Introduction to the Holocaust The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST? Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Further Reading Bergen, Doris. Dawidowicz, Lucy S.
Genocide Raphael Lemkin, in his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), coined the term "genocide" by combining Greek genos (γένος; race, people) and Latin cīdere (to kill).[5] Lemkin defined genocide as follows: "Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. During a video interview with Raphael Lemkin, the interviewer asked him about how he came to be interested in this genocide. There was a gap of more than forty years between the CPPCG coming into force and the first prosecution under the provisions of the treaty. The exclusion of political groups and politically motivated violence from the international definition of genocide is particularly controversial.
The Holocaust The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt")[2] also known as Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "the catastrophe"; Yiddish: חורבן, Churben or Hurban, from the Hebrew for "destruction"), was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, throughout the German Reich and German-occupied territories.[3] Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.[4] Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.[5] A network of over 40,000 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territory were used to concentrate, hold, and kill Jews and other victims.[6] The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Etymology and use of the term Distinctive features Origins
German Propaganda Archive (Guide Page) Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page Propaganda was central to Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The German Propaganda Archive includes both propaganda itself and material produced for the guidance of propagandists. The goal is to help people understand the two great totalitarian systems of the twentieth century by giving them access to the primary material. My book titled Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic (Michigan State University Press, 2004) provides an analysis of much of the material on the German Propaganda Archive. This site is maintained by: Randall Bytwerk [My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.] Professor Emeritus Calvin College Page design by Rob Veenstra
Nazism Nazism, or National Socialism in full (German: Nationalsozialismus), is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and state as well as other related far-right groups. Usually characterised as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism originally developed from the influences of pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German nationalist movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture in post-First World War Germany, which many Germans felt had been left humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. German Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and social Darwinism, asserted the superiority of an Aryan master race, and criticised both capitalism and communism for being associated with Jewish materialism. The Nazi Party was founded as the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party in January 1919. Etymology Position in the political spectrum Origins Völkisch nationalism
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); National Socialist German Workers Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer (leader) of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As effective dictator of Nazi Germany, Hitler was at the centre of World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust. Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I. He joined the precursor of the NSDAP, the German Workers' Party, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. Hitler actively sought Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people. Under Hitler's leadership and racially motivated ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen ("sub-humans") and socially undesirable. Early years Ancestry Childhood and education Notes
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was born on 20th April, 1889, in the small Austrian town of Braunau near the German border. Both Hitler's parents had come from poor peasant families. His father Alois Hitler, the illegitimate son of a housemaid, was an intelligent and ambitious man and was at the time of Hitler's birth, a senior customs official in Lower Austria. Alois had been married before. Klara Polzl, Hitler's mother, left home at sixteen to to join the household of her second cousin, Alois Hitler. Franziska saw Klara as a potential rival and insisted that she left the household. The first of the children of Alois's third marriage, Gustav, was born in May 1885, to be followed in September the following year by a second child, Ida, and another son, Otto, who died only days after his birth. In 1895, when Hitler was six years old, his father, Alois Hitler retired from government service. Alois was an authoritarian, overbearing, domineering husband and a stern, distant, aggressive and violent father. Dr.
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler, a charismatic, Austrian-born demagogue, rose to power in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s at a time of social, political, and economic upheaval. Failing to take power by force in 1923, he eventually won power by democratic means. Once in power, he eliminated all opposition and launched an ambitious program of world domination and elimination of the Jews, paralleling ideas he advanced in his book, Mein Kampf. 1. 2. 3. 4. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, the fourth child of Alois Schickelgruber and Klara Hitler in the Austrian town of Braunau. When Adolf was three years old, the family moved to Passau, along the Inn River on the German side of the border. Following another family move, Adolf lived for six months across from a large Benedictine monastery. By 1900, Hitler's talents as an artist surfaced. Adolf's father died in 1903 after suffering a pleural hemorrhage. With the loss of the war, the German monarchy came to an end and a republic was proclaimed.