The Setting of the Holocaust

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At the end of this lesson you should: Think about this quote:  Understand the historical context in which the Holocaust was possible; “Anti-Semitism is the same  Understand the difference between as delousing: getting ride of a dictatorship and a democracy; lice is not a question of  Learn about Hitler, his anti-Semitic ideology, it is a matter of views as expressed in Mein Kampf cleanliness”. and his rise to power;  Understand how the Nazis were ~ Heinrich Himmler transformed form a radical right- wing fringe movement into the Nazi political machine that assumed power in Germany in 1933;  Understand the ways in which the Nazis employed propaganda;  Understand the various methods Higler used to take away the civil rights of Jews and others;  Understanding the power of fear and terror;  Explain the reasons for the Second World War.

1 Key Terms Nationalism The wish of a people to govern themselves as a nation Democracy A form of government where the people elect the government Dictatorship A form of government with a dictator – a person who has absolute power Anti-Semitism An intense dislike for and a prejudice against Jewish people Totalitarian A government that subordinates the State individual to the state and strictly controls all aspects of life by coercive measures Propaganda An organized program of publicity, or selected information, used to spread and gain acceptance of a belief, practice or ideology. The goal of propaganda is to persuade the reader or listener to "buy

2 into" something –influence their behaviour.

3 The Nazi Creed – a short summary

1. Men are not created equal. As the 5. Democracy and majority rule are most superior race on earth, Germans stupid. The masses are ignorant sheep are true creators of culture. Since only that need leading by a brilliant they are capable of solving mankind’s statesman. This divinely appointed future problems, the future of leader is Adolf Hitler who will rule the civilization depends on them. world with a few chosen elite. The Therefore, Aryan blood must be kept Third Reich or new German Empire pure or these superior qualities will will last one thousand years. It will be be lost. Marriage to inferior races is a Nazi totalitarian state with total forbidden. Germans must create a control of Government and the lives pure master race to rule the world. of all citizens. 2. Jews, the most inferior race, are the 6. Propaganda or a system to spread true destroyers of culture. They have political ideas must be used to gain deliberately invaded and drained all support of the ignorant masses. Since countries of the world of money and the people are dull and forgetful, power. Therefore, the future of the propaganda must be limited to only a world power rests on either the few points and repeated over and rightful German masters or the Jews. over again in slogans. It is not Germans must save the world by important that these ideas be true, for ridding it of this Jewish problem. people will believe anything. In fact, 3. Slavs, blacks and Mediterranean the bigger the lies, the better. peoples rank only slightly above Jews. 7. Force and fear are the only means to They are fit to live only as German keep the masses under control. slaves. Reason and argument have no place in 4. The German master race will take as the Third Reich. much land to the east as it needs of 8. Give the people a single enemy to Lebensruam, or extra living space. hate and to blame for all their Political boundaries are nonsense. If troubles. Then they will not feel guilty others resist, Germany will use its and will aim all their frustrations in arms and take land by force. one direction. Blame the Jew for everything evil. 9. Thou shalt have no other God but Germany!

4 Timeline 1889 - Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria 1914-1918 - World War I is fought in Europe; Hitler serves on the Western Front 1918 - Germans revolt against Kaiser Wilhelm II and proclaim German Republic in Berlin; the Kaiser abdicates 1919 - Germany signs Versailles Treaty; Hitler joins German Workers' Party in Munich 1920 - German Workers' Party issues its program and changes its name to National Socialist German Workers' Party 1921 - Nazis found their paramilitary organization, the SA (storm troopers) 1923 - French and Belgian troops occupy Ruhr, in western Germany; Hitler attempts to seize power in Bavaria 1924 - Hitler is tried for high treason and is sentenced to five years in prison but released before the end of the year 1925 - Paul von Hindenburg elected as president of the republic; Hitler's Mein Kampf published 1932 - Nazis increase their percent of the vote in national elections to 37.3 and become largest single party in the Reichstag (national parliament) with 230 seats 1933 - Hitler appointed chancellor; Heinrich Himmler establishes first concentration camp at Dachau; nationwide boycott of Jewish stores; trade unions dissolved; books by "un-German" authors burned in cities across Germany; Germany becomes a one-party state 1934 - On the "Night of Long Knives" SS officers murder the SA leadership; Reich President von Hindenburg dies

