Transcript Untermensch

Untermensch
Under Men (The Undesirables)
Learning Questions
 How Did Hitler Use The Mass
Extermination Of Inferior Races To
Consolidate His Power?
 Was This Crazy Extermination a
Policy or Just Paranoia?
VOCAB
 Untermensch (Sub Human)
 Hitler
 Einsatzgruppen (Task Forces)
 Lebensraum (Expansionism Theory)
 Raul Hilberg
 David Cesarini
Lebensraum
 Was a racist theory that proposed the
aggressive, territorial expansion of Germany
 Justified By Nature (Back To Darwin’s Natural
Selection Theory)
 Without consideration of traditions and prejudices, Germany must find the
courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the
road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new
land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the
earth or of serving others as a slave nation. The National Socialist
Movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our
population and our area—viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a
basis for power politics—between our historical past and the hopelessness
of our present impotence. The German borders of 1914 were borders that
represented something as unfinished as peoples' borders always are. The
division of territory on earth is always the momentary result of a struggle
and an evolution that is in no way finished, but that naturally continues to
progress. It is dumb to simply take borders from any given year in the
history of a people and establish it as a political goal.
 Hitler 1930
Who Were The Untermensch?
Who Were The Untermensch?
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Reichsführer-SS (1942) Thomas Mann
Einsatzgruppen
 Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD
 Also Known as SS
 Paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were
responsible for mass killings during World War II
 Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich
Statistics On The SS
Raul Hilberg estimates that:
 Between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and
related auxiliary troops killed more than two million
people, including 1.3 million Jews.
 The total number of Jews murdered during the
Holocaust is estimated at 5.5 to 6 million people
Source
 “The Nazis hated assimilated and converted Jews as much as
they hated orthodox Jews. This was a struggle that was almost
zoological, from the animal world. This was a struggle for
survival between the human race and this Jewish species that
the core group of the Nazis invested with almost a kind of
supernatural demonic power, which was absolutely
unprecedented.”
 DAVID CESARANI
Propaganda
 Propaganda was essential for spreading the idea of
sub-humans
 Aimed at every aspect of everyday life
 Compared undesirable races to animals (Ex. posters
and cartoons)
Interview To My Grandfather: Antonio Agosta
“When the SS came to town people already knew what was going to happen if
people didn’t speak. The morning they arrived with about 10 soldiers, they
“gently” asked people to tell them if there were any Jewish or any other
Untermensch in the village. If people told them where they were hiding the
village would have been safe, otherwise the SS would burn the village without
any emotions in their eyes…Once I was talking to a Nazi marshal and I was
shocked to see how they were brain-washed by what Hitler said, he told me
that they looked at him as god-like figure which for the first time gave dignity to
a “raped” country. It was all about honor, without honor the Nazis wouldn’t
have existed”
Discussion Questions
 Do You Think the mass extermination of Untermensch really
helped Hitler in consolidating his power?
 To What Extent Was Hitler In Control Of what was happening?
VIDEO
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIHU3OdWmT8