No. World War 2 in Europe was a major war between the Allies (Britain, the U.S., Russia, Canada and many other countries on the one hand) and Germany, Italy and various other countries on the other. In Europe was initially triggered by the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and lasted from 1939-1945.

The Holocaust refers to:

1. The Nazi genocide of the Jews in 1941-45 during World War 2. In all, a total of about six million Jews were murdered.
2. In addition, many others were murdered on the basis of group identity, including 'gypsies', Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Polish intellectuals, Communists and others. Historians generally do not include these groups in the Holocaust.
3. The Holocaust was a kind of 'subplot' of World War 2. Saying this is not intended to diminish its significance but to put it in the context of World War 2
4. Some historians, such as Christopher Browning, see the Holocaust as part of a wider campaign by the Nazis to rid the world of what the latter called 'Jewish Bolshevism' ('Jewish Communism').

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Moreover:

• When the Nazis invaded Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and the Soviet Union ('Russia') it was for land.
• The Nazis invaded country after country, and this brought more and more Jews under German control. As a result, the Nazis' self-inflicted 'Jewish problem' grew and grew for them. (In particular, the invasion of Poland and, later, of the Soviet Union, brought a huge increase in the number of Jews under Nazi rule).
• The war shielded the Holocaust from outside intervention, in much the same way as World War 1 shielded the Ottoman Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915.
• The Nazis conducted the Holocaust largely in Poland, which is difficult to reach from Allied bomber bases in, say, Britain.

Since 1945-46, the most commonly quoted figure for the total number of Jews killed has been an estimate of approximately six million. This figure, first given at the Nuremberg Tribunal, has been broadly confirmed by later research.

The Holocaust commemoration center, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, comments:

There is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The figure commonly used is the six million established by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 and repeated later by Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official. Most research confirms that the number of victims was between five and six million. Early calculations range from 5.1 million (Professor Raul Hilberg) to 5.95 million (Jacob Leschinsky). More recent research, by Professor Yisrael Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, estimates the Jewish losses at 5.59-5.86 million, and a study headed by Dr. Wolfgang Benz presents a range from 5.29-6.2 million. The main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar censuses with postwar censuses and population estimates. Nazi documentation containing partial data on various deportations and murders is also used. We estimate that Yad Vashem currently has somewhat more than four million names of victims that are accessible.

Raul Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews, estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from "Ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings"; and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000". Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they typically include only those deaths for which some records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment. British historian Martin Gilbert used a similar approach in his "Atlas of the Holocaust", but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.

One of the most authoritative German scholars of the Holocaust, Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, cites between 5.3 and 6.2 million Jews killed in Dimension des Völkermords (1991), while Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett estimate between 5.59 and 5.86 million Jewish victims in the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (1990).

There were about 9.4 million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by the Nazis. (Some uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The 6 million killed in the Holocaust thus represent about 64% of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, over 90 percent were killed. The same proportion were killed in Latvia and Lithuania, but most of Estonia's Jews were evacuated in time. In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed. More than 50 percent were killed in Belgium, Hungary and Romania. It is likely that a similar proportion were killed in Belarus and Ukraine, but these figures are less certain. Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy and Norway. Finally, of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived. Although many German Jews emigrated before 1939, the majority of these fled to Czechoslovakia, France or the Netherlands, from where they were later deported to their deaths.

The number of people killed at the major extermination camps is estimated as follows:

Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1.4 million; Belzec: 500,000; Chelmno: 152,000; Majdanek: 78,000; Maly Trostinets: 65,000; Sobibór: 250,000; and Treblinka: 870,000.

This gives a total of over 3.3 million; of these, 90% are estimated to have been Jews. These seven camps alone thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.

In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent. Another 800,000 to 1 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the Einsatzgruppen killings were frequently undocumented). Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary before they could be deported.

Putting it as simply as possible:

• The Nazis thought that the German Jews were 'alien', 'un-German' and a 'corrupting influence' on Germany and that they were encouraging immorality.
• The Nazis believed that the Jews were Communists (and that Communism was a specifically Jewish ideology).
• There were strange conspiracy theories that claimed that the Jews were trying to achieve 'world domination'.
• The Nazis said that the Jews were enemies of Germany, and that Jews and Germans were locked in a struggle to the death. (This was another of those conspiracy theories that many Nazis took seriously).
• The Nazis believed that the Jews had made Germany lose World War 1.
• The Nazis subscribed to racialist theories that claimed that the Jews were inferior to others.
• However, Nazi propaganda also portrayed them as very clever indeed, very dangerous and close to achieving world domination: the two don't even begin to fit.
• With the start of World War 2 in September 1939 Hitler became obsessed with the idea that 'the Jews' had started the war.
• Earlier, 'religious' hostility to Judaism had often demonized the Jews and painted them as sinister and evil.
• Because some Jews were affluent and influential, they represented political positions in opposition to Hitler, and were targeted like others he saw as rivals.

