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Few would have thought that the Nazi Party, starting as a gang of unemployed soldiers in 1919, would become the legal government of
Germany by 1933. In fourteen years, a once obscure corporal, Adolf Hitler, would become the Chancellor of Germany.
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.
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.
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.
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. The SA was the
paramilitary unit of the Party, a propaganda arm that became known for its strong arm tactics of street brawling and terror. The SS was
established as an elite group with special duties within the SA, but it remained inconsequential until Heinrich Himmler became its leader
in 1929. By the late twenties, the Nazi Party started other auxiliary groups. The Hitler Youth, the Student League and the Pupils' League
were open to young Germans. The National Socialist Women's League allowed women to get involved. Different professional groups-teachers, lawyers and doctors--had their own auxiliary units.
From 1925 to 1927, the Nazi Party failed to make inroads in the cities and in May 1928, it did poorly in the Reichstag elections, winning
only 2.6% of the total vote. The Party shifted its strategy to rural and small town areas and fueled antisemitism by calling for
expropriation of Jewish agricultural property and by condemning large Jewish department stores. Party propaganda proved effective at
winning over university students, veterans' organizations, and professional groups, although the Party became increasingly identified
with young men of the lower middle classes.
The Great Depression began in 1929 and wrought worldwide economic, social, and psychological consequences. The
Weimar democracy proved unable to cope with national despair as unemployment doubled from three million to six million, or one in
three, by 1932. The existing "Great Coalition" government, a combination of left-wing and conservative parties, collapsed while arguing
about the rising cost of unemployment benefits.
Reich president Paul von Hindenburg's advisers persuaded him to invoke the constitution's emergency presidential powers. These
powers allowed the president to restore law and order in a crisis. Hindenburg created a new government, made up of a chancellor and
cabinet ministers, to rule by emergency decrees instead of by laws passed by the Reichstag. So began the demise of the Weimar
democracy.
Heinrich Brüning was the first chancellor under the new presidential system. He was unable to unify the government, and in September
1930, there were new elections. The Nazi Party won an important victory, capturing 18.3% of the vote to make it the second largest
party in the Reichstag.
Hindenburg's term as president was ending in the spring of 1932. At age 84, he was reluctant to run again, but knew that
if he didn't, Hitler would win. Hindenburg won the election, but Hitler received 37% of the vote.
Germany's government remained on the brink of collapse. The SA brownshirts, about 400,000 strong, were a part of daily street
violence. The economy was still in crisis. In the election of July 1932, the Nazi Party won 37% of the Reichstag seats, thanks to a
massive propaganda campaign. For the next six months, the most powerful German leaders were embroiled in a series of desperate
political maneuverings. Ultimately, these major players severely underestimated Hitler's political abilities.
Joseph Heinrich Tells His Story
Joseph Heinrich was one of ten children born to a middle class Jewish family in Frankfort am Main, Germany.
His father, who ran a small grocery shop, was sympathetic to the Zionist movement. By 1937, when Joseph was
thirteen years old, his four older brothers and sisters had already left Germany to settle in Palestine.
Joseph Heinrich: On November 9, 1938, we stood by the window of our house--the house where I was born-and watched while they burned down the big synagogue across the street. The Boerneplatz Square was crowded
with thousands of spectators; they made a circus out of it. We saw it all. Suddenly they burst into our rooms with
axes and bars and smashed everything up.
We ran to the neighborhood police station for help. They looked at us and just laughed. We fled from them to
find shelter with a family my father knew. Then in the evening we took a taxi to my aunt's house. That was
Thursday. On Friday we saw them arresting Jewish people all day long. Friday evening, we were still with my
aunt. We heard a knock on the door; they had come to arrest my uncle, my father's brother-in law.
My father said to them, "I won't let him go alone."
"Fine. You can come too," they said, and took them both away.
A few hours later my sister and I went to the police station asking for our father. They told us to get lost. Several days after, on the 15th of
November, my mother sent my little sister Lorle, my younger brother Asher, and me to Holland. We went together with a group of about
twenty-five children, organized by some Jewish women; I don't know who they were.
When we arrived at the Dutch border, two S.S. men took us off the train, into a waiting room. All the Germans had to leave the room because
they couldn't have Germans and Jews in one place together--we were very dangerous people, you know; I was fourteen, Lorle was eight,
Asher was twelve, and there was another child of three or four. They told us there was no toilet, no water fountain, no nothing, and don't cry.
Right away the little ones started crying.
We weren't allowed to leave the room until evening when they put us aboard another train, the Reingold Express--I remember it very well.
We crossed the border into Holland. When we arrived, a committee was waiting to greet us. There were journalists and photographers;
everyone was asking how things were in Germany. We told them about the burning and arrests.
I don't know if I can tell you how I felt; as a young child, maybe it was like some kind of adventure; I
know I wasn't afraid. Even when I saw the synagogue burning and how they broke up our flat, I'm certain I
was not afraid--really not.
But when we arrived in Holland, that moment was very hard for me. I think I realized all at once that
something was irreversibly broken. It was only at that moment that I understood what was going on, or
maybe more, I started to think about what might be in store in the future.
