the holocaust: confronting the perpetrators...c. 600 seats in the reichstag, nazis, 1928, 12...

$: THE HOLOCAUST: CONFRONTING THE PERPETRATORS...C. 600 seats in the Reichstag, Nazis, 1928, 12 deputies, 1930, 107, J. 1932 \ 尩 at 37% of vote, largest party in Germany HOW/WHY HITLER?$
THE HOLOCAUST: CONFRONTING THE

PERPETRATORSA CHRISTOPHER WREN ASSOCIATION COURSE

June 4, 11, & 18

INSTRUCTOR: DON SCHILLING

INTRODUCTIONS, CONTEXTS & LEADING PERPETRATORS

• The Instructor

• The Course

• Defining Key Terms• Holocaust: “The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored

persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority” and onpolitical, ideological, and behavioral grounds.” (USHMM)

• Shoah: from the Hebrew sho’ah, meaning catastrophe• Final Solution: a Nazi term (Endloesung) referencing the ‘final

solution’ to the Jewish Question.• Genocide: term coined by Raphael Lemkin (1944) and defined as

the planned annihilation of a national, religious, or racial group. • Perpetrators: the people who played a specific role in the

formulation and/or implementation of Nazi racial policies, especially of anti-Jewish measures culminating in mass murder.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Instructor-My academic background and work on this topic Course: Reference various parts of the syllabus. Stress eagerness to hear from you both through your questions and your comments especially regarding Levi Highlight overview of course—topics and work for each session. Defining Terms: Holocaust comes from Greek translation of the Hebrew word olah meaning “a sacrificial offering burnt before the Lord.” Genocide Convention of 1948: defined it as “all acts committed with the intent to destroy all or part of national, religious, or racial group.” Listed a series of prohibited acts from killing to forcibly transferring children from one group to another Victims: who to include besides Jews? The handicapped, Roma and Sinti (gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet POW’s, Poles.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS• Who were the perpetrators?

• Were there significant differences among perpetrators?

• Were perpetrators identifiably different from persons in the general population?

• What functions did perpetrators perform and within what primary institutional contexts?

• How and why did perpetrators become active agents in the processes of genocide?

• How did perpetrators justify their actions?

• What can we learn about ourselves and human behavior from the study of perpetrators?

WHO WERE THE PERPETRATORS?A BRIEF ANSWER

• Adolf Hitler

• Members of the SS/Police empire under Heinrich Himmler

• German government civil servants at many levels including those in the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, justice, finance, armaments, health, railroads

• Members of the German Army (Wehrmacht)

• German physicians

• German businesses and their personnel

• Non-German government officials and volunteers

CONTEXTS: MODERN GERMANYKEY PERIODS AND TERMS

• Imperial Germany 1871-1918

• Weimar (Republican) Germany 1919-1932• 1919-1923: A period of great instability; the Republic barely

survives political, economic, and social challenges• 1924-1928: Stabilization of the Republic economically and

politically• 1929-1932: A period in acute crisis on all levels

• Germany 1933-1945 • National Socialist or Nazi Germany• The Third Reich

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Weimar politically controlled by coalition governments: core base Social Democrats, German Democratic Party, Catholic Center Party, joined at times by Conservative German National Peoples Party. German pop 66 million in 1933, Jewish pop. .75% c. 600,000; 87 million in 1939 after annexations.,

CONTEXTS: THE NAZI MOVEMENT

• How did the Nazis, initially an insignificant local party, become the most powerful movement opposing the Weimar Republic?

STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NAZI MOVEMENT

• 1. 1919-1923: from a small right wing discussion group in Munich to a major political force in Bavaria committed to the revolutionary overthrow of the Republic; phase culminated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Nov. 9-10, 1923.

• 2. 1925-1929: Party refounded, committed to national organization with sophisticated structure, to using electoral politics to undermine the Republic, but limited political pay-off.

• 3. 1930-1933: Party broke through to national prominence in 1930; built strength in the following two years as the Republic slipped into crisis; Hitler appointed German Chancellor, January 30, 1933.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

C. 600 seats in the Reichstag, Nazis, 1928, 12 deputies, 1930, 107, J. 1932 (230) at 37% of vote, largest party in Germany

HOW/WHY HITLER?

Presenter

Presentation Notes

No one who knew Hitler before his 30th birthday would have given him any chance of achieving this position of power.

His Parents

Alois Hitler(1837-1903)

Klara Hitler(1860-1907)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Austrian peasants, father a Custom’s official, Klara his 2nd cousin; she left family farm at 16 to become a maid in Alois’s household in Braunau am Inn, married Jan 7, 1885 (3rd wife and pregnant at the time). A.H. reported difficult relations with his father, especially over vocation; Mother doted on him given death of several other children.

