World War I

Raphael Lemkin (Polish: Rafał Lemkin; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a Polish lawyer who is known for coining the term "genocide" and for campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention, which legally defines the act. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled the country and sought asylum in the United States, where he became an academic at Duke University and campaigned vigorously to raise international awareness of the atrocities that the Axis powers were committing across occupied Europe. It was amidst this environment of World War II that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policy.

As a young Jewish law student who was deeply conscious of antisemitism and the persecution of Jews, Lemkin learned about the Ottoman genocide of the Armenian people during World War I and was deeply disturbed by the absence of international provisions to charge, punish, and hold accountable those who were responsible for organizing and executing it. In his view, the suffering of the Jewish people was part of a larger pattern of like-minded atrocities occurring around the world and throughout history, such as the Holodomor.

The Old Yishuv (Hebrew: היישוב הישן, haYishuv haYashan) were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah waves, and the consolidation of the new Yishuv by the end of World War I. Unlike the new Yishuv, characterized by secular and Zionist ideologies promoting labor and self-sufficiency, the Old Yishuv primarily consisted of religious Jews who relied on external donations (halukka) for support.

The Old Yishuv evolved following a significant decline in Jewish communities across the region during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and was composed of three clusters. Firstly, Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities settled in the region during the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, alongside Arabic-speaking Musta'arabi communities, who had already been living there since before the coming of Islam and had been culturally and linguistically Arabized. Secondly, Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries, forming another group. A third wave of Yishuv members arrived in the late 19th century, hailing from Europe, North Africa, Yemen, Persia, and the Caucasus. These migrations gave rise to two distinct communities within the Old Yishuv—the Sephardim (including Musta'arabim) and the Askhenazim.

The Union of South Africa (Dutch: Unie van Zuid-Afrika; Afrikaans: Unie van Suid-Afrika, pronunciation) was a British Dominion and, later, a Commonwealth realm in southern Africa from 1910 to 1961. It was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies. It included the territories that were formerly part of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.

Following World War I, the Union of South Africa was a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and became one of the founding members of the League of Nations. It was mandated by the League with the administration of South West Africa (now known as Namibia). South West Africa became treated in most respects as another province of the Union, but it never was formally annexed.

The British Army is the land warfare force of the United Kingdom responsible for defending the UK, the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. The British Army has seen involvement in most of the world's major wars throughout history, including both world wars and was founded in 1707. As of 1 January 2025, the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Gurkhas, 25,742 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 "other personnel", for a total of 108,413.

The British Army traces back to 1707 and the formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into a single state and, with that, united the English Army and the Scots Army as the British Army. The English Bill of Rights 1689 and Scottish Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the monarch as their commander-in-chief. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence and commanded by the Chief of the General Staff.

The Allies or the Entente (UK: /ɒ̃ˈtɒ̃t/, US: /ɒnˈtɒnt/ on-TONT) was an international military coalition of countries led by the French Republic, the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire, the United States, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan against the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the major European powers were divided between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente was made up of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. The Triple Alliance was originally composed of Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy, but Italy remained neutral in 1914. As the war progressed, each coalition added new members. Japan joined the Entente in 1914 and, despite proclaiming its neutrality at the beginning of the war, Italy also joined the Entente in 1915. The term "Allies" became more widely used than "Entente", although the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and Italy were also referred to as the Quadruple Entente and, together with Japan, as the Quintuple Entente. The five British Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Union of South Africa) all fought alongside the British. The colonies of Allied countries, such as the American Philippines, Belgian Congo, British India, French Algeria, and Japanese Korea, were also used as a source of manpower by the colonial powers.

Tanks were initially deployed in World War I, engineered to overcome the deadlock of trench warfare. Between the two world wars, tanks were further developed. Although they had demonstrated their battlefield effectiveness, only a few nations had the industrial resources to design and build them. During and after World War I, Britain and France pioneered tank technology, with their models generally serving as a blueprint for other countries. However, this initial advantage would slowly diminish during the 1930s, shifting in favor of the Soviet Union and, to a lesser degree, Nazi Germany.

Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as a "firebombing".

Although simple incendiary bombs have been used to destroy buildings since the start of gunpowder warfare, World War I saw the first use of strategic bombing from the air to damage the morale and economy of the enemy, such as the German Zeppelin air raids conducted on London. The Chinese wartime capital of Chongqing was firebombed by the Imperial Japanese starting in early 1939 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. London, Coventry, and many other British cities were firebombed during the Blitz by Nazi Germany. Most large German cities were extensively firebombed starting in 1942, and almost all large Japanese cities were firebombed during the last six months of World War II.

In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion". Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their countries from colonization. The Danish, Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease and bargain with the invaders in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.

Some countries' leaders such as Henrik Werth of Axis member Hungary, cooperated with Italy and Germany because they wanted to regain territories lost during and after World War I, or which their nationalist citizens simply coveted. Others such as France already had their own burgeoning fascist movements and/or antisemitic sentiment, which the invaders validated and empowered. Individuals such as Hendrik Seyffardt in the Netherlands and Theodoros Pangalos in Greece saw collaboration as a path to personal power in the politics of their country. Others believed that Germany would prevail, and wanted to be on the winning side or feared being on the losing one.

Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsiɪzəm, ˈnæt-/ NA(H)T-see-iz-əm), formally named National Socialism (NS; German: Nationalsozialismus, German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] ), is the far-right totalitarian ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequently called Hitler Fascism and Hitlerism. The term "neo-Nazism" is applied to far-right groups formed after World War II with similar ideology.

Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. Its beliefs include support for dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-Slavism, anti-Romani sentiment, scientific racism, anti-Chinese sentiment, white supremacy, Nordicism, social Darwinism, homophobia, ableism, and eugenics. The Nazis' ultranationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement, which had been prominent within German ultranationalism since the late 19th century. Nazism was influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which the party's "cult of violence" came. It subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy, identifying ethnic Germans as part of what the Nazis regarded as a Nordic Aryan master race. Nazism sought to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous German society based on racial purity. The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, gain lands for expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum, and exclude those deemed either Community Aliens or "inferior" races (Untermenschen).

Lebensraum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm] , lit. 'living space') is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of the German Empire in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was promoted and initiated by the Nazi Party, that had ruled Nazi Germany, whose ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.

Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (lit. 'Master Plan for the East') was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum necessary for its survival and that most of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, extermination, or enslavement), including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Czech, and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during and following World War II. Entire populations were ravaged by starvation; any agricultural surplus was used to feed Germany. The Jewish population was to be exterminated outright.