Transcript History Presentation - The-Historic

Socio-economic Conditions Amongst Civilians
in Nazi Germany
Bones of Anti-Nazi German
Women in the crematorium in a
German Concentration Camp
Socio-economic Conditions Amongst Civilians
in Nazi-Soviet Occupied Poland
A Way of Execution: Dead
Poles hang while the Nazi
soldiers smile for a picture.
♥
1940: Life in Germany was unchanged
 German victories in France (1940) and Russia (1941) ensured a steady supply of goods from
conquered territories to Germany
 Rationing was carried out but there was still a plentiful supply of food and clothes
 Schools, work and annual holidays were not affected and businesses carried on as usual
 Youths indoctrinated with Nazi ideas in schools
 German women with husbands at war lived comfortably off state allowances
 Rounding up and annihilation of Jews, communists, homosexuals etc.

1941: The turning point
 Women made to work for 10-12 hours in factories manufacturing war equipment
 Children from the Hitler youth operated anti-aircraft guns and searchlight batteries
 Winter: Distribution of potatoes disrupted as there was a shortage of farmworkers
 Berlin-based American journalist, Howard K. Smith: “People’s
faces are pale, unhealthily white as flour, except for the red rings
around their eyes.”
 Wounded German soldiers from Moscow brought into Berlin
 Civilian supply of new clothing and footwear went to armed forces

1942 to 1944: Bombs over Berlin
 22 November 1943: 700 bombers dropped 2 500 tonnes of bombs on the city
  2 000 people were killed and another 20 000 bombed out of their homes

20 April to 2 May 1945: Battle of Berlin by the Soviet Union
 Over 30 000 tonnes of bombs dropped on the city
 Nearly 1 million women and children evacuated; schoolboys helped operate anti-aircraft guns
and searchlight batteries; women who remained recruited into fire-fighting service
 Men between 16 and 60 had to defend Berlin
 Gas, electricity, sanitation and public transport collapsed, street hydrants were the only source
of water
 Berliners hid in cellars in fear
 Many Germans committed suicide so as not to be captured by the Russians
 Vengeful Soviet troops looted, raped an estimated 100 000 women and murdered civilians
 Food shortages led to widespread famine
 Buildings destroyed, streets shattered
 However, people still went to work, 12 000 law officers remained on duty, mail still delivered,
daily newspapers were published, telephones still worked, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
carried on concerts, part of the Berlin Zoo still opened
 An estimated 200 000 Soviet and German soldiers and civilians perished

When WW2 first broke out, Germany’s economy was not greatly
affected
 Germany’s early preparations for the war and a large portion of the German economy already
directed to military production
 No direct increase in taxes to fund war
 Economy sustained by the exploitation of conquered territories and peoples
 conquered territories forced to accept arbitrary low exchange rates on their currency and sell raw materials
and agricultural products at low prices

1942: German economy began to suffer
 Military spending grew rapidly
 Economic resources more dedicated to fund a losing war
 Civilian factories converted to military use

1944
 Entire German economy driven to military production
 Allied bombing destroyed many factories and buildings, disrupting production

1945: Collapse of German economy
 With the loss of war, the country entered the period known as Stunde Null (Zero Hour) and the
German economy was left in ruins
 Inflation raged

1939







Damaged buildings left un-repaired to remind Poles of their defeat
Public buildings draped with flags displaying the Nazi symbol
Polish street names were replaced by German street names
Polish-language newspapers banned
Poles of German descent forced to accept German nationality or face death penalty
Polish institutions ordered to shut down
Poles could only work up to the level of factory foreman and the others were forced to become slaves,
providing cheap labour
 Pole leaders executed or sent to concentration camps
 Food supply controlled by the Germans and the Poles were left to starve
 Ration allowances provided very little food and disease was rife
 To survive, Poles grew vegetable gardens
 Lack of fuel, overcrowded housing, shortages of soap, clean linen,
drugs and proper medical facilities
 There was widespread poverty and many Poles depended on
public relief measures while wealthier Poles bought from the
flourishing black market

