Transcript The Holocaust and World War II

The Holocaust
Historical Context
World War II
 Germany defeated in WWI.
 Economic collapse. Mass inflation.
 Versailles treaty sought to punish Germany for
aggressions. Demilitarization. Japan, Italy not
included in talks. German moral LOW.
 Hitler sought renewed vision of Germany.
Stacks of German Marks, which were practically worthless due to
super inflation
World War II, Cont’d.
• Promoted Lebensraum –vision of vast new
empire in Eastern Europe.
• 1939: Germany invades Poland. Quick loss.
• Britain and France respond by declaring war.
• Invades Norway and Denmark; neutral
countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands.
WW II, Cont’d.
•
•
•
•
•
Invades France, Italy, Britain.
Britain repels attack (1940).
Germans conquer Baltic region (Greece) 1941.
Germany breaks Soviet non-aggression pact.
December 7, 1941 – Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
–US immediately declares war on Japan.
• Germany and Italy declare war on US.
Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941
WW II Cont’d.
• Allied and Axis powers are at war.
• Next 3 years: systematic bombing by Allies of
German industrial plants.
• Germany invades parts of N. Africa.
• D-Day: Massive military operation. (June 6,
1944)
▫ 150,000 soldiers land in France.
• 55,000,000 deaths total –greatest loss of human
life in history.
(World War II In Europe)
U.S. troops wade ashore at Normandy on D-Day, the beginning of the
Allied invasion of France to establish a second front against German
forces in Europe. Normandy, France, June 6, 1944.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party
 Appointed Chancellor of Germany Jan. 30, 1933.
 Extremely charismatic.
◦ Articulated vision of a better Germany.
 Aligned himself w/ Nazi (National Socialist)
goals.
 Reichstag decree suspended basic civil rights of
German citizens after the suspicious Reichstag
fire.
 Became police state. Totalitarian –Top down…
 Persecution of minority groups.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party,
Cont’d.
 Used propaganda to spread goals of regime.
 Nazi party ideology guided by racist belief that
Germans were biologically “superior”.
 “Racially pure” German women were told to breed.
 Peacetime policy was intended to prepare for war.
 Gestapo used to quell dissent.
(Introduction to the Holocaust)
The Eternal Jew: Propaganda
portrayed Jews as undesirable, evil,
suspicious.
German children read an anti-Jewish propaganda book titled DER
GIFTPILZ ( "The Poisonous Mushroom"). The girl on the left holds a
companion volume, the translated title of which is "Trust No Fox."
Germany, ca. 1938.
The Holocaust: A Definition
• The Holocaust was the “systematic,
bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and
murder of approximately six million Jews by the
Nazi regime and its collaborators.”
• A word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by
fire”
(INTRODUCTION TO THE HOLOCAUST)
Nuremburg Laws
• Anti-Jewish legislation.
• As early as 1920, the Nazi party publicly declares
their intent to separate Jews from the “Aryan”
population.
• From 1933-1940, over 400 decrees and
regulations restricted Jews from normalized
public life in Germany.
• Removed Jews from state government.
• Placed severe limitations on doctors, lawyers,
notaries, tax consultants and the like.
Nuremberg Laws, Cont’d.
• 1935: Jews prevented from Reich citizenship.
• Prevented from having sexual relations w/
Germans.
• No right to vote; could not hold public office.
• “Jew” defined as someone with 3 or 4 Jewish
grandparents.
• Led to a new wave of Anti-Semitism.
(ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION IN PREWAR
GERMANY)
Sign excluding Jews from public
places.
Pogroms
 Means “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently”.
 Anti-Semitism throughout Europe and Russia
had occurred for centuries.
◦ Raped, murdered Jewish victims.
◦ Destroyed property.
 Tens of thousands killed between 1918-1920.
 Even though Hitler denounced “disorder”
against population, acts still continued.
 Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht
•
•
•
•
“The Night of Broken Glass”
November 9 and 10, 1935.
A wave violent anti-Jewish pogroms.
Refers to shards of broken glass from Jewish
businesses, synagogues, and homes destroyed
during the pogrom.
• 267 synagogues; 7,500 businesses; 91 deaths.
• Cemeteries desecrated.
A Synagogue Destroyed, November
1938
Jewish Synagogue
“Night of Crystal”, Cont’d.
• Where? In Germany, annexed Austria, and other
German occupied lands.
• Ernest Vom Rath embassy official assassinated
by 17 year old Polish Jew on Nov. 7, 1938.
• Joseph Goebbels Propaganda Minister; SA and
Hitler Youth, instigated pogrom: "the Führer has
decided that … demonstrations should not be
prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar
as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be
hampered.“
“Night of Crystal”, Cont’d.
• Basically claimed as “retaliation” for
assassination.
• Jews in end blamed for pogroms. No insurance
settlements were given them, and owners made
to pay for their own repairs.
(KRISTALLNACHT: A NATIONWIDE POGROM, NOVEMBER 910, 1938)
Targeted Groups
 Nazis deemed the “Aryan Race” “superior” and other
groups racially “inferior”.
 Main ideas coming from American “eugenics”
movement.
 Groups seen as threat to German community.
◦
◦
◦
◦
Jews
Roma (Gypsies)
The disabled
Some of the Slavic people (Poles, Russians)
Targeted Groups, Cont’d.

