END OF WEIMAR REPUBLIC

November 1918: Military defeat of Imperial Germany, revolution breaks out.

1919: New German government forced to sign Versailles Treaty. Few Germans accept the new "German Republic", despite a constitution which promises all citizens equal rights and social welfare

1926: Germany becomes member of League of Nations.

1920s: Berlin is a major center of art and science in Europe. National Socialists are gaining support and prestige.

1930s: Depression. In 1932, six million unemployed in Germany. Inefficient government because of unstable coalitions.

1932: Chancellor Franz von Papen drives democratic government of Prussia (largest state) out of office, no resistance.

1933: President Hindenburg appoints Hitler Chancellor. At first, Hitler's opponents do not see through the pseudolegality of the "seizure of power". By the time they realize that the National Socialist government is pursuing the permanent destruction of the republic, Hitler has already obtained the decisive instruments of power for establishing a dictatorship.

Demonstration in Berlin, 1930. The Reichsbanner, an organization independent of political parties,

continually calls on citizens to demonstrate for the Republic. Its membership in the 1920s included about three million members from every party of the Weimar

Coalition loyal to the Republic, particularly from the ranks of the Social Democrats and labor unions.

RISE OF HITLER AND NAZI PARTY

1889: Hitler born in Austria-Hungary. In late teens: Anti-semitic influences of Vienna mayor Karl Lueger and Aryan theories of former monk Lanz von Liebenfels

1921: Infiltrated a small nationalist party called German Workers’ Party. Reorganized and renamed it to National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, Nazi for short). Newspaper, SA (Storm Troops), mass movement.

Storm Troops: 1923: up from a few hundred to 70K.1929: 178,0001932: 500,000

1923: Failed coup. Hitler spent 5 years in prison, wrote Mein Kampf.

1929: By now, Nazi party had nationwide organization

September 1930: Nazis had 18% seats in parliament of Weimar Rep.

1932: Nazi party membership was more than 800,000. Hitler pioneered election campaigning by covering 50 cities in 15 days. Nazis didn’t get absolute majority in 1932 election but , became largest voting bloc in parliament.

Mein Kampf

The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the Jew…Today he passes as 'smart,' and this in a certain sense he has been at all times. But his intelligence is not the result of his own development … For what sham culture the Jew today possesses is the property of other peoples, and for the most part it is ruined in his hands … there has never been a Jewish art … above all the two queens of all the arts, architecture and music, owe nothing original to the Jews … the Jew lacks those qualities which distinguish the races that are creative and hence culturally blessed.

The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion; only in order to get ahead he early sought for a means which could distract unpleasant attention from his person. And what would have been more expedient and at the same time more innocent than the 'embezzled' concept of a religious community? For here, too, everything is borrowed or rather stolen.

NAZI RULE

1933: Hitler appointed Chancellor, Enabling Act gave him authority to disregard parliament and constitution. No opposition except from Social Democrats.

Gleichshaltung (Nazification): Police force, civil services, labor unions, concentration camps for enemies of regime, exclusion of Jews from public office and gradually from public life, federal autonomy scrapped, all parties abolished. All by end of 1933.

1934: Hitler abolished presidency. Plebiscite showed 85% of Germans approved of the new order.

1935: Race-based citizenship laws. Open defiance of Versailles treaty (rearmament, remilitarization of Rhineland, agreement with Britain to rebuild navy, reintroduction of draft

1938: Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass); encouraging Jewish emigration; Madagascar Plan.

Nazi diplomacy: 1935 pact with Britain, 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis (Mussolini), 1936 alliance with Japan, 1936 support of Gen. Franco of Spain.

Nazi ideology: The master race, motherhood, the Volk, Lebensraum, Gleichshaltung, propaganda, hatred of Bolshevism (plan to expand eastwards)

Wolfgang Willrich

1932

GROWING PROPAGANDA

NAZI PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE DISABLEDThis frame from a filmstrip shows that the money needed to support a person with a

hereditary disease can support an entire family of healthy Germans for the same amount of time.