All this was much more important than stories about what a Jew might or might not have done to Hitler in his childhood. There is no firm evidence that Hitler was anti-Jewish before about 1916. Beware of naive explanations.

For fuller answers click on the related questions below.

• The Jews had previously been subject to all kinds of earlier "religious" prejudices. From the 1870s onwards a new, racial antisemitism was added to this.
• There was widespread demonization of the Jews.
• According to the first part of Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler, 1889-1939 Hubris, Penguin Books 1998 Hitler was a "lazy leader" who did not like to bother himself much with formulating day-to-day policy ... As a result, his subordinates at various levels tried to guess what he wanted. This encouraged rapidly growing extremism. The terror apparatus, headed by Himmler and Heydrich, became a very powerful lobby.
• There were all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories about the Jews as the 'biological root' of Communism. The Nazis kept on saying, without any evidence, that 'the Jews' were enemies of Germany and so on. In fact, most German Jews were very pro-German indeed and had fought well for Germany in World War 1. Many were tragically in love with Germany, and some were reluctant to leave the country even if they were able to do so. However, fear of Communism was a powerful force in many parts of Central and Southern Europe in the interwar period, and was ruthlessly exploited by many politicians.
• The Holocaust happened because Hitler wanted to purify Germany so to speak...He wanted the Aryan Race, of which couldn't be obtained unless all Jews were gone (along with homosexuals, Gypsies, Russians...etc.) Extermination camps were a ploy for Jews...Hitler actually told them that he was just getting them out of the country and "resettling" them in Eastern Europe but ended up killing them there...
• One motive may have been robbery - it has been estimated that the Holocaust (including confiscated property and slave labour) profited the Nazis by a sum that would today be in the tens of billions of dollars. {However, according to Raul Hilberg, the value of Jewish slave labour for the Nazis was even greater].
• Nazi conquests, especially in Eastern and Eastern Central Europe (Poland and the Soviet Union) resulted in large additional numbers of Jews coming under Nazi control, thus exacerbating the Nazis' self-imposed "Jewish problem".
• In addition, there were also Nazi plans to reduce the population of occupied Eastern Europe. This kind of thinking was propped up by various race theories.

Further input:

Many Germans blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, some even claiming that German Jews had betrayed the nation during the war. In addition, at the end of the war a Communist group attempted to carry out a Bolshevik-type revolution in the German state of Bavaria. Most of the leaders of that failed attempt were Jews. As a result, some Germans associated Jews with Bolsheviks and regarded both groups as dangerous enemies of Germany. After the war, a republic, later known as the Weimar Republic, was set up in Germany. Jewish politicians and intellectuals played an important role in German life during the Weimar Republic, and many non-Jews resented their influence.

On the basis of his antisemitic views, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler attacked the impressive role Jews played in German society during the Weimar Republic, especially in the intellectual world and in left-wing politics. He referred to them as a plague and a cancer. In his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle, translated 1939), which was published in 1926, Hitler blamed the plight of Germany at the end of World War I on an international Jewish conspiracy and used terms such as extirpation and extermination in relation to the Jews. He claimed that the Jews had achieved economic dominance and the ability to control and manipulate the mass media to their own advantage. He wrote of the need to eradicate their powerful economic position, if necessary by means of their physical removal.

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Some historians, such as Christopher Browning, see the Holocaust as part of a wider campaign to destroy what the Nazis saw as 'Judeo-Bolshevism'.

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Note also Yehuda Bauer's stark formulation:

The basic motivation [of the Holocaust] was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, nonpragmatic ideology - which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means.

How seriously individual Nazis took these illusions and conspiracy theories is another matter. This notion of the Jews as dangerous, cunning conspirators doesn't fit the Nazi view of them as inferior.

The main cause of the Jewish Holocaust was AdolfHitler's hatred of all Jews also

Please see the related questions.

