Adolf Hitler
- born in 1889 in Austria
- dropped out of school at 16
- wanted to be and artist and architect
- failed to get into art school
- moved to Germany in 1913
- joined German Army when WWI broke out
- was wounded twice (once by gas)
- won numerous medals
- accepted the “stab in the back” theory
- hated Weimer Republic
- joined the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi) after WWI
- voted Fuhrer (Leader) of the Nazi Party in 1921
- Nazi party attracted the following groups of people:
1. Manual laborers
2. Former soldiers
3. Adventurers and misfits
- The Nazi Party:
1. was violently nationalistic
2. was anti-Semitic (anti-Jew)
3. Hated the democratic Weimer Republic
4. talked of the Volk (German common people) superiority
-Random
- Anti-simitic: hated Jews
- Beer Hall Putsch (1923)
- Hitler and the Nazis tried to take over the German Gov’t
- Failed miserably
- Hitler was arrested for treason
- Got five years but only served 9 months
- While in prison he wrote his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
- Outlined Hitler’s ideas:
1. Aryans were the superior race
- Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Scandinavians and English
- No interbreeding
2. Anti-Semitic beliefs
- Hated Jews, inferior race
- Hitler associated them with the Weimer Republic and
Communism
3. Hated democracy
- Believed one person had to have the power to keep order and
Discipline
4. Undo the Treaty of Versailles
5. Re-unite German speaking peoples
- Austria, Sudetenland, Danzig, Poland
6. Lebensraum
*****
- Genocide - has to be specific (different then a mass killing)
- The Holocaust; genocide of approx. six million European Jews during WW2
- A program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany
- Approx. 2/3 of the population of nine million who lived in Europe
- Some maintain the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Naxis genocide of millions of people in other groups from Germany and other occupied territory
- Victims (11-17 million)
- Who else killed? Gypsies (500,000-1.5 million), Mentally/Physically Handicap (75,000-250,000), Slavs (Soviet) (16.5 million), Polish (2.5 million), Homosexuals (5 - 15 thousand), Communist/Socialist, Dark Skinned People, Mixed Races, Jehovah's Witnesses (2,500-5,000)
- Aryan Race: perfect was blonde, blue eyed, tall and muscular
- Misused by the Nazis - "master race"
- Lebensborn - Fount of Life
-The programs aimed to promote the growth of "superior" Aryan populations by providing excellent health care and living conditions to women and by restricting access to those deemed "fit"-Houses were set up throughout Germany and many occupied territories-Many thought women were raped - not case
- Hitler's Jewish Question (1933)
-Nazis "temporarily" suspend civil liberties for all citizens in 1933 - never restored
-The Nazis set up the first concentration camp at Dachau in 1933. The first inmates are 200 Communists
-Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Services, and teachers in public high schools. All but few Jewish students are banned from public high schools and colleges
- Nuremburg Laws (1935)
-Took away German citizenship from Jews thus making Jews second class citizens by removing their basic civil rights
-Established membership in the Jewish races are being anyone who either considered themselves Jewish or had three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents were considered to be mixed race (eventually anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was a risk)
-Jews can only marry Jews
-No sexual relations between non-Jewish Germans and Jews
- 1936
-Nazis boycott Jewish-owned businesses
- Kristallnacht - 1938 ("Night of the Broken Glass"
-On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, gnags of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhood breaking windows, etc
-101 synagogues were destroyed
-91 died in attack
- 1938
-All Jewish children expelled from public schools in Germany and Austira
-Take control of their businesses
- 1939
-Hilter orders the systematic murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria
-Jews were required to wear armbands or yellow stars
- 1940
-Nazi's begin deporting German Jews to Poland
-Jews are forced into ghettos
-Nazi's begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland
- 1941
-Jews throughout Eastern Europe are forced into ghettos
-In two days, German units shoot 33,771 Ukrainian Jews at BabiYar - the largest single massacre of the Holocaust
-The death camp at Chelmno in Poland begins murdering Jews
- 1942
-Nazi officially announce "Final Solution" their plan to kill all European Jews
-Five death camps being operation in Poland: Majdanek, Sobibor, Trebinkla, Belzec and Auschiwitz-Birkenau
-Ghettos of Eastern Europe are being emptied as thousands of Jews are shipped to death camps
-The US, Great Britain, and Soviet Union, acknowledge that Germans are exterminating the Jews of Europe
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