WAS THE CHILD FATHER TO THE MAN?

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Born into a society where antisemitism was part of the fabric, but no indication from these early years that fanatically antisemitism defined his youth. Left school in 1905 without completing high school, lived a life of indolence in Linz drawing, painting, reading, writing poetry; going to the opera and theatre in the evenings.

HITLER’S VIENNA YEARS (1907-1913)& WW I BEGINS

Hitler’s paintings (prewar Vienna) Hitler in the crowd in Munich learns war has broken out, enlists in German army

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Goes to Vienna in early Sept. 1907 with hope of entering the Academy of Fine Arts but failed to gain admission (28 of 133 were admitted). Second effort also unsuccessful. Mother dies in Dec. 1907 from cancer; her doctor, Bloch, was Jewish? A factor in his development of rabid antisemitism? Rudolf Binnon, Hiller Among the Germans (1976) makes that argument, but contemporary evidence of Hitler expressing gratitude to Bloch for his kind treatment of his mother. Hitler himself in Mein Kampf says he became a committed antisemite in Vienna. He writes, “Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City [of Vienna], I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? Was my first thought. For to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously; but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form. Is this a German?” Stimulated by this experience began to buy antisemitic pamphlets And “Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Associates Jews with dirt, uncleanliness, and disease. Links them to every evil he sees, especially to Marxism. Is his account to be accepted? Certainly would have access to radical antisemitic literature; models like Karl Lueger, Chis-Soc Mayor; pan-Germanism, but no hard evidence to confirm. What do know is that in 1919 when he embarked on his political career he espoused an extreme racial antisemtism. Are some letters from WW I Outbreak of the war-Photo of Hitler in crowd. He wrote, “Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm I feel down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” Volunteered for war assigned to Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (List Regiment)..

HITLER IN THE GREAT WAR

• Served 4 years as runner carrying orders from command post to front lines; wounded several times and earned the Iron Cross 1st

Class

• Reached rank of corporal; a loner but also celebrated the comradeship of the trenches

• Germany’s surrender a bitter blow, determined to dedicate himself to politics and Germany’s rebirth

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Promoted to corporal in fall 1914 and never promoted again. Some evidence that antisemitism sharped during war. Saw Jews as shirking combat; behind Marxist anti-war agitation and part of fomenting revolution of late 1918 (stab in the back).

HITLER AS SPEAKER/ORGANIZER FOR THE NSDAP--EARLY 1920S IN MUNICH

FAILED REVOLUTION: THE BEER HALL PUTSCH, NOV. 9, 1923

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Highlight role of the French takeover of the Ruhr and hyperinflation. Mark- 4.2 marks to the $ in July 1914; 25.2 billion in October; 4.2 trillion marks to $ in mid Nov. 1923.

TRIAL FOR TREASON AND PRISON

Hitler and co-conspirators on trial for treason; Hitler gains national attention

Hitler sentenced to 5 years, served a year

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Writes Mein Kampf while in Landsberg. Look at the selection on race and discuss. What are the fundamental ideas contained this selection: 1) Nature’s Law-like with like, law of struggle (Social Dawinism); 2) Race creates culture: role of the Aryan, race mixing a source of decline; 3) the Jew—characteristics and nature of the threat (linked to Marxism).

REFOUNDING THE MOVEMENT (1925)

Joseph Goebbels

Herman Goering

Hitler, Maurice, Kriebel, Hess, Weber

WHY THE NAZIS SUCCESS?NATURE OF THE MOVEMENT

• The appeal of National Socialist ideology

• Strong, flexible organization headed by a charismatic leader

• Effectiveness of propaganda including projecting an image of youth, dynamism, and masculine power

• Tactics of violence and legality

• As a catchall party of protest, it created a mass base

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Look at handout on NS core ideas and values for first point

HITLER AS THE NEW CHANCELLOR,1/30/33

Hitler, Frank, and Goering-the only Nazis in the cabinet. Conservatives expect to dominate him.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

FRANK Minister of Justice, Hitler’s personal lawyer as well.

