of France at the immediate end of the war there was a period of about 2 weeks when there was summary Justice when a lot of French people essentially took revenge on others who had collaborated or mistreated them and perhaps about 10,000 people were killed in what was called the purification at the end of the war but then you know de go was very keen to get this under control and courts were set up to deal with u collaborators and again the distinction was made between economic collab oration and political collaboration so for example if you were a factory owner or a manager of a of a plant which had worked with the Germans you could probably get away with it political collaboration was not excused and actually intellectual collaboration was clamped down on women accused of collaboration were often targeted for public humiliation and acts of brutality there was a tendency to single out women who had had relationships with German soldiers easily identified sometimes they were disfigured had ears cut off had their head shaved or were tired and feathered but they were easy victims the aftermath of Total War divided France for years to come the population and the collective memory of of the nation struggled to reconcile the actions of those who had resisted and those who were seen as collaborators I think there is a long-term effect which is what you might call a divided memory although as it were the good is one and the resistance story won there were still large numbers of people who felt that if they had supported vishi they had done the right thing the work of the resistance was not remembered fondly by everyone in France there's another distinction which is a divide in memory at the level of villages where they had been massacres as a result of resistance activity there was still for a long time a kind of um a tension between the resistors who were saying yeah we did a great thing we killed these Germans and then the survivors of families whose parents have been shot whose brothers and sisters have been shot as a result of German Collective repr presles attacks on collaborators were not confined to Europe in the Pacific those who were perceived as having cooperated with the Japanese were also targeted police officers informers those who had traded with the Japanese were among those targeted in Singapore these people had been supplying Japanese guerillas so off they went to internment camps retribution against collaborators is not unique to Total War but the occup occupation of many nations which had been an aspect of Total War made collaboration and the reprisals that followed more widespread where occupying forces had mixed with the local population guilt could be assigned to civilians as well as the enemy among them apparently was at least one gapo man he was posing as a Dutchman but a Russian girl denounced him eventually he was marched away for interrogation while a crowd of workers made their feelings perfectly clear with ir Ric or Cher as most people in France and Belgium greeted their liberators and others began to suffer the consequences of collaboration the German people faced Total War at a level they had not yet experienced Hitler had resisted Joseph goal's calls to impose Total War conditions on the German population until 1944 in August he appointed Geral barich plan of potenti for Total War it's only then that he becomes the Gobles of public memory in other words uh previous to this he just had control of radio and Cinema really the late war is the apotheosis of Geral Geral stays in Berlin Geral creates the FTM the folk storm this great People's Army which is the final resource and which is going out to battle the Bolsheviks manto man the vom a people's militia was created in September 1944 boys and men between 16 and 60 were recruited into service women took their place armed with pistols Manning anti-aircraft guns Men Women and Children built fortifications and dug trenches Gales mobilized the German people to fight on German soil in a last ditch attempt to save the Nazi regime from the consequences of defeat at last they were mobilized for Geral Total War but Geral hedged his bets he also sent a memo to Hitler suggesting a broken peace with Stalin to end the war Hitler would not compromise in the end he would only accept total Victory or total defeat in 1944 he still clung to the desperate belief that the impact of the Wonder Weapons would help secure Victory people often ask the question why do the Germans keep fighting and they keep fighting if you have this National Socialist perspective because there is no peace the peace will be the destruction of the German people it's also true for the Nazi leaders that they know that their own freedom and likely their own lives are going to end with the loss of the war above all Hitler would not acknowledge defeat because defeat would be a consequence of the failure of the German people and if they did not fail then they could not lose if that was not true their Nazi racial theory was false and that of course could never be allowed the German people had endured are bombing on a scale never seen before but they were spared the destruction of battles in their own cities towns and Villages until the final stages of the war when armies were fighting on German soil it was particularly in the East that the atrocities committed against civilians during the German Advance were repaid in kind on the civilian population as the Red Army Advanced now for the German people they are fleeing they are hundreds of thousands of German refugees out of East Prussia fleeing Westward they trying to escape the Red Army and with good reason there is clear evidence that the Red Army perpetrate widespread rape and looting all too often those who suffered were [Music] women when Berlin fell in May 1945 women and teenage girls became the victims of mass rapes the perpetration of such crimes was not limited to the Red Army the United States Judge Advocate General also investigated instances of sexual assault carried out by United States troops the Allies entered Germany as conquerors and some behaved accordingly [Music] despite the Looting and violence as the Allies turned from Victory to occupation their focus was on relief and rebuilding as much as on demilitarization and denazification at War's end Germany was divided into four zones the United States of America Great Britain France and the Soviet Union each being allocated a zone for administration it was an arrangement that was to divide Germany for four decades in 1949 the Western democracies merged their zones creating the German federal republic known as West Germany the Soviet Union rejected the plan to create a stable German democracy and its administrative Zone became the German Democratic Republic