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In the first of the 20th century Germany was the preeminent intellectual and cultural of the world and the Jews
were – integrated citizens. The emergence of the Nazism and its leader Adolf Hitler, changed Europe and led
to the greatest destruction that the Jewish people have ever faced the HOLOCAUST.
During the 1920 and the 1930 despite continuing anti-Semitism and occasional pogroms, Jewish communities
were a large part of European society. Cities, villages and towns across Europe boasted importance Jewish
populations. In Germany, Jews were leading academics, artist and politicians as well as teachers, doctors,
farmers and sharp keepers
Germany politician movement began gaining around ground in Germany, promoting an extremely racist
nationalism, they were called national social workers party (NAZI) and their leader Adolf Hitler. Anti-Semitism
was a foundational to their ideology. In famous book “Mein Kampf”. Hitler called the Jewish people a noxious
bacillus that lives as a parasite in the body of other nations.
Once I really am in power”, Hitler declared in 1922” my first and fore most task will be the annihilation of the
Jews in spite of rising support, Hitler and the Nazi’s actually failed to gain much ground in German Parliament
it was after the economic collapse of 1929 that the party began to gain real power (political power). Social
turmoil and strife led to a polarized and unstable political climate.
The Nazi party became the largest function in the Ranch stag was started by communist planning an
insurrection and the fear constitutional protection. Shortly thereafter, Hitler was given the
On September 15, 1935 the Nazis passed a series of notoriously racist laws called the Nuremberg laws of
their German citizenship removed call their political The Nazi Party adopted and developed
several racist Scientific and Philosophical racial classifications as part of its ideology (Nazism) in order to
justify the genocide of groups of people which it deemed racially inferior. The Nazis considered the putative
"Aryan race" a superior "master race", and they considered black people, mixed-race
people, Slavs, Roma, Jews and other ethnic groups racially inferior "sub-humans", whose members were only
suitable for slave labor and extermination. These beliefs stemmed from a mixture of 19th-
century anthropology, scientific racism and anti-Semitism. The term “Aryan” belongs in general to the
discourses of Volk (the people as a lineage group sharing a territory, language and culture).[1]tical right and
legally institutionalized their persecution.
Characteristics which determine the moral and other qualities of their individual members, the belief has no
scientific basis. In fact racism although racism is said to spring from a belief that there are distinct human
races with distinctive is rarely the product of any kind of purely cognitive process. People who propound racist
beliefs are almost always motivated by emotional or psychological factors or by a supervening interest, and
will therefore persist in such beliefs even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The so-called
“reasons” proffered for racist attitudes towards entire ethnic or national groups are necessarily no more than
rationalizations.
Although racial theories of human behavior have long been shown to lack any scientific foundation,
nineteenth-century racist thinkers, such as Houston Chamberlain, exerted a significant influence on many in
Adolf Hitler’s generation. Racism, including racial antisemitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on
false biological theories), was an integral part of German National Socialism (Nazism). According to Nazi
theories of race, Germans and other northern Europeans were “Aryans” — a superior race.
When the Nazis assumed power in Germany in 1933, they sought to give effect to their racial theories in
several ways, including the proclamation in 1935 of the infamous Nuremberg Laws. That same year, the Nazis
began the “Lebensborn” (Life spring) program aimed at breeding “Aryan” children via extramarital relations of
persons classified as “racially pure and healthy” based on Nazi racial hygiene and health
ideology. Lebensborn encourDuring World War II, the Nazi leadership also instigated a policy of ‘racial
purification’ (the more contemporary expression is ‘ethnic cleansing’) within the occupied eastern territories of
Poland and the Soviet Union. This policy entailed physically transferring ‘non -Aryan’ peoples from their lands,
or murdering them, and repopulating the lands with ‘Aryans’. Nazi racial ideology was thus used to rationalise
the displacement of entire communities from their homes and murder on an unprecedented.