Left: A Jewish-owned store in Berlin. November 10, 1938. Right: Jews arrested during Kristallnacht line up for roll call at the Buchenwald concentration camp. November 1938.

KRISTALLNACHT, NOVEMBER 9, 1938

THE HOLOCAUST

1938-39: Nazis encouraged emigration of Jews.

Sept 1939: World War 2 began as Britain and France declared war on Germany. The Nazis needed a more “efficient” policy to get rid of the Jews.

1941: Einsatzgruppen or firing squads of the SS (a Nazi paramilitary that took over the job of the SA, and of which the Gestapo or secret police was a part) deployed to round up Jews in ghettos and villages and bury them in mass graves. The Einsatzgruppen had morale problems because of constant face-to-face killing, although they did kill an estimated 1 million Jews.

1942-45: The Allies were gaining ground in 1942, and even swifter “solution” to the Jewish problem became necessary. Now Jews from Germany and countries occupied by it were shipped off by train to death camps. The railways gave this priority over even shipping military supplies in the thick of war.

Death toll by the end of WW2: 5-6 million Jews400,000 Roma or Gypsies (40% of Europe’s Gypsy population)4 million eastern Europeans used as slave labor3-4 million Soviet prisoners of war killed in captivity

Left: A chart of signs to distinguish different inmates of concentration camps. Signs were sewn or attached to prisoners’ clothes.

Above: A boy shows his identification tattoo. When the number of deaths rose, some camps started tattooing identification numbers on sick and old prisoners, so they could be identified regardless of clothes.

Above: A victim of Nazi medical experiments,

Buchenwald.

Below: Dr. Josef Mengele, the physician in

charge of experiments.

A victim of a Nazi medical experiment is immersed in icy water at the Dachau concentration camp. SS doctor Sigmund Rascher oversees the experiment. Germany,

1942

A prisoner in a compression chamber loses consciousness (and later dies) during an experiment to determine altitudes at which aircraft crews could survive without oxygen. Dachau, Germany, 1942.

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

Martin Niemöller, pastor(January 14, 1892 - March 6, 1984)

"When the Nazis took away the Communists, I was silent;I wasn't a Communist.

When they locked up the Social Democrats, I was silent;I wasn't a Social Democrat.

When they took away the labor unionists, I was silent;I wasn't a labor unionist.

When they took away the Jews, I was silent;I wasn't a Jew.

When they took me away, there was no one left to protest."

THE “BANALITY OF EVIL”

Hannah Arendt Adolf Eichmann

Evil occurs not because of the presence of hatred, but because of the absence of those imaginative capacities that can make the human and moral aspects of our activities clear to us. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, which would have permitted self-awareness.

Thinking is different from knowing. Thinking persistently makes us ask questions that cannot be answered from the standpoint of knowledge, questions we cannot refrain from asking. Thinking does not yield positive results that can be considered settled; rather, it constantly returns to question again and again the meaning that we give to experiences, actions and circumstances.

Adapted from Majid Yar (2001), http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/arendt.htm

MUSSOLINI AND FASCISM

1912: Mussolini expelled from Socialist party

1919: Established Fascio de Combattimento (League of Combat).

1921: Fascists 7% of parliament. Use of violence (200,000 Squadristi)

1922: Mussolini became prime minister

By 1926: Press censorship; rule by decree; OVRA (secret police); role of women; use of youth organizations, mass media and education for propaganda

Limitations of fascism: armed forces, peasantry, monarchy, church

Militarism: attacks in SE Europe (Corfu, Albania), tighter control over Libya (Italian colony since 1911), 1935 attack on Ethiopia, 1936 pact with Hitler

Edition dated July 22, 1946 Edition dated September 6, 1937

TOTALITARIANISM UNDER STALIN, HITLER, MUSSOLINI

Origins:

• War economy

• Industrial society

• Economic hardship

Characteristics:

• One leader overriding constitution, parliament, or opposition

• Use of terror and espionage against citizens

• Active loyalty from citizens

• Extreme patriotism

• Use of propaganda

• Affirmation of social inequality (gender and race)