Adolf Hitler’s rise to power grew out of issues left unresolved by the earlier conflict during World War I. Resentment and harsh terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty only fueled Hitler’s revenge, which would result in the largest blood bath the world has ever come to see. World War II would be considered the deadliest war in history, murdering millions of civilians. In 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland resulting in a deadly six-year battle until the final allied defeat of both Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.
In August 1939, Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the Germany Soviet Nonaggression Pact. The Nonaggression pact meant that Hitler would get assistance from the soviets if he invaded Poland. If Hitler was to invade Poland, Great Britain and France guaranteed military support if Germany was ever attacked. On Sept 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, two days later France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.
Hitler’s pursuit for world domination would continue until his goals for racial purity and spatial expansion would one day be his driving force behind his foreign and domestic policy. In March 1933, the first official concentration camp opened at Dachau. In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, to be considered a Jew, you would have to have three or four Jewish grandparents and those people with two Jewish grandparents were considered half-breeds. This law made Jews open targets for stigmatization and persecution.
When the German army took over the western half of Poland, German police forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into the ghettoes. Poverty, hunger, overpopulation and diseases caused the Germans to gas the Jews in the so-called ...
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...eir lives. The German government took full responsibility for the crimes that were committed.
Today, the Holocaust is still one the worlds most horrific, tragic and memorable events that occurred in history. The largest mass murdering of innocent Jewish people and their families due to one mans hatred and discrimination. Though many people may have moved on since, including the victims themselves, no one will ever forget the tragic crimes that took so many lives. Hitler will always remain one of the world’s most hated men. The amount of people he killed to rid the Jewish race but in the end was unsuccessful and took his own life. Unfortunately, this man will never be forgotten.
Works Cited
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"World War II in Europe." 10 June 2013. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 18 March 2014 .
After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death.
The Holocaust began in 1933 when the Nazis instigated their first action against the Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. The Nuremberg Laws went into place on September 15, 1935 which began to exclude the Jews from public life. These laws went to the extent of stripping German Jews of the citizenship and then implemented a prohibition of marriage between the Jewish and the Germans. These laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation. Over the next several years, even more laws would be introduced. Jews would be excluded from parks, fired from civil service jobs, required to register all property and restricted Jewish doctors from practicing medicine on any person other than Jewish patients.
HItler created laws, named the "Nuremburg Race Laws," which set barriers on Jewish people. The laws would give all Jewish people a curfew and restricted them from using public transportation. Over time the Nuremburg Race Laws grew, they eventually restricted Jews form owning a business and seperated them from the rest of the country. They were forced to attend Jewish schools. These actions are very similar to the Jim Crow Laws in the United States during the period of segregation. The race laws Hitler created expanded to include more people including mentally handicapped, physically disabled, and colored people.
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and his sudden control over Germany sparked a new age of reform within the new “Nazi-state” (Hunt 848). As Nazism became a major aspect of everyday life in Germany, Hitler plotted against his enemies and those he blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War I: the Jewish race. In his biography, Mein Kampf, Hitler discusses the artistic, social, and technological superiority of Germany (“Aryans”), why he believes the Aryans are the ultimate dominant human race, and he makes many anti-Semitic remarks against the Jews. (Lualdi 224). In 1935, the “Nuremberg Laws” were enacted to deny Jewish Germans of their citizenship; this ultimately led Hitler to carry out his “Final Solution,” in which he hoped to fully exterminate the Jewish race from all of Europe (Hunt 864). After gathering the Jews from their “ghettos” and forcing them into concentration camps all across Europe, Hitler and his Nazi advocates began one of the most destructive and horrifying genocides in history, known today as the Holocaust. Only after being introduced to the conditions of these concentration camps, the hatred and abuse put towards the Jewish, and the gruesome lifestyle they were trapped into living can one understand why the Holocaust affected so many as it did. What exactly were the conditions of these camps, and how did a few lucky survivors prevail while their friends and families perished?
The Germans wanted to control the size of the Jewish population by forcing Jews to lived in segregated sections of towns call Jewish residential quarters or ghettos. They created over 400 ghettos where Jewish adults and children were forced to reside and survive. Most ghettos were located in the oldest, most run-down places in town, that German soldiers to pick to make life in the ghetto as hard as possible. Overcrowding was frequent, several families lived in one apartment, plumbing was apprehended, human excrement was thrown out with the garbage, contagious diseases ran rapid, and hunger was everywhere. During the winter, heating was scarce, and many did not have the appropriate clothing to survive. Jerry Koenig, a Polish Jewish child, remembers: “The situation in the Warsaw Ghetto was truly horrendous- food, water, and sanitary conditions were non-existent. You couldn’t wash, people were hungry, and very susceptible to disease...
