the radicalisation of the state Flashcards
What were the three distinct phases in the development of the Nazi regime?
- The legal revolution 1933-34
- Creating the new Germany 1934-37
- The radicalisation of the State 1938-39
Who did Hitler depend on when he came to power in 1933?
His political allies, he could not completely prevent the radical SA’s violence but controlled it as much as he could.
How did Hitler consolidate his power?
By legal means.
By what time had the Nazi regime secured themselves?
By August 1934.
Why did Hitler still not have a free hand when securing his power?
He still worried about public opinion at home and abroad.
What is an example of Hitler being worried about public opinion?
The Olympic Games in Berlin 1935-36, where antisemitism was put under wraps with Nazi propaganda projecting an image of a civilized society.
Why was the Nazi regime much stronger at the end of 1937 than it had been in 1933?
The economy had recovered, the SS completely controlled the police system, Hitler felt that Germany was militarily ready for war.
What bold steps did Hitler take in 1938/39 that he would not have taken earlier?
He took control of the army and sacked its 2 most important commanders, Blomberg and Fritsch.
He also let loose radical persecution of ‘racial enemies’.
What was Social Darwinism?
The adaptation of Darwin’s scientific principles of natural biological selection and applying it to human society in order to justify racial superiority and theory of eugenics.
What were an influential group of scientists seeking to do in Sweden?
To eliminate disabilities through population planning and birth control.
Many of these ideas incorporated into Nazi ideology.
How did Hitler view humanity?
As a hierarchy of races:
- Jews, black people and the Slavs were inferior
- Aryan people of northern Europe were the master race
What was it vital for the Aryan race to maintain in order to achieve success in their racial struggle?
Purity.
How did Himmler come to later justify the killing of Jewish women and children as well as man?
Hitler was decided on an all-or-nothing basis where there would be no compromises. Conversion to Christianity, Medals won in the First World War made no difference, Hitler believed that they were a ‘germ that had to be eliminated’.
How could a person qualify as a member of the Volk?
They had to be a true German, both in terms of loyalty and racial purity.
What was essential in protecting the Volk?
The ruthless elimination of all un-German elements, especially the Jews.
What was the best way to define the Volk?
Identifying the racial enemies to be excluded from it rather than those who naturally belonged to it.
What were members of the Volk expected to be?
Genetically healthy, socially efficient and politically reliable.
What were the 3 divisions that the Nazis made to identify who were to be excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft?
- Political enemies
- Asocials (people who did not fit social norms of the Nazis
- Racial enemies (different races and those with hereditary defects)
What is the meaning of lebensraum?
Living Space.
Where had the idea of lebensraum originated from?
The later 19th Century where many European thinkers had proposed opening up space for the expanding populations of the superior white race.
Where did many Germans argue that their destiny was?
In the easy where they were to conquer inferior Slav peoples in Poland and the former Russian Empire to gain access to fertile farmland and raw materials.
What did Hitler’s concept on lebensraum have a particular focus on?
Race, would provide a battleground for a war of racial annihilation, wiping out inferior Slav races.
Why were the mentally ill and physically disabled considered to be biological outsiders from the Volksgemeinschaft?
Because their hereditary defects made them a threat to the future of the Aryan race.
What did Nazi ideology on the issues of mental and physical disability borrow mindset from?
The ‘science’ of Eugencis
Where had eugenics become increasingly more influential?
Over Europe and the USA from the late 19th century, especially in the aftermath of WW1.
What different factors combined to raise concerns about long-term health of nations after WW1?
- Declining birthrates
- Loss of millions of healthy young men
- Improvements in medicine which prolonged the lives of those suffering from hereditary diseases.
What might have been involved in Eugenicists proposal of the improvement of race through selective breeding?
The use of birth control and sterilisation of those with hereditary defects.
What had the State government of Prussia drawn up in a draft law before the Nazis had even come to power?
The allowing of voluntary sterilisation of those with hereditary defects.
What sterilisation law did the Nazis introduce in July 1933?
The Law for Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny which introduced compulsory sterilisation for certain categories of ‘inferiors’.
What did the sterilisation law July 1933 specify that sterilisation should be applied to?
- Congenital feeble-mindedness
- Schizophrenia
- Manic-depressive Illness
- Epilepsy
- Chronic alcoholism
- Hereditary blindness + deafness
- Severe physical malformation (if proven hereditary)
What did later amendments to the July 1933 sterilisation law permit?
Sterilisation to children over the age of 10, and use of force to carry it out after 14 years with no right to legal representation.
