On the night of November 9, 1939, the Nazis attacked and destroyed the synagogues, businesses, and homes of Jews, killing an estimated 100 people; this became known as Kristallnacht. Most Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, while others committed suicide. When going through with Kristallnacht, the Nazis did not receive any major resistance from the majority of the German people. This lack of resistance was due to Adolf Hitler’s strategic reconstruction of Germany in such a way that made it close to impossible for people to think as individuals, but rather as an entire nation under his rule.
By isolating Jews from Germans, interactions were limited between these two groups. Hitler began by focusing on the youth. By the age of
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When Hitler took power, he fused the roles of the chancellor and the president into one title; he was referred to as the Fuehrer. This position allowed him undeniable control over the entire nation. Second, soldiers swore their loyalty to Hitler rather than to Germany, due to the new oath Hitler had composed. By taking this oath, they became one of Hitler’s clones, obeying every order they were given. Soldiers often went against their morals in order to honor this oath, but claimed they had no choice but to. Another example of this was shown in the Reserve Police Battalion 101. Although deeply upset with the task he was given, Major Wilhelm Trapp led his battalion into a killing mission targeting Jews. Witnesses reported sights of him weeping and distraught, yet he insisted that the orders must be carried out for they came from above. Hitler held utmost authority over Germany, causing German citizens to follow his lead, whether they agreed or …show more content…
Humans’ need to fit in is shown through the experience of a high school girl, Eve Shalen, who reflected on her susceptibility to being influenced by her peers’ actions. Although Shalen was bullied herself, she did not hesitate to make fun of another girl when with the group of “popular” girls. Her need to belong caused her to act out against her morals. A similar situation arose in Germany when a young boy had to decide whether or not he was going to throw stones at Jewish shops along with the other children. There was pressure from his peers to participate, but after contemplating his options he decided against it. However, in Reserve Police Battalion 101, the men were easily influenced by each other’s decisions. When Trapp made the offer that any man who felt unable to openingly shoot Jews was permitted to step out, only a couple men opted out. One later admitted that he did not want to be seen as cowardly among his fellow soldiers, therefore he participated in the shooting. These men let the fear of not being accepted by their comrades take priority over the lives of hundreds of Jews. German citizens refrained from thinking as individuals and enabled the actions of their peers to influence their personal behavior.
By dividing German citizens who were inculcated to obey Hitler’s word and Jews, a targeted and isolated minority, Hitler was given an open road to carry
At a time of loss, the German people needed a reason to rebuild their spirits. The Jews became a national target even though Hitler’s theory could not be proven. Even as a Jew, he accused the Jews people for Germany’s defeat in order to rally the people against a group of people Hitler despised. The story-telling of the Jews’ wickedness distracts the Germans from realizing the terror Holocaust. Millions of Jewish people died because Hitler said they caused the downfall of Germany. Innocent lives were taken. The death of millions mark the rise of Hitler. He sets the stage for the largest massacre in
Kristallnacht was a savage night where hundreds where murdered. In addition, Kristallnacht means the night of broken glass in German, and The Night of Broken Glass occurred on the night of November 9th until November 10th. Kristallnacht took place in small parts of Austria, Sudentland, and all over Germany in addition discrimination of the Jews had dated all the way back to 1935 by Germans. Two years before Kristallnacht, Jews were treated unfairly and ignored by the society, furthermore Germans did not allow Jews attend public parks and in 1936, Jews were banned to come see the Olympic Games which were held in Germany at the time. Kristallnacht got its nickname The Night of Broken Glass due to the fact that during November 9th and 10th rioters and police, violent and extreme, sh...
Ordinary Men Christopher Browning describes how the Reserve Police Battalion 101, like the rest of German society, was immersed in a flood of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. Browning describes how the Order Police provided indoctrination both in basic training and as an ongoing practice within each unit. Many of the members were not prepared for the killing of Jews. The author examines the reasons some of the police officers did not shoot. The physiological effect of isolation, rejection, and ostracism is examined in the context of being assigned to a foreign land with a hostile population.
In the Holocaust, the Nazis persecuted and murdered over 6 million Jews during a four and a half year period. By the 1930s the Nazis rose in power and all the Jews became victims. One of the ways the Nazis persecuted the Jews, was putting them into tight confined places called ghettos were they suffered for many years.
The Nazis were killing thousands of Jews on a daily basis and for many of the Jewish people death seemed inevitable, but for some of the Jewish population they were not going to go down without a fight as Jewish resistance began to occur. However, the Jewish resistance came in many different forms such as staying alive, clean and observing Jewish religious traditions under the absolute horrendous conditions imposed by the Nazis were just some examples of resistance used by the Jews. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many of the Jews who did succeed in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local resident and partisan groups who often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bia...
