NAZI GERMANY & HOLOCAUST FINAL
The Eternal Jew
1940 Anti-semantic German Nazi propoganda documentary film. The film provides succession of the scenes in which Jews are portrayed as uncivilized and parasitic people who have a low social standing. The images were mostly shot in the Warsaw ghetto and other Polish ghettos, showing subjects who were deliberately chosen to be poorly dressed, dirty, and had partially toothless grins.
Nuremberg Trials
1945-1949, 13 trials that put high Nazi officials on trial. Of the 24 on trial, 11 were sentenced to death and one committed suicide. These trials were made to punish Germans in part for show for denazification. This trial coined the term "crimes against humanity".
Munich Pact
An agreement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy on September 30th, 1938 in regards to Germany wanting to take over Czechoslovakia. The agreement was that Great Britain, France, and Italy would not help Czechoslovakia in a war against Germany, so Germany took over Czechoslovakia because they could not win in a war on their own. Chamberlain (British prime minister) believed that this pact would bring peace with Germany to avoid war, but the following year, was the invasion of Poland that started WWII.
Nuremberg Laws
Anti-Jewish laws enforced by Germany on September 15, 1935. Major step in clarifying racial policies and to remove Jewish influence from the Aryan society (blue eyes, blonde hair, white, non-Jew). Some of the laws included: Jews could no longer raise a German flag, citizenship rights, and marriage. This is important because these were the laws that laid the foundation for future anti semantic measures by legally distinguishing the difference between a German and a Jew. For the first time in history, the Jews faced persecution not for what they believed, but for who they - or who their parents were - by birth.
Nuremberg Laws: Law for Protection of German Blood and German Honor
Banned marriage between Non-Jewish Germans and Jews. It also criminalized sexual relations between the two groups.
Elisatzgruppen
Founded in 1939, with Heinrich Himmler as the leader. Also known as the "Mobile Killing Unit" that was responsible for killing people that were perceived to be racial or political enemies found behind German combat lines in the occupied Soviet Union. They murdered Jews, Romans, and members of the soviet communist party. Many historians say that the systematic killing of Jews in the Soviet Union was the first step in the "Final Solution". 1941-1945 killed 2 million people (1.3 of which are Jews).
Fall of Berlin
In 1944 the German army is not in a good state. The Russians beat them at Stalingrad and continued to push west. The Germans lost the battle of Berlin which was a major battle. Then the boys and girls of Berlin were committed to Hitler: they worshiped him, all they knew was a socialist world, they were willing to fight and die. Hardened veterans were trying to work with the kids but they were frustrated with the kids and thought they were annoying. The Soviet Red army had grown to 3 million and was continuing to advance to Berlin. The west had grown to 4 million soldiers and consisted of Americans, British, Polish, etc. February of 1945, the west continued to advance and the Ally Liberation army had 85 divisions and the German army only had 25. The German army had 200 thousand soldiers that were mostly children. American and Soviet soldiers all met at Torgau on April 25, 1945. The Americans won in Berlin but they didn't get there fast enough so Stalin and Roosevelt decided it was going to be a Russian victory. Citizens of Berlin would drape white sheets or blankets out of their windows as a sign of surrender flying court marshals AKA gangs of Nazis would kill the whole family if they saw the sheets. April 21st, 1945, Soviet tanks enter the suburbs of Berlin. The red army wanted to regroup to siege. German resistance maintained, they were surprisingly strong. Berlin had been bombed before, it was a war city. Soviets raped and murdered 10s of thousands of German women. The soviets overpowered German forces and Hitler and his wife committed suicide. Gobals kill their whole family and themselves.
Jewish Ghettos
Isolated neighborhoods Jews were forced to live in (this was before concentration camps). Jewish Police were people who were Jewish men who were reinforcers of the Nazis within the neighborhoods. Jewish councils were a group of elders within the community that was focused on communication between the Nazis and the Jews.
Commissar Order
Issued by the German Armed Force High Command (a unified military command controlling Germany's air force, navy, and army) on June 6th, 1941. Political commissars were told that if they captured any of the soviets they had to shoot them on sight. They order this because they claim that the soviets are barbaric and use Asiatic methods of warfare.
Eichmann Trial
May 1960 the Israeli Security Service office stole Eichmann from Argentina and put him on trial in 1961. Eichmann coordinated the transport of Jews to Auschwitz; he was tied to crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations (15 total counts). Sentenced to death June 1, 1962. He provided the number that 6 million Jewish people were killed. He was presented in a bullet proof glass case during the trial because he most likely would have been shot during the trial. The trial was more for a show as it was hosted in Israel and it was common sense that he was going to be sentenced to death.
Wannsee Protocol
On January 1942, fifteen high ranking Nazi party and government officials gathered in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of executing Jews (Final solution to the Jewish question). They decided that Jews in Germany and all neutral nations would be murdered. They decided to murder all Jewish people and also made work and concentration camps. Here, they talked about forceful removal of the Jewish population, death camps, and made confusing rules to determine who would be a Jew that way they could murder anyone without it being a problem.
Opperation Barbossa
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers. This was the crucial turning point in World War II, for its failure forced Nazi Germany to fight a two-front War against an alliance processing immensely superior resources. Operation Barbossa had failed miserably - one of the bloodiest battles in history.
Nuremberg Laws: Reich Citizenship Law
Only people of "German or kindred blood (German association)" could be citizens of Germany. The law defined who was and who was not German, and who was and who was not a Jew. The Nazi's rejected the traditional view of Jewish people as members of a religious or cultural community. They claimed instead that the Jews were a race defined by birth and blood.
Sealed Jewish Ghettos
Places that were closed off by walls or fences and barbed wire established in Lodz and Warsaw that were really poor.
Roma Genocide
The Nazis judged Roma to be racially inferior. Under Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary internment, forced labor, and mass murder. German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roma in German occupied territories and sent thousands more to killing centers.
Denazification
There were questionnaires for all Germans to figure out who was a Nazi and who wasn't to figure out who would keep their influential job positions (jobs like teachers, judges, etc.) Millions of Germans lost their jobs; 150,000 were put into prison. Education took a turn and had a system more like the United States. There were new textbooks and teachers that taught about the Holocaust about 20-30 years later.
Euthanasia Program
This was the Nazi's first program for secret mass murder. They targeted mentally and physically disabled patients living in institutional settings in Germany and German-annexed territories. This is important because Nazis extended the justification for medical professionals for the destruction of "unfit" categories for perceived biological enemies (Jews and Roma). They used this radical strategy to eliminate those who did not fit into their vision.
Kristallnacht
Wave of violent Jewish attacks that took place through out Germany, annexed Austria, and other areas recently occupied by German troops on November 9th and 10th, 1938. Violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials, members of the SA, and the Hitler youth. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues, shattered the shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial establishments, and used Jewish cemetaries as a place to discriminate. This was the first instance in which Nazi regime incarcerated Jews on a massive scale simply on the basis of ethnicity. The passivity with which most German civilians responded to the violence signaled to the Nazi regime that the German public was prepared for more radical measures.
