Civilians at war

Why did WW2 have a greater impact on civilian life than the Great War

due to the air war and extensive mobilisation, which placed greater emphasis on ordinary people

• After 1945, long-term improvements for ordinary people were taken seriously

How was the outbreak of war in 1939 received in Britain?

 Weary resignation, expected after the failure of Munich, with no cheers or excitement that characterised 1914

• No recruitment campaigns, but conscription was introduced from April 1939

• Although there was a sense of relief with the end of appeasement, this was replaced by fear of the nature of warfare and Nazi Germany as a formidable enemy

How had Britain been preparing for war since the Munich Crisis of 1938

• Air raid shelters were built across the country under Sir John Anderson, who was in charge of the Air Raid Precautions Bureau from November 1938

  • The ‘Anderson shelter’ was a small backyard shelter topped with metal sheets which families could crawl under to avoid falling debris

  • In 1941, Home Secretary Herbet Morrison gave his name to the ‘Morrison shelter’, a strong metal cage used indoors

  • In London, the tube city stations were used as public air raid shelters, containing 200,000 people each night

• It was widely believed that gas would be used, one of the horrors of the Great War

  • Since 1938, civilians had been issued gas masks and were not allowed to leave home without one

  • Gas was never used against civilian populations

• Within days of the outbreak of war, 1.5 million children were evacuated from Britain’s cities to avoid the oncoming bombings

  • During the ‘phoney war’, many of these children were returned home

    • Some children were evacuated to Canada or South Africa, but after a ship sunk, this was stopped

• The ‘blackout’ was one measure to deal with expected air attacks from the Germans

  • Once the air raid siren sounded, street lights and car headlights were turned off, and windows were covered to conceal internal lighting

  • The Air Raid Precautions wardens (ARP) rigorously enforced heavy fines for disobeying blackout regulations

• Barrage balloons made German dive-bombing more difficult forcing them to fly higher and thus reduce their accuracy

  • Buildings were sandbagged, beaches covered in barbed wire, pillboxes set up and signposts were removed to confuse any enemy invasion

Although British cities never experienced the level of mass bombing Germany did, it had a major impact on industrial and civilian areas

• From September 1940 to May 11941, London experienced the Blitz

  • German bombings began during the day, and later switched tactics to night

• Later in the war, Britain experienced smaller-scale attacks from the 1944 V1 and V2

  • Although these rockets were not effective, they caused enormous fear

• London was not the only city to be bombed

  • 14 November 1940, a massive raid was launched against Coventry

  • Cities of economic value were attacked across Belfast to Swindon to Birmingham to Sheffield

    • In 1941, ports were the main target as bombings tried to assist German U-boat campaign in the Battle of the Atlantic

German air attacks on Britain had several aims

• Initially, it was to weaken the country for a German invasion, destroy Britain’s ability to produce the needs of war and break British morale

• However, on all accounts these aims failed

  • The Luftwaffe’s failure in the Battle of Britain ended prospects of German invasion

  • Although bombing did damage to working class housing, British economic production was never seriously threatened

  • The bombings strengthened British morale, continuing the Dunkirk spirit

    • London did not witness the panic-striken crowds of France in 1940

    • King Geroge VI and Churchill were well received in the ruins of the East End, particularly after Buckingham Palace was hit

  • However, not all people shared the Dunkirk spirit, as crime rates increased, instances of mass-panic and a thriving ‘black market’

The British government intervened in the life of the nation by taking on extra powers

• The National Service (Armed Forces) Act

  • All men aged between 18 and 40 were liable to be conscripted, which was increased in 1941 to 51

    • Exemptions included reserved occupations, conscientious objectors and those in poor health

• Security measures

  • The Emergency Powers Act (1939) gave the government power to direct workers, including women

  • A National Registration Act was introduced, forcing people to carry identification

  • The Treacheries Act was used to imprison, ban or watch people or organisations considered a threat to security

    • Eg. The British Fascist Party led by Oswald Mosely

  • People of German or Italian descent were interned or sent overseas

• In 1941, Minister of Labour Bevin brought in the Essential Works Order

  • Essential workers such as railway employees were under government control, showing Britain’s shift towards ‘total war’

How was propaganda and censorship used to influence British people’s lives during the war