THE NAZI CONSOLIDATION OF POWER (GLEICHSCHALTUNG)

• Political: Centralization of state power; elimination of other parties/groups

• Social: coordination of all organizations at all levels

• Economic: abolish unions, work projects, rearmament

• Cultural: censoring/destroying the cultural production of“enemies”

• Containing the church & the army

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Brief comment on methods-use of the Reichstag fire to gain emergency powers which used to attack Communists; Enabling Act., intimidation (concentration camps)

THE COURSE OF NAZI ANTI-JEWISH POLICY

1933-1942

PERSECUTION OF GERMAN JEWS, 1933-39

• Over 400 laws, decrees, regulations restricting all aspects of the public and private lives of Jews

• Isolated socially; restricted access to public amenities

• Removed from the political life of the nation, lost citizenship

• Purged from civil service, military, educational institutions, normal professional practice

• Aryanization of Jewish business

• Removed from participation in German culture; erasure of past contributions

BOYCOTTS AND ISOLATION

Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, 4/1/1933

Anti-Jewish propaganda in rural areas in Germany. “The Devil is the father of the Jews.”

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Discuss Doc on Nazi instructions for the boycott.

THE REICH CITIZENSHIP LAW, 9/15/1935

• The Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is herewith promulgated.

• 2. (1) A citizen of the Reich is only that subject, who is of German- or kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve faithfully the German people and Reich. (2) The right to citizenship is acquired by the granting of Reich citizenship papers. (3) Only the citizen of the Reich enjoys full political rights in accordance with the provision of the laws.

• 4. (1) A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He has no right to vote in political affairs, he cannot occupy a public office.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Note that in 1936 Germany hosted the Olympics; down played persecution of the Jews; Germany “orderly, peaceful, dynamic.” International press “overplayed negatives”

NUREMBERG LAW FOR THE PROTECTION OF GERMAN BLOOD AND GERMAN HONOR

9/15/35

• Moved by the understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German Nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following Law, which is promulgated herewith:

• Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law. Extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood is forbidden.

• Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of German or related blood who are under 45 years old.

KRISTALLNACHT, 11/9-10/1938

Destruction of Jewish property and synagogues: the “Night of Broken Glass”.

• Vom Rath shot by H. Grynszpan, 11/7 d. 11/9

• 267 synagogues destroyed

• 7,500 shops looted, windows shattered

• 91 Jews killed, many others beaten, raped

• c. 30,000 males imprisoned in camps

• Jewish community fined $400 million; insurance coverage denied

Presenter

Presentation Notes

After 1 point about Vom Rath look at Orders for action on Kristallnacht, then follow up on other points and conclude with discussion follow-up meeting. What conclusions would we draw about Nazi policy at this stage.

ANTISEMITIC PROPAGANDA

From Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer

“LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”THE T4 “EUTHANASIA” PROGRAM

• Nature of and rational for the program

• Under administration of Hitler’s private chancellery office at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin

• Process at six killing sites

• Duration: October 1939 to August 1941

• Significance Hartheim Castle T4 Site

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Killing sites: Brandenburg (near Berlin), Grafeneck in Wurtemberg, Hartheim near Linz, Austria, Bernburg on the Saale in Prussia, Hadamar in Hesse. Surveys submitted to hospitals/institutions to gather infor on persons who would be “best served” by the program. Teams (composed of 3 medical experts) reviewed the records to determine which patients should be transferred to the special institutions.where patients gassed on arrival in gas chambers using pure carbon monoxide gas, then cremated, ashes in urns sent to families, with fictive death certificate. “Officially” ended in Aug. 1941 b/c secret could not be maintained. Public protest especially by various church bodies and individual clergymen; Count Clemens von Galen, bishop of Munster, public sermon Aug. 3, 1941 had most impact. Hitler ordered the program stopped, but only so it continue by other means—folded into the emerging Holocaust. Significance: over 70,000 killed; Hitler signed letter absolving those involved from legal punishment, T4 saw development of methods used in the Holocaust and key personnel from T4 program went on to play role on the Holocaust. Public outcry.

Philipp Bouhler Karl BrandtHeads Hitler’s Chancellery Hitler’s Personal Physician

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1983-094-01 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5483174

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Victor Brack, the active administrator under these two.

THE SS AND THE HOLOCAUST

CWA-The Holocaust: Confronting the PerpetratorsJune 11, 2018Don Schilling

WW II AND HOLOCAUST:AN OVERVIEW

Overview Map

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005143&MediaId=7827

Presenter

Presentation Notes

http://www.ushmm.org/learn/mapping-initiatives/holocaust-history-animated-maps

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005143&MediaId=7827

ASSESSING HITLER AS A PERPETRATOR

• Is there a case against judging Hitler as the leading perpetrator?

• What is the case for judging Hitler as the leading perpetrator?

