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hitlers anti semetic policy

hitlers anti semetic policy History essay Hitlers Anti semetic party Natasha Mays There are several reasons as to why the Nazi Anti-semetic policy developed as it did between 1933 and 1939. We are going to look at some of the main ones to try and understand Hitlers aims and ideas and wether or not they worked. Despite Hitler's inferiority, he came across as a saviour for Germany. He was a charismatic leader and people could identify with his dream to re-establish Germany as a great power. He was a good orator and deliberately built up the emotion of the crowd. Those close to him admired him and believed he was not mad, for example, his secretary saw him as a friendly, polite, charming man and the German people loved him also. They worshipped him and hung his portrait in their homes. His obsession with racial purity and barbaric actions confirm that he was so obviously insane but due to his forceful personality he was able to get away with it. The National Socialist German Workers Party almost died one morning in 1919. It numbered only a few dozen grumblers. It had no organization and no political ideas. But many among the middle class admired the Nazis' muscular opposition to the Social Democrats. And the Nazis themes of patriotism and militarism drew highly emotional responses from people who could not forget Germany's prewar imperial grandeur. In the national elections of September 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly 6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as the most popular party in Germany. In Northeim, where in 1928 Nazi candidates had received 123 votes, they now polled 1,742, a respectable 28 percent of the total. The nationwide success drew even faster... in just three years, party membership would rise from about 100,000 to almost a million, and the number of local branches would increase tenfold. The new members included working-class people, farmers, and middle-class professionals. They were both better educated and younger then the Old Fighters, who had been the backbone of the party during its first decade. The Nazis now presented themselves as the party of the young, the strong, and the pure, in opposition to an establishment populated by the elderly, the weak, and the dissolute. If it hadn't of been for Hitlers popularity and the weakness of Gerany, Hitler would have not been as succesful as he was. When WWI broke out, Hitler joined Kaiser Wilhelmer's army as a Corporal. He was not a person of great importance. He was a creature of a Germany created by WWI, and his behavior was shaped by that war and its consequences. He had emerged from Austria with many prejudices, including a powerful prejudice against Jews. Again, he was a product of his times... for many Austrians and Germans were prejudiced against the Jews. In Hitler's case the prejudice had become maniacal it was a dominant force in his private and political personalities. Anti-Semitism was not a policy for Adolf Hitler--it was religion. And in the Germany of the 1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, it was not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of the nation's society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it. The fact is that Hitler's anti-Semitism was self-inflicted obstacle to his political success. The Jews, like other Germans, were shocked by the discovery that the war had not been fought to a standstill, as they were led to believe in November 1918, but that Germany had , in fact, been defeated and was to be treated as a vanquished country. Had Hitler not embarked on his policy of disestablishing the Jews as Germans, and later of exterminating them in Europe, he could have counted on their loyalty. There is no reason to believe anything else. On the evening of November 8, 1923, Wyuke Vavaruab State Cinnussuiber Gustav Rutter von Kahr was making a political speech in Munich's sprawling Bürgerbräukeller, some 600 Nazis and right-wing sympathizers surrounded the beer hall. Hitler burst into the building and leaped onto a table, brandishing a revolver and firing a shot into the ceiling. "The National Revolution," he cried, "has begun!" At that point, informed that fighting had broken out in another part of the city, Hitler rushed to that scene. His prisoners were allowed to leave, and they talked about organizing defenses against the Nazi coup. Hitler was of course furious. And he was far from finished. At about 11 o,clock on the morning of November 9-the anniversary of the founding of the German Republic in 1919-3,000 Hitler partisans again gathered outside the Bürgerbräukeller. To this day, no one knows who fired the first shot. But a shot rang out, and it was followed by fusillades from both sides. Hermann Göring fell wounded in the thigh and both legs. Hitler flattened himself against the pavement; he was unhurt. General Ludenorff continued to march stolidly toward the police line, which parted to let him pass through (he was later arrested, tried and acquitted). Behind him, 16 Nazis and three policemen lay sprawled dead among the many wounded. The next year, Röhm and his band joined forces with the fledgling National Socialist Party in Adolf Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Himmler took part in that uprising, but he played such a minor role that he escaped arrest. The Röhm-Hitler alliance survived the Putsch, and Öhm's 1,500-man band grew into the Sturmabteilung, the SA, Hitler's brown-shirted private army, that bullied the Communists and Democrats. Hitler recruited a handful of men to act as his bodyguards and protect him from Communist toughs, other rivals, and even the S.A. if it got out of hand. This tiny group was the embryonic SS. In 1933, after the Nazi Party had taken power in Germany, increasing trouble with the SA made a showdown inevitable. As German Chancellor, the Führer could no longer afford to tolerate the disruptive Brownshirts; under the ambitious Röhm, the SA had grown to be an organization of three million men, and its unpredictable activities prevented Hitler from consolidating his shaky control of the Reich. He had to dispose of the SA to hold the support of his industrial backers, to satisfy party leaders jealous of the SA's power, and most important, to win the allegiance of the conservative Army generals. Under