A Ministry of Information was established under John Reith, who controlled the amount and nature of information the British people were allowed to have

• Involved in censoring soldier’s letters home to pushing anti-German sentiments in propaganda posters to pushing fears of spies

  • Although censorship never developed to the extent that it did in Germany, Churchill believed that it was better to tell people the truth, as his speeches were peppered with exhortations to face war’s grim realities

• The BBC’s fledgling television service was closed down on 1 September 1939, as radio was the key disseminator of government information and propaganda

  • Churchill frequently used radio broadcasts to inspire

  • At first, radio comprised of sombre music and dour news bulletins

    • However, by the 1940s, humour, music and shows were much needed

      • Tommy Hanley’s ‘it’s that main again’ was a national favourite, and many catchphrases from the show became part of English language

        • “Can I do you now sir?” - Mrs Mopp

        • “Ta, Ta for now”

        • “I don’t mind if I do” - Colonel Chinstrap’s response to alcohol

      • The BBC produced shows such as ‘Worker’s Playtime’ and ‘Music While You Work’

      • An Armed Forces Radio Network was popular, as major artists such as Gracie Fields, George Formby and Vera Lynn, the force’s sweetheart, performed

        • ‘We’ll meet again’, ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover’ and ‘There’ll always be an England’

    • Cinema became a popular escape from the tribulations of daily life

      • Gone With The Wind, Disney classics and Humphrey Bogart films were popular

While the Blitz was feared, what posed the greatest threat to Britain surviving the war and why?

The Battle of the Atlantic

Richard Overy: “The Axis knew how much the oceans mattered, which is why they made such strenuous efforts to sever the arteries one way or another. By 1942, German submarines were sinking British ships faster than they could be replaced”

What measures did the government take in response to its weakness of importing food and petrol

• Food rationing began in January 1940 for butter, bacon and sugar

  • Other foods were soon included, such as meat (March 1940), tea (July 1940) and margarine, fats and jam (March 1941)

  • In December 1941, a points system was introduced, allowing each person 16 points to spend at any shop they wanted

• The Ministry of Food exhorted people to use substitute foods such as carrot tart, American spam and whale meat

  • Food initiatives such as ‘victory gardens’ were encouraged as they were not rationed

  • The BBC ‘Kitchen Front’ promoted ideas for producing nutritious foods

• Eggs were rare as many chickens were being killed, and average egg rations was one a fortnight

  • Dried eggs were introduced in July 1942

  • Full cream ‘National Dried Milk’ was available for small children

    • Ironically, people were treated better during the war years than the Depression, so health standards rose

  • Exotic products like chocolate became highly valued although tobacco and alcohol were not rationed, but had limited trading hours

• Clothes were also rationed, and clothes that were being produced lacked pre-war frills and extravagances

  • People were encouraged to make their own clothes, recycle old garments and repurpose blankets and curtains

    • Nylon stockings were impossible to get, so women resorted to drawing on the back of their leg to give the impression of a stocking seam

• Life during the war lacked its privations, and a thriving black market emerged

  • For all the hardships, people faced life stoically

  • The government was largely successful in ensuring a degree of equality during the war years, further improving morale, as the popular song went: ‘We all must stick together’

Over 4.6 million children were born during the war, who ironically became the most healthy generation of Britons yet born

• Infant mortality fell by 10%, maternal mortality by 40%

• The government introduced a series of health measures including

  • Diphtheria immunisations decreased deaths from this disease by 75%

  • All school children received free milk from September 1941, a scheme that lasted until the 1970s

  • By 1945, half of all school children were receiving meals at school

  • The Emergency Hospital Service widened the availability of medical services

The Home Guard was created in May 1940, known as the Local Defence Volunteers, comprised of boys and old men, armed with sticks and pikes

What role did it play?

