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Home , Einsatzgruppen, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heinrich Himmler, Luftwaffe, Night of the Long Knives, Reinhard Heydrich

Nazi Unit 7: Interwar Period

Nazi Officials

• Minister of Propaganda  Oversaw all media in Germany  Contributed to Hitler’s popularity

• Intensely anti-Semitic  One of the architects of the  Personally oversaw deportation of

• Led the SS • Led the • Formed the with Heydrich • One of the architects of • Created and controlled the concentration camp system Hermann Goering

• Commander of the • Created the Gestapo • Mobilized the German economy to support the war • Might have been the real arsonist • Ordered Heydrich to organize details of the

• The main designer of the Final Solution

• Created the Einsatzgruppen with Himmler

• Organized

• Described by other high- ranking officials as the most vile among them  Hitler himself called Heydrich heartless

Josef Mengele

• SS doctor at Auschwitz

• Performed inhumane experiments on prisoners

• Personally evaluated all incoming prisoners to Auschwitz  Decided who was gassed, who worked, who to experiment on

• Prisoners called him the “Angel of Death”

• Established the Mauthausen concentration camp • Personally oversaw Nazi of homosexuals • Oversaw most Nazi activities in • An architect behind • Along with Heydrich, generally considered among the most vile of all Nazis

• One of the architects of the Holocaust • Managed the logistics behind the mass deportation of Jews to camps

New Germany • Hitler’s new gov’t referred to as Third Reich  Supposed to last 1,000 years • First concentration camp (Dachau) established immediately to  Exploit labor  Imprison threats to Nazi rule outside of legal oversight • Government stresses conformity to Reich at all costs https://youtu.be/OQ4nA0JlKIY

Gestapo • Did not need to follow laws • Operated undercover to identify and eliminate political enemies and undesirables  Planted evidence, blackmail, torture • Investigated denunciations from German citizens

Schutzstaffel (SS)

• SS originally were bodyguards for Hitler

• Later became org. responsible for all security- related matters  Police  Genealogy  Intelligence  Concentration camp admin  Carrying out Final Solution

Nazi Power Struggles

• 1933, SA had over 3,000,000 members  Ernst Rohm (leader of SA) became increasingly power hungry  SA members were typically lower-class; very radical

• Goering and Himmler disliked Rohm due to competition  Task Heydrich with forging documents that Rohm was planning a coup

• Hitler also feared Rohm’s power

• of the Long Knives: SS troops arrested, executed Rohm and other SA leaders in 1934  SA declined until absorbed by SS

Road to the Holocaust Unit 7: Interwar Period Government involvement The “” • Hitler and Nazis begin debating “Jewish Question” How should Jews be treated? Are they citizens? Do they follow the same laws? What about undesirable non-Jews? • 1933-1935, Nazis begin addressing Question with legislation Answer to the “Jewish Question” •At some point (exact origin unknown), Nazi officials devised the Final Solution Plan to annihilate Jewish people Holocaust

• Systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of peoples deemed inferior and detrimental to the Third Reich; primarily the genocide of Jews • Non-Jewish targets include:  Gypsies  Homosexuals  People with disabilities (intellectual and physical)  People with chronic illnesses  Slavic peoples  Communists and socialists Final Solution = idea

Holocaust = application 1933

• SA begins to terrorize Jewish businesses; German police unsuccessfully try to stop attacks

• Nazis organize boycott of Jewish business

• Law is passed requiring Aryan heritage to work in gov’t  Jewish judges, lawyers, teachers, other civil servants fired  Hindenburg tells Hitler to exempt WWI veterans from law Laws (1935) • Jews defined as anyone with 3-4 Jewish grandparents • Jews are no longer German citizens • Jews forbidden to marry, have sexual relations with persons of German blood • Couples wanting to marry must be approved by German health ministry  Those with hereditary illnesses, physical defects rejected • Later expanded marriage restrictions to include Gypsies and

Kristallnacht “Night of Broken Glass” • Nazi officials and German civilians destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, homes, synagogues Kristallnacht • Aftermath  30,000 Jews taken to camps  Jews blamed for riots, heavily fined  Jews forbidden from most private professions  Jews expelled from German schools  Jews lost driver’s license, right to own car  Jews removed from public (cannot use public transportation; cannot attend movies, concerts, plays)  Jewish businesses sold to Aryans Kristallnacht “Night of Broken Glass” • Nazi officials and German civilians destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, homes, synagogues • Significance Nazi regime believed German public ready for more radical anti-Semitic measures Anti-Semitic policies increased rapidly

Children and the Disabled

• “It is unbearable to me that the flower of our youth must lose their lives at the front, while that feeble-minded and asocial element can have a secure existence in the asylum.”

• Gov’t registered all babies born with disabilities  Down syndrome; low IQ; malformations of any kind; seizure disorders

• Reich officials took away children, told parents their kids were receiving improved treatment  Children euthanized via injection; death reported to parents as pneumonia  Suspicious parents threatened with camps if they refused

• >5,000 children euthanized  Used as test subjects for various methods of mass murder

Cover-up

• held in Germany  Intended to prove racial superiority  Intended to hide Jewish persecution

• Some citizens of other countries called for boycott

• Anti-Semitic propaganda removed from public areas

• Groups of poor undesirables moved out of public eye

• Mostly successful  Dozens of countries recognized Hitler’s rule as legitimate

Public Involvement Children

• established to ensure future of Nazi Germany  Millions of children indoctrinated with Nazi values

• Doctrine included:  “Germany must live” even if they must die  Aryan superiority  Jews = parasitic “bastard race”; rats; vermin; pests  Devotion to Hitler

• Hitler’s birthday becomes national holiday

• Books unaligned with Nazi ideology banned, burned

• Toys and textbooks used as propaganda

Discussion With your table , discuss the following: •Why would ordinary German citizens participate in carrying out the Holocaust? Motivations How could ordinary German people have participated in the Holocaust? • Fear • Gain  Jewish property and businesses confiscated and sold to “pure”  Psychological satisfaction of revenge against a common enemy • Respect for authority  Statistically, people will abandon their morals if ordered to do so by an authority • Peer pressure and rationalization  By nature, people do not like to rock the boat  People have a psychological need to rationalize their choices to avoid guilt Milgram Experiment

Yale University, 1961 • Aim  Test how far people would go in obeying instruction if it involved harm to another • Procedure  Participants instructed to give shocks to a learner for each wrong answer; the shocks increase each time up to 450 volts (extreme danger) • Results  All 40 participants went up to 300 volts (extreme shock); 65% went up to 450 volts (potentially fatal) • Conclusion  Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure even to the extent of killing an innocent human being https://youtu.be/yr5cjyokVUs