Chapter 17 - the radicalisation of the state Flashcards
1
Q
What was the radicalisation of the state
A
- The nazi regime could not act just as it wished in its first few years in power
- Nazi ideological aims could only be implemenred when it was politically possible
- There were 3 distinct phases in the development of the nazi regime
1) The legal revolution 1933-34 - When Htler came to power in 1933 he depended on political allies
- Hitler could not completely prevent the radical SA’s vilence, but he controlled it as much as he could
- He consolidated his power by legal means
2) Creating the New Germany, 1934-37 - By august 1934, the nazi regime was secure, but Hitler still did not have a free hand
- He worried about public opinion both at home and abroad
- One example of this was the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936
- Before and during the games, nazi anti-semitism was put under wraps while Nazi propaganda projected the image of German as a civilised society
- Between 1934 and 1937, Hitler avoided confronting power groups like the army or the churches
- He also knew that German was not yet ready for war, whatever the propaganda said
3) The Radicalisation of the State, 1938-39 - By the end of 1937, the Nazi regime was far stronger than in 1933
- The economy had recovered
- The SS completely controlled the police system
- Hitler felt Germany was militarily ready for war
- In 1938 and 1939, therefore, the Nazis took control of the army, sacking its two most important commander, Blomberg and Fritsch
- Hitler also let loose the radical persecution of his “racial enemies”
2
Q
What was the Nazi racial ideology of social Darwinism and race theory?
A
- Social Darwinism was a theory that was widely discussed in 19th century Europe
- Social darwinists adapted Darwin’s scientific principles of natural biological selection (the survival of the fittes) to rather unscientific theories about human society in order to justify ideas of racial superiority and the theory of eugenics
- In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many social darwinists put forward theories deisgned to justify European imperilaims by arguing that “advanced” Europeans had the right and responsibility to rule over “inferior” and “backward” colonial peoples
- In Sweden, there was an influential group of scientists seeking to eliminate disabilities through population planning and birth control
- Many of these ideas were implemented into Nazi ideology
- Hitler’s obsession with this “biological struggkle” between different races easily fitted with his view of jews
- He viewed society as consisting of a hierarchy of races – the Jews, black people and the slavs were inferior races, while the master race was the Aryan peoples of northern Europe
- Another key nazi idea was the need to purify the stronger races by eliminating the “germs” that threatened to poison them through inter-marriage with so called “degenerate” races
- Hitler believed that it was the destiny of Aryans to rule over the inferior races
- In order to ensure their success in this racial struggle, it was vital for the Aryans to maintain their racial purity
- Hitler’s own concept of social Darwinism was, therefore, an an all or nothing basis
- Biologically and culturally, the Jews were to be treated as posing a deadly threat to the German volk
- There could be no compromises or exceptions
- Conversion to Christianity could make no difference, nor could medals won in the first world war
- The germ had to be eliminated – this is how Himmler later justified the killing of Jewish women and children as well as men
- In the same way, the Nazi principle of racial hygiene justified the sterilisation (or eliminating altogether) of the vmentally and physically disbabled, the Roma and other “racial undesirables” such as homosexuals, pacifists and Jehovah’s witnesses
- This theme of removing racial enemies ran through much of the more extreme nazi propaganda of the 1920s
3
Q
What was the Nazi concept of Volksgemeinschaft?
A
- Hitler’s concept of the Volksgemeinschat (people’s community) was not inclusive of all people living in Germany
- In a way that was typical of many other aspects of Nazi ideology, the concept of the national community was twisted by anti-semitism and racial thinking
- The key word was the “volk”
- To qualify as a member of the volk, it was essential to be a true German, both in terms of loyalty and racial purity
- To protect the volk, it was essential to ruthlessly eliminate all un-German elements, especially the Jews
- So the best way of defining the volk came through identifying the racial enemies to be excluded from it, rather than the people who actually belonged to it
- Membership of the Volkgsgemeinschaft, known as the Volksgenossen (national conrades) was reserved for those of Aryan race, members of which were expected to be genetically healthy, socially efficient and politically reliable
- The nazis divided those who were to be excluded from the volksgemeinschaft according to 3 criteria
- Asocials
- Political enemies
- Racial enemies (subdivided into those of different races and those with hereditary deficits)
4
Q
What was the Nazi ideal of Lebensraum?
