Transcript Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology

Nazi Ideology and The Holocaust
First grade pupils, both Jewish and non-Jewish, study in a
classroom in a public school in Hamburg. Germany, June 1933.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
All human history is a continual
struggle for existence between races.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
There is a collective instinct for survival; every
individual partakes of this collective instinct.
“As we have already noted,
people do not live as individuals
like animals and plants, but as
peoples, which largely have come
together as ethnic states.”
See Marie Harm and Hermann Wiehle, Lebenskunde
für Mittelschulen. Fünfter Teil. (Halle: Hermann
Schroedel Verlag, 1942), pp. pp. 168-173.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
Survival of the race depends on…
– RACE PURITY
A racial hygienist measures a woman's features in an
attempt to determine her racial ancestry. Berlin,
Germany, date uncertain.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
Survival of the race depends on
– RACE PURITY
– SEIZURE OF TERRITORY TO EXPAND
POPULATION
“People Without
Space“ by Hans
Grimm
1926.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
There is a hierarchy of races;
some are more valuable than
others.
Chart prepared by the Nazi health ministry to
demonstrate Aryan racial “superiority.“
Bamberg, Germany, date uncertain.
Basic Assumptions of Nazi Racial Ideology
• There is a collective instinct
for survival; every
individual partakes of this
collective instinct.
• Survival of the race
depends on
– Race Purity
– The seizure of territory to
expand population
• There is a hierarchy of
races; some are more
valuable than others
The Image of Jews in Nazi Racial Ideology
•
Jews were a race.
•
Jews were special enemies of the German
people.
•
Unlike other races, Jews had no living
space of their own.
•
Jews sought to dominate host peoples by
destroying the nation-state and establishing
Jewish world domination.
•
The goals of Jews, by definition, were the
genetic bastardization of all peoples and the
elimination of all states.
Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology:
A “people” is a distinct ethnicbiological group
A Nazi propaganda slide from the State
Academy for Race and Health in Dresden
shows the offspring of a relationship
between a German woman and a Moroccan.
Germany, ca. 1936.
Illustration from an
antisemitic German
children's book,
DER GIFTPILZ (The
Poisonous Mushroom),
published in
Nuremberg, Germany,
in 1935.
The caption reads: "The
Jewish nose is crooked,
it looks like a 6.“
Racial instruction
became mandatory in
German schools in
September 1933.
Antisemitic Propaganda
Nazi antisemitic book, The Eternal Jew,
published in 1937
Nazi stereotype depicting Jews as both
Money lenders and communists.
Source: Der Ewige Jude, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP.,
Franz Eher, Nachf., 1937
Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology:
Peoples may not mix with others
without bringing on decay and
corruption, leading ultimately to
extinction.
Propaganda illustration from a Nazi film strip. The
caption states: “The Jew is a bastard.”
The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German
Honor: September 15, 1935
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:
Article 1: Marriage between Jews and subjects of the state of
German or related blood are forbidden.
Article 2: Extramarital relations between Jews and subjects of
the state of German or related blood is forbidden.
Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology:
A healthy, vigorous people expands
its population base of racially
healthy individuals
In this context then
responsible government
promotes the racial integrity
and quality of its people
Forced Sterilization and “Euthanasia
A Nazi propaganda
poster encourages
healthy Germans to
raise a large family.
The caption, in
German, reads:
"Healthy Parents
have Healthy
Children." Germany,
date uncertain.
A chart used by the German Health Ministry to justify forced sterilization of
"inferiors." The chart shows a decrease in the reproduction of the "superior"
peoples, and an increase in the "inferior" peoples. Germany, 1938.
In an attempt to justify forced
sterilizations to the German public,
health officials published this chart
claiming that out of 57 children
born to alcoholics, only ten were
normal. Bamberg, Germany,
prewar.
Poisonous Sprouts
20 alcoholic families have 57 children of whom
25 died young
6 idiots
5 learning impaired
5 physically impaired
5 Epilepsy
1 Movement Disorder (St. Vitus’ Dance)
10 Normal
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily
Diseased Offspring July 14, 1933
1. Anyone who is hereditarily diseased can be made infertile through surgical interventions
(Sterilization) When after scientific medical evaluations it is to be expected that the offspring
will suffer severe congenital bodily or mental damage.
2. According to this law, a person who suffers from one of the following illnesses is
considered hereditarily diseased:
1. Congenital feeble-mindedness,
2. Schizophrenia
3. Manic-depressive insanity
4. Congenital epilepsy
5. Congenital Huntington’s chorea,
6. Congenital blindness,
7. Congenital deafness,
8. Severe congenital physical deformation
3. In addition, anyone who suffers from severe alcoholism can be made infertile.
RGBL 1933 I: p. 529
A shop worker with a
disputed schizophrenic
diagnosis, Gerda D. was
sterilized. Later, she was
forbidden to marry by
Nazi authorities because
of the sterilization. Place
and date unknown.
A slide for a lecture on genetics
and race at the State Academy
for Race and Health in Dresden
shows the Black offspring of a
German woman and an African
colonial soldier stationed with
French forces occupying the
Rhineland after
World War I. ca. 1936.
Some 500 teenagers– called the
"Rhineland bastards"--were
forcibly sterilized after 1937 as
part of Nazi policy to "purify"
the German population.
“Legitimizing” medical murder
Berlin, September 1, 1939
Reich Leader Bouhler and
Dr. med. Brandt
are charged with responsibility
to extend the powers of specific
doctors in such a way that, after
the most careful assessment
of their condition, those
suffering from illnesses deemed
to be incurable may be granted
a mercy death.
[signed]
A. Hitler
Smoke rising from the chimney at Hadamar, one of six
facilities which carried out the Nazis’ “Euthanasia” program.
Germany, circa 1941
German Disabled Persons
During the initial phase of operations,
from 1939 until 1941, about 70,000 people
were killed under the “Euthanasia Program.”
At the proceedings of the International
Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945-1946),
it was estimated that the total number of victims
was 275,000 people.
Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology
A healthy, vigorous people
expands its territorial base at
the expense of its neighbors.
Nazi View of Germany in 1930
• Germany lost World War I
and had to cede territory to
its neighbors
• High level of race mixing:
almost 40 percent of all
marriages involving Jews
are interfaith marriages.
• Germans face extinction;
only Hitler can save them!
A German
soldier stands
on a toppled
Polish
monument.
Krakow,
Poland,
wartime.
German soldiers line up Polish men for firing-squad
execution. Sosnowiec, Poland, 1941
Poles assembled for forced labor. Poland, June 1943.
Polish babies, chosen for their “Aryan” features, to
be adopted and raised as ethnic Germans.
Camp for Soviet prisoners of war located south of Hamburg in northern
Germany. Shelter was minimal, consisting of rough dug outs.
Wietzendorf, Germany, 1941-1942
Soviet prisoners of war in the Mauthausen
concentration camp, Austria, January 1942.
Soviet Prisoners of War
The German army (“Wehrmacht”) captured about 5,700,000
Soviet military personnel during World War II.
More than 3,ooo,ooo Soviet POWs died during internment in German
camps.
About 1,ooo,ooo joined with the Germans serving in auxiliary forces of
the army and also with the SS.
About 1,ooo,ooo escaped from German custody and joined partisan
forces fighting behind the front in the East.
The remaining Soviet POWs survived the war in German custody.
Fundamental Belief of Nazi Ideology
The community of racially
acceptable individuals
(“Volksgemeinschaft”) under
the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
German Political Dissidents
SA man guards arrested Communists. Berlin, Germany, March 6, 1933.
Jehovah’s Witnesses
In 1933 there were between 25,000 to
30,000 Germans who were Jehovah's
Witnesses.
The Nazis confined between 2,000 to 2,500
to concentration camps.
Of those confined to camps about 1,400
perished.
German military tribunals executed
several hundred Jehovah's Witnesses for
refusing to serve in the German military.
Group of Jehovah's Witnesses, former prisoners of Niederhagen concentration camp.
Germany, after liberation.
The Nazis targeted Jehovah's Witnesses:

