Brno Farm

Worlds in Flames: Global Conflict and Human Horror, 1900 to Present – Part Three

Objectives:

Unit Overview:

The era from c. 1900 to the present stands as one of the most transformative and turbulent in human history. At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe (along with powers like the United States, Russia, and Japan) dominated the global political order through vast land-based and maritime empires. Yet this dominance was fragile and challenged by rising nationalism, revolutionary ideologies, economic rivalries, and technological advances that made warfare more destructive than ever before.

This 3-part unit explores the global conflicts that dominated the era, the dramatic changes in the global political order after 1900, and the devastating mass atrocities that marked the century. Two world wars reshaped borders, toppled empires, and killed tens of millions, while the interwar years exposed the fragility of peace efforts and sowed seeds for even greater catastrophe. These conflicts were not isolated to Europe; they drew in colonies, non-European powers, and global economies, accelerating decolonization, ideological struggles, and shifts toward new forms of international organization.

Theme Day 1 examines the shifting global power dynamics after 1900 and the outbreak, conduct, and immediate aftermath of World War I: the conflict that shattered the old order and set the stage for future instability.

Theme Day 2 covers the uneasy interwar period and the descent into World War II, exploring its causes, global scale, and how new forms of warfare and total mobilization defined the deadliest conflict in history.

Theme Day 3 focuses on mass atrocities after 1900, with deep attention to the Holocaust and Britain’s specific challenges in responding to it, while connecting these horrors to broader patterns of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the era’s ideological extremes.

Theme Day 3: Mass Atrocities After 1900, Including Challenges for Britain – The Holocaust

Today we confront one of the most sobering realities of the modern world: the wave of deliberate mass atrocities that swept across the 20th and early 21st centuries, even as the international community vowed “Never Again” after the Holocaust. 

Why did so many genocides and mass killings occur despite advances in human rights and global communication? Well there are rerecurring patterns of causes: extremist ideologies (racial, nationalist, communist), state power turned murderous, ethnic scapegoating, economic collapse, war and imperial breakdown. Using Gregory Stanton’s 10 Stages of Genocide as our analytical lens, we’ll introduce five landmark cases: Armenian Genocide, Holodomor, Holocaust, Cambodian Genocide/Killing Fields, and Rwandan Genocide.

Genocides Around the World

Since the start of the 20th century, genocides and mass atrocities have scarred every continent, claiming millions of lives and exposing the fragility of human rights even in an era of international law and global communication. From the deserts of Namibia to the killing fields of Cambodia, from the villages of Rwanda to the mountains of Iraq, these horrors have unfolded under different flags, ideologies, and excuses, yet they share chilling patterns: states wielding power to eliminate entire groups, propaganda turning neighbors into enemies, and early warning signs ignored until it was too late. The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the engineered famine of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine, the industrialized murder of the Holocaust across Nazi-occupied Europe, the Khmer Rouge’s radical purge in Cambodia, the lightning-speed slaughter in Rwanda, and ongoing crises like Darfur and the Rohingya persecution remind us that genocide is not confined to one region, culture, or time. It is a global tragedy that demands we learn its geography, its causes, and, most urgently, its preventable stages before history repeats itself again.

“What are Mass Atrocities?” by USHMM Simon-Skjodt Center (first 2 to 3 minutes)  