The most simple answer: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler was the driving force behind the obsessive and fanatical Nazi persecution and ultimately also the mass slaughter of the Jews and various other groups, though the details of implementation were left to the terror apparatus, headed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Here are more opinions and input:

• Nazi propaganda operated with conspiracy theories, especially the 'stab-in-the-back legend' and bizarre claims about an imaginary 'Judeo-Bolshevist' conspiracy against Germany, Austria and ethnic Germans. These ideas became popular among hardline nationalists in Germany, Austria and in some other countries. These fanciful, but dangerous notions were also fuelled by some refugees from the Russian Revolution and civil war of 1918-21. The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (first forged around 1900 by the Tsarist secret police and purporting to provide details of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world) was particularly important in this respect.
• The Holocaust unfolded as Adolf Hitler's personal vision of the cleansing of Europe of 'undesirables'.
• In World War 2 the Nazis greatly exacerbated (increased, intensified) their self-inflicted 'Jewish problem'. As a result of the Nazi invasion of other countries and especially Poland, the number of Jews under Nazi control greatly increased. At first, they herded the Jews in Poland and some other areas into ghettos, with a view to moving them all out of Europe at a future date. When it became clear that they were not going to win the war quickly, the Nazi leadership moved from a 'territorial solution' to the 'Final Solution' - that is, the Holocaust.
• In much of Europe (and America) the Jews had already been demonized for their religion, but this in itself does not explain the Holocaust.

  The Holocaust was part of a wider Nazi campaign to rid the world of what they often referred to as 'Jewish Bolshevism'. It did not start with 'a big bang' in response to any particular incident but developed rapidly in the second half of 1941 during the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

  Please see the related question.

Holocaust deaths

The word holocaust generally refers to the deaths of Jews, but other victims of Nazi Germany are often also included. (The word holocaust is also often used to describe the genocide of the Armenians in 1915-1917 by the Ottoman Turkish regime).

Although the exact figure will never be known, here are estimates:

• The figure of 11 million people dead is often given but it is completely unclear where this figure comes from, and how it is calculated. It is far too low. One also encounters the range 11-17 million.
• 6 million of these were Jewish (close to two thirds of Europe's Jewish population) and about one quarter of these were children under 15.
• Up to 270,000 were Roma/Sinti (Gypsies).

In addition, Hitler targeted homosexuals, Communists and other political dissidents, most Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, dissidents, some Protestant pastors and Catholic priests, black people, the mentally and physically disabled, and others. The figures include the camps as well as the mass graves in the countryside, killings in the street, organized mass shootings (such as Babi Yar, etc.) and basically, any person singled out for their race, religion, political beliefs, or their sexual orientation.

There are approximately 250 Holocaust museums and centers around the world where you can learn more, as well as extensive information elsewhere on the Internet.

• Jews- 5.9 million
• Soviet POW's- 3.3 million
• Non-Jewish Poles- 1.8-2 million
• Romanis ('gypsies')- 220,000- 270,000 (but even the higher figure may be too low)
• Disabled- 200,000 - 250,000
• Homosexuals- 5,000 - 15,000
• Jehovah's Witnesses- 2,500 - 5,000

7,000,000

The most common meaning nowadays of the Holocaust (with an article and a capital h) is the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Sometimes other victims who were murdered by the Nazis on the basis of their group identity are included, in particular, the gypsies (Roma). Around 1980 it replaced the term 'Final Solution [of the Jewish Question]', which was the Nazis' own term. Before the late 1970s the word was most commonly used (without a capital H) in the expression nuclear holocaust, which referred to the feared nuclear war between East and West.

The word Holocaust means great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life by fire.

It comes from the Greek word "holokaustos", which means "burned whole". It has been used in English for a long time in the sense of disaster involving many deaths (especially by fire). In its Middle English form, derived from Greek, it was used to mean a burnt offering. This later broadened to any major destruction due to fire, and broadened further to mean any mass destruction. When used in capitalized form, it is specifically referring to the mass destruction of Jewish and other people by the Nazis in World War Two.

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It comes from a Greek word which means a sacrifice totally burned by fire. It has been widely used in English in the sense of 'great destruction (usually by fire)'. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s there was widespread fear of a nuclear holocaust.

Since the late 1970s the word holocaust has been widely used in historical writing in the sense of genocide. The Holocaust (without any further detail or qualification) refers to the genocide of about 6 million Jews by the Nazis. The Ottoman Turkish murder of about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-1917 is often also referred to the Armenian Holocaust).

The term is often extended to the systematic, mass killing of all groups that the Nazis tried to exterminate on the basis of group membership - including Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, incuarbles, Soviet political commissars and some other groups. Recently, the word has been widely used in English for the Nazi genocide of the Jews and has largely replaced the expression Final Solution [of the Jewish question], which is a direct translation of Nazis' own term.

