When Hitler and the Nazi Party first entered power, they proposed strict and unimaginably radical policies. Their goal as the dominant political power was to create a “pure” German society. The idea of a “pure” German society stemmed from the idea that certain racial groups and ethnicities were undesirable and inferior. With that in mind, they sought to completely eliminate, through annihilation tactics, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, biracial children, handicapped citizens, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and any other individual(s) who opposed their radical ideologies. However, the most questionable part of these tactics was how and why the Nazis chose them. Of the many ways dictators and corrupt governments had tortured their citizens in the past, why was Hitler determined that the Einsatzgruppen, ghettos, and concentration camps were going to be the methods of choice to mass murder the Jewish people. Robert Payne notes in his book The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler that Hitler was not satisfied with a gruesome murder of the Jewish race. He preferred them to die in agony and complete humiliation. Methods of mass murder such as killing squads (the Einsatzgruppen), ghettos, and concentration camps proved themselves as the perfect final solution. These tactics would exterminate Jews at an increasing rate while removing them of their respectable status.
Hitler’s first and foremost goal in Germany was to eliminate all of the Jews. With this plan in mind, he consistently sought different methods to kill Jews. One of the first methods Hitler used to complete this mass murder operation was the Einsatzgruppen. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the Einsatzgruppen were killing units generally composed of German SS and police personnel(...
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...w understood that the Nazis didn’t simply stand as a corrupt and oppressive government; they represented the evil that can result from radical ideologies and their selfish, ignorant, and insane perpetrators.
Works Cited
“Rise of the Nazi Party.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
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Rummel, R.J. “Nazi Germany and Mass Murder.” Democide: Chapter 1. Hawaii EDU. 2002. Web. 18 May 2014.
Spiro, Ken. “The Final Solution.” Jewish History. Simple to Remember: Judaism Online. 2013. Web. 18 May 2014.
“The Camps.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
Florida. 2005. Web. 18 May 2014.
“The Ghettos.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
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Trueman, Chris. “Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.” History Learning Site. May 2012. Web. 18 May 2014.
The time, 1941, the place, the then Soviet Union, the Red Army is in retreat from the German forces, following closely behind the German frontline is an unspeakable force coming over the conquered lands like a deadly plague. The Einsatzgruppen were considered as mobile death dealers by their victims. The major occupation of the Einsatzgruppen was the humiliation, extermination, and complete of annihilation of Jews, Romany or gypsies, members of the communist party, and intellectsia or major thinkers. They were organized to be the most efficient at occupying and murdering the undesirables. The leaders of these hounds of war were hand selected by Heydrich Himmler from the brightest, bravest, and most loyal of the Nazi members. The Einsatzgruppen were broken down to cover more area and to cause more chaos. Their techniques for killing were horrific, and in some cases could even tax the mind of the executioner. They were responsible for most of the murders of Jews during World War 2. Almost every huge massacre site they were at it killing undesirables.
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.
Hitler blamed the Jews for the evils of the world. He believed a democracy would lead to communism. Therefore, in Hitler’s eyes, a dictatorship was the only way to save Germany from the threats of communism and Jewish treason. The Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was the instrument for the Nazis to convince the German people to put Hitler into power. Point one of the document states, “We demand the union of all Germans in a great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.” 1 This point explicates the Nazi proposition that Germany will only contain German citizens and also, that these citizens would display his or her self-determination towards Germany to the fullest.
Dr. Michael Mussmanno, a jury in the Nuremberg Trials, stated that the main purpose of constructing the Einsatzgruppen was, “to murder Jews and deprive them of their property.” Many German civilians began persuaded to believe that Jews were the reason for their problems. The Einsatzgruppen were four paramilitary units created for the purpose of murdering Jews and other races. They began by going on massacre missions in Jew communities, then to shoving Jews in gas vans. The gas vans were supposed to make it easier for the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, but it really just made it harder. They heard the victims suffer longer, and it was more painful. They followed Adolf Hitler, in belief that everything that he said was correct. People in the Einsatzgruppen were German civilians that thought what they were doing was helping Germany. It was a nationalistic thing. The Einsatzgruppen had a leading role in the implementation of the Final Solution in territories ruled by Nazi Germany.
Christopher Browning believes that Hitler did not have a pre-existing plan to liquidate the Jews but rather, the Final Solution was a reaction to the cumulative radicalization amongst the German nation from 1939 to 1941. Although Hitler was notoriously one of the most anti-Semitic people to walk the Earth, he had not intended to mass slaughter the Jews, but rather attempted to find another solution to the Jewish problem. Hitler had such an obsession on finding this solution, that he promised one way or another he would reach his goal in perfecting a Judenfrei Germany (Browning 424). The first solution to the Jewish problem in Germany was through emigration. Once Hitler seized power he imposed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped the Jews of all of their rights, expecting the Jewish people to comprehend the message and leave the country. The German officials even supported emigration and Zionistic movements. By 1939 only half of the Jews had left so the Jewish problem still rested unfinished. In September of 1939, the German declared war on Poland in an attempt to conquer Lebensraum. [Living space] After starting the war, they decided they could no longer let the Jews emigrate (Browning 12). By capturing Poland they inherited three million Jews. Hitler summoned all of the Jews in the German empire into ghettos in Poland until he could find another plan. Himmler, Hitler’s right hand man, proposed two plans to expel the Jews to either Lublin or to Madagascar. Hitler approved both but neither was put into affect. The Nazis’ inability to solve the Jewish question once again disappoints them. The obligation to solve the problem still weighed heavily upon them, which lead to frustration, which lead to the radical decisions to liquidate th...
