Nazi Ideology and the Holocaust

Text pages 766-771; 824-829

SSWH18 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the global political,

economic, and social impact of World War II.b. Identify Nazi ideology, policies, and

consequences that led to the Holocaust.

Hitler and His Views • Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on

April 20, 1889 • At the core of Hitler’s ideas was

racism, especially anti-Semitism• An extreme nationalist who

understood how political parties could use propaganda & terror effectively

• Served for four years during WWI in Germany

• 1919 joined the German Workers Party

Hitler and His Views Continued…• By 1921 he had taken control of the party

which had been renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi for short

• Party militia known as SA, Storm Troops, or Brown shirts

• After an uprising called the Beer Hall Putsch, he was sentenced to prison

• While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf or My Struggle, an account of his movement and basic ideas

• Extreme German nationalism, strong anti-Semitism and anticommunism are linked together by a Social Darwinian theory of struggle

Rise of Nazism

• While in prison, Hitler realized the Nazis would have to gain power through legal means

• By 1932, Nazi Party had 800,000 members and was the largest party in the German Parliament

• Why was the Nazi Party so popular?– Economic factors- 6 million unemployed in

1932– Hitler promised to create a new Germany by

appealing to national pride and honor– People viewed him as their helper, savior,

deliverer

Victory of Nazism • After 1930, German government ruled by

decree with support of President Hindenburg• 1933, President Hindenburg made Hitler

chancellor • March 23, 1933, Enabling Act was passed

allowing the government to ignore the constitution for four years

• In effect making Hitler a dictator• When Hindenburg died in 1934, office of the

President was abolished • Hitler became sole ruler- public officials and

soldiers were required to take a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler as their Fuhrer or Leader

Timeline for Nazi Extermination Camps

• (Kulmhof) Chelmno • December 7, 1941 • Gas Vans Killed 320,000

• Auschwitz- Birkenau • September, 1941• Zyklon-B Killed 1,200,000

• *Belzek • March 17, 1942• Carbon Monoxide gas • Killed 600,000

• *Sobibor • March, 1942• Carbon Monoxide gas

• Killed 250,000• *Treblinka • July 23, 1942• Carbon Monoxide gas • Killed 700,000

• Majdanek • October, 1942• Carbon Monoxide and Zyklon

B gas • Killed 1,380,000

• Stutthof • June, 1944 • Zyklon-B gas • Killed 65,000

The Nazi State, 1933-1939• Hitler wanted to develop a totalitarian

state• Larger goal—development of an Aryan

racial state• Aryan was a state linguists used to

identify people speaking Indo-European languages

• Nazi’s misused terms and identified the Aryans with the Ancient Greeks and Romans and 20th Century Germans and Scandinavians

• Goal to create a Third Reich, the empire of Nazi Germany

The New Order in Europe• In 1942, the Nazi regime stretched

across continental Europe from the English channel in the west to the outskirts of Moscow in the east

• Nazi-occupied Europe was largely organized in two ways:–Some areas were directly annexed

by Germany and made into German provinces

–Most was run by German military or civilian officials with help from local collaborators

Resettlement in the East • Nazi administration in the conquered lands to

the east was especially ruthless.

• They were populated, Nazis thought, by racially inferior Slavic peoples.

• Hitler’s plans for an Aryan racial empire were so important that he and the Nazis began to put their racial program into effect soon after the conquest of Poland.

• Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, was put in charge of German resettlement plans in the east. Himmler’s plan was to move the Slavic peoples out and replace them with Germans.

Resettlement in the East Continued…

• Slavic peoples included Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Ukrainian.

• One million Poles were uprooted and moved to southern Poland.

• By 1942, 2 million ethnic Germans had been brought in to settle Poland.

• Himmler told a gathering of SS officers that 30 million Slavs might die in order to achieve German plans in the east.

Slave Labor in Germany

• In 1942, a special office was set up to recruit labor for German farms & industries.

• By 1942, 7 million European workers were laboring in Germany.

• By summer of 1944, seven million European workers were forced to labor for the Nazis in their own countries.

The Holocaust • No aspect of the Nazi New Order was more terrifying

than the deliberate attempt to exterminate the Jews. • Racial struggle was a key element in Hitler’s world of

ideas. • On one side were the Aryans; on the other were the

Jews, parasites in Hitler’s view, who were trying to destroy the Aryans.