• The name change occurred in July 1940 and under the command of General Ironside, the Home Guard had over 1.5 million members by 1942

  • It evolved into a decently trained and armed organisation, who were prepared to take on German parachute landings

The war had a major impact on the lives of women

• Many women joined the armed services

  • WAAF: Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and WRNS: Women’s Royal Naval Service

  • Service jobs included communications, repair and clerical work

  • Many women served in civil defence jobs such as Air Raid wardens, the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service)

  • Women served in the WVS (Women’s Volunteer Service), setting up worker’s canteens, helped with civil defence and organised evacuations

  • 80,000 women joined the Women’s Land Army in basic farming work, allowing agricultural workers to fight

• Many women worked in industry

  • Over two million women worked in various industrial jobs, making munitions and transport workers

  • Nursing at home and overseas

Although statistics can be misleading, Home Office figures reveal interesting trends in Britain

• Dramatic fall in crime

  • In 1939 there was 787,000 offences; in 1945, there was 467,000 offences

    • Potentially due to increased surveillance of the population and decreased population

  • Drunkenness also decreased 40%

    • Caused by the restrictions on pub opening hours

• Concern about moral standards

  • Increase in promiscuity and premarital sex

  • In 1939, there was 9970 divorce petitions; in 1945, there was 24,857

    • Adultery rates decreased significantly

    • In 1945, over 70,000 illegitimate children were born

  • Millions of American troops were based in Britain during the war

    • Although there was gratitude towards American presence in the war, as it spelt the inevitable defeat of Germany, there was deep resentment

      • Americans had more money, a smarter uniform and were taking British women

        • By the end of the war, 15,000 British women had married Americans

    • Violence between British and American soldiers was not uncommon

      • Americans were “overpaid, oversexed and over here”

Churchill’s cabinet contained both Labour and Conservative Ministers, and he often received more support from Labour members than from his own party

Why was this?

• Also Minister for Defence, Churchill wanted to keep control of military policy as he could deal with service leaders better due to his own experience

  • Halifax was succeeded as Foreign Minister in 1940 by Antony Eden, whose poor health and fervent admiration of Churchill allowed him to dominate foreign policy as well, having two major impacts

    • Churchill remained totally preoccupied with the military and diplomatic aspects of the war

    • Domestic affairs, social and economic policy, industrial relations and post-war planning became the domain of Labour ministers

      • Atlee, Morrison and Bevin dominated domestic affairs, having two main impacts

        • Labour Party was seen as the party for post-war reconstruction and reform

        • In the General Election of 1945, despite the gratitude felt for Churchill, he was not reelected, as the Conservative Party was associated with Depression and appeasement

British war-time government put in a series of ‘blue-prints’ for the future direction of Britain’s society and government such as

• The Beveridge Report, published in 1942, proposed sweeping measures to ensure the wellbeing of the British people as a future Welfare State

  • Ensured mass unemployment of the 1930s would not be repeated in the post-war era

• John Maynard Keynes published his ‘General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest’

  • Keynesian economics stipulated how governments could manipulate the national economy and avoid a repeat of the depression

• Richard Butler’s 1944 ‘Education Act’ raised the school leaving age to 15

  • Working class children could enter grammar schools and all schools provided free meals and medical services

Social and economic effects of the war in Britain

Arthur Marwick

Alan Jenkins

• “The struggle for civilian survival at home initiated lasting social changes. Experience of the Blitz, food shortages, and lack of clothing ensured that Great Britain emerged from this war a very different type of society, with a new emphasis on social equality”

• “By Christmas 1941, thousands of Londoners were leading an astonishingly cheerful troglodyte existence underground”

The impact on German civilians was catastrophic, destroying the regime and leadership, as German cities were decimated by Allied bombing

What was the aftermath on the German Home Front?

• The German Home Front has to confront the death of tens of thousands in a single night, the absence of judicial procedure, concentration camps and the Soviet advance into Berlin

What was the reaction of the Germans at the outbreak of the war

• After the successes of foreign policy in the 1930s, Germans did not expect to have to fight over Poland, expecting another Munich

• Early Blitzkrieg successes were welcomed in Germany, but Hitler’s popularity reached its zenith in July 1940

  • However, these emotions fr Hitler represented relief on the part of the people, not a further desire for conquest

Right-wing propaganda argued that Germany lost World War I due to the ‘stab in the back’, and as a result, Hitler kept close attention to the Home Front

• Determined to maintain Home Front morale, Hitler intended for most of German life to continue normally, apart from a few rationing measures such as?

