Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Group 1- The Rise of the Nazi Party 1918- World War I ended in 1918 with a grisly total of 37 million casualties, including 9 million dead combatants. German propaganda had not prepared the nation for defeat, resulting in a sense of injured German national pride. Those military and political leaders who were responsible claimed that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by its leftwing politicians, Communists, and Jews. When a new government, the Weimar Republic, tried to establish a democratic course, extreme political parties from both the right and the left struggled violently for control. The new regime could neither handle the depressed economy nor the rampant lawlessness and disorder. 1919- The German population swallowed the bitter pill of defeat as the victorious Allies punished Germany severely. In the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was disarmed and forced to pay reparations to France and Britain for the huge costs of the war. The German Workers' Party, the forerunner of the Nazi Party, espoused a right-wing ideology, like many similar groups of demobilized soldiers. Adolf Hitler joined this small political party in 1919 and rose to leadership through his emotional and captivating speeches. He encouraged national pride, militarism, and a commitment to the Volk and a racially "pure" Germany. Hitler condemned the Jews, exploiting antisemitic feelings that had prevailed in Europe for centuries. He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, called for short, the Nazi Party (or NSDAP). By the end of 1920, the Nazi Party had about 3,000 members. A year later Hitler became its official leader, or Führer. 1923- Adolf Hitler's attempt at an armed overthrow of local authorities in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, failed miserably. The Nazi Party seemed doomed to fail and its leaders, including Hitler, were subsequently jailed and charged with high treason. However, Hitler used the courtroom at his public trial as a propaganda platform, ranting for hours against the Weimar government. By the end of the 24-day trial Hitler had actually gained support for his courage to act. The right-wing presiding judges sympathized with Hitler and sentenced him to only five years in prison, with eligibility for early parole. Hitler was released from prison after one year. Other Nazi leaders were given light sentences also. 1925- While in prison, Hitler wrote volume one of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which was published in 1925. This work detailed Hitler's radical ideas of German nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism. Linked with Social Darwinism, the human struggle that said that might makes right, Hitler's book became the ideological base for the Nazi Party's racist beliefs and murderous practices. After Hitler was released from prison, he formally resurrected the Nazi Party. Hitler began rebuilding and reorganizing the Party, waiting for an opportune time to gain political power in Germany. The Conservative military hero Paul von Hindenburg was elected president in 1925, and Germany stabilized. Hitler skillfully maneuvered through Nazi Party politics and emerged as the sole leader. The Führerprinzip, or leader principle, established Hitler as the one and only to whom Party members swore loyalty unto death. Final decision making rested with him, and his strategy was to develop a highly centralized and structured party that could compete in Germany's future elections. Hitler hoped to create a bureaucracy which he envisioned as "the germ of the future state." The Nazi Party began building a mass movement. From 27,000 members in 1925, the Party grew to 108,000 in 1929. Group 2- The Nazification of Germany 1933- On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Within months of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the Dachau concentration camp was created. The Nazis began arresting Communists, Socialists, and labor leaders. Dachau became a training center for concentration camp guards and later commandants who were taught terror tactics to dehumanize their prisoners. As part of a policy of internal coordination, the Nazis created Special Courts to punish political dissent. In a parallel move from April to October, the regime passed civil laws that barred Jews from holding positions in the civil service, in legal and medical professions, and in teaching and university positions. The Nazis encouraged boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and began book burnings of writings by Jews and by others not approved by the Reich. Nazi antisemitic legislation and propaganda against "Non-Aryans" was a thinly disguised attack against anyone who had Jewish parents or grandparents. Jews felt increasingly isolated from the rest of German society. 1935- Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically. Jews were also defined as a separate race under "The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor." Being Jewish was now determined by ancestry; thus the Germans used race, not religious beliefs or practices, to define the Jewish people. This law forbade marriages or sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Hitler warned darkly that if this law did not resolve the problem, he would turn to the Nazi Party for a final solution. More than 120 laws, decrees, and ordinances were enacted after the Nuremburg Laws and before the outbreak of World War II, further eroding the rights of German Jews. Many thousands of Germans who had not previously considered themselves Jews found themselves defined as "non-Aryans." 