Jews all over Europe feared for their lives and many were aware that the punishment for their religion depended on the country they were fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to live in. Hitler not only held prejudice against Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and those who harboured any of the above, but also held firm convictions that some countries’ citizens were fit to die, no matter their religion. No one was hit harder by this prejudice as was Poland. Hitler hated all Polish citizens and hated Polish Jews even more. In Warsaw, Jews were confined to a blocked off area which came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of these Jews never saw outside the Ghetto again and for those who did it was only en route to a concentration camp or labour prison. Food rations inside the Ghetto were very low and though many outsiders smuggled food in, there was not nearly enough to keep everyone alive. Many died of starvation or died due to illness they had contracted because their bodies had grown so weak. Throughout the war, Sweden remained neutral and many Jews from neighbouring countries were smuggled in. Nazi police soon realized that they had to find ways to prevent this from happening and turned to the animal world. Dogs were trained to detect the scent of humans and soon, all boats leaving for Sweden were searched to detect any Jews that were hiding in basement compartments. Most Jews were discovered before they could escape and this discouraged many more from attempting to do the same. Jews that were apprehended were not treated much differently by the Nazis but the Jews left behind received the brunt of the their anger. Danish Jews in particular were often accused of planning to escape because of their proximity to Sweden. There are stories of countless ...
16. Young, James. “Toward a Received History of the Holocaust.” History and Theory, Volume 36, Number 4, Theme Issue 36. December 1997.
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. Hitler established the camps when he came into power for the purpose of isolating, punishing, torturing, and killing anyone suspected of opposition against his regime. In the early years of Hitler's reign, concentration camps were places that held people in protective custody. These people in protective custody included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi regime. By the end of 1933 there were at least fifty concentration camps throughout occupied Europe.
There is no doubt that the Holocaust is one of the best remembered and most studied genocides in human history. There are very few who would be puzzled by the mention of the Holocaust in today’s world as it’s impacts have been immense and lasting. Many lives were lost during this time, and many atrocities occurred- torture and persecution were pushed past the boundaries of most people’s imaginations. Throughout modern history, the Holocaust has been documented over and over again as the worst genocide- and perhaps even the worst crime- in human history. Many historians have even said it was a unique occurrence that is unparalleled by other crimes in human history. This being said, it is not difficult to argue this statement when observing and analyzing the many components of the Holocaust and of other horrible crimes that have happened.
"History1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/tp/holocaust.htm - Similar Sites and Reviews | Xmarks." Xmarks | Bookmark Sync and Search. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. .
Soon after Germany separated from Austria in March 1938, the Nazi soldiers arrested and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps all over Germany. Only eight months after annexation, the violent anti-jew Kristallnacht , also known as Night of the Broken Glass, pogroms took place. The Nazi soldiers arrested masses of male adult Jews and held them captive in camps for short periods of time. A death camp is a concentration camp designed with the intention of mass murder, using strategies such as gas chambers. Six death concentration camps exis...
"Jewish Life during the Holocaust." Jewish Life during the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.
The Holocaust, occurred between 1933 and 1945. The actual definition of “holocaust” is a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned on an altar. The definition has now been altered to describe the slaughter of six million Jews during World War II. The leader of these mass killings was Adolf Hitler. His ideologies of the perfect race, were deemed reason enough to murder millions of human beings. How were the killings done on such a massive scale? Concentration camps. Jews, and other imperfect aryans, (homosexuals, gypsies, and the disabled), were transported to “work” camps. Here, crematoriums, gas chambers, and shootings awaited them. If you made it past your first once-over, you were expected to work in back-breaking conditions throughout
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. Germany was defeated in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles forced giant reparations upon the country. As a result of these reparations, Germany suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party who blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. His incredible public speaking skills, widespread propaganda, and the need to blame someone for Germany’s loss led to Hitler’s great popularity among the German people and the spread of anti-Semitism like wildfire. Hitler initially had a plan to force the Jews out of Germany, but this attempt quickly turned into the biggest genocide in history. The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933.“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” –Adolf Hitler