World wars

A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple continents and can last for years before showing any signs of slowing. In fact, as a world war progresses, nations devote more and more of their resources to the conflict, resulting in ever-escalating destruction. World wars result in unparalleled devastation to almost every country involved, with loss of life which can only be estimated.
The term has usually been applied to two conflicts of unprecedented scale that occurred during the 20th century: World War I (1914 1918), and World War II (1939 1945).

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The Holocaust was a systematic, state-organized persecution of Jews and other targeted groups by the Nazi state and its collaborators. During the Holocaust two-thirds of Europes Jewish population was slaughtered which calculates to one-third of the world population of Jews. In addition, the Nazis genocide exterminated millions of Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), Soviets, Polish citizens, Catholics, homosexuals, handicapped, alcoholics, political and religious dissidents and Jehovah Witnesses.
The Holocaust is many times called by other names. The Nazis spoke of it as die Endlosung or the Final Solution for the Jews extermination. In the early 1940s a Yiddish word churbn, which means destruction, was utilized. Others utilized the word Shoah that means catastrophe.
The term Shoah is commonly used in Israel and is used for official Remembrance Day for the Holocaust called Yom HaShoah, which occurs in the spring.

Kristallnacht:The Night of Broken Glass or Crystal Night
On November 9, 1938, Adolf Hitler attended a dinner party in Munich Germany honoring Nazi party heroes. At the dinner he learned that Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat was killed in Paris. Leaving the dinner, Hitler gave orders for a night of terror throughout Germany, including German-annexed Austria and the Sudenland region of Czechoslovakia.
During the nights of November 9-10 more than 90 Jews were killed and hundreds of synagogues and temples were set on fire. Throughout the two-day period over 7000 Jewish businesses were looted without intervention by the police. Additionally, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and over 30,000 Jewish men were placed under house arrest and sent to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
Noted as the worst pre-war program, the streets of Germany were filled with shattered glass from the synagogues and store windows, creating the name Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass. When the night was over, the German Jewish community was ordered to pay repatriations to pay for the damage created by the acts of the Third Reich. Blamed for the destruction, the Jews were fined one billion Reichsmark, which is equal to $400,000,000 in United States currency.
Protests erupted throughout the world surrounding Kristallnacht. In New York, protesters asked for an intensification of existing boycotts of German goods and services. Demonstrations called for an end to Hitlers bloody pogroms. In Chicago, protesters burned swastika flags. Franklin D. Roosevelt, horrified by the actions of Hitlers Kristallnacht, proclaimed his shock that such actions could occur in the 20th century and recalled the American ambassador from Germany. Sadly however, few Americans advocated for changing the immigration laws to increase quotas of Jewish immigrants from Europe.
Hitler had no intention of being intimidated by the protests or the boycotts. On January 30, 1939 Hitler declared that Germany was at war and the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race of Europe.
*Sources: Gilbert, M. Never Again: History of the Holocaust, Universe Publishing
and The Holocaust Chronicle Publication International, Ltd.,

A U.S. solider surveys a German concentration camp

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It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some b*stard will get up and say that this never happened'
'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'
Edmund Burke

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The UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.
These photos were taken in Germany by James Emison Chanslor, an Army Master Sergeant who served in World War II from 1942 until 1945.

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Source: Photos courtesy of John Michael Chanslor.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
In memory of the
six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

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World War I, also known as the First World War and the Great War, was a global war which took place primarily in Europe from 1914 to 1918. Over 40 million casualties resulted, including approximately 20 million military and civilian deaths. Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilized from 1914 to 1918. The immediate cause of the war was the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb citizen of Austria-Hungary and member of the Black Hand. The retaliation by Austria-Hungary against the Kingdom of Serbia activated a series of alliances that set off a chain reaction of war declarations. Within a month, much of Europe was in a state of open warfare.

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World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict, the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.

This global conflict split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", erasing the distinction between civil and military resources. This resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort.

Over 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The financial cost of the war is estimated at about a trillion 1944 U.S. dollars worldwide, making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives.

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The Board of Agriculture organised the Land Army during the Great War, starting activities in 1915. Towards the end of 1917 there were over 260,000 women working as farm labourers.

With 5 million men away to fight in the First World War Britain was struggling for labour. The government wanted women to get more involved in the production of food and do their part to support the war effort.

This was the beginning of the Womens Land Army Many traditional farmers were against this so the board of trade sent agricultural organizers to speak with farmers to encourage them to accept women's work on the farms. This was a successful campaign and by 1917 there were around 260,000 women working as farm labourers.

In the United Kingdom, women were essential to the war effort, in both civilian and military roles. The contribution by women to the civilian war effort in the United Kingdom was acknowledged with the use of the words "Home Front" to describe the battles that were being fought on a domestic level with rationing, recycling, and war work, such as in munitions factories and farms. Men were thus released into the military. Women were also recruited into non-combat military units such as the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS or "Wrens") and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) thus further releasing men into the frontline. Auxiliary services such as the Air Transport Auxiliary also recruited women.
In Britain, women were not recruited into regular combat units, but the Special Operations Executive (SOE) did. They were used as agents and radio operators in Nazi occupied Europe.

