Treatment of Ethnic Minorities by Nazi Germany Essay

The Totalitarian Aspects of Nazi Germany The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state. They ruled in Germany ever since Hitler became chancellor in 1933, to 1945. Totalitarianism was a form of government in which the state involves itself in all facts of society, including the daily life of its citizens. It penetrates and controls all aspects of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror and technology.

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of

The main goal of the Nazis pertaining to the European Jews was that of total extermination. At the yearly party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which regulated a large number of the racial speculations common in Nazi philosophy. Two distinct laws passed in Nazi Germany in September 1935 are referred to on a whole as the Nuremberg Laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Assurance of German Blood and German Honor. These laws epitomized large portions of the racial hypotheses supporting Nazi philosophy. They would give the legitimate structure to the orderly abuse of Jews in Germany. The laws rejected German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and denied them of most political rights.

Between 1933 and 1945 Hitler and his minions tortured non-Aryans because they were considered of lesser value to his regime. History books are filled with horrific tales of mistreatment of human beings he considered inferior: Jews, those who were disabled, gay or lesbians. However, most people are unaware that there was a small population of Germans of African descent who were also victims. According to The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, “The fate of black people…in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder”. Because of the small number of

The Change of the Treatment of the Nazis from 1939-1945 On January 20th 1942 an important meeting took place where fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and governmental leaders gathered for an important meeting that lasted around 90 minutes. The meeting was known as the wannsee conference and the purpose was to discuss "the final solution". This involved many different strategies to help get rid of the Jews in Europe. After the conference the number of killings in the streets increased, deportation and mass murders escalated within a month of the conference taking place, all centers were ready for murder.

Nazi propaganda played an important role in the Holocaust, the extermination of millions based on race, religion, and ethnicity. It successfully secured the acquiescence of the general public to the crimes committed by the Nazis. The Nazi Party used their control of the media to fuel anti-Semitic belief and to persuade Germans to support the Nazi cause throughout the Holocaust and World War II.

Germany was believed to be the cause of World War one, which made other European countries want to severely hurt Germany’s military and economy so that Germany couldn’t achieve future aggressions. The peace treaty called the Treaty of Versailles did just that. On June 28, 1919, the major powers in Europe, other than Germany, negotiated Germany’s punishment for the war. Germany’s military was limited to 100,000 men, they lost many of their colonies, they were forced to disarm their troops from the Rhineland, and worst of all they were forced to pay for all of the destruction caused by the war, which totaled to about 40 billion dollars. The Treaty of Versailles crushed Germany; they were weak and desperate, until Nazi Germany came to power.

[IMAGE] A Jewish man clearing broken glass after Reichkristallnacht Whilst this physical brutality is certainly horrific, it is on a much smaller scale than other terror regimes of the era, such as Stalin’s Russia, where hundreds of thousands of innocent soviet citizens were sent to work camps and worked to death. Due to this, it could be argued that Nazi policy towards Jews was not remarkably brutal however the brutality of Nazi Germany also took on a much more extreme psychological dimension against Jewish citizens. These incidents of ‘legal anti-Semitism’ were common in Nazi Germany, an example of which being the 1933 book burning, where, in a state organised affair thousands of Jewish-authored books were burned in public.

The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events ever to happen in World War II. Over 6 million people were killed in it. Two thirds of the Jewish population were killed because of Holocaust. The word “Holocaust” comes from two Greek words - “holo” (which means whole) and “kaustos”(which means burnt). In some languages it refers to a sacrifice to God, which was usually an animal sacrifice. Adolf Hitler thought that the Jewish race was the cause of everything evil. He blamed the Jews for Germany’s loss in World War I, because he said they wanted to dominate the world. Hitler thought that the only way for Germans to survive was to kill all of the Jews. Holocaust was the time when the Nazis reached the peak of their persecution. This peak was

The Change in the Nazis Treatment of the Jews Why did the Nazis treatment of the Jews change from 1939-45?

camps it was time to kill as many as they could in on final swoop.

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

Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Though use of the term itself

The Holocaust is most well-known for the organized and inhumane extermination of more than six million Jews. The death total of the Jews is this most staggering; however, other groups such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, political groups, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals were targeted as well (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Introduction to the Holocaust). The initial idea of persecuting select groups of people began with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In January 1930, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany after winning over its people with powerful and moving speeches. From this point forward, it was a goal for both Hitler and his Nazi Party to rid the world of deemed “inferior” groups of people (Holocaust Encyclopedia: Timeline