The next day the people looking after us told us to write letters home letting our parents know that we had
arrived safely. They made sure we stayed in contact with our families by writing every week. I found out
that my father was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp. But then he was set free because he
managed, through a cousin, to get an afidavit for England. In 1938 Buchenwald was not yet a death camp, although there were plenty of
people who never left the place. If you could show you had an affidavit to emigrate, they would set you free and let you leave the country,
but it was very, very hard to do. There was practically no country in the world that would take Jews--not America, not England, none. Ships
were leaving for America, but if you were Jewish you couldn't go, even if you had the money. The only place you could go to easily was
Shanghai, and who had enough money to go there? --very, very few. When the Germans invaded Poland on the first of September 1939, my
mother said to my father, "You must leave, otherwise they will arrest you again." But there was no affidavit for my mother. I never saw her
again.
My father was on the last civilian train to cross the Holland border, and then on the last boat from Holland to England. In England he was
arrested right away for being German--an enemy alien--and put in a concentration camp on the Isle of Mann with Nazis! He was there for a
long time.
Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy. It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European
world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. The Nazi machinery was dedicated to eradicating millions of people it deemed
undesirable. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health
conditions. These included Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, and people with physical or mental disabilities. Others were Nazi victims
because of what they did. These victims of the Nazi regime included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, Communists,
Socialists, asocials, and other political enemies.
Those believed by Hitler and the Nazis to be enemies of the state were banished to camps. Inside the concentration camps, prisoners were
forced to wear various colored triangles, each color denoting a different group. The letters on the triangular badges below designate the
prisoners' countries of origin.
Jews
Antisemitism was a familiar part of European political life in the 1800s. Political antisemitism was preceded by centuries of
religious persecution of Europe's Jews. There is evidence as early as 1919 that Hitler had a strong hatred of Jews. As Chancellor
and later ReichsfŸhrer, Hitler translated these intense feelings into a series of policies and statutes which progressively eroded the rights of
German Jews from 1933-1939.
At first, the Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses for one day in April 1933. Then legislation excluded Jews from certain professions. The
Nuremberg Laws created very detailed Nazi definitions of who was Jewish. Many people who never considered themselves Jewish suddenly
became targets of Nazi persecution.
The world accessible to German Jews narrowed. Jews were no longer allowed to enter cinemas, theaters, swimming pools, and resorts. The
publishing of Jewish newspapers was suspended. Jews were required to carry identification cards and to wear Star of David badges. On one
night, Nazis burned synagogues and vandalized Jewish businesses. The arrests and murders that followed intensified the fear Jews felt. Next,
Jewish children were barred from schools. Curfews restricted Jews' time of travel and Jews were banned from public places. Germany began
to expel Jews from within its borders.
Germany's invasion of Poland in late 1939 radicalized the Nazi regime's policy toward Jews. Hitler turned to wholesale death of the
European Jewish population. He swept Jewish populations into ghettos in eastern Europe. Simultaneously, mobile squads killed millions.
The next step was to send Jews to squalid concentration and death camps. Approximately six million died for one reason: they were Jewish.
More information about Jewish victims of the Holocaust, with links to other Web sites and documentary materials.
Roma (Gypsies)
The Roma, a nomadic people believed to have come originally from northwest India, consisted of several tribes or nations. Most
of the Roma who had settled in Germany belonged to the Sinti nation. The Sinti and Roma had been persecuted for centuries. The
Nazi regime continued the persecution, viewing the Roma both as asocial and as racially inferior to Germans.
Although the Nuremberg Laws did not specifically mention them, Roma were included in the implementation of the statutes. Like Jews, they
were deprived of their civil rights. In June 1936, a Central Office to "Combat the Gypsy Nuisance" opened in Munich. By 1938, Sinti and
Roma were being deported to concentration camps.
The fate of the Romani peoples paralleled that of the Jews after the beginning of World War II: systematic deportation and murder. First,
western European Roma were resettled in ghettos. Then they were sent to concentration and extermination camps. Many Roma in the east-Russia, Poland, and the Balkans--were shot by the Einsatzgruppen. In total, hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma were killed during
the Holocaust.
Further information about the Sinti and Roma, a photo, and links to other Web sites.
Poles and Other Slavs
It is often forgotten that Christian Poles and other Slavs, notably Ukrainians and Byelorussians, were also primary targets of Nazi
Germany hatred during World War II. To the Nazis, the Slavs were considered Untermenschen,or subhumans, and nothing more
than obstacles to gaining territory necessary for the superior German race. This philosophy is apparent in Hitler's statement, "The
destruction of Poland is our primary task. The aim is not the arrival at a certain line but the annihilation of living forces...."
The combination of a Nazi genocidal policy and the Nazis' thirst for more living space resulted in disaster for Polish, Ukrainian, and
Byelorussian populations. Millions of Slavs were deported to Germany for forced labor. Intelligentsia, consisting of teachers, physicians,
clergy, business owners, attorneys, engineers, landowners, and writers, were imprisoned in concentration camps or publicly executed. Tens
of thousands of Ukrainians were executed by mobile killing squads, or Einsatzgruppen.
Those who were sent to camps had to wear badges, of course. There was not one badge designation for Poles and other Slavs. Rather, a
Polish or Slavic person was categorized as a criminal, asocial, political prisoner, and so on.
Millions upon millions of non-Jews were slaughtered in the Slavic countries.
Political Dissidents and Dissenting Clergy
The remnants of the Communist and Socialist parties and members of the trade unions resisted the Nazi regime. Especially in the early years
of the Third Reich, political prisoners were a significant portion of the concentration camp inmates. At the end of July 1933, about 27,000
political prisoners were being held in concentration camps in "protective custody." During its twelve year existence, Dachau was always a
camp for political prisoners.