A
- The nazi ideal of Lebensruam (living space) was yet another example of an ideological concept being twisted by anti-semitism
- Like social Darwinism, the idea of lebensraum was not new, nor originated by Hitler and the nazis
- In the late 19th century, many European thinkers had proposed opening up space for the expanding populations of the superior white race
- In Germany, there was widespread support for the idea that the country was already over-populated and that the industrious German farmers needed more land
- Many argued that Germany’s destiny lay in the east, conquering the supposedly inferior slave peoples of Poland and the former Russian empire to gain access to fertile farmland and raw materials
- Nazi ideology fitted in smoothly with these ideas about Germany’s destiny to expand eastwards, but Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum had a particular focus on race
- Lebensraum would not only allow for the “Germanisation” of the eastern lands and bringing the “lost Germans” (those lost into Poland through the Treaty of Versailles) back to the Reich, more importantly it would provide the battleground for a war of racial annihilation, wiping out the inferior slav races and smashing Bolshevism in Russia
5
Q
What Nazi racial policies were put in place against minorities?
A
- 14th July 1933 – sterilisation laws: disabled people and others, such as severe alcoholics, can be forced to have operations that prevent them from having children. Between 300,000 and 400,000 people are sterilised during Nazi rule
- 1934 – Gestapo ordered to draw up the “pink lists” of gay men which were used to hunt down tens of thousands of gay men and bring them to trial
- April 1935 – Jehovah’s witnesses sent to prison and concentration camps
- 28th June 1935 – Law against homosexuality widened making it illegal not only to have gay sex, but to act in any way that was considered to be homosexual
- 1935 – to clean uo the city ahead of the Berlin Olympic gamesm police force all roma (gypsies) in the area to move to Marzahn, an open field in eastern Berlin
- 1936 – Roma included in Nuremeberg laws
- April 1937 – black people are rounded up and sterilised to stop them having children
- From October 1939, Roma are no longer allowed to lead a travelling life and so those who do not settle down in towns or villages are sent to concentration camps in Dachau, Ravensbruck and Buchenwald
- 1940 – Himmler ordered that, after they have finished their time in prison, gay men must be sent to a concentration camp, or could choose to be castrated instead
- June 1941 – following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 4 nazi killing groups (the Einsaztgruppen) were ordered to murder the leaders if the soviet communist party as well as Jewish spies and anyone who resists Nazi occupation. More than 100,000 Roma men and women were also shot
- In September 1942, the SS is given the power to work all concentration camp prisoners serving more than 8 years to death (exterminated through work)
6
Q
What were nazi policies towards the mentally ill and physically disabled?
A
- In nazi racial ideology, the mentally ill and physically disabled were considered to be “biological outsiders” from the Volksgemeinschaft because their heridtary “defects” made them a threat to the future of the Aryan race
- Nazi thinking on the issue of mental and physical disability borrowed much from the “science of eugenics” which had become increasingly influential in Europe and the USA from the late 19th century and especially in the aftermath of the first world war
- Declining birth rates, the loss of millions of healthy young men in the war and improvements in medicine that prolonged the lives of those siffering from hereditary conditions all combined to raise concerns about the long term health of nations
- Eugenicists proposed the improvement of a race through selective breeding, which might involve the use of birth control and sterilisation of those who had hereditary “defects”
7
Q
What is sterilisation?