“Genocide” overview from Britannica Kids/Students  

Genocide / Mass Atrocity	Time Period	Primary Category	Secondary Categories	Key Drivers / Notes
Herero and Nama Genocide	1904–1907	Colonial / State-Sponsored	Racial / Imperial	German colonial forces in Namibia used extermination, camps, and scorched-earth against indigenous Herero/Nama; first 20th-century genocide prototype.
Armenian Genocide	1915–1923	State-Sponsored / Ethnic	Nationalist	Ottoman Young Turks’ deportations, marches, killings to eliminate Armenians as perceived threat; ~1.5 million deaths; widely recognized, denied by Turkey.
Assyrian/Sayfo Genocide	1914–1920s	State-Sponsored / Ethnic	Religious / Nationalist	Ottoman massacres/deportations of Assyrian, Aramean, Chaldean Christians during WWI; often linked to Armenian Genocide.
Holodomor (Ukrainian Genocide)	1932–1933	State-Sponsored / Ideological	Ethnic / National	Stalin’s Soviet engineered famine via collectivization to crush Ukrainian identity/resistance; millions starved; recognized as genocide by many nations.
The Rape of Nanking / Nanjing Massacre	1937–1938	State-Sponsored / War Atrocity	Ethnic / Imperial	Japanese Imperial Army mass rape/murder in China; debated as full genocide but fits mass atrocity patterns.
The Holocaust	1933–1945 (escal. 1941–45)	State-Sponsored / Ideological (Racial)	Ethnic / Racial	Nazi Germany’s systematic extermination of ~6 million Jews + millions others; most documented industrialized genocide.
Cambodian Genocide / Killing Fields	1975–1979	State-Sponsored / Ideological	Class-Based / Ethnic (minorities)	Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot’s radical communism; ~2 million deaths via purges, starvation; targeted “class enemies” and minorities.
Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina	1992–1995	State-Sponsored / Ethnic	Nationalist / Religious	Serb forces’ ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims (e.g., Srebrenica massacre); recognized by ICTY as genocide.
Rwandan Genocide	1994	Ethnic / State-Sponsored	Tribal / Nationalist	Hutu extremists’ 100-day killing of ~800,000–1 million Tutsi/moderate Hutu via machetes/radio propaganda.
Darfur Genocide	2003–present (peak 2003–05)	State-Sponsored / Ethnic	Racial / Militia-Driven	Sudanese government/Janjaweed militias’ campaign against non-Arab Darfuris; ~400,000 deaths; called genocide by many (e.g., US).
Yazidi Genocide (by ISIS)	2014–2017	Ideological / Religious	Ethnic / Extremist	ISIS targeted Yazidis in Iraq/Syria with mass killings, enslavement; UN-recognized as genocide.
Rohingya Genocide	2016–present	State-Sponsored / Ethnic	Religious / Nationalist	Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing/violence against Rohingya Muslims; UN described as “textbook ethnic cleansing” with genocidal acts.

The Stages of Genocide

One of the most powerful tools we have for understanding, and preventing, genocide is Gregory Stanton’s model of the Ten Stages of Genocide, developed in the 1990s and refined over decades of study. This framework shows that genocide is not a sudden explosion of evil, but a predictable, step-by-step process that begins with everyday divisions and escalates through deliberate actions by those in power. From the early classification of “us vs. them,” through dehumanizing propaganda, organization of killing squads, and finally extermination and denial, these stages reveal warning signs that appear again and again across different times and places. By learning Stanton’s stages, we gain a roadmap: we can spot where societies are sliding toward atrocity, recognize how ordinary people and institutions become complicit, and, crucially, identify points where courageous intervention can still interrupt the descent.

1. Add a main card for the stage:
   • Write the stage number and name in bold (e.g. “Stage 4: Dehumanization”).
   • Add a short definition in 1 to 2 sentences (use the videos or here to create simple wording).
2. Make it visual:
   • Upload or link one strong image that represents the stage.
3. Make it connected to history:
   • Add one concrete example from at least one of our five genocides (e.g. “Hutu Power radio calling Tutsi ‘cockroaches’ during the Rwandan Genocide”).
   • Include one prevention question in red text (e.g. “What could stop this stage from escalating?”).

The Holocaust: The Darkest Chapter

The Holocaust stands as the most systematic, documented, and industrialized genocide in human history. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, along with millions of others targeted for their ethnicity, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or other “undesirable” traits. 

What began with discriminatory laws and boycotts in the 1930s escalated through Kristallnacht pogroms, ghettoization, mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen, and finally the creation of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers and crematoria. Rooted in virulent antisemitism and racial ideology that portrayed Jews as an existential threat to the Aryan race, the Holocaust was not a spontaneous outburst but a state-orchestrated, bureaucratic machine of death involving propaganda, legal persecution, forced labor, medical experiments, and mass murder on an unprecedented scale. 

Activity 11: Holocaust Escalation Chain

Create a timeline of the Holocaust – use padlet or other. Find the dates.

