World War II, The Holocaust, and Anne Frank

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World War II, The Holocaust, and Anne Frank
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Adolf Hitler

• Hitler served in World War I.
• He joined the National Socialist German Workers
  Party and soon became its leader.
• January 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler becomes the
  Chancellor of Germany. He had a magnetic
  personality and was a persuasive speaker.

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Hitlers Mission

• Hitlers primary goal was to exterminate all Jews
  whom he considered to be Untermenschen
  (sub-human).
• Hitler was influenced by several books that
  promoted the idea that the Aryan race was
  superior to all others. He also believed that
  the Jews had a secret conspiracy to take over the
  world.
• Hitler eventually wrote his own book, Mien Kampf
  (My Struggle).

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Aryan

• A term used by the Nazis to describe Caucasians
  of non-Jewish descent. The Nazis believed that
  the ideal Aryans, blond-hair and blue-eyed North
  Europeans, were a master race destined to rule
  the world.

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Hitlers Power

• The Schutz Staffel (SS) was a protection squad
  created in 1925 to serve as Hitlers personal
  bodyguard. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler was
  appointed to SS leadership, and the organization
  was eventually expanded to become the Nazi
  Partys prime security organ. By the time WWII
  began in September of 1939, the SS controlled all
  police agencies, concentration camps, and some
  elite combat troops (the Waffen-SS).

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Why did so many people support Hitler?

• Hitler came to power at a time when Germany was
  looking for a hero, someone to give them an
  answer for all of their problems.
• Germany was humiliated after WWI. The Germans
  were also greatly affected by the Depression.
• Hitler told the Germans things that they wanted
  to hear. He made it seem as though he had all of
  the answers.

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Scapegoat

• A person, group, or thing that bears the blame
  for the mistakes or crimes of others. Hitler
  made Jews a scapegoat by blaming them for
  Germanys unemployment and economic decline.

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Nazism

• The political doctrine of the Nazi Party. Nazism
  advocated anti-Semitism, racism, one-party rule,
  anti-communism, rigid authoritarian dictatorship,
  extreme nationalism, and militarization, while
  urging a destiny of world leadership for Germany.
  

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Anti-Semitism

• Acts or negative feelings against Jews which take
  the form of prejudice, dislike, fear,
  discrimination, and persecution.

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Bystanders, Perpetrators, and Victims

• Bystanders - Individuals or governments who were
  indifferent to the persecution of the victims of
  the Holocaust. Bystanders failed to come to the
  aid of Jews and other persecuted groups.
• Perpetrators - In the Holocaust, those persons,
  agencies, or governments who assist in or gain
  from the persecution of others.
• Victims - In the context of the Holocaust, those
  groups singled out for persecution and/or
  extermination by the Nazis Jews, Gypsies,
  political dissenters, leftists, homosexuals, and
  other ethnic religious groups.

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Prejudice and Racism

• Prejudice A negative, inflexible attitude
  toward a group of people (ethnic or religious)
  impervious to evidence or contrary to argument.
  In most cases racial prejudice is founded on
  suspicions, ignorance, and irrational hatred of
  other races, religious groups, or nationalities.
• Racism The belief that a racial group is
  inferior because of biological or cultural traits.

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How did the persecution start?

• The Nuremberg Laws
• In 1935 the Nazis gave legal force to their
  anti-Semitism by implementing these laws that
  excluded Jews from German society, deprived them
  of their citizenship rights, removed them from
  their jobs, expelled them from schools and
  universities, and prohibited them from marrying
  non-Jews under the penalty of death.

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Kristallnacht (Crystal Night)

• The Night of Broken Glass
• On November 9, 1938 the Nazi police and
  collaborators subjected Jews to an onslaught of
  anti-Semitic violence. Nazis vandalized and
  burned Synagogues and Jewish businesses and
  randomly terrorized Jews. This event signaled
  the beginning of the Nazi effort to exterminate
  the Jewish people.

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Ghettos

• The term used to describe the compulsory Jewish
  Quarter, the poor sections of cities where Jews
  are forced to reside. These areas, surrounded by
  barbed wire or walls, confined people in
  overcrowded conditions where they were forced
  into heavy labor and provided little to eat.

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Concentration Camps

• Prisons where the Nazi regime sent people
  considered by them to be dangerous. Some
  concentration camps were killing centers that
  employed poison gas to systematically kill
  hundreds of thousands of people. Prisoners were
  typically worked or starved to death. Persons
  held in the camps were political and religious
  dissidents, resistors, homosexuals, as well as
  racial and ethnic victims of the Nazi regime and
  its collaborators. More than 100 camps existed.

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Death Camps

• Killing centers in occupied Poland designed
  specifically for the murder of Jews, Gypsies, and
  other people found undesirable by the Nazis.
• The 6 death camps were Chelmno, Auschwitz,
  Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Maidanek.

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Holocaust (1933-1945)

• Literally means burnt offering or an offering
  to God that is entirely consumed by fire.
• The Nazi term was The Final Solution to the
  Jewish Problem.

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Holocaust cont.

• The Holocaust The systematic, bureaucratic
  annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi
  regime and their collaborators during WWII.
  Although Jews were the primary victims, up to
  one-half million Gypsies and at least 250,000
  mentally or physically disabled persons were also
  victims of genocide (the deliberate and total
  extermination of a culture). In addition, three
  million Soviet prisoners of war were killed
  because of their nationality. Poles and other
  Slavs were targeted for slave labor, and as a
  result, tens of thousands perished. Homosexuals
  and others deemed anti-social were also
  persecuted and often murdered. Also, thousands
  of political and religious dissidents such as
  communists, socialists, trade unionists, and
  Jehovahs Witnesses were persecuted for their
  beliefs and behavior.

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Statistics

• 6 million Jews died in the killing centers, 4
  million others
• 66 of European Jews were slaughtered (1/3 of all
  Jews worldwide)
• A total of 55 million people died in World War II

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