The Holocaust.
The Jewish people had been hated throughout Europe for hundreds of years, they were often treated unfairly in courts and forced to live in ghettos. One of the reasons for the persecution was because of their religion; the Jewish people were blamed for the death of Jesus Christ. Another reason is because they were well educated so they had well paid jobs or run successful businesses.
Hitler insanely hated the Jewish people, this was because when his mother was terminally ill the doctor couldn't save her and the doctor was Jewish. He blamed them for his years of poverty, as when he applied for a place in the Vienna Art School he was denied a place and it was Jewish people who got in. whilst he was on the streets he became obsessed by the fact that the Jewish people ran many of the most successful businesses. This put a downer on his idea of the superiority of the Aryans. Hitler also blamed the Jewish people for Germany losing World War I he blamed the Jewish businessmen and bankers. He thought the forced the German army into surrendering.
As soon as Hitler took power in 1933 he immediately began to mobilise the full powers of the state against the Jewish people. The Jewish people were immediately banned from the civil service and some public services like broadcasting and teaching. At the same time, SA and later on the SS troops organised boycotts of Jewish run shops and businesses, which were marked by the Star of David. In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws took away German citizenships from Jewish people. They were also forbidden to marry or have sex with pure-blood Germans. Goebbel's propaganda experts bombarded German children and families with anti-Jewish messages. Jewish people were often refused jobs, and people in shops refused to serve them. Jewish children were humiliated, and then segregated.
A massive, coordinated attack on Jewish people throughout the German Reich on the night of November 9, 1938, into the next day, has come to be known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass. He attack came after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jewish person living in Paris, shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff there in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Germany. On October 27, Grynszpan's family and over 15,000 other Jewish people, originally from Poland, had been expelled ...
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A massive, coordinated attack on Jewish people throughout the German Reich on the night of November 9, 1938, into the next day, has come to be known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass. He attack came after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jewish person living in Paris, shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff there in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Germany. On October 27, Grynszpan's family and over 15,000 other Jewish people, originally from Poland, had been expelled from Germany without any warning. They were forcibly transported by train in boxcars then dumped at the Polish border. For Adolph Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel's, the shooting in Paris provided an opportunity to incite Germans to "rise in bloody vengeance against the Jewish." On November 9, mob violence broke out as the regular German police stood by and crowds of spectators watched. Nazi storm troopers along with members of the SS and Hitler Youth beat and murdered Jewish people, broke into and wrecked Jewish homes, and brutalized Jewish women and children. All over Germany, Austria and other Nazi controlled areas, Jewish shops and department stores had their windows smashed and contents destroyed. Synagogues were especially targeted for vandalism, including desecration of sacred Torah scrolls. Hundreds of synagogues were systematically burned while local fire departments stood by or simply prevented the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings. About 25,000 Jewish men were rounded up and later sent to concentration camps where they were often brutalized by SS guards and in some cases randomly chosen to be beaten to death. The reaction outside Germany to Kristallnacht was shock and outrage, creating a storm of negative publicity in newspapers and among radio commentators that served to isolate Hitler's Germany from the civilized nations and weaken any pro-Nazi sentiments in those countries. Shortly after Kristallnacht, the United States recalled its ambassador permanently. In Germany, on November 12, top Nazis, including Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbel's, held a meeting concerning the economic impact of the damage and to discuss further measures to be taken against the Jewish people. SS leader Reinhard Heydrich reported 7500 businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned (with 177 totally destroyed) and 91 Jewish people killed. Heydrich requested new decrees barring Jewish people from any contact with Germans by excluding them from public transportation, schools, even hospitals, essentially forcing them into ghettos or out of the country. Goebbel's said the Jewish people would be made to clean out the debris from burned out synagogues which would then be turned into parking lots. At this meeting it was decided to eliminate Jewish people entirely from economic life in the Reich by transferring all Jewish property and enterprises to 'Aryans,' with minor compensation given to the Jewish people in the form of bonds. Regarding the economic impact of the damage from Kristallnacht and the resulting massive insurance claims, Hermann Göring stated the Jewish people themselves would be billed for the damage and that any insurance money due to them would be confiscated by the State.
In 1939 when Germany defeated Poland, the Nazis started "Germanising" Poland. They replaced all the Polish people with German settlers. Almost one in five Polish people died in the fighting and as a result of racial policies of 1939-1945. Polish Jewish people were rounded up and transported to the major cities. When in the major cities they were transported to the ghettoes, which are sealed areas. The able bodied one was used for slave labour but the young, old and the sick were left to die from hunger and disease.
In 1941 Germany invaded the USSR. The invasion was a great success at first. However, within weeks the nazi's found themselves in control of three million Russian Jewish people in addition to all the other Jewish people in all the other countries they had invaded. German forces had orders to round up and shoot communist party activists and their Jewish supporters. The shootings were carried out by special SS units called Einsatzgruppen. By autumn of 1941, mass shootings were taking place all over occupied Eastern Europe. In Germany, all Jewish people were ordered to wear the Star of David on their clothing to mark them out.
In January 1942, senior Nazis met at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, for a conference to discuss what they called the "final solution" to the "Jewish question". At the Wannsee conference, Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo, was put in charge of the systematic killings of the Jewish people within Germany and German occupied countries. Slave labour and death camps were built at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmo and other places. The old sick and young children were killed immediately. The able-bodied were first used as slave labour. Some were used for appalling medical experiments. Six million Jewish people, five hundred thousand European gypsies and countless political prisoners, Jehovah witnesses, homosexuals and Russian and Polish prisoners of war were sent to these camps to be worked to death, gassed or shot.
