Master Race: Nazism Overtakes German Society
"A sea of swastikas. We were out in the streets and went to the Brandenburg Gate and watched the Nazis marching into power. Restaurants were open almost all night. People were drinking, there was a huge commotion. We were shocked by this incredible upsurge and the sudden swing to Nazis." Josef Felder remembers the eve of Adolf Hitler's inauguration as Chancellor. The following day, the national socialists swept to power and the German people would take their first steps down a new road.
In Master Race, Germans talk candidly about the initial seduction of Nazism; Gypsies reminisce about life before Hitler; and Jews recall their persecution as Hitler's "Master Race" pursued its destiny -- and descended to the greatest depths of barbarism in human history. What emerges is a powerful portrait of a nation -- and ideology -- gone awry.
Berlin, 1933: With a unique blend of nationalism, militarism, and racial theory, Adolf Hitler persuades millions that they are a unique people -- a master race with a special destiny. He promises a more orderly and united society, free of industrial conflict and ripe with opportunity and new jobs. Luise Essig remembers Hitler and her first Nazi Party party -- a Harvest Festival: "We all felt the same, the same happiness and joy. Harvest Festival was a 'thank you' for us farmers having a future again. Things were looking up. I believe no statesman has ever been as loved as Adolf Hitler was then. It's all come flooding back to me. Those were happy times."
An entire generation was taught to live the ideal German life the Nazi's prescribed. Reinhard Spitzy remembers: "I personally was in the SS. 'Selected people shall be the future aristocratic spinebone of the German nation.' I felt myself very much flattered by being chosen for this. And then the uniform was very beautiful -- black. Of course we liked the uniform and boots and all that."
The SS had originated as Hitler's bodyguards -- but they would soon spearhead the drive to confirm the German people's supremacy. To build national unity, the Nazi's turned to blame: The Allies of the First World War were responsible for the country's economic distress; weak leadership of the 1920s contributed to Germany's problems. And then there were the Jews. The Nazi's drew on old hatred and old jealousies; says Rienhard Spitzy: "[The Jews] were much slyer in business . . . excellent in literature, in theaters, in cinema, in science. And of course all that made for a strong and hard-line anti-Semitism."
"It was a process which developed slowly, but surely, and took over all sections of the population who had never thought about it before," recalls Horst Slesina, an officer in the Nazi Propaganda Ministry from 1934 to 1945. "A lot of them talked about it, not necessarily believing it. But gradually their brains became fogged. They started to say, 'The Jews are our misfortune'."
The misfortune, however, was to be a Jew -- or black, homosexual, mentally or physically challenged, a Gypsy, or among any one of the minorities then judged to be subhuman. Records were made on the basis of physical appearance and ancestry. Partners had to be chosen with great care. Rienhard Spitzy: "I was affected by this when I married. . . . We thought that we should, that we could form a new ideal race -- and I chose my wife according to this line."
For those who weren't considered a threat to the German race, life was improving by 1937. Germans were regaining their pride as Hitler's aggressive diplomacy forced respect from European neighbors. At home, propaganda continued to find eager listeners. Friedl Sonnenberg remembers: "Young people were the most excited by the propaganda, over ninety percent of us were behind everything that went on." And state film and radio would drive the message home, one idea above all others -- "in a word," says Horst Slesina, "the greatness of the German people. Propaganda gave people a big boost in confidence for the first time."
In March 1938, Germany absorbed Austria in direct defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. It was a euphoric moment -- for the Nazis. Norbert Lopper was a nineteen-year-old Viennese Jew: "There had always been anti-Semitism in Vienna, long before 1938. But then it became official and that made it much worse." The Nazis were determined to expand their territory, invading Czechoslovakia in January 1939. With Hitler's invasion of Poland that September came the Second World War. And by 1941, the decision to systematically kill all Jews -- the "Final Solution" -- had been made.
In Ejszyszki, Lithuania in September 1941, the Nazi's led some 3,500 Jews to pits outside the town and ordered them to undress. Zvi Michaeli was sixteen: "When I saw Rabbi Zushe undressed, I thought this was the end. The verses from Psalms that he recited in our ears up until then -- I'd been confident that we wouldn't die. And my father was saying 'You will live, don't be afraid.' He put his left hand on me. I saw my brother David climbing up on his thigh; so tight, he clung so tight. He didn't let go of him until the last minute. And the shots of the machine gun. There was a mixture of voices, of people crying, and children, and the shots -- and the dust -- and everything mingled together.... I felt my father give me a push and then fall on top of me. He covered me. He wanted me to live."