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Case against: never visited a killing site, never found a signed order for the mass murder of the Jews and most historians believe there probably was none. Have been some writers who have argued the Holocaust was basically all the work of Himmler, the SS, other key subordinates with Hitler remaining essentially removed.. Structuralist/functionalist arguments with emphasis on ‘weak’ dictator over a poloycratic system. Case for: fully committed to his racial vision/antisemitism (a core belief along with securing German hegemony in Europe, reversing loss in Gt War and securing Lebensraum); not just a useful political tool. Intentionalist arguments connected to vision of a strong dictator. Structural/functionalist arguments emphasize that anti-Jewish policy evolved over time, adjusting to changing situations. See increasing radicalization of policy (with tactical adjustments when necessary). High point reached with attack on the USSR-a war v. Jewish Bolshevism. Key analytical approches: Ian Kershaw’s “working toward the Fuehrer”. Role of Hitler’s prophecy of Jan.30, 1939.

HITLER’S PROPHECYJanuary 30,1939*

• “In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it…. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevising of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” [*Hitler often deliberately misdated this statement to September 1, 1939.]

• This prophecy was consistently referenced by Hitler and his subordinates at key moments of radicalization of anti-Jewish actions leading to mass extermination between 1939-1945.

THE PRIMARY INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION: THE SS (SCHUTZSTAFFEL)

Heinrich Himmler 1900-1945

• Himmler’s background and personality

• The origins of SS

• The development of the SS/Police empire

• Its functions

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Himmler, 1900-1945. Heydrich, 1904-1942, naval intelligence in 1920s, joined SS 1931 to set up SD, also headed RSHA, major role in Jewish affairs.

RECRUITING THE RACIAL ELITE

THE CAMP (LAGER) SYSTEM: ORIGINS

DACHAU-THE MODEL CAMP

Presenter

Presentation Notes

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=7825

AUSCHWITZ IAnimated Map

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?MediaId=3371

Presenter

Presentation Notes



AUSCHWITZ II-BIRKENAU


Presenter

Presentation Notes


I.G. Farben Complex:Auschwitz III-Monowitz

Himmler’s VisitJuly 17-18, 1942

The Buna

TYPES OF CAMPS

• Concentration Camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrueck, Belsen)

• Extermination Camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Operation Reinhard Camps)

• Labor Camps (Monowitz, Plaszow, Mittelbau-Dora)

• Transit Camps (Westerbork, Drancy)

• Multipurpose Camps (Auschwitz, Majdanek)

• Ghetto Camp-Theresienstadt (Terezin)

• Sub-camps

ASSESSING HIMMLER AS A PERPETRATOR

• His October 4, 1943 speech

• His level of responsibility

• His motivations

REINHARD HEYDRICH1904-1942

• Heydrich’s background and personality

• Road to the SS

• Becoming “Heydrich”

• His roles• Heads SD/RSHA• Einsatzgruppen• The Wannsee Conference• Acting Reich Protector of

Bohemia & Moravia (9/41-5/42)

WANNSEE CONFERENCEJanuary 20, 1942

ASSESSING HEYDRICH AS A PERPETRATOR

• His level of responsibility

• His motivations

• Your judgments

ADOLF EICHMANN1906-1962

• Contrasting views of Eichmann

• Eichmann’s background and personality

• His road to the SS

• Becoming “Eichmann”

• Assessing Eichmann as a perpetrator

David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann

“Eichmann was dimly aware at the time that the mass murder of the Jews was a legal and moral outrage. After 1945 he certainly recognized that by the lights of the victorious Allies it was a crime. But he never fully repented. Eichmann had learned to hate and he taught himself to be a practitioner of genocide. The capacity to do what he did was not, however, inborn. Eichmann was not ‘hard-wired’ to become an accomplice to atrocities. The key to understanding Adolf Eichmann lies not in the man, but in the ideas that possessed him, the society in which they flowed freely, the political system that purveyed them, and the circumstances that made them acceptable. What Eichmann did was made possible by the dehumanization of Jews, the construction of the Jewish people as a racial-biological threat and political enemy, and the disabling of inhibitions against killing. Anyone subject to these processes might have behaved in the same way, be it in a totalitarian state or a democracy.” (pp, 367-8)

DISCUSSING ORDINARY MEN

• The Author

• The Challenges of Writing this Book

• The First Chapter

• Defining the Order Police and their Roles

• Profiling the Killers

QUESTIONS?COMMENTS?

Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans?

