Explain to students that World War II involved two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The main countries making up the Allies were France, Poland, and the United Kingdom. The Axis powers consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Tell students that the video they will watch will help to explain the actions taken by these countries during the war.

Give out the questions below prior to starting the video (6.5 min) by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Answers to the questions can be found in the intervals shown above.

Beginning – 1:30
What groups of people were targeted by Nazis and their allies and collaborators? What was their reasoning?

1:30 – 4:40
Which country did Germany invade first? What did they do there?

End of video
How did the war end?

In small groups, or as a class, ask students if they are able to list the roles in which major countries played in the war? Write a header for ‘Allies’ (those that fought Germany), ‘Occupied Territories’, ‘Allied with Germany’, and ‘Neutral’. You may want to provide the list of the countries. You can tell them to focus on German aggression, not the attacks done by the Soviet Union. Give students 10 minutes for this activity. If you would like, you can return to the video and have students try to correct their answers.

The answer guide can be found here.

It is okay if students can’t remember all of them from the video (most will not be able to), the exercise is meant to show how much was going on at that time. It is important to remind students that the murders of 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews were taking place under the cover of war.

When you explain how the Holocaust was perpetrated under the cover of World War II, you should also mention that this is not the first instance of this happening. The genocide against the Armenians took place under the cover of World War I.

Ask students, why do they think atrocities, such as genocide, take place in conjunciton with war?

Ask students who the initial aggressor was in WWII?

Given that it was Germany, and given that Germany was not supposed to be capable of war, how did they become the aggressor?

Tell students that they will be reading about the initial actions taken by Hitler that would ultimately drive Germany toward war. Note that they will also be exploring how these illegal actions were perceived by people at the time.

Direct students to the source, Battle for Work, which is an excerpt from Facing History and Ourselves. Have them read through the document individually first, taking note of sections, words or ideas that they didn’t understand clearly. Give students about 10 minutes to read this text.

Then, divide the class into five groups. Start them on the path toward understanding by having them attempt to answer one another’s questions about the text.

Ask the large group whether they think Hitler’s jobs program might have been attractive to Germans, amidst a depression and in the wake of the defeat of WWI. Then, ask each person to read, Rearming Germany by Facing History and Ourselves.

In the same small groups, have students discuss the questions available on the ‘Rearming Germany’ page. For the first fifteen minutes, ask each group to talk through each question and discuss what they think about each. Then, assign one question to each group and ask them to quickly prepare a short response to their question to kick off the broader, full class discussion about that question.