Night Background Notes

1. Night Background Notes World War II/Adolf Hitler/The Holocaust

2. Germany’s Turmoil • World War I left Germany in chaos, having to adopt to a new form of government (democracy) rather than a monarchy. • Turmoil allowed extremist political groups to rise to power. One of these was the German Workers’ Party.

3. Hitler’s Rise to Power • Also focused on Germany’s national interests, opposition to communism, and racial superiority • German Workers’ Party was renamed the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler became the new leader • 1923—Hitler launches a failed attempt to take over the government

4. Hitler’s Rise to Power • Germany hired a WWI veteran, Adolf Hitler, to investigate the German Workers’ Party. • Hitler eventually joined the party with the hopes of leading the German people to military conquest and global superiority.

5. Hitler’s Rise to Power • While imprisoned for nine months on charges of treason, Hitler wrote his manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle) • The book set forth his plan to conquer Europe and laid out his ideas of racial superiority, blaming the Jews for all the world’s evils

6. Hitler Assumes Power • By March 1933, Hitler had made himself dictator of Germany, opened Dachau, and outlawed all press and political parties • Immediately, Nazis revoked Jewish citizenship rights with the 1938 Nuremberg Race Laws

7. Persecution of the Jews • Also forbid Jews from marrying Aryans and forced them to wear the yellow star at all times as a means of identification

8. Kristallnacht • November 9/10, 1938—Kristallnacht (Night of Broken glass)—coordinated attack and mass rampage against Jewish people, homes, and synagogues.

9. The Final Solution • Adolf’s Hitler’s plan to systematically eliminate all Jews throughout Europe by rounding them up, shooting them, and then dumping their bodies in mass graves or assembling them into ghettos until deportation to camps

10. World War II • Began in 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland. US entered in December 8, 1941. • 1944—German army begins to abandon camps along the eastern front with Russia, forcing camp prisoners to march hundreds of miles on “Death Marches”.

11. The End • April 1945—Germany surrenders, American soldiers liberate Buchenwald, Adolf Hitler commits suicide • November 1945-October 1946—Nuremberg Trials—Twenty-two Nazi leaders were tried for crimes against peace and humanity and for the murder of over six million Jews and five million other Europeans.

12. Important Facts • Holocaust comes from the Greek meaning “whole burnt offering.” The name was given to this particular genocide because it equates the Jews’ sacrifice of their lives with the sacrifices at the Temple in Biblical Times. • Jews were not the only minority group targeted during the Holocaust. Other victim groups included: Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, the disabled, and the “anti-social” (beggars and vagrants). • There were two types of camps: work/concentration camps and death camps. Death camps were concentration camps with special equipments specifically designed for systematic murder. The six death camps were: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belze, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All were located in Poland.