g which was the Sturmabteilung or the S.A., which helped Hitler undermine the German democracy. Also, the Gestapo or secret police were formed. The Gestapo were given complete freedom to arrest anyone and blindly followed Hitler’s orders. The Schutzstaffel or the S.S., served as Hitler’s personal bodyguards and eventually controlled the concentration camps and the Gestapo. By 1934, Hitler was in complete control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews was in action. Nazi propaganda portrayed the Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking, courageous, and honest. The Nazis claimed that the Jews, who were economically based in finance, the press, literature, and theater, had weakened Germany's economy and its’ cultural history. The government-supported propaganda created a racial anti-Semitism, which was different from the long-standing anti-Semitic tradition of the Christian churches. Hitler began to entrap the Jews with legal action and terror campaigns, which included burning books written by Jews, removing Jews from their professions and from public schools, confiscating their businesses and property, and excluding them from public events. The most renowned of the anti-Jewish laws were the Nuremberg Laws, passed on September 15, 1935. They formed the basis for the Jews' exclusion from society. Then, on November 910, 1938, the attacks on the Jews became violent. Hershel Grynszpan, a 17yearold Jewish boy distraught at the deportation of his family, shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, who died on November 9. Nazi officials used this assassination as the ostensible motive for instigating a night of destruction that is now known as Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass). Jewish homes were looted and destroyed and businesses as well as synagogues were burned. Many Jews were beaten and killed and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentr...