• No switch to total war production as in Britain and Soviet Union

• Women were not rushed into factories, as Nazi ideology believed women belonged at home, according to Goering, it would cause too much unrest

• In September, paid holidays were removed and wage freezes were imposed, but they caused so much opposition that they were removed by December

  • Shows the emphasis on the Home Front

• The Euthanasia Policy was quickly dropped following strong opposition from the Catholic Church led by Archbishop of Munster, Cardinal von Galen

• The German people did not begin to suffer until the end of the war

  • About 35% of Germany’s food came from occupied areas and domestic agriculture benefitted from good weather and use of foreign labourers

  • Families of men in the armed forces were looked after

Unlike World War I, living standards only collapsed until the war had been truly lost

How did the German Home Front maintain high morale?

• Despite Hitler’s concerns, morale was not a concern for the Nazis during the early part of the war, as Hitler’s swift defeats in Poland and Western Europe convinced people of his genius, but rather the long-term war effort

  • Goebbel’s wartime propaganda was abundant, showing the Wehrmacht’s march into France, producing light comedic entertainment as war heroes paraded the streets

  • Early Blitzkrieg offences were not good for the Home Front and long-term war effort, convincing the Nazis there was no need for stringency at home

    • Laxity on the Home Front continued when common sense would have dictated that total war should have been introduced immediately

However, by the end of 1942, the war was not clearly going in Germany’s favour, as Britain still resisted, the Afrika Korps had been defeated, the US was in the war and defeat was looming at Stalingrad

Against these military setbacks, Germany reverted to ‘total war’ which meant

• 18 February 1943 Goebbels announced this switch, ‘Total war means a shorter war’ and meant that policy in all areas became more extreme (economic, repression, propaganda)

• Propaganda became far more strident

  • Crude caricatures of Jewish/Slav/Bolshevik figures

  • The link between Jews and Communists was emphasised

  • Atrocity stories of the war in the East was spread

    • Goebbels made much of the Soviet massacre of Polish soldiers at Katyn Wood in 1940

Why did Germany not surrender despite fighting a three-front war

• January 1943 Casablanca Conference between Churchill called for a German ‘unconditional surrender’

  • Goebbels argued that the Allies would treat Germany worse than 1919, and were left with no choice but to fight

The death of Fritz Todt in February led to the appointment of Albert Speer as the new Armaments Minister, whose attempts to drag Germany into total war added two years to the war effort

How did he do this?

• Speer was a genius at organisation, a true technocrat, whose introduction of mass production and improvisation increased efficiency of German production

  • 42 aircraft models were reduced to 5, 151 truck types were reduced to 23 and 12 anti-tank weapons to 1

  • In 1944, Germany was producing 1000 Messerschmitt 109 Fighters from three plants, instead of 180 from seven

• In Speer’s book, Inside the Third Reich, Speer claims to have improved workers’ conditions and disobeyed Hitler’s orders to lay waste to Western Germany in 1945

  • Ironically, Speer had no problem using thousands of slave workers from the occupied territories who were worked to death

• Richard Overy: “A remarkable amount was achieved in three years…The shift to mass production, though far from universal, brought an instant increase in efficiency”

• Despite Speer’s efforts, wartime Nazi Germany was to be plagued with an ‘arthritic organisational’ system, as layers of bureaucracy hindered production

  • Contrary to popular belief, Nazi Germany was incredibly decentralised, as there were many centres of power including

• The SS empire, developed by Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Heydrich

  • The SS ran concentration camps, had their own schools, factories, legal system and army (the Waffen SS)

• There was 32 Gauleiters in Germany, regional Nazi governors, who were so powerful that they could hoard supplies from the army

• Goering tried to hang onto aircraft production long after his limitations were revealed

• Adolf Eichmann organised the Final Solution, commandeering the railways before the army could

• Martin Bormann, the Nazi Party Chancellery, from May 1941, sought to develop his own power by becoming Hitler’s confident and controlling access to the Fuhrer

  • Particularly disliked Speer

• Against all this rivalry, Speer tried to direct the economy and the Wehrmacht tried to fight a war

Mass allied aircraft formations bombed entire German towns, and such tactics ensured civilian casualties were high

What was the impact of allied bombing on German citizens?