pressure from all sides, and enraged by an SA plot against him that Heydrich had conveniently uncovered, Hitler turned the SS loose to purge its parent organization. They were too uncontrollable even for Hitler. They went about their business of terrorizing Jews with no mercy. But that is not what bothered Hitler, since the SA was so big, (3 million in 1933) and so out of control, Hitler sent his trusty comrade Josef Dietrich, commander of a SS bodyguard regiment to murder the leaders of the SA. The killings went on for two days and nights and took a tool of perhaps 200 "enemies o the state." It was quite enough to reduce the SA to impotence, and it brought the Führer immediate returns. The dying President of the Reich, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, congratulated Hitler on crushing the troublesome SA, and the Army generals concluding that Hitler was now their pawn--swore personal loyalty to him. In April 1933, scarcely three months after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazis issued a degree, ordering the compulsory retirement of "non-Aryans" from the civil service. This edict, petty in itself, was the first spark in what was to become the Holocaust, one of the most ghastly episodes in the modern history of mankind. Before he campaign against the Jews was halted by the defeat of Germany, nearly 11 million people had been slaughtered in the name of Nazi racial purity. The Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. Millions of Russians, Poles, gypsies and other "subhumans" were also murdered. But Jews were the favored targets-first and foremost. It took the Nazis some time to work up to the full fury of their endeavor. In the years following 1933, the Jews were systematically deprived by law of their civil rights, of their jobs and property. Violence and brutality became a part of their everyday lives during 1938. On the 9th of November Krystallnacht took place, many Jews were killed, their places of worship were defiled, their windows smashed, their stores ransacked. Old men and young were pummeled and clubbed and stomped to death by Nazi jack boots. Jewish women were accosted and ravaged, in broad daylight, on main thoroughfares. Although Kristallnacht was not said to be intentionally planned, it is understood that Goebbels had wasnted to win back Hitlers favour after having an affair with a Czech actress. The extermination camps were essentially kept secret in rural Poland and Austria for fear of an uprising. Therefore if the people did not know, they could not oppose. In 1934 with the assassination of military leader, Ernst Röhm, Hitler won over the army who was possibly the only ones in a position to remove Hitler of his power. Despite this, "quiet resistance" such as protests performed by church organisations after leaks about the 'euthanasia programs' took place. This saw the termination of such killings authorised in writing by Hitler, although, it caused 800 Protestant pastors and many Roman Catholic priests to be sent to concentration camps, which really should not have occurred in a "civilised" society. Persecution kept most forms of resistance under control. Hitler also played his deputies off against each other in order to prevent them from joining to conspire against him. This worked, where everyone hated everyone else causing suspicion so they all fought for his praise. Once in power it was hard to remove Hitler and various assassination plots failed. For example, the 1944 plot on July 20 saw all bar one conspiricers shot. This made Nazi followers outraged and gained Hitler sympathy. Under Hitler, it was basically conform or die. Some Jews fled Germany. But most, with a kind of stubborn belief in God and Fatherland, sought to weather the Nazi terror. It was forlorn hope. In 1939, after Hitler's conquest of Poland, the Nazis cast aside all restraint. Jews in their millions were now herded into concentration camps, there to starve and perish as slave laborers. Other millions were driven into dismal ghettos, which served as holding pens until the Nazis got around to disposing of them. The mass killings began in 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Nazi murder squads followed behind the Wehrmacht enthusiastically slaying Jews and other conquered . It is likely the only way Hitler held control was through terror and propaganda. Germany's desperate situation made the people prepared to accept Gobbles' propaganda campaign. Basically, if you were not a Jew or interested in politics, you could live quite happily under the Nazis as Hitler took great care to please the people. Success and lack of obstruction appealed for Hitler to take bigger risks and with so much triumph in the economy, Germans too saw him as infallible. Germany became a totalitarian nation where no one could oppose or criticise Hitler. Those arrested had to swear an oath of obedience. People who did not fit or like the policies were severely harassed. For example, if any German was caught helping a Jew he was executed, political parties were banned so the Nazis had no opposition and trade unions abolished as they were seen as a way for the people to resist. It is bewildering to think how Hitler's barbaric attitudes has so much influence on the people and such sadistic atrocities were allowed to occur in such a civilised nation. Quite simply, the Nazi rule was a cult. It is difficult to comprehend that people thought this madman was superhuman. He became a second god and took elements from his religious upbringing to form his own brutal religion. He created a great myth about himself that he believed in also. He came to power in a time of social misery offering hope, unity and vengeance, restoring national pride in a discouraged nation. This had a great uplifting psychological effect on the people and therefore no one contradicted him. People believed he was superior and through the amount of propaganda Germans were forced to accept, the Nazi anti-semitic views persuaded most Germans to ignore what was happening to their neighbours. The youth were brainwashed by this propaganda to become members of the SA (storm troopers) which appealed to the young as it offered wages and uniforms. I believe Germans had a bystander mentality that allowed such things to occur instead of uniting to resist. Bibliography:

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