Hitler's New Man

The Holocaust was organized by Adolf Hitler and it targeted Jewish people. In the beginning, the Nazis only targeted their political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. These were the people that were sent to the first concentration camp. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 labeled anyone with three or four grandparents as a Jew and those with two Jewish grandparents as half-breeds. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution (“History”). The Nazis portrayed Jews as a race and not a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation (Berenbaum 1). “Kristallnacht” was a night in November of

One event that encouraged Anti-Semitism and increased tensions leading up to Kristallnacht and beyond was the announcement of the Nuremberg Laws in September of 1935. This set of laws created by the Nazi party made sharp distinctions between the rights and privileges of Germans and Jews (Sigward 291). This redefined citizenship in the Third Reich and laid the groundwork for a racial state. For example, the Reich of Citizenship Law stripped Jews of their citizenship, claiming they didn’t have “German blood” (Sigward 291). Those of Jewish descent were denied the right to vote and the ability to obtain a valid passport or visa to leave the country. This law completely dehumanized Jews living in Germany and made them stateless, which caused those of the Aryan race or pure German descent to feel superior. In the Nuremburg Laws, Article 5 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law defined a Jew as a descendant of three or more Jewish grandparents or two Jewish parents (Sigward 293). These laws lead to the Jews being persecuted for who they were, rather than the faith they believed during previous years. As a result of these laws being carried out, German nationalism and Anti-Semitism across the Reich increased drastically .

He believed that “Aryans” were the purified race. He pronounced that his race must remain pure in order to one day take over the world. For Hitler, the ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall. Although Hitler was not even close to looking like an Aryan, he showed the love he had for them. His mind-set was very racist and discriminatory. He had the idea of a “master race” and he discriminated anyone that wasn’t a part of it. He believed that the Germanic people were the only purified race and everyone else was filthy. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered "inferior." The only way Hitler could carry on his “master race” was by getting rid of every non-aryan. He went on a hunting spree for every Jew, Gypsy, homo-sexual, etc. He thought they were not pure and didn’t belong on earth, and this expresses the hatred and how discriminatory he was towards anyone that wasn’t German. By doing this, the Nazis grew in power and had the German society following them, which shows the control and power of Hitler’s words and actions. When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs became the government ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters, on the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in newspapers. Hitler traveled in planes from city to city, spreading the word of the Aryan-race. He spoke to radio stations, educated children in school, posted pictures and many posters, but he mostly gave brainwashing speeches that tricked most of the German Society to follow him. He used blind obedience to grow his idea. Although most Germans followed out of fear, others seemed to resist and go against

Laws passed in 1935 and the "final solution" beginning in 1939. These actions taken by the Germans were evidence of their attempt at willing the unwillable. They were trying to will German national power and regain honor by willing the Jews, which was not a reasonable solution. The thought behind their attempt at willing the unwillable was the illogic of logic, that if they Jews were gone, the Aryan race would flourish. The

The new race that he wanted to make was blue eyes and blonde hair he wanted for them to be the main race in Germany. All Jews that were found were either killed or put into concentration camps.The Nazi's and Hitler did not care about the age alll Jews found were taken away. Over 1.5 million children were killed, you can think of it as racism because if you were considered an "undesirable" you were punished. Jews were basically stripped of their citezenship innocent people had to witness very gruesom activites. Thousands of peole were killed in gas chambers, when they got put into the chamberss they realized that they were going to die and they cried out maybe one last time and said there goodbyes. The Jews were tatooed so that they could be indentified because they got their hair cut very short . They were also seperated from their loved ones and were treated like animals. The quote "Names pile up like pebbles on tombstones, to forget you is to let you die twice." -Emily Borenstien this quote means that we will always remeber you and was meant for the innocent people that died. They did not deserve to be treated like this, no one does.

30000 Jews were sent to concentration camps during Kristallnacht. The Nazi's came to power in 1932 as they were elected 608 seats in the German parliament. After this event, the Nazi's used fear and propaganda to slowly hypnotize and imbed their beliefs into the minds of every German citizen. However in November of 1938, the Nazi's showed everyone what they really believed in. during "the night of broken glass" or Kristallnacht. The Nazi's ransacked and destroyed many Jewish businesses while they also killed and captured many Jewish citizens . The purpose of Kristallnacht was to strike fear into Jewish communities, which in turn also sparked the beginning of the Nazi war machine that would sweep through Europe over the course of the upcoming years. To assess the significance of Kristallnacht I will look at the consequences, what caused it to happen.

