The beginning of the Holocaust |
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Before we dive in to the Nazi's role in solving the "Jewish Question" it is important to understand how they came in to power in the first instance. In hindsight, it is clear that Adolf Hitler knew exactly what he wanted to do, though at that time did not quite how it was going to be done.
Germany was suffering badly in the aftermath of World War I with a failing economy, high unemployment and social unrest. The German people began to look to the political extremes for answers, turning to the Communist Party and National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi's). Adolf Hitler was elected as head of NSP in 1921 and the core of the party ideology was to create a German state for "real" German People; any German that was deemed as desirable by the Third Reich. He was subsequently appointed as Chancellor of Germany on 30th January 1933. President Hindenburg was persuaded by Franz von Papen that Hitler could be kept under control, boasted that In two months, we will have pushed Hitler into a corner so that he squeaks. Such a claim was all but confined to the bin as after only 24 hours after taking office, Adolf Hitler called for new elections to be held on 5th March 1933. Not long after, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to give him emergency powers that took away people’s rights, which astonishingly was passed by the Reichstag on 24th March 1933. This was called the ‘Enabling law’, which gave the Nazi party the power to make laws without parliamentary approval.
A campaign of violence and terror against Communists and other opponents soon followed but the campaign also involved banning opposition meetings, leaflets, newspapers, anti-communist and antisemitic propaganda. the main methods used to broadcast their message was mainly by radio, leaflets newspapers, rallies. These events were only a hint of things that were to follow. Once the Nazis had a series of policies and measures in place that enabled them to consolidate power over Germany, the next step was to develop control over much of the European mainland. Control of everyday lifeThe Nazis wasted no time to assert their dominance on and control of the Germany population and to deal with all forms of opposition, concentration camps were constructed. The first of these camps established on 1st April 1933 in the town of Dachau just a few kilometers north west of Munich. The network of camps that followed would be employed to support the Nazis’ control of Germany in a brutal way, and later many people of countries across Europe.
Hitler and the Nazis sought to control every part of public life. This included the economy, education and employment. The racial policies of the Nazi Party were at the centre of their ideology and the development of Germany as the master race was the focal point of their social and economic political policies. Females performed a key role in this area of Nazi policy. The Nazis also began a re-armament programme in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. This was primarily aimed at supplying tanks, guns, aeroplanes and ships for the military, which would ultimately support the policy of expansionism towards the end of the 1930's. Nazi policies impact on Jewish communitiesOne of the he Nazi leadership's highest priorities was to take over the state and control and deal with their political enemies. Once that was in operation, they then looked to tighten further their grip on power.
As early as March 1933, there were mobs of locally organised Nazis attacking Jews on the streets, mostly beating them up but also sometimes killing them. Many hundreds of Jews were rounded up across Germany by local groups and sent to concentration camps. Attacks on Jews soon increased and become more organised. Hitler saw that these attacks and arrests were random and not controlled by the state and as he believed that everything should be controlled by the state, any campaign against the Jews was to be in his hands. The Nazi's began to develop antisemitic laws that would severely affect the lives of those Jews living with the German boarders during April 1933. Over the next ten years, a gradual increase in laws would affect every facet of Jewish life in Germany and the lands that were eventually invaded and occupied. Antisemitic PoliciesAntisemitism was at the core of Nazi ideology. Prior to 1941, it was the gradual legal, social and physical exclusion of the Jews from German society that were the aim of the Nazi Party. They wanted to make life so difficult for the Jews that they would want to leave Germany, never to return. The Nazis passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service at the beginning of April 1933, which began the exclusion of Jews from professions. People who had at least one Jewish grandparent were classed as Jewish under this law. In five years, all the Jews in Germany had been expelled from professional and business life.
Employers, local people and organisations in towns and villages all over Germany were encouraged by the centrally organised discrimination, so began to victimise Jews, expelling them from employment and to deny them membership of leisure and cultural organisations. Restaurants, shops and hotels began to erect ‘Jews not welcome’ signs on their entrances. Local councils also placed signs on park gates and benches to inform Jews that they could not use them. The Nazi government legalised its anti-Jewish policies with the passing two laws on 15th September 1935.
These laws were based on the premise that Jews were a racial group as opposed to being a religious group. People who had three Jewish grandparents were classed as full Jews and those who had fewer Jewish grandparents were labelled "half-breeds" (Mischlinge). The civil rights of Jews across Germany were gradually taken away from them – from being banned from sports clubs memberships in April 1933 to not being able to buy eggs or milk in July 1942. Non Jewish minoritiesThe Jews were not the only people in Germany that had reason to fear the Nazi's with black Germans, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and the mentally & physically disabled also deemed as "undesirable. These people could not be part of the new "racially pure" Germany.
During the early 1920's some of the French troops occupying the Rhineland had been of North African descent. Naturally a number of these men had developed relationships with German females, and often having children. Children were also born to people from the African colonies who had settled in Germany These mixed race children were seen as ’inferior’ to the Aryans by the Nazi's. After 1933, nearly 400 black Germans were part of a compulsory programme of sterilisation in Germany and between 1939 and 1945 many of them disappeared without trace.
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