DOCSLIB.ORG

Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany Information Booklet. Use This Booklet to Create Your Mind-Maps and Flash Cards

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany Information Booklet. Use This Booklet to Create Your Mind-Maps and Flash Cards GCSE History Revision Information Booklet Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany Name - ………………………………………… Class- …………………. Form - ……………………………………….. Paper 3 – Weimar and Nazi Germany 1918-1939 Exam skills (more guidance in practise q. booklet) 1. Source inference (4 – 5 mins) 2. Explanation 12 mark (12 – 15 mins) 3a. Source utility (8 – 10 mins) 3b. Difference of interpretations (4 – 5 mins) 3c. Reasons for differing interpretations (4 – 5 mins) 3d. Interpretations essay (20 – 16 plus SPAG – 35 mins) Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany Information booklet. Use this booklet to create your mind-maps and flash cards. You will also receive a separate practise question booklet. 1 GCSE History Revision Information Booklet Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany KEY TOPIC 1.1 INFO: The Origins of the Weimar Republic, 1918-19 Germany had been dominant for large parts of WW1. Although many German soldiers had died during WW1 (3 million) most of the fighting had been in France. America had joined the war in 1917 and with their help, Germany was slowly losing land and retreating by October 1918. This was not reported to the German people so they were shocked when they finally surrendered. The situation was made even worse by the British navy surrounding Germany to prevent food getting in (a blockade) which led to serious food shortages and hardship for ordinary German people. The Kaiser had always controlled the government, army and navy but it October 1918 politicians took control of the government for the first time as the military situation got worse. Led by Prince Max of Baden they wanted to end the war however the leader of America, President Wilson, refused to discuss surrender until Kaiser Wilhelm (the man Wilson blamed for starting the war) was removed. To make matters worse, the Germany navy was asked to make one final attack on the British navy. With an end to the war being discussed and with no chance of victory the German sailors in a city called Kiel mutinied. This meant they stopped following their leader’s orders. Other mutinies broke out all across Germany as soldiers and the German people refused to fight until a surrender was agreed. This was known as the German Revolution, violence revolt spread across Germany. Finally on November 9th 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm realised he had no support to remain as King of Germany. With the pressure from Wilson to resign in order to have peace talks also, he gave up his role and left Germany. A temporary revolutionary government took Kaiser Wilhelm’s place, and signed the armistice (an agreement to stop fighting) on 11th November. Germany assumed, like everyone else, that they would be part of the peace talks. The German people had not heard any news of the German army’s defeats and were shocked when they quickly surrendered. By 1919, it was clear that a more permanent government was needed. On 19th January, in Weimar, a new ‘Weimar Republic’ came together for the first time. They had been voted for by the people of Germany, and were mostly made up of democratic parties (who had gained 80% of the vote). This is how Germany’s Weimar Republic was born. See the diagram below for an overview of its structure: The Weimar Republic was a very democratic system, giving it several strengths. However, some aspects of this democracy would make the Weimar Republic difficult to rule. See below for the strengths and weaknesses of the Weimar Republic: 2 GCSE History Revision Information Booklet Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany Strengths Weaknesses All Germans had equal rights, including the … but, in 1919 many people did not want the democratic right to vote… Republic to be in charge of Germany. It was not sensible to allow everyone to vote when some wanted to destroy the Republic. Proportional representation made voting fair, This meant there was never one strong party but lots of it meant that every party got a proportion of different smaller parties. This meant Parliament would seats in parliament based on how many votes always be based on coalitions and agreements and lead to they received. having no one strong majority. Germany was used to have a strong leader in This gave the President huge amounts of power. If the charge like the new role of the President. A President did not support democracy he could make strong president was needed to take control himself a dictator. of Germany given all the different problems it faced. Germany was made up of states with their The states could turn against the central government. own traditions and ideas, it was right each state had a say in how its area was ruled Article 48 meant the President could quickly This meant that the President could ignore democracy and make laws to solve problems without having just make any law he wished. to ask anyone else to agree to it. KEY TOPIC 1.1 TASKS: The Origins of the Weimar Republic, 1918-19 1. Make a mind-map with ‘strengths and weaknesses of the Weimar Republic’ in the middle 2. Make flash cards for all of the key facts in topic 1.1 and test yourself KEY TOPIC 1.2 INFO: The early challenges to the Weimar Republic, 1919-23 The First World War had left Germany with many problems. As they took over just after the war, this would mean that the Weimar Republic could easily be blamed for the issues facing Germany. Here is a summary of the problems they faced, and the uprisings that resulted: Stab in the back myth Many people were outraged by the serious punishments of the Treaty of Versailles. They blamed their politicians for accepting the Treaty of Versailles (even if they had no