Ethnic Minorities in Nazi Germany Flashcards

1
Q

What vision did the Nazis have for Germany?

A
  • They wanted it to be ‘racially pure’, and only inhabited by Aryan Germans
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2
Q

How far did this policy of racial purity extend?

A
  • It excluded disabled Aryans
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3
Q

What did the Nazis do to deal with disabled people?

A
  • They passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in July 1933, which they used to forcibly sterilise disabled people
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4
Q

How did the idea to sterilise disabled people become more radical, and when?

A
  • In 1939 the programme Action T4 started
  • It was the killing of disabled children and adults
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5
Q

Give 2 figures on Action T4.

A
  • 5000 children were killed
  • By 1941, 80,000 had been killed by gas alone
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6
Q

How did the Nazis expand the sterilisation law?

A
  • They included Jews, black and mixed race people, and Gypsies
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7
Q

How many people were sterilised between 1933 and 1939?

A
  • 300,000
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8
Q

How were Gypsies treated during World War Two? Give 3 examples.

A
  • At the end of 1939 Hitler ordered for them to be deported to the east of Poland
  • Tens of thousands of them were killed by SS squads along with Jewish people
  • The mass murder of Gypsies was also part of the Final Solution (21,000 died in Auschwitz alone)
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9
Q

What did the Nazis do to discriminate against Jews in 1933? Give 3 examples.

A
  • There was post-election anti-Jewish violence by the SA
  • The Nazis called for a national boycott against Jewish shops in April
  • They passed the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service
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10
Q

What caused the Nazis to call for a national boycott of Jewish shops?

A
  • Hindenburg had urged Hitler to control the post-election violence
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11
Q

What did the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service say?

A
  • It prevented Jews from being in the civil service, but with some exceptions
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12
Q

Why were there some exceptions to the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service?

A
  • Hindenburg had originally refused to approve the law and introduced amendments to protect those who had served Germany during the war
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13
Q

What are 2 reasons why the Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service was so important?

A
  • It was the first explicitly racist law to be passed in Germany since 1871
  • It was the start of the legal exclusion of Jews
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14
Q

Which laws were passed against Jews in 1935?

A
  • The Nuremberg Race Laws
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15
Q

Describe 3 parts of the Nuremberg Race Laws.

A
  • Reich Citizenship Law: Jews were deprived of German citizenship
  • Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour: Aryans could not marry or have sex with Jews
  • Being Jewish was also defined as having 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents
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16
Q

What was important about the timing of the passing of the Nuremberg Race Laws?

A
  • It was passed around the same time the idea of Volkgemeinschaft was being emphasised by the Nazis
17
Q

When did the Nazis organise the first large-scale act of violence against Jews, and what was it known as?

A
  • November 1938
  • Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)
18
Q

Describe 5 aspects of Kristallnacht.

A
  • More than 200 people died
  • Over 1000 synagogues were destroyed
  • Jewish owned homes and shops were attacked and looted
  • Over 20,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps
  • Jews were taxed a billion Reichsmark for the damage
19
Q

What approach did the Nazis take to make Germany ‘Jew-free’ at first? Give 5 details.

A
  • They encouraged Jews to leave Germany
  • Over 450,000 left between 1933 and 1939
  • The Nazis took a tax of 30- 50% of their wealth
  • However, leaving became harder as countries set quotas on immigration, and the Nazis became less willing to let Jews go
  • After Anschluss (and the absorption of more Jews into Germany as a result) they were allowed to only take a suitcase each
  • Those who fled to other European counties ultimately did not flee far enough
20
Q

Who was responsible for dealing with Polish resistance after the occupation of Poland in 1939? What else did they do?

A
  • Einsatzgruppen (special SS units)
  • They killed Jews in increasing numbers
21
Q

What initially happened to the Jews who were not killed by the Einsatzgruppen in Poland?

A
  • They were put in ghettos from October 1939 (German Jews were also sent to these ghettos)
22
Q

How had the activities of the Einsatzgruppen worsened by 1941?

A
  • By then they were committing mass murder; they rounded up Jews, forced them to dig mass graves, told them to strip and they would then shoot them
23
Q

How large of a scale did the Einsatzgruppen work on?

A
  • They killed 2 million out of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust
24
Q

What 3 issues did Himmler have with the work of the Einsatzgruppen?

A
  • He believed it was:
  • too slow
  • too inefficient
  • too psychologically damaging for them
25
Q

When was the ‘Final Solution’ decided on?

A
  • In the Wannsee conference in 1942
26
Q

What were conditions like in death camps? Give 2 details.

A
  • The people there were used to dig roads or work on the land or in factories before they were gassed
  • People died from starvation, dysentry or mistreatment by the guards