A
- Even before the nazis came to power, the state government of Prussia had drawn up a draft to allow the voluntary sterilisation of those with hereditary defects
- In July 1933, the Nazis took this further by introducing the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny (sterilisation laws) which introduced compulsory sterilisation for certain categories of inferiors
- This law specified the “hereditary diseases” that sterilisation was to be applied to: congenital feeble mindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive illnesses, epilepsy, chronic alcoholism, blindness and deafness, and severe physical malformation
- Later amendments permitted sterilisation of children over 10 years and the use of force to carry it out after 14 years, with no right to legal representation
- Two years later, the law was amended to permit abortions in cases where those deemed suitable for sterilisation were already pregnant
- In 1936, x-ray sterilisation of women over 38 years old was introduced (due to the greater risk of offspring with mental and physical disabilities)
- In the opposite direction, there was a ban on arbortion and contraception for Aryan women and girls in an attempt to increase the birth rate
- Decisions about sterilisation were made at Hereditary Health Courts
- Most of the judges were strongly in favour of sterilisation policy
- The operation took place, by force if necessary, within 2 weeks
- 60% of those sterilised were “feeble minded”, categorised and suffering from idiocy (IQ of 1-19) or imbecility (IQ of 20-49)
- The idea of moral insanity was also used as a basis for sterilisation, but this was often merely an excuse to prevent birthds among the “criminal underclass” or “anti-socials”
- During the third reich, 400,000 people were sterilised
8
Q
What is euthanasia?
A
- The nazi desire to create their master race did not stop at sterilisation and banning sexual relationships between Aryans and jews
- By October 1939, the regime had authorised Euthanasia for the mentally and physically disabled, regarded by the Nazis as an “unproductive burden” on Germany’s resources and as a threat to “racial hygiene” and the “biological strength” of the volk
- A recurrent theme of Nazi propaganda was the idea that something had to be done about the “burden” of the long term ill and disabled
- The openly stated solution was to pass new legislation allowing mentally and physically disabled children to be “mercifully” put to death and so “relieve the burden n the national community”
- This idea was closely linked to the policy of sterilisation which was a well developed policy by 1939 and had attracted quite a lot of public support
- The first euthanasia programme for disabled children originated from one specific case of a badly disabled child in 1939
- The child’s father wrote a letter to Hitler asking for his child, “this creature” as he called him, to be put to sleep
- Dr Phillip Bounler, Chief of the Fuhrer’s party office, made sure the letter was brought to Hitler’s attention
- Hitler sent a senior SS doctoer, Karl Brandt, to examine the baby
- Brandt’s report advised euthanasia for the child
- Hitler approved the report and issued a directive announcing that he would personally protect from prosecution the doctors who carried out “mercy killings”
- This one case was the catalyst for the whole euthanasia programme
- Hitler gave Bouhler authority to deal with similar cases in the future
- All petitions were to go through the chancellery of the Fuhrer
- Hitler also made it clear that any such actions were to be secret
- Medical staff in hospitals and assylums had to report on children suffering from mental illnesses or physical deformities
- On the basis of these reports, children were sent to special hospitals to be starved to death or given lethal injections
- Parents were assured their children had died in spite of receiving the very best treatment
- The technical and administrative methods used to kill more than 5000 innocent children, deemed by the Nazis to be incurable and worthless to society, would be applied later to the Jews of occupied Europe
- Bouhler and Brandt then used their authority to extend euthanasia to adults
9
Q
What was the T4 programme?
A
- From October 1939, the programme of euthanasia was rapidly expanded and later moved to new, larger headquarters in Berlin, Tiegarten 4
- It was from this address that the name by which the euthanasia is best known, Aktion 4, originated
- The basis of T4 was bureaucracy and paperworks
- Forms about patients were to be filled in at clinics and asylums, and passed onto assessors, who were paid on a piecework basis to encourage them to process as many patients as possible
- Those who made judgements of life or death did so without having to look the patients in the eyes, but rather simply looked at forms
- Some doctors took part because they were careerists
- Several doctors and nurses complained about the programme, but their objections were ignored
10
Q
How did the T4 programme end?