choice). People began to call them November Criminals as they also blamed them for surrendering in the first place. These are some of the harsh punishments described in the ToV: T - Territory R - Reparations A - Army W – War Guilt L – League of Nations • All colonies given to Britain• and Had to pay £6.6 billion to • Army limited to • Article 231• Germany was France. France, Britain and 100,000 • Germany had to banned from • Gave 10% of its land to other America (note – this was • No tanks accept full joining the countries (Poland, France, etc) initially set as an • No planes responsibility for startingLeague of • Germany not allowed any soldiers in unlimitedits figure in the • No subs WW1 Nations land closest to France (Rhineland – ToV – 6.6 bill was • 6 warships (the first UN) demilitarised) worked out later) • Banned from joining with Austria 3 GCSE History Revision Information Booklet Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany The government and the army The first Chancellor of the Weimar Republic was from a left wing party called the SPD. The army did not like left wing parties as they wanted to take power away from powerful business leaders and army generals and give it to soldiers and workers. The leaders of the army also thought democracy was weak and wanted the Kaiser to return so Germany had a strong leader. The Weimar Republic needed the support of the army to help put down all the rebellions so the leader of the Republic, a socialist called Ebert agreed not to change anything about the army and continue to give them large amounts of government spending in return for the army promising to protect the Weimar Republic. This meant the Weimar Republic now had the limited support of the army but now had no way to control it or change it. Spartacist Uprising This was an uprising led by two communists – Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. They wanted to make Germany into a communist country, just like a group called the Bolsheviks had done to Russia in 1917. They formed the Germany Communist Party (KPD) in 1918 and tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic on 6th January 1919 by taking over important government buildings. The leader of the Weimar Republic Ebert had to use the Germany army (Reichswehr) and a group of right wing ex-soldiers who had refused to hand over their guns and uniforms at the end of WW1. They were called the freikorps and were not part of the army or government, they joined together as they missed the friendships of the trenches and hated communists. The rebellion was quickly defeated and Rosa Luxembourg was executed by these soldiers without a trial. When there was another communist uprising in March 1919 1,000 communists were killed by the freikorps. Kapp Putsch Having a large armed group like the freikorps attacking communists and not taking orders from the government was a serious problem for the government. In 1920 the government announced they were going to disband (get rid) of the freikorps. The freikorps refused and joined up with a right wing politician called Wolfgang Kapp. They were joined by over 400 officers from the Reichswehr and their soldiers who sympathised with the freikorps and were angry at the government for reducing the size of the army. They seized control of a number of government buildings in Berlin forcing the government to move to another city. The army refused to stop the rebellion as they said they refused to fire against their own soldiers. It looked like the Weimar Republic had no one to stop the rebellion spreading. Finally the socialist leaders called on the German people to go on strike to stop the rebellion. Millions of workers refused to turn up to their jobs for days bringing Berlin and Germany to a standstill. Eventually Kapp and the freikorps had to end their attempted rebellion.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • From Complaisance to Collaboration: Analyzing Citizensâ•Ž Motives Near
    James Madison University JMU Scholarly Commons Proceedings of the Tenth Annual MadRush MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference Conference: Best Papers, Spring 2019 From Complaisance to Collaboration: Analyzing Citizens’ Motives Near Concentration and Extermination Camps During the Holocaust Jordan Green Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/madrush Part of the European History Commons, and the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons Green, Jordan, "From Complaisance to Collaboration: Analyzing Citizens’ Motives Near Concentration and Extermination Camps During the Holocaust" (2019). MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference. 1. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/madrush/2019/holocaust/1 This Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Conference Proceedings at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference by an authorized administrator of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. From Complaisance to Collaboration: Analyzing Citizens’ Motives Near Concentration and Extermination Camps During the Holocaust Jordan Green History 395 James Madison University Spring 2018 Dr. Michael J. Galgano The Holocaust has raised difficult questions since its end in April 1945 including how could such an atrocity happen and how could ordinary people carry out a policy of extermination against a whole race? To answer these puzzling questions, most historians look inside the Nazi Party to discern the Holocaust’s inner-workings: official decrees and memos against the Jews and other untermenschen1, the role of the SS, and the organization and brutality within concentration and extermination camps. However, a vital question about the Holocaust is missing when examining these criteria: who was watching? Through research, the local inhabitants’ knowledge of a nearby concentration camp, extermination camp or mass shooting site and its purpose was evident and widespread.
