14. Third Reich: expansion, war and genocide

Germany community

• Volksgemeinschaft; racially defined German people community

• Construction of a racially based peoples community - excluded those considered inferior

• Most Germans accepted the racialisation of society

However:

• Persecution of people didn’t start with mass violence, It happened step by step as they were pushed towards the margins of society; Jews isolated by mid 1930s

• 12 years isnt a long time to radicalise a society - happened fairly quickly

• Lots of Germans didn’t like the physical violence (Kaplan)

• Hitlers ideological vision 'race and space'

• Legal, political and economic isolation/persecution happening prior to actual mass violence.

lebensraum

• Notion of expansion; space for Aryan Germans to live

• Crucial component of Nazi imperial and racist vision

• Both Lebensraum and Volksgemeinschaft were intertwined and correlated, both need to be taken together to understand Nazi notion

• Germany people needed to expand out; was not first a Nazi notion

  • These ideas were around by 19th century and was thrown around by German philosophers, expanding eastwards which was imagined as empty, behind, barbaric lands.

    • Right to settle; colonial mindset

• Those 'inferior' which already occupy these eastlands must be pushed away and become slaves, they must be eradicated to a full degree.

war + genocide

• WW1 + Holocaust = hard to understand genocide without taking the war into account.

• Murder of Eu Jews need to be understood within the context

• Mass killing of over 12M civilians, including 6 million Jews, Soviet POWs, mentally and physically disabled, Sinti + Roma and other groups seen as a threat to Nazi regime

Germany Expansion:

• March 11–13, 1938: Nazi Germany annexed Austria (Anschluss); most Austrians enthusiastic: starts relatively peacefully, most Austrians were happy

  • After the war, they attempt to showcase themselves as first victims of Germans

• September 29–30, 1938: Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, Czechoslovakia surrenders its border regions (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany. 

  • Czechoslovakia a lot of them wanted to join into Germany due to the German minorities that were already situated in such areas.

  • Hitler pretends to protect these minorities, threatening war in the land which isn't surrendered.

• March 15, 1939:  Nazi Germany invades and occupies the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.

Motov-Ribbentrop Pact:

• August 23 1939, Germany + Soviet union signed a non-aggressive pact, a secret protocol pact dividing eastern Europe into sphere of influence.

  • Both Hitler + Stalin was playing into their own political needs

  • Signed to prevent hostility between the 2 countries

  • Each take 1/2 of Poland and other east

beginning of WW2

• September 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe.

• Referred to as Blitzkrieg “lightning war.”

  • TO SHOCK THE OPPONENT - tactical move, allowing country to be overrun quickly

  • Targeted civilians, attacking anyone regardless of heritage

• September 3, 1939:  Honoring their guarantee of Poland’s borders, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

• Occupying Poland - Germany had a larger Jewish population under their regime; unsure what to do with this =

  • Establishment of Ghettos, Warsaw Ghetto, some were small, some were big, some existed long term/short term

  • Jews lived in horrendous circumstances in these ghettos - sick, starved, disease ridden

  • More jews died in Warsaw ghetto than those deported from France

• Only basic offensive preparations

• Confetti war - Britain

• First part of the war is seen as a sitting war

• 1940 - Took Denmark then Norway, most Danish Jews were rescued and shipped off to Sweden

  • Resistance movement that continues to fight Germany for a couple of months

• Germany goes towards to France - defeated quickly, forced France to sign Armistice, forced to occupy north of France

• July 10 1940- Oct, "Battle of Britain"

  • British soldiers leave France, returning for the landing of the Normandy

  • German shift attention to British cities such as London

  • UK does it back; Hitler underestimated Royal air force, lost 300 of their fleets, only half of UK

• 1941: Hitler then looks to Soviet union: more interested in gaining territories in the East, so different ideology when attempting to fight

German Jews → Eastern European Jews

• The Nazi government issued 55 new anti-Jewish laws and decrees in 1939, 101 in 1940, 135 in 1941, and 169 in 1942

  • Unable to visit a cinema, beach, etc

  • Further excluded them from society

• Jews had to move to so-called Judenhäuser (Jewish houses), by 1943, most of the few remaining Jews lived in such Judenhäuser

• Jews faced desperate living conditions, received reduced rations, and were subjected to forced labour.

