3.03c Nazi prosecution of minority groups

Things To Know

• explain the extent to which the Nazis dealt with their political opponents
• explain how the Nazis used culture and mass media to control the people
• describe why the Nazis persecuted many groups in German society
• explain the types of opposition to the Nazi regime

Extra

• explore conceptual understandings underlying totalitarianism and authoritarianism
• research on the rivalry between the SS and Wehrmacht (German armed forces)
• explore the relation of religion and the state in Nazi Germany

Minority groups persecuted

Social Darwinism

The Nazis practiced Social Darwinism, which is evolution by natural selection

• “inferior” groups of people persecuted:
  • Jewish people
    • No Jews in civil services
    • Jews couldn’t be served when going out
    • No Jewish-Aryan marriage/relationships
  • gypsies (Roma)

    Inf

    The Roma are a traditionally-nomadic European ethnic group.

    • judged to be “racially inferior”
    • were subjected to imprisonment, forced labor and mass murder
    • many were killed in concentration camps
  • black people
  • physically/mentally disabled people
    • targeted to ‘protect the racial integrity’ of the German nation
    • July 1933: law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases was passed
    • some were subjected to forced sterilisation and abortion
  • terminally ill people
  • Jehovah’s Witnesses
  • criminals
  • alcoholics
  • drug addicts
• “undesirables”/“asocials”

Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass

• a turning point in the harassment of German Jews
  • before Kristallnacht, anti-semitic harassment was ==mostly non-violent==
• 7 November 1938: Polish-Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan assassinates Ernst vom Rath
  • Grynszpan bought a revolver that morning and visited the German embassy in Paris, asking to see an embassy official
    • he had just learnt of his parents’ deportation from Germany to Poland
  • he yelled insults as vom Rath died, saying this was in the name of persecuted Jews
  • this angered Nazis, leading them to plan and launch the Kristallnacht within hours
• 8-9 November 1938: Stormtrooper (brownshirts/stormtroopers) and civilians begin the Kristallnacht
  • participants were given addresses of Jewish businesses and weapons
  • firefighters would only extinguish fires threatening Aryan property
  • 100+ Jews were murdered
  • 250+ synagouges were burnt
  • 700+ Jewish businesses were trashed
  • 20,000+ people were taken to concentration camps
  • 100,000+ people would leave the country
  • 30,000 Jews would be sent to concentration camps
• happened just before the start of 1939-1945 World War II
  • although some argue that it started much earlier, and that WW1/WW2 are actually thirty-year wars
    • 1914-1918: World War I
    • 1918: others argue it started during the disaster called the League of Nations
    • 1937: Second Sino-Japanese war
    • 1931: Manchuria-Japan Crisis: when Japan invaded Manchuria and the LoN did literally nothing
    • also another parallel timeline, where Italy and Japan were coming into power

Reactions to Kristallnacht

• the press (under Goebbels’s direction) presented the event as the spontaneous reaction of ordinary Germans against the Jews
  • they also blamed the Jews for ‘starting’ this
• locally: most Germans didn’t believe it
  • they disagreed with the Nazis’ methods, and became disillusioned with the party and what it’d become
  • ordinary Germans wanted the Jews out of the country, but they didn’t want them killed
    • they were okay with bullying and discrimination, but physical hurt and murder crossed the line for most Germans
  • nearly no one protested; those who did were killed and/or jailed
• globally: a turning point in relations between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world
• Poem: First They Came by Martin Niemoller