In 1935 it was amended again to permit abortions for those deemed suitable for sterilisation but were already pregnant.
What ban was introduced in the opposite direction of sterilisation?
Aryan women and girls were banned from being on contraception and having abortions in attempt to increase the birth rate.
How many people were sterilised during the Third Reich?
400,000.
What had the regime authorised one step further from sterilisation by October 1939? Why?
Euthanasia for the mentally and physically disabled.
They were regarded as an ‘unproductive burden’ on Germany’s resources, and a threat to ‘racial hygiene’ and ‘biological strength of the Volk’.
How did the first euthanasia programme for disabled children originated?
From one specific case of a badly disable child in early 1939.
The child’s father wrote a letter to Hitler asking for his child to be put to sleep, calling him ‘the creature’.
Hitler sent a senior SS doctor Karl Brandt to examine the baby, where he reported advised euthanasia for the child. Hitler approved the report and issued a directive announcing he would personally protect doctors carrying out mercy killings from persecution.
Who did Hitler give authority to deal with similar future euthanasia cases to?
Phillip Bouhler.
What did Hitler make clear about the first euthanasia programme for disabled children?
- That it was to be kept a secret.
- Medical staff had to report on children suffering from mental illness or physical disabilities
Where were children sent based on reports of them being mentally ill or physically disabled?
To special hospitals to be starved to death or given lethal injections, whilst parents were being assured their children were receiving the best treatment.
How many children did the technical and administrative methods of the euthanasia programme kill?
More than 5000 children, deemed to be ‘incurable’ and worthless to society.
Where did Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt later extend their authority to?
The euthanasia of adults.
Why was the euthanasia programme called the T4 programme?
It rapidly expanded from October 1939 and moved to a new, larger headquarters in Berlin called Tiergarten 4.
What was the basis of the T4 programme?
Bureaucracy and paperwork, forms about patients were filled in at clinics and asylums and then passed on to assessors.
How were assessors of the T4 programme encourage to work harder?
They were paid on a piecework basis where the more patients processed, the more money they would earn.
What was happening to the T4 programme by 1941?
Rumours about the policy of euthanasia was spreading widely and aroused opposition.
What did one public official do in opposition to the T4 programme?
Filed a complain to the Reich Justice Ministry and an accusation of murder against Philipp Bouhler. These proceedings got nowhere but worried the regime.
What opposition did the Nazis face regarding the T4 programme from July 1940?
A lot of protests from Churches with Pastor Braune writing a memorandum against it.
What happened to Pastor Braune on August 12th 1940? What did this lead to?
He was arrested by the Gestapo, which led to intervention on behalf of the Pope.
What official statement from Rome say on December 2nd 1940?
That direct killing of people with mental or physical defects was against the ‘natural and positive law of God’.
What did Catholic Archbishop Galen of Munster do on August 3rd 1941?
He preached a sermon making an emotive attack on euthanasia, backed by specific evidence provided to him.
What was Archbishop Galen’s sermon designed to do?
Start up mass protest against euthanasia in the Rhineland province.
Thousands of copies of it were printed and widely distributed.
When did Hitler halt the T4 programme?
August 24th 1941, with the Nazi Party alarmed by the hostile public reaction.
How was the protest against the T4 programme an isolated success for public process against Nazi race policies?
This same public stance was not taken against the persecution of Jews, and the end of the programme did not mean an end to the drive for implementation of Nazi racial ideology.
What did the euthanasia programme provide for the coming of the ‘Final Solution’?
The techniques, the trained personnel and the administrative experience.
Who did the term ‘asocials’ cover?
- Criminals
- ‘Work-shy’
- Tramps and beggars
- Alcoholics
- Prostitutes
- Homosexuals
- Juvenile delinquents
What happened to the approach towards asocials as time went on?
It was hardened and became more systematic, alike to the other aspects of Nazi racial policy.
What happened to asocials in September 1933?
The regime began a mass round-up of ‘tramps and beggars’ many of whom were homeless, unemployed people.
What did the Nazis do as they realised they did not have enough space in concentration camps to place the 300,000 ‘tramps + beggars’ they had rounded up in September 1933?
They began to differentiate between the ‘orderly’ and the ‘disorderly’ homeless.
What is meant by the ‘orderly’ homeless?
They were fit and willing to work, with no previous convictions. They were given a permit and forced to work for their accomodation.
What is meant by the ‘disorderly’ homless?
These were those considered to be habitual criminals and sent to concentration camps.
What did the police do to the large numbers of ‘tramps and beggars’ before the Olympics in 1936?
