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Introduction
🔹 Helmuth
- Eleven-year-old German boy
- Father shot himself
- Refused to eat at home for nine years
- Feared mother might poison him
🔹 Helmuth’s Father
- Physician
- Nazi supporter
- Feared Allied revenge
- Said: “Now the Allies will do to us what we did to the crippled and Jews.”
🔹 Nazism
- Not only isolated acts
- A system, a structure of ideas about world and politics
- To make Germany mighty power
- killing Jews, conquering Europe
🔹 Hitler & Nazi Collapse
- Hitler: determined to conquer Europe
- Killed Jews
- April 1945: committed suicide in the Berlin bunker
- Goebbels and family also committed suicide
🔹 End of World War II
- May 1945: Germany surrendered to the Allies
🔹 Nuremberg
Tribunal
- Prosecuted Nazis for:
- Crimes against Peace
- War Crimes
- Crimes Against Humanity
- Eleven leading Nazis sentenced to death
- Many imprisoned for life
- Allies avoided harsh treatment like after WWI
🔹 Crimes Against Humanity
- Genocidal war by Nazi Germany
- Victims:
- 6 million Jews
- 200,000 Gypsies
- 1 million Polish civilians
- 70,000 disabled Germans
- Innumerable political opponents
- Killed by gassing in centres like Auschwitz
🔹 Rise of Nazism
- Linked to Germany’s experience after First World War
Birth of the Weimar Republic
🔹 Germany in
World War I
- Fought 1914–1918 with Austrian Empire
- Opposed Allies: England, France, Russia (later US)
- Occupied France and Belgium
- Got defeated when US joined Allies in 1917
- Defeat in November 1918
🔹 Fall of Empire
& New Republic
- Defeat led to abdication of German emperor
- Parliamentary parties took over
- National Assembly met at Weimar
- Established democratic constitution
- Created federal structure
- Reichstag: deputies elected by equal and universal suffrage
- Women could vote
🔹 Treaty of Versailles – Harsh Terms
- Harsh and humiliating peace for Germany
- Lost:
- Overseas colonies
- 10% of population
- 13% of territories
- 75% of iron, 26% of coal to France, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania
- Demilitarised by Allied Powers
- War Guilt Clause: blamed Germany for war and damages
- Forced to pay £6 billion compensation
- Rhineland occupied by Allied armies in 1920s
🔹 Public Hatred
of Weimar Republic
- Germans blamed Weimar Republic for:
- Defeat in war
- Accepting Versailles terms
- Seen as national disgrace
- Republic associated with shame and weakness
🔹 Link to Later Rise of Nazism
- Resentment from Versailles Treaty helped fuel rise of extremism
- Anger over defeat and economy paved way for Hitler and Nazis
The Effects of the War
🔹 Financial Impact
- Europe turned from creditor to debtor continent
- Weimar Republic made to pay for old empire’s sins
- Forced to pay compensation → financially crippled
🔹 Political Blame And Attacks
- Supporters of Weimar: Socialists, Catholics, Democrats
- Mocked as ‘November criminals’ by conservatives and nationalists
- Seen as traitors for accepting defeat and Treaty of Versailles
🔹 Social & Psychological Impact
- Deep imprint on European society and politics
- Soldiers placed above civilians
- Emphasis on aggression, strength, masculinity
- Media glorified trench life
🔹 Reality of War
- Soldiers lived in miserable conditions in trenches
- Rats fed on corpses
- Faced poisonous gas, enemy shelling
- Witnessed rapid loss of comrades
🔹 Rise of Conservatism & Decline of Democracy
- Aggressive war propaganda and national honour dominated public thought
- Growing support for conservative dictatorships
- Democracy = young, fragile idea
- Could not survive instabilities of interwar Europe
Political Radicalism and Economic Crises
🔹 Spartacist Uprising & Weimar’s Response
- Spartacist League launched revolution inspired by Bolshevik Revolution
- Formed soviets of workers and sailors in cities
- Demanded Soviet-style governance
- Opposed by Socialists, Democrats, Catholics
- They met in Weimar to establish democratic republic
- Free Corps (war veterans) helped crush uprising
- Spartacists founded Communist Party of Germany
🔹 Division on the Left
- Communists and Socialists became irreconcilable enemies
- Failed to unite against Hitler later
🔹 1923 Economic Crisis Hyperinflation
