Background to nazi anti semitism

Social Darwinists

Survival of the fittest and theory of evolution by natural selection

hitlers racial ideology

Anti semitism against non german members part of the Aryan race

Nazism

Has a strategic vision of a dominant, pure German race that rules by subjecting people they believed to be innately inferior

Impact of the Second World War

• war economy

• Four year plan

• Ghettoisation

Nature of the nazi state

• lebensborn programme

• Nuremberg laws

Internationalist approach

Was the holocaust planned in advance by Hitler?

Functionalist approach

How far did the nature of the nazi state and the impact of war determine how the holocaust developed

Darwinian evolution theory

1. It’s ability to reproduce and multiply

2. It’s accumulation of land to support the growing population

3. It’s vigilance in maintaining the purity of the gene pool in order to preserve its unique racial characteristics

Ghettoisation within Germany

After the nazis occupied Poland in 1939 thousands of Jews and gypsies were segregated and transported to polish ghettos, usually in the most run down area of a city

Poland in 1941

Nearly all Jews were cramped in overcrowded districts, with Warsaw holding over 490,000 Jews and a few hundred roman and gypsies

Łódź ghetto

Established in 1940 and it was the second largest ghetto with more than 165,000 Jews forced into an area of less than 4 sqkm

Judenrat council

A Jewish council that was set up in each community of each ghetto to enforce German orders

Volksgemein Schaft

A racially homogeneous national community of the Aryan race

Reichsarbeits dienst

The national labour service of nazi germany that aimed to indoctrinate the German workforce into nazi ideology and militarise it

Ghettoisation

The segregation and transportation of thousands of Jews to cramped and overcrowded ghettos in 1939