Chapter-2
Nazism and the Rise of Hitler
The Allied Powers -The UK, France, the then USSR and USA
Axis Powers- Germany, Italy and Japan.
Central powers- Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey (Ottoman Empire)
Genocidal war
1.
Killing of a selected racial group by
the other. Under the shadow of the Second World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war against Jews.
2.
The number of people killed included 6
million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians, 70,000 Germans
who were considered
mentally and physically disabled, besides
innumerable political opponents.
3.
Nazis devised an unprecedented means of
killing people, that is, by gassing them in various killing centers.
What was international Military
Tribunal?
1. After the Second World War the allied powers formed an
international military court (Tribunal) at Nuremberg to punish Nazi war
criminals.
2. The Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced only eleven leading
Nazis to death. Many others were imprisoned
for life.
Germany in the World War I
1.
Germany,
a powerful empire
fought the First
World War (1914-1918)
alongside the Austrian empire and
Turkey and against the Allies (England, France and Russia.)
2.
All
joined the war
enthusiastically hoping to
gain from a
quick victory.
3.
Germany made initial gains by occupying
France and Belgium.
4.
But USA’s entry changed the course of
the war.
5.
However the Allies won the War by defeating
Germany and the Central Powers in November 1918.
Birth of the Weimar Republic and its failure
1.
The defeat of Imperial Germany and the abdication
of the emperor gave an opportunity to parliamentary parties to recast
German polity. A National Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution
with a federal structure.
2.
The
Weimar constitution had some inherent
defects, which made
it unstable and vulnerable
to dictatorship. One defect was proportional
representation. This made achieving a majority by any one party a near
impossible task, which led to a rule by coalitions.
3.
Another defect was Article
48, which gave
the President the
powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights
and rule by decree.
4.
Within its short life, the Weimar
Republic saw twenty different cabinets (governments) lasting on
an average 239 days, and a liberal use of Article 48. People lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary
system, which seemed to offer no solutions except Hitler..
Versailles treaty- (A Pease treaty signed between
allied powers and Germany)
1. Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population
and 13 per cent of its territories.
2. 75 per cent of
its iron mines and 26 per cent of its coal mines were given to France, Poland, Denmark
and Lithuania.
3. The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to (not to
possess more than one lakh soldiers) weaken its power.
4. Germany was made responsible for the I World War and damages
the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting
to £6 billion.
5. The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich
Rhineland for much of the 1920s.
November criminals
Many Germans held the new
Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat in the war but the disgrace
at Versailles. Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists,
Catholics and Democrats became easy targets of attack in the conservative
nationalist circles. They were mockingly called as the November criminals.
The Effects of the World War I in Germany
a.
Psychological
Effect (social effect)
1.
The First World War left a deep imprint
on European society. Soldiers were placed above civilians.
2.
Politicians and media laid great stress
on the need for men to be aggressive, strong and masculine.
3.
Aggressive war propaganda and national
honour led to popular support for conservative dictatorships
b. Political Radicalism( Political effect)
1.
The birth of the Weimar Republic
coincided with the revolutionary uprising of the Spartacist League on the pattern of the
Revolution in Russia.
2.
The political atmosphere in Berlin was
charged with demands for Soviet-style government. But the uprising was suppressed with the
help of a
war veterans organisation
called Free Corps.
c.
Economic
crisis (Hyperinflation)
1.
Germany had fought the war largely on
loans and had to pay war reparations
in gold. This depleted gold
reserves.
2.
In 1923 Germany refused to pay so the French
occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr.
3.
Germany printed paper currency
recklessly. With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German
mark fell. In April the US dollar was equal to 24,000 marks, in August
4,621,000 marks and in December 98,860,000 marks.
4.
This crisis came to be
known as hyperinflation, a situation
when prices rise phenomenally high.
d. Economic Depression
and its impact on Germany
1.
The years between 1924 and 1928 USA gave
short-term loans to Germany. This support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929
in the USA.
2.
Fearing a fall in prices, people made
frantic efforts to sell their shares. On one single day, 24 October, 13 million
shares were sold. This was the start of the Great Economic Depression in the
USA.
3.
The German economy was the worst hit by the
economic crisis. By 1932, industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent, Workers
lost their jobs, and number of unemployed touched an unprecedented 6 million.
4.
Germans hung placards
around their necks saying, Willing to
do any work.
5.
Unemployed youths
took to criminal activities and
total despair became common place. The middle classes,
especially salaried employees
and pensioners, saw their
savings diminish when
the currency lost
its value.
e.
Proletarianisation
( Fear of becoming poor)
1.
The rich, small business men, middle
class and self-employed persons developed a fear that at any time they would
become poor and come to street in poverty.
2.
