Download Group 1- The Rise of the Nazi Party

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:
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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**