5 1935 - The League of Nations returns the Saar province to Germany; Nazis introduce conscription and expand the army; Nuremberg Racial Laws ban marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews 1936 - Hitler reoccupies demilitarized Rhineland 1938 - Germany annexes Austria; Munich conference results in ethnic- German Sudeten border region of western Czechoslovakia being given to Germany; Kristallnacht takes place 1939 - Hitler's army occupies rest of Czechoslovakia; Hitler defeats Poland; euthanasia campaign begins; Polish Jews forced to wear yellow Star of David 1940 - German Army invades Denmark and Norway and defeats Netherlands, Belgium, and France; Battle of Britain begins 1941 - Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece; Hitler invades Soviet Union, but German Army halted before it reaches Moscow; mass shootings of Jews by Einsatzgruppen 1942 - Systematic mass gassings of Jews begin in Auschwitz-Birkenau; German Sixth Army encircled at Stalingrad 1943 - German Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad; Jews in Warsaw ghetto stage uprising; Allies land in Sicily; major tank battles fought at Kursk; Soviets recapture Kiev 1944 - Germany occupies Hungary; Allies invade France on the Normandy coast; German officers' attempt to kill Hitler and overthrow Nazi regime fails; Soviet Army liberates Majdanek concentration camp; American and French troops enter Paris 1945 - Red Army liberates Auschwitz; American troops enter Buchenwald concentration camp; British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; American and Soviet troops meet at Elbe River; Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker; Red Army occupies Berlin; Germany capitulates to Allies

6 How did Hitler rise to power?

Hitler (first man on the left) poses with his fellow soldiers in 1916. In his life as a politician, Hitler emphasized that he had once been an ordinary soldier in the trenches, just like millions of other Germans. (© IMAGNO / Thomas Sessler Verlag)

After the end of the First World War, Germany was treated unfairly at the Peace of Versailles in 1919. Germany was blamed somewhat unfairly for the First War (all the Axis Powers were deemed responsible). It lost its territory and its overseas empires. Germany was forced to drastically reduce its armed forces and was hit with reparation payments of about 33 million dollars which the country did not have. It was humiliated. This humiliation was later exploited by the Nazis and was one of the key factors in Hitler’s political movements.

7 There were weaknesses that the Nazi party exploited. There was a lack of leadership plus “hyperinflation” financially. In 1914, one German Mark was worth 25 cents in American money. By the end of 1923, the mark was worth almost nothing: one million marks were worth 25 cents in American money. People could not afford to feed their families! The economy was such that the price of a loaf of bread could have bought the entire bakery and more a week earlier. One story from that time states that in one German city a man was carrying a basket full of money. He placed it on the sidewalk while he quickly ran into a building. When he returned he discovered that the thief had dumped the money in a big pile on the sidewalk and taken what was really valuable – the basket! By 1932, nearly six million Germans were homeless. It was a country of desperate, depressed and needy people.

Reflection: What does desperation mean to you? How desperate would you have to be before you opted for an extremist political situation?

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8 ______

Hitler Trivia:

- Hitler was a bit of a loser and a failure for most of his life.

- Hitler never actually had regular job until he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when he was 44 years old.

- Hitler was an artist before becoming a politician

- Hitler believed like many Germans that Jews were a menace in business and that Jews were linked with socialism

- Hitler added glamour to the party

- Hitler adopted the swastika, a sign he had seen in a church where he sang in a choir as a young boy – he put the swastika in the centre of a pure white circle and centered this on a blood-red background. The effect was magical for Germans. The swastika stood for the Aryan or Nordic German Race. The white colour represented the nationalist idea of creating a Greater Germany, a nation of all German speaking people. The red colour was for the Nazi Movement of all Germans living together.

9 - In 1923, Hitler was considered a fringe leader and was not taken seriously by the political establishment. In fact, had you told someone in Germany that within a decade Hitler would be Chancellor of Germany they would have thought you were insane!

- Hitler wrote Mein Kampf – My Struggle while he was in prison. It was published in 1925 and sold poorly. By 1936, Mein Kampf was the number one book in Germany. Only the Bible sold more and Hitler became very wealthy.

- Hitler’s time in prison also taught him about achieving power legally and in the next six years or so he transformed the Nazi party from a bunch of rowdy extremists into a real political party. The 1929 crash and ensuing Depression helped Hitler enormously by making him appear to be the only possible solution for Germany’s many economic problems.

- Hitler was one of the first politicians to use an airplane to speak at more than one locale in a day and the rallies and parades staged by the Nazis were brilliant displays of his popularity.

