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  • The Second World War and the Holocaust

What were the turning points of World War II?

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The decisive turning points of World War II began when Allied victories at Stalingrad, Midway, and Normandy broke Axis momentum between 1942 and 1944. As Allied armies advanced into Germany in 1944 and 1945, they uncovered Nazi concentration camps. In response, the 1945–1946 Nuremberg trials established international legal accountability for state leaders, defining crimes against humanity and prompting the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.

The topic explained

How military and industrial shifts broke the Axis advance

The turning points of World War II were decisive military and industrial shifts that stripped the Axis powers of their initiative between late 1942 and 1944. Following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States brought unmatched industrial capacity to the Allied side. By 1943, Allied factories were outproducing Axis powers in aircraft, munitions, and transport ships by more than three to one, supplying both the western Allies and the Soviet Union.

On the Eastern Front, the Battle of Stalingrad between August 1942 and February 1943 resulted in the complete destruction of the German Sixth Army and roughly 800,000 Axis casualties. After this defeat and the Soviet victory at the tank battle of Kursk in July 1943, Germany lost the ability to mount strategic offensives in the east. In the west, the Allied amphibious landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944 (Operation Overlord) deployed over 156,000 troops on its first day, opening a full-scale second front that forced Germany into a two-front war leading to its unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945.

What liberating armies found inside the concentration camps

As Allied armies pushed into German-held territory, soldiers liberated Nazi concentration and death camps. Soviet forces arrived first at major sites in the east, liberating Majdanek in July 1944 and Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, where they found roughly 7,000 surviving prisoners whom retreating SS guards had not forced onto winter death marches. In April 1945, British soldiers entered Bergen-Belsen and American soldiers reached Dachau and Buchenwald, encountering thousands of unburied corpses and severely emaciated captives.

Military medical teams confronted an immediate humanitarian emergency. Starving prisoners suffered from gastrointestinal collapse; standard combat rations caused fatal metabolic shock, known as refeeding syndrome. British and American medical officers had to administer specialized glucose and skimmed-milk solutions in small, gradual doses. In the following months, between seven and nine million displaced persons remained stranded across Europe, including approximately 250,000 Jewish survivors who gathered in Allied-administered camps while awaiting international resettlement.

How the postwar trials defined new international law

Between November 1945 and October 1946, the International Military Tribunal sat in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute 22 major Nazi political, military, and economic leaders. Led by prosecutors such as American Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the tribunal based its cases heavily on captured German state paperwork, meeting minutes, and film rather than eyewitness memory alone. The court ruled that 'following superior orders' did not relieve officials of personal criminal responsibility when a moral choice was possible.

Nuremberg formally applied the charge of 'crimes against humanity' to prosecute atrocities committed against civilian populations. Recognizing that existing law lacked a term for the deliberate destruction of an entire people, Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin created the word 'genocide' in 1944. In December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, codifying universal standards against state-sponsored terror.

Free printable worksheet

Turning Points, Camp Liberation, and the Nuremberg Trials

This worksheet is for 10th-grade history students. Use your knowledge of World War II from 1942 to 1948 to answer the questions in complete sentences.

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Turning Points, Camp Liberation, and the Nuremberg TrialsName:

  1. Identify the primary battle fought between August 1942 and February 1943 that ended Germany's strategic offensive capacity on the Eastern Front.

  2. What code name was given to the Allied cross-channel invasion of Normandy launched on June 6, 1944?

  3. Explain why British and American military medical units could not immediately feed liberated camp survivors standard army combat rations.

  4. Define the legal term 'crimes against humanity' as applied at the 1945–1946 Nuremberg trials.

  5. Who coined the legal term 'genocide' in 1944, and what root words did he combine to create it?

  6. Read the following statement made by a defense attorney at Nuremberg: 'My client was an administrative officer carrying out the domestic laws and orders of his sovereign government. He cannot be judged by foreign powers.' Explain how the International Military Tribunal answered this defense.

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Common questions

Why is the Battle of Midway also considered a turning point in World War II?

Fought in June 1942, the Battle of Midway resulted in the United States Navy sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers. The loss permanently eliminated Japan's naval air superiority in the Pacific and put its armed forces on the defensive.

What is the difference between a war crime and a crime against humanity?

War crimes are violations of established laws and customs of war during armed conflict, such as mistreating prisoners of war. Crimes against humanity cover widespread, systematic attacks on civilian populations, including a government persecuting its own citizens.

Why did Jewish displaced persons remain in camps long after the war ended?

Many Jewish survivors returned to find their homes destroyed, their families murdered, and renewed local violence, such as the 1946 Kielce pogrom in Poland. Stiff immigration restrictions in Britain, the United States, and British-administered Palestine kept roughly 250,000 refugees waiting in displaced persons camps until policies changed around 1948.

What were the primary legal outcomes of the main Nuremberg trial?

Of the 22 defendants tried by the International Military Tribunal, 12 were sentenced to death by hanging, 3 received life sentences, 4 received prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years, and 3 were acquitted. The trial established individual accountability for heads of state in international law.

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