What Led Up To Ww2 Essay

Before World War II, most nations condemned targeting civilians in bombing raids. As the war went on, the nations at war expanded their bombing targets from military to industrial ones, then to workers' houses, and finally to entire cities and their civilian populations. In 1923, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States agreed to a set of rules for air warfare. At the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932, most of the world's powers agreed that air attacks on civilians violated the laws of war. But the conference broke up before approving a final agreement. Race and religion were one of the principal reasons that led the axis powers to target civilians. In the years leading up to World War II, Japan became the first power to attack civilians from the air. In 1932, Japanese warplanes bombed a worker district in Shanghai, China, an incident that produced worldwide outrage. The outrage did not stop Japan from bombing civilian areas of other Chinese cities. While Japan justified its conquests in World War II as the

Along with many other nations, the United States denounced the Japanese, and German bombing of civilians as "contrary to principles of law and humanity." But the terror bombing of civilians was only beginning. Hitler introduced a new form of aggression in 1939. He ordered his military to attack Poland, thus starting World War II in Europe. The Germans hit the Polish capital of Warsaw especially hard, with indiscriminate bombing killing thousands of civilians. The Jews were not the only victims of Nazism. According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation website, it is estimated that as many as 15 million civilians were killed by this murderous and racist regime, including millions of Slavs and Asiatic, 200,000 Gypsies and members of various other groups. Thousands of people, including Germans of African descent, were forcibly sterilized. Hitler considered all these people racially