The new Nazi party attracted loads of attention. This was because that particular party offered something to everyone, but it was also because of the violence of his supporters. Hitler had already set up an armed, uniformed and disciplined force. This force was directed to keep order in Party meetings. They then later broke up the meetings of opponents who stopped them from speaking.
During this year lots and lots of bad and vicious men joined the Nazi party. In 1923 Hitler thought he had enough support to seize power. This failed because the police were not on his side so they arrested him. He was then sentenced for five years in Lands berg prison. He only served nine months and learnt that he should win power legally nest time!
In October 1929, the USA plunged into Depression, which is known as the Wall Street Crash. American loans to Germany under the Dawnes plan stopped, and that meant that the German Economy was in trouble! Wages fell and unemployment increased. The Nazi Party was the only party that could help them to be rich again.
Hitler’s Nazi Party was the biggest in the Reichstag – German Government. Lots of rich Germans backed Hitler because they thought that they would crush the communists and then Hitler and his party could be replaced once the political party was over even though on the Election Day Hitler made speeches attacking the Jews, and his storm troopers publicly murdered and beat up the Jews. In January 1933 the situation in Germany was so desperate that the President Hindenburg decided to elect Hitler as Chancellor. In many ways Hitler was a man of his word. He said that he hated democracy. Communists and Jews, and he promised jobs to the unemployed. Within two years of coming to power Hitler found jobs for two and a half million Germans. He destroyed democracy in Germany within six months of becoming Chancellor.
The Germans loved Hitler he gave them what they wanted in the Economic depression. Hitler was now granted dictatorship for four years so he could pass laws without consulting the parliament and sign agreements with foreign countries.
Hitler however still did not control the German army. They were too suspicious of what Hitler was going to do. The army was also worried about the storm troopers, and the SA. The SA leader, Ernst Roehm, wanted to make the SA more powerful so it could become like a kind of second German army. The SA was a force of 4 million men all specially trained in street fighting. Hitler had to make a choice between the army and the SA. By this time the SA was an embarrassment to Hitler. Now he was safely in power he did not need those violent bullies. He was moving into the highest circles of the German society and did not want to be reminded of his street fighting gangs. On the night of 19 June 1934, Hitler ordered his SS killers to act. Hundreds of SA leaders, including Roehm and any other possible rivals, were murdered on the night, this was known as ‘ The Night Of The Long Knives’.
Now they were taken care of Hitler knew that the army and wealthy businessmen could now support the Nazis without feeling threatened. The support of the army was really needed for Hitler’s plans for war.
Soon after the Night of the long knives President Hidenburg died. Hitler took over the position of the President as well as being Chancellor.
Now the Nazis were rulers of Germany they thought they could do anything. Books, plays, films and arts were strictly censored. The German people only read what the Nazis only wanted them to read and hear. Dr Joseph Goebbels was the minister of Propaganda. He was in control of the newspapers and the radio. Books by anti- Nazis were taken from the schools and libraries. Huge bonfires were made of them in every town.
In a recent book Lucy Dawidowicz wrote
“The Jews inhabited Hitler’s mind. He believed that they were the source of all evil and misfortune. They were the devils whom he had been given a divine mission to destroy”
A special attention was given to control the next generation. All teachers had to be supporters of the Nazis. Textbooks were changed and school timetables were re-arranged to support Nazi ideas.
School pupils were taught the basic idea of Nazism. If the teachers started talking about the Jews or the Communists and someone told the Nazis the teacher would then be beaten up in front of there class.
The school pupils were taught that the German race was superior who were people with blonde hair and blue eyes (even though Hitler didn’t have blonde hair or blue eyes)! They were also taught that the Jews were part of an inferior race, such as the Slaves, Negroes, but the lowest of all were the Jews. They said the Jews were even subhuman. All Hitler’s successes were praised. Even outside school the propaganda didn’t stop.
Here is an extract from the Berlin diary by William Shirer
“ There, at the rally they were jammed together like sardines, the little men of Germany who had made Nazism even possible achieved the highest state of being the Germanic man knows: the shredding of their individual souls and minds, with personal responsibilities doubts and problems.”
Those who dared to speak against the Nazis put their own lives at risk. Any kind of opposition to the Nazi state was thought to have been a crime. The Gestapo (the state street police) had the right to just arrest the people on suspicion. The police could even imprison the suspects or slaughter them without even a trial. Neighbours, even families, spied on each other and reported private conversations.