Some people are uneasy about the use of the word holocaust because it can have religious implications. In Hebrew the word Shoah, meaning great calamity, is widely used instead.

For practical and linguistic purposes the meaning of a word is its current use, not its etymology or history.

Parts of the answers to the Related Questions below and the links give definitions and some discussion.

Battle of Britain

• If the RAF had been destroyed, the English fleet could have then been attacked by the German air force and navy, resulting in the invasion of England and Spain joining the war alongside Germany. Spanish leaders had said if England was knocked out of the war they would join in.

• If Germany had defeated or otherwise subdued Britain in 1940, Germany would have reaped these benefits: time to continue building their military machine before invading Russia; the ability to attack Russia without Britain as an enemy in the rear; loss to the Allies of Britain as a staging area for invasion of Europe/Africa, etc. It is not all that far-fetched, that the Germans could have won the Battle of Britain. Their strategic mistake was to shift the point of attack, from the RAF (attain air superiority), to wanton and pointless destruction of British cities. The Germans were actually winning the Battle, although both sides were suffering horrendous losses, when they switched to bombing cities, etc. Once the Luftwaffe had achieved air superiority over Britain, an invasion (by air or sea) becomes achievable.

• In terms of the western front, the Luftwaffe failure to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain was a major failure on the German part, and it's not like they didn't have the opportunity, with Hitler and Goering changing tactics from the airfields to the cities just when the RAF's back was nearly broken. (It came back to haunt the Germans later when the Allies began to launch the infamous bombing raids on German cities and the main industrial sectors.)

• This was probably one of the most important turning points in the war. If Hitler had defeated Britain the US and Russia would have lost a valuable ally and it would have allowed Germany to concentrate on the USSR. It also allowed D-Day and El Alamein to happen.

• The Battle of Britain was one of the most important events during the courseof World War II, this showed the people of the world that Hitler was not undefeatable, the British showed everyone what the Germans were weak at. The Battle of Britain kept the British from German control and later staged the D-Day landings, when if the Allies had not re-entered Europe Russia would have been alone against the Germans. If the Americans, British and other Allied forces had not gained the French beaches then France would have still been under German control. Without Britain being free, Germany would still have controlled Eastern Europe, and would not have had to fight on two fronts, meaning it could concentrate the bulk of their forces in Russia.

• I give the BoB a low ranking on the ladder because it was really only a pipe dream of Hitler's. There was no way he could have moved enough men across the Channel, let alone gain air superiority. Nevertheless, the Battle of Britain ate up many German aircraft that otherwise would have been flying over the Eastern Front.

• If the Luftwaffe had concentrated more on the airfields of the RAF instead of tartgeting British cities, the RAF could well have been utterly destroyed leaving Britain defenceless from the air. Hitler may have been satisfied at this outcome at leaving Britain weaker, rather than invading. The lack of RAF would have certainly have weakened Britain's position in the war, for example, no air recon planes to observe German movements by sea and air. Thus, German warships and subs may have been able to roam freely without being spotted apart from by other ships, and would causes more damage to the British shipping fleet. If Britain had been invaded by the sea, it may have led to the invasion of the Soviet Union being postponed for a year or more, depending on how the invasion of Britain went.

Battle of The Atlantic

• If the Germans had won here (although it was much more of a terror war than anything else; less than one percent of Britain's total merchant-marine was sunk) it would have made the Torch and Overlord/Gymnast landings impossible.

• If the U.S. had not been able to help Britain in the form of materials, ships, food i.e. the Lend-Lease Act, the Brits would of fallen to the Germans, or at the very least been useless to the war effort. And if the Brits would have fallen, there would have been no African Campaign. In that case, the Germans would have been fighting one on one with the Russians, and based on the initial performance of Germany, it is almost certain they would of crushed Russia.

D-Day (Operation Overlord)

• Europe was occupied by the Germans, their troops were concentrated on taking over Russia, so most of the troops were stationed there. The Germans always expected the Allies to attack Europe someday, they just didn't know when. When D-Day took place their Atlantic wall was destroyed, heavy fights with great losses on both sides took place in the area around Normandie. Those fights were even worse and cost more casualties than the rush on Normandie itself. The battle of the Bulge and The Bocage were probably the hardest tasks for the Allied forces. After those places were finally taken over by the Allies, most parts of France were secured. After that the Netherlands and Belgium were freed. The German Army got weaker and weaker. The Germans desperately tried to win the battles in Stalingrad (Russia) almost all their reinforcement was sent there, but the Russians beat them. I would say D-Day and the battles in Russia made it possible to defeat the Germans. After this there just wasn't a chance for the German Army to win the war in Europe.