Shootings took place in thousands of towns and villages across the Third Reich. Jürgen Kroger was an interpreter for one of the execution squads: "They said the Jews were an inferior race. One of them said to me, 'It's like having a rosebush and the rosebush has got greenfly on it. You have to get rid of the greenfly.' The Jews weren't human beings for them. It was like killing fleas."
Dora Schwartz was sent to a concentration camp. She describes her arrival at Auschwitz: "When we arrived, we didn't know where we were. We suspected this was a place of death. We saw those chimneys. We saw the smoke from the chimneys. The sight made you shudder. This was going to be our fate."
Hans Münch served as an SS doctor at Auschwitz and remembers the gas chambers: "[The chamber] was almost hermetically sealed. You could hardly hear anything. Then the Zyclon B gas was thrown in from the top and the doctor had to check after about ten minutes to see if it was all over. . . . You looked through the peephole and if everyone was on the floor, then it was alright. Then the doors...were opened and lorries drove up to take them away more easily."
Since 1933, Nazi Germany had sung the rousing songs, been stirred by the Führer's rhetoric, and shared the glow of early military success. Twelve years later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. Only now would the true cost of the Nazi pursuit of a special racial destiny be exposed.
Master Race is produced and directed by Jonathan Lewis; the narrator is Alfre Woodard. People's Century is a co-production of WGBH and the BBC -- filmed around the world and shaped in Boston and London. Executive producer for WGBH is Zvi Dor-Ner; senior producer is David Espar. Peter Pagnamenta is executive producer for the BBC. National corporate sponsorship for the series is provided by Conseco, Inc. Major funding is provided by public television viewers and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation and The Lowell Institute.
Hitler has a strong belief that his race, the Aryan race is unique and the only one that will survive in this world. Hitler and his allies were in joy at the thought of a generation living the German Nazi life. He found being a race other than German was unfortunate.
Adolf Hitler's first antisemitic writing September 16, 1919
Dear Herr Gemlich, The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew leaves--almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, antisemitism is too easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect. Antisemitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the question of whether someone is a Jew or non-Jew. There is scarcely a race whose members belong exclusively to just one definite religion.
Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non- German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.
The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.
The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.
This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.
He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.
In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.
The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.
For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.
The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state-form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.
And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.
But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution--the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay-off consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the antisemitic movement.
Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler
Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non- German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.
The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.
The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.
This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.
He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.
In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.
The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.
For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.
The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state-form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.
And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.
But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution--the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay-off consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the antisemitic movement.
Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler
Hitler legally had the right to retain citizenship and even natural human rights from the Jews, including Muslims. His extremist attitude led to him creating these anti laws. The laws that came along with his first writing were taking their property, imprisoning them without trial, and putting them to death with absolutely no crime. Unbelievably, it was his right as a dictator to take away almost every conceivable right you can imagine.
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels originated from Berlin, Germany; he was a German politician. He was one of Hitler's closest associates and was recognized for his deep belief in antisemitism. He lead to the extermination of Jews and lead to the "final solution." After he earned his PhD, he became a member of National Socialist German Worker's party. Soon he became the leader in Reich Minister of Propaganda. One right Joseph possessed was burning the books Jews owned, and the book was part of their religion.
Wrangling
"When the one-time judge, Harry Truman, became US president on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, he insisted that enemy leaders should be given a formal trial based on western practice, with clear charges and the right to a defense. When the three wartime partners - the British, Americans and Russians - met in San Francisco in May 1945 to thrash out the basis for what became the United Nations, the British delegates were outmaneuvered, and a decision was taken to establish a military tribunal to try the cases of those senior politicians and soldiers captured following Germany's defeat.
