GRADUALISM AND RADICALISM Flashcards
WHAT were the 3 phases of escalation in Nazi Germany?
1) Consolidation (1933-34): legal revolution
2) Gradualisation (1934-37): Nazi regime secure, but there was still a worry about powerful groups like the army and Church, and about public opinion at home/abroad.
3) Radicalisation (1938-39): radical persecution of ‘racial enemies’ began
WHAT was the Volkisch movement?
An ethno-nationalist set of beliefs originating from the late 19th century which combined patriotism, Christianity, the rejection of urbanisation and later ideas linking anti-Semitism to race and science
DEFINE ‘Eugenics’.
A pseudo-scientific belief that human traits could be improved by hereditary ‘manipulation’ (birth control, forced abortion, compulsory sterilisation, racial segregation)
WHAT was Social Darwinism and race theory?
Applied natural selection to theories about human society to justify ideas about racial superiority and eugenics
WHERE did Social Darwinism and race theory originate from?
- Widely discussed in 19th century Europe
- Used for justifying European imperialism, arguing that ‘advanced’ Europeans had the right to rule over ‘inferior’ or ‘backward’ colonial people
HOW did the Nazis apply Social Darwinism to their policies?
- Stressed the need to ‘purify’ the stronger races by sterilising or eliminating the weaker ones
- This view allowed no compromise (justification for the murder of Jewish women and children, as well as men)
WHAT was Volksgemeinschaft?
- ‘People’s community’
- A national community excluding those not considered ‘volk’
- More defined by exclusion of racial enemies, rather than inclusion of those in the community
HOW did someone qualify as part of the German ‘volk’?
Through loyalty to Nazism and the Fuhrer, and through racial purity
HOW did the Nazis use the idea of Volksgemeinschaft in their racial policy?
Excluded many from the German community and stressed the idea that all un-German elements had to be eliminated
WHAT 3 categories of people were to be excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft?
- Political enemies
- ‘Asocials’ (those who didn’t fit social norms)
- Racial enemies (those of a different race, and those with hereditary defects)
WHAT was Lebensraum?
- ‘Living space’
- The idea that Germany needed to expand eastwards for land, food and raw materials
WHERE did the idea of Lebensraum originate from?
- Europeans in the late 19th century proposed opening up space for the ‘superior white race’
- Many Germans felt the country was over-populated, and that Germany’s desitny was eastwards, through conquest
HOW did the Nazis apply Lebensraum, in regards to racial policy?
Lebensraum would allow the Germanisation of eastern lands, bringing ‘lost Germans’ back to the Reich. The east would also provide a battleground for a war of racial annihilation (Slav peoples) and the crushing of Bolshevism (Russia)
WHO were the Roma/Sinti?
Two gypsy tribes. The Sinti predominated in Germany and Western Europe, while the Roma were mainly in Austria, Eastern Europe and the Balkans
HOW did the Nazis treat the Roma/Sinti peoples pre-1939?
- In 1935, it was ruled that the Nuremberg laws applied to them, as well as Jewish people
- The SS began to locate and classify the Roma and Sinti in centralised files
- Registration and segregation after 1938, under the Decree for the Struggle Against the Gypsy Plague
WHEN was the Decree for the Struggle Against the Gypsy Plague passed?
1938
WHAT was the Decree for the Struggle Against the Gypsy Plague?
A law that registered Roma and Sinti people and led to their segregation
HOW did the Nazis treat Roma/Sinti peoples after 1939?
- Many were deported from Germany to Poland
- They were put in designated areas, and if anyone tried to leave, they would be sent to concentration camps
- They were systematically murdered in and out of the death camps
HOW MANY Roma/Sinti were killed under Nazi control?
Estimates are between 250,000 and 500,000– about 25-50% of the total Roma/Sinti population in Europe.