• The importance of the U.S. involvement in Europe cannot be understated. Some say Russia would have won the war against Germany without U.S. support. This statement is totally bogus. The Germans got all the way to Moscow before they were stopped by a combination of things. Even with the demise of the 6th Army, Hitler still had enough troops to stop the Russians. The reason he could not stop them is because he had to man the Atlantic Wall from a western invasion and continue his fighting in North Africa. This is where the United States comes in. Stalin had been begging President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to start a second front so as to relieve the Russian burden as early as the Argentine Conference in 1941. Just the threat of a U.S. invasion made Germany move troops from Russia to France, which made is easier for the Russians when they finally went over to the offensive because they had less enemy to fight.

Battle of the Bulge

• Where the German forces in the West were broken. The Bulge was the climax of the campaign in the West.

Operation Cobra

• In Europe, on the Western Front, you could argue for Operation Cobra, since that was when the Western Allies broke out and removed the Germans from France and Belgium and put them onto the defensive.

Battles of Gustav Line/Monte Cassino

• This ended the most staunch and fierce German resistance outside the Soviet Union and finally allowed the Allies to move on Rome.

Second Battle of El Alamein

• The battle of El Alemain deprived Germany of the Middle Eastern oil fields and necessitated the invasion of the tCaucasus that ended disastrously at Stalingrad.

• Put an end to the Desert Fox's escapades in Egypt and brought the 8th Army back from the brink, allowing for Torch to knock Italy out of the war.

• Resulted in the loss of the Afrika Korps for the Germans. Opened up the British for a more active role in the mainland war.

Hitler's Meddling and Japanese Military Arrogance

• The major turning points in World War Two are always described with major battles that Germany and Japan had lost. Whilst this is clearly seen there are many mistakes made by these nations leading up to and after these battles. They say it is the little things that count, so when you look at the mistakes made by Germany leading up to the second battle of El Alamein and Stalingrad there becomes clear a picture of less noticed turning points leading to these debacles. Firstly allowing the British and French forces to escape from Dunkirk, The Battle of Britain, the failure to defeat Britain, the failure to occupy Malta, the underestimation of Soviet strength in material and determination to fight, the belief that an entire army could be supplied totally by air transport and the failure to destroy American Aircraft Carriers at Pearl Harbour. These mistakes and there are more that have not been mentioned all contribute to the major losses the Axis forces suffered. There can be said that it was Arrogance and a overestimation of there own abillities that was the turning point in World War Two.

• Most of the blame rests squarely on Hitler. He not only got involved in a two front war, which is a major no-no in most military scenerios, but he was actually involved on three fronts. The first front was the Russian, the second was the Invasion of Europe through France, the third was the invasion of Italy by the Allies. The latter two involving major U.S. forces which diverted German soldiers from Russia, thus allowing the Russians an easier and faster route to Berlin. Ironically, multi-front fighting is one of the core reasons Hitler labled the pre-Nazi government as criminals, saying they got Germany involved in a hopeless war which ended with their defeat in WWI.

• The most critical error of WW2 began with Adolph Hitler. The German General Staff knew that they didn't have the logistics or modern military equipment to win a large war in the late 1930s. They wanted to wait until 1945 and develop their weapons and logistics to defeat Western Europe and then defeat Eastern Europe. Hitler though was getting older and impatient and wanted to see his 3rd Reich.

• There are many areas that Hitler lost the war, it has been stated numerous times that if he had not stopped the panzers from closing Dunkirk, or if he had continued the attacks on the RAF airfields and radar stations, Operation Sealion could have happened, or if he had focused more research on U-boots (remember the early wooden rifles incidents), or if the drive into the Soviet Union had been focused on seizing Moscow in the late August early Sept. time frame, so on and so on. As Hitler stated before the war, the winner will be the side the commits the fewest blunders. Germany if properly ran could have won WWII even though it was a three front war, East, West and South.

Germany Attacking Russia (Operation Barbarossa)

• The single largest point of failure that cost the Axis powers the war was Germany attacking Russia ("Barbarossa"). This meant the Germans were fighting on multiple fronts, something the leaders of Germany (even in 1914!) desperately tried to avoid because they knew the possible results. By having the Germans stuck between two larger forces, and knocked out of the war, the Japanese were doomed. This is irregardless of what actually happened in the Pacific. Had Midway not happened, had Japan taken Port Moresby, they still would have lost (eventually), as the combined might of the Allied nations would have ground them to dust.