• Himmler and the SS closely shared Hitler’s racial ideas. • The SS was given responsibility for what the Nazi’s

called their Final Solution to the Jewish problem. The Final Solution was genocide—physical extermination—of the Jewish people.

• Reinhad Heydrich, head of the SS’s Security Service, was given the task of administering the Final Solution.

The Holocaust Continued…

• After the defeat of Poland, he ordered forces to found up all Polish Jews and put them in ghettos set up in a number of Polish cities.

• Conditions in the ghettos were horrible—unsanitary housing & minimal amounts of food.

• June 1941, the forces were given the new job of acting as mobile killing units.

• SS death squads followed the regular army’s advance in the Soviet Union.

• Their job was to round up Jews, execute them, and bury them in mass graves.

• The graves were often giant pits dug by the victims themselves before they were shot.

The Death Camps• Probably one million Jews were killed by the death

squads• As appalling as that sounds, it was too slow by

Nazi standards. • They decided to build death camps to kill the

European Jewish population more efficiently. • Beginning in 1942, Jews from countries occupied

by German were rounded up, packed like cattle into freight trains, and shipped to Poland.

• Six extermination centers were built for this purpose; the largest was Auschwitz.

• About 30% of the arrivals to Auschwitz were sent to a labor camp, where they were starved or worked to death.

• The remainder were sent to the gas chambers.

The Death Camps Continued…

• Some inmates were subjected to cruel and painful “medical” experiments.

• By the spring of 1942, the death camps were in full operation.

• First priority was given to the elimination of the ghettos in Poland.

• By the summer of 1942, Jews were being stripped from France, Belgium, & Holland.

• Even as the Allies were winning the war in 1944, Jews were being shipped from Greece & Hungary.

• Despite desperate military needs, even late in the war when Germany faced utter defeat, the Final Solution had priority in using railroad cars.

The Death Toll • Germans killed between five and six million Jews, over

three million in death camps. • Virtually 90% of the Jewish population of Poland, the

Baltic countries, and Germany were killed. • The Nazi’s were also responsible for the deliberate death

by shooting, starvation, or overwork of at least 9 to 10 million other people.

• The Nazi’s considered the Roma (gypsies) to be an alien race. They were rounded up for mass killing. About 40% of Europe’s one million Romas were killed in the death camps.

• The leading citizens of the Slavic peoples—clergy, intellectuals, civil leaders, judges, and lawyers were killed.

• Probably an additional 4 million Poles, Ukrainians, and Belarusians lost their lives as slave laborers for Nazi Germany.

• Finally, probably at least 3-4 million Soviet POW’s were killed in captivity.

• This mass slaughter of European civilians is known as the Holocaust.

• Jews in and out of the camps tried to resist the Nazis.

• Some were aided by friends and soldiers, hidden in villages or smuggled into safe areas. Foreign diplomats would issue exit visas in an effort to help.

• The nation of Denmark saved almost its entire Jewish population.

• Some people did not believe the accounts of the death camps due to exaggeration as propaganda during WWI.

• The Allies were aware, but chose to focus on the ending of the war. Not until after the war did they learn the full extent of the horror and inhumanity of the Holocaust.

Children in the War • Young people of all ages were victims of World

War II. • Jewish women and children were the first to be

sent to the gas chambers because they were unable to work.

• Young Jewish males soon learned to look as adult as possible in order to survive.

• Altogether, 1.2 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.

• Many children were evacuated from cities during the war to avoid the bombing.

• The Germans created about 9000 camps for children in the countryside; Japan evacuated 15000 children from Hiroshima before its destruction.

• The British moved about 6 million children and their mothers in 1939.

Children of the War… • Children evacuated to the countryside did not

always see their parents again. • In 1945, there were perhaps 13 million

orphaned children in Europe. • All secondary schools in German occupied

Eastern Europe were closed and their supplies destroyed.

• In the last years of the war, children could even be found on the war front.

• In the Soviet Union, children as young as 13 or 14 spied on German positions and worked with the resistance movement.

• Some were even given decorations for killing the enemy.

• http://shamash.org/holocaust/photos/• http://www.auschwitz.dk/index.htm• http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holoc

amp.html• http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/• http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/

gallery/L1945B.htm

PHOTOS TAKEN AT DACHAU CONCENTRATION

CAMP IN FALL 2008

OTHER CONCENTRATION CAMP PHOTOS