This group began to support Hitler and
his ideas.
Hitler’s Promises
1. Hitler promised to build Germany in to a strong
nation.
2. Hitler promised to undo the injustice of the
Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the German people.
3. He promised employment for those looking for work.
4. He promised to
secure future of the youth.
5. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and
resist all foreign conspiracies against Germany.
Hitler’s Destruction of Democracy
1. On 30
January 1933, President
Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship to Hitler. Having acquired
power, Hitler set out to dismantle the structures of
democratic rule.
2. A mysterious
fire that broke
out in the German
Parliament building and the
Fire Decree of
28 February 1933 was passed which indefinitely suspended
civic rights like freedom
of speech, press
and assembly.
3. Then he turned on his arch- enemies, the Communists,
most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the
newly established concentration camps. The repression of
the Communists was severe. The socialists, democrats and Catholics also were
arrested and killed.
4. On 3 March
1933, the famous
Enabling Act was
passed. This Act established
dictatorship in Germany.
It gave Hitler
all powers to control
over the economy,
media, army and judiciary.
5. Special surveillance and security forces were created
to control and order society in ways that the Nazis wanted. Apart from the already existing regular
police in green
uniform the Gestapo (secret state
police), the SS (the protection squads), criminal police and the Security
Service (SD). The police forces arrested, tortured and killed the
undesirables.
Reconstruction of German Economy by Hitler
1.
Hitler
assigned the responsibility of
economic recovery to the
economist Hjalmar Schacht who provided employment through a state-funded
work-creation programme. This project produced the
famous German superhighways
and the people’s car, the
Volkswagen.
2.
In
foreign policy also
Hitler acquired quick
successes. He reoccupied the
Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan,
One people, One empire, and One leader.
3.
He then went on to wrest German-speaking
Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled
up the entire country.
In all of
this he had
the unspoken support
of England and France.
4.
These quick successes at home and abroad
seemed to reverse the destiny of
the country. Hitler invested hugely in
rearmament as the
state still ran
on deficit financing.
5.
Hitler chose war as the way out of the
approaching economic crisis which led to II World War.
Germany in the World War II
1. In
September 1939, Germany
invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England. In September
1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed
between Germany, Italy
and Japan, strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power.
2. Hitler moved
to achieve his
long-term aim of
conquering Eastern Europe. He wanted to ensure food supplies and living
space for Germans.
3. He attacked the
Soviet Union in June 1941. In this historic blunder Hitler exposed the German
western front to British aerial bombing and the eastern front to the powerful
Soviet armies. The Soviet Red
Army inflicted a
crushing and humiliating
defeat on Germany at
Stalingrad.
4. Japan was expanding its power in the east. It had
occupied French Indo-China and was planning attacks on US naval bases in the
Pacific. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed the US
base at Pearl
Harbor, the US
entered the Second
World War.
5. The war ended in May 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and the
US dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Hitler’s worldview/ Nazi ideology/ Nazi worldview (peculiar features of Nazi World View)
1.
According to Nazi ideology there
was no equality
between people, but
only a racial hierarchy. In
this view blond,
blue-eyed, Nordic German
Aryans were at the
top, while Jews
were located at
the lowest rung.
They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the
Aryans.
2.
The
other ideology of
Hitler’s was Lebensraum,
or living space. He believed that new territories had to be acquired for
settlement. This would enhance the area of the mother country, and the material
resources to be used for Germany.
3.
Nazis wanted only a
society of pure and
healthy Nordic Aryans.
They alone were
considered desirable. Only they were seen as worthy of prospering and
multiplying against all others who were classed as undesirable.
4.
Under the Euthanasia Programme,
Helmuth’s father along with other Nazi officials had killed many Germans who
were considered mentally or physically
unfit.
5.
Many Gypsies
and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial inferiors. They were
widely persecuted. Even Russians
and Poles were considered subhuman and killed.
6.
Jews
remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. They
had been stereotyped
as killers of
Christ and usurers. They lived in separately marked areas called
ghettos. They were often persecuted through
periodic organised violence,
and expulsion from
the land.
The Racial Utopia and killing of polish Civilians
1.
Genocide and war became two sides of the
same coin in Germany. Occupied Poland was divided up. Much of north-western Poland
was annexed to Germany. Poles were forced to leave their homes and
properties behind to be occupied
by ethnic Germans
2.
Members of the Polish intelligentsia
were murdered in large numbers in order to keep the entire people
intellectually and spiritually
servile.
3.
Polish
children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their
mothers and examined by race
experts. If they
passed the race
tests they were raised in German
families and if not, they were deposited in orphanages where most perished.
Youth in Nazi Germany / What happened in schools under Nazism?
1.