10 Popular Propaganda Poster of Hitler.

11 A Timeline of Terror

Year Hitler’s Dictates against Jews 1933 Hitler proclaims a one-day boycott of all Jewish shops: all non- Aryan civil servants are forcibly retired: Kosher butchering is forbidden by law: German nationality can be revoked for those considered “undesirable”: non-Aryan students begin to be denied admission to German schools and universities (approx ½ million Jews live in The Third Reich) 1934 Jewish newspapers can no longer be sold on the streets 1935 Nuremberg Laws deprive Jews of German citizenship, forbid Jews to employ Aryan servants under the age of thirty-five: forbid marriage between Jews and Aryans 1936 Jews may not participate in parliamentary elections: as the Olympic Games open in Berlin, “Jews Not Welcome” signs are hastily removed from public places. 1937 Jewish students are removed from German schools and universities: Jewish travel abroad is now restricted, passports difficult or impossible to obtain 1938 Jews no longer permitted to practice occupations such as broker, tourist guide, real estate cards, Jewish doctors now unlicensed, regarded only as medical attendants: all Jewish street names are replaced: Jews are forced to be renamed to be called only by Jewish first names, not permitted to have German names: Jewish passports are marked with J: pogroms begin: Jews may not own or bear arms: Jews may not head any businesses, not attend plays, movies, concerts or exhibitions, are not restricted to certain districts in cities: Jews are not permitted to move about on Nazi holidays, must hand in

12 driver’s licenses, car registrations, sell their business, real estate and hand over securities, jewellery and other valuables: Jews are forbidden to attend German schools and universities. 1939 Curfew for Jews is instituted: 9 p.m. in summer, 8 p.m. in winter: pogroms begin in Poland against Jews: Austrian Jews are now deported to Poland: Polish Jews must now wear yellow Stars of David on all outer clothing 1940 German Jews begin to be deported to concentration camps: Jews may no longer have telephones, have to pay special income tax, are not permitted to receive clothing coupons distributed to German People 1941 No one may be friendly with a Jew: no Jew is permitted to use a public telephone: No Jew may leave a residence without permission of police: large-scale deportation of German Jews is now underway.

13 Reinhard Heydrich

With son Wife Lina Heider at Heydrich, Fehmarn, 1940 1936

Breakfast SS barber with the cuts young Reichsführer Heider SS Heinrich Heydrich's Himmler: hair, while Klaus brother Heydrich at Heino (?) Fehmarn looks on. island 1938 http://www.fpp.co.uk/Heydrich/Heydrich_photos.html

14 The man in these photographs is Reinhard Heydrich.

Heydrich was responsible for organizing the murder of every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe.

In 1939, Heydrich ordered Jews in Poland to be imprisoned in ghettos – areas of towns that were sealed off by walls and fences.

In 1941 – as the German Army swept into the Soviet Union – Heydrich ordered four killing squads (called Einsatzgruppen) to move from town to village, rounding up and shooting Jews wherever they could find them. Heydrich personally planned the sites for the Nazi death camps and in 1942, organized how Jews would be sent to these camps from all over Europe.

15 Heinrich Himmler

The Himmler Brothers

Picking flowers at an Herb Farm at Dachau.

With his beloved daughter ‘Puppi’.

16 Himmler with Hitler (September 1938)

This is Heinrich Himmler, the head of the feared SS and the most powerful man in Germany after Hitler. The SS were the Nazi’ main instrument of terror and control. It was the SS and their collaborators that organised and carried out the Holocaust. It was the SS killing squads (called Einsatzgruppen) with helpers that shot one and a half million Jews in massacres in Eastern Europe. It was SS doctors who carried out cruel and often fatal medical experiments on camp inmates. And it was the SS who from 1934 ran the concentration camps and later the death camps where four and a half million Jews, three million Soviet Prisoners of War, one million Polish civilians, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies and thousands of homosexuals and opponents of the Nazis were murdered or worked to death.

17 Reflection: Does seeing the personal side of Heydrich and Himmler make them seem more human? Does it cause more confusion or does it round them out as people? Does it make them worse or better?

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18 Propaganda Advertisers use propaganda techniques to convince us to consume; political parties use propaganda to gain support from voters; health officials and social organizations use propaganda in public service announcements. Propaganda can also play a role in news reporting by journalists. Advertising examples might include: the "bandwagon" approach that makes you feel like "everyone's doing it"; pulling at people's heartstrings; playing on people's insecurities about themselves; applying the "cool" factor, etc.

Propaganda is distributed not only through written and spoken language, but also through music, sounds, images, colour – even video and computer games. Reflection: Is propaganda always obvious, or can it also be subtle? Can you think of examples of subtle propaganda?