However by 1937, after 4 years of the Nazi rule, most Germans were satisfied with Hitler. In 1933, the economy was in a really bad state with over six million people unemployed. But by 1937 unemployment was under one million. Hitler reduced the figures by sending people to labour corps.
At fourteen the boys were expected to join the Hitler youth and girls in the league of maidens. Hitler was very keen to see women carry out their traditional role of being a housewife like cleaning the house and looking after the kids. They marched, sang songs and, from time to time went to work camps. There they had to listen to more Nazi propaganda lectures! Hitler liked all of this because this let the children develop very friendly relations so that the girls could ‘donate a child to the Fuhrer’ and then make sure that the German race stays racially pure. As many as 100,000 Hitler Youth and BdM girls attended the Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1936 and 900 of the girls came home pregnant. Because of this the girls in the league got a really bad reputation.
Girls were told to study either language or domestic science in secondary school. The school-leaving certificate was nicknamed ‘the pudding level’. Girls were also told not to perm their hair, wear make-up or trousers, smoking in public, and dieting. Hitler knew that smoking and slimness gave the women less chance of having children. And Hitler wanted lots of Kids to be born so he could brain wash them at an early age! But lots of women supported this rule anyway!
What I think about this rule is that it was a good idea but Hitler really shouldn’t have encouraged girls to get pregnant at a very young age! And Hitler really shouldn’t tell the girls what to do, they should decide themselves, anything can be better than getting them pregnant!
The unemployment mainly was reduced by the expansion of the German army, navy and air force and with supplying them with equipment. From 1935 Hitler was preparing for war. He knew he was doing wrong by going against the treaty of Versailles but power had already got into his head. He then ordered tanks aeroplanes and ships to be built. This meant that he had to loan off money to the iron and steal industries making Germany go into lots of debt. The German industry grew and grew and grew making loads of new jobs for every one! German inventors know tried to find substitutes for imports. Imports were really expensive and it would even be more expensive in getting all the equipment in at wartime. To save some money for Germany from importing rubber and cotton Hitler really encouraged the growing of the plastic and the nylon industries. His aim (which was never really fully achieved) was to be self sufficient in the war. He also wanted Britain and France to pay for their treaty of Versailles making Germany a laughing stock in front of all the other countries!
Hitler also ordered work to start on a ‘cheap people’s car’ and guess what that car was, the Volkswagen!
Hitler was able to bring such a great economic recovery to me it wasn’t that surprising that lots of Germans were ready to go along with Hitler.
Those people who went along with Hitler really had to close their eyes to one the Nazi’s did. Hitler always insisted that non-Aryan races were bad. He could now put all of those ideas whizzing round in his delusional head into action. Blacks and Gypsies in Germany were attacked. At the Olympic games in 1936, Hitler stormed out in rage after the black American athlete Jesse Owens won a gold medal. But the main victims were the Jews. At first Jewish shops were boycotted and Jews were not allowed to inherit any land at all! His wicked policy was to make life more and more difficult for the Jews until they “crack”.
Then civil servants and doctors who were non-Aryan were told to leave their jobs they were dismissed. In 1935, Hitler passed the Nuremberg laws where the Jews were not allowed to vote, or hold public office or even marry a true Aryan.
Lots and lots of thousand Jews left Germany during these years, it was estimated over 35,000, but thousands still remained there. Some of them went to Palestine where the Jews wanted to set up a Jewish state; others went to the USA and Britain. Among them were famous writers, artists, musicians, and scientists and even doctors not all Germans accepted Hitler as a dictator without question. They just didn’t want to live somewhere where they had very little freedom. A few brave men stayed in Germany but were against Hitler. Some of them were Christians like Pastor Niemoeller; some were socialists or Communists like Willy Brandt; some were even in the army like General Beck. Jews were also being attacked, and the same laws applied to the places that Hitler had conquered. Placards had appeared outside shops and cafes and beside roads leading to towns and villages, reading ‘Jews not wanted’. Millions of Jews tried to flee to other places in the world. Hitler liked this idea just as long as there were not any Jews in Germany or any of the other places he was in charge of. Later on Hitler even decided that he wanted to set up a state in Madagascar! He was out of control. Then in 1938 a Jew murdered a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazis ordered an attack on the Jews and their property. During kristallnacht (the Night Of Glass) over 7,000 Jewish shops were destroyed, 119 synagogues burned down and Jewish homes were destroyed all over Germany from the storm troopers and even ordinary Germans. Loads of Jews were arrested. The Nazi government also decided that the German Jews should pay a fine of one and a quarter billion marks for their so-called ‘abdominal crimes’.