They rounded them up from the streets of Berlin to project the image of a hard-working and dynamic society to the world.
What was meant by the ‘asocial colony’ set up in 1936?
Where was it set up and what was it known as?
It was set up in northern Germany and was known as Hashude.
It had the aim to re-educate the asocials so they could be integrated into society.
What happened to most asocials in the 1938 mass round up?
Most were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp where few survived the harsh treatment.
What happened to homosexuality during the Weimar period?
It flourished in Berlin and other large cities.
How did most Nazis regard homosexuals?
As degenerate, perverted and a threat to racial health of the German people.
What did Nazis begin to do to homosexual organisations and literature in 1933? How?
Purge them.
Clubs were closed down, organisations for gay people banned and gay publications were outlawed.
What did Nazi students do in May 1933 as an attack on homosexuality?
They attacked the Institute of Sex Research, a gay organisation, and burned its library.
They also seized the Institute’s list of names and addresses of gay people, beginning the long and sustained persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany.
What did the Gestapo begin to do with gay people in 1934?
Compile lists of them, and in the same year the SS eliminated Rohm and other leaders of the Nazi SA who were homosexuals.
What was the law on homosexuality amended to in 1935?
To widen the definition of homosexuality and to impose harsher penalties for those convicted.
How many men were arrested between 1936 and 38 after the law on homosexuality changed?
Over 22,000.
What office did Himmler create in 1936?
The Reich Office for the Combatting of Homosexuality and Abortion.
How many men were arrested overall for homosexuality?
Around 100,000 with about 1/2 being convicted.
What had the Gestapo or SS continue to do to homosexual men who’d been arrested and served their sentences?
Immediately rearrest them and hold them in concentration camps in ‘preventive custody’.
What triangle did homosexual men have to wear in concentration camps?
The pink to distinguish them from other prisoners, where they were subjected to particularly brutal treatment by guards.
What were many imprisoned homosexuals subjected to?
‘Voluntary castration’ to cure them of their ‘perversion’.
Why didn’t lesbians suffer the same treatment as gay men?
They were considered to be asocial rather than degenerate.
What Christian sects had become established in Germany by the time the Nazis came to power?
- Jehovah’s Witnesses
-Christian Scientists - Mormons
- Seventh-Day Adventists
- New Apostolic Church
Why were the Nazis suspicious of the Christian sects? What did they do to them?
They all had international links which led to Nazi suspicion on where their loyalty lay and so most were banned in November 1933.
How could some sects lift their ban?
When they demonstrated their willingness to cooperate with the regime, but Gestapo agents attended and reported on their services.
What was the only religious group to show uncompromising hostility to the Nazi State?
The Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Why were the Jehovah’s Witnesses beliefs in conflict with the Nazi regime?
They believed that they could only obey Jehovah (God) and so they refused to take the loyalty oath to Hitler.
What else did the Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to do?
- Give the Hitler salute
- Participate in Nazi parades
- Accept army conscription
What did Jehovah’s Witnesses in prison refuse to do?
- Obey orders
- Attend parades
- Remove their caps
How many Jehovah’s Witnesses had been imprisoned by 1945?
Around 10,000.
What did the Nazis fail to do to Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Break their resistance and many had converted some to their beliefs in camps.
Which sect gave a positive welcome to the Nazi regime?
The Seventh-Day Adventists, describing it as the beginning of Germany’s rebirth.
Why was the Seventh-Day Adventists’ ban lifted within 2 weeks?
They agreed to display the swastika flag in churches, conclude its services with the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting and remove the ‘Jewish’ language of the Old Testament from its services.
They also agreed to exclude asocials, Jews and other ‘race enemies’ from receiving help from their well-developed welfare organisation which provided food and shelter.
How had gypsies faced legal discrimination far before 1933?
Local authorities had often harassed them into moving away.
What did Nazi legal experts rule about the Nuremberg Laws in 1935?
That the laws applied to Gypsies even though they were not specifically mentioned in the laws.
What did the SS set up in 1936 against gypsies? Who became the expert scientific adviser?
The new Reich Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance.
Robert Ritter, a university psychologist.
What did the SS start to do using Ritter’s criteria?
The process of identifying and isolating those whose heritage was part-Gypsy and who had become fully integrated into German society, as they represented a threat to Aryan racial purity.
What did Himmler issue in December 1938 against gypsies?
A Decree for the Struggle against the Gypsy Plague which led to a more systematic classification of Gypsies.
What happened to Gypsies after war broke out in September 1939?
They were deported from Germany to Poland.