- Germany fought WWI on loans, paid reparations in gold
- Gold reserves depleted during scarce resource period
- Refused to pay in 1923 → France occupied Ruhr for coal
- Germany responded with passive resistance
- Printed massive paper currency → money lost value
🔹 Collapse of German Mark
- Value fell rapidly:
- April: 1 USD = 24,000 marks
- July: 353,000 marks
- August: 4.6 million marks
- December: 98.8 million → trillions
- Prices soared; people carried cartloads of notes to buy bread
- Known as hyperinflation – prices rose phenomenally high
🔹 Dawes Plan
- USA intervened to resolve crisis
- Introduced Dawes Plan
- Revised reparation terms to ease
financial burden on Germany
The Years of Depression
🔹 Temporary Stability
(1924–1928)
- Short-lived stability in economy
- Based on short-term loans from USA
- Called “built on sand” – not sustainable
🔹 Wall Street Crash (1929)
- Stock market crashed in USA
- 24 October: 13 million shares sold in panic
- Marked start of Great Economic Depression
- US national income halved by 1932
- Factories closed, exports fell, farmers ruined, money withdrawn
🔹 Global Impact
- US recession affected worldwide economies
- Germany worst hit
🔹 Germany’s Economic Collapse
- By 1932, industrial production
dropped to 40% of 1929 level - jobs losses or wage cuts
- High Unemployment
- Youth played cards, sat idle, queued at employment offices
- Many turned to crime out of despair
🔹 Social Suffering
- Middle class:
- Salaried workers, pensioners → savings lost as currency devalued
- Fear of proletarianisation (becoming poor/unemployed)
- Small businessmen, self-employed, retailers → businesses ruined
- Peasants → hit by sharp fall in agricultural prices
- Women → despair over inability to feed children
- Only organised workers barely survived, but weakened by job loss
🔹 Political Fragility of Weimar Republic
- Proportional representation:
- Made majority impossible
- Led to unstable coalition governments
- Article 48:
- Gave President power to impose emergency, suspend rights, rule by decree
- 20 cabinets in short time → average life 239 days
- Frequent use of Article 48
- People lost confidence in democracy
- Parliament seen as unable to solve crises
Hitler’s Rise to Power
🔹 Background for Hitler’s Rise
- Economic, political and social crisis
- Great Depression after 1929 → mass unemployment, poverty, despair
- People lost faith in Weimar Republic
🔹 Hitler
Early Life & War Experience
- Born 1889 in Austria
- Lived in poverty during youth
- Joined German army in WWI
- Served as messenger, became corporal
- Awarded medals for bravery
- Horrified by German defeat, furious over Versailles Treaty
🔹 Formation of Nazi Party
- Joined German Workers’ Party in 1919
- Took control and renamed it National Socialist German Workers’ Party
- Later known as Nazi Party
🔹 Failed Coup & Rise in Popularity
- 1923: Attempted to seize power in Bavaria, march to Berlin
- Failed, arrested, tried for treason, later released
- Nazis gained little support until early 1930s
- Great Depression turned Nazism into a mass movement
🔹 Electoral Growth
- 1928: Nazi Party got only 2.6% votes in Reichstag
- 1932: Became largest party with 37% votes
🔹 Hitler’s Appeal
- Powerful speaker – passionate, emotional speeches
- Promised:
- To build a strong nation
- Undo injustice of Versailles Treaty
- Restore dignity of German people
- Jobs for unemployed
- Secure future for youth
- Remove foreign influences and resist foreign conspiracies
🔹 Mass Mobilisation & Spectacle
- Used rituals and spectacle for propaganda
- Held mass rallies and public meetings
- Symbols: Red banners, Swastika, Nazi salute
- Ritualised applause after speeches – created image of unity and power
🔹 Hitler as ‘Saviour’
- Nazi propaganda portrayed Hitler as a messiah, a saviour
- Promised to deliver people from distress
- Appealed to those with shattered pride and hopelessness
- Gained support during acute economic and political crises
The Destruction of Democracy
🔹 Hitler Becomes Chancellor
- 30 January 1933: President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor
- Nazis had rallied conservatives to their side
🔹 Suspension of Civic Rights
- February 1933: Fire in the Reichstag (Parliament)
- Fire Decree (28 February 1933):
