Download World War II - Awtrey Middle School

World War II, The Holocaust, and Anne
Frank
Adolf Hitler
• Hitler served in World War I.
• He joined the National Socialist German
Worker’s 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.
Hitler’s Mission
• Hitler’s 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).
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.
Hitler’s Power
• The Schutz Staffel (SS) was a protection squad
created in 1925 to serve as Hitler’s personal
bodyguard. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler was
appointed to SS leadership, and the
organization was eventually expanded to
become the Nazi Party’s 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).
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.
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 Germany’s unemployment and
economic decline.
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.
Anti-Semitism
• Acts or negative feelings against Jews
which take the form of prejudice, dislike,
fear, discrimination, and persecution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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 Jehovah’s Witnesses
were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior.
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