Hitler’s Nazi party mass
murdered many people who lived on the fringe of the German population which
included, but not limited to, the Jewish people, Communists, Social Democrats,
blacks, gypsies, gay people, and people with disabilities. The perceived racial
superiority of the Aryan race was the central point of Nazism. The coming
together of nationalism piloted the diabolical political movement which
fostered German pride by vilifying all other political and religious groups
that did not fall under the Nazi belief system. Anger fueled Germany’s hatred
toward other countries as the end result of World War I and the sanctions
implemented such as the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler’s charm and manipulation
led a multitude of German people to buy into his promises of establishing a
stable and peaceful country, a country not filled with animosity. While those
promises were being made, the Nazis caused the most chaos and destruction.
Hitler’s faulty belief system led to much of the genocide which was linked to
Anti-semitism and a hatred of any party that opposed the Nazi party.
Anti-semitism was a term coined in 1879 by
Wilhelm Marr to explain the anti-Jewish campaigns that occurred in central
Europe at the time. Anti-semitism has appeared to occur since the Crusades.
Multiple villages and groups of Jewish people faced massacres during that time.
Nazi anti-semitism culminated as a result of Hitler’s belief that the Jewish
people were Bolsheviks or Russian Communists and for biological reasons, they
were considered inferior (Berembaum, ND).
Another of Hitler’s most prominent faulty
beliefs involved the communist party. Hitler hung onto the defective conviction
that the communists supported capitalistic ideals. Capitalism was not a part of
the communist’s agenda, quite the opposite. He believed all Jewish people
happened to be Russian Bolsheviks associated with the Russian communist party.
Many of the Jewish people held prominent positions such as lawyers and bankers
before the Nazis stepped in and ruined their chances of earning a living. The
beliefs of the Communist Party were contrary and somewhat similar to that of
the Nazis. Both groups focused on hierarchy. The communist pushed to have the
poor and less fortunate rise up against the affluent. The Nazi believed the
rich needed to run the country. They were a part of the superior race
(Whittock, 2011).
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June
1919 at the Palace of Versailles in Paris, classified peace terms between
Germany and the triumphant allies at the end of World War I. The treaty held
Germany responsible for starting the war and imposed severe penalties resulting
in a loss of territory, extensive reparations payments and demilitarization.
The sanctions humiliated Germany while at the same time did not resolve the
primary reasons that led to war in the first place. Economic hardship and
resentment of the treaty within Germany fueled the extreme nationalist mindset
that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The compilation of
harsh feelings of resentment led to World War II after years of Germany’s
efforts to work towards rearmament (History.com Editors, 2020).
The Munich Putsch in 1923 led by Hitler and
a group of nationalists in their attempt to seize power of Munich, the capital
of Bavaria in southern Germany, ended up with mixed results for Hitler. The
Nazis held a march in Berlin to drum up support for their cause. During the
month of January in 1923 many Germans were angry that France occupied the
German Ruhr coalfields which led to
economic crisis and hyperinflation.
On the evening of November 8, Hitler and
his supporters seized control of a beer hall. The leader of the Bavarian
government was giving a speech. Hitler declared a “National Revolution” and the
Bavarian leader gave his support at first. However, the leader changed his mind
and during a marching demonstration police and troops fired on the marchers.
Four police officers and 14 of Hitler’s supporters were killed. Hitler, charged
with high treason, served only nine months of his five-year sentence and the
judge also decided not to deport Hitler back to his native Austria. He received
much leniency by the court. The Nazi Party membership rose from 20,000 to
55,000 as a result of their actions against what happened in Munich concerning
the French occupation.
Hitler changed his focused to the Jewish
people and referred to them as “Jewish Bolshevism.” He believed the Jewish
people dominated the world by their control of two forces: Bolshevism (Russian
Communism) and world capitalism. In essence, the two groups opposed each other
which posed no difficulty for Hitler’s beliefs. Both camps served as enemies of
German nationalism. Many anti-semitic groups bought into the unfounded
conspiracy theory based on mutually irreconcilable dual hatreds of the lower
middle class: communism and capitalism. They based their beliefs on the fact
that some of the capitalists were Jewish and that Karl Marx was Jewish along
with a number of communists in the USSR. The fact that most capitalists and
communists were not Jewish did not deter the anti-semitic individuals from
buying into Hitler’s conspiracy theory. Again, the fact that communist and
capitalist systems completely opposed one another did not come into Hitler’s
distorted reality (Whittock, 2011).