• Systematic deportations to camps and ghettos in occupied Poland, the Baltic states, and Belorussia began in the fall of 1941

  • Forced into force labour

  • Persecution of German Jews began in 1941

Mass shootings:

• Following invasion of Soviet 1941, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen SS units, moved behind German lines to murder Jews and Roma in mass shootings

  • Hitler, Oct'41 "By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service," - justifying such actions

• Nazi propaganda showcased Jews responsible for the war

Babi Yar:

• In September and October 1941 members of the SS killing unit (Einsatzgruppe) with the active participation of the Wehrmacht murdered over 50,000 Jews in the ravine Babi Yar near Kiev, 33,000 of them during the last two days of September alone.

  • Ordinary soldiers even were involved.

Holocaust by Bullets:

• More than 1.5M Jews killed in mass shootings

• Mass shooting of Jews + others continued throughout the war, many conducted by militarised battalions of the German order police

  • Play little role in the representation of the Holocaust

war against Soviet

Germans start to have logistical problems:

• Huge territories, supplies were stretched

• The axis troops advanced to Leningrad

• Siege of Leningrad lasted 890 days, the blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history.

• Nazi invasion of the SU was incredibly violent.

• “War of annihilation”- (Vernichtungskrieg)

• Twenty million people died in Russia (soldiers fighting on the front, Jews who were singled out and murdered in Russian towns, local government officials, and millions of ordinary Russian citizens)

• Estimated that at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million who were captured (shot, deliberately starved, worked to death, or killed in concentration camps)

• Soviet POWs seen as racially inferior and expendable; considered to be subhuman.

• Soviet prisoners of War are a largely forgotten victim of Nazi violence.

  • Seemed like a forgotten factor of Nazi violence

Generalplan Ost (General plan east)

• Plan for ethnic cleansing on a vast scale

• Settlement of Germans in the conquered Lebensraum and the reduction of the native population through death or expulsion

  • Resettlement of people they considered German or with German origins

  • Moving around people as an attempt to remove and ostracise those who lived in occupied regions

  • Continuities in imperial thinking + Nazi violence

• Nazi expansionist policy can be seen in a colonial framework:

Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire. German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler, New York 2011; Dirk van Laak, Über alles in der Welt. Deutscher Imperialismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, München 2005. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire. Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, London 2008; Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine,Chapel Hill 2005.

• continuities between German colonial practices in Eastern Europe during World War I and Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe

  • Those engaged in the conquest and occupation of territories used imperial language

    • Called Ukrainians the N word and considered Eastern Europe as their own 'India'

extermination camps

• Nazis had already used gassing as a means of killing disabled people (T-4 campaign)

  • Due to them being considered as 'evil' or 'non-German' (propaganda showcases disabled people as undeserving and used up too much finance of the government

• From 1941 the method was applied to Soviet Prisoners of War and to Jews.

•  In 1941 the SS began using mobile wagons outfitted for gassing, trying to ramp up the kill rate. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment.

  • There were few survivors

•  From December 1941 Jews from the Lodz area of German-occupied Poland as well as Roma were deported to the concentration camp Chelmno in German-occupied Poland where they were killed there in gas vans.

  • Nazis tried to cover their tracks

• Spring of 1942: the concentration camp established at Majdanek in 1941 was adapted to become an extermination camp

• Adopted gas techniques from Euthanasia research

• Camps had low survival rates

  • Testimonies gaine from those who were prisoners who aided in disposing victims

  • Lack of evidence as Nazis were eager to destroy evidence from these places left behind

• Jews were deported to extermination camps, most were killed instantly upon arrival

  • Few number of Jews kept for forced labour -> until weak

  • Starvation and disease was significant throughout the camps - caused deaths

Collaboration:

• Nazis relied on the collaboration of the local population across Europe to deport the local Jewish populations

• Germany's European Axis partners cooperated with the Nazi regime by enforcing anti-Jewish legislation

• In some places fascist paramilitary organizations terrorized, robbed, and murdered Jews, either under German guidance or on their own initiative.

