Transcript Questions to Consider

Questions to Consider:
- In your notes, answer the following questions …
* (1) What do we know about the Jewish
Holocaust?
* (2) Read pages 470-471, “What was the method of
extermination for settling the ‘final solution of the
Jewish question’ determined at the Wannsee
Conference?”
Questions to Consider:
* How does hatred occur?
* Why do certain people hate other
people?
* How did this happen in Germany?
Are There Psychological Reasons
for Why This Happened?
- Gordon Allport’s, a psychologist and sociologist
- Developed a “Scale of Prejudice and
Discrimination”
or
“Allport’s Scale of Prejudice”
- From the book, The Nature of Prejudice
Scale of Prejudice
1 – “Antilocution” – making fun of
others & creating a preference for
one’s own group
2 – Avoidance – avoiding the minority
group
3 – Discrimination – Calculated harm,
denying opportunities
4 – Physical Attack
5 – Extermination
* Prejudice?
* Discrimination?
* Violence?
* Hatred?
What is Genocide?
The legal definition is …
“… the deliberate and systematic destruction, in
whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or
national group.”
From:
Office of the High Commission for Human Rights. Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Wikipedia.org
- “Master Plan East”
- (1) Based upon the policy
of Lebensraum designed
- (2) Extermination of
Nazis and Slavic peoples
to establish Hitler’s
master, “Aryan Race”
- (3) And Hitler’s belief in
“autarky,” a nation had
to be complete selfsufficient
- Oil from Romania
- Wheat and
agriculture from the
Ukraine
“Generalplan Ost”
An Einsatzgruppen soldier shoots a
Jewish woman and her child.
A mass execution of Jews in Nazi
occupied Soviet Union.
[Einsatzgruppen detail]
Eugenics
False science of
racial identity
based on physical
features.
Jews were
considered
racially inferior to
“Aryans.”
Why Did People Support Hitler?
** Hard to truly answer this question!!!
No simple answers.
Why Did People Support Hitler?
** Hard to truly answer this question!!!
No simple answers.
Other Possible Explanations:
(1) Propaganda
- Scapegoat
(2) Existing Anti-Semitism
- “Pogroms”
- German peoples hatred of the
Treaty of Versailles??
- Lack of strong democratic
tradition??
(3) Economic Prosperity under Hitler
(4) Fear of being a target yourself
Comparison
of FDR vs.
Hitler
Unemployment Rates
The German Recovery:
- Large-scale borrowing for
public expenditures
- Railroads, canals, & the
Autobahnen
- Large-scale wage controls
** For both U.S. & Germany,
industrial production dropped
50% from 1929 to 1933
Propaganda
“You will think
the way I tell you to think.”
Aryan supremacy was one goal. Lebensraum “living
room” or “living space” the other.
Youth were indoctrinated to see Hitler as a loving protector.
1930’s
Children’s
Book
"Just as it is often hard to tell a toadstool from an
edible mushroom, so too it is often very hard to
recognize the Jew as a swindler and criminal..."
What a greedy Jew looks like…
[from “The Poison Mushroom” required reading
in elementary schools under Nazi authority]
“How Jewish traders cheat us. ”
From “The Poison Mushroom”
“The eternal Jew”
always taking money
[German propaganda poster, 1935]
What a proper German looks like…
Nazification replaces education
in schools
• Book burning
• Fewer academics
• Physical
conditioning
"Hitler our last hope";
"Therefore come to us!"
Austrian political poster 1936-1938
Students engaged more in physical and military training exercises,
less in academics.
By 1937, 95% of teachers belonged to the
Nazi Teachers’ League
Peer pressure, fear, job security, just make things easier.
"The Jew is our greatest enemy!
Beware of the Jew!"
Public burning of “un-German” books in Berlin,
May 10, 1933. SA officers and college students.
SA stands for Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers. Nazi academics had
been eager to eliminate books that promote thinking outside Nazi belief,
including religion, communism…Jewish authors, in particular.
Slide comparing racially mixed man with healthy “Aryan”
man
Linking the idea of racially identifiable Jews with Bolshevism, Communism,
inferior physical and moral characteristics – a constant theme.
Propaganda posters on public display
Postcard showing
Nazi soldier
waving large
swastika flag
standing on a
mountain ridge,
overlooking a
valley.
Huge rallies were staged and broadcast via radio
Hitler ordered all but the official Nazi radio transmission to be cancelled.
There was no television, computer, cell phone or other electronic visual
technology in the home. “We are yours” is depicted in the stadium.
Jewish Persecution Begins
1933 – Jewish professionals prohibited from being
- Attending universities
- Doctors
- Lawyers
- Farmers
- Newspaper journalists or editors
Nuremberg Laws
1935 – Jewish prohibited from marrying Aryans
- Jews cannot be citizens
- Civil Rights taken away!!!!
** “The Law for the protection of German
blood and German honor”
A synagogue burns in Siegen,
November 10, 1938. Kristallnacht.
Germany, on
1939
or
1940
German soldiers brutalizing a Jew
in the street.
Humiliation, brutality,
then murder…
“You are ordered to kill Jews.”
February 1,1942.
There were four
special military units
Einsatzgruppen
who carried out the
massacres of Jews in
the Soviet Union.
An Einsatzgruppen soldier shoots a
Jewish woman and her child.
This man
is being
shot by
an SS
officer,
to fall into
the grave
with the
rest of the
bodies.
A mass execution of Jews
in Nazi occupied Soviet Union.
[Einsatzgruppen detail]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8NAZmUnAEE
“Einsatzgruppen actual footage”
The Holocaust
Never Again!
We can and must stop this
kind of annihilation from ever
happening again.