    [Show full text]
  • Kristallnacht Caption: Local Residents Watch As Flames Consume The
    Kristallnacht Caption: Local residents watch as flames consume the synagogue in Opava, set on fire during Kristallnacht. Description of event: Literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops. Instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA (Sturmabteilungen: literally Assault Detachments, but commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth, Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom- broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. Nuremberg Laws Caption: A young baby lies on a park bench marked with a J to indicate it is only for Jews. Description of event: Antisemitism and the persecution of Jews represented a central tenet of Nazi ideology. In their 25-point Party Program, published in 1920, Nazi party members publicly declared their intention to segregate Jews from "Aryan" society and to abrogate Jews' political, legal, and civil rights.Nazi leaders began to make good on their pledge to persecute German Jews soon after their assumption of power. During the first six years of Hitler's dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives. Many of those laws were national ones that had been issued by the German administration and affected all Jews.
    [Show full text]
  • SS-Totenkopfverbände from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (Redirected from SS-Totenkopfverbande)
    Create account Log in Article Talk Read Edit View history SS-Totenkopfverbände From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from SS-Totenkopfverbande) Navigation Not to be confused with 3rd SS Division Totenkopf, the Waffen-SS fighting unit. Main page This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason Contents has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (December 2010) Featured content Current events This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding Random article citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2010) Donate to Wikipedia [2] SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), rendered in English as "Death's-Head Units" (literally SS-TV meaning "Skull Units"), was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi SS-Totenkopfverbände Interaction concentration camps for the Third Reich. Help The SS-TV was an independent unit within the SS with its own ranks and command About Wikipedia structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany, such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Community portal Buchenwald; in Nazi-occupied Europe, it ran Auschwitz in German occupied Poland and Recent changes Mauthausen in Austria as well as numerous other concentration and death camps. The Contact Wikipedia death camps' primary function was genocide and included Treblinka, Bełżec extermination camp and Sobibor. It was responsible for facilitating what was called the Final Solution, Totenkopf (Death's head) collar insignia, 13th Standarte known since as the Holocaust, in collaboration with the Reich Main Security Office[3] and the Toolbox of the SS-Totenkopfverbände SS Economic and Administrative Main Office or WVHA.