In 1933, the Roman Catholic Church signed a concordat or agreement with the new Nazi government, recognizing the legitimacy of the
Third Reich. The Protestant Church was united into a single Reich Church under one bishop. In September 1933, Martin Niemöller, a pastor
of a fashionable church in Berlin, set up a Pastors' Emergency League which led to the formation of the anti-Nazi Confessional Church. This
church wrote a memorandum to Hitler attacking the government's anti-Christian campaign, policies of antisemitism, and terrorizing tactics.
Hitler responded with a crackdown on members of the Confessional Church. Hundreds of dissenting clergy were arrested, many were
imprisoned, and also executed.
Persons with Physical or Mental Disabilities
These people never were assigned a badge because they were rarely sent to concentration camps. Persons with physical or mental disabilities
threatened the Nazi plan for human "perfection."
In 1934, forced sterilization programs sterilized 300,000 - 400,000 people, mainly those in mental hospitals and other institutions.
Propaganda was distributed which helped build public support for these government policies. Persons who were mentally ill or physically
disabled were stigmatized, while the costs of care were emphasized in propaganda campaigns.
In 1939, a Nazi "euthanasia program" began. This term is used as a euphemism for the Nazi plan to murder those with physical or mental
defects. Unlike the sterilization program, the "euthanasia" program was conducted in secrecy. "Operation T4" was the code term used to
designate this killing project.
As word leaked out about the "euthanasia" program, some church leaders, parents of victims, physicians, and judges protested the killings.
Hitler ordered the end of Operation T4 in August 1941. However, the murders continued in a decentralized manner. Doctors were
encouraged to kill patients with disabilities by starvation, poisoning, or injection.
Jehovah's Witnesses
In 1933, the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany totaled about twenty thousand. Although their religious meetings were outlawed after the Nazi
rise to power, many continued to practice their religion. In 1934, Jehovah's Witnesses attempted to fend off Nazi attacks by having
congregations send letters to the government explaining their beliefs and political neutrality.
The Nazis did not tolerate the Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal, which was based on religious principles, to salute flags, to raise their arms to
"Heil Hitler,"or to serve in the German army. The group was banned by national law in April 1935. Those Witnesses who defied the ban on
their activities were arrested and sent to prisons and concentration camps.
Marked with purple triangular badges, the Witnesses were a relatively small group of prisoners in the concentration camps,
numbering several hundred per camp. If Jehovah's Witnesses within the camps signed documents renouncing their religious
beliefs, they would be freed. Very few, even in the face of torture, signed the declarations. In all, about 10,000 Jehovah's
Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps. Of these, approximately 2,500 to 5,000 died in Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald,
Auschwitz, and other camps.
Homosexuals
A state policy of persecution of homosexuals began in Germany in 1933. Publications by and about homosexuals were prohibited and
burned. In 1934, a special Gestapo division on homosexuals was set up. A criminal code relating to homosexuality was amended and made
harsher. German police raided gay clubs and bars and made arrests.
Some homosexuals spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Even within the confines
of the camps, homosexuals were mistreated and tormented by other inmates.
The Nazi regime claimed its concern about homosexuality related to keeping the Aryan birthrate high. German and Austrian gays were
subject to arrest and imprisonment, but in German-occupied countries, Nazis did not deport homosexuals and send them to camps.
Other Victims
When the Nazis came to power there were hundreds of African-German children living in the Rhineland. They were the offspring of German
mothers and African soldiers brought in during the French occupation. In Mein Kampf,Hitler claimed these children were part of a Jewish
plot to begin "bastardizing the European continent at its core." Under the Nazi regime, African-German children were labeled "Rhineland
Bastards" and forcibly sterilized.
Asocials were another category of people that Nazis deemed undesirable, and necessary for eradication. Nazis targeted numerous vagrants,
prostitutes, alcoholics, and others who were considered unfit for society.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party or NSDAP, known as the Nazi Party, controlled Germany from 1933 to 45. Nazis labeled and
isolated Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, political prisoners, and the mentally and physically disabled. Some were passively killed by
starvation and widespread disease. Millions were murdered in attacks by the Gestapo, the SA, and the SS, in mass killings of the
Einsatzgruppen, in and around Nazi concentration, and later death camps.
Although Adolf Hitler is often perceived as the chief perpetrator, there were others. Perpetrators were Nazi party leaders, bankers, professors,
military officials, doctors, journalists, engineers, judges, authors, lawyers, salesmen, police, and civil servants. Perpetrators committed crimes
against Jews and other undesirables for many reasons. They wanted power. They believed in an ideology of racial cleansing. They profited
financially, displaced their anger from their own failures, or were perhaps "following orders."
Hitler's war against Germany's domestic enemies was waged with court decrees, a continuous flow of propaganda, and ever present violence.
Legal policies
Nazis began to whittle away at the rights of Jews and other party enemies soon after Hitler became Chancellor in January of 1933. One
example is the treatment of German Jews. A series of laws were created banning "non-Aryans" from civil service, the legal, medical, and
dental professions, teaching positions, cultural and entertainment enterprises, and the press. At the 1935 party rally, the Nuremberg Laws
were announced, completing the disenfranchisement of the Jews. Jews no longer were German citizens; they were subjects. They were
forbidden to marry Aryans and forbidden to fly the Reich and national flags. Jews were separated politically, socially, and legally from the
Germans.
The full Nuremberg Laws are listed.
