Outsiders of the peoples community Flashcards
What is a Volksgemeinshaft- in terms of aryans and outsiders?
The Nazis stressed the idea of Volksgemeinschaft, a people’s community of healthy Aryans working for the good of the nation. This concept was reinforced by its opposite: outsiders who did not belong (gemeinschaftsunfähig) and who had to be excluded from the people’s community.
The outsiders from the peoples community we classified into 3 main groups. What were these?
- Ideological: those threatening the political unity of the nation, such as Communists, Jehovah’s witnesses etc.
- Biological: those whose genes posed a threat to a healthy, pure German race, such as Jews, racial minorities, mentally and physically handicapped.
- Social: those whose behaviour conflicted with the norms of the national community, such as the asocials and homosexuals etc.
What was happening during Weimar to physically or mentally disabled people?
a) Declining Birth Rates
b) Loss of healthy generation due to WW1- “Germany’s best” were dead.
c) Economic depression led to debate on feeding ‘useless’ mouths.
d) Progress in medical science meant many with hereditary defects were surviving into adulthood
What happened to Gypsies during the Weimar period?
A law of 1926, in Bavaria, allowed for the two- year imprisonment of Gypsies in workhouses if they could not prove they had regular employment. By 1929, this practice had been adopted across Germany.
There was a long history of antisemitism in Europe (black death etc). This hostility was reinforced by resentment at the wealth and position of some Jews and the periodic need for scapegoats to blame for problems. Anti-Semitism increased in Germany around turn of the century as a result of what?
- Social Darwinism
- Influx of Jewish immigrants repressed in Tsarist Russia.
- Anti-Jewish propaganda was in evidence across the political spectrum in Germany from 1918 to 1933.
What does Evans say about the Anti-Semitism?
Richard J Evans : From September 1935 anti-Semitism became “a principle governing private as well as public life”.
What does Wachsmann say was needed for National salvation?
The Nazis believed that an extensive policy of exclusion was needed for national salvation and this meant repression of all ‘racial aliens’, above all of the Jews.
Who said “Racial anti-Semitism was the key element”
Micheal Burleigh
Jill Stephenson says what about the National community being based on what?
the national community was to be based “on race and ‘value’
A bill existed for sterilization in Germany by 1932 but was never put in place due to what?
the economic and social chaos.
July 1933 the sterilisation law was put in place what is its posh name?
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring
If what court decided in favour of sterilisation, the sterilisation must be carried out even against the wishes of the person to be sterilised
Hereditary Health Court
Name a few conditions that could have been sterilised?
Congenital [hereditary] feeblemindedness, Schizophrenia, Manic depression, Hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, Hereditary blindness, Hereditary deafness, Serious physical deformities.
One of the first acts of the Nazi regime was a law allowing compulsory sterilisation of the hereditarily ill, to prevent bearers of such genes from passing them on to children. In the next twelve years how many were sterilised, with about 100 dying as a result.
about 350,000 people
How many alcoholics were sterilised?
30,000 alcoholics were sterilised by 1939.
How many “feebleminded” individuals were sterilised?
200,000 were sterilised by 1939.
How many epileptics were sterilised?
57,000 epileptics were sterilised by 1939.
All children under 3 who had illnesses or a disability, such as what were targeted under the T4 programme?
Down’s syndrome, or cerebral palsy
In 1938 a father wrote to Hitler requesting that his ill son be put out of his misery.How did Hitler use this letter?
(This letter was just one of hundreds of personal petitions Germans sent to their leader every week, most of which were dealt with by his subordinates.) In 1939 Hitler used a father’s letter requesting that his deformed son be ‘put to sleep’ to initiate the policy of killing the incurably ill.
In some hospitals the ratio of doctors to patients rose as high as what to what?
1:500
How were children killed in the T4 euthanasia campaign?
Children were killed by starvation, by lethal injection or by gas in mobile vans (‘killer boxes’) or ‘shower’ gas chambers. The policy was gradually extended to adults.
How were children’s parents told of the death of the child? - what was on the death certificate?
Relatives were informed by letter of the victims’ sudden death from diseases such as measles or from ‘general weakness’ and were sent urns of ashes. Administrative errors, with urns of boys containing hair grips and diagnoses of appendicitis on those without an appendix, increased suspicion of what was occurring. - Generally, project shrouded in secrectrue cause of death withy, with held.
By 1944, how many deemed mentally and physically disabled had been murdered.
200,000 people
What castle was turned into an ‘asylum’ where handicapped children were murdered by gas or lethal injection?
Hartheim Castle
At 6 secret locations, especially selected teams of doctors, nurses and SS men drawn from the concentration camps killed over how many people from 1939-41
700,000 people between 1939-1941.
Mounting public criticism of the “euthanasia” killings prompts Adolf Hitler to order what?
the end of the program. Gas chambers in the various “euthanasia” killing centers are dismantled. Although the Euthanasia Program is officially ended, the killing of physically or mentally impaired people continues in secret in individual cases.
Who said “The first people exterminated were not the Jews but unhealthy Germans”
D Welch
The government tried to prepare the German people for such policies by promoting the pro-euthanasia argument, especially through propaganda films. Some of these were aimed at the staff in the ‘euthanasia institutions’, others at the general public. How were the deaths of disabled people justified?
The deaths of the disabled were justified mainly on the grounds of ending their misery, but this idea was reinforced by stressing the financial cost of keeping them alive and the adverse effect such people had on the nation.
What 1935 film was viewed by 40 million people and used to scare people from medically and physically ill?
Erbkrank (Hereditary Illness)
In November 1935, the Ministry of the Interior sought to clarify what was meant in the Nuremberg Laws when they stated that the right to marriage would be denied if the resulting children were ‘a threat to the purity of German blood’. The law - a later decree stated - also banned what -
marriage between Germans and “Gypsies” banned.
In July 1936, the Berlin police arrested how many Gypsies ahead of the Berlin Olympics and moved them to Gypsies intensified an interment camp near a sewage dump in Marzahan which had horrible living conditions, little water and food and no electricity?
about 600
In June 1938 how many Germanys were deported into concentration camps such Dachau and Lichtenburg?
1,000 German and Austrian Gypsies
