The events recounted in Anne Frank's diary take place during World War II, in which almost all the countries of Europe, as well as the U.S.A. and Japan, were involved to a greater or lesser extent between 1939 and 1945. The reasons for the war are many and varied, and even the historians are not fully in agreement as to the precise causes, some blaming the harsh conditions and economic penalties imposed on Germany after its defeat in World War I, others claiming that it was the weakness of the European countries after Hitler's rise to power in Germany that was the indirect cause. All are agreed, however, that had it not been for Hitler and his policies, the war would not have taken place.
In addition to the various military engagements, however, the Nazis were engaged in a systematic attempt to kill off certain sections of the population — primarily Jews and Gypsies — both within Germany and in the countries which they occupied, claiming that they were "racially inferior." The murder of mentally retarded and psychologically disturbed people, as well as homosexuals, was also official Nazi policy. In some cases, these people were made to work as slaves before they were killed so that the Germans could benefit as much as possible from their labor. To implement this scheme, the Germans established huge "concentration camps," or death camps, throughout Europe. Jews and other people were sent there in cattle trains, and upon arrival, their heads were shaved and their arms were tattooed with numbers; in addition, they were stripped of their clothes and whatever possessions they still had. They were made to work and were subjected to the strictest discipline and the most inhumane conditions before they were gassed in special chambers and their bodies burned. In those parts of Europe which were occupied by the Nazis, but where these methods of killing large numbers of people had not yet been established, the Nazis assembled large numbers of Jews and machine-gunned them all as they stood on the edge of huge pits which they had dug themselves, or beside natural, deep ravines, as was the case at Babi Yar, in Russia. In other places, the Nazis herded all the local Jews into the synagogue and then set it on fire.