1936- In 1936, Berlin hosted the Olympics. Hitler viewed this as a perfect opportunity to promote a favorable image of Nazism to the world. Monumental stadiums and other Olympic facilities were constructed as Nazi showpieces. Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned to create a film, Olympia, for the purpose of Nazi propaganda. Some have called her previous film in 1935, Triumph of the Will, one of the great propaganda pieces of the century. In it, she portrayed Hitler as a god. While two Germans with some Jewish ancestry were invited to be on the German Olympic team, the German Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann, one of the world's most accomplished high jumpers, was not. 1939- On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, officially starting World War II. Two days later, Britain and France, now obliged by treaty to help Poland, declared war on Germany. Hitler's armies used the tactic of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, a combination of armored attack accompanied by air assault. Before British and French power could be brought to bear, in less than four weeks, Poland collapsed. Germany's military conquest put it in a position to establish the New Order, a plan to abuse and eliminate so-called undesirables, notably Jews and Slavs Group 3- The Ghettos 1939- Hitler incorporated the western part of Poland into Germany according to race doctrine. He intended that Poles were to become the slaves of Germany and that the two million Jews therein were to be concentrated in ghettos in Poland's larger cities. Later this would simplify transport to the death camps. Nazi occupation authorities officially told the story that Jews were natural carriers of all types of diseases, especially typhus, and that it was necessary to isolate Jews from the Polish community. Jewish neighborhoods thus were transformed into prisons. The five major ghettos were located in Warsaw, Lódz, Kraków, Lublin, and Lvov. On November 23, 1939 General Governor Hans Frank issued an ordinance that Jews ten years of age and older living in the General Government had to wear the Star of David on armbands or pinned to the chest or back. This made the identification of Jews easier when the Nazis began issuing orders establishing ghettos 1940- In total, the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945. There was no uniformity to these ghettos. The ghettos in small towns were generally not sealed off, which was often a temporary measure used until the residents could be sent to bigger ghettos. Larger cities had closed ghettos, with brick or stone walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire defining the boundaries. Guards were placed strategically at gateways and other boundary openings. Jews were not allowed to leave the so-called "Jewish residential districts," under penalty of death. All ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions. The smallest ghetto housed approximately 3,000 people. Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held 400,000 people. Lódz, the second largest, held about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Bialystok, Czestochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Lvóv, Radom, and Vilna. 1941- Many of the ghetto dwellers were from the local area. Others were from neighboring villages. In October 1941, general deportations began from Germany to major ghettos in Poland and further east. Also, Jews from Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were sent to the ghettos. Ghetto life was wretched. The ghettos were filthy, with poor sanitation. Extreme overcrowding forced many people to share a room. Disease was rampant. Staying warm was difficult during bitter cold winters without adequate warm clothes and heating fuel. Food was in such short supply that many slowly starved to death. Even in the midst of these horrible conditions, many ghetto dwellers resisted dehumanization. Parents continued to educate their children, although it was considered an illegal activity. Some residents secretly continued to hold religious services and observe Jewish holidays Group 4- The Camps 1941- In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union. By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional anguish. In September 1941, the Nazis began using gassing vans--trucks loaded with groups of people who were locked in and asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. These vans were used until the completion of the first death camp, Chelmno, which began operations in late 1941. 1942- Starting early in 1942, the Jewish genocide (sometimes called the Judeocide) went into full operation. Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór began operations as death camps. There was no selection process; Jews were destroyed upon arrival. Ultimately, the Nazis were responsible for the deaths of some 2.7 million Jews in the death camps. These murders were done secretly under the ruse of resettlement. The Germans hid their true plans from citizens and inhabitants of the ghettos by claiming that Jews were being resettled in the East. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send reassuring postcards back to the ghettos. Thus did millions of Jews go unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance. The total figure for the Jewish genocide, including shootings and the camps, was between 5.2 and 5.8 million, roughly half of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war. About 5 million other victims perished at the hands of Nazi Germany. 