Adolf Hitler's rise to power was just the start to a horrifying 13 years. Hitler became Chancellor Hitler of Germany in 1933, knowing what his goal was and what he wanted to do, which he called "The Final Solution." According the The Holocaust: An Introductory History, published by Jewish Virtual Library, Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" plan was to exterminate the entire Jewish population, and all of the other undesirerables. Every group of undesirerables is listed in the Nuremburg Race Laws. The Nuremburg Race Laws took away some of the Jews political rights, didn't let Jews marry anoyone of the German desent, and didn't focus on peoples' religious beliefs. Instead of focusing on their religious beliefs, they defined people as a Jew if they had three of four Jewish granparents, whether the individual defined people as a Jew or no...
The fear of the Jews that was created by the Nazis was effective. Small Jewish shops were burned or heavily destroyed by the German people. The propaganda that was used to cause the hatred of Jews was created to show how to solve Germany’s problems. According to the Anne Frank House, the solution to all of Germany’s problems was to banish Jews from society (“Banish”). According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, Jews were not allowed in movie theaters, swimming pools, and resorts (“Victims”). Jews were forced out of Germany at one point. The whole point was to get rid of any other race beside Aryan. Hitler believed if Germany was completely Aryan and stro...
Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany in January of 1933. He hated Jews and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened to Germany. Hitler’s goal in life was to eliminate the Jewish population. With his rise to power in Germany, he would put into action his plan of elimination. This is not only why German Jews were the main target of the Holocaust, but why they were a large part of the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hitler’s “final solution” almost eliminated the Jewish population in Europe during World War II. At the end of the war and along with his suicide, the Jewish population would survive the horror known as the Holocaust and the Jews would eventually find their way back to their homeland of Israel as well as find new communities to call home.
One of the worst events in World History, the Holocaust, was led by Adolf Hitler. The goal of Hitler and Nazi Germany was to exterminate the Jews and other people that they considered to be inferior. It is estimated that over twelve million people, more than half of them Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Years since the terrible event, several books and movies have been written regarding the horrible conditions in which millions of innocent people perished.
The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp that carried out Hitler's ‘final solution' in greater numbers than any other.
Over the span of the Holocaust over 6 million Jewish people were senselessly tortured and killed. The man in charge of this horrible act is no stranger to history, Adolf Hitler. There is only one logical explanation in my opinion for the way Hitler acted. Paranoia. You can clearly see that as soon as he felt that he was being threatened by someone or some group, he just took them out, like the Jews, the Gypsies, the swing kids, and many more. Hitler was scared or paranoid of having his power taken from him so he did what he thought was the best decision that he could do to protect what little power he did have at the time, which was genocide.
It was Hitler’s ability to make group identity salient within the Aryan German population, the transformation of his ideas to ideology, and his deep hatred for the Jews that ultimately led to the Holocaust. Although Anti-Semitism was already present within German society before Hitler rose to power, he was the actor that enacted policies against Jews and what ultimately led to the Final Solution
Hitler had thought that the Jews did not believe in the “right” thing so he tried to eliminate the race. He did not want them to believe in what they did and still do. He thought that the Jewish race was inferior and did not mean anything. The way that Hitler treated the Jews were crimes against humanity and I know that many non Jews saw that but did...
In the Summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler started exterminating Jews and other non-Aryans, as a part of his plan to create a perfect Germany and to carry out his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. Before exterminating 6,000,000 Jewish people, Adolf Hitler had already performed several actions which singled out the Jew as an evil person and one who should be killed. In 1923, Hitler was caught while trying to overturn the Bavarian government and was imprisoned for 5 years. In prison, he wrote the famed autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he stated his first publicly known anti-Semitic beliefs and his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. While imprisoned, there was a worldwide depression as economic markets crashed worldwide. This would help Hitler because once out of prison he would use this to help gain power both for the Nazi’s and for himself politically by promising better things to come in the future. In 1933, while preaching in front of a large Nazi crowd, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s loss in World War One. “If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.'; Many people were upset at the loss, and blaming the Jews made many people anti-Semites. Once he was named chancellor in 1933, Hitler preached about creating a Germany for true German people and a more centralized Germany. This included eliminating those who were non-Aryans and/or non-German. He would later detail about what a true German was in the Nuremberg Laws. He stated that Jews were not really Germans but instead, they were non-Aryan, and they were malignant tumors.
Hitler saw that most of Germany didn’t fit this picture at all, so he decided to solve it in one of the most awful ways possible. The mass murder, or Holocaust of over six million Jews, and long with the innocent Blacks, Gays, Gypsies, and both physically and mentally Handicapped. He mostly targeted the Jewish because in World War II, the Jewish was the main reason why Germany lost in World War II. This mass murder lasted over years and years of murder, forced lab...