hi136 the history of germany lecture 13 the nazi war of annihilation
TRANSCRIPT
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HI136 The History of GermanyLecture 13
The Nazi War of Annihilation
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Discussion Questions
• Were the crimes committed under the National Socialist regime unique in modern history?
• What is the Holocaust?
• What lessons, if any, can be learned from the Holocaust?
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The Polish Campaign, 1-28 Sept. 1939Source: R. Overy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich
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Blitzkrieg
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Campaigns in western Europe and the Mediterranean,April 1940-April 1941
Source: The Encyclopaedia of the German Army in the 20th Century
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The Battle of Britain• Air superiority
necessary if Germany to mount an invasion of the British Isles.
• Reasons for failure to do so:– German aircraft had
limited range and were designed to support land forces
– Superior British fighter planes
– Greater British fighter production
– Radar– Change of tactics
Paul Nash, Battle of Britain (1941)
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Europe,Dec 1941
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Operation Barbarossa• Largest land invasion ever seen• Three Army Groups made up of
German, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian troops
• Objective was to capture key strategic areas: oil fields of the Caucuses (South).
– Baltic coast and Leningrad (North)– Ukraine & Moscow (Centre)– oil fields of the Caucuses (South).• Intended to be a repeat of
Blitzkrieg in the West• Armies covered vast distances but
didn’t achieve their objectives• Flaws:
– Operation started too late– Deep penetration into Russia left
supply lines exposed
Source: R. Overy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich (1996)
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The SS and Jewish Policy• From 1939 SS tasked with
Jewish policy• Emigration schemes
(Madagascar, Urals)• ‘Jew-free’ Reich leads to
ghettoisation in General Government, but ‘cumulative radicalisation’ (Mommsen) between competing agenciesReinhard
Heydrich, Security Service leader
Adolf Eichmann, head of Jewish desk at Reich Security Head
Office
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The decision for the Final Solution
• Autumn 1941 (Operation Barbarossa): elation of victory or realisation of defeat?
• First tests of gas chambers at Auschwitz on Soviet PoWs
• January 1942: conference at Wannsee (Berlin) decides on European-wide programme of mass murder, using mechanised techniques
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Map of Concentration Camps and Death Camps
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The Holocaust• 55,000 Jews from the Łódz ghetto &
5000 Gypsies gassed in mobile gas chambers in the winter of 1941-42.
• 200,000 killed in death camps at Chelmno, Treblinka & Belzec in August 1942.
• By Dec. 1942 500,000 had been gassed at Belzec alone.
• Jews & Gypsies from all over Europe transported to Auschwitz from spring 1942 onwards.
• Estimated that around 1,600,000 murdered at Auschwitz alone, c.300,000 of which were not Jews.
• ‘Medical’ experiments conducted on camp inmates.
• Around 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, plus hundreds of thousands of others – Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill etc.
Jewish deaths in the Holocaust, showing percentage of the population killed in each country
Source: H. Schulze, Germany: A New History (1998)
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Roma and Sinti gypsies
• Sinti & Roma labelled workshy
• Ethnographic studies of gypsies as Indo-European migrants
• Proportionally as many gypsies died in Holocaust as JewsGypsies await their fate at Belzec camp
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Models of radicalisation
• Intentionalists: top-down models based on a Fuehrer order (lack of written evidence?)
• Incremental, step-by-step radicalisation, & ‘war against the Jews’ (Lucy Dawidowicz)
• Functionalists: polycratic, competing bureaucracies radicalise from below (Martin Broszat); ‘working towards the Fuehrer’ (Ian Kershaw)
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Holocaust: Height of Modernity?
• Pseudo-scientific justification derived from rational Enlightenment ‘perfectibility of mankind’
• Use of ‘factories of death’, but also compartmentalisation of killing process enabled distancing from murder
• Increasing ‘economisation’ of the Holocaust to justify it in war effort (Aly & Heim)
• Key commentators: Zygmunt Bauman
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Holocaust: height of barbarism?
• Daniel Goldhagen: focus on the ‘trigger pullers’
• Need to explain sadistic nature of violence
• ‘Eliminationist antisemitism’ too simplistic?
• Cf Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men, who cites peer pressure, careerism, but also psychological need to conform to authority
Police Reserve Battalion 101, stationed in occupied Poland
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WWII Offensives
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The Home Front• Continued provision of leisure & entertainment• “A reluctance to ask the public to bear sacrifices” (Craig), initially
led to limited state interference in the economy & a failure of mobilize the full resources of the state
• Women not brought into the war effort on ideological grounds• Surveillance of the population – the security forces on the look-
out for signs of defeatism• Intensification of propaganda & cult of the Führer• Exploitation of occupied territories and forced labour
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The War Economy
• The Nazis less successful at mobilizing their economy than the Allies.
• Corruption, inefficiency and disorder marred their efforts.
• April 1942: Central Planning Board set up – attempts to rationalise the economy & make better use of resources & manpower.
• Within 6 months production had increased by 59%
• But too little too late – ideological concerns still led to wasting resources and manpower.
Albert Speer (1905-1981),Minister of Armaments, 1942-45
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Source: R. Overy, Russia’s War (1997) Source: R. Overy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich
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The ‘New Order’ in Europe• Germany exploited occupied
territories, expropriating assets, raw materials, art treasure, etc.
• Foreign workers used to solve the labour shortage – 7 million foreign workers in Germany, and a further 7 million in the occupied territories by 1944.
• Ambitious plans to colonize the east – ghettoization & ‘liquidation’ of Jews, Slavs etc. to make way for colonists.
Poster inviting Dutchmen to join the SS
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‘The Turning of the Tide’, 1942-43
• 7 Dec. 1941: Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour.
• 11 Dec. 1941: Hitler declared war on the USA, globalizing the conflict.
• 5 Sept. 1942: German forces reached the Russian city of Stalingrad.
• 23 Oct. – 5 Nov. 1942: Battle of El Alamein – the British 8th Army defeated the Germans in North Africa and pushed them into retreat.
• 8 Nov. 1942: Anglo-American forces invaded Morocco & Algeria, cutting off the German retreat and trapping them in Tunisia.
• July-August 1943: The British & Americans invade Sicily.• Sept. 1943: Anglo-American forces move onto the Italian
peninsula. Germany occupies Italy.
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Stalingrad: A 900-day Siege• Confrontation between the two
dictators over the ‘City of Stalin’ – neither would give in.
• Russian counter-attack in November 1942 encircled the German 6th Army.
• The Germans lost 750,000 men (killed or missing) and 91,000 were captured.
• A turning point in the war – after Stalingrad the Germans did nothing but retreat on the eastern front.
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Russian soldiers wave the ‘Hammer & Sickle’ flag from the roof of the Reichstag building, Berlin, May 1945
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Reasons for Defeat• The role of Hitler• Fighting on multiple fronts• The failure to fully mobilize the population and the
economy• Flexibility• Morale• Key texts:
– Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (2008)– Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (2006)