East Germany so the aftermath of Total War planted the seeds for the Cold War the shadow of things to come also spread across the aftermath of the Pacific War the United States and Soviet Union agreed to a temporary division at the 38th parallel of what had been the Japanese colony of Korea the increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union made this temporary division permanent from zul capital of Korea pictures of the recent clash between nationalists and Communists a number of Communists were rounded up suspected of being snipers they were searched by Korean police the Soviet Union fostered a communist regime in the north the United States supported a nominally democratic government in the South The Embers of a new conflict born of the old began to smoger they were set a light in 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War [Music] China was left shattered after the war Millions were dead inflation Rose poverty was widespread and the political situation was a Tinder Box China suffered as much as any other country during the second World War this meant that after 1945 when the nationalists took back China they took control of a country with the exception of the Northeast which was controlled by the Communists they took control of a country that was really on its knees at the same time the Nationalist government and the Nationalist Army were at the end of their tether I think Total War fostered a sense of nationalism in China that fed into the Civil War that followed and I think that it's fair to say that the war brought Chinese people together sometimes this was because Chinese people saw the terrible things that the Japanese were doing and suddenly became all nationalistic and voluntarily went to either fight or to support the war in other ways sometimes it was because the nationalists and the Communists used propaganda to make people see that the political entity that they were part of was a nation called China the struggle for control over the country between 1945 and 1949 rested on popular support the Communist Party Drew on popular support particularly in rural areas where the vast majority of the population lived after 1945 it had started to permeate throughout the countryside particularly um in areas where the Communists had most control and it would continue to do so and this meant that nationalism could would be relied upon by the Chinese Communist party to bolster support we see it during the Korean War and we see it even [Applause] now for Japan total defeat meant the loss of sovereignty the Allied occupation of Ja Jaan was led and managed by the United States Great Britain the Soviet Union and China had advisory roles through the Allied Council but the final Authority and the future of Japan rested with General maccaa and the us we are gathered here representatives of the major Waring powers to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored it is my Earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and Carnage of the past the idea of total defeat means that the entity the the state sovereignty itself dissolves and is completely over overtaken by that of the Conqueror and of course that is what happens with Japan Japan loses its sovereignty it ceases to have a foreign office it ceases to have a government that is allowed to talk with other governments they have to go through the occupation government the occupation of Japan initially began with a focus on punishment demilitarization and reform the British Commonwealth occupation force was charged was supervising the demilitarization and destruction of War materials but the humanitarian crisis that existed in the aftermath of Total War was not lost on The Victors so the extent of urban Devastation in Japan is extensive the economy is in freefall the population is dying the colonies and the occupied lands from which Japan Drew food stuffs during the Empire they've all been suddenly cut off and the Harvest in 1945 is devastating so people are not eating the Americans then realized they need to help in some ways support Japan in this freef fall the economic and humanitarian crisis also provoked a fear that Japan might be swayed by the growing communist influence the Americans in some ways see the writing on the wall and begin to discuss how do we bring Japan into our framework of liberal capitalism so that it doesn't fall into what is seem to be kind of this Red Sea that's overtaking East and Southeast Asia so the delivery of Aid and the establishment of a new world order was not driven by humanitarian but by strategic and political concerns when maidong declared the People's Republic Aid earmarked for China was redirected the economic development of Japan now offered a path for the United States to shore up a potential ally in the new fight fascism had been defeated the new enemy was [Music] communism the United States was not alone in providing Aid in the aftermath of War a lesson learned from the failed peace of 1919 was that the United States could not withdraw into a policy of isolation where after the first world war it had refused to join the League of Nations after the second it was the prime mover of and location for the United Nations and un agencies from the start were crucial to rebuilding and relief efforts the United Nations relief and Rehabilitation Administration or anra as it was known was a coalition of 44 Nations supervising over 100 International Private relief organizations anra provided relief and sought to repatriate displaced persons $4 billion in food medicine Agricultural and Industrial Equipment was shipped to Europe and Asia the repatriation of refugees proved to be one of the greatest challenges in the aftermath of Total War there were around 175 million people displaced across the world at the end of World War II this included of course the 60 million people displaced across Continental Europe but there are also 90 million people displaced in China so internally displaced people are following the Japanese invasion the loss fac by refugees was profound it was more than just the loss of a house and possessions for home is more than a house it is the core of social connection the sense of place and neighborhood the climate and the pace of life it is a sense of security and familiarity the war had torn many homes apart separated children from their families it also must be remembered that there were tens of thousands of children stolen by the Reich for their germanization programs and sent to places like leban Bor homes foster homes and so parents were scrambling to find these lost children one of the main ways that families were able to attempt to reunite or or find each other again was through the central tracing Bureau and this became the central