In the dark days that followed the fall of France a new volunteer fighting force was hastily improvised to wage a secret war against Hitler's armies. This force was called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and their mission was sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines.
Sabotage meant blowing up trains, bridges and factories whilst subversion meant fostering revolt or guerrilla warfare in all enemy and enemy-occupied countries. On July 16, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed a civilian, Hugh Dalton, to be SOE's political master and then promptly ordered him to 'set Europe ablaze!'

The Gulf War or Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991) was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force from 34 nations[ authorized by the United Nations (UN) and led primarily by the United States in order to return Kuwait to the control of the Emir of Kuwait. The conflict developed in the context of the Iran-Iraq War and in 1990 Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraq's oil through slant drilling. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops was met with immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by some members of the UN Security Council, and with immediate preparation for war by the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait began in January 1991 and was a decisive victory for the coalition forces, which took over Kuwait and entered Iraqi territory. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, and bordering areas of Saudi Arabia. Iraq also launched missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel in retaliation for their support of the invading forces in Kuwait.

Since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 had been called the "Gulf War" or "Persian Gulf War" by many news sources, the 1991 war has sometimes been called the Second Gulf War, but more commonly, the 1991 war is styled simply the Gulf War or the "First Gulf War", in distinction from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Operation Desert Storm was the U.S. name of the air and land operations and is often used to refer to the conflict.

Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, US President George H.W. Bush started to deploy US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard units to Saudi Arabia (Operation Desert Shield), while at the same time urging other countries to send their own forces to the scene. UN coalition-building efforts were so successful that by the time the fighting (Operation Desert Storm) began on January 16, 1991, twelve countries had sent naval forces, joining the regional states of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, as well as the huge array of the US Navy, which deployed six aircraft-carrier battle groups; eight countries had sent ground forces, joining the regional troops of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the seventeen heavy and six light brigades of the US Army and nine Marine regiments, with their large support and service forces; and four countries had sent combat aircraft, joining the local air forces of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the US Air Force, US Navy, and U.S. Marine aviation, for a grand total of 2,430 fixed-wing aircraft.

The Iraq War is an ongoing conflict which began on March 20, 2003 with the United States-led invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition composed of U.S. and UK troops supported by smaller contingents from Australia, Denmark, Poland, and other nations. The Iraq War is also known as Operation Iraqi Liberation and then Operation Iraqi Freedom (U.S), Operation Telic (UK),

The main rationale offered by the United States Administration for the Iraq War was the Iraqi regimes continued violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions stemming from the first Gulf War. Two supporting rationales for the invasion were offered by U.S. President George W. Bush and coalition supporters: the allegation that Iraq was at least passively supporting al-Qaeda and potentially providing a low-level of active support, and that it possessed older WMDs, particularly Chemical and Biological weapons, and was actively seeking the development of weapons of mass destruction more advanced (WMD) in violation of the first Gulf War cease-fire agreements, United Nations resolutions and its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Profileration Treaty.

At the start of the war, U.S. officials argued that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the interest of the United States, Europe and the other nations of the Middle East, particularly Israel. The supporting intelligence was supported by British intelligence , as well as given tacit support by Russian and German intelligence.. But the intelligence was also criticized by others, and weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD. After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its WMD programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production if and when the Iraq sanctions were lifted. Although some earlier degraded remnants of misplaced or abandoned WMD were found, they were not the weapons for which the coalition invaded. Some U.S. officials claimed Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had been cooperating, but no evidence of any collaborative relationship has been found. Other reasons for the invasion stated by officials included concerns over Iraq's financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Iraqi government human rights abuses, spreading democracy, and Iraq's oil reserves, although the latter has been denied by other officials.

The invasion led to the quick defeat of the Iraqi military, the flight of President Saddam Hussein, his capture in December, 2003 and his execution in December, 2006. The U.S.-led coalition occupied Iraq and attempted to establish a new democratic government. But shortly after the initial invasion, violence against coalition forces and among various sectarian groups led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency, strife between many Sunni and Shia Iraqi groups, and al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. Estimates of the number of people killed range from over 150,000 to more than 1 million. Member nations of the Coalition began to withdraw their forces as public opinion favoring troop withdrawals increased and as Iraqi forces began to take responsibility for security

The Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the American War, occurred from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The term Vietnam Conflict is often used to refer to events which took place between 1959 and April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and its communist allies and the US supported Republic of Vietnam. It concluded with the defeat and dissolution of South Vietnam. For the United States, the war ended with the withdrawal of American troops and failure of its foreign policy in Vietnam.
Over 1.4 million military personnel were killed in the war (only 6% were members of the United States armed forces), while estimates of civilian fatalities range up to 2 million. On April 30, 1975, the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon fell to the communist forces of North Vietnam, effectively ending the Vietnam War.