- Suspended indefinitely civic rights
- Freedom of speech, press, assembly abolished
- Rights guaranteed under Weimar Constitution revoked
🔹 Repression of Communists
- Hitler targeted Communists first
- Most sent to newly established concentration camps
- Example: In Duesseldorf (pop. 500,000):
- 1,440 of 6,808 arrest files were Communists
- Communists were just 1 of 52 victim groups persecuted
🔹 Enabling Act (3 March 1933)
- Established dictatorship in Germany
- Gave Hitler power to:
- Rule by decree
- Bypass Parliament
- Banned all political parties and trade unions except Nazi Party
- State took total control of:
- Economy
- Media
- Army
- Judiciary
🔹 Nazi Surveillance & Security Forces
- Created special forces to impose Nazi order:
- Gestapo (secret state police)
- SS (protection squads)
- Criminal police
- SD (Security Service)
- Also had regular police (green uniform) and SA (Storm Troopers)
🔹 Police Powers
& Terror State
- These forces had extra-constitutional powers
- Police Could:
- Detain people in Gestapo torture chambers
- Send to concentration camps
- Deport, arrest, or round up without legal process
- Police ruled with impunity
- Nazi state seen as most dreaded criminal state
Reconstruction
🔹 Economic Recovery (Reconstruction)
- Hjalmar Schacht – economist appointed by Hitler
- Goal: Full production, full employment
- State-funded work-creation programme
- Projects:
- Built German superhighways
- Developed Volkswagen (people’s car)
🔹 Foreign Policy Successes (1933–1939)
- 1933: Withdrew from the League of Nations
- 1936: Reoccupied the Rhineland
- 1938: Merged Austria with Germany
- Slogan: “One people, One empire, One leader”
- Took the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia
- Later gobbled up entire Czechoslovakia
🔹 International Response
- England gave unspoken support
- Believed Versailles Treaty was too harsh on Germany
🔹 Shift to War Economy
- Schacht opposed huge rearmament spending due to deficit financing
- He was removed – cautious voices silenced
- Hitler chose war to solve economic crisis
- Aim: Gain resources through territorial expansion
🔹 Start of World War II
- September 1939: Germany invaded Poland
- Started war with France and England
🔹 Axis Powers & Expansion
- September 1940: Tripartite Pact signed by:
- Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- Established Axis alliance
- Puppet regimes set up across occupied Europe
- By end of 1940, Hitler at pinnacle of power
🔹 Invasion of Soviet Union
- June 1941: Hitler attacked Soviet Union
- Goal: Gain living space and food supplies for Germans
- Historic blunder:
- Exposed western front to British bombing
- Exposed eastern front to Soviet armies
🔹 Defeat at Stalingrad
- Soviet Red Army defeated Germany
at Stalingrad - Crushing and humiliating defeat
- German forces pushed back to Berlin
- Led to Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe
for next 50 years
🔹 US Entry into WWII
- Initially avoided war due to economic fears from WWI
- Japan expanded in Asia:
- Occupied French Indo-China
- Allied with Hitler
- Bombed US base at Pearl Harbor
- US entered war after attack
🔹 End of World War II
- May 1945: Hitler defeated, war ended in Europe
- USA dropped atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
- War concluded with total defeat of Axis powers
The Nazi Worldview
🔹 Racial Hierarchy
- No equality – only racial hierarchy
- Top = Blond, blue-eyed Nordic German Aryans
- Lowest = Jews – seen as anti-race, arch-enemies of Aryans
- Other coloured people ranked in between based on external features
🔹 Misuse of Darwin & Spencer
- Hitler borrowed from Charles Darwin (evolution, natural selection)
- Herbert Spencer added “survival of the fittest”
- Nazis claimed: Strongest race survives, weak perish
- Aryan race = finest → must stay pure, grow stronger, dominate world
- Racist thinkers misused his ideas to justify imperial rule
🔹 Lebensraum (Living Space)
- Geopolitical idea: acquire new territories for German settlement
- Goals:
- Expand mother country’s area
- Keep settlers linked to homeland
- Increase material resources and national power
- Eastward expansion planned to unite all Germans in one place
- Poland used as laboratory for this policy
