The Quest for a Pure Germany

Jews vs Arabs in Middle East Jews are always immigrants world-wide Economic reputation as wealthy,

stingy, savvy with money Political reputation as plotters of world

dominance Fear of Zionism—a Jewish homeland in

Palestine would be like a Vatican-a headquarters for spreading their ideas

Several times in European history, Jews were targeted for expulsion from the area or killed:• Ancient Greece & Rome• Some Christians since their beginnings—

“Jews killed Jesus”• Spanish Inquisition (1492)• Late 1800s Europe—grew into Nazism; a

racial ideology

Extreme nationalism: Purify Germany. Leave only Aryans.

Jews as a race, were seen as the #1 threat to national security & purity• scapegoat

Hitler’s message was meant to be taken as a whole—if you didn’t like part of it, get over it

Read the excerpts from Mein Kampf to try and grasp Hitler’s antisemitism

525,000 Jews lived in Germany No real sense of panic—Jews were

directed to remain calm Would the Nazis even stay in power? Most discrimination included

boycotting Jewish stores, breaking their windows, avoiding them in public/disassociation

Some killings by SA/SS/Gestapo

Jews Anyone with birth defects—and they

were supposed to be sterilized so as not to have children with birth defects

Gypsies (Roma), while technically Aryan, had mingled with the lowest classes of society and were therefore tainted: “criminally asocial”

Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and anyone who helped save any of the above

Improving the genetic makeup of a population through the application of science…

“It will be the task of the People's State to make the race the centre of the life of the community. It must make sure that the purity of the racial strain will be preserved. It must proclaim the truth that the child is the most valuable possession a people can have. It must see to it that only those who are healthy shall beget children; that there is only one infamy, namely, for parents that are ill or show hereditary defects to bring children into the world and that in such cases it is a high honour to refrain from doing so.”

http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocEuth.htm

1933: All Jewish business boycotted• Marriages between Christians and Jews

prohibited• Jewish University professors’ classes were

abandoned• 37,000 of the 525,000 German Jews

emigrated 1934: Night of the Long Knives

(eliminated all other rivals for power—Hitler is it.)

1935: Nuremburg Laws:• 1. Reich flag law—black, red, & white are

national colors, swastika is the national flag• 2. Citizenship law—distinction between

“citizens” of the Reich (Germans) and “subjects” of it (all foreigners)

• 3. Law for the Defense of German Blood & Honor—forbade marriages & all relations between Germans and Jews

• (Many German Jews at this point hoped for a manageable segregated but lawful society now.)

1936: Olympic Games held in Berlin—no anti-semitism shown to the world--greatest propaganda feat of all time?

1938: Anschluss: The annexation of Austria to Germany; antisemitic behavior was rampant there immediately

All German Jews turned in their passports (no leaving) and had to get Jewish identity cards

November 9, 1938: Kristallnacht: “The Night of Broken Glass”• Look up

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/knacht.htm

• In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, German propaganda minister Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/knacht.htm

September 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland• All Polish Jews must wear Star of David

1939: First Polish ghetto is established• Concentration camps at Dachau and

Buchenwald are used—see link 1939-1941: Increasing use of

ghettos to contain Jews and building of new concentration camps

Auschwitz

1942: Many Jews in concentration camps are sent to Auschwitz/death camps

1942-1944: Majority of the captured Jews, gypsies, and others are deported to locations to be killed—6 extermination camps in Poland; ghettos are destroyed• Resistance movements occur

1945: Allies (USA, USSR mostly) liberate concentration camps

Jewish people killed as a % of their pre-war population

11,000,000 killed (6 m Jews, 5 m others)

Or, 15-20 million killed &/or imprisoned 30,000 slave labor camps 1150 Jewish ghettos 980 concentration camps 500 brothels with sex slaves Thousands of other camps for

euthanizing the elderly, “purifying” & “Germanizing” people, sterilizing facilities…