Section One The history of world war two started out with the ending of world war one and the treaties that were made, and the policies put into place. One of these treaties was the treaty of Versailles. The treaty was signed in 1919. This treaty would limit the power of the German government and the financial power of Germany. With this blow they would have to go through three stages in order to fix their economy. They also started looking towards science to answer the problems of their economy and government problems. The end of the Weimar republic ended with the third Reich and with Hitler’s rise to power.
Hitler came to power in 1933, and with this power he began to take advantage of the power he had during the Weimar republic. “In October 1933 Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations…” (Gallately 15). Hitler also started to change the law and get rid of the Weimar Republic by passing the Fire Decree and Enabling act to try and cement his leadership in Germany. (Gallately 13). He then made a special police force to, at first, fight against communism in Germany called the Nazi Storm Troopers. Later on these troops and even police battalions would roundup and exterminate Jewish people. From World War I Germany was not allowed to have an organized military, so Hitler trained many police officers, and recruited more officers to have military training. Finally in 1941 Hitler ordered the “Final Solution” in which Germany would eradicate the Jewish people
Hitler created an act to the Weimar constitution that would give him power to make laws without the consent of the Reichstag, which is similar to America’s congress, and from there he was able to become a dictator and gain the popular vote of the German people and take control. He was also able to undermine the treaty of Versailles and create a special police called the SS troopers, Schutzstaffel, which was basically Hitler’s personal army. Which was against the treaty of Versailles? However no other country would confront Hitler about it. Hitler also created laws that granted government money to a family if a woman would quit her job and have kids. They also would be labeled bronze silver or gold based on how many kids they had. He used this law to establish Hitler’s youth. He used Hitler’s youth to feed propaganda to kids and make them think that they are genetically superior to all other races, especially the Jewish people and handicapped people and gypsies. Because of this sense of empowerment he was able to start using genetics.
Section Two In chapter 4 of “Racial Hygiene” Proctor writes about how the Germans feel they are losing their pure race, and how the Americans have already set up certain emigration laws. “German racial hygienists also pointed to American emigration policies, according to which only the fittest were allowed in and inferiors sent back to the European motherland” (Proctor 98). This gave the Germans an excuse to set up political laws to try and preserve their race. With this strive for racial cleansing the Nazis passed the sterilization law in 1933, which was supposed to be only “eugenic”, but some thought it “punitive” (Proctor 102), meaning that some people only looked at it as for race, while other though it could solve the criminal problem. Once the sterilization laws were set into effect, Germany took it to a whole new level by having over 80,000 people apply to be sterilized, most of which were Near the end of the sterilization program is when things escalated, and they started killing people instead of sterilizing them. “The year 1939 marks the
“The year 1939 marks the beginning of the euthanasia program, in which individuals were not simply sterilized but killed� (Proctor 115). As the Nazi party and the eugenics started to kill people who were not fit to contribute to the pure race, it became easier to accept that these things were happening and it leads us into some reasons why Jewish people were killed in Nazi Germany.
The first video is a propaganda film from the United States describing how little kids become Nazis. It is a cartoon made by Disney and was played to show the dark side of the Germans. It does have some valuable information in it but the main focus is how Americans viewed the Germans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l14WDZCnz-w The Next video is a speech given by Hitler. The main focus is how different he is viewed by the German people, compared to the cartoon by Disney. This speech also shows the viewer how well Hitler is at public Speaking some things to watch for is how he waits for everyone to gets quite before he begins to speak. Also how he starts out very calm and collect, and then progressively builds into the heart of his speech where he is loud and uses hand motions to move his crowd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGhdX1SI3KY&bpctr =1385930686
Works Cited Proctor, Robert. Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Print. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l14WDZCnz-w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGhdX1SI3KY&bpctr =1385930686 Robert Gallately Article from History Class 2012. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/A dolf_Hitler_42_Pfennig_stamp.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/ 4%5EKharkov_1943.jpg