The new Germany would be purified by the removal of the Jews, the most inferior race in Nazi theory

Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Germany from 1934 to 1945, was founder and leader of the Nazi Party. Under the leadership of Hitler, Nazi Germany created concentration camps to segregate Jews and many other minorities from German society. Though, the Jewish population was not great in Germany, individuals who had converted to another religion or had ancestors who were Jewish were also categorized by the Nazis as a Jew. The “Final Solution,” the genocide of more than six million Jewish people, consisted of gassing, shootings, starvation and random acts of terror. This is the most familiar scheme from the

Jumping forward, we see a man by the name of Adolf Hitler come to power and take over the entirety of Germany. He believed in an Aryan master race, or the ideal

In the essay “A 1938 Pogrom Against…” the American Holocaust Museum (AHM) says, “the two laws provided the foundation by which hundreds of thousands of Jewish people living in Germany had their rights steadily and systematically taken away” (46). In this quote the AHM is referring to the Nuremburg Laws, which removed the citizenship from Jews living in Germany, the laws also prohibited the intermarrying of Jews to non-Jews (46). Later, Jews were forced to identify themselves and were banned from using public facilities such as hospitals (46). The most impressive aspect of these laws is that there was no opposition from the German people when these laws were put into place, instead the German public were prepared for more radical measures (47). In the essay excerpt “An Overview of the Holocaust” college professor Christian Gerlach describes the first act of violence against Jews was Kristallnacht, in which more than 1,000 synagogues were destroyed, Jewish shops were robbed and looted and 91 Jews were killed (30). In the essay passage “An American Jewish Woman…” journalist Adam Biga explains that during the events of persecution the main perpetrators were the authorities, however, civilians also took part in similar attacks across Europe (159). During this time the authorities enacted laws into motion to antagonize the Jewish community so that the Jews would be hated by the people of Europe. The act of going after a specific racial group qualifies as a crime against humanity and an act of

The Nuremberg Laws effectively banned the Jews from any citizen rights. The ‘Blood Law’ or Reich’s Citizenship Law banned Jews from marrying Germans, it banned them from sexual relations with Aryans, it banned the Jewish people from displaying the National flag and effectively stripped them of their rights to citizenship. The debate about what defined a Jew tested Hitler in the weeks following the Nuremberg Rally eventually creating the ‘mischlinge’ category of 1st or 2nd degree half Jews, all of which were subject to less but varying degrees of discrimination. The two years that followed were also relatively quiet as far the Jewish question was concerned

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

The Nazis and Hitler used extreme propaganda in attempt for people to accept their actions. Hitler made the Jews out to be a problem and a threat to the purity and perfection of German society (Holocaust Encyclopdia: Nazi Propaganda ). In Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in September, 1942, he states,

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.

In a time of war, when people are needy and weak, what worked rather well for the Nazi party to get its country back in shape was propaganda. Before World War 2 (1933-1938), the Nazis used propaganda to brainwash their citizens into believing that Germany was the best country, to create anti-Semitism. After losing the first great war which caused a major depression in the state, Nazi’s used Jewish people as a scapegoat for Germany's suffering economy and poor moral. This idea of using propaganda against the Jews tied into the Nazi ideology. Nazi ideology came to be after Adolf Hitler and others created the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP)”(Alpha History 1). They called this ideology that they developed ‘National Socialism’, which is now called Nazism today. This ideology was the centerpiece that the Nazi Party moved around. However, The NSDAP didn’t have a very clear expression of its ideology, the only documents that had concrete evidence were the Twenty Five points (1920), and Hitler's journal, Mein Kampf (1924). (Alpha History 1). The core beliefs of the Nazi party are as shown: “Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, Nationalism, Militarism, Expansionism, Economic sovereignty, Traditional values, and Racialism” (BBC 1-2). The effective use of propaganda; which is “Defined as: information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc” (Dictionary.com), was one of the main reasons the Nazi