• Regardless of morality, allied bombing was enormously effective in weakening German war effort

• German bombings dwarfed the impact of the Blitz

  • From September 1940 to May 1941, British civilian casualties amounted 43,000 dead

  • In July 1943, Bomber Command launched ‘Operation Gomorrah’ against Hamburg with incendiaries which left 40,000 dead, over 500,000 homeless and over 50% of the city decimated

    • Similar actions occurred in Dresden in February 1945 and Soviet attacks on Berlin in April/May 1945

  • Forced German production to be dispersed from major cities or underground, limiting German potential output

    • Oil supplies, chemical production and the railway system were greatly reduced and disrupted

• Despite this, German morale continued until the end, not because of patriotic fervour to the regime, but because they had no choice

• Michael Burleigh: “the progressive isolation of a leadership determined to go down in flames from an increasingly atomised civilian and military mass increasingly bent on personal survival. The latter literally lost faith, and had to confront a terrible inner emptiness”

The Nazi police-terror state ensured that the Home Front did not suffer the opposition or industrial disruption it had experienced during the Great War

How did they do this?

• In September 1939, the Reich Central Security Office was set up under Heydrich, coordinating all police forces in the Reich to increase their efficiency

• In September 1941, the Night and Fog Decree was introduced, giving the regime the power to arrest and detain anyone without trial and deny any knowledge of such action

• The Nazis never hid the reality of the concentration camps from the German people, frequently front-page stories

  • Between 1933-1945, Nazi records show that over 3 million Germans spent time in a concentration camp

  • 414,000 Germans were in concentration camps for political crimes

• All pretence at judicial procedure disappeared, and in 1942 Georg Thierack became Minister of Justice, and his People’s Court delivered swift and brutal party justice

Reports of the SD, the Intelligence Branch of the SS, revealed that many Germans were unhappy with the regime such as?

• Disillusionment with the war and disquiet at anti-Semitic policies meant that Goebbels no longer trusted the people to listen to foreign broadcasts

• Open opposition against the regime was limited

  • Hans and Sophie Scholl organised the White Rose resistance movement in Munich

  • Left-wing Red Chapel group

  • Churchmen such as Pastors Niemoller and Bonhoeffer

• Army opposition to the regime was seen during the unsuccessful July 1944 bomb plot on Hitler’s life by Colonel Stauffenberg, leading to more repression

Social and economic impacts of the war on German citizens

Richard Overy

Michael Burleigh

• “A popular myth that German women were not recruited to war work as they were in other warring powers, an assertion that rests largely on a statistical illusion. Women in Germany played a major part in keeping the war effort going”

• “This atomisation of the population into ever smaller ‘communities of fate’ continued beyond the end of the war, as did the progressive redefinition of family, with neither wives nor adolescent children prepared to subordinate themselves to the returning father”

The Soviet Union suffered the most out of all nations in World War II, particularly as the Nazis viewed the Russians as Untermenschen and did not merit treatment as human beings

How many Russians died during the war

• Twenty million Russians would die during the war during this battle for survival

The Nazi invasion against the Soviet Union in 1941 was the greatest invasion in history

Russia scored a tumultuous victory in what Soviet writers call ‘The Great Patriotic War’, although it came at what enormous price?

• Stalin realised that the USSR only had time and space as its advantage, and tried to draw battles out until winter

  • Every action, no matter how small, was valuable if it slowed down the German advance, even if only for a few hours

  • The Red Army pursued a ‘scorched earth policy’, destroying everything they left behind, houses, farms, livestock, even the Dnieper Dam

• The combination of German barbarity and Soviet scorched earth policy was devastating

Lionel Kochan

David Christian

• “The war destroyed 17,000 towns, 70,000 villages, 31,000 factories, 84,000 schools, 64,000 kms of railway and 45 million livestock. By 1945, 25 million people had nothing to live in but wooden huts”

• “In the first six months of the war, the Red Army lost over 5 million men and the territory that produced 60% of Soviet resources and industry, which had dropped 50%”

How were the Muscovites affected by the German invasion

• As Moscow came under direct attack, thousands of Muscovites dug tank traps around the city, sandbagged buildings, imposed blackouts, set up barrage balloons and slept in the Moscow underground

The Soviet people suffered the most during the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted over 900 days from September 1941 to January 1944

• Isolated from the country, apart from a winter lifeline across frozen Lake Ladoga, supplies were non-existent