Women at war

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By 1914 nearly 5.9 million were working out of the 23.8 million females in Britain.
In World War I, for example, thousands of women worked in munitions factories, offices and large hangars used to build aircraft. Women were also involved in knitting socks and preparing hampers for the soldiers on the front, as well as other voluntary work, but as a matter of survival women had to work for paid employment for the sake of their families. Nursing became the one and only area of female contribution that involved being at the front and experiencing the horror of war.
Not only did they have to keep the home fires burning but they took on voluntary and paid employment that was diverse in scope and showed that women were highly capable in diverse fields of endeavor. There is little doubt that this expanded view of the role of women in society did change the outlook of what women could do and their place in the workforce. However the extent of this change is open to historical debate.
The role of women tended to differ in scope and importance between World War I and World War II.
Many women worked as volunteers serving at Red Cross and encouraging the sale of bonds and the planting of "victory gardens".
In part because of female participation in the war effort Canada, the United States, Great Britain, and a number of European countries extended suffrage to women in the years after the First World War.

With this expanded horizon of opportunity and confidence, and with the extended skill base that many women could now give to paid and voluntary employment, women's roles in World War II were even more extensive than in the First World War. By 1945, more than 2.3 million women were working in the war industries in the U.S., building ships, aircraft, vehicles, and weaponry. Women also worked in factories, munitions plants and farms, and also drove trucks, provided logistic support for soldiers and entered professional areas of work that were previously the preserve of men. In the Allied countries thousands of women enlisted as nurses serving on the front lines. Thousands of others joined defensive militias at home and there was a great increase in the number of women serving in the military itself, particularly in the Red Army (see below).
This necessity to use the skills and the time of women was heightened by the nature of the war itself. While World War I was mainly fought in France and was a war arguably without clear aggressor or villain, World War II was truly a global conflict where countries were invaded or under the threat of invasion from leaders in Germany (Adolf Hitler) and Japan that had ambitions of world domination. In these circumstances the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. The hard skilled labour of women was symbolized in the United States by the figure of Rosie the Riveter.
Many women served in the resistances of France, Italy, and Poland, and in the British SOE which aided these.

American women also saw combat during World War II, firstly as nurses in the Army Nurses Corps and United States Navy Nurse Corps during the Pearl Harbor attacks on 7 December 1941. The Womans Naval Reserve and United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve were also created for women performing auxiliary roles. In July 1943 a bill was signed making the Women's Army Corps an official part of the regular army, but not in combat units. In 1944 WACs arrived in the Pacific and were landing in Normandy on D-Day. During the war, 67 Army nurses and 16 Navy nurses were captured and spent three years as Japanese prisoners of war. 350,000 American women served during World War Two and 16 were killed in action. American women also performed many varieties of non-combat military service in special units such as the WAVES, Women's Army Corps, and Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Indeed World War II also marked milestones for women in the US military, Carmen Contreras-Bozak, who became the first Hispanic to join the WAC's, serving in Algiers under General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Minnie Spotted-Wolf the first female Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marines. In 1943, the first female officer of the United States Marine Corps was commissioned, and the first detachment of female marines was sent to Hawaii for duty in 1945. Women also joined the federal government in massive numbers during World War II. Nearly a million "government girls" were recruited for war work.

The Korean War

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Korean War Time Line

The Korean War was an escalation of border clashes between two rival Korean regimes, each of which was supported by external powers, with each trying to topple the other through political and conventional tactics.

In a very narrow sense, some may refer to it as a civil war, though many other factors were at play. After failing to strengthen their cause in the free elections held in South Korea during May 1950 and the refusal of South Korea to hold new elections per North Korean demands, the communist North Korean Army assaulted the South on June 25, 1950. The conflict was then expanded by the United States and the Soviet Union's involvement as part of the larger Cold War. The main hostilities were during the period from June 25, 1950 until the armistice (ceasefire agreement) was signed on July 27, 1953.

The KOREAN WAR

Home Front

Home front is the informal term commonly used to describe the civilian populace of the nation at war as an active support system of its military. In the political jargon of militarists or nationalists, it implies the imperative of effective militarisation of a society, and a claimed necessity for social servitude to the needs of a military command, during a time of war. The view that a society in wartime must function as a component of its executive branch is sometimes called a "teeth and tail" view.
In a modern industrial nation, the fighting "teeth" of combat soldiers, depends to a considerable degree on the "tail" of civilian support services extending all the way to the factories that build the material.

The Korean War was an escalation of border clashes between two rival Korean regimes, each of which was supported by external powers, with each trying to topple the other through political and conventional tactics. In a very narrow sense, some may refer to it as a civil war, though many other factors were at play. After failing to strengthen their cause in the free elections held in South Korea during May 1950 and the refusal of South Korea to hold new elections per North Korean demands, the communist North Korean Army assaulted the South on June 25, 1950. The conflict was then expanded by the United States and the Soviet Union's involvement as part of the larger Cold War. The main hostilities were during the period from June 25, 1950 until the armistice (ceasefire agreement) was signed on July 27, 1953.

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