At its core, the Nazi world view was racist and biological, positing that the so-called “Aryan” race – primarily
the North Europeans – was the superior race of human beings. Their superiority granted the Aryans the right
and obligation to rule over other races and peoples, for the benefit of humankind. The Jews, in complete
contrast, were seen as a kind of “anti-race”, dangerous inhuman beings in seemingly human form.
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, argued that the Germans was superior to all other races. Hitler
became obsessed with 'racial purity' and used the word 'Aryan' to describe his idea of a 'pure German race' or
Herrenvolk. The 'Aryan race' had a duty to control the world.
The Nazis believed that the Aryans had the most "pure blood" of all the people on earth. The ideal Aryan had
pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes.
Non-Aryans came to be seen as impure and even evil. Hitler believed that Aryan superiority was being
threatened particularly by the Jews. Therefore, a hierarchy of 'races' was created with the Aryan s at the top
and with Jews, Gypsies and black people at the bottom. These 'inferior' people were seen as a threat to the
purity and strength of the German nation.
The term Aryan originally meant something completely different. Its origin started in the Ved ic period by Indo-
Iranian people in India. The word was a self-designation and ethnic label that referred to the noble class from
the Āryāvarta parts of India. The Nazis, however, linked the word 'Aryan' with the German word 'Here', which
means 'honour' and therefore, used 'Aryan' to depict their image of 'the honourable people'.
The Nazi totalitarian government had total control over men, women, youth, newspapers, radio, art, books,
music, universities, schools, police, army, law courts and religion. In other words, they controlled every aspect
of life in Germany. Furthermore, Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's most devoted associates, was elected as
the Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 - 1945.
To control every part of every German's life, the Nazi Party had to persuade people to believe that Hitler had
the answers to all their problems. The Nazi Party used terror, on the one hand, and propaganda on the other.
The Nazi Party used propaganda to influence the German people's thoughts and opinions. Propaganda was
used to bring most Germans together for the common goal - to stand together against the enemies of the Nazi
Party.
The propaganda unit also set their sights on the youth of Germany. For example; schools, universities and
churches were indoctrinated with Nazi teachings. Furthermore, the importance of the role of women in the
indoctrination of children was recognized and women were encouraged to have more children. In 1933 Hitler
set up the "Hitler Youth" or "Hitlerjugend", an organization aiming to train and educate the male youth with
Nazi principles and ideologies. Young boys were trained and prepared to use weapons - clearly preparing for
what was the Nazi was.
Public health measures to control reproduction and marriage aimed at strengthening the “national body” by
eliminating biologically threatening genes from the population. Many German physicians and scientists who
had supported racial hygiene ideas before 1933 embraced the new regime’s emphasis on biology and
heredity, the new career opportunities, and the additional funding for research.
Hitler’s dictatorship, backed by sweeping police powers, silenced critics of Nazi eugenics and supporters of
individual rights. After all educational and cultural institutions and the media came under Nazi control, racial
eugenics permeated German society and institutions. Jews, considered “alien, ” were purged from universities,
Echoing ongoing eugenic fears, the Nazis trumpeted population experts’ warnings of “national death” and
aimed to reverse the trend of falling birthrates. The Marital Health Law of October 1935 banned unions
between the “hereditarily healthy” and persons deemed genetically unfit. Getting married and having children
became a national duty for the “racially fit.” In a speech on September 8, 1934, Hitler proclaimed: “In my state,
the mother is the most important citizen.”
Eugenicists
had expressed concerns about the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and syphilis. The Nazi regime sponsored
research, undertook public education campaigns, and enacted laws that together aimed at eliminating “genetic
ZZX XZ poisons” linked to birth defects and genetic damage to later generations. In 1936 the Reich Central
Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion was established to step up efforts to prevent acts that
obstructed
reproduction. In a 1937 speech linking homosexuality to a falling birthrate, German police chief Heinrich
Himmler stated: “A people of good race which has too few children has a one-way ticket to the grave.