A third phase of restricting Jewish rights took place in 1938-39. In July 1938, Jews were required to carry identification cards. Later, Jewish
children were banned from school and curfews were instituted. Jews were also excluded from businesses, parks, resorts, and forests. A one
billion mark penalty was levied against the Jews for "the hostility of Jewry toward the German people and Reich...."
The list of discriminatory decrees against Jews as presented at the Nuremberg Trials.
Propaganda
Propaganda employs techniques which assume that the masses are not individuals capable of forming their own opinions. Propaganda relies
on emotion rather than on logic, concentrates on a few points which are presented in simple terms, and then hammers those points repeatedly.
Adolf Hitler helped establish the Nazi party in 1920 and was the propaganda director of the Party before becoming its leader. In his book,
Mein Kampf (My Struggle), written in 1924, Hitler wrote:
The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members... Propaganda works on the
general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea....
Until 1929, the technical equipment available to the Nazi propagandists was rather primitive, so propaganda trucks carried posters and people
shouting slogans. As microphones, loudspeakers, and other mass media developed, so did the sophistication of
Nazi propaganda.
Hitler, a highly skilled orator, spoke at a number of mass rallies. These mass meetings created a sense of
community, kept emotional levels high, and were a psychologically fertile environment in which to deliver
propaganda. Rallies often took place in the evening when Hitler thought that people were most suggestible and
least resistant. Carefully timed stage effects including: marching music, spotlights, torchlight processions,
parades, flags fluttering, shouts of "Heil!," and impassioned oratory created the feeling of national unity,
strength, and purpose.
Propaganda was used throughout the Nazi Party's lifetime, in its rise to power and while Hitler was Führer.
Several weeks after Hitler was named Chancellor, Joseph Goebbels was appointed the Minister of People's
Enlightenment and Propaganda. He had total control of radio, press, publishing, cinema, and the other arts.
The weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer, was an antisemitic newspaper with a circulation of around 500,000 at its peak in 1927. Julius Streicher,
a friend of Hitler, was the founder of the antisemitic journal.
Violence--terror and death
Hitler's philosophy about terror was clear-cut:
We must be ruthless...Only thus shall we purge our people of their softness...and their degenerate delight in beer-swilling...I don't
want the concentration camps transformed into penitentiaries. Terror is the most effective political instrument...It is my duty to
make use of every means of training the German people to cruelty, and to prepare them for war...There must be no weakness or
tenderness.
The SS (Schutzstaffelnor guard squadrons), the SA (Sturmabteilungor storm troops), the SD
(Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS or security service of the SS), and the Gestapo (Geheime Staats
Polizeior Secret State Police) were all Nazi instruments of terror.
The SA was founded in 1921 as the Nazi Party militia. It lured new recruits with promises of adventure:
participating in parades and secret meetings, painting slogans on buildings, fighting with opponents, and
wearing the Brown Shirt uniforms. The SA recruited 15,000 members by 1923, and by the end of 1933, the
SA was four-and-a-half million men strong.
The SS began in 1925 as a small personal guard unit to protect Hitler and other party leaders. It developed
into the elite corps, the Black Shirts, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler. There were about 100,000
members in 1933. A power struggle occurred in 1934, called the "Night of the Long Knives," between the
SA and the SS. The SS won. Himmler was made chief of the German police as well as the head of the SS,
able to act within the law as head of the police and outside the law as head of the SS. Germany was truly a
police state in which almost any act of terror could now be interpreted as legal.
The German people were in the hands of the police, the police were in the hands of the Nazi Party, and
the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men....
--Prosecutor Jackson's Address to the International Military Tribunal
Himmler established the Nazi Party's intelligence service in 1931, appointing Reinhard Heydrich as its chief. This section of the SS was
created to uncover the Party's enemies and keep them under surveillance. After the outbreak of the war, the SD was assigned operational
tasks, joined the Einsatzgruppen,and played a central role in organizing and implementing the "Final Solution."
The Gestapo was composed of professional police agents, unlike the SS or SA. The Gestapo, in addition to their own agents, had block
wardens, who kept close watch on the tenants of their block. The Gestapo was everywhere. Even a hint of criticism of the National Socialist
Regime could result in arrest.
The Nazi party military and police agencies wielded their power violently, leaving a wake of terror and fatalities. Joseph Goebbels and
Reinhard Heydrich orchestrated a night of terror in Germany, destroying synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish businesses and homes,
looting, physically beating Jews, and arresting thousands of Jews who were then sent to concentration camps. On November 9 and 10, 1938,
Kristallnacht,or "The Night of Broken Glass," was a turning point in the escalation of terror against Jews.
Concentration camps were a part of the perpetrators' systematic reign of terror. The SA and the SS units, during the first months following
the Nazi seizure of power, established the camp at Dachau in March, 1933. Initially, Communists, Socialists, labor leaders, and other
political opponents were the prisoners. Jews and homosexuals were sent next. By 1934, a unit of the SS, named the Death's Head Formations,
was in charge of all the concentration camps. Prisoners were starved, forced into labor, tortured, and sometimes murdered in these camps.
Following the successful German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis had more than two million additional Jews under their
administration. Heydrich was in charge of the Einsatzgruppen,(Special Duty groups), a military group which was responsible for
implementing the Final Solution. In Poland, the Einsatzgruppenwere to move Jews from the countryside to larger cities, where ghettos were
established. Their tactics included mocking, beard cutting, beating, torture, and arrest. As Jews were evacuated from the smaller towns, some
were randomly seized from the streets and their homes, deported for forced labor, and brutally shot or beaten to death.