After WWI Germany tried to get on its feet
financially which the Nazis believed meant having more Germans work the land.
The Nazi regime, who considered themselves to be good traditional Germans, felt
threatened by the communists concerning Nazi land ownership. They believed the
communists wanted to take over their land and the wealthy capitalists wanted to
charge them high interest rates on loans. The complex Nazi approach concerning
those who worked the land involved reducing the debts of farmers and to have
German industrial workers return to working the land. The Nazi attempt to gain
support of the German farmers was slow to develop. They ended up exploiting the
land with the assistance of Slav agricultural workers who were reduced to
slavery.
Hitler’s view concerning women involved the
expansion of more Germans and their role of staying home to produce large
families to increase the size of the German population. A third of the men were
unemployed after the Depression in 1929. The Nazis presented the argument that
women were taking the jobs away from men. During Hitler’s campaign for office
in 1932, he claimed that 800,000 women would be out of their employment
positions within four years. In 1933, a law was passed to enable couples who
were having children to obtain loans to set up homes and start families. Single
people and couples without children paid the price with higher taxes.
The Nazis empathized racial purity and the
making of a new German community free from communists, Jewish people and other
undesirables. German women already managed their households and raised their
children. The Nazis promised protection for families and sought to eliminate
unemployment that disrupted households. The Nazis instilled fear with the women
when they told them that if the communists took over there would be crime and
disorder.
The wealthier businesspeople, drawn to the
promises by the Nazis to control workers and trade-union activities, bought
into the possibility of increased profits for industry. By November of 1932
pressure was applied for the Nazis to become a nationalist authoritarian
regime. When Hitler became Chancellor in January of 1933, large donations
flooded the Nazi party’s coffers. Before Hitler became the Chancellor, many
business people watched to see if the Nazi party had a prominent future.
Throughout the history of this world, chances of making high profits superseded
any other political agendas.
Many of the struggles faced by German
business people arose from the 1929 U.S. stock market crash which made a
serious negative impact on Germany’s economy. The Nazi party appeared to be
established overnight in September of 1930 and the party made promises to all
social groups to a larger and lesser degree. The unpredictability of the
variety of voters explained Hitler’s actions when he came into power. Democracy
appeared to be insecure and unpredictable which led to complete and total
control through a dictatorship. Hitler faced a challenge of contradictory expectations.
Hitler came into power legally and
constitutionally in January of 1933 through a fair election. When Hitler first
became the Chancellor, he was in a difficult situation. He could not achieve
the role of a dictator as long as President Hindenburg was still in office. The
president could dismiss him at any time. Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934 at
the age of 86 from lung cancer. After the president’s death, Hitler declared
the office of president to be permanently vacant and he became Germany’s both
head of state and its head of government. He also became the supreme commander
of the military which only answered personally to Hitler. The process of
bringing Germany in line took a massive step forward. When things started
turning for the worse under Hitler’s rule, the legality of Hitler becoming the
Chancellor affected how most Germans viewed the regime. His regime became the
most violent and criminal government in world history but hard to oppose
because it was a legitimate government. Difficult to overthrow.
By February 1933, the Social Democrats and
Communists faced multiple attacks. If they fought back, they would be
completely defeated since the military and police served the Nazis. Their
meetings were disrupted and people from the two aforementioned groups were
assaulted and killed. Hitler started accomplishing his goal of crushing any
opposition.
On March 22 the first concentration camp
opened at Dachua, near Munich. Those considered enemies of the new Nazi regime,
ended up at the camp. Held without trail and many tortured and murdered. Soon
other camps were established across Germany and approximately 100,000 were
arrested and 600 murdered in 1933.
By July of 1933, the Nazis infiltrated the
local government and institutions. The communists, crushed under the Nazi
regime, joined the other political parties who were banned or dissolved such as
the Social Democrats. Soon anyone who opposed the new political party took
resident in the concentration camps. On July 13th, the regime ordered
all public employees to greet each other with the “Hitler Salute” (Whittock,
2011).
The Daily Mail presented an
approving account on July 2, 1934 of Hitler’s efforts to ban all opposition.
“Herr Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor, has saved his country. Swiftly and
with exorable severity, he has delivered Germany from men who had become a
danger to the unity of the German people and to the order of the state. With
lightning rapidity he has caused them to be removed from high office, to be
arrested, and put to death.