A
- By 1941, rumours about the policy of euthanasia were spreading widely and aroused opposition
- One public official filed a complaint with the Reich Justice Ministry and also an accusation of murder against Phillip Bouhler
- These proceedings got nowehere, but they worried the regime
- From July 1940, there was also a groundswell of protests from the churches
- Protestant pastor Braune wrote a long memorandum on July 1940, protesting about the T4 programme
- On 12th August, Braune was arrested by the Gestapo
- The Roman Catholic hierarchy made official protests behind the scenes
- This led to intervention on behalf of the pope
- An official statement from Rome on 2nd December 1940 pronounced that the direct killing of people with mental or physical defects was against the “natural and positive law of God”
- On 3rd August 1941, Catholic Archbishop Galen of Munster preached a sermon making an emotive attack on euthanasia, backed by specific evidence provided by local congregation members
- Galen’s sermon was designed to mobilise mass protest in the Rhineland-West Phalia province
- Thousands of copies of Galen’s Sermon were printed and widely distributed
- As intended, this sparked further protests and public demonstrations
- The Nazi regime was alarmed by the hostile public reactions
- On 24th August 1941, Hitler halted the programme
- However, this was an isolated success for public protest against Nazi race policies
- Archbishop Galen never took a public stance on behalf of the Jewish persecuted victims
- The halting of the T4 programme in August 1941 did not mean the end of the drive to implement Nazi racial ideology, it was only a tactical pause
- In many respects, the euthanasia programme provided the techniques, the trained personnel and the administrative experience for the coming “final solution”
11
Q
What were nazi policies towards asocials?
A
- The term “asocial” as used by the Nazis covered a wide range of people who were deemed to be social outcasts
- These included criminals, the “work shy”, tramps and beggars, alcoholics, prostitutes, homosexuals and juvenile delinquents
- Nazi policy was to introduce tough measures against these groups and to give the police more power to enforce them
- As with other aspects of Nazi racial policy, the approach towards asocials hardened and became more systematic as time went on
- In September 1933, the regime began a mass “round up” of tramps and beggars, many of whom were young, homeless, unemployed people (particularly after the depression)
- Since the nazis did not have enough space in concentration camps to house all of these people (estimates vary between 300,000 and 500,000), they began to differentiate between the “orderly” and the “disorderly” homeless
- The orderly, who were fit, willing to work and had no previous convictions, were given a permit and forced to work for their accommodation
- The disorderly were considered to be habitual criminals and sent to concentration camps
- In 1936, before the Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the police rounded up large numbers of “tramps and beggars” from the streets of the capital in order to project an image of a hard-working and dynamic society to the world
- In 1936, an asocial colony was set up, known as Hashude, in northern Germany with the aim of re-educating the asocials so that they could be integrated into society
- In 1938, there was an even bigger round up of “beggars, tramps, pimps and gypsies”.
- Most of these were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where few survived the harsh treatment
12
Q
What were nazi policies toward homosexuals?
A
- In common with most other European countries at this time, homosexuality was outlawed in Germany before 1933
- In the relatively liberal climate of the Weimar republic, however, homosexuality flourished in Berlin and other large cities
- Most nazis regarded homosexuals as degenerate, perverted and a threat to the racial health of the German people
- In 1933, the Nazis began a purge of homosexual organisations and literature
- Clubs were closed down, organisations for gay people were banned and gay publications were outlawed
- In May 1933, Nazi students attacked the Institute of Sex Research, a gay organisation, and burned its library
- They also seized the insitute’s list of names and addresses of gay people
- This was the beginning of a long and sustained persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany
- In 1934, the Gestapo began to compile lists of gay people
- Also in 1934, the SS eliminated Rohm and other leaders of the Nazi SA who were homosexuals
- The law on homosexuality was amended in 1935 to widen the definition of homosexuality and to impose harsher penalties for those convicted
- After the law was changed, over 22,000 men were arrested and imprisoned between 1936 and 1938
- In 1936, Himmler created the Reich Office for the Combatting of Homosexuality and Abortion
- Overall, some 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, of whom about 50,000 were convicted
- Even when the men arrested had served their sentences, they were immediately re-arrested by the Gestapo and SS and held in concentration camps under “preventive custody”
- In the camps, they had to wear a pink triangle to distinguish them from other prisoners and they were subjected to particularly brutal treatment by the guards
- Many of those imprisoned were subjected to “voluntary castration” to cure them of their “perversion”
- Gay men who would not agree to abandon their sexual orientation were sent to concentratiom camps where they were subjected to unsually harsh treatment – many were beaten to death
- It has been estimated that about 60% of gay prisioners died in the camps
- Lesbians did not suffer the same degree of persecution as they were considered to be asocial rather than degenerate
13
Q
What were nazi policies towards religious sects?
