Lesson 14 — Activity 4: Further Effects of War
Completion requirements
Lesson 14 — Activity 4: Further Effects of War
Warm Up
In L14 — A3, you learned of some of the positive effects of war for our country. In this activity, you will examine other effects of war that are caused by ultranationalism.
During both world wars, many Canadians became caught up in the racism and extreme nationalism of the time. Many thousands of people of German, Ukrainian, and Japanese origin were interned — sent to prison camps — as enemy aliens.
Ukrainian Canadians in World War I
By 1914, as many as 171,000 Ukrainian immigrants had come to Canada and had settled in the Prairie provinces. Many of these immigrants held Austrian passports because the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied the part of Ukraine where they came from.
During the First World War, Germany and Austria-Hungary were allies. Many people in Canada feared that the "Austrians" would give information to the enemy. As a result, the Canadian government called members of this group "enemy aliens."
Many of these people were sent to one of 24 internment camps across Canada. About 5,000 of the 8,579 enemy aliens at the camps were ethnic Ukrainians. Another 80,000 Ukrainian Canadians were required to carry cards that identified them as enemy aliens, and they had to report to authorities regularly.
Japanese Canadians in World War II
During the Second World War, propaganda depicted Germans, Italians, and Japanese people as enemies. As a result, Canadians of
German, Italian, and Japanese origin were very often the targets of discrimination.
Even before World War II, Japanese-Canadians were subjected to discrimination, especially in British Columbia, where many had made their homes. They were not allowed to vote or to hold certain jobs.
After the Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong in December, 1941, things became worse for these Canadians. In 1942, Japanese Canadians who lived within 160 kilometres of Canada’s Pacific coast were rounded up and taken to internment camps either in the interior of British Columbia or to farms on the Prairies. Internment camps were very much like prisons. The government seized Japanese-owned homes, property, and businesses and sold them at very low prices. The government then used the money from the sales to pay the costs of keeping people in the camps.
You learned previously how ultranationalism can lead to violence. Ultranationalism can also lead to genocide. Genocide is when one group attempts to kill all the people belonging to a certain race or nation.
Genocide in Nazi Germany
You learned previously as well about how propaganda was used against Jewish people and how the Nazis in Germany promoted extreme nationalist values. On January 20, 1942, a meeting took place in Berlin, the capital of Germany. Fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered to discuss how to carry out "the final solution of the Jewish question."
The "Final Solution" was the Nazi regime's code name for the
deliberate, planned mass murder of all European Jews.
During the months before this meeting, special units made up of SS, the elite guard of the Nazi state, and police personnel, known as Einsatzgruppen, had begun killing Jews in mass shootings on the territory of the Soviet Union that the Germans had occupied. As well, six weeks before this meeting, the Nazis had began to murder Jews at Chelmno, an agricultural estate located in the part of Poland annexed to Germany. Here SS and police personnel used sealed vans into which they pumped carbon monoxide gas to suffocate their victims. The meeting then served to sanction and expand the implementation of the "Final Solution" as a state policy.
During 1942, many trainloads of Jewish men, women, and children were transported from countries all over Europe to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and four other major concentration camps in German-occupied Poland. By the end of 1942, approximately 4 million Jews were dead.
