Europe in an Age of Total War: World War II,1939–45 591the Asian war. The United States bombed the Japanese
city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 68,000
people instantly and nearly 100,000 over time. A sec-
ond A-bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days later,
killed another 35,000 and convinced the Japanese to
surrender.
The Holocaust, 1941–45
In 1945 the world learned the details of a crime as in-
credible as was the destructive force of the atomic
bomb: During the war, the Nazis had used their concen-
tration camps for the systematic murder of millions of
people. Rumors of Nazi horrors had circulated earlier,
but they had not been widely known and they did not
provoke Allied governments to act. The original net-
work of camps (see map 29.4), including Dachau (near
Munich), Buchenwald (near Weimar), and Sachsen-
hausen (near Berlin), expanded during the war, especially
in Poland, the site of such notorious camps as Auschwitz
(near Cracow) and Treblinka (near Warsaw). In a speech
to the Reichstag in January 1939, Hitler had warned that
the Jewish race in Europe would be exterminated in the
next world war. Hitler’s psychotic anti-Semitism culmi-
nated in a grotesque plan to “purify Aryan blood,”NORWAYSWEDENDENMARKFINLANDGREAT
BRITAINIRELAND
NETH.
BELGIUM
LUX.SPAINPORTUGALSWITZ.ITALYGREECETURKEYALBANIAYUGOSLAVIAAUSTRIA
HUNGARYCZECHOSLOVAKIAROMANIABULGARIAPOLANDGERMANYU.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R.FRANCEESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIAAFRICAMunich ViennaBerlin
Weimar CracowAtlantic
OceanNorth
SeaMed
iterra
nean SeaBalticSeaMauthausen Plaszow
DachauBuchenwald Gross RosenMittelbau DoraNeuengamme
Bergen-BelsenNatzweilerGospicJasenovac
SajmisteFlossenbergSachsenhausenRavensbrückBelzecMaidanek
AuschwitzSobiborChelmnoStutthof TreblinkaKlooga Vaivara24,000106,000868125,00012083,00070,0007,50065,00060,000264,000300,000277,0004,565,0001,0007000 250 500 Miles0 250 500 750 KilometersConcentration CampEstimated Jewish Death Toll
(per country)TreblinkaExtermination CampDachau277,000MAP 29.4
The Holocaust