organizational Agency for people around the world to search for family members that had been lost in the war total war destroyed homes for millions of people it sent them into the world forced to seek a new home a new way of life which was anything but familiar the displaced people were spread across hundreds of camps in German Austria and Italy Millions were Keen to return to what was left of their home but home was all too often no longer recognizable for many particularly survivors of the Holocaust a return home was accompanied by the trauma of what they had lost the long-term effects on survivors were immense a lot of people people wanted to go home to find out who amongst their families immediate and extended families had survived because people were separated when they got back they often found no survivors no immediate family no extended family and sometimes whole communities had been wiped out other displaced people feared the possibility of return to a home that had been irrevocably changed their homes were occupied by a different Power it was now territory occupied and influenced by the Soviet Union territory people were fleeing in the first year of operations the anra sent home sometimes forcibly in the case of Soviet Nationals around 6 million displaced persons but as the Cold War deepened across Europe it becomes increasingly difficult for the Allies to to justify repatriating people back to communist countries against their will so it's at this time in the aftermath of World War II that you get the development or the politicization of international Refugee law in other words if you could prove that you were opposed to Communism you were a legitimate displaced person and it's also in this time that you're getting a harder ing of the categories of economic migrant as opposed to political Refugee in 1946 the international Refugee organization was established the focus turned from repatriation to resettlement refugees were slowly accepted by other nations across the globe in China the number of internal refugees as a result of the war are almost incomprehensible tens of millions have been forced to flee their homes sometimes many years earlier following Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 or fullscale invasion of the country in 1937 like those in Europe many had no home to return to When The War finished as displaced people sought refuge in countries across the globe the United States continued its efforts at economic Rehabilitation with the implementation of the European recovery plan the Marshall Plan whether we like it or not we find ourselves our nation in a world position of vast responsibility we can act for our own good by acting for the world's good the martial plan is seen in American terms as has the most creative the most generous foreign policy in history and there is some argument for that it's seen in Europe as of course something that helped save Europe although this varies from country to Country the United States came into the Marshall Plan one might say with a great deal of reluctance Congress really had to be talked into it as much as $13 billion in economic aid was distributed across 17 European nations in the form of loans and grants the aim to create an economically stable Europe and prevent a turn to Communism which might be the result from poverty and dislocation the United States was very worried that its production which after its industrial growth in the second world war would so outstrip its ability to consume it that it would go in into deep depression because remember who could buy these exports anymore therefore they had to get dollars in European hands implemented between 1948 and 1951 the plan was successful the gross national product of the Western European nations involved Rose by 15 and 25% and the plan fostered the renewal of Industry the relief efforts helped to fuel the dominance of the United United States in the post-war [Music] world the United States was not the only nation concerned with the economic and political stability of the world in the aftermath of Total War the United Nations was established on October the 24th 1945 the preamble to its Charter made clear that the organization sought to save succeeding Generations from the scourge of War at the signing of the charter President Truman made clear that the United Nations and its Charter was about peace this new structure of peace is rising upon strong Foundation let us not fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a worldwide rule of reason to create an enduring peace under the guidance of God the aftermath of Total War predictably engendered hopes for peace but the violence of Total War also turned the attention of the Allies to the pursuit of justice and retribution for atrocities committed by A's powers [Music] the war crime trials held in urberg in Japan and elsewhere in Asia were a response to the brutality that Total War Unleashed brutality that demanded a new class of offense war crimes and a new word for a new crime genocide and perhaps the hope that Justice would ensure against similar violence against civilians in the future as the crimes committed were unprecedented lawyers introduced new Concepts which are regarded as milestones in the history of international law these Concepts were crimes against humanity war crimes and crimes against peace and on the grounds of these charges those Nazi leaders could be put on trial and sentenced the international Military Tribunal held in nurburg between 1945 and 46 is the best known of the war crimes trials between 1946 and 1949 the United States military conducted 12 further tribunals known as the subsequent nurenberg proceedings these tribunals led to the conviction of 97 defendants the occupying powers in Germany also conducted Zone trials American the British the French and the Russian took over the persecution in their zones of occupation while the Americans centered on the international war crimes tribu in Tokyo the international Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo in 1946 that only puts on trial a very small number of Japanese important leaders both civilian and uh military I 28 individuals at the outset although a few drop out due to various circumstances so in the end 25 which if you think about the length and breadth and depth of Japanese issues and Imperial atrocities it's a very small number the United States and General MacArthur took the lead on the Tokyo tribunal other Allied Nations conduct a Tribunal elsewhere in the asia-pacific region there are also however in East Asia 5,700 individuals who are brought up in about 2,200 some OD cases in what are called the BC class war crimes tribunals and they take place in about 49 different venues throughout East and Southeast Asia