The day after the army advanced into the Soviet Union in 1941, the Einsatzgruppenfollowed. Their task was to kill masses of Jews. From
1941-42, the Einsatzgruppenmassacred over one million Jews with guns or in mobile killing vans.
While the Einsatzgruppenmurdered Jews in the Soviet Union, Hitler constructed death camps to efficiently murder massive numbers of Jews
in the rest of Europe. Hitler gave Himmler the task of creating the death camps. Six major annihilation camps were established in what is
now Poland: Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibór, Majdanek, and Treblinka. Trains transported Jews, first from the Polish ghettos, and
then from France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, and Hungary. Each day, gas chambers killed
thousands of Jews, whose bodies were then burned in huge crematoria and in open pits. Himmler's perverted logic twisted these unbelievable
atrocities into acts of greatness:
Most of you know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time-apart from exceptions caused by human weakness--to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of
glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written....
Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) was instrumental in implementing the Final Solution, organizing transports of Jews
from all over Europe to the killing centers. As SS lieutenant colonel and head of IVB4, the Jewish department of the
Office for Reich Security, Eichmann served as secretary at the Wannsee Conference. He was arrested at the war's end
in the American zone of Germany, but escaped to Latin America and disappeared. In 1960, members of the Israeli
Secret Service discovered Eichmann in Argentina and through a covert action, transported him to Israel for trial. In
December, 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed in Jerusalem.
Hans Frank (1900-1946) Governor-General of occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945. A member of the Nazi Party
from its earliest days and Hitler's personal lawyer, he announced, "Poland will be treated like a colony; the Poles will
become slaves of the Greater German Reich." By 1942, more than 85% of the Jews in Poland had been transported to
extermination camps. Frank was tried at Nuremberg, convicted, and executed in 1946.
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) held the title of Reich Minister for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933
until his suicide in May, 1945. He had total control of the radio, the press, publishing houses, and the cinema. He was
highly skilled at mass persuasion and played an important role in creating and maintaining the Führer's image. He
staged the book burning in Berlin in 1933 and instigated Kristallnachtin 1938.
Hermann Göring (1893-1946) was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime
Minister of Prussia, and Hitler's designated successor. He created the secret police and helped set up the early
concentration camps for political opponents. In 1936, as Plenipotentiary for the implementation of the Four Year Plan,
he had dictatorial control in directing the German economy, and personally amassed a fortune. Göring directed the
Luftwaffe campaigns against Poland, France, and Great Britain. Hitler blamed Göring for Germany's military defeats.
Göring was tried at Nuremberg, found guilty and sentenced to death. He committed suicide while in prison.
Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) was the mentally unstable number three man in Hitler's Germany. He is best known for a
surprise flight to Scotland in 1941. He was sentenced to life in prison at Nuremberg. He died in jail in 1987.
Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) became the chief of the SD. His more notorious achievements included the
establishment of ghettos in Poland, his leadership of the Einsatzgruppen, and the convening of the Wannsee
Convention. His assassination in 1942 caused merciless German reprisals, continuing after his death the terror and
intimidation that characterized his life.
Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was an unsuccessful chicken farmer and fertilizer salesman who became a leader in
the Nazi party in the mid-1920s. As head of the SS as well as the Gestapo, he was a cold, efficient, ruthless
administrator. He was the organizer of the mass murder of Jews, the man in charge of the concentration and death
camps.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was leader of the Nazi Party and Reich Chancellor of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.
His tyrannical reign was marked with a passion for destruction, ruthless hatred, and the massacre of millions of
innocent people.
Joseph Mengele(1911-1978?) SS physician at Auschwitz, notorious for pseudo-medical experiments, especially on
twins and Gypsies. He "selected" new arrivals by simply pointing to the right or the left, thus separating those
considered able to work from those who were not. Those too weak or too old to work were sent straight to the gas
chambers, after all their possessions, including their clothes, were taken for resale in Germany. After the war, he spent
some time in a British internment hospital but disappeared, went underground, escaped to Argentina, and later to
Paraguay, where he became a citizen in 1959. He was hunted by Interpol, Israeli agents, and Simon Wiesenthal. In
1986, his body was found in Embu, Brazil.
Jürgen Stroop (1895-1951) was the SS major general responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.
Later that year, as Higher SS and Police Leader in Greece, he supervised the deportation of thousands of Jews from
Salonika. He was sentenced to death and executed in Poland in 1951.
2. DISCRIMINATORY DECREES AGAINST JEWS
When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, the conspirators used the means of official decrees as a weapon against the Jews. In
this way the force of the state was applied against them. Jewish immigrants were denaturalized (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 480,
signed by Frick and Neurath). Native Jews were precluded from citizenship (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1146, signed by Frick).
Jews were forbidden to live in marriage or to have extramarital relations with persons of German blood (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page
1146, signed by Frick and Hess). Jews were denied the right to vote (1936 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 133, signed by Frick). Jews were
denied the right to hold public office or civil service [Page 981] positions (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 277, signed by Frick) .
Jews were relegated to an inferior status by the denial of common privileges and freedoms. Thus, they were denied access to certain city
areas, sidewalks, transportation, places of amusement, restaurants (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1676). Progressively, more and more
stringent measures were applied, even to the denial of private pursuits. They were excluded from the practice of dentistry (1939
Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 47, signed by Hess). The practice of law was denied to them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1403,
signed by Frick and Hess). The practice of medicine was forbidden them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 969, signed by Frick and
Hess). They were denied employment by press and radio ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from stock
exchanges and stock brokerage 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from farming ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, , Part
I, page 685). In 1938 they were excluded from business in general and from the economic life of Germany (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I,
Page 1580, signed by Goering).
