Document 6585494

Conditions in 1930s
1) Germany was defeated in World War I
• Germans lacked confidence in their weak
government
2) An Economic depression hit Germany
• Millions lost their jobs
Germans were desperate for change, so they
looked to Adolf Hitler who promised a better life and
a new and glorious Germany.
In January 1933 Hitler was
appointed chancellor, the head of the German
government, and many Germans believed that they
had found a savior for their nation .
•A crowd cheers Adolf Hitler as
his car leaves.
Hitler moved quickly to turn Germany
into a one-party dictatorship. He ended
individual freedoms and organized
police power to enforce policies. People
lost their right to privacy. He put tons of
jobless men to work as Nazi Storm
Troopers. These men were put to the
streets to beat and kill some opponents
of the Nazi regime.
• May 2,1933 - Trade union officials and
activists are terrorized. The trade
unions' records are impounded and
their assets seized.
• July 14,1933 - All political parties
except the Nazi party are dissolved.
Police search a vehicle for arms.
An important tool of the Nazi terror was the Protective squad, or SS. The SS began as a
special guard for Adolf Hitler and other party leaders.
~Some of the SS members formed a smaller, elite group whose members also served as
auxiliary policeman and also as concentration camp guards, which eventually
overshadowed the Storm Troopers, or SA.
~The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, also turned the regular police forces into an instrument
of terror. These non-uniformed police used ruthless and cruel methods throughout
Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and others who refused to obey laws
and policies of the Nazi regime.
~After Hitler took power, the SA and Gestapo agents went from door to door looking for
Hitler's enemies. Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had
spoken out against the Nazi party were arrested, and some were killed. By the middle of
1933, the Nazi party was the only political party, and nearly all organized opposition to the
regime had been eliminated.
~Many different groups, including the SA and SS, set up hundreds of makeshift "camps"
in empty warehouses, factories, and other locations all over Germany.
• Members of
SS parade
during a
rally.
Nazi Propaganda and Censorship
• The Nazi party created a propaganda campaign to win the
loyalty of Germans.
• The propaganda was found in magazines, newspapers,
books, etc.
• Nazis in the spring of 1933 burned books that were written
by Jewish writers. More than 25,000 books were burned.
• Books were removed from German libraries in an attempt
to censor Jewish writers.
• Hitler and his Nazi party then implanted books that
taught children to obey the Nazi party and love Hitler.
Nazi Racism
During WWII in Germany, a new tactic called “Blitzkrieg,”(lightning war)
was used to break through enemy defenses. Germany defeated Norway,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, and
Yugoslavia. German Nazis pushed more than 600 miles to the gates of
Moscow. Allies tried to start attacking their way into Germany. Finally,
Nazi Germany surrendered in May of 1945.
~Adolf Hitler suggested that wartime "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many
Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a
"master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society. At the
beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally
ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.
~The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the
medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals
should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six
institutions in Germany and Austria to be killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped
infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The
bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.
• Hartheim castle, a
euthanasia killing
center where people
with physical and
mental disabilities were
killed by gassing and
lethal injection.
Hartheim, Austria.
German Rule in Occupied Europe
 Germany planned to annex most territories they
conquered
 Territories were ruthlessly exploited for the German
war effort
 Local populations were drafted for forced labor
 Germans destroyed cultural and
scientific institutions
 Territories were given starvation rations
 Food and raw materials were
confiscated for the war effort
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