1943- By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the death camps built specifically to exterminate Jews. The death tolls for the camps are as follows: Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibór, (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (also called Majdanek, 50,000 Jews). Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews. Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945, they sent prisoners walking to camps in central Germany. Thousands died in what became known as death marches. Group 5- The Resistance 1943- April 19, 1943 marked the beginning of an armed revolt by a courageous and determined group of Warsaw ghetto dwellers. The Jewish Fighter Organization (ZOB) led the insurgency and battled for a month, using weapons smuggled into the ghetto. The Nazis responded by bringing in tanks and machine guns, burning blocks of buildings, destroying the ghetto, and ultimately killing many of the last 60,000 Jewish ghetto residents. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first large uprising by an urban population in German-occupied territory. Late summer of 1943 saw armed uprisings at several ghettos and camps. On August 2, seven hundred Jews torched parts of the Treblinka death camp. Most of the rebels were killed within the compound and of the 150-200 who escaped, only a dozen survived. 1944- On October 7, the sonderkommando (prisoners forced to handle the bodies of gas chamber victims) succeeded in blowing up one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz. All of the saboteurs were captured and killed. Resistance continued until the end of the war. Group 6- Rescue and Liberation 1944- Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others from the Nazi death sentence did so at great risk to their own safety. Anyone found harboring a Jew, for example, was shot or publicly hanged as a warning to others. Sharing scarce resources with those in hiding was an additional sacrifice on the part of the rescuer. Despite the risks, thousands followed the dictates of conscience. In Denmark, 7,220 of its 8,000 Jews were saved by a citizenry who hid them, then ferried them to the safety of neutral Sweden. 1945- As Allied troops entered Nazi-occupied territories, the final rescue and liberation transpired. Allied troops who stumbled upon the concentration camps were shocked at what they found. Large ditches filled with bodies, rooms of baby shoes, and gas chambers with fingernail marks on the walls all testified to Nazi brutality. General Eisenhower insisted on photographing and documenting the horror so that future generations would not ignore history and repeat its mistakes. He also forced villagers neighboring the death and concentration camps to view what had occurred in their own backyards. Group 7- Aftermath 1945- Beginning in the summer of 1945, a series of high-level visitors examined the DP camps. Visitors included Earl G. Harrison, President Truman's envoy; David Ben-Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel; and the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. Harrison wrote, "We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we don't exterminate them." Reports by these influential visitors resulted in improved living conditions in the DP camps. Jewish DPs were recognized as a special ethnic group, with their own needs, and were moved to separate camps enjoying a wide degree of autonomy. Agencies of the United Nations and of Jews from Palestine, the United States, and Britain became involved with the camps. They provided vocational and agricultural education, and financial, legal, and psychological assistance. Several newspapers were published in the camps, keeping communication open between the DPs and the rest of the world. Other more formal punishment was being discussed in the courtroom. Of the many post-war trials, those held at Nuremberg are the most well known. During the last years of the war, responding to reports of death and labor camps, the Allied countries created a War Crimes Commission and began the process of listing war criminals with the intent to prosecute. After the war, the International Military Tribunal was chartered. It composed of the four Allied nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and was charged with the task of prosecuting major Nazi war criminals. 1946- With newspaper and radio coverage broadcasting news globally, much of the world first learned the full extent of the "Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity." Half of the 22 defendants were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, and the remaining were imprisoned. Among the International Military Tribunal's conclusions were the following: A war of aggression, in any form, is prohibited under international law. The individual is responsible for crimes carried out under superior orders. The Gestapo, Nazi Party, SS, and SA were criminal organizations. The leaders and organizers of these criminal organizations were guilty of crimes carried out by others in executing the criminal plan 1948- On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent State of Israel as theirs, and the British withdrew from Palestine. The next day, neighboring Arab nations attacked Israel. In this same month, the U.S. legislature passed the Displaced Persons' Act of 1948. However, the law had strong antisemitic elements, limiting the number of Jewish displaced persons who could emigrate to the United States. Truman reluctantly signed it. Two years later, in June 1950, the antisemitic provisions were finally eliminated. ** All information taken from http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/timeline.htm**