A
- There were a number of Christian sects that had become established in Germany by the time the Nazis came to power – the Jehovah’s witnesses, Christian scientists, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and members of the new Apostolic church
- All had international links, which aroused Nazi suspcions about their loyalties, and most were banned by the regime in November 1933
- The ban on some sects, however, was lifted when they demomstrated their willingness to cooperate with the regime
- Where sects were allowed to continue, however, Gestapo agents attended and reported on their services
- The Jehovah’s witnesses were the only religious group to show uncompromising hostility to the Nazi state
- With around 30,000 adherents in Germany in 1935, the Jehovah’s witnesses were a small but closely knit sect
- Their belief that they could only obey Jehovah (God) led them into conflict with the nazi regime because they refused to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler
- They refused to give the Hitler salute, participate in Nazi parades or accept army conscription
- They regarded persecution as a test of their faith and became more resistant under pressure from the regime
- Many were arrested
- In prison they refused to obey orders, to attend parades, or remove their caps
- By 1945, around 10,000 Jehovah’s witnesses had been imprisoned and many had died
- However, the regime had failed to break their resistance and the witnesses had had some converts to their beliefs in the camps
- Unlike the Jehovah’s witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists gave a positive welcome to the Nazi regime, describing it as the beginning of Germany’s re-birth
- The ban on the sect was removed within two weeks as it agreed to display the Swastika in its churches, conclude its services with the “Heil Hitler” greeting and remove the so called “Jewish” language of the old testament from its services
- Other sects also strove to make the necessary compromises with the regime in order to ensure their survival
- The Mormon’s Welfare Organisation, like that of the Seventh-Day Adventists, selected it recipients according to the Nazi criteria
- The New Apolistic Church incorporated SS and SA flags into its church parades
14
Q
What were nazi policies towards the Roma and Sinti?
A
- Jews were not the only victims of the intensification of Nazi race policies after 1935
- There was also a growing persecution of Germany’s 30,000 gypsies (Roma and Sinti people), known in Germany as Ziegeuner
- Gypsies had been subjected to legal discrimination well before 1933
- Local authorities frequently harassed them into moving away
- The Nazis made the persecution much more systematic
- In 1935, Nazi legal experts ruled that the Nuremberg Laws applied to gypsies even though they were not specifically mentioned in the laws
- In 1936, the SS set up a new Reich Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance
- A university psychologist, Dr Robert Ritter, became the expert scientific adviser to the SS and Ministry of Health
- Using Ritter’s criteria, the SS began the process of locating and classifying gyspies
- The centralised files they collected were essential to facilitate police action against them
- Ritter was particularly concerned to identify and isolate those whose heritage was part gypsy (mongrels) and who had become fully integrated into German society, since they represented a threat to the Aryan racial, policty
- In December 1938, Himmler issued a decree for the Struggle against the Gypsy Plague, which led to a more systematic classification of gypsies
- After war broke out in September 1939, gypsies were deported from Germany to Poland
- It is estimated that the nazis killed 25% of all roma and sinti living in Europe – 23,000 were sent to Aushwitz and at least 19,000 died there
15
Q
Who did the Nazis consider to be degenerate?
A
- Disabled
- Tramps and beggars
- Homosexuals
- Roma and sinti (gypsies)
- Religious sects
