History glossary
Genocide
the intentional attempt to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
- Category
- Mass violence
What it means
Genocide is a legal and historical term for attempts to destroy protected groups, in whole or in part. It can involve killing, forced displacement, starvation, sterilization, family separation, cultural destruction, and conditions meant to make group survival impossible.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Holocaust
From legal discrimination to genocide, the Holocaust traces twelve years of escalating persecution that killed six million Jews and millions of others across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Nazi Germany
From Weimar collapse to WWII, Nazi Germany imposed totalitarian rule, expansion, and genocide.
Operation Barbarossa
From Hitler's ideological war in the east to Soviet survival before Moscow, Barbarossa turned expected blitzkrieg into prolonged attritional catastrophe.
The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia fractured through crisis, nationalism, and war, collapsing violently in the 1990s.
The Second World War
From fragile peace to global war, WWII reshaped the world through conflict, genocide, and new power orders.
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
From the ashes of World War I to the Night of the Long Knives, this story traces the political rise of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
The World After The Cold War
From the fall of the Soviet Union to the rise of China and global terrorism, this story traces the turbulent reshaping of the international order after 1991.
