War and Genocide by Bergen Doris L. & Bergen Doris L

Author:Bergen, Doris L. & Bergen, Doris L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

Prisoners gather outside their barracks in the Gurs concentration camp in southwestern France, in 1939 or 1940. French authorities, not Germans, were in charge of Gurs. Originally set up for refugees from Franco’s Spain, Gurs was used after 1940 to intern “foreign” Jews (non-French nationals) and other people deemed enemies of Vichy France. This photograph highlights the wide range of places that get grouped together under the label “Nazi camps.”

The Battle of Britain

With the fall of France, most accounts will tell you that Britain stood alone against Germany. Indeed, Britain was the only European power both to declare war on Germany in 1939 and to stand firm until 1945. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States entered the war against Germany until 1941.

The British, however, were not entirely alone. The Dominions—Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, after considerable internal debate, South Africa—joined in declarations of war against Germany. The British-controlled government of India also did so, although without consulting the Indian political parties or, for that matter, the Indian public. For its part, the Irish Free State proclaimed its neutrality.

Support of the Allied cause by countries all over the world was significant, both to the outcome of the war and after the fact, to the national pride of citizens of the nations concerned. People in the Dominions would bear a substantial burden in the war, and if the British Isles were to have fallen to the Germans, there would still have been the possibility of continuing the war effort. In fact, the British leadership planned to do so from Canada and moved large parts of Britain’s gold reserves to Canada in case they would be needed to finance the war.

Within Europe, Britain became the last refuge for many people fleeing Nazi Germany. The Polish, Norwegian, and Dutch governments-in-exile were surrounded by communities of people forced to flee their homelands. Czech and French opponents of Germany also gathered in Britain, as did those Jews from the continent who could make it in. Among the people who had arrived before war began in 1939 were the ten thousand children of the Kindertransport and thousands of German Jewish adults, including many women who had entered on visas that restricted them to work in domestic service, as maids, nannies, housekeepers, or cooks.

In Britain, too, the situation of refugees was precarious. Families were separated and unable to communicate. After the evacuation at Dunkirk, British authorities began interning German-born adult males as enemy aliens. Jews from Germany and Austria were included in this measure, which put twenty-seven thousand men behind barbed wire, many of them on the Isle of Man, and some in overflow camps in Canada and Australia. Hundreds of Jewish teenage boys who had entered Britain with the Kindertransport now found themselves categorized as “enemy alien” adults and confined to internment camps. One young man from Hanover got to England on the Kindertransport, was interned, shipped to Australia, and ended up serving in the Australian army. At the time he and others dispatched to

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