Kristallnacht, a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms, took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 and is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." Organized by Goebbels and Heydrich, head of the Security Service, the campaign of violence resulted in the destruction of many synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses. Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, killed close to 100 Jews, and sent more than 30,000 to Nazi concentration camps. Starting on November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs vandalized and even burned down hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries.
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
The Nazi Party, controlled by Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. In 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi government began to take over. Hitler became a very influential speaker and attracted new members to his party by blaming Jews for Germany’s problems and developed a concept of a “master race.” The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jewish people were a threat to the German racial community and also targeted other groups because of their “perceived racial inferiority” such as Gypsies, disabled persons, Polish people and Russians as well as many others. In 1938, Jewish people were banned from public places in Germany and many were sent to concentration camps where they were either murdered or forced to work.
Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew out of anger because the germans lost the war. He blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in the war. Hitler also used the Jews as an excuse for all the problems that Germany was facing. To get the jews to get deported, Hitler and his nazis made the jews think that they were moving to a better, happier place, when in reality, they were moving to concentration camps, or death camps. They were deported on packed trains. Many people died on the trains from hunger, disease, thirst, and suffocation. The jews could be on the trains for months at a time.
It was in December 1948, when it was approved unanimous the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at France which became the 260th resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations. What made the leaders of the 41 States create and sign this document in which the term Genocide was legally defined? This document serves as a permanent reminder of the actions made by the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust where more than five million of European Jews were killed. In summary I will explain what were the events that leaded the ordinary Germans kill more than six million Jews in less than five years. To achieve this goal, I will base my arguments on the Double Spiral Degeneration Model provided by Doctor Olson during the spring semester of the Comparative Genocide class.
Introduction Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous, especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to, but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority; for example, the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience, reflecting how this can be destructive in real life experiences. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid, hence useless.
Beginning in 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party targeted not only those of the Jewish religion but many other sets. Hitler was motivated by religion and nationalism to eradicate any threats to his state. It was Hitler’s ideology that his Aryan race was superior to any other. Hitler’s goal was to create a “master race” by eliminating the chance for “inferiors” to reproduce. Besides the Jews the other victims of the genocide include the Roma (Gypsies), African-Germans, the mentally disabled, handicapped, Poles, Slavs, Anti-Nazi political parties, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Homosexuals. In Hitler’s eyes all of these groups needed to be eliminated in order for his master race to be a success.
History always finds a way of repeating itself. A Tale of Two Cities, depicts the French Revolution and the citizens living through it. Many citizens go along with the leaders want, in order to avoid being executed, this is taking part in mob mentality because although they might not be doing what they want, they are doing what everybody else is doing, so they can fit in. Some people can participate in something so vulgar even when they do not mean to. In “Top 10 Instances of Mob Mentality”, author S.Grant says that, “Looking back on Nazi Germany, it’s difficult to comprehend how ordinary people acted so ruthless and inhumane. Even if you assume the average German citizen didn’t know what was happening in the concentration camps, there were still 24,000 members in the “Death’s Head Unit,” a special section of the Schutzstaffel (SS) that was in charge of the concentration camps. These Death’s Head
During the Holocaust, around six million Jews were murdered due to Hitler’s plan to rid Germany of “heterogeneous people” in Germany, as stated in the novel, Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche. Shortly following a period of suffering, Hitler began leading Germany in 1930 to start the period of his rule, the Third Reich. Over time, his power and support from the country increased until he had full control over his people. Starting from saying “Heil Hitler!” the people of the German empire were cleverly forced into following Hitler through terror and threat. He had a group of leaders, the SS, who were Nazis that willingly took any task given, including the mass murder of millions of Jews due to his belief that they were enemies to Germany. German citizens were talked into participating or believing in the most extreme of things, like violent pogroms, deportations, attacks, and executions. Through the novel’s perspicacity of the Third Reich, readers can see how Hitler’s reign was a controversial time period summed up by courage, extremity, and most important of all, loyalty.
Stated by the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, “To conquer a nation, First disarm its citizens.” This is exactly what Hitler did during his reign of power and the people targeted by his wrath were those of the Jewish religion. The Nazis did many horrendous things to the Jewish people by destroying their homes and their lives. This did not help with an already growing hatred towards to the Jewish people as many Germans thought that they were the ones who had lost Germany the first World War. Hitler and the Nazis also discriminated against the Jewish people, which impacted how they were viewed in Germany at the time of their reign of power. First, Hitler’s connections during his earlier life helped to shape how he thought during his political