On July 14, 1933, the Nazi dictatorship fulfilled the long-held dreams of eugenics proponents by enacting the
Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (“Hereditary Health Law”), based on a voluntary
sterilization View This Term in the Glossary law drafted by Prussian health officials in 1932. The new Nazi law
was coauthored by Falk Ruttke, a lawyer, Arthur Gütt, a physician and director of public health affairs, and
Ernst Rüdin, a psychiatrist and early leader of the German racial hygiene movement. Individuals who were
subject to the law were those men and women who “suffered” from any of nine conditions assumed to be
hereditary: feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, genetic epilepsy, Huntington’s
chorea (a fatal form of dementia), genetic blindness, genetic deafness, severe physical deformity, and chronic
alcoholism.
Special hereditary health courts lent an aura of due process to the sterilization View This Term in the
Glossary measure, but the decision to sterilize was generally routine. Nearly all better -known geneticists,
psychiatrists, and anthropologists sat on such courts at one time or another, mandating the sterilizations of an
estimated 400,000 Germans. Vasectomy was the usual sterilization method for men, and for women, tubal
ligation, an invasive procedure that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of women.
The same Jew who plunged the German people into the bloodletting of the World War, and who committed on
it the crime of the November Revolution [Weimar Republic] is now engaged in stabbing Germany, recovering
from its shame and misery, in the back. . . . The Jew is again engaged in poisoning public opinion.
Propaganda was not the only weapon the Nazis used against the Jews. They also relied on terror. On March
9, 1933, just a few days after the elections, Nazi SA storm troopers in Berlin imprisoned dozens of Jewish
immigrants from eastern Europe. In Breslau, they attacked Jewish lawyers and judges. On March 13 in
Mannheim, they forced Jewish shopkeepers to close their doors. In other towns, they broke into Jewish homes
and beat up the people living there.
Although these events were rarely reported in the German press, the foreign press wrote about them regularly.
In the United States, many Jews and non-Jews were outraged by the violence. Some called for a boycott of
German goods. Their outburst gave the Nazis an excuse for a “defensive action against the Jewish world
criminal” on April 1, 1933.
That action—a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses—was the first major public event that specifically targeted
Jews not as Communists or Social Democrats but as Jews. It was not a huge success. In some places,
Germans showed their disapproval of the boycott by making a point of shopping at Jewish-owned stores on
April 1.
Even in places where the boycott took place as planned, the Nazis quickly discovered that it was not always
easy to decide if a business was Jewish-owned. There was no legal definition of who was a Jew and who was
not. Also, many Jews had non-Jewish business partners, and nearly all had non-Jewish employees. Were
those businesses to be closed as well? For example, Tietz, a chain of department stores in Berlin owned by
Jews, had more than 14,000 employees, almost all of whom were non-Jews. At a time when unemployment
was high and the economy fragile, did the Nazis really want to put those workers out of a job? In the end, the
Nazis allowed Tietz to remain open—at least for the time being. A few years later, the owners were forced to
turn over their stores to “Aryan” businessmen.
The boycott did succeed, however, in one of its goals: it terrorized Jews throughout Germany. Edwin Landau
described what it was like in his hometown in West Prussia. On the Friday before the boycott, he recalled,
“one saw the SA [storm troopers] marching through the city with its banners: ‘The Jews are our misfortune.’
‘Against the Jewish atrocity propaganda abroad.’” He wrote about the day of the boycott:
In the morning hours the Nazi guards began to place themselves in front of the Jewish shops and factories,
and every shopper was warned not to buy from the Jews. In front of our business, also, two young Nazis
posted themselves and prevented customers from entering. To me the whole thing seemed inconceivable. It
would not sink in that something like that could even be possible in the twentieth century, for such things had
happened, at most, in the Middle Ages. And yet it was the bitter truth that outs ide, in front of the door, there
stood two boys in brown shirts, Hitler’s executives.