The Jews were also forced to pay discriminatory taxes and huge atonement fines. Their homes, bank accounts, real estate, and intangibles
were expropriated. A report of a conference under the chairmanship of Goering, and attended by Funk, among others, which was held at 11
clock on 12 November 1918 at the Reich Ministry for Air, quotes Goering as saying: "One more question, gentlemen, what would you think
the situation would be if I'd announced today that Jewry shall have to contribute this one billion as a punishment." "I shall choose the
wording this way that German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, etc., etc., have to make a contribution of one billion;
that'll work. The pigs won't commit another murder. I'd like to say again that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany." (1816-PS) Following
these whimsical remarks a decree was issued over the signature of Goering, fining German Jews the sum of one billion Reichsmarks (1938
Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1579 dated 12 November 1938, signed by Goering). [Page 982]
Throughout the Holocaust, victims received help from rescuers. Courageous citizens were able to hide and protect thousands of Jews and
other victims of oppression until the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the death camps by the Allied forces.
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.
Better known rescuers include Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who led the effort that saved
100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Another rescuer, Oscar Schindler, saved over 1,000 Polish Jews from their
deaths. Huguenot Pastor André Trocme led the rescue effort in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid
and protected 5,000 Jews. Over 13,000 men and women who risked their lives to rescue Jews have been
honored as "Righteous Gentiles" at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Thousands more
remain unrecognized.
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.
Confining Jews in ghettos was not Hitler's brainchild. For centuries, Jews had faced persecution, and were often forced to live in designated
areas called ghettos. The Nazis' ghettos differed, however, in that they were a preliminary step in the annihilation of the Jews, rather than a
method to just isolate them from the rest of society. As the war against the Jews progressed, the ghettos became transition areas, used as
collection points for deportation to death camps and concentration camps.
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.
Jews were segregated from the rest of society.
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.
Ghetto Nutrition
Jewish Rations in 1941.
The Polish ghettos received food supplies in two ways - from official and unofficial sources. Official sources were distributed by ration cards
issued by the occupation authorities, a method which was introduced even before ghettos were set up and which from the start allowed Jews
much less than the general population. When the ghettos were established, their supply departments were authorized to purchase food
according to the allocations determined by the German authorities.
In the second half of 1941, the daily food ration received by Jews in the GENERALGOUVERNEMENT, on the basis of ration cards,
consisted of an average of 184 calories, which is 7.5 percent of the minimum daily requirement. The Germans received a full ration and the
Poles 26 percent. In most of the ghettos of the of Poland which had been incorporated into the Reich, the standard was better. At first Jews
received between 1,500 calories and 1,800 for hard labor, and later 513 and 638, respectively - the daily requirement for light labor is 2,400.
Supplimenting Rations.
Items supplied by ration cards were much cheaper than on the black market, but were very limited in variety. Since the rations were so small,
people tried to supplement them. Most of the Jews were impoverished, and this meant only the relatively wealthy could afford to buy food on
the black market. People who did not have any savings starved to death, despite the additional nourishment available at food kitchens; in
Warsaw in 1941 the soup contained about 110 calories. Some of the ghetto population, who were employed in jobs in German - operated
factories and were housed in barracks, had part of their food provided to them by the management. The rations they received depended on
what type of work they were doing.
The Warsaw Ghetto.
In Warsaw in December 1941, status in the ghetto scheme of things determined average daily food intake: Judenrat employees averaged
1,665 calories; teamsters, 1,544; shopkeepers 1,429; self - employed artisans 1,407; unemployed professionals, 1,395; house superintendents,
1,350; employees of "shops" 1,229; refugees in bunkers, 805; and beggars 785. During the first 18 months of the ghetto's existence, between
15 and 18 percent of the people starved to death. In other ghettos the situation was much the same.
German Exploitation of Starvation.
The Germans exploited the lack of food to persuade Jews to report for deportation of their own free will. In one period, Jews in Warsaw who
volunteered for deportation were given 6.6 pounds (3 kg) of bread and 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of jam.
Two large and on-going international needs emerged as World War II was ending: 1) retribution for perpetrators, and 2) the re-settlement of
people uprooted by the war. These complex issues have occupied the hearts and minds of thousands around the world for decades. Even
today, unresolved issues about the Holocaust remain.
International and national trials conducted in the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and other European countries indicted
hundreds of war criminals. Defendants ranged from Hitler's deputy minister, to the editor-in-chief of a malicious antisemitic newspaper, Der
Stürmer, to concentration camp guards and members of Einsatzgruppen.
Seven to nine million people were displaced by the end of the war. At the end of 1945, 1.5 to 2 million displaced persons (DPs) did not want
to return to their homes, fearing economic and social repercussions, or even annihilation. About ten percent of these people were Jewish. The
Allies set up DP camps in Germany, which American, British, and French military controlled, and the United Nations took care of. One
question that faced the Western world was, "who will offer a home to these displaced people?"
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.
Organizations, many with a Zionist focus, formed within the camps. Some Jews envisioned a Jewish
homeland, considered by many to be Palestine. The British White Paper of 1939, however, still restricted
immigration to Palestine by Jews.
