Nazi Racial Policies

Question 1

Development of Nazi Anti-semitism

Answer 1

Doesn’t mean it was a structuralist phenomenon - gradualism

Question 2

Nazi pursuit

Answer 2

Wanted Germany to be racially pure - peopled by Aryan Germans ; included getting rid of the elderly and disabled. They believed in the eugenic theories of the Weimar Republic and quickly bought this persecution to life

Question 3

How can we say this wasn’t just targeted at Jews?

Answer 3

1st January 1934, Nazis began a sterilisation programme - doctors were forced to report anyone “unfit” to breed and hundreds of hereditary health courts set up across Germany ; extended to all Roman, Sinti and Jewish people, criminals and mixed race people. The law was widened in June 1935 to allow abortion for the unfit ; heavily publicised in schools and pamphlets etc and 400000 people sterilised with 5000 dying from the procedure

Question 4

Anti-semitism when Hitler came to power?

Answer 4

Did not immediately start the mass slaughter of Jews in 1933 but instead they worked up to the “final solution” by degrees - with their propaganda innately being anti-Semitic. Alongside this they started to systematically isolate Jews from sociey

Question 5

Legal separation (1)

Answer 5

Civil services and professions - Jews were banned from being civil servants on 7th April and were later banned from being doctors and journalists ; Jews were even further disproportionately represented in the Professions
Editor’s Law 1933 - not allowed to be norunalists

Question 6

Bans and Boycotts (1)

Answer 6

National boycott on the 1st April 1933 ; SA members roughly prevented people from entering and across the country this resulted in an escalation of violence. This was partly also done to calm down some stormtroopers after post-election violence

Question 7

Laws to Jews after these boycotts (1)

Answer 7

Law against overcrowding of schools in 1933 - response by regime to over enthusiastic Nazis at a local Länder level, limiting the total number of Jewish students to 1.5% of the total number of people educated. Industrialists such as Von Krupp took initiative and fired Jewish employees to ingratiate themselves with the Nazi Regime

Question 8

Step 1

Answer 8

Structuralist approach as they are responding to pressures (Rank and file:)

Question 9

Nuremberg Laws

Answer 9

1935 - heralded a growing number of laws to exclude Jews from all spheres of life
Reich Citizenship laws deprived News of their German citizenship and political rights
Laws for protection of german blood and German honour - bans marriage and sexual relations between Jews and pure Germans

Question 10

Context behind Nuremberg Laws (2)

Answer 10

Structuralist yet again as party members have been demanding action against Jews ; response from grassroots. Trying to keep their more extreme members such as Julius Streicher (Franconia Gauleiters) on their side - more fanatic and thus responding to pressure

Question 11

What did propaganda urge (2)?

Answer 11

Idea of separation to prevent contamination from these “vermin”/“filth” - coloured benches, team cars, concerts and swimming pools etc ; marked Jews as dirt and dangerous

Question 12

Olympics (3) - 1936

Answer 12

Lull in Jewish attacks because international eyes were turned to Germany
Concerned over economy and international condemnation
Renewed persecution straight after with decree for registration of Jews in 1938

Question 13

Jewish Emigration (4)

Answer 13

Between 1933 and 1939, 450000 Jews emigrated and had to give a “flight tax” of 30 to 50 % of their wealth ; many did not go far enough and got trapped in Nazi occupied territory soon
Emigration got much harder as Nazis were less willing to let Jews go and other countries set quotas on immigrants - instead with Anschluss on 11th March 1938, they imposed the same restrictions on 185000 Austrian Jews and were given dehumanising tasks like scrubbing streets on their knees
Only about 60000 Jews left in Austria before outbreak of war caused shift in policy

Question 14

What did war mean?