I took my war decorations, put them on, went into the street, and visited Jewish shops, where at first I was also
stopped. But I was seething inside, and most of all I would have liked to shout my hatred into the faces of the
barbarians. Hatred, hatred—when had it become a part of me? — It was only a few hours ago that a change
had occurred within me. This land and this people that until now I had loved and treasured had suddenly
become my enemy. So I was not a German anymore, or I was no longer supposed to be one. That, of course,
cannot be settled in a few hours. But one thing I felt immediately: I was ashamed that I had once belonged to
this people. I was ashamed about the trust that I had given to so many who now revealed themselves as my
enemies. Suddenly the street, too, seemed alien to me; indeed, the whole town had become alien to me.
Words do not exist to describe the feelings that I experienced in those hours. Having arrived at home, I
approached the one guard whom I knew and who also knew me, and I said to him: “When you were still in your
diapers I was already fighting out there for this country.” He answered: “You should not reproach me for my
youth, sir . . . I’ve been ordered to stand here.” I looked at his young face and thought, he’s right. P oor,
misguided young people!
and the Nazis were rabid anti-Semites who falsely claimed that German Jews had betrayed Germany during
World War I and were responsible for its defeat. The Nazi ideology was also based on a racist ideology whose
goal was the elimination of Jews and other undesirable groups from German society. The Nazis also held
Jews responsible for Germany’s economic misery during the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The hatred of Jews has a long history in European society. Pogroms and expulsions marred the history of
almost every country in Europe in the middle ages and even in the modern era. This was based on the
depiction of Jews as “Christ-killers” by Christian authorities and the persistence of antisemitic stereotypes in
art and literature. During the nineteenth century, religious Jew-hatred combined with beliefs about racial
difference and superiority that focused on “blood” rather than belief to produce modern antisemitism.
The pioneering Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg argued that Jew-hatred evolved through the ages, but with
remarkable continuities in methods and aims: “The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no
right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live
among us. The German Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live.”
Why and how this idea was endorsed by German society has been the subject of debate. Some scholars have
argued that the Nazis were an expression of a particularly German form of antisemitism and was the basis of
their appeal. Others have argued that Germans became antisemitic after the Nazis took power and took
control of education, broadcasting and the media.
Nazi beliefs categorised people by race, and Hitler used the word ‘Aryan’ for his idea of a ‘pure German race’.
The Nazis believed Aryan people were superior to all others. Their devotion to what they believed was racial
purity and their opposition to racial mixing partly explains their hatred towards Jews, Roma and Sinti people
(sometimes referred to as ‘Gypsies’) and black people. Slavic people, such as those from Poland and Russia,
were considered inferior and were targeted because they lived in areas needed for German expansion.
The Nazis wanted to ‘improve’ the genetic make-up of the population and so persecuted people they deemed
to be disabled, either mentally or physically, as well as gay people. Political opponents, p rimarily communists,
trade unionists and social democrats, as well as those whose religious beliefs conflicted with Nazi ideology,
such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, were also targeted for persecution.
Hundreds of thousands of lives were destroyed because of Nazi persecution, and many groups did not receive
acknowledgement of their suffering until years after 1945
It is not known when the leaders of Nazi Germany definitively decided to implement the "Final Solution." What
is clear, however, is that the “Final Solution” was the culmination of a decade of increasingly severe
discriminatory, anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis. Today, the "Final Solution" View This Term in
the Glossary is used as a synonym for the genocide of Europe’s Jews. Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the
persecution and segregation of Jews was implemented in stages. After the Nazi Party achieved power in
Germany in 1933, its state-sponsored racism led to anti-Jewish legislation, economic boycotts, and the
violence of the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms, all of which aimed to systematically isolate
Jews from society and drive them out of the country.
After the September 1939 German invasion of Poland (the beginning of World War II), anti-Jewish policy
escalated to the imprisonment and eventual murder of European Jewry. The Nazis first
established ghettos (enclosed areas designed to isolate and control the Jews) in the Generalgouvernement (a
territory in central and eastern Poland overseen by a German civilian government) and the Warthegau View
This Term in the Glossary (an area of western Poland annexed to Germany). Polish and western European
Jews were deported to these ghettos where they lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions with
inadequate food.