While some of the international community were focusing on the survivors of the Holocaust, others were dealing with punishing to the
perpetrators. The Allied troops were so outraged at what they found at concentration camps that they demanded German civilians directly
confront the atrocities. U.S. troops led compulsory tours of concentration camps to the neighboring population. Some German citizens were
forced to partake in the burial of countless corpses found in the camps.
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.
In Nuremberg, a war-ravaged town in southern Germany, 22 high ranking Nazi officials were named and
brought to trial before the world. Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg
Trials, addressed the International Military Tribunal on November 20, 1945, the first day in court:
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a
grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so
malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot
survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hands of vengeance and
voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid
to Reason.
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.
In addition to the well-known Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, there were Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings held between December 1946,
and April 1949, which tried 177 persons. Individual countries also prosecuted war criminals in national courts of law. The British held trials
of the commandant and staff of the Bergen-Belsen camp, those responsible for forced labor, and the owners and executives of the
manufacturer of Zyklon B, among others. The Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, West Germany, and Romania were some of the other
countries that brought war criminals to trial.
As the perpetrators were being tried, many survivors were still in limbo, waiting for an opportunity to
emigrate from Europe. Joining these survivors, in large numbers in 1946, were Jews who had remained
throughout eastern Europe. They felt they could no longer continue living in their former villages which,
during the war, had become Jewish graveyards.
Many of these Jewish refugees turned to the American DP camps for temporary asylum. This organized
and illegal mass movement of Jews throughout Europe, known as "B'richa," added to the displaced
persons' dilemma.
The United States and Britain were the two countries in a position to help resolve this crisis. However, the
U.S. was reluctant to increase its immigration quota. Britain, which held Palestine as a mandated territory,
was hesitant to take a stand that would alienate the Arabs, who did not want to see Palestine become a
Jewish homeland.
It became increasing clear that the problem of approximately one million displaced people, about 80% Christian and 20% Jewish, would not
be resolved easily. In 1947, a series of bills was introduced in the U.S. Congress to relax immigration quotas, but none passed.
In the meantime, the British turned to the United Nations, hoping that an international organization could resolve this thorny issue. On
November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a plan that divided Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with
Jerusalem under international control.
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.
An on-going aspect of the aftermath of the Holocaust has been the quest to track down and bring to justice Nazi war criminals who escaped.
Simon Wiesenthal is a prominent figure who has devoted much of his life to hunting down Nazis in hiding and prosecuting them.
The capture of war criminal Adolf Eichmann was an historic event. In May 1960, Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina.
They brought him to Israel, where Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced in the Israeli Parliament, "Adolf Eichmann...is under arrest
in Israel and will shortly be put on trial." He was charged with crimes against Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, and others, including their arrest
and imprisonment, deportation to extermination camps, theft of property, mass expulsions, and murder. Eichmann was sentenced to death,
and executed at midnight May 31, 1962. The trial brought to light, especially for a new generation of Israelis and Germans, as well as for the
entire world, the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazis.
More than fifty years after the end of World War II, a new chapter of Holocaust history is unfolding. Evidence is emerging of the
complicated financial transactions between the Nazis and the European countries and businesses that profited by the genocide. Released on
May 7, 1997, a United States study, directed by Commerce Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat, describes "one of the greatest thefts by a
government in history."
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The Eizenstat report shows that between January 1939, and June 1945, Nazi Germany transferred $400 million (equivalent to $3.9
billion in today's dollars) worth of looted gold to the Swiss National Bank, in exchange for foreign currency and materials vital to
Germany's war machine.
The Eizenstat report also documents that gold, jewelry, coins and melted down dental fillings of concentration camp victims were
taken, mixed with plundered bank gold, and resmelted into gold bars that were traded to other countries.
There are still many unresolved issues related to the unlawful taking of property, including real estate and works of art, from the
victims of the Holocaust. For example, the city of Paris possesses a number of apartments seized from deported Jews. The Louvre
Museum owns pieces of art which were confiscated from Jews by the Nazis. Many of these Jews were sent to the camps and never
returned to claim their property.
Belgium and the Netherlands have recently demanded to know what happened to the gold that was taken from their treasuries by the
invading German army.
A March 1997 lawsuit accused seven existing insurance companies that conduct business in the United States today of failing to
honor insurance policies bought before the war. These German, French, Italian, and Austrian companies are charged with acting in
bad faith and enriching themselves at the expense of Holocaust victims.
There are many more stories, of both great and small magnitude, which recount the widespread injustices of the Holocaust. Due in part to the
fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, observed in 1995, there is now a new awareness of the tragedy and a heightened interest in
discovering the truth about this horrific event. And, just as new revelations about the period are coming to light, the generation of Holocaust
survivors is aging and passing away. With a growing sense of urgency, the world continues its search for answers.
Resistance against the Nazis--planned and spontaneous, armed and unarmed--took many forms throughout WWII and the Holocaust. For
many, the resistance was a struggle for physical existence. Some escaped through legal or illegal emigration. Others hid. Those who
remained, struggled to obtain life's essentials by smuggling the food, clothing, and medicine necessary to survive.
Resistance was very hazardous. In addition to the direct threat to those engaged in resistance, there was a great risk of immediate retaliation
by the Nazis to the larger population after an insurrection.