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19 FURTHER READING: True Life Story: Birthday cake request for 3-year-old Hitler namesake denied by supermarket , Tue Dec 16, 9:09 PM By The Associated Press EASTON, Pa. - The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance. Heath Campbell and his wife, Deborah, are upset not only with the decision made by the Greenwich ShopRite, but with an outpouring of angry Internet postings in response to a local newspaper article over the weekend on their flare-up over frosting. "I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted in Easton, on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J. "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," the 35-year-old continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did." Deborah Campbell, 25, said she phoned in her order last week to the ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request. A store manager at ShopRite referred questions to a corporate spokeswoman who did not immediately return a phone message Tuesday. But spokeswoman Karen Meleta told The Easton Express-Times for Sunday's editions that the store considered Campbell's request inappropriate. The Campbell’s ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said. About 12 people attended the birthday party on Sunday, including several children who were of mixed race, according to Heath Campbell. "If we're so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?" he asked. The Campbells' other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell turns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell will be 1 in April. Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name." He sounded surprised by all the controversy the dispute had generated. Campbell said his ancestors are German and that he has lived his entire life in Hunterdon County. On Tuesday he wore a pair of black boots he said were worn by a German soldier during the Second World War. He said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently. "Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."

20 FURTHER READING: True Life Story

November 11, 2005 Katrin's choice: how do I tell my son about great-uncle Heinrich? From Roger Boyes in Berlin http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article588988.ece KATRIN HIMMLER’S son is a bright, curious six-year-old. “I’m dreading the moment,” she says, “when I have to tell him that one half of his family tried to kill the other half.” Frau Himmler, a political scientist, is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s SS and mastermind of the concentration camp system that murdered millions of Jews. She is married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw ghetto, which was burned to the ground by troopers acting on her great-uncle’s orders. Sometime soon her son will have to be told of the 20th-century tragedy that is part of his heritage. Katrin Himmler, 38, has tackled the problem by writing an account of the family which she will give to her son as soon as he is old enough to read. She has used the stories of her extended family to produce a fresh portrait of the SS chief who became the Third Reich’s second most powerful man. Die Bruder Himmler (The Himmler Brothers) published by Fischer Verlag, shows Himmler as a member of a normal German family, loved, respected and admired by his relatives who were aware of at least some of his crimes. It supplies the missing link between the man — the lover, hypochondriac and chicken farmer — and the monster. The book, which was published last week, has already been hailed as an important new way of looking at the Third Reich in which the families themselves tell the story. The first generation of Nazi offspring, growing up in the 1950s, lived in silence. At school they were mocked and bullied as the Germans were taught to hate the Nazis. Katrin Himmler was forced to confront her family’s past when she fell in love with an Israeli - and he with her. “It was as if we were predestined to meet,” she told The Times. Both their fathers were born in 1939. The father of Dani — the pseudonym she chooses to conceal her husband’s identity — survived the Warsaw Ghetto with his mother using false papers identifying him as an Aryan and Polish. Dozens of other relatives perished in the concentration camps.

21 Frau Himmler’s father was a nephew of the SS leader, the most sinister figure in the Nazi leadership. He could not find the vocabulary to answer his daughter’s question: “What does it mean to be a Himmler?” He instead gave her books on the Nazi era. “Then came the television film Holocaust,” she said. “I was 11. I sat at my desk, crying and crying because, of course, the name Himmler was repeated again and again.” There were three Himmler brothers. Katrin’s grandfather, Ernst, died fighting in the closing days of the war. A second brother, Gebhard, was held in an American prisoner- of-war camp. Heinrich was caught by British troops near Hamburg. He was in a sergeant’s uniform, an eye patch replacing his pince-nez glasses. During a body search he bit on a cyanide capsule. Frau Himmler had to reconstruct the family relationship from these abrupt endings, and as she trawled her family’s collective memory she encountered resistance. Heinrich Himmler’s daughter, Gudrun Burwitz, continues to cherish her father’s memory. She was the guiding spirit behind Stille Hilfe (Silent Aid), a charity which funneled money to relatives of war criminals and which encourages neo-Nazis. “ Sadly she did not want to make contact,” said Frau Himmler. Gradually, however, the family saga emerged. The brothers plainly profited from their connections with Heinrich. There was the comfortable Berlin garden house, snatched from trade unionists banned by Hitler. Frau Himmler’s grandfather denounced a “non-Aryan’” colleague in a letter to Heinrich, surely aware that he was signing a death warrant. Another relative, Richard Wendler, was actively involved in the deportations of Jews. She still considers her great-uncle “the worst mass murderer of modern times” but, from the letters, diaries and photographs, it became clear to her that he was in no sense isolated. She began to realize that it was a family business. The research has not been easy for Frau Himmler. The most uneasy moment came when she heard a recording of her great-uncle addressing SS troops near Poznan in which he makes plain that they were being sent on a killing mission. “It was a cold, strong voice and it sends shivers down my spine,” she said. The confusion of victim and perpetrator has made this particular union of German and Jew especially difficult. So far, the closest Frau Himmler’s son has got to the book is unpacking the free publishers’ copies with his mother.