No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
There then followed six months of wrangling over who should be put on trial, and on what charges, and where. There was no precedent. No other civilian government had ever been put on trial by the authorities of other states. No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
The category of war crime, defined under international agreements made earlier in the century, covered specific violations of the rules of war (such as the murder of prisoners of war, or the shooting of hostages), but these were enforced against the immediate perpetrators - who were in most cases junior officers and regular soldiers. What the Allied powers had in mind was a tribunal that would make the waging of aggressive war, the violation of sovereignty and the perpetration of what came to be known in 1945 as 'crimes against humanity' internationally recognised offences.
Unfortunately these had not previously been defined as crimes in international law, which left the Allies in the legally dubious position of having to execute retrospective justice - to punish actions that were not regarded as crimes at the time they were committed."
No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
There then followed six months of wrangling over who should be put on trial, and on what charges, and where. There was no precedent. No other civilian government had ever been put on trial by the authorities of other states. No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
The category of war crime, defined under international agreements made earlier in the century, covered specific violations of the rules of war (such as the murder of prisoners of war, or the shooting of hostages), but these were enforced against the immediate perpetrators - who were in most cases junior officers and regular soldiers. What the Allied powers had in mind was a tribunal that would make the waging of aggressive war, the violation of sovereignty and the perpetration of what came to be known in 1945 as 'crimes against humanity' internationally recognised offences.
Unfortunately these had not previously been defined as crimes in international law, which left the Allies in the legally dubious position of having to execute retrospective justice - to punish actions that were not regarded as crimes at the time they were committed."
Wrangling was a massive issue when Hitler was in absolute power. Wrangling is the act of having a long and complicated dispute. Harry Truman felt even allies should have the right to trial, as a right to defense. Six months passes when people continued to dispute on who went to trial and who didn't. Surprisingly, murder of prisoners at war, and shooting hostages ended up not counting as a legit crime. Hitler and his allies gained the right to make such laws.
Winston Churchill
"On May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister. "I would say to the House," he declaimed, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." He predicted "an ordeal of the most grievous kind," then set forth the policy that would govern Britain's response: "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime." As for Britain's aim: "It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival." Churchill underscored the point: "Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for."
The speech became perhaps the most famous of Churchill's career, one of the great clarion calls to arms in the history of the English language. Shorn of its eloquence and viewed simply as a mission statement, however, it can be seen—and has been seen—as something of a disaster. Because in the five years that followed, the victory Britain achieved really did come "at all costs." It cost Britain its status as a great power and, despite Churchill's implication that victory would mean the survival of the British Empire, it cost Britain its empire.
Over the decades, a number of historians have called attention to this, arguing that Churchill's resolution was reckless and that a colder, more calculating policy —a policy matched more realistically to England's actual resources—would have yielded far better results. Still, these historians have always been deluged with expressions of darkest contempt from Churchill's many admirers.
Among the most recent authors to receive such treatment is political commentator Patrick Buchanan. In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War (2008), he argues that Britain made an enormous mistake when it pledged its full support to Poland if any action threatened Polish independence—a guarantee intended to deter Germany from an attack on Poland. This "guarantee" scarcely guaranteed Poland's survival, for Britain's ability to defend Poland was nil. But it did encourage Poland to cease negotiations with Germany over Danzig, a city in the Polish Corridor whose population was 95 percent German.
It would have been better, Buchanan says, for Britain to have instead encouraged those negotiations, for Germany and Poland had previously enjoyed good relations and both shared a common enemy: the Soviet Union. And if Germany had ultimately attacked Poland, it would have been a German-Polish war. What Britain's guarantee to Poland did, in fact, was guarantee a major war in western Europe. But for it, Hitler probably would have turned full attention to the destruction of the Bolshevik regime.
Yes, the Nazis were evil, Buchanan concedes. However, the world is full of evil regimes, and in the 1940s Joseph Stalin and his minions were every bit as malevolent as Hitler and his. Britain's war with Germany did not save the Jews from the Holocaust, but it did assure that the Soviet Union would control eastern Europe—including Poland, the very nation whose independence Britain had guaranteed—for more than 40 years. It also assured that the United States would assume Britain's role as the foremost power among the great democracies, and that despite Churchill's hope of preserving the British Empire, waging war with "all our might and with all the strength that God can give us" won Britain no help from the anticolonial Americans in realizing that hope."
