Lesson 4: The New Order and the Holocaust

Lesson Focus

This lesson examines the brutal 'New Orders' of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We will explore how their ideologies led to widespread exploitation, forced labor, and the systematic genocide known as the Holocaust.

People to Know

Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich

Learning Objectives

• Analyze how Nazi Germany organized its 'New Order' in Europe through annexation, military rule, and resettlement policies.
• Explain how Hitler's racial ideology fueled the 'Final Solution,' leading to the genocide of European Jews during the Holocaust.
• Describe Japan's 'New Order' in Asia, including its economic exploitation of conquered territories and the impact on local populations.

Driven by a desire for 'living space,' the Nazis established a brutal new order in Europe after 1942.

Heinrich Himmler led the SS in resettling eastern lands by uprooting Slavic peoples for slave labor and moving in ethnic Germans.

This ruthless occupation, often assisted by local collaborators, disrupted production in conquered nations and caused more people to resist the Nazis, undermining Germany's own war effort.

Hitler's racist ideology, which blamed Jews for Germany's problems, was the foundation for the most terrifying part of the New Order.

The SS, under Himmler, was given responsibility for the Final Solution—the planned genocide of all European Jews.

Reinhard Heydrich created the Einsatzgruppen to round up Polish Jews and force them into overcrowded, unsanitary ghettos, where starvation and disease were rampant but resistance also emerged.

Because the Einsatzgruppen's methods were deemed too slow, the Nazis escalated their genocidal plans.

Beginning in 1942, they built six death camps in Poland, with Auschwitz being the largest. Jews from all over Europe were shipped in freight trains to these camps.

Most arrivals were immediately killed in gas chambers, while the rest were worked to death. This industrialized system of murder became the primary method for carrying out the Final Solution.

The Nazi regime's systematic killing resulted in the deaths of approximately 6 million Jews, an event known as the Shoah (Hebrew for 'total destruction').

They also murdered another 9 to 10 million non-Jewish people, including Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Ukrainians, and Soviet prisoners of war.

Though some people resisted or helped, many others were collaborators or chose to ignore the atrocities, the full horror of which was not widely understood until after the war.

Japan sought to control Asia for its raw materials and markets, creating the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Under the slogan 'Asia for the Asiatics,' Japanese military authorities actually held all power, exploiting resources and forcing locals into labor with little respect for their lives or customs.

This brutal occupation caused immense hardship, turning many Southeast Asian nationalists who had initially cooperated against their Japanese conquerors.