    [Show full text]
  • Hitler's Personal Security: Gaps and Contradictions by Peter Hoffman*
    Summer 1984 Hitler's Personal Security: Gaps and Contradictions by Peter Hoffman* INTRODUCTION The world, certainly Europe, would look very different if in No­ vember 1938 the Führer and Reich Chancellor of Nazi Germany had been killed. Perhaps people would have regarded him as a "Great German," as a noted colleague has speculated; more important, the suffering, destruction and division resulting from the Second World War might have been avoided. It is well known that attempts to as­ sassinate Hitler were made repeatedly, though it is probably less well known how many such attacks there were. At last count, no fewer than fourteen individuals made at least thirty separate, documented attempts to murder Hitler during the years 1933 to 1945. In the light of so much anti-Hitler energy, it seems reasonable and interesting to look at the circumstances in which Hitler survived all this hostility for so long. The author's interest in those circumstances grew out of a study of anti-Hitler activities, of the German Resistance and their efforts to do away with the Dictator. It soon became clear that the problems of Hitler's personal protection went far beyond those with which modern leaders ordinarily have to live, and that they had far greater implications, for they affected the lives of literally millions of people. The obvious question was how Hitler survived the many attempts on his life. There were conflicting claims as to how easy or difficult it was for a would-be assassin to get close enough to Hitler for a chance to kill him.
    [Show full text]
  • Local Agency and Individual Initiative in the Evolution of the Holocaust: the Case of Heinrich Himmler
    Local Agency and Individual Initiative in the Evolution of the Holocaust: The Case of Heinrich Himmler By: Tanya Pazdernik 25 March 2013 Speaking in the early 1940s on the “grave matter” of the Jews, Heinrich Himmler asserted: “We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.”1 Appointed Reichsführer of the SS in January 1929, Himmler believed the total annihilation of the Jewish race necessary for the survival of the German nation. As such, he considered the Holocaust a moral duty. Indeed, the Nazi genocide of all “life unworthy of living,” known as the Holocaust, evolved from an ideology held by the highest officials of the Third Reich – an ideology rooted in a pseudoscientific racism that rationalized the systematic murder of over twelve million people, mostly during just a few years of World War Two. But ideologies do not murder. People do. And the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, never personally murdered a single Jew. Instead, he relied on his subordinates to implement his often ill-defined visions. Thus, to understand the Holocaust as a broad social phenomenon we must refocus our lens away from an obsession with Hitler and onto his henchmen. One such underling was indeed Himmler. The problem in the lack of consensus among scholars is over the matter of who, precisely, bears responsibility for the Holocaust. Historians even sharply disagree about the place of Adolf Hitler in the decision-making processes of the Third Reich, particularly in regards to the Final Solution.
    [Show full text]
  • Einsichten Und Perspektiven
    004-EP-4.13.Titel.Rueck.284K1_Layout 1 02.12.13 13:37 Seite 285 Bayerische Landeszentrale 4 | 1 3 für politische Bildungsarbeit Einsichten und Perspektiven B a y e r i s c h e Z e i t s c h r i f t f ü r P o l i t i k u n d G e s c h i c h t e Die SED und Gorbatschows Geschichtspolitik / Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Erinnerungskultur? / Nach München. Das lange Nach - leben eines Abkommens / „Ich sterbe im Schoße der Kirche“. Neue Deutungen des Falls Maurice Bavaud / Synekdoche, Balkan. Reisen nach Sarajevo und Belgrad / Realizing Utopia. Alternative Lebens - formen in Bayern 004-210-229.In.Wilke.K2_Layout 1 02.12.13 13:29 Seite 210 Einsichten und Perspektiven Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Heftes Impressum Christoph Huber ist Gymnasiallehrer für Deutsch, Geschichte, Ethik und Philosophie. Er war Einsichten Lehrbeauftragter an der Universität Augsburg sowie der LMU München und ist seit 2010 zum und Perspektiven Ministerialdienst abgeordnet. Miriam Kronester ist Bachelor für Sozialwissenschaften, studiert Deutsch und Geschichte für das Verantwortlich: Lehramt und absolviert derzeit ein Praktikum in der Bayerischen Landeszentrale für Monika Franz, politische Bildungsarbeit. Praterinsel 2, Prof. Dr. Jaroslav Kucˇera lehrt Zeitgeschichte an der Karls-Universität Prag und ist Mitglied des 80538 München Lehrstuhls für Deutschland- und Österreichstudien am Institut für internationale Beziehungen. Martin Steinacher, Jahrgang 1983, studierte Geschichte und Germanistik an der LMU München Redaktion: und begründete das Komitee Maurice Bavaud München, welches sich für eine vollständige Aner- Monika Franz, kennung des schweizerischen Hitler-Attentäters verwendet.
