Nazi Germany Essay
Hitler and his Nazi party brought about various changes in Germany between 1934 and 1939. These are political, economical, and social changes, and they affected many people in different ways. The ordinary people in Germany, especially those who were unemployed were the ones who were benefited by some of the economical changes that the Nazis made. However, German communists, social democrats, Jews, and other people whom the Nazis took a prejudiced view of had to undergo many hardships during the period of the changes. Since the year Hitler became Führer and gained absolute power, many events occurred that changed the course of German history and took a heavy toll of human lives. The following paragraphs are about how Hitler and the Nazi party started the political, economical, and social events, and what kind of effects they had on the people.
The political events include ‘Night of the long knives’, Terror Campaign, Nuremberg laws, and Kristallnacht. The first major event that took place in the year 1934 was ‘Night of the long knives’. This was triggered by the increasing power of the SA, the private army of the Nazi party. Hitler needed to stop this in order to gain support from the army that objected to the SA. So, Hitler ordered the SS, his bodyguard, to kill SA leaders and his private enemies as well. After this massacre Hitler became more powerful, and after one and a half months President Hindenburg died, so, Hitler became both Führer and Reich Chancellor. Terror campaign was carried out, too, and political prisoners, Jehovah’s witnesses, Anti-Socials, criminals, homosexuals, emigrants, and Jews were sent to concentration camps and suffered several kinds of cruelty. They were restricted in their movements, and anyone who broke the strict rules was hanged. Between 1934 and 1937 the average percentage of prisoners who were killed in the concentration camps was 12% of the prisoners that were sent there each year. However, the matter became worse and in the year 1938 40% of the prisoners died, and in 1939 only half of the prisoners could survive. The Nazis became tyrannical in the extreme. Hitler blamed the Jews for the evil in the world and the defeat of Germany in the First World War. He had criticized them in his book, Mein Kampf in 1923, and attacked them in his speeches and in the Nazi party election manifesto in 1933. They weren’t allowed to do government jobs and go to some public places. On the 15th of September 1935 the Nuremberg laws were made. They were laws against the Jews, and forbade marriages and sexual relations between Germans and Jews, and forbade the Jews to employ Germans. The 9th and the 10th of November (1938) were the days of Kristallnacht. SS and SA men were made to attack property and synagogues of the Jews, and killed 91 Jews and arrested 20000. This occurred because the Nazis were offended by the fact that a Polish Jew had killed an official in the German Embassy in Paris. After the Kristallnacht the government made the Jews pay for the damages.
