Download Night Background Notes - RachelFormyDuval

Night Background
Notes
World War II/Adolf Hitler/The
Holocaust
Germany’s Turmoil
World War I left Germany in chaos,
having to adopt to a new form of
government (democracy) rather than
a monarchy.
 Turmoil allowed extremist political
groups to rise to power. One of these
was the German Workers’ Party.

Hitler’s Rise to Power
Also focused on Germany’s national
interests, opposition to communism,
and racial superiority
 German Workers’ Party was renamed
the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler
became the new leader
 1923—Hitler launches a failed attempt
to take over the government

Hitler’s Rise to Power


Germany hired a WWI veteran, Adolf Hitler, to
investigate the German Workers’ Party.
Hitler eventually joined the party with the hopes
of leading the German people to military
conquest and global superiority.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
While imprisoned for nine months on
charges of treason, Hitler wrote his
manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
 The book set forth his plan to conquer
Europe and laid out his ideas of racial
superiority, blaming the Jews for all
the world’s evils

Hitler Assumes Power
By March 1933, Hitler had made
himself dictator of Germany, opened
Dachau, and outlawed all press and
political parties
 Immediately, Nazis revoked Jewish
citizenship rights with the 1938
Nuremberg Race Laws

Persecution of the Jews

Also forbid Jews from marrying
Aryans and forced them to wear the
yellow star at all times as a means of
identification
Kristallnacht

November 9/10, 1938—Kristallnacht
(Night of Broken glass)—coordinated
attack and mass rampage against
Jewish people, homes, and
synagogues.
The Final Solution

Adolf’s Hitler’s plan to systematically
eliminate all Jews throughout Europe
by rounding them up, shooting them,
and then dumping their bodies in
mass graves or assembling them into
ghettos until deportation to camps
World War II

o
Began in 1939 with Germany’s
invasion of Poland. US entered in
December 8, 1941.
1944—German army begins to
abandon camps along the eastern
front with Russia, forcing camp
prisoners to march hundreds of miles
on “Death Marches”.
The End


April 1945—Germany surrenders, American
soldiers liberate Buchenwald, Adolf Hitler
commits suicide
November 1945-October 1946—Nuremberg
Trials—Twenty-two Nazi leaders were tried
for crimes against peace and humanity and
for the murder of over six million Jews and
five million other Europeans.
Important Facts



Holocaust comes from the Greek meaning “whole burnt
offering.” The name was given to this particular genocide
because it equates the Jews’ sacrifice of their lives with the
sacrifices at the Temple in Biblical Times.
Jews were not the only minority group targeted during the
Holocaust. Other victim groups included: Gypsies,
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, the disabled,
and the “anti-social” (beggars and vagrants).
There were two types of camps: work/concentration camps
and death camps. Death camps were concentration camps
with special equipments specifically designed for systematic
murder. The six death camps were: Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Belze, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All were
located in Poland.