    [Show full text]
  • Liberation & Revenge
    Episode Guide: Orders & Initiatives September 1941–March 1942 Jews from the Lódz ghetto board deportation trains for the Chelmno death camp. Overview "Orders and Initiatives" (Disc 1, Title 2, 48:27) highlights the crucial decision-making period of the Holocaust and reveals the secret plans of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich to annihilate the Jews. At a conference in January 1942, the Nazis plan how to achieve their goals. The first gas chambers are built at Auschwitz and the use of Zyklon B is developed. German doctors arrive to oversee each transport, deciding who should live and who should die. In the program's Follow-up Discussion (Disc 2, Bonus Features, Title 8, 7:18), Linda Ellerbee interviews Claudia Koonz, professor of history at Duke University and author of The Nazi Conscience (Belknap, 2003), and Edward Kissi, professor of Africana studies at the University of South Florida and an expert on international relations and human rights. Target Audience: Grades 9-12 social studies, history, and English courses Student Learning Goals • Citing specific events and decisions, analyze how the Nazi mission changed from September 1941 to March 1942, explaining the reasons for the changes. • Compare Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in terms of location, purpose, population, and living conditions. • Identify the incremental steps the Nazis used to isolate Jews and deport them from their home environments to death camps, and the effects on Jews, their neighbors, and the Nazis at each stage. • Summarize how and why many European nations collaborated with the Nazis, including their history of antisemitism.
    [Show full text]
  • History of the Holocaust
    HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST: AN OVERVIEW On January 20, 1942, an extraordinary 90-minute meeting took place in a lakeside villa in the wealthy Wannsee district of Berlin. Fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered to coordinate logistics for carrying out “the final solution of the Jewish question.”Chairing the meeting was SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office, a central police agency that included the Secret State Police (the Gestapo). Heydrich convened the meeting on the basis of a memorandum he had received six months earlier from Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Hermann Göring, confirming his authorization to implement the “Final Solution.” The “Final Solution” was the Nazi regime’s code name for the deliberate, planned mass murder of all European Jews. During the Wannsee meeting German government officials discussed “extermi- nation” without hesitation or qualm. Heydrich calculated that 11 million European Jews from more than 20 countries would be killed under this heinous plan. During the months before the Wannsee Conference, special units made up of SS, the elite guard of the Nazi state, and police personnel, known as Einsatzgruppen, slaughtered Jews in mass shootings on the territory of the Soviet Union that the Germans had occupied. Six weeks before the Wannsee meeting, the Nazis began to murder Jews at Chelmno, an agricultural estate located in that part of Poland annexed to Germany.Here SS and police personnel used sealed vans into which they pumped carbon monoxide gas to suffocate their victims.The Wannsee meeting served to sanction, coordinate, and expand the implementation of the “Final Solution” as state policy.
    [Show full text]
  • Heydrich and Anspach
    Fencing with death Here's another article from my time as a journalist in Belgium, about an incident from World War Two. It was first published in January 2005 in the Brussels‐based magazine The Bulletin. Point of honour In the midst of World War Two, an Olympic fencing champion faced down one of the Third Reich’s most notorious figures in a bizarre duel of wits, as Jeremy Duns reports. Of all the stories of heroism in World War Two, one of the strangest is that of Paul Anspach, the fencing champion who defied the Third Reich on a matter of principle. Anspach was born in Brussels on April 1, 1882, of good stock: his uncle had been mayor of the city and his grandfather governor of the national bank. Paul, who qualified as a lawyer, was a keen footballer and tennis player until he discovered the sport that would dominate his life: fencing. After becoming national champion, the 26‐year‐old travelled to London for the 1908 Olympics, where his team won bronze. But it was at the Stockholm Games in 1912 that he secured his place in fencing history, winning gold medals in both the individual and team epée events. Some fencing nations had not taken part in the Stockholm Games, because they applied slightly differing rules. Anspach (pictured below, third from left, with team‐mates at a later Olympics) realised that for the sport to progress, it needed its own governing body: the fact that he was the best epée fencer in the world and spoke fluent French, German and English helped him make contacts across the continent, and in 1914 he became Secretary General of the newly‐formed International Fencing Federation (FIE).
