Ethnic minorities, 1933-45 Flashcards
(18 cards)
What were the Nazi’s racist ideology?
- Idea of culture creating/bearing/destroying races
- Aryans were culture creating, for example, art, science, literature originated from them
- Orientals were culture bearing as they copied aryans
- Jews and gypsies were culture destroying, like a cancer, destroying aryan culture
- Founded from Social Darwinism and Eugenics, all predated the Nazis
When was the boycott of Jewish shops? What did it include?
April 1933
A symbolic gesture, as many jews were small business owners – 80% of dept stores were jewish. Lasted a day as a prolonged boycott would damage economic recovery.
Examples of legal exclusion
Hindenburg’s death in 1934 allowed Hitler to bypass his reluctance to pass racist legislation.
Sept 1933 - Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service – removed most Jewish people from civil services
Nuremberg Race Laws – Sept 1935
- Reich Citizenship Law – removed citizenship rights from all people who had four or more ‘non-aryan’ grandparents
- Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour – made it illegal for aryans to marry or have sex with non-aryans to protect their bloodline
Economic exclusion
Under Schacht, he had advised against economic exclusion as jews contributed to the economy. However under Goering, he was able to use his power as plenipotentiary to exclude jews from the economy
1937 - reduced access of jewish-owned firms to raw materials and authorised take-overs of jewish firms by aryan firms
1938 - outlawed the issuing of govt contracts to jewish firms
1938 - banned jews from selling or leasing property worth more than RM5,000. Stopping jews from leaving germany and taking money with them.
When was Kristallnacht?
9-10 November 1938
What was Kristallnacht?
Night of Broken Glass
8th Nov 1938 - A polish jew shot and killed a german diplomat at the german embassy in Paris. It was a protest against the deportation of his parents in germany to poland.
Hitler authorised mass SA violence against jewish homes, synagogues and businesses.
They had imposed a fine on jews for the damage caused
Stats for Kristallnacht
200+ killed
30,000 arrests
Destroyed 1,000+ synagogues
What was the aim behind the Holocaust?
The ultimate aim was to exclude Jews from Europe. This began with the drawn up Madagascar Plan, which was seriously considered between 1938-40. This involved sending Jews to Madagascar. But, they considered Jews internal enemy partisans, so killing them was justified, including women and children (who were killed so they do not grow to become enemies of the state).
Einsatzgruppen and local police forces began rounding up jews in occupied territories and shot them.
Problem with the Einsatzgruppen
Himmler thought that their progress was too slow:
They had killed 700,000 people in 1941, but the effects of killing women and children would be harrowing to the SS troops, so Himmler drew up the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in Jan 1942
The Final Solution
Meant the systematic transportation of ‘sub-human’ jews from across Europe to death camps, like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor. The aim was to destroy the population of 11 million European Jews. Around 6 million were killed.
Nazis and black people – how were they dealt with?
Hitler also did not like the ‘Rhineland Bastards’ who were likely to be in their teens by the mid 30s.
They were dealt with through forced sterilisation
How many ‘rhineland bastards’ were there in 1935?
500
Nazis and gypsies
They had long been subject of state persecution due to their unconventional lifestyles and most germans thought that it was undisciplined and even criminal.
1936 - established camps, not death camps, just sanitation facilities with loads of disease
1939 - not allowed to marry aryans without a special permit.
At the Wannsee Conference, Gypies were included in the Final Solution, and they were also taken to camps to be killed. 21,000 died at Auschwitz alone.
Who counted as ‘degenerate aryans’?
Mostly people with disabilities, or those who were work shy or alcoholics. They were basically eating up precious resources that could go to the good aryans.
Sterilisation laws against people with disabilities
July 1933 – Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (aka the Sterilisation Law)
If you were deaf, blind, epileptic, schizophrenia, alcoholism or ‘feeble-minded’ you would be sterilised and this would strengthen the racial purity of the aryan race.
How many people were forcibly sterilised during 1933-39?
Around 300,000
What was Aktion T4?
August 1939
This was a plan for the systematic killing of people with physical and mental impairments. It required medical professionals to report when a baby is born with Down’s Syndrome, ‘idiocy’ or physical malformation, like limbs.
The policy was extended to disabled children up to 17, the elderly, mentally or chronically ill.
How many people were estimated to have been killed by Aktion T4?
Over 70,000
