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Rise of the Nazi Party
Few would have thought that the Nazi Party, starting as a gang of unemployed soldiers in 1919, would become the legal government of Germany by 1933. In fourteen years, a once obscure corporal, Adolf Hitler , would become the Chancellor of Germany. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
World War I ended in 1918 with a grisly total of 37 million casualties, including 9 million dead combatants. German propaganda had not prepared the nation for defeat, resulting in a sense of injured German national pride. Those military and political leaders who were responsible claimed that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by its leftwing politicians, Communists, and Jews. When a new government, the Weimar Republic. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
In the Treaty of Versailles , Germany was disarmed and forced to pay reparations to France and Britain for the huge costs of the war. Hitler condemned the Jews, exploiting antisemitic feelings that had prevailed in Europe for centuries.By the end of 1920, the Nazi Party had about 3,000 members. A year later Hitler became its official leader, or Führer. -
Rescue and Liberation
Better known rescuers include Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who led the effort that saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Another rescuer, Oscar Schindler, saved over 1,000 Polish Jews from their deaths. -
Camps
In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union.The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional anguish. -
Resistance
April 19, 1943 marked the beginning of an armed revolt by a courageous and determined group of Warsaw ghetto dwellers. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first large uprising by an urban population in German-occupied territory. The following month, 600 Jewish and Russian prisoners attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. About 60 survived and joined the Soviet partisans. An embarrassed Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers closed down and the camp leveled. -
Resistance
On October 7, the sonderkommando (prisoners forced to handle the bodies of gas chamber victims) succeeded in blowing up one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz . All of the saboteurs were captured and killed. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
Adolf Hitler's attempt at an armed overthrow of local authorities in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch , failed miserably. The Nazi Party seemed doomed to fail and its leaders, including Hitler, were subsequently jailed and charged with high treason.The right-wing presiding judges sympathized with Hitler and sentenced him to only five years in prison, with eligibility for early parole. Hitler was released from prison after one year. Other Nazi leaders were given light sentences also. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
While in prison, Hitler wrote volume one of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) , which was published in 1925. This work detailed Hitler's radical ideas of German nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.After Hitler was released from prison, he formally resurrected the Nazi Party. Hitler began rebuilding and reorganizing the Party, waiting for an opportune time to gain political power in Germany. -
The rise of the Nazi Party
Heinrich Brüning was the first chancellor under the new presidential system. He was unable to unify the government, and in September 1930, there were new elections. The Nazi Party won an important victory, capturing 18.3% of the vote to make it the second largest party in the Reichstag. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
Hindenburg's term as president was ending in the spring of 1932. At age 84, he was reluctant to run again, but knew that if he didn't, Hitler would win. Hindenburg won the election, but Hitler received 37% of the vote. In the election of July 1932, the Nazi Party won 37% of the Reichstag seats, thanks to a massive propaganda campaign. For the next six months, the most powerful German leaders were embroiled in a series of desperate political maneuverings. -
Rise of the Nazi Party
The seeds of the Holocaust began with the evolution of Adolf Hitler's maniacal dreams based on his interpretation of Germanic history, the quest for the "Aryan ideal", and a lust for power. -
Nazification
President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor. -
Nazification
Reichstag building went up in flames. Nazis immediately claimed that this was the beginning of a Communist revolution. This fact leads many historians to believe that Nazis actually set, or help set the fire. Others believe that a deranged Dutch Communist set the fire. -
Nazification
By 1934, one year after he rose to Chancellorship, Hitler began to implement the pieces of his strategy to take over Europe, expand his race, and eradicate the Jewish population; Man, woman and child alike. -
The Rise of the Nazi Party
Along the way, countless millions of others, Gypsies, sympathisers, American, British, Free French and Russian troops, and scores of other races and nationalities also paid the price of standing in the way of Hitler's ambitions with their lives. -
Nazification
Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically.More than 120 laws, decrees, and ordinances were enacted after the Nuremburg Laws and before the outbreak of World War II, further eroding the rights of German Jews. -
Nazification
In Germany, open antisemitism became increasingly accepted, climaxing in the "Night of Broken Glass".More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be tormented, many for months. Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and expelled all Jewish pupils from public schools. -
The Ghetto
On November 23, 1939 General Governor Hans Frank issued an ordinance that Jews ten years of age and older living in the General Government had to wear the Star of David on armbands or pinned to the front of shirt or back. -
The Ghetto
In total, the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945. There was no uniformity to these ghettos. The ghettos in small towns were generally not sealed off, which was often a temporary measure used until the residents could be sent to bigger ghettos. -
Camps
In January 1942, SS official Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting of Nazi government officials to present the Final Solution. At this meeting, known as the Wannsee Conference , the Nazi officials agreed to SS plans for the transport and destruction of all 11 million Jews of Europe. The Nazis would use the latest in twentieth century technology, cost efficient engineering and mass production techniques for the purpose of killing off the Jews, Gypsies...etc. -
Rescue and Liberation
Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others from the Nazi death sentence did so at great risk to their own safety. Anyone found harboring a Jew, for example, was shot or publicly hanged as a warning to others. -
Aftermath
Beginning in the summer of 1945, a series of high-level visitors examined the DP camps . encies of the United Nations and of Jews from Palestine, the United States, and Britain became involved with the camps. They provided vocational and agricultural education, and financial, legal, and psychological assistance. Several newspapers were published in the camps, keeping communication open between the DPs and the rest of the world. -
Death March from Auswitch camp system begins
The SS begins evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners are forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands are killed in the days before the death march. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shoot anyone who falls behind or cannot continue. More than 15,000 die during the death marches from Auschwitz. -
Rescue and Liberation
As Allied troops entered Nazi territories, the final rescue and liberation Began. Allied troops who stumbled upon the concentration camps were shocked at what they found. Large ditches filled with bodies, rooms of baby shoes, and gas chambers with fingernail marks on the walls all testified to Nazi brutality. General Eisenhower insisted on photographing and documenting the horror so that future generations would not ignore history and repeat its mistakes. -
Aftermath
In addition to the well-known Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, there were Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings held between December 1946, and April 1949, which tried 177 persons. Individual countries also prosecuted war criminals in national courts of law. The British held trials of the commandant and staff of the Bergen-Belsen camp, those responsible for forced labor, and the owners and executives of the manufacturer of Zyklon B , among others. -
Aftermath
It became increasing clear that the problem of approximately one million displaced people, about 80% Christian and 20% Jewish, would not be resolved easily. In 1947, a series of bills was introduced in the U.S. Congress to relax immigration quotas, but none passed. In the meantime, the British turned to the United Nations, hoping that an international organization could resolve this thorny issue. -
Aftermath
On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent State of Israel as theirs, and the British withdrew from Palestine. The next day, neighboring Arab nations attacked Israel. In this same month, the U.S. legislature passed the Displaced Persons' Act of 1948. However, the law had strong antisemitic elements, limiting the number of Jewish displaced persons who could emigrate to the United States. Truman reluctantly signed it. Two years later, in June 1950, the antisemitic provisions were finaly