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 Letter from the Head of the Security
    Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 Letter from the Head of the Security Police and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, on the Classification of Concentration Camps (January 2, 1941) As early as March 1933, Himmler, then police president of Munich, had ordered the creation of the first Nazi concentration camp, which was located in nearby Dachau. Political opponents of the Nazi regime (e.g., Communists, Social Democrats, labor unionists, etc.) were sent there for so-called protective custody [Schutzhaft]. Dachau served as the model for the organization of all subsequent camps. After 1933, several other concentration camps were built in Germany, including large camps such as Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1938), and Ravensbrück (1939). After the outbreak of war in 1939, the network of concentration camps extended quickly into newly conquered territories, particularly in the East. Camp inmates included political opponents, “enemies of the race,” criminals, homosexuals, “asocials,” and later prisoners of war as well. At the beginning of 1941, Himmler ordered the classification of all existing concentration camps, with each being graded on the basis of prisoner type and working conditions. For all intents and purposes, imprisonment in Mauthausen, a category III camp, was a sentence to “extermination through work” in its quarry. The regulations put forth in this decree, however, were not always followed. This was due above all to the fact that the number of both prisoners and camps rose sharply after the start of the war. Secret Berlin 2 January 1941 The Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service (SD) To: a.
    [Show full text]
  • The-Concentration-Camps.Pdf
    Camps were an essential part of the Nazis' In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of systematic oppression and mass murder of Jews, Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called political adversaries, and others considered socially Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of and racially undesirable. There were concentration four units of between 500 and 900 men each which camps, forced labor camps, extermination or death followed the invading German troops into the Soviet camps, transit camps, and prisoner-of-war camps. Union. By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the The living conditions of all camps were brutal. shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps Dachau, one of the first Nazi concentration camps, proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for opened in March 1933, and at first interned only killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not known political opponents of the Nazis: the victims, emotional anguish. Communists, Social Democrats, and others who had been condemned in a court of law. Gradually, a more diverse group was imprisoned, including Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, dissenting clergy, as well as others who were denounced for making critical remarks about the Nazis. Six death or extermination camps were constructed in Poland. These so-called death factories were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec , Sobibór, Lublin (also called Majdanek ), and Chelmno . The primary purpose of these camps was the methodical killing of millions of innocent people. The first, Chelmno, began operating in late 1941. The others began their operations in 1942.
    [Show full text]
  • Night of Broken Glass Remembered
    NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS REMEMBERED: HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED KRISTALLNACHT IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT Paighten Harkins HIST 3120 Nazi German Culture December 2, 2014 NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS REMEMBERED: HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED KRISTALLNACHT IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT It is often said that news organizations write the first draft of history. However, news organizations are not just recording history and filing it away. They distribute this draft to the public, whose world perceptions are then molded based on those accounts, those initial drafts. Insofar as American newspapers are concerned—at least in the 1930s and 40s—the New York Times was the newspaper of record for not just New York, but also the entire United States. The way that organization did—or did not—cover current events shaped Americans’ understandings of those events, both as they were happening and as they would someday be remembered. During those times, the Times was the ultimate purveyor of international going-on’s, which was important considering nearly the entire planet was involved in the second world war or soon would be. However, as the war raged the Times all but left out an important detail of the war: the Holocaust. When the Times did cover the events of the Holocaust, the events were either portrayed as a general—not Jewish—problem, or they were hidden on an inside page. The Holocaust, which had killed nearly 6 million Jews before it finally ended in September 1945, the Times hardly mentioned in comparison to the other wartime news, or at least did not mention in the same way by giving it front-page play with the day’s other most important articles.
    [Show full text]