Chapter 20 Flashcards
Background to Operation Barbarossa
Invading Poland caused Britain and France to go to war, but this did not save Poland. In October 1940, Hitler won a series of Blitzkrieg victories in the west, defeating France and leaving Britain isolated. France came under a Nazi puppet regime ruled from the town of Vichy. Hitler seemed to have a free hand to fulfil his aim of Lebensraum in the east. In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin, the leader of the communist USSR, had concluded the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which guaranteed that the USSR would not intervene when Germany invaded Poland. The Pact was onlv ever intended to be a temporary truce. In October 1940, Hitler started detailed planning for the conquest of the USSR and, in June 1941, he launched Operation Barbarossa.
Operation Barbarossa beginning and significance
German armies swept across the USSR, occupying vast territories in eastern Poland, the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), western Russia and Ukraine. Complete victory seemed almost certain. The way was open for the fulfilment of the dream of Lebensraum. All of these events had an impact on the development of Nazi anti-Semitic policy, since the war in the east was to be a war of racial annihilation, fought with a savagery and ideological intensity on a completely different scale than the relatively civilised struggle against the western Allies.
The German invasion deep into the western parts of the USSR in 1941 immediately brought more than 3 million Soviet Jews under German rule.
The war was especially brutal.
Nazi orders in Operation Barbarossa
Before the invasion had even been launched, Hitler issued the instruction to ‘eliminate the ‘Bolshevik-Jewish intelligentsia. The Nazis made it clear in numerous directives that the war was to be one of’extermination’ of Germany’s racial enemies. There was no explicit Hitler order in June 1941 to kill all the Jews of the Soviet Union. There was, however, an atmosphere in which troops saw killing as part of the overall mission.
This was made clear in July 1941 when Goering issued a general order to kill communist commissars (party officials assigned to the Red Army) and Jewish sympathisers.
Why did Hitler intensify anti semitic measures by late 1941?
The war with Soviet Russia intensified the pressure on Hitler to deal with the Jewish question’ in Germany as well as in the occupied territories.
Further anti-Jewish measures brought in by 1941 (3)
• Radio sets were confiscated from Jews. In November 1939 Jews were banned from buying radios. A month later, they were banned from buying chocolate.
• In 1940, Jews were excluded from the wartime rationing allowances for clothing and shoes. In July, an order limited them to entering shops at restricted times only - in Berlin it was from 4 pm to 5 pm.
• In 1941, regulations were tightened up to require Jews to have a police permit to travel. An order in December 1941 compelled Jews in Germany to wear the yellow Star of David, as was already the case with Jews in the occupied territories.
What problem did the Nazis need to solve that had been created
The Nazi regime urgently needed a clear plan to deal with the huge Jewish populations that were displaced by military conquest and Germanisation.
Nazi ghetto introductions
One solution they turned to was the creation of Jewish ghettos.
In February 1940, the first ghetto was set up in Lodz, the second biggest city in Poland. About 320,000 Jews were living in the city. The Nazis considered their immediate evacuation’ to be impossible. The majority of Jews were accommodated in a closed ghetto, set up in a single day by barricades - later the Jews had to build a surrounding wall. The remaining Jews were formed into labour gangs, accommodated in barrack blocks and kept under guard. The Jewish Council of Elders was given responsibility for food, health, finance, security, accommodation and registration.
Conditions in the ghettos
Jews sent to the ghettos had their homes confiscated. Most Jews had to sell their valuables to survive. There was further economic exploitation in the form of forced labour. The Nazis massively restricted the amount of food, medical supplies and other goods that entered the overcrowded ghettos.
Conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Six people shared an average room; 15 people lived in an average apartment. Few homes had running water. With no economic links to the outside world, basic necessities such as food and fuel were scarce. There were terrible lice infestations and diseases spread rapidly, including spotted fever, typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis.
Jewish resistance in ghettos
The Jewish authorities worked within the regulations laid down by the Nazis, but also tried to get around them where possible. There was a black market for food smuggled in from outside. Jewish leaders organised prayers and religious festivals, despite the fact that they were strictly forbidden by the Nazis. The ghettos had illegal schools and even illegal printing presses. Most Jewish elders in positions of authority in the ghettos acted responsibly and did their best to relieve suffering, although some were accused of corruption or collaboration with the Nazis.
Formation of Warsaw Ghetto
The largest ghetto established in Poland was in the capital city, Warsaw. Governor Hans Frank ordered the jews to build a high wall around the Jewish Quarter in October 1940, forming the Warsaw ghetto. Jews also had to pay for its construction costs. In November, the ghetto was sealed off completely from the rest of the city. More than 400,000 Jews were concentrated there and over the following months, many more Jews and Gypsies were forced out of the countryside into the ghetto. Richer Jews were housed in the ‘small ghetto’; the mass of ordinary people were squeezed into the so-called large ghetto, which was not large at all and became desperately overcrowded.
Conditions in Warsaw ghetto
Food rations in the large ghetto were at starvation levels. Germans in occupied Poland were consuming an average of 2310 calories per day, close to the 2500 calories a day for an adult man recommended by present-day nutritionists.
In Warsaw in 1940, Poles received 634 calories a day. The figure for Jews was 300.
Malnutrition and overcrowding inevitably led to outbreaks of killer diseases, above all typhus. More than 100,000 people died in the ghetto in 1940-41. Later, almost all the remainder died in the death camps after mass deportations to Auschwitz during Operation Reinhard, which began in 1942.
How did the Nazis design and view the ghettos?
The Nazis never saw the ghettos as a long-term solution to the Jewish problem. The conditions in the ghettos and work gangs did however give some insight into the fate that was intended for the Jews. The ghettos were designed to ensure that Jews died in large numbers of starvation, cold and disease.
Many were worked to death carrying out forced labour for the Nazis.
How many Jews died in ghettos in total
In total, around 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos.
Emergence of Einsatzgruppen and objective
As German forces overran the western territories of the USSR in June and July 1941, ‘Special Groups, the Einsatzgruppen, were sent in to eliminate communist officials, Red Army commissars, partisans and the Jewish.
Bolshevist intelligentsia.
Make up of Einsatzgruppen
The Einsatzgruppen were temporary units made up of police and regular troops commanded by men from the Gestapo, the SD and the Criminal Police under the overall direction of the SS. Einsatzgruppen had been in operation before 1941. Reinhard Herdrich and the RSHA had organised Special Groups in 1938 and 1939 to secure government buildings and to seize official files at the time of the Anschluss (union) with Austria and when Germany occupied Prague. Special Groups were used extensively in support of military operations in the invasion of Poland in 1939, when they were involved in ‘special actions’ against Jews and many Poles, especially communists and the ‘intelligentsia.
Local volunteers were often recruited to assist them.