Moscow and Leningrad

• The failure of Germany to capture Moscow and Leningrad when they first invaded the Soviet Union cost them dearly.

Stalingrad

• The first major German loss on the land. Soviet victory here rallied the Allies and proved that the Wehrmacht was definitely not invincible.

• No doubt about it. It consumed a huge chunk of the Wermacht (German army).

• In the east, easily Stalingrad. The Soviets destroyed the 6th Army, which, in turn, forced the other half of Army Group South (engaged in capturing the Caucasus and Baku oil fields) to withdraw to the north-west to regroup and form a new defensinve line. The failure to capture the oil fields cut off the Axis powers from any hope of finding a large enough fuel source to continue an effective war, essentially sealing their fate with that of the 6th Army.

• The climactic turning points of WWII are the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. I don't want to insult Western people, but in 1944, when Allies commenced "Overlord", there was no doubt that Germany would be defeated by Russia. In 1942 Germany had more than five million excellent soldiers in Russia (compare it with just several divisions in Africa at the same time). By the beginning of 1944 most of those troops were smashed by the Soviet Army, and in Normandy the Allies faced just a ghost of a German army. So, "Overlord" would be impossible without Russia.

Battle of Kursk

• If the Germans were able to break through to Kursk, the Eastern war could have been prolonged for a couple more years.

• Consumed absolutely massive proportions of German and Soviet armour. The only hitch was that the Soviets had recovered within weeks whereas the Germans still hadn't recovered from the losses two years later. Debut of the Panther, Ferdinand/Elefant and Tiger AFVs in large numbers.

Pearl Harbor

• Technically, Barbarossa or Pearl Harbor were turning points because although Germany and Japan continues on the offensive for some time, they brought into the war the USSR and the USA, both of whom had the economic and (eventually) military power to win the war.

• In terms of the Pacific, when Japan failed to destroy the Pacific fleet in Pearl, they had effectively lost the war there and then, and although it is true that they did commit themselves to offensive operations up until Midway, the loss of the element of surprise and sheer industrial and military might of the US in comparison to that of Japan had already doomed the Japanese army and navy, which was both smaller and more ill-equipped than their American counterparts.

• Pearl Harbor (and the declaration of war against the US by Germany and Italy) was the only major turning point in WWII. We like to think of battles, but it is the economy (Bill Clinton quote). During 1941, the US economy was one third of the world economy (in terms of steel production). Germany's contribution equaled Russia and Britain combined. Japan's was 10% of US. When Germany declared war on the US, Germany went from tied (production wise) to immediately being out numbered by 2.5 to one (in EVERY category). Regardless of what battles were fought, eventually the sheer weight of 2.5 to one odds would have overwhelmed the German defenses. We like to think of battles, but by the end of the war, the US was producing equipment (50% of world economy)-- as many planes, tanks, ships, etc. PER MONTH as the Germans produced during the entire WAR. The US alone had 16 million people in the military (population of Germany was less than 75 million). The US needed one year to mobilize (1942), and their enemies never experienced a sustained victory again. Once the US entered the war, the war ended PERIOD!

• Mr. Churchill wrote in his diary on night of Pearl Harbour: "So that's how it ends, we win the war!"

Battle of Midway

• After this the Japanese were always on the defensive.

• It hurt Japanese morale and boosted American morale.

• Those four carriers could have prolonged the struggle for a considerable time.

• The true turning point of World War II was the Battle of Midway. Without the United States, WWII would have taken MUCH longer and many more lives would have been lost. Pearl Harbor was attacked. Americans wanted revenge, and if the US did not make revenge against the Japanese, the American public would not be in favor of going to Europe. When the Japanese Naval fleet was crushed, it allowed the US to win the war in the Pacific and it allowed the US to invade France and Italy. Germany would only have one significant front to deal with.

Guadalcanal

• The US Army/Marines finally demonstrated their ability to desisevly stop any Japanese land offensives.

• First US land offensive into Japanese held territory. Japan is forever on the defensive.

The Marianas

• The remains of the Japanese navy were crushed.

Papau New Guinea

• Before then everyone thought the Japanese army (not the navy) to be invincible. This was when the Japanese army started being pushed back.

Soviet invasion of Manchuria

• The Soviet attack on Manchuria was a large, but underrated factor in the Japanese surrender. Although by this time American forced would have destroyed Japan in any case, the Soviet Union destroyed the one-million strong Kuantung army, which, although greatly weakened, was a central part in the Japanese plans to defend the home islands.

Atomic Bomb

• The development of the atomic bomb. All other battles and heroic deeds would all have been for naught if Nazi Germany had used their several year head start in the development of the atomic bomb. The war was won at Los Alamos, NM.