Establishment of the Racial State
🔹 Goal of Nazi Racial Policy
- Create a pure racial community of Germans
- Eliminate all ‘undesirable’ people physically
🔹 Ideal Population
- Only ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’ considered desirable
- Seen as the only group worthy to prosper and multiply
🔹 Persecution of Germans Deemed ‘Unfit’
- Even Germans labeled mentally or physically unfit were targeted
- Euthanasia Programme:
- Ordered killing of disabled Germans
- Helmuth’s father involved in condemning such people to death
🔹 Other ‘Undesirable’ Groups
- Gypsies (Roma) and Blacks:
- Classified as racial inferiors
- Threatened Aryan purity → widely persecuted
- Russians and Poles:
- Considered subhuman
- Captured civilians forced into slave labour
- Many died from starvation and hard work during occupation
🔹 Nazi Hatred of Jews
- Jews = worst sufferers
- Traditional Christian hostility:
- Stereotyped as killers of Christ, usurers
- Barred from land ownership
- Lived in ghettos, faced expulsions, violence
- Hitler’s hatred based on pseudoscientific race theories
- Believed conversion ineffective
- Solution: Total elimination of Jews
🔹 Phases of Anti-Jewish Measures
- 1933–1938:
- Terrorised, pauperised, segregated Jews
- Forced them to leave Germany
- 1939–1945:
- Concentrated Jews in specific areas
- Mass murder through gas chambers in Poland
The Racial Utopia
🔹 Genocide & War
- Genocide and war = two sides of the same coin
- Nazis used war to implement racial utopia
🔹 Occupation of Poland
- North-western Poland annexed to Germany
- Poles forced out of homes and property
- Ethnic Germans from occupied Europe moved in
🔹 General Government
- Rest of Poland became General Government
- Called the destination of all ‘undesirables’
- Poles herded like cattle into this area
🔹 Suppression of Polish Intelligentsia
- Polish intelligentsia murdered in large numbers
- Aim: Keep Polish people intellectually and spiritually servile
🔹 Kidnapping
of Polish Children
- Children who looked Aryan forcibly taken from mothers
- Examined by ‘race experts’
- If passed: raised in German families
- If failed: sent to orphanages → most perished
🔹 Killing of Jews
- General Government had:
- Some of the largest ghettos
- Gas chambers
- Served as killing fields for Jews
Youth in Nazi Germany
🔹 Importance of Youth
- Hitler believed a strong Nazi society needed ideological training from childhood
- Required control over children inside and outside school
🔹 Changes in Schools
- All schools ‘cleansed’ and ‘purified’
- Teachers who were Jews or ‘politically unreliable’ were dismissed
- Segregation: German and Jewish children could not sit or play together
- ‘Undesirable children’ (Jews, disabled, Gypsies) expelled from schools
- By 1940s, many sent to gas chambers
🔹 Nazi Schooling
for ‘Good Germans’
- Textbooks rewritten
- Racial science taught to justify Nazi race theories
- Maths problems used to spread anti-Jewish stereotypes
- Children taught to:
- Be loyal and submissive
- Hate Jews
- Worship Hitler
- Sports aimed to build violence, aggression, masculinity
- Boxing promoted to make youth iron-hearted, strong, masculine
🔹 Youth Organisations
- Founded to teach spirit of National Socialism
- 1922: Nazi Youth League founded
- 1926: Renamed Hitler Youth
- All other youth groups dissolved, then banned
- Age-wise structure:
- 10 years: Join Jungvolk
- 14 years: Join Hitler Youth
- Trained to:
- Worship war
- Glorify violence and aggression
- Condemn democracy
- Hate Jews, Communists, Gypsies, ‘undesirables’
- Trained to:
- 18 years:
- Join Labour Service
- Then serve in armed forces and enter Nazi organisations
The Nazi Cult of Motherhood
🔹 Gender Roles in Nazi Ideology
- Girls taught: women are radically different from men
- Equal rights movements = wrong, would destroy society
- Boys: trained to be aggressive, masculine, steel-hearted
- Girls: trained to be good mothers, raise pure-blooded Aryan children
🔹 Role of Women
- Must:
- Maintain racial purity
- Avoid Jews and other ‘undesirables’
- Look after the home
- Teach children Nazi values
- Seen as bearers of Aryan culture and race
🔹 Hitler’s Statement (1933)
- “In my state the mother is the most important citizen.”