1940: Poor living conditions
 Warsaw ghetto built to confine Jews and sealed off from the rest of the city with a 3m high, 18km long wall
surrounding it
 Access by 22 gates, which were heavily guarded by the Nazis
 Mass deportations of Jews, gypsies and Poles to the General Government area of Poland begins
 As death camps were not built yet, they were sent to overcrowded ghettos
 More than 430 000 people were packed in the ghetto and this resulted in starvation and disease
 Over 200 000 people had no food or shelter and they sold their clothes and wore rags
 People lived and died on the streets; corpses lay in the open,
covered with only sheets of newspaper
 High mortality rate

1941: Measures enforced with policy of terror
 Street round-ups and mass public executions, by hanging
or shooting were common
 Daily executions claimed the lives of up to 300 people a month
 Death camps set up: Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Majdanek, Sobibór, Treblinka, Warschau
“Two little boys are begging in the street next to our gate. I see them every time I go out. . .Their heads are shaven, clothes in rags, their
frightfully emaciated, tiny faces bring into minds birds rather than human beings. Their huge black eyes, though, are human; so full of
sadness. . .The little one just sits on the pavement, the bigger one just stands there with his claw of a hand stretched out. ”
Heinrich Himmler oversaw the
death and concentration
camps and Einsatzgruppen.
He coordinated millions of
killings of Jews, Poles
communists etc.

1942: Deportation
 About 265 000 men, women and children were deported to the Treblinka death camp
 Abduction of children who might be ‘racially valuable’ sent to Germany for ‘Germanisation’

1943: Jewish Fighting Organisation formed
 Resistance groups to fight Germans and underground resistance movement formed
 Published 100 secret newspapers in Warsaw

1944: Soviet domination of Poland
 ‘Sovietisation’





State-owned Polish property confiscated and nationalised
Forced collectivisation implemented
Schools reopened but restarted as Soviet institutions
Media controlled by Moscow
Attempt to remove traces of Polish History
 Soviet radio stations made Polish-language broadcasts
calling for an uprising against Germans
 Children fought, young girls served as messengers
 Germans took revenge and shot all Poles in sight,
poured petrol over them and set them ablaze
 Rule of terror--massacres by NKVD
 Death toll of Poles at 215 000; cities left in ruins

Polish currency
 Currency withdrawn from circulation without exchange to newly-introduced rouble
 Life savings lost overnight
 Money exchange limited per individual, according to status

‘Germanisation’ and ‘Sovietisation’ of Polish economy
 Assimilate the economy into the German Reich and Soviet Union

Industrial production hard-hit
 Major cities destroyed

Destruction of important infrastructure

 Trade disrupted
 Economically isolated
Treasury exhausted
50 złotych note in 1940

Nazi Germany
 Germans initially spared from hardships of
war
 Women and children played a huge part in
the war
 People lived off state allowance
 Rationing, but still had plenty of food
 No ghettos
•
Nazi-Soviet Occupied Poland




Poles immediately suffered hardships of war
Children, but little women, involved in war
People depended on public relief measures
Rationing, but food was too little
•
some sense of normality
 War crimes rife during Battle of Berlin
 Extermination campaigns of some groups of
people
 Food shortages
 Little disruption of trade but disruption of
production
 Very high government spending to fund war
 No impact on currency
People starved
 Ghettos constructed
•
relatively comfortable standards of living
 Major cities were damaged but continued to
function
•










poor living conditions and life became a matter of
day-to-day survival
Cities stopped functioning immediately
War crimes, disease and poverty rife
People constantly lived in fear
Resistance groups established
Extermination campaigns of some groups of
people but anyone could be a target
Food and housing shortages and lack of proper
services and sanitation
Trade and production greatly affected
Relatively lower government spending than
Nazi Germany
Large impact on currency
•
Polish currency had little value
http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/Economics/Economic_History/Poland/eco
hist_pol_postwar_lg.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939-1945)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Polish_Republic#World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin#Aftermath
Pictures courtesy of www.google.com
Thank you for your attention!
DONE BY:
Adeline Seah
Elizabeth Low
Goh LiTing
Comments





Good stuff girls! Definitely very informative.
What you could have done would be to provide an
essential understanding/theme/statement that will help
to frame all these info.
What is the key take away that you want your classmates
to remember?
E.g. Although civilians do bear some of the physical brunt
of war, the ones who bear the most are the ones whose
country have been occupied by enemy forces; Because
they not only have to put up with physical deprivation,
but also emotional trauma and psychological suffering
inflicted on them by the atrocities of the invaders.
Biblio: Use the correct format. (Title of page, URL, date of
access.)