CWA-The Holocaust: Confronting the PerpetratorsJune 18, 2018Don Schilling

FRANZ STANGL1908-1971

• Stangl’s background and personality

• His road to Sobibor & Treblinka

TREBLINKA TRAIN STATION1942-43

This photo was found in an album belonging to camp commandant Kurt Franz. Poland, 1942-1943. (USHMM)

STANGL AT TREBLINKA

• His role as he understood it and its consequences

• Stangl’s self-understanding

• Assessing Stangl as a perpetrator

Photo from USHMM

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Note Sereny’s purpose—through her encounter with Stangl to determine: “whether evil is created by circumstances or by birth, and to what extent it is determined by the individual himself or by his environment.” (p.13)

FEMALE PERPETRATORSIrma Gresse (1923-1945)

Sensationalized Prototype

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Irma Ida Ilse Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was a female SS guard at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen.[1] Grese was convicted for crimes against humanity committed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and sentenced to death at the Belsen trial. Executed at 22 years of age, Grese was the youngest woman to die judicially under British law in the 20th century. Auschwitz inmates nicknamed her the "Hyena of Auschwitz" Survivors provided detailed testimony of murders, tortures and other cruelties, especially towards women, in which Grese engaged during her years at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. They testified to acts of sadism, beatings and arbitrary shootings of prisoners, savaging of prisoners by her trained and allegedly half-starved dogs, and her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. Grese was reported to have habitually worn heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol. Witnesses testified that she took pleasure in using physical and psychological methods to torture camp inmates and enjoyed shooting prisoners in cold blood.

FEMALE PERPETRATORS

• Her focus: German women in the East and their roles in the Holocaust as witnesses, accomplices, perpetrators

• Who went? Teachers, nurses, secretaries, & wives/consorts (especially of SS/police men)

• Why? Opportunity (better pay, positions), adventure, sense of duty, ideology

• How many? Several hundred thousand in total; killers in the thousands

WHY DID THEY KILL?• The problem of evidence

• Nurses: care-givers; killing handicapped an act of mercy, acting under doctors orders, duty

• “One of more difficult motives to document was paradoxically the most pervasive: anti-Semitism.” Yet “[w]hen Erna Petri, Johanna Altvater, and others callously killed Jewish children, they manifested a Nazi anti-Semitism so profound that it reduced the value of even an innocent child’s life to nothing.” Petri said, “I had been so conditioned to fascism and the racial laws, which established a view toward the Jewish people. As was told to me, I had to destroy the Jews. It was from this mindset that I came to commit such a brutal act.”

Members of the SS Helferinnen (female auxiliaries) arrive in Solahuette, the SS retreat near Auschwitz with Karl

Hoecker, Adjutant-7/22/44

http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1163637

"Some of the SS girls at Belsen"

http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1180773

DISCUSSING ORDINARY MEN

• Describe the Order Police and their roles

• How did the men respond to the killing action at Józefów? Did their responses change over time?

• What was the role and significance of the “Jew hunts”? Of “Harvest Festival?”

ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION:WHY DID 80% OF THE MEN RPB 101 KILL?

• Possible factors: • wartime brutalization (Dower)• segmentation and routinization of the task• special or self selection of the perpetrators (Adorno,

Steiner, Staub)• situational factors (Zimbardo)• careerism/self-interest• obedience to orders • deference to authority (Milgram)• ideological indoctrination/antisemitism• conformity/peer pressure

• Insights from the documents from Klee, ‘The Good Old Days’

AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION

• The Author

• His Approach

• His Interpretation

• Comparing Browning and Goldhagen

• Your judgments?

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS• Who were the perpetrators?

• Were there significant differences among perpetrators?

• Were perpetrators identifiably different from persons in the general population?

• What functions did perpetrators perform and within what primary institutional contexts?

• How and why did perpetrators become active agents in the processes of genocide?

• How did perpetrators justify their actions?

• What can we learn about ourselves and human behavior from the study of perpetrators?

FINAL QUESTIONS and COMMENTSThank you for a very

stimulating three weeks!

CONTEXTS: MODERN GERMANYKEY PERIODS AND TERMS

• Imperial Germany 1871-1918

• Weimar (Republican) Germany 1919-1932• 1919-1923: A period of great instability; the Republic barely

survives political, economic, and social challenges• 1924-1928: Stabilization of the Republic economically and

politically• 1929-1932: A period in acute crisis on all levels

• Germany 1933-1945 • National Socialist or Nazi Germany• The Third Reich

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Weimar politically controlled by coalition governments: core base Social Democrats, German Democratic Party, Catholic Center Party, joined at times by Conservative German National Peoples Party.

the holocaust: confronting the perpetrators...c. 600 seats in the reichstag, nazis, 1928, 12...

Documents