• The bombing undermined the Japanese will to fight on.

• It stopped Japan.

Battle of the Bulge was one of the more telling moments of the war that swung the tide for the Allies.

• The German decision to stop the advance in France, thus allowing the British and French Reebarkment in Dunkirk.
  • The German decision to invade Russia.
  • The US entering the war after Pearl Harbor.
• Stalingrad.
• The Strategic bombings in Germany '43-'44.
  • Kursk (more than Stalingrad, here the Germans lost the initiative of the war in the east for good).
• The surrender of The Afrika Korps.
• The Success of the D-Day Landings
• Midway
  • The battle in the Gulf of Leyte
  • Guadalcanal

There are others, but the big ones have two stars, that is how I see it, be sure I forgot something.

The major turning point of WWII was the Battle of Britain. Hitlers first major defeat and the end to his dream of global domination. No other battle in WWII was so pivotal.

Pearl harbour, the victory in north Africa were vital.

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was an irrelevance as even if Hilter had won the allies would have got to Berlin and cut off the nazi soldiers in Russia anyway. The Russian soldiers fought bravely though.

Midway was not piotal as Japan had no ability to achieve gobal domination as they were unable to beat the British in India and Australia, or to invade the USA.

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Midway Island was the turning point in the Pacific.

The Siege of Stalingrad was the turning point in Europe/Asia.

• Mass open air shootings of Jews began in June and July 1941 behind German lines in Lithuania, eastern Poland, Belarus, Latvia and the Ukraine (in the then Soviet Union). Obviously, persecution, oppression and enforced ghettoization had started earlier and had already taken their toll.
• Routine (as opposed to experimental) gassings of Jews began on 8 December 1941 at Chelmno.
• The extermination camps - Auschwitz II (Birkenau), Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka - were all situated in Nazi-occupied Poland.
• The Holocaust affected Jews throughout Nazi controlled territory between 1941 and 1945.
• The Holocaust took place in Germany and German-occupied Europe. It was not confined to any particular town or city.
• Two of Germany's allies - Romania and Croatia - carried out their own holocausts.
• The Holocaust ended in May 1945, but some camps and some areas were liberated earlier.

Mass killings of Jews began in June 1941 as the death squads (SD-Einsatzgruppen) that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union began to operate behind the German lines.

The deportation of Jews from Berlin to Theresienstadt, to Riga (Latvia) and Maly Trostenets (Minsk, Belarus) started on 15 October 1941. Riga in Latvia and Maly Trostenets soon became a vast killing field for deported Berlin Jews.

The first large scale gassings took place at Chelmno on 8 December 1941. Further administrative details of Holocaust were worked out at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. (The actual 'conference' lasted only 90 minutes and was mainly concerned with co-ordinating the activities of the various agencies involved. Apart from a brief discussion of what to do about half-Jews and quarter-Jews, the meeting was not concerned with matters of policy).

The killings took place in:

1. Mass open air shootings (especially in the Soviet Union)

2. Exceptionally harsh concentration camps, where the prisoners were literally worked to death: they had to do heavy manual labour (such as quarrying and mining) on insufficient food.

3. Extermination camps, mainly located in Poland:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek (used mainly as a back-up)
• Sobibor
• Treblinka

The above camps were all in Poland. In addition, Maly Trostenets in Belarus is generally regarded as an extermination camp.

In Poland, Jews were herded into ghettos (such as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Lodz Ghetto) and given grossly insufficient food and not allowed medication. Many died of stavation and disease.

Two of Germany's allies, Romania and Croatia, carried out their own national holocausts.

Here is more input:

• In my opinion, the Holocaust happened in every town, every house, every heart that knew what was happening and did nothing. Most of the killing was done in Eastern Europe, as the previous post mentioned, especially Poland and Russia. But other countries all over Europe participated, shipping out their Jewish populations, out of fear or to get rid of undesirable peoples. Some of Germany's allies, such as Croatia and Romania conducted their own holocausts. As countries began closing their borders to Jewish refugees, including the US, they contributed indirectly to the death toll in the camps.

• The holocaust ended in 1945 when World War 2 was about to end.
• The holocaust ended in specific places when the Allies liberated the camps in 1944-1945. The holocaust did not end completely till the end of WWII in Europe and the surrender of all German troops.
• The Holocaust ended a few days after Hitler committed suicide in 1945. However, even when camps were liberated the death rate from disease remained high for several weeks.

About 1,500. This staggering figure includes all satellite camps, including temporary camps. There were about 20 main camps (Stammlager).