Example events:

• Boycott of Jewish businesses
• Nuremberg Laws (stripping citizenship, banning intermarriage)
• Kristallnacht (state-sponsored pogrom)
• Ghettos established (Warsaw, Łódź)
• Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads begin mass shootings
• Wannsee Conference plans “Final Solution”
• Operation Reinhard camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec)
• Auschwitz-Birkenau becomes main extermination site
• Liberation of camps by Allies

Britain’s Complex Role in the Face of the Holocaust

Britain’s relationship with the Holocaust is one of stark contrasts.

As the only major European power to fight Nazi Germany from the very beginning of World War II in September 1939, Britain declared war partly in defense of Poland (where the Holocaust would later unfold most brutally) and became one of the first nations to liberate concentration camps in 1945. However, during the 1930s, Britain severely restricted Jewish refugee entry, turning away desperate ships like the St. Louis in 1939, and failed to prioritize bombing railway lines to death camps despite growing evidence of mass murder. 

The Kindertransport rescued nearly 10,000 Jewish children, but many more were left behind. Wartime knowledge of the “Final Solution” existed through intelligence and escapee reports, yet public and governmental response remained muted.

Post-war, Britain participated in the Nuremberg Trials and helped shape the Genocide Convention, but today faces ongoing challenges in teaching the Holocaust:

• Rising antisemitism
• Holocaust denial and distortion
• Curriculum debates
• How to connect this history meaningfully to contemporary issues
• Not overwhelming students
• Not diluting its unique horror

Activity 12: British Upstanders and Key Figures

Research each of the following briefly and make brief bullet points

Choose one, deep dive, deliver a 3 min speech related to the topic ‘Did Britain do Enough?’

Bringing It All Together: From Horror to Hope

We’ve spent this intense day confronting one of the darkest realities of the modern world: the wave of genocides and mass atrocities that have scarred the globe since 1900, from the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust, from the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the slaughter in Rwanda. These ongoing crises that remind us the threat has not vanished. 

We mapped their geography across continents, traced the predictable stages that allow ordinary societies to descend into extraordinary evil, and examined the Holocaust’s chilling escalation in detail.

We wrestled with Britain’s complex legacy: heroic rescues like the Kindertransport and Nicholas Winton’s quiet courage alongside painful failures in refugee policy, internment of the vulnerable, and missed opportunities to act sooner. 

Here are the authentic voices of  those who lived through or witnessed the Holocaust. They come from survivors who endured the camps and ghettos, a British chaplain who entered Bergen-Belsen at liberation, and from a former Nazi supporter who later expressed regret.

1. Reflections From the Survivor Never Shall I Forget – by Elie Wiesel

2. Reflections From the Rescuing Liberator

 “If all of the sky were paper, and all of the trees were pens, and all of the waters were ink, there would still not be enough material to describe the sufferings at the hands of the Nazis.” – Reverend Leslie Hardman (adapted from “If all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean were ink, refilled by seven other oceans, the Words of Allah would not be exhausted.” – Surah Luqman (31): Verse 27)

3. Reflections From the Perspective of Regret (Former Nazi Supporter)

First They Came – by Pastor Martin Niemöller

Mass Atrocities After 1900 – Activity Rubric

Criteria	1 (Emerging)	2 (Developing)	3 (Proficient)	4 (Advanced)
Activity 9: Mapping the Horror (Add unique genocides to Padlet map; coordinate for 6 total, no duplicates)	Adds 0–1; errors or no coordination	Adds 2–3; some accuracy, minor duplicates	Adds 4–5; accurate, good coordination	Adds all 6; flawless, excellent coordination & visuals
Activity 10: Visual of the Stages of Genocide (Padlet visual of 10 stages with images/examples/prevention)	<5 stages; missing visuals/examples	5–7 stages; basic visuals, some errors	8–10 stages; accurate visuals/examples	All 10 stages; compelling, creative, insightful prevention
Activity 11: Holocaust Escalation Chain (Padlet/other timeline with events, stages, tipping points)	<5 events; disorganized, no stages	5–8 events; basic order, weak stage links	9–12 events; accurate, clear stage links	12+ events; deep, innovative connections
Activity 12: British Upstanders (Bullet research on all figures; 3-min speech on one tied to “Did Britain do Enough?”)	Sparse research (<4 figures); speech <1 min/off-topic	Covers 4–6; speech 1–2 min, basic tie-in	Full research; ~3 min speech with solid evidence	Thorough research; engaging 3-min speech with strong insight/stance