Answer 14

Upped ferocity levels - far more draconian in the way they treat people
Reinhardt Heinrich and Eichmann planned the final solution with the general office for Jewish emigration set up established in Jan 1939

Question 15

Kristallnacht

Answer 15

9th November 1938
Triggered by the murder of a German diplomat - reactionary (ernst von rath murdered)
Goebbels wanted to get back in Hitler’s good books after having an affair with a Czech actress - LINK TO HOW GOV WORKED WITH COMPETITION
Pushed idea of kristallnacht to climb up Nazi ladder - quenched Hitler’s anti-semitism + personal ambition
20000 Jews temporarily sent to concentration camps + saddled with a bill of 1 billion reichsmark after synagogue burnt and shops etc looted
FITS IN MODEL OF WORKING TOWARDS THE FUHRER

Question 16

What happened when Germany invaded Poland?

Answer 16

Special SS units called Einsatzgruppen were set up and their job was to root out and kill any polish resistance ; also killed Jews in increasing numbers by setting synagogues alight ; by the time they invaded USSR in 1941 they were forcing Jews to dig their own graves, strip, stand on the edge and then shot them
2 million of the 6 million Jews killed were from Einsatzgruppen
SEPTEMBER 1939

Question 17

Increasing isolation of Jews (6)

Answer 17

30th Jan 1939 Hitler said “the destruction of the Jewish race i Europe” ; exemplifying how he may have planned this genocidal extermination
Curfew then introduced in September (after 8pm) and the first ghetto set up in October of the same year
Because Poland had around 3 million Jews, the Nazis became even more extreme and they introduced Ghettos

Question 18

In 1940

Answer 18

We start to see the mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps transport from the NW of Poland to the general government ; and all Jews have to wear a Star of David
Increasingly isolated and identified - had to change their name to Sarah or Israel

Question 19

Ghettos

Answer 19

Many were rounded up into Ghettos in cities such as Warsaw ; first Ghetto, in Piotrkow was set up in October 1939 and they were bad,y overcrowded with food and medical supplies a minimum. Jews were dirty and hidden with lice (propaganda) - strength through joy campaigns ran buss trips through Łódź Ghetto to show how depraved of a rice they were ; another way to dehumanise them alongside Gypsies

Question 20

What evidence suggests this mass extermination was again structuralist?

Answer 20

The fact that Heinrich was planning to sent them to Madagascar - defeat of French colony in 1940 ; due to how ridiculous and impractical this was, it can be questioned whether or not they were intentionalists

Question 21

Concentration camp conditions

Answer 21

Full of all types of undesirables
Sent to dig roads, work,land and work in factories etc
Die from starvation, dysentery or due to beating/mistreatment
Many had a crematorium there itself

Question 22

Operation Barbarossa impact (8)

Answer 22

June 1941 ; Hitler spoke in terms of annihilation but how much credence can we put on his words
Jews linked to Bolshevism (Trotsky) thus further persecuted
Einsatzgruppen weren’t just working on a local level but authorised by commissary order (June 1941) ; anyone who seemed subversive or an enemy - LACK OF PLANNING (AS THERE WRE NOT ENOUGH REINFORCEMENTS) AGAIN GOES TO SHOW HOW OT WAS STRUCTURALIST

Question 23

Final solution (9)

Answer 23

Wannsee Conference on 20th January 1942 and extermination facilities were developed in Places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Treblinka
8th December 1941 - an experimental death camp at chelmno begins gassing Jews
Heinrich chaired this meeting and decide the mechanics of this operation and by 27th January 1945, approx 6 million were murdered and Auschwitz liberated

Question 24

What other groups were persecuted (there are 4)?

Answer 24

Asocials - those who did not fit into the idea of the folk, eccentric, alcoholics, shy ; did not follow 1871 traditions - unworthy of society
Homosexuality - Hitler was viciously homophobic and seen as a threat to a virile population and in 1936 hImmler forced gay SA members to go to concentration camps - used in medical experiments
Gypsy/Roma/sinti - expansion east meant more hostility and violence to 500000 gypsies killed ; religious sects were killed (Jehovah’s witnesses refused to join the army)
T4 campaign meant that mentally I’ll and disabled children were euthanised -Philip Bauler ; Reich chancellor (working towards the fuhrer) ; by 1934 % 200000 mentally disabled people were exterminated even though Von Galen led a vocal criticism and euthanasia campaign