🔹 Reward for
‘Desirable’ Mothers
- Only ‘Aryan’ mothers with racially desirable children rewarded
- Benefits included:
- Better hospital treatment
- Concessions in shops, theatres, railways
- Honour Crosses awarded:
- Bronze: 4 children
- Silver: 6 children
- Gold: 8 or more children
🔹 Punishment for ‘Undesirable’ Conduct
- Aryan women who had contact with Jews, Poles, Russians:
- Publicly condemned and punished
- Paraded with shaved heads, blackened faces
- Forced to wear placards: “I have sullied the honour of the nation”
- Many given jail sentences
- Lost civic honour, husbands, and families
The Art of Propaganda
🔹 Deceptive Language
- Nazis avoided words like ‘kill’ or ‘murder’
- Used coded terms:
- Special treatment = mass killing
- Final solution = extermination of Jews
- Euthanasia = killing the disabled
- Selection, disinfections = murder
- Evacuation = deportation to gas chambers
🔹 Fake Design of Killing Centres
- Gas chambers disguised as ‘disinfection-areas’
- Looked like bathrooms with fake showerheads
🔹 Media Control & Propaganda Tools
- Used films, radio, posters, slogans, leaflets, images
- Aim: Win support, spread Nazi worldview
🔹 Stereotyping
Enemies
- Socialists and liberals:
- Shown as weak, degenerate
- Called malicious foreign agents
- Jews:
- Targeted through hate films like The Eternal Jew
- Portrayed with beards, kaftans – false stereotype
- Called vermin, rats, pests
- Movements compared to rodents
🔹 Psychological Manipulation
- Nazism tapped emotions
- Turned public hatred and anger against ‘undesirable’ groups
🔹 Mass Appeal Strategy
- Reached out to all sections of population
- Promised Nazis alone could solve all problems
Ordinary People and the Crimes Against Humanity
🔹 Reactions
of Ordinary
Germans
- Many accepted Nazi views
- Saw world through Nazi eyes
- Spoke in Nazi language
- Felt hatred toward Jews
- Marked Jewish houses, reported suspicious neighbours
- Believed Nazism would bring prosperity and well-being
🔹 Resistance & Silence
- Not all Germans were Nazis
- Some organised active resistance
- Faced police repression and death
- Majority were passive
- Apathetic witnesses, too scared to protest
- Preferred to look away
🔹 Pastor Niemoeller’s Observation
- Noted absence of protest
- Described uncanny silence among ordinary Germans
- Despite brutal, organised crimes under Nazi rule
🔹 Impact on Jews
- Charlotte Beradt recorded Jewish dreams in The Third Reich of Dreams
- Jews began believing Nazi stereotypes about themselves
- Dreamt of hooked noses, black hair and eyes, Jewish looks and movements
- Nazi propaganda haunted them even in sleep
- “Died many deaths” long before reaching gas chambers
Knowledge about the Holocaust
🔹 Discovery of Nazi Crimes
- During Nazi rule: Information trickled out slowly
- After 1945: World fully realised the horrors committed
🔹 German vs. Jewish Focus After Defeat
- Germans: Focused on own suffering as a defeated nation
- Jews: Wanted world to remember their atrocities and suffering
- Term used: Holocaust (Nazi killing operations)
🔹 Will to Bear Witness
- Ghetto inmate said: “I want to outlive the war just for half an hour”
- Meant: To tell the world what happened
- Many prisoners wrote diaries, kept notebooks, created archives
- Acted with indomitable spirit to preserve truth
🔹 Nazi Cover-Up Attempt
- As defeat neared, Nazi leaders gave petrol to destroy evidence
- Aim: Eliminate incriminating documents from offices
🔹 Memory of the Holocaust Today
- Lives on through:
- Memoirs
- Fiction
- Documentaries
- Poetry
- Memorials
- Museums
- Serves as:
- Tribute to resisters
- Embarrassing reminder to collaborators
- Warning to silent onlookers