By 1939, Jews were forbidden to go to school or university. Jewish teachers could only teach the Jews! The German people didn’t know what was going on at all, but by this time the Germans were already too afraid to speak out even if they did know anything (I guess this is the time to shout out “POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”). On the 1st of September 1939 the Second World War broke out so very few people outside Germany really knew what was happening. It was impossible for Hitler to get rid of the Jews to other parts of the world so the Jews were trapped. After September 1st 1939 mentally and disabled children were put to death.
The final solution was now made up. The Plan was to kill off the Jews in Europe and the other places conquered by Hitler.
Thousands of Jews were rounded up by the Gestapo (nazis) and sent them to concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald and Treblinka. These camps were especially run by the special “Death’s head” units of the SS. When the Jews had got to the camps there was very sweet music so the Jews thought that they would come to a nice place. They were then told to line up and the Germans chose whether they should go to the right or the left. Those who were unable to work went on the right while those who went on the left were worked to death; some were used as human ‘guinea pigs’ in sick really sick scientific experiments. For those who were not selected for work died in the Gas Chambers. The Germans lied to them saying they were going in the shower and to remove there clothes where they would be given them back at the end of their shower. There they died.
Adolph Eichmann was put in charge of ‘Jewish Resettlement’. He decided to round Jews up and send them to a number of Ghettos. Walls were built to separate the ghetto district from the rest of the city. There were on average seven people living in every room. They were given about 300 calories of food a day this was like two and a half loaves of bread per person per month. Altogether about half a million Jews died in a Ghetto. Nearly all of the flats were under heated. Lots of people caught a disease carried in bad drinking water. Anyone who stepped foot outside the Ghetto was executed. Those who did get away (very few) went to the forests and formed resistance groups. Sometimes the locals helped them other times they were betrayed. The resistance groups attacked German soldiers, but the Germans took terrible revenge and killed innocent people. Some Jews even helped France to invade Germany in 1944. In the Ghetto once there was a prisoner who managed to get some weapons and then he handed some out like guns. Petrol was then put inside the camp disinfectant so when the disinfectant was sprayed petrol was sprayed everywhere. The camp then was obviously set on fire, the weapons exploded. 15 guards were killed and only 150 prisoners escaped. But the Germans got there control back and killed 550 prisoners. Religion was not allowed in the camps although they still held secret ceremonies. Reports about what was happening in the camps were smuggled out, even though the threat was death penalty. Lots of prisoners drew pictures, made carvings and wrote about there experiences. Gradually the Nazis got what they wanted. The best thing the Jews did do to stop Hitler was the Bomb Plot of 1944, where Hitler was injured but he was sadly not killed. But Hitler killed five thousand Germans who rounded up and executed. It wasn’t only Staffenburg who dropped the bomb it was also Field Marshal Rommel. Hitler gave Rommel the chose of facing a trial or taking poison; Rommel chose suicide. Most of the other things the Jews tried to do didn’t go that far because they were caught and executed.
The Jews became so weak that they started looking like sub-humans that the Nazi propaganda made them out to being. This made more Germans be part of the Nazis as they convinced themselves that they were not dealing with proper people. In 1941 the Germans had captured lots of Russian Jews. Where there was a special group whose job was to kill off any Jews.
Before I started this project I had no idea what the Holocaust was. I hadn’t even heard of the term used. After this project on the destruction I knew that I was missing out on lots of world issues.
I had no idea how a man couldn’t have any feelings like Hitler. It’s like he wasn’t even human. I think all of his hatred and anger had come from the First World War when he was a messenger. He saw all of his friends being shot down and killed in front of his eyes. Then the treaty Of Versailles. He must have felt so much revenge for anybody who stopped Germany from winning. I think he really needed counselling at this time of his life, which would have really helped him.
Hitler then had so much power he didn’t really know what to do with it. His personality must have changed and then he must have thought that he could change the world!
On the next page I fished out an article on the Second World War. The first one was about a Nazi war criminal who was living in Milton Keynes after being chucked out of America for his position in the concentration camps where he was thought to have killed over 80,000 people in a camp in America. He was an SS. It says that another suspected war criminal was Konrad Kalejs who was allowed to leave Britain.
From my point of view it is absolutely disgusting of them to kill all of those people. But I can kind off understand why they did it. Other wise they might have been killed. So they were kind of saving there own life but that still doesn’t make it right.
The other article is about a man who went to Germany and swapped a packet of cigarettes for Hitler’s hand written Reinstag speech. They were on pieces of paper to remind Hitler on what he was saying and what he was going to say. He is thought to be getting £15,000 from an auction.
