Mass Atrocities After 1900
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Holocaust/ˈhɒləkɔːst/ | The Nazi genocide of European Jews during the Second World War. |
| genocide/ˈdʒenəsaɪd/ | The intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. |
What the CED states
- The rise of extremist groups in power led to the attempted destruction of specific populations, notably the Nazi killing of the Jews in the Holocaust 犹太人大屠杀 during World War II, and to other atrocities, acts of genocide 种族灭绝, or ethnic violence.
- The CED's causal claim is precise: extremist groups in power — the combination of an ideology and a state.
- This subtopic is treated soberly and factually; the historical record is what the exam asks you to know.
The CED's causal phrase is...
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An ideology becomes an atrocity when it acquires a state.
The CED's named cases
- Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I.
- Cambodia during the late 1970s. Tutsi in Rwanda in the 1990s.
- Ukraine in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
Select all the cases the CED names.
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Ukraine in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s completes the CED's list.
What the cases share
- In each, state power was used against a population defined by identity rather than by any act.
- In each, an existing prejudice was made into policy by a group that had captured a state.
- So the CED's phrase extremist groups in power names the mechanism, and the cases are its instances.
Cause, mechanism, or consequence?
Sort each element of the CED's account.
In each case, state power was used against a population defined by ____ rather than by any act.
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That is what distinguishes these from ordinary wartime violence.
The CED's causal phrase is extremist groups in power, not extremism alone. An ideology becomes an atrocity when it acquires a state — its bureaucracy, its records, its transport and its police. Naming the state capture is what makes an answer explanatory rather than descriptive.
Select all the consequences this lesson names.
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Memory politics in the societies involved completes the list.
Causes and consequences
- The objective asks for the various causes and consequences of mass atrocities in the period from 1900 to the present.
- Causes: extremist ideology, state capture, wartime conditions, and the industrial and bureaucratic capacity described in units 5 and 7.
- Consequences: demographic destruction, refugee movements, postwar legal instruments, and the memory politics of the societies involved.
The objective asks you to rank these atrocities against each other.
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It asks for causes and consequences; accuracy is what the rubric rewards.
Writing about this carefully
- Use precise language: name the state, the group targeted, the period, and the mechanism.
- Avoid comparison as ranking — the objective asks for causes and consequences, not for which was worst.
- Accuracy is the respect this material requires, and it is also what the rubric rewards.
Each of the CED's cases involves a state apparatus applied to a population defined by identity: lists, transport, camps or militias organised through official channels. That is why in power is in the sentence — prejudice without state capacity produces violence, and prejudice with it produces the scale the twentieth century recorded.
The rise of extremist groups in power led to the attempted destruction of specific populations, notably the Nazi killing of the Jews in the Holocaust, and to other atrocities, acts of genocide or ethnic violence. The CED's cases: Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Cambodia in the late 1970s, Tutsi in Rwanda in the 1990s, and Ukraine in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
Write from the Holocaust as state murder
- The Nazi state identified Jews and other groups for destruction.
- The killing was organised by government policy, not by a single riot.
What kind of event was the Holocaust?
A government planned and carried out the killing.
What was the Holocaust?
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The Nazi state organised the atrocity.