All schools were cleansed and purified. This meant that teachers who were Jews or
seen as politically unreliable were dismissed.
2.
Children were first segregated Germans and
Jews could not
sit together or
play together. Subsequently, undesirable
children Jews, the physically
handicapped, Gypsies were thrown out of schools.
3.
Good German children were subjected to a
process of Nazi schooling, a
prolonged period of ideological training.
School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced
to justify Nazi ideas of race. Stereotypes about Jews were popularised even in
classes.
4.
Children were taught to be loyal and
submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler. Even the function of sports
was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among children. Hitler
believed that boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and masculine.
5.
Youth
organisations were made responsible for educating
German youth in the .the spirit of National Socialism.. Ten-year-olds had to enter
Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organization
called Hitler Youth, where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and
violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those
categorised as undesirable.
The Nazi
Cult of Motherhood
1
While
boys were taught to
be aggressive, masculine
and steel hearted,
girls were told
that they had to become good
mothers and rear
pure-blooded Aryan children. Girls
had to maintain
the purity of
the race, distance themselves from
Jews, look after
the home, and
teach their children Nazi
values
2
In Nazi Germany all mothers were not
treated equally. Women who bore
racially undesirable children
were punished and those who
produced racially desirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment
in hospitals and concessions
in shops , theatre tickets and railway fares.
3
To encourage women to produce
many children, Honour Crosses were awarded. A bronze
cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more.
4
All Aryan women who deviated from the
prescribed code of conduct were publicly condemned, and
severely punished. Those who maintained contact
with Jews, Poles
and Russians were paraded through the town with shaved
heads and blackened faces.
The Art of Propaganda
(why was Nazi propaganda effective in creating a hatred for Jews)
1.
The Nazi regime used language and
media with care, and often to great effect. Nazis never used the words kill
or murder in their official communications. Mass killings were termed special
treatment, final solution, euthanasia, selection and disinfections.
2.
Media was
carefully used to win support
for the regime
and popularise its worldview.
Nazi ideas were
spread through visual images, films, radio, posters, catchy
slogans and leaflets.
3.
In posters, groups identified as the enemies
of Germans were stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as evil. Socialists
and liberals were represented as weak
and degenerate. They were attacked as malicious foreign agents.
4.
Orthodox Jews were shown with flowing
beards wearing kaftans. They were referred to as vermin, rats and pests. Their
movements were compared to those of rodents.
How did the common people react to
Nazism?
1.
Many people saw the
world through Nazi
eyes, and spoke
their mind in Nazi
language. They felt
hatred and anger
surge inside them
when they saw someone who looked like a Jew.
2.
They marked the houses of Jews and
reported suspicious neighbours. They believed that Nazism would
bring prosperity and improve
general well-being.
3.
But not every German was a Nazi. Many
organised active resistance to Nazism, braving police repression and death. The
large majority of Germans, however, were passive onlookers and apathetic
witnesses. They were too scared to act, to differ, to protest.
What did Jews feel in Nazi Germany?
1.
Charlotte Beradt secretly recorded jew’s
dreams in her diary and later published them in a highly disconcerting book
called the Third Reich of Dreams.
2.
She describes how Jews themselves began
believing in the Nazi stereotypes about them. They dreamt of their hooked
noses, black hair and eyes, Jewish looks
and body movements.
3.
The stereotypical images publicised in
the Nazi press them even in their dreams.
Jews died many deaths even before they reached the gas
chamber.
Holocaust
1.
Jews wanted the world to remember the
atrocities and sufferings they had endured during the Nazi killing operations.
They collected and preserved documents wrote diaries, kept notebooks, and
created archives which are called the Holocaust.
2.
On the other hand when the war seemed
lost, the Nazi leadership distributed petrol to its functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.
3.
The history and the memory of the
Holocaust live on in memoirs, fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials
and museums in
many parts of the world today. These are a tribute to those who resisted
Nazism and a warning to those who watched the Nazi crimes in silence.
Assignment
1.
What is Genocidal
war?
2.
What was international Military
Tribunal?
3.
What was Weimar Republic and what were the defects of
its constitution?
4. Explain the conditions of Versailles treaty?
5.
Who were called as November criminals?
6.
What were the Effects
of the World War I in Germany?
7.
Explain Hitler’s Promises
8.
How did Hitler Destroyed Democracy in Germany?
9. How did Hitler
Reconstruct German Economy?
10. Explain the peculiar features of Nazi World View.
11. What happened to schools under Nazism in Germany?
12.
Explain the Nazi
Cult of Motherhood.
13.
Why was Nazi propaganda so effective in
creating a hatred for Jews?
14. How did the common people react to Nazism?
15. What did Jews feel in Nazi Germany?
16.
What is Holocaust?
