Quick questions on Impact of the war on civilians: HSC Modern History Peace and Conflict

The European war was the deadliest in modern history for civilians. Estimates of civilian deaths in the European theatre:

The German bombing of British cities (the Blitz) began on 7 September 1940 and continued in major form to May 1941. Coventry was severely bombed on 14 November 1940 (around 600 dead, the cathedral destroyed). London was hit on around 71 nights of major bombing. Total British civilian dead from bombing: around 43,000 (Blitz) and 9,000 (V-1 and V-2 attacks of 1944 to 1945).

Around 250 million Europeans came under German or Italian occupation between 1939 and 1944. Occupation regimes varied by Nazi racial valuation of the population:

Generalplan Ost (drafts from 1940; major version 1942) was the SS plan for the colonisation of Eastern Europe. It envisaged:

Resistance movements operated across occupied Europe with varying scale, ideology, and effectiveness:

Children experienced the war as bombing victims, evacuees, deportees, Holocaust victims, and Hitler Youth or Komsomol participants. Around 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust. The British evacuation moved 1.5 million children to safer rural areas in 1939 (most returned within months when the bombing did not yet come). Soviet children were often raised by grandparents while parents worked; many were orphaned.

Source A is the Wannsee Protocol (20 January 1942). Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the role of the German state in the Holocaust. [5 marks]

Evaluate the extent to which the impact of the war on European civilians was the product of deliberate Axis policy. [25 marks]

Compare the views of Christopher Browning and Saul Friedlander on the trajectory of the Holocaust. [10 marks]