The speech became perhaps the most famous of Churchill's career, one of the great clarion calls to arms in the history of the English language. Shorn of its eloquence and viewed simply as a mission statement, however, it can be seen—and has been seen—as something of a disaster. Because in the five years that followed, the victory Britain achieved really did come "at all costs." It cost Britain its status as a great power and, despite Churchill's implication that victory would mean the survival of the British Empire, it cost Britain its empire.
Over the decades, a number of historians have called attention to this, arguing that Churchill's resolution was reckless and that a colder, more calculating policy —a policy matched more realistically to England's actual resources—would have yielded far better results. Still, these historians have always been deluged with expressions of darkest contempt from Churchill's many admirers.
Among the most recent authors to receive such treatment is political commentator Patrick Buchanan. In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War (2008), he argues that Britain made an enormous mistake when it pledged its full support to Poland if any action threatened Polish independence—a guarantee intended to deter Germany from an attack on Poland. This "guarantee" scarcely guaranteed Poland's survival, for Britain's ability to defend Poland was nil. But it did encourage Poland to cease negotiations with Germany over Danzig, a city in the Polish Corridor whose population was 95 percent German.
It would have been better, Buchanan says, for Britain to have instead encouraged those negotiations, for Germany and Poland had previously enjoyed good relations and both shared a common enemy: the Soviet Union. And if Germany had ultimately attacked Poland, it would have been a German-Polish war. What Britain's guarantee to Poland did, in fact, was guarantee a major war in western Europe. But for it, Hitler probably would have turned full attention to the destruction of the Bolshevik regime.
Yes, the Nazis were evil, Buchanan concedes. However, the world is full of evil regimes, and in the 1940s Joseph Stalin and his minions were every bit as malevolent as Hitler and his. Britain's war with Germany did not save the Jews from the Holocaust, but it did assure that the Soviet Union would control eastern Europe—including Poland, the very nation whose independence Britain had guaranteed—for more than 40 years. It also assured that the United States would assume Britain's role as the foremost power among the great democracies, and that despite Churchill's hope of preserving the British Empire, waging war with "all our might and with all the strength that God can give us" won Britain no help from the anticolonial Americans in realizing that hope."
On May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill had made one of his most famous speeches of all time.
Adolf Hitler, speech in the Reichstag (30th January, 1939)
"In connection with the Jewish question I have this to say: it is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them - which is surely, in view of its attitude, an obvious duty. The arguments that are brought up as an excuse for not helping them actually speak for us Germans and Italians.
For this is what they say: "We," that is the democracies, "are not in a position to take in the Jews." Yet in these empires there are not even 10 people to the square kilometer. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometer, is supposed to have room for them! They assure us: We cannot take them unless Germany is prepared to allow them a certain amount of capital to bring with them as immigrants.
For hundreds of years Germany was good enough to receive these elements, although they possessed nothing except infectious political and physical diseases. What they possess today, they have by a very large extent gained at the cost of the less astute German nation by the most reprehensible manipulations.
Today we are merely paying this people what it deserves.When the German nation was, thanks to the inflation instigated and carried through by Jews, deprived of the entire savings which it had accumulated in years of honest work, when the rest of the world took away the German nation's foreign investments, when we were divested of the whole of our colonial possessions, these philanthropic considerations evidently carried little noticeable weight with democratic statesmen."
For this is what they say: "We," that is the democracies, "are not in a position to take in the Jews." Yet in these empires there are not even 10 people to the square kilometer. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometer, is supposed to have room for them! They assure us: We cannot take them unless Germany is prepared to allow them a certain amount of capital to bring with them as immigrants.
For hundreds of years Germany was good enough to receive these elements, although they possessed nothing except infectious political and physical diseases. What they possess today, they have by a very large extent gained at the cost of the less astute German nation by the most reprehensible manipulations.
Today we are merely paying this people what it deserves.When the German nation was, thanks to the inflation instigated and carried through by Jews, deprived of the entire savings which it had accumulated in years of honest work, when the rest of the world took away the German nation's foreign investments, when we were divested of the whole of our colonial possessions, these philanthropic considerations evidently carried little noticeable weight with democratic statesmen."
Hitler thought people should feel ashamed of themselves for even thinking of having sympathy for the Jews. He believed he was only paying the Jews what they deserved, and they deserved torture.
Battle Of Berlin.