Some groups persecuted on behavioral, ideological,
or political grounds:

Communists, Socialists, Jehova’s Witnesses,
homosexuals.
(Introduction to the Holocaust)
The Ghettos
• Date as far back as 1516 in Venice, Italy –from
which the name is derived.
• Often enclosed municipal districts in which Jews
were forced to live.
• Separated Jews from non-Jewish population.
• Miserable conditions: lack of food, medicine,
sanitary conditions.
• 1,000 ghettos in Germany alone.
• Placed in ghettos while Nazi party officials
decided a “solution” to the “Jewish problem”.
Sign in Riga ghetto, Latvia warns
inhabitants that they will be shot if
they attempt to cross the fence.
Warsaw Ghetto and Uprising
• 400,000 Jews in 1.3 square miles.
• Warsaw, Poland.
• Required to wear Jewish “badge”: Star of David
(part of Nuremburg decrees).
• Forced labor.
• Jewish police were forced to abide by German
authority orders –would be killed if not.
• Officials did not hesitate to murder any
perceived “threat”.
(Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)
Hungarian Jews with yellow stars, at the time of the
liberation of the Budapest ghetto. Hungary, January 1945.
German soldiers burn residential buildings to the ground, one by one,
during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943
.
Warsaw Ghetto, Cont’d.
•
•
•
•
July 22nd, November 12, 1942.
300,000 deported or murdered.
Only 35,000 granted permission to stay.
Resistance efforts: smuggling medicine, food,
weapons and intelligence across walls.
• Two armed resistance groups in ghetto worked
together to stop the destruction of the ghetto.
(750 fighters in total.)
Warsaw Ghetto and Uprising, Cont’d.
 January 18, 1943.
 Halted deportations.
 April 19, 1943 = new deportations.
 Lasted until May 8, 1943.
 Few remained after. Most sent to killing centers
such as Treblinka.
Deportation from Warsaw in Cattle
Trains
Deportation from Lodz Ghetto to
Chelmno Extermination Camp
Extermination Camps
 Final measure taken to rid Germany of its Jewish
population.
 Called the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question”
 Pogroms  ghettos  mobile killing units 
 Established killing centers:
◦ Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka
(Ghettos)
Nazi Extermination Camps in Europe
View of Gurs Camp from Water Tower
View of Auschwitz Camp
Extermination Camps, Cont’d.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau = Main killing center.
▫ Approximately 1,000,000 Jews
• Asphyxiation w/ gas or by shooting
• Jewish population prior to war: 9,000,000.
• After war – loss of 2/3.
(Killing Centers)
Former prisoners of Wöbbelin, a subcamp of
Neuengamme, are taken to a hospital for medical
attention. Germany, May 4, 1945.
Suitcases that belonged to people deported to the Auschwitz camp.
This photograph was taken after Soviet forces liberated the camp.
Auschwitz, Poland, after January 1945.
One of many piles of ashes and bones found by U.S.
Dr. Fritz Klein, a former camp doctor who conducted
medical experiments on prisoners, stands among corpses
in a mass grave. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, after April 15,
1945.
Death Marches
 Rapid Soviet and Allied advanced forced Nazi’s to
order evacuation of camps to interior of Reich.
 Mostly done by foot; some train, boat.
 Strict orders to kill prisoners who could not walk or
travel.
 3 purposes
◦ Prevent prisoners from telling stories of what occurred
in camps.
◦ Thought they needed prisoners to maintain
manufacturing of armaments.
◦ SS leaders believed they could use prisoners as
“hostages” to guarantee survival of Nazi regime.
(Death Marches)
Prisoners on a Death March from
Dachau
End of the War
 Allies began liberating concentration camps in the
months in and around 1945.
 Nazi SS guard began “death marches” to eliminate
remaining Jews and move further away from the
front.
 May 7, 1945: German forces surrender
unconditionally to Allied forces.
 Survivors moved to displaced persons camps
throughout Europe.
 Nazi officials later prosecuted in Nuremburg Trials.
 Hitler commits suicide in bunker. (April 30, 1945)
The defendants rise as the judges enter the courtroom at
the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at
Nuremberg.
Works Cited
“Holocaust Encyclopedia”. Various Articles.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 25
Nov. 2011. Web. 6 Jan. 2011. USHMM.org.