  • Bread was baked with sawdust and workers ate grease from factory bearings

  • Workers toiled in roofless factories as winter temperatures plummeted

  • 900,000 Leningraders died

Soviet industry was in a critical state following the German invasion, as industrial areas were in range of German bombers, so Stalin ordered a mass migration of factories, plants, machines and workers

How was this achieved

• Government moved over 1500 industrial enterprises eastward beyond the Ural Mountains alongside 10 million workers

  • Factories were stripped down, taken east and rebuilt

  • Conditions in the east were exceptionally tough, as Soviet workers had to cope with a lack of food, freezing temperatures and 16-18 hour working days

• Despite these difficulties and human suffering, the Soviet Union produced an economic miracle, producing over 135,000 aircraft, almost 500,000 guns, 100,000 tanks and 35000 new industrial enterprises

  • Soviet industry worked on principles of simplicity and rationalisation, in contrast with German industry pre-Speer

    • The Soviets produced only two types of tanks, T34 and KV and five types of aircraft 

• From 1942, Soviet industry was helped with the inflow of aid from the US under the Lend Lease Scheme, as the Soviets would pay for any aid after the war

The Soviet Union was a highly centralised, disciplined system, due to Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and the implementation of terror machinery, such as the NKVD and gulags

How did this system effectively deal with the pressures of the war, despite the genuine nationalism during the war

• Stalin was viewed as a symbol of Russian resistance to the foreign invader, changing Soviet propaganda from defending socialism to ‘mother Russia’

• State religious policy was turned on its head

  • Propaganda took in a strictly patriotic and anti-German tone, promoted by the Pravda, poems, plays, etc

    • Stalin made sure he was associated with great Russian heroes of the past, including Alexander Nevsky, Peter the Great and General Kutuzov

    • AA Fadeev’s ‘Leningrad in the Days of the Blockade’ and Dimitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony ‘The Leningrad’

    • Russia’s cinema had a smaller output than in Britain and US, focusing on resistance partisan groups and heroines

    • References to the party, Leninism and socialism were minimal

  • Religious policy

    • Church schools were allowed to reopen and give religious instruction

    • The League of Militant Atheists was closed alongside anti-religious propaganda, churches reopened and in 1943, Stalin allowed the reelection of a new patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church

    • In 1943, the Central Direction of Muslims was established in Tashkent to gain Muslim support against Germans

The Soviet Union was a multi-national nation with a predominant national group of Russians, as Stalin had been pushing a policy of Russification since the 1930s

How did this impact the German campaign?

• Some of these nationalities, particularly Ukrainian, Georgians, Kazakhs, Estonians, welcomed the Germans as liberators, but savage German treatment painted Stalin as the lesser evil

  • Germans living in Leningrad were deported to the east

  • When the Red Army liberated areas taken by the Germans, Stalin ordered the deportation east of entire ethnic groups, not just German collaborators

    • Includes the Kalmyks, the Chechens, Ingushis and Crimean Tatars

The Communist Party changed during the Great Patriotic War, as there was a significant increase in party membership from 1941 to 1945, with five million new candidate members and three and a half million new full members

How did this aid the war effort?

• Half of these members were in the armed forces, which had not been present before 1941

• The party took on additional crucial roles in civic, economic and military areas

  • Before the war, one’s background and proletarian consciousness was important for party membership, replaced with actual talent and efficiency

    • 40% of party membership came from the intelligentsia, and party members with technical skills were sent eastward to organise factories, avoiding the army

• The extremities of war established a closer bond between the old and new members of the party

• Partisan groups, bands of irregular guerilla fighters, fought the Germans behind enemy lines

  • At one point, they occupied 10% of German forces

The social and economic impact on Russian civilians

Isaac Deutscher

Helene Carrere D’Encausse

Richard Overy

• “Stalin artificially boosted the nationalist emotion as a matter of policy…Hosts of propagandists followed him with a grotesquely immoderate glorification of Russia’s imperial past”

• “The recovery of production was largely due to the almost superhuman effort of the civilians, especially of the women who almost everywhere took the place of men who were called up”

• “for the Soviet people as they struggled to come to terms with life in an economy where there was little left over for civilians once the forces were equipped and fed. Theirs was an exceptional, brutal form of total war”

