SCHOOLS PAGE: A short history of World War Two

6 - The Full Horror of War

Shopping in Britain - there was not much to buy because of rationing.

Land Army Girls spent the war years living on farms, helping to grow crops,  and even fixing  broken tractors!

So that as much food could be grown or produced as possible in Britain, farms produced great quantities of crops such as potatoes, vegetables and wheat.  With so many men away in the Army, Air Force or Navy, women had to take over the jobs that men had once done.  Land Army Girls toiled in the fields, helping farmers produce the food that was so badly needed.

In homes all over the country, garden lawns were dug up and fruit and vegetables planted in their place.  Even city parks had huge areas of grass ploughed over to grow crops.

The winter months were hard and long.  It was only by growing as much food as possible through the spring, summer and autumn months, and sharing it out equally between everyone that starvation was avoided.

Women also worked in many of the factories doing jobs that had traditionally been carried out by men before the war.  They helped to make planes; tanks and other vehicles; bombs and bullets which the soldiers would need.

The Holocaust

Meanwhile, in Germany and the surrounding European countries which the Germans had occupied, Adolf Hitler was able to mistreat all those people he did not like.

Jews, gypsies and anyone else he hated were rounded up and thrown into prison or death camps where they were either put to work as slaves or simply killed.  Whole families: men, women and children were either shot, or suffocated with poisonous gas. Their bodies were either buried in large holes in the ground or burnt in furnace ovens.

Some Jewish people managed to flee Germany and escape to other countries.  But since travelling around Europe was strictly controlled by the Germans, many Jews found themselves trapped and facing certain death if they were found.  Some kind people hid them in their homes, at great risk to themselves if the Germans found out. 

One such family who were offered a hiding place in the Dutch city of Amsterdam were the Franks.  Young Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a teenager who kept a diary when she and her mother, father and sister were hidden in an attic of a house for two years.  Unfortunately, someone snitched on them, and the Germans arrived to arrest them and take them away to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne, her sister and mother would later die of diseases they caught whilst there.  Only Anne's father Otto survived.  Today, Anne and her diary are remembered around the world as a symbol of defiance against the horrors of what Hitler and the Nazis did to so many innocent people. 

Over 6 million people died in concentration camps - either from disease, starvation, cruelty or were simply killed by being shot or poisoned with gas.  This terrible chapter of history is known as "the Holocaust".

The Germans also turned on their former friends, the Italians, and started to kill them too. In 1943, Italy swapped sides and joined the Allies in the fight against Germany.

Warning notices, telling people where Jews were living, were often put up  in German cities by cruel people who wanted to terrorise anyone whom Adolf Hitler hated.

                 Teenager Anne Frank and most of her family were murdered by the Germans

Claus von Stauffenberg

Not all Germans were evil and bad.  There were some who even tried to kill Adolf Hitler.  One brave German officer, Claus Von Stauffenberg - a well respected young officer - even managed to place a bomb inside a briefcase in Hitler's office.  The bomb exploded, and although Hitler was injured, he survived.  Von Stauffenberg and his friends who had helped him were hunted down and executed for treason.

The same same fate happened to others who dared to speak out against what Hitler and his Nazi party supporters were doing. By murdering anyone who criticised what was happening, Hitler made sure he remained in power.