WW2 & Kentuckians: Voices of a Generation

Nazi Germany. Imperial Japan. Fascist Italy. These three nations, the Axis Powers, came to represent the antithesis of freedom and democracy during World War II. Newsreels carried images of soldiers, ships and machines of war moving triumphantly across Europe and the Pacific Islands. As they extended their power, they ruthlessly eliminated all opposition, implementing regimes so brutal they went beyond human experience. Hitler?s Germany created a holocaust that slaughtered millions of innocents. The Japanese added new meaning to the horrors of war at places like Bataan and Iwo Jima.
As they rose to international power, they claimed more and more territory, needed more natural and human resources, and demanded capitulation from their enemies. Backed by people who believed in them, or were forced to accept their ideology and methods, the Axis nations took similar routes to power and joined together against their common enemies - the allied nations of Europe and ultimately the United States.

The Third Reich represented an unprecedented level of International aggression. As they learned of Nazi racial theories and plans to exterminate so-called untermenschen inside Germany and in the conquered territories, the Allies agreed that the destruction of Hitler's regime was the only acceptable outcome of the war effort. American soldiers who had to deal with the reality of the Holocaust were shocked by the brutality and carnage and could not rationalize away the events and circumstances that had caused the deaths of millions. Many left the European theate only to confront horrific combat conditions in the Pacific as they took on the other major foe, Japan.