What differentiatedHitler’s war

was that it was racial and ideological in its aims, achieving Lebensraum and creating a German empire of racially pure Aryans

Nazi ideology was based on Social Darwinism, as nations were involved in a struggle for survival in which only the fittest survive

For the Aryan race to succeed, its blood stock needed to be kept pure from

• Nazi policies developed to identify several impurities

  • Non-Aryan racial types such as Slavs and Gypsies

  • Handicapped people and the mentally ill

  • Homosexuals and other sexual deviants

  • Jews

What is the historiographical debate around the motivations behind the Holocaust

• The Intentionalists

  • Believe that Hitler always intended to exterminate the Jewish race and began putting his plans into practice from 1933

  • Early victories put more Jews under his control, fulfilling this aim

  • Evidence includes

    • Hitler’s Mein Kampf

    • Consistency of anti-Jewish rhetoric

    • Increase in pressure against Jews in the 1930s

    • 1939 speech threatening to end all Jews

• The Structuralists

  • Argue that Hitler did not start with the intention to destroy the Jews

  • As the war went on, the Nazi Party became radicalised and spun out of control, leading to the Holocaust

  • Evidence includes

    • Attempts at Jewish emigration in the late 1930s

    • The problem of what to do with Jews after early victories in Europe

    • The desire for Nazi leaders to work towards the Fuhrer

Why was anti-semitism not unique to Nazism, but had been apart of European history for thousands of years

• Jews were Christ-killers and persecution was justified by Christians

• After the Roman expulsion of Jews from Palestine in 70 AD, Jews sought refuge across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

  • Some gradually assimilated, while others remained culturally separate

  • Jews were excluded from various activities, such as the church, army and police, and could only participate in commerce as moneylenders

  • Jews had historically been scapegoats, blamed for the Black Death, disappearing children and German defeat in WWI

Although Hitler’s support rose during the early 1930s, it was not because of anti-semitism, but rather the desperation caused by the depression and the hope that the Nazis provided for the future

Regardless, anti-semitic measures were introduced before the outbreak of the war

• Anti-Jewish measures caused inconvenience and were humiliating, such as exclusion from parks and buses

• This expanded to include professions such as doctors, teachers and lawyers

• The 1935 Nuremberg Laws denied Jews German citizenship and forbade marital or sexual relationships between Aryans and Jews

• November 1938 Kristallnacht saw Jews all across Germany be attacked and sent to concentration camps

The conquest of Poland in 1939 presented the problem of 3 million Jews

How did the Nazis deal with Jews from occupied territories?

• Jews from Austria and Moravia were sent to Poland

• In November 1939, Polish Jews were forced to wear the Star of David

• The General Government area of Poland was run by Hans Frank

  • SS killing groups, known as Einsatzgruppen, murdered around 15,000 Polish Jews by December 1939

• In 1940, medieval style ghettos were established in Polish cities such as Warsaw and Lodz to separate Jews from non-Jewish society

  • Conditions were atrocious, as thousands of people were crammed in small areas

    • Warsaw contained 450,000 people

  • In 1943, a Jewish protest rising in the Warsaw Ghetto was brutally suppressed, survivors sent to concentration camps

  • Food supplies were poor, medical facilities non-existent and thousands died from starvation and disease

German successes in western Europe brought Jews there, although numbers were smaller than Eastern Europe, and sent to death camps

How did the Vichy regime in France deal with their Jewish population?

• Vichy regime in France passed anti-Semitic laws and set up a Ministry of Jewish Affairs in March 1941

  • In July 1942, 13,000 Parisian Jews were rounded up by French police and herded into a cycling stadium, the Velodrome d’Hiver, and all died in Nazi death or concentration camps

When Germany invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa, they conquered areas inhabited by millions of Jews

The Einsatzgruppen followed the German army, with the intent to exterminate the Jews. How was this done on the Eastern Front?