As the war continued and conditions for Jews throughout Europe worsened, their resistance intensified. With a growing awareness of the
"Final Solution," resistance turned to forms of guerrilla warfare. In addition to widespread partisan movements across Europe, armed
rebellions occurred in Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. It was clear that the insurgents did not have a real chance to stop the Nazis,
but their efforts were an affirmation of the determination to prevail. Secretly participating in Jewish rituals was also a form of spiritual
resistance, which helped to sustain a sense of dignity and heritage for Jews in ghettos and camps. Printing underground newspapers, hiding
written accounts of daily life, and holding concerts or plays in the ghettos were other ways that some defied the Nazi authorities. A few Jews
were able to escape the ghettos and join existing partisan forces.
Eastern Europe, especially Belorussia, the western Ukraine, and Lithuania, had wide expanses of forests and
swamps which were ideal for guerrilla warfare. Joseph Stalin called for the establishment of an underground
movement in the occupied territories to fight the enemy, and in June 1942, central headquarters were
established for the entire partisan movement.
With the influx of Jews into the partisan movement, family camps evolved, especially in Belorussia. These
camps ranged from a few families to several hundreds of families. The families took refuge in forests
primarily in an effort to save their lives, and secondarily to fight the enemy.
In western Europe, large scale guerrilla movement was impossible due to the more open topography.
However, there were acts of organized armed resistance.
In total, partisans were relatively few in number, but because of their ability to move within enemy territory they could disrupt Nazi activity.
Partisans interfered with enemy communication by cutting telephone, telegraph, and electrical lines and by destroying power stations. They
sabotaged transportation links by blowing up bridges, roads, and railway equipment, and they sabotaged factories that produced materials for
the Axis war effort.
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 Germanoccupied 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. Two weeks later, Jewish paramilitary organizations within the
Bialystok ghetto attacked the German army. The revolt ended the same day with the death or capture of all
the resisters. Later, on September 1, inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto revolted. Most of the participants were
killed, but some managed to escape and joined partisan units.
The following month, 600 Jewish and Russian prisoners attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. About 60 survived and joined the
Soviet partisans. An embarrassed Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers closed down and the camp leveled. .
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.
With Adolf Hitler's ascendancy to the chancellorship, the Nazi Party quickly consolidated its power. Hitler managed to maintain a posture of
legality throughout the Nazification process.
Domestically, during the next six years, Hitler completely transformed Germany into a police state. Germany steadily began rearmament of
its military, in violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Internationally, Hitler engaged in a "diplomatic revolution" by skillfully negotiating
with other European countries and publicly expressing his strong desire for peace.
Starting in 1938, Hitler began his aggressive quest for Lebensraum,or more living space. Britain, France, and Russia did not want to enter
into war and their collective diplomatic stance was to appease the bully Germany. Without engaging in war, Germany was able to annex
neighboring Austria and carve up Czechoslovakia. At last, a reluctant Britain and France threatened war if Germany targeted Poland and/or
Romania.
In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France had no choice but to declare war on Germany. World War II had begun.
On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor.
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building went up in flames. Nazis immediately claimed that this was
the beginning of a Communist revolution. This fact leads many historians to believe that Nazis actually set,
or help set the fire. Others believe that a deranged Dutch Communist set the fire. The issue has never been
resolved. This incident prompted Hitler to convince Hindenburg to issue a Decree for the Protection of
People and State that granted Nazis sweeping power to deal with the so-called emergency. This laid the
foundation for a police state.
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. Parliamentary democracy ended with the Reichstag passage of the Enabling Act, which allowed the government to issue laws
without the Reichstag.
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.
The SA (Sturmabteilung) had been instrumental in Hitler's rise to power. In early 1934, there were 2.5 million SA men compared with
100,000 men in the regular army. Hitler knew that the regular army opposed the SA becoming its core. Fearing the power of the regular army
to force him from office, Hitler curried their favor by attacking the leadership of the SA in the "Night of the Long Knives." Hitler arrested
Ernst Röhm and scores of other SA leaders and had them shot by the SS, which now rose in importance.
On August 2, 1934, President Hindenburg died. Hitler combined the offices of Reich Chancellor and President, declaring himself Führer and
Reich Chancellor, or Reichsführer (Leader of the Reich).
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."
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.
International political unrest preceded the games. It was questioned whether the Nazi regime could really accept
the terms of the Olympic Charter of participation unrestricted by class, creed, or race. There were calls for a
U.S. boycott of the games. The Nazis guaranteed that they would allow German Jews to participate. The boycott
did not occur.
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.
The great irony of these Olympics was that, in the land of "Aryan superiority," it was Jesse Owens, the African-American track star, who was
the undisputed hero of the games.
In March 1938, as part of Hitler's quest for uniting all German-speaking people and for Lebensraum, Germany
took over Austria without bloodshed. The Anschluss occurred with the overwhelming approval of the Austrian
people. No countries protested this violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
In September 1938, Hitler eyed the northwestern area of Czechoslovakia, called the Sudetenland, which had three
million German-speaking citizens. Hitler did not want to march into the Sudetenland until he was certain that
France and Britain would not intervene. First, he met with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and
threatened to go to war if he did not receive the territory. Then at the Munich Conference, Hitler prevailed upon
Britain, France and, Italy to agree to the cession of the Sudetenland. The Western powers chose appeasement
rather than military confrontation. Germany occupied the Sudetenland on October 15, 1938.
These photographs show the German annexation of the Sudetenland. In Germany, open antisemitism became increasingly accepted,
climaxing in the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) on November 9, 1938. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels initiated this free-forall against the Jews, during which nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire and 76 were destroyed. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and
homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be
tormented, many for months. Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and expelled all Jewish
pupils from public schools. With brazen arrogance, the Nazis further persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of
Kristallnacht.
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.