over a period from pretty much 1945 all the way to 1951 the war crimes trials were not a Flawless Carriage of Justice there are many problems with all of the war crimes trials and the more we look at them I think the more we come to understand in many ways they're not Victor's Justice critics call them certainly in Japan exost facto law which means they're a law created after the fact and then applied retro itively grandfathered in which is of course normally completely illegal to do however using the tool of law as a way to find Justice as a way to avoid further and continued retribution to end a cycle of violence that had continued for decades in East Asia I think was not only very novel but also had a massive impact the Geneva Convention adopted in 1949 sought to prevent such atrocities being committed [Music] again the severity of World War II led to a fundamental change in the way in which civilians were viewed despite the fact that this was a war in which civilian targeting became increasingly acceptable it was a war that was so barbaric so uh total in the devastation that it wrought against civilian populations it was very important in spurring the rise of the human rights Agenda International law the R development of the Geneva conventions that protect civilians came out really of the devastation witnessed in uh World War II Total War changed people's lives often in ways that were permanent but perhaps more usually in ways that passed with the end of hostilities Total War had for example mobilized women to varying degrees around the world a change in women's roles had been necessary to the conduct of the war but it was often seen as a temporary measure not a change which should be sustained in peace time very large fall in the birth rate created a bit of a sort of Crisis amongst the government and and certain forces in society are very worried about deep population and so women it was about their duty to go home plus you've got millions of men who are going to be demobilized and the military command were always absolutely adamant that morale was the highest priority how we slept look this one's picking potatoes it looks like real work I had no idea you were a tough or you'd be surprised societal expectations also weighed heavily on women who had fallen in love and sometimes had children with soldiers during the war there was doubling of pregnancies outside marriage still very small compared to today but uh shocking thought to be very very shocking at the time so um that caused a great concern you got 70,000 women going off as GI Brides uh that adds to the concern about population so women are sort of being told go back in the home we don't want you in the factories anymore in the aftermath of War some women were forced to make unimaginable choices of the 2 million men who were here Forida I think it was something like 130,000 of the American men were black GIS and there was a concept at the time of course of white britishness you know we were thought to be a white race uh and and moreover thought ourselves to be superior and therefore interracial sex was unnown no the result is though that something like a th500 um babies were born uh two black G uh and unfortunately there their fate was a rather sad one because at this time mixr's children were not [Music] acceptable the generation of women who live through the Second World War were changed by it but in peace the world around them resisted change women carried the burden not only of their War experiences but of the expectations of the [Music] peace the tribunals and conventions in the aftermath of Total War sought to prevent similar atrocities occurring again but in the decades that followed peace and safety for civilians continued to be an elusive [Music] hope what we have learned after the Holocaust after nurg modern societies find it comparatively easy to unleash genocidal campaigns ethnic cleansing you might call that in order to solve their National Religious and social problems that once you have done that and once you've sh own it's possible it can be repeated the problem with lessons of history is that they have no power unless there are those prepared to teach and those willing to learn it's up on all of us to ensure that Holocaust is not forgotten it may happen again it's important to keep that historical knowledge and to pass that knowledge to New Generation that humans can organize industrial slaughter houses to kill other humans only because they are different total war created a legacy of shared grief across the globe a generation came to understand to varying degrees loss and destruction on a scale the world had never seen so there's a lot to still be done in terms of actually creating the kind of cultural understanding an awareness of the history of what actually happened in the period many people in the west do not really recognize the levels and forms of violence that were deployed in World War II for Nations that bore the full brunt of Total War the scale of loss is almost incomprehensible what a sight for Russian eyes everyone in that great crowd had suffered one way or another at the hands of these Gallant soldiers of the how many friends or relatives had been butchered or tortured and executed in village and City during the German occupation of course in Germany Japan the Soviet Union Eastern Europe the effects were much more devastating entire populations had been wiped out uh communities had been destroyed their cultural identities and memories had been wiped out and still to this day many of these communities have never recovered or never will be able to recover to re claim what they can many survivors also carried a legacy of trauma with few exceptions survivors succeeded in rebuilding their shattered lives but wherever they went after the period of Liberation they were always accompanied by traumatic experiences the effects of Total War on survivors were not only psychological innumerable military personnel and civilians suffered wounds that lasted a lifetime the victims of the atomic blasts the hipusa were among that group those who were affected by the radiation but survived carried the scars left by the terrible weapon for the rest of their lives discouraged from marrying or having children for fear of Watch unting mutations might be passed on the final blow came years later when their exposure to radiation made them vulnerable to [Music] leukemia so devastating was the total war that extinguished at least 60 million lives that its repercussion defin the world for decades afterwards because it was Total War it influenced and infected every aspect of life it is somewhere in the explanation for everything about our modern world often in ways that we are only just beginning to acknowledge oh [Music]