• These areas were inhabited by millions of Jews, and the Einsatzgruppen followed the German army

  • In September, 33,000 people were killed in ‘one action’ at babi Yar near Kiev

  • Nazis were often assisted by local non-Jewish population

• However, Einsatzgruppen methods were inefficient, time-consuming and distressing for those taking part, calling need for new solution

• Goering requested Heydrich present a plan that would resolve the Jewish problem in Germany

  • Before 1942, the Nazis had begun experimenting with various gassing methods

    • Sealed trucks crammed with prisoners were filled with carbon monoxide

    • Chelmno and Belzec concentration camps begun using poisonous gasses

What was the Final Solution?

Who came up with it, when and where was it implemented?

• In January 1942, a group of top party officials met Heydrich at Wannsee to seek a final solution of the Jews by gassing them

  • Blueprints were made for the gas chambers, crematoria and number of Jews to be exterminated

• In 1942, extermination camps were built in Poland at Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka, and Jews were later deported to new larger camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau

• By the middle of 1943, death camps were in full-swing

What was the process of exterminating the Jews?

• Jews were cleared out of Eastern Europe ghettos with no choice, but Jews in western Europe paid their own fares, believing they were being resettled

  • Jewish leaders often decided who could leave first

• Jews were herded onto cattle trucks, often taking days to reach death camps

  • On arrival, SS guards would scream Jews to get out of trucks, removing dead bodies first

  • Lining up, Jews would be examined by an SS doctor

    • If they appeared young, strong and healthy, they were selected to work

    • If they appeared old, sick, lame or pregnant, they would be sent to be gassed

      • Forced to undress, they were ordered to line up to shower, sometimes hundreds at a time

      • Each gas chamber had a small metal grill, dropping pellets of Zyklon B gas inside

      • After fifteen minutes, the door would open and Jewish volunteer prisoners would extract the bodies

      • Taken to the crematoria to be incinerated

Once it became apparent that the war was lost, Adolf Eichmann ensured that valuable resources were made available to ship Jews than used by the army

How did this impact the final outcome of the war?

• The SS increased killing dramatically, between May and June 1944 half a million Hungarian jews were deported

• By the end of the war, the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews

The camps were extremely efficient, as nothing was allowed to go to waste

What were other uses for the camps, apart from labour and death?

• The camps were extremely efficient, as nothing was allowed to go to waste

  • Gold fillings and remaining jewellery were extracted from the dead

  • Human hair was shaved and kept

  • All possessions were kept for reuse

• The camps in the east were also used for perverted medical science experiments, particularly by Josef Mengele known as the ‘angel of death’

  • Injected diseases to trace the progress of infection, subject to intense cold or intense air pressure

  • Experimented on twins to try and learn how to clone

Although the Jews were personal victims of Nazi barbarism, they were not the only victims

• Gypsies were viewed very poorly by the Nazis

  • They were not racially German and risked polluting the bloodline

  • Their lifestyle was not productive and anti-social, excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft

  • By 1945, the Nazis had murdered 200,000 Gypsies

• The Nazis put much effort into identifying homosexuals

  • Over 15,000 German homosexuals were sent to the camps

  • In the camps they were forced to wear a pink triangle, easily targeted by guards and inmates alike

  • Ironically, many Nazis were homosexuals themselves, like Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA

  • Michael Burleigh: “This explains why the Gestapo agency responsible for their repression coupled homosexuality with abortion, since both had deleterious effects on the birth rate”

  • Estimates of murdered homosexuals range from 10,000 to 600,000, as many would have been classified as Jewish or communist

• The mentally ill and handicapped were also targeted through the euthanasia program, known as Operation T4

  • Collected and sent to one of six special facilities throughout Germany, where they were gassed using pure carbon monoxide gas

  • Although stopped temporarily by the Catholic Church, it resumed in 1942

  • By the end of the war, 275,000 handicapped people were killed

The Holocaust

William S Shirer

Israel Gutman

Ian Kershaw

Daniel Goldhagen

• “The Jews and the Slavic people were the Untermenschen - subhumans. To Hitler they had no right to live, except as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the mines as slaves of their German masters”

• “Everyday was filled with unbearable tension…the constant threat of being sent to the gas chambers, either for some ‘misdemeanour’ or because of illness or weakness”

• “Hitler had raised hopes which encouraged pressure for radical action from his subordinates”

• “The vast majority of the German people to understand, assent to and, when possible, to do their part to further the extermination of the Jews…an enormous number of ordinary, representative Germans became…Hitler’s willing executioners”