The opposition was weak to stop Hitler from doing what he did.
∙ Failure to deal with the Depression
∙ Failure to cooperate with one another
∙ Attitudes of Germans to democratic parties
These were some of their weaknesses. Other factors were:
∙ Weaknesses of the Weimar Republic
∙ Scheming of Hindenburg and von Papen
∙ The impact of the Depression
∙ The Treaty of Versailles
∙ Memories of the problems of 1923
By April 1933 Nazi boycotted Jewish shops and businesses that were owned by Jewish people. Jews had to walk with miles to get milk for small children and babies because there weren’t any Jewish shops near their houses. Germans were not allowed to buy on Jewish shops because they were punished if they did so. The police closed Jewish shops that operated in violation of this order. Even though most of these Jews Hitler is victimising against were born in Germany, they were made outsiders very quickly.
During this time in Germany, there were lot of concentration camps and extermination camps. Lots of people lost their lives. Auschwitz was one of the biggest camps. It was a concentration and an extermination camp. On March 22nd 1933 Nazis opened Dachau a concentration camp near Munich where lots of people died. In March 1938 after Auschwitz, the storm troopers (SS) were put in charge of Jewish affairs in Austria with Adolf Eichmann establishing an office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. A few years later Heinrich Himmler, the man in charge of the S.S established a concentration camp Mauthausen near Linz, therefore more Jewish people could go onto Nazi hands.
From time to time laws were made against Jews. The most important one was the “Nuremberg Laws” in 1935. Few of them were:
• Marriages between Jews and citizens of Germans were forbidden.
• Jews were forbidden to display the national flag and their national colours.
• Jews were not allowed to employ a female citizen of German blood as a domestic servant.
By April 1938 Nazi ordered Jewish shops to register the wealth, property and the owned businesses. They were not allowed to make their businesses together with Germans. Nazi decided that Jews taught to be put out of German schools. They did this on purpose therefore teachers have more freedom to explain to their students how to hate Jews even more, although Jewish students were way better than German kids. Most of doctors and lawyers were Jews.
Jewish people had different symbols to Germans in their passports. Jewish passports were marked with a large “J” as an identification of a Jewish person. On August 1938 Nazi required Jewish women to add Sarah and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports. They also had different signs in the streets. Jews were not allowed to go in certain places. Some of the streets were marked “Jews not wanted here”.
Nazi decided that Jews should have separate compartments. They couldn’t claim for a seat. Jews were not allowed to sit around in German parks. Jews had separate benches from the German ones. Benches that were for Jews were marked “For Jews only”, because Germans said that it’s not Jewish’s people business to come and mix with us. They were not allowed to go and mix with German people on cinemas, theatres, public concerts, halls, museums, exhibition halls, ice skating and sport centres.
Jews throughout the world were very angry with the Nazis. On November 7th 1938, a Polish Jew living in Paris murdered a German official there. Three days later on 10th of November 1938 Jewish buildings were smashed into and contents destroyed or looted and all synagogues were gutted by fire. About twenty thousand German Jews especially male between the ages of sixteen and sixty were arrested and transported to concentration camps and ninety one of them were murdered. The rest were forced to pay compensation. The 10th of November was the night of horror for Jewish population living in Paris. The 10th of November 1938 was known as “Kristallnacht” or “The Night of Broken Glass”.
Waves of Jewish emigration from Germany had occurred with each new policy of victimisation. In Germany there have been half a million Jews when Nazis came to power. On July 14th 1933 Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany. They also passed laws to strip Jewish emigrants from Poland of their citizenship. In 1939 only about 300 000 Jews remained living there. A huge number of Jews fled from Austria, and by 1940 less than fifty per cent of the Jewish population was left. Allies appealed to other countries to accept emigrants who came from death camps.