because they were unwilling to accept the
supreme authority of the Nazi state,

because of their international
connections,

because they were strongly opposed to
both war on behalf of a temporal
authority and organized government in
matters of conscience.
The Nazis used this form to force imprisoned Jehovah’s
Witnesses to renounce their religious beliefs. There is no
evidence that any prisoner signed. Dachau concentration
camp, Germany, date uncertain.
Homosexuals
Paragraph 175 was the German statute
prohibiting homosexuality between men.
Enacted in 1871, its enforcement was
sporadic prior to 1933. In 1935, Nazi jurists
undertook an extensive overhaul of the
German criminal code. Paragraph 175 was
re-written to broaden the law’s scope of
“indecencies between men” from a narrow
interpretation of an intercourse-like act, to
include virtually any contact between men
deemed to have sexual intent, even “simple
looking” or “simple touching.”
Identification pictures of a prisoner, accused of homosexuality,
who arrived at the Auschwitz camp on December 6, 1941.
He died there three months later. Auschwitz, Poland.
Population policy and Homosexuals in Germany
In 1936 the Gestapo (Secret State Police) established a central
office to investigate homosexuals.
It was called the Reich Central Office for the Combating of
Homosexuality and Abortion.
The linking of homosexuality and abortion reflected the Nazi
concern with expanding the population of “racially acceptable”
Germans.
Some leading Nazis feared that the relative shortage of men in
Germany and the possible size of the homosexual population
would seriously hinder the expansion of the German population
into eastern Europe.
Overview of Nazi Persecution of Specific Groups
“Racial Enemy”
The Jew
The quest for racial purity
Gypsies (Roma)
German disabled persons
Germans of African descent
The racial struggle for Europe
Slavs
Poles
Soviet prisoners of war
Nazi ideology and the persecution of Aryan Germans
Political dissidents
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Male homosexuals
Conclusion
o The Nazi conception of the world was
fundamentally racist.
o They had a crusade-like vision of saving
western civilization from Jews.
o They had a strategic vision of a dominant
German “Aryan” race ruling subject
peoples.
o They believed “superior” races had not
just the right but the obligation to subdue
and even exterminate the “inferior” ones.
o To insure the racial superiority of
Germany, they instituted the continual
self-purge of their society.