“The names of the men who have been shot by
his orders are already known. Hitler’s love of Germany has triumphed over
private friendships and fidelity to comrades who had stood shoulder to shoulder
with him in the fight for Germany’s future,” (Whittock, 2011, pg. 70). A
multitude of the German population either became complacent and cooperative
with the Nazi party due to fear and/or admiration. They were also blinded by
the manipulation games of the Nazi party to gain absolute power.
Hitler and the accompanying Nazi party took
other steps to gain power through corruption which was seen at all levels of
business and banking. Germany’s largest bank, the Deutsche Bank, served an
important role for expropriation of Jewish owned businesses both in Germany and
areas seized by the German army during WWII. The Aryanization policies put in
place by the Nazi regime permitted the Aryan (non-Jewish) Germans to seize
Jewish assets. Gold transactions conducted by the aforementioned bank played an
important part in the financing of the construction of Auschwitz. In other
words, Jewish assets paid for the construction of the infamous concentration
camp.
The German economy, unstable and highly
abnormal, reached a point by the late 1930s in which war was inevitable. The
imbalanced economic system would require theft, and control of European
resources, markets and populations especially in the East. The huge expansion
of armaments the country had undertaken had placed a burden on them
financially. The country lacked enough gold and foreign currency reserves to
buy products legitimately. The administration decided the best way to
accommodate their needs was to gain more living space and resources. Hitler
would solve his economic problems by invasion and plunder (Whittock, 2011).
The anti-semitic beliefs perpetuated by
Hitler and the Nazis had been bred throughout history as typical persecution
and scapegoating of a minority. During the middle ages, the Jewish people have
been recognized as a religious minority. They served as easy targets for any
problems the country was facing. The Jewish people were the only people who
could lend money and collect interest. Often resented even though they provided
a valuable service for funding developments in the economy. As a result, they
ended up in situations in which they faced violent attacks and acts of
discrimination. By the 19th century, economic anti-semitism was more
prevalent than religious anti-semitism. The Jewish people were accused of
manipulating trade and banking to the detriment of the German people. What
complicated things was the addition of categorizing human communities which
caused a competition between races, religions and political views.
When the Nazis came into power, there were
approximately 100,000 businesses owned by the Jewish people, typically small
scale enterprises. By June of 1935, their businesses fell by 25% and by mid
1938 their businesses fell by 70%. By the end of that year Jewish businesses
did not exist at all. The Jewish businesses had been Aryanized, taken over by
non-Jewish people.
In
January of 1933 the Nazi government embraced the idea of racial purity and
considered some lives worthless. In July of 1933 they put into place the Law
for Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. The law was also referred to
as the sterilization law which legalized compulsory sterilization for any
citizen the Genetic Health Court deemed to have genetic disorders. The list of
genetic disorders included many mental health and health issues such as
epilepsy and mood disorders. Later on, alcoholism and criminal behaviors were
added to the list.
German settlers and
missionaries married African women during the Kaiser’s empire and as a result
in 1937, 400 of the “Rhineland bastards” were sterilized. Under Hitler’s rule,
approximately 400,000 individuals underwent sterilization against their will
(Whittock, 2011).
In November of 1933 the Nazi administration
implemented the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals which gave police
authority to arrest what were considered the dregs of society: prostitutes,
beggars, gypsies, chronic alcoholics and homeless people. The individuals, who
were arrested, ended up in the increasing number of concentration camps.
The idea of sterilization was considered
controversial, while euthanasia was thought to be even more so. The patients in
Germany’s mental health facilities created a whole new problem. The Nazi
radicals pressured the administration to do something about the “useless mouths
to feed.” First the resources provided to the asylum patients were reduced
considerably, doctor to patient ratio decreased to 1:500. Nazi party members
took over the post of psychiatric nurses and the treatment of the patients
became brutal. The requests for mercy killings moved the cruel treatment to
actual murders.
The establishment of the Reich Committee
for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses
led to the killing which became fully institutionalized. Children at specialized
pediatric clinics were killed by a mixture of starvation and strong sedatives.
At six secret locations, a team of doctors, nurses and other Nazi members killed
over 70,000 people between 1939 to 1941, primarily by gassing them. The gassing
technique became one of the chosen methods for killing the Jewish people from
1942 (Whittock, 2011).