Most concentration camps had many sub-camps, many of them labour camps that only functioned for a short time. The list below from the German-language Wikipedia is very good. There is a link below to the list issued by the Federal German Ministry of Justice. This can be assumed to be more or less definitive.

(The figure of 1,500 only includes camps run by the SS and related organization. It does not include camps for Soviet prisoners of war or camps for forced labourers imported to Germany from Eastern Europe).

Please see the link for the full list and also the related question.

Wikipedia and other sources name six extermination camps, all located in occupied Poland:

• Auschwitz II (part only)
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek (part only)
• Sobibór
• Treblinka II

These six were killing centres and enjoy a kind of canonical status. Many would add Maly Trostenets in Belarus and some include Janowska in Ukraine.

The figure of 1,500 camps does not include camps for forced foreign labourers sent to Germany from the various countries under German rule. Many of these camps, especially those for Poles and Ukrainians, were little better than concentration camps. Nor does the figure include regular POW (prisoner of war) camps.

Note that there were three grades of ordinary Nazi concentration camps. These were, in ascending order of harshness: Grade I (such as Dachau) , Grade II (such as Buchenwald) and Grade III (such as Auschwitz III - aka Buna or Monowitz). Conditions at the Grade III camps were appallingly bad.

In 1944 there were 5.7 million forced foreign workers in Germany, many of whom had been abducted (kidnapped), taken to Germany and forced to work there.

Please see the link beginning with the word Bundesministerium for the full list.

Because the camps were located in all of the occupied countries in some form or another, and because many camps had sub-camps and even the sub-camps were further divided at different labor sites, I doubt that even the Nazi's could answer. Camps existed in Africa and even in the British Channel Islands. Not all camps were giant extermination factories, some were collection and transit points while the vast majority were labor centers with as few as a couple dozen inmates.

" Jewish Virtual Library estimates that the number of Nazi camps was closer to 15,000 in all of occupied Europe"

[From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps ]

But even that is an estimate: it's worse than that:-

"THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum.....

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing - first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, "Germanizing" prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

"You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."

[From article "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking' at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ]

'
35 main and 100's of smaller
There were about 35 main and 1000 smaller concentration camps during World War 2 and there were 6 extermination (death) camps.

Obviously, his parents didn't give him enough attention. I mean, come on, his "perfect race" didn't even include himself!

Hitler wanted a pure Aryan race, people with blue eyes, blonde hair, muscular (in the case of men) and beautiful (the case of women). He wanted all Germans to be racially pure because he wanted to start his own "super" perfect race, even though he did not have blonde hair or blue eyes! Also there was a lot of speculation about him being homosexual, even though he sent homosexuals to concentration camps etc.

The view that the Nazis wanted a pure "blonde-haired, blue-eyed" race is largely a popular myth. The Nazis aimed to ensure that all members of the state were of "Germanic" stock. In practice that usually meant proving that one's ancestry for three generations past was free of any mixing with "non-Aryans", i.e. Jews, Asians, Africans.

However, the emphasis was always on ancestry, which was tested through records. There was no test based on the individual's hair or eye colour.

Obviously German propaganda depicted individuals with a handsome appearance and with North European features. But blondness was not an exclusive characteristic. Propaganda films, such as films showing members of the Hitler youth, or girls doing gymnastics, display the normal range of physical features found among German, e.g. many blondes, but also many persons of darker colouring.

1. The 'ideal German' was also supposed to be tall, slender, physically fit, free of any disability, deformity, abnormality or mental illness and sexually as 'straight' as a poker, chaste, refrain from masturbation and be completely immune to Marxist thinking. Smoking, heavy drinking and drugs were also a complete 'no-no'. It wasn't only a matter of appearance.
2. For men it was essential to be fit for military service, while women of child-bearing age were expected to be very fertile.
3. A key catchphrase was 'a sound mind in a healthy body'. (It was sometimes said at the time that this really meant 'a servile, conformist, obedient mind in a body fit for military service' - or in the case of women 'a fertile body').
4. The only member of the Nazi leadership who bore any physical resemblance to the 'ideal German' was Reinhard Heydrich. During the Nazi period jokes circulated in Germany about being 'as blond as Hitler, as slim as Goering, as chaste as Goebbels' and so on.
5. According to some sources, the Nazi leader who took all this most seriously was Himmler. Hitler's main concern was to get rid of the Communists and the Jews. He wasn't very interested in eye or hair colour. After all, he himself was far removed in appearance from the 'ideal type' ...