After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, SS and police units (acting as mobile killing units)
began massive killing operations aimed at entire Jewish communities. By autumn 1941, the SS and police
introduced mobile gas vans. These paneled trucks had exhaust pipes reconfigured to pump poisonous carbon
monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing those locked within. They were designed to complement ongoing
shooting operations.
Himmler with responsibility for all security matters in the occupied Soviet Union. Hitler gave Himmler broad
authority to physically eliminate any perceived threats to permanent Germa n rule. Two weeks later, on July 31,
1941, Nazi leader Hermann Goering authorized SS General Reinhard Heydrich to make preparations for the
In the autumn of 1941, SS chief Heinrich Himmler assigned German General Odile Globocnik (SS and police
leader for the Lublin District) with the implementation of a plan to systematical ly murder the Jews of the Gener
lgouvernement. The code name Operation Rein hard was eventually given to this plan, named after Heinrich
(who was assassinated by Czech partisans in May 1942). As part of Operation Rein hard, Nazi leaders
established three killing centers in Poland—Balzac, Snobbier, and Treblinka—with the sole purpose of the
The Majdanek camp served from time to time as a killing site for Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement. In
its gas chambers, the SS killed tens of thousands of Jews, primarily forced laborers too weak work. The SS
and police killed at least 167,000 Jews, as well as approximately 4,300 Roma (Gypsies), in gas vans at
the Chelmno killing center about thirty miles northwest of Łódź. In the spring of 1942, Himmler
German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with
poison gas or by shooting. In its entirety, the "Final Solution" View This Term in the Glossary called for the
murder of all European Jews by gassing, shooting, and other means. Six million Jewish men, women, and
children were killed during the Holocaust—two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe before World War II.
THIS IS WHEN THEY NOTICE THAT HITLER THEIR LEADER HAS PASSED AWAY.
As Soviet troops entered the heart of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in his underground
bunker. Although there is some speculation about the manner of his death, it is widely believed that he shot
himself. Eva Braun, whom he had recently married, also took her own life. According to his wishes, both
bodies were burned and buried. Almost immediately, however, conspiracy theories began. The Soviets initially
claimed that they were unable to confirm Hitler’s death and later spread rumors that he was alive. According to
subsequent reports, however, the Soviets recovered his burnt remains, which were identified through dental
records. Hitler’s body was secretly buried before being exhumed and cremated, with the ashes scattered in
1970.
r, chancellor and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, died by suicide via Adolf Hitlegunshot on 30 April
1945 in the Führerbunker in Berlin[a] after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, which
led to the end of World War II in Europe. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also died by suicide,
taking cyanide.] In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains
were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery garden, where
they were doused in petrol and burned. The news of Hitler's death was announced on German radio the next
day, 1 May.
Eyewitnesses who saw Hitler's body immediately after his suicide testified that he died from a self -inflicted
gunshot, which has been established to have been a shot to the temple. Otto Günsche, Hitler's personal
adjutant, who handled both bodies, testified that while Braun's smelled strongly of burnt almonds – an
indication of cyanide poisoning – there was no such odour about Hitler's body, which smelled of gunpowder.
Dental remains extracted from the soil in the garden were matched with Hitler's dental records in May
1945. The dental remains were later confirmed as being Hitler's.
The Soviet Union restricted the release of information and released many conflicting reports about Hitler's
death. Historians have largely rejected these as part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by Joseph
Stalin to sow confusion regarding Hitler's death, or have attempted to reconcile them. Soviet records allege
that the burnt remains of Hitler and Braun were recovered, despite eyewitness accounts that they were almost
completely reduced to ashes. In June 1945, the Soviets began seeding two contradictory narratives: that Hitler
died by taking cyanide and that he had survived and fled to another country. Following extensive review, West
Germany issued a death certificate in 1956. Conspiracy theories about Hitler's death continue to attract
interest.
Surname: Khwane
Grade:11 “C4”
Subject: history