Hitler’s plans which involved killing
spread to other countries. In September of 1939 the Nazis attacked Poland which
left Britain and France with little choice then to resist Hitler’s efforts. The
takeover of Poland caused a serious imbalance of power which made Germany the
winner. The invasion served as an effort for Germany’s rearmament and to
address its economic issues mentioned earlier. Hitler, committed to a
Europe-wide war, was obsessed with a racially warped geopolitical scheme. He
not only wanted to dismantle the Treaty of Versailles, he also had a strong
desire to create a slave empire in eastern Europe as far as the Urals. His
drive for all out war went up a lot due to his belief that he did not have much
time. Countries such as the U.S became involved. The World Jewish Conspiracy, which
was located in the U.S, pushed the U.S. to become involve in WWII to support
Britain and France against Germany. Hitler attacked Poland on September 1st,
1939. By September 3, 1939, the British and French were mobilized and WWII
broke out between the three nations (Whittock, 2011).
One of the techniques used by the Nazis to run
the country was their use of fear and many
reported feeling watched which occurred at work and at home. They felt a
sense of threat and they needed to be very careful what they said.
“Two men meet. ‘Nice to see you’re free
again. How was the concentration camp?’
“’Great! Breakfast in bed, a choice of
coffee or chocolate, and for lunch we got soup, meat and desert. And we played
games in the afternoon before getting coffee and cakes. Then a little snooze
and we watched movies after dinner.’
“The man was astonished: ‘That’s great! I
recently spoke to Meyer, who was also locked up there. He told me a different
story’(Whittock, 2011, pg.212).
“The other man nods gravely and says: ‘Yes,
well that’s why they’ve picked him up again.’
In place was a well-developed system of
repression which was devised by the police to punish and intimidate individuals
who threatened Nazi rule. As mentioned earlier, many people died while they
were at the concentration camps. They worked like slaves and were underfed
while at the concentration camps. “In September 1939, there were about 25,000
prisoners held in one of six camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald,
Flossenburg, Mauthausen and Ravensbruck. This constituted 0.04 percent of the
total German adult population aged 15 – 65 years old, which was 52,581,000.
Even allowing for the fact that released prisoners were still subject to police
supervision, this was clearly not a nation dominated by the numbers of its
concentration camp population” (Whittock, 2011, pgs. 219-220).
The confinement of the eastern Jewish
people on small plots of land referred to as reservations but better known as
ghettos served as part of the genocidal process. In October of 1939 the first
ghetto was established in Piotrkow Trybunalski. Larger ghettos followed in
other locations such as Lodz in April of 1940, The Warsaw ghetto was
constructed by using one quarter of the Polish capital. Within a short amount
of time the area in Warsaw became overcrowded with approximately 380,000
people. Trapped, they fell victim to hunger, disease and violence by the
Germans.
During the 1930s, the Nazis established a
substantial level of backing for their regime in Germany. This level of support
survived until 1945. The Nazis deliberate use of terror against what they
considered unwanted dregs of society, which was kept in the public view, led to
the agreement of such policies by the majority of Germans. The increasing
persecution of Jews, Gypsies, Socialists, trade unions, the mentally and
physically disabled and Communists that led to the elimination of the
undesirables was met with an alarmingly level of approval with the majority of
Germans (including non-Jewish and noncommunist groups). Opposition and
nonconformity did occur but coincided with widespread acceptance of the Third
Reich which probably existed due to the extent of the collusion that was
present with the Nazi party (Whittock, 2011).
The Nazis did not only seek to murder the
Jewish people in Germany, they ordered other countries to hand over their
Jewish people so they could murder them. The Romanians originally agreed and
then refused in 1942. During early 1943, the Hungarians blocked the German
demands for deportation of their country’s Jewish people. In Bulgaria, the
Jewish people from areas annexed from Greece and Yogoslavia, were handed over
to the Nazis. Mussolini bought into anti-semitism, but did not support turning
them over to the Nazis. The Jewish population numbered approximately 800,000 in
Hungary so when Germany occupied Hungary, the Hungarian Jewish population was
murdered at Auschwitz.
The persecution of the Jewish people and
others who were considered undesirables created a thriving industrial business
concerning the production of the killing agents used to murder them. The
primary killing agent was IG Farben’s poison gas crystals (Zyklon B), which was
originally invented as a pesticide. The Nazis used approximately 22,000 pounds
in their process of mass murder. At Auschwitz, IG Farben also constructed a
multifaceted fuel and synthetic rubber plant. The plant could not be hit by
allied bombing raids and it was well connected to the railroad system with
plenty of slave labor. The plant, when it was fully operational, consumed more
electricity than Berlin per day. This same industrial plant established
notoriety for its research and development of a vast range of medicines and
their scientists won a multitude of Nobel Prizes.