"On the 21st of April the Red Army had broken through the gates of Hitler’s capital and was poised to attack the city after a swift strategic push through Germany’s heartland.
The Russian’s had advanced quickly, beginning their offensive on the 16th of January, 1945, and advancing as much as 25 miles every day, as German forces crumbled.
Soviet forces began their final assault on the night of the 15th of April with a massive artillery barrage against German forces west of the Oder River and east of the Berlin in an area known as the Seelow Heights – known as the gates of the city.
Once past these the Soviet troops could advance from three directions: north, east and south-east. The 1st Belorussian Front, under Marshal Georgy Zhukov, was the first attack group to begin shelling Berlin.
The city was surrounded, but the Nazi leadership still believed that victory was still achievable. Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels issued a statement saying that Berlin was to be defended to the last.
These messages to the citizens were painted across the walls to encourage the population to do their duty in defence of the city.
The 20th of April was also Hitler’s 56th birthday, but by this time most of the military plans he was formulating to repel the Allied attacks were purely based on fantasy German armies. Although fighting continued, it was more and more desperate, with fewer and fewer resources to halt the Soviet advance.
In addition the men fighting against this unstoppable Russian tide were terrified of what horrors it would bring to match the atrocities carried out by German troops during Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi plan to conquer Russia.
Watch this clip that summarises why Operation Barbarossa almost saw the fall of mother Russia to the Nazis."
The Russian’s had advanced quickly, beginning their offensive on the 16th of January, 1945, and advancing as much as 25 miles every day, as German forces crumbled.
Soviet forces began their final assault on the night of the 15th of April with a massive artillery barrage against German forces west of the Oder River and east of the Berlin in an area known as the Seelow Heights – known as the gates of the city.
Once past these the Soviet troops could advance from three directions: north, east and south-east. The 1st Belorussian Front, under Marshal Georgy Zhukov, was the first attack group to begin shelling Berlin.
The city was surrounded, but the Nazi leadership still believed that victory was still achievable. Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels issued a statement saying that Berlin was to be defended to the last.
These messages to the citizens were painted across the walls to encourage the population to do their duty in defence of the city.
The 20th of April was also Hitler’s 56th birthday, but by this time most of the military plans he was formulating to repel the Allied attacks were purely based on fantasy German armies. Although fighting continued, it was more and more desperate, with fewer and fewer resources to halt the Soviet advance.
In addition the men fighting against this unstoppable Russian tide were terrified of what horrors it would bring to match the atrocities carried out by German troops during Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi plan to conquer Russia.
Watch this clip that summarises why Operation Barbarossa almost saw the fall of mother Russia to the Nazis."
Effects of the Beer Hall Putsch.
"A large crowd gathers in front of the Rathaus to hear Julius Streicher during the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler's early unsuccessful attempt to seize power. Munich, Germany, November 1923."
"Recently appointed as German chancellor, Adolf Hitler greets President Paul von Hindenburg in Potsdam, Germany, on March 21, 1933. This pose was designed to project an image of Hitler as non-threatening to the established order. This particular image is from a popular postcard. The photo also appeared widely in both the German and international press. Hitler appears in civilian dress, bowing in deference to the heavily decorated von Hindenburg. The March 5, 1933, elections had conferred legitimacy on Hitler's leadership."
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum; USHMM Collection, courtesy of B. I. Sanders
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum; USHMM Collection, courtesy of B. I. Sanders
Perpetrators.
Perpetrators were Nazi party leaders, bankers, professors, military officials, doctors, journalists, engineers, judges, authors, lawyers, salesmen, police, and civil servants. Perpetrators committed crimes against Jews and other undesirables for many reasons. They wanted power. They believed in an ideology of racial cleansing. They profited financially, displaced their anger from their own failures, or were perhaps "following orders."
The Beginning of World War II
Residents salute as Hitler
enters the Sudetenland, 1938.
The Holocaust, Crimes, & Heroes
Albert Goering loathed all of Nazism's inhumanity and at the risk of his career, fortune and life, used his name and connections to save hundreds of Jews and and political dissidents during the Second World War. After the war Albert Goering - savior of victims of the tyranny his brother helped create - was imprisoned for several years for his name alone. But his story is almost unknown: he was shoved into obscurity by the enormity of his brother's crimes.