Radicalisation of the State Flashcards
Chapter 17
What was phase 1 of the Nazi regime?
Legal revolution 1933-4
Hitler depended on political allies
Couldn’t prevent SA violence but tried to control it
Consolidated power through legal means
What was phase 2?
Creating New Germany 1934-7
Regime was secure but Hitler worried about public opinion
At 1936 Olympic games, anti-semitism was kept under wraps
Avoided confronting powerful groups like the army or church
What was phase 3?
Radicalisation of the State 1938-9
Economy was recovered
SS controlled police forces
Ready for war
Radical persecution of racial enemies
What was Social Darwinism?
Natural selection/survival of the fittest to justify racial superiority and theory of eugenics
Hierarchy of races - Jews, black people and Slavs were inferior, Aryans were master race
Needed to ‘purify’ by eliminating ‘germs’
Jews were deadly threat to German Volk
What was Lebenstraum?
Living Space - idea of over populated country and farmers needing more land, specifically in the East so wanted to conquer Slavs to gain fertile land and raw materials
What was the Theory of Eugenics?
Idea that race can be genetically improved through selective breeding
What was Sterilisation?
1933 - Law for Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny
Law amended to permit abortions
Most judges in court were in favour of sterilisation
400,000 people sterilised under Third Reich
What was Euthanasia?
Oct 1939 - Authorised euthanasia for the mentally and physically disabled
Idea that something had to be done about the ‘burden’ of the disabled
Father wrote to Hitler for child to be put to sleep - catalyst for T4 programme
What was the T4 programme?
Euthanasia programme named after T4 headquarters in Berlin
Children sent to special hospitals and were starved or given lethal injections
5000 innocent children were killed
1941 - rumours about policy spread and protest from churches, intervention of pope and public demonstrations lead to Hitler halting the programme in August 1841
Who were the Asocials?
People deemed social outcasts such as criminals, prostitutes, beggars, homosexuals
In Sept 1922 - tramps, homeless and unemployed were rounded up and differentiated between the orderly (who were then forced to work ) and the disorderly (sent to concentration camps)
What was Nazi policy to homosexuals?
Seen as degenerate
1934 - Gestapo compiled lists of gay people, SS eliminated Nazis who were homosexual
Law was amended in 1935 to impose harsher penalties
22,000 men were arrested and imprisoned between 1936-8
What was Nazi Policy towards Religious Sects?
Jehovah’s Witness showed hostility to the Nazis and refused to swear the oath to Hitler, many were arrested and imprisoned
What was Nazi policy towards the Roma and Sinti?
Growing persecution
Were harrassed to move away
1935 - Nuremberg laws applied to them
1939 - Gypsies were deported to Poland