Of the six million Jewish people who lost
their lives during the Holocaust, 1.5 million were children. The earliest
victims of the Nazi mass murder were people with disabilities. However, the
Nazis did not invent concentration camps. The first camps were in South Africa,
Cuba, the Philippines, Namibia and the United States. The Nazis were the first
to use poison gas to murder people at sites referred to as killing centers.
When the Nazi party came into power in 1933, the Jewish people made up less
than 1% of the German population and most of the Jewish victims of the
Holocaust did not come from Germany but from other Eastern European countries. Most
of the concentration camp survivors were not liberated from the camps they
spent most of the war at because they were ordered to partake in death marches
toward the center of Germany during the last days of WWII (Lester Campus &
Sue Smith Campus, ND).
The Nazis went through a final solution
process with the invasion of the USSR and the killing of their perceived Jewish-Bolshevik
enemies. Hitler and the rest of the Nazi party were driven to eliminate all undesirables
in their drive to have Germany and possibly other countries fall under the
order of the master race, the Aryans. During the invasion of the USSR, the
general population in Latvia and the Ukraine believed the arrival of the
Germans meant they needed to kill their Jewish neighbors because they were
blamed for the communist repression. Massacres took place in all German
occupied places in the USSR and the Ukraine. One of the largest mass murders
occurred at the Babi Yar ravine, in the Ukraine, during the month of September
in 1941, approximately 33,700 Jewish people were shot near Kiev. In a number of
cases the regular army units and police justified their action as reprisals
against the Jewish-Bolsheviks (Whittock, 2011).
WWII, a war fought between Germany,
England, France and the U.S. and the various countries Germany invaded, led the
countries involved to set up peace treaties. Hitler was behind the inception of
the war and approximately 70 million people lost their lives. The countries
that fought with Hitler lost territory and had to pay reparations to the
Allies. Germany and its capital Berlin were divided into four parts. The zones
were controlled by Great Britain, the U.S., France and the Soviet Union. Lots
of dissention existed between the Soviet Union and the Allies. As a result, Germany was divided into two
separate countries, East Germany which was a Communist government and West
Germany, which was a democratic state. Before the end of WWII Hitler took his
life on April 30 in his Berlin Bunker which ended his reign of terror (History.com
Editors, 2021).
Only approximately 10% of the Germans who
worked at Auschwitz were ever put on trial. People around the world were aware
about the Holocaust while it was happening, however, the Allies decided that
ending WWII would be the best way to end the Holocaust. Reports of mass murder
appeared in newspapers including in the U.S. while it was occurring. The
horribleness of the Holocaust has left much of the world questioning how such
heinous acts could happen towards any group of people. Hitler and the Nazi party
have been remembered for their completely evil and domineering form of
government and anti-semitism, or the hatred of Jewish people, still exists
today all over the world.
The positive consequences of the Holocaust
have included the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Holocaust was not the only example of genocide. There have been multiple
genocides throughout the history of the world such as the genocide of the
Native American people in the U.S. The wounds caused by the Holocaust have been
slow to heal. Many of the survivors of the concentration camps could not return
home. They had lost their families and denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors
and communities. The 1940s brought about a huge number of refugees, POWs and other
displaced populations in Europe. The Allies in an effort to punish the villains
associated with Nazi atrocities held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46. The trial
brought the horrific actions of the Nazis to the forefront. Ordinary Germans
who were not a part of the terrible atrocities since the Holocaust have
struggled with the bitter legacy. Beginning in 1953, the German government made
payments to individual Jewish people as a way of the government taking
responsibility for the crimes committed in their name.
Hitler and the Nazi party made a
long-lasting impact on Germany and the rest of the world. The shock of the
astrocities committed by them has caused many to study the harm and end result
of their regime. Hitler went to his grave believing the Jewish people were a
part of the communist party and a threat to Germany. Many lost their lives
because of his faulty beliefs. Racial purity efforts led to the deaths of
people with physical and mental disabilities and others the Nazi party considered
unworthy. The war to end all wars, which Hitler caused, involved the eastern
and western part of the world and multiple countries and millions of people
lost their lives. Anti-semitism still
exists in the world today and the Jewish people are still under attack.
No comments:
Post a Comment