•  In most places local military personnel and police played a key role in the expropriation, concentration, and deportation of Jews

  • Mainly a German story, but European as their was collaboration

Wannsee Conference 1942: many people had already died before this

• January 20, 15 high ranking Nazi and government officials met at a villa in Wannsee Berlin to coordinate the implementation of what they termed the 'final solution of the Jewish question'

  • Not the starting point of the genocide, but the start where violent tactics were confirmed as being implemented

  • Implementation as the final solution for their 'burden'

• No officials objected the plan at the meeting

Stalingrad 1943 + D day Normandy 1944

• Surrounded by Russian armies, German forces surrendered to Russian late Jan 1943

• In response; Goebbels 'total war speech' in Berlin.

  • Delivered to handpicked loyalists, called for total wars to secure victory over Germans

  • Combination of Jewish people being perceived as just evil and the reason

D Day 6 June 1944: Normandy

• German strategy turns defensive

• Allies forces move into France + Belgium (free them basically) after the successful D-Day

  • Advance into Germany

  • Soviet were successful in East into Germany

  • Germany losing on two fronts

  • During advances; dead bodies are seen everywhere, discovery of concentration camps + Genocide

20 July plot + Hitler death

• German military leadership are aware Germany is failing, world doesn’t look fondly at them due to crimes committed, serious trouble awaits

• Earlier supported the regime, but want to salvage Germany from complete destruction

• On 20 July 1944: Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler,

  • Assassination attempt fails, they are killed

  • Minor crimes evidently cause big punishments during this era (ordinary Germans shot for listening to radio)

• Allies continue to build resistance within German cities through propaganda

Death:

• April 1945:  Hitler, along with his wife Eva Braun commits suicide.

• German armed forces surrender unconditionally in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945.

• Hitler used to said if Germany fails to win, Germany will not live

  • Most destructive conflict in European history

who did Nazis target in pre war then during 2nd war

• Targeted Jews (started like 1930 ish with propaganda, then nuremburg laws in 1934, isolated them in camps), disabled people (cost the state money apparently in propaganda), people that werent considered worthy of being aryan (alcoholics, prostitutes, mentally ill, chronic-unemployment, poverty), those against the Nazi regime (leaders of other parties like Communists, people who spoke up like the White rose group).

• Was sterilising disabled people, euthanasia.

• Believed that through sterilisation - the new generation wont have these 'problems' (physical, mental, drug, homelessness) Nazis considered genetic and could be passed down families. This racial attitude drove such a belief.

• It was being normalised - disabled people were mainly ethnically German, hence T4 being extremely unpopular (how far can Nazis get away with this until other larger groups are targeted).

• Soviet Communists, soviet prisoners of war (first to get killed) Slavic element.

 

• Why did they target these groups?

  • They targeted Jews as they believed they needed to 'cleanse Europe'. Felt that they stabbed Germany in the back with WW1 (propaganda showcases Germans believing they were behind the financial market + controlled it, led to Germany’s economic downfall), East European Slavs + Roma people as they were not the 'true master race'.

  • Jewish people in Poland were less assimilated like German Jews; easier to identify to a degree.

    • Mass shooting in the forests - first target: anyone with a political/cultural position - elites (anybody who seems like a somebody, attempts to destroy resistance by destroying the most visible members of the Polish elites).

    • Most German Jews evacuated to Poland before Germany went there: Nazis continue to catch up to this (nazi ideology of constant expansion).

 

• How did the reasons for persecution and mechanism of persecution differ between groups?

  • Poland is cut in half, half of it is incorporated into the Reich -> push people into trains into the eastern area that lacked infrastructure, then left them across the border -> idea of camp ignites.

  • The area of Poland in the Reich was used for the Lebensraum: people migrating into Poland and living there, lots of Germans came and settled (like large German minorities that have just been left there after the treaty of Versailles).

 

nazis actions were a continuation of 19th-century German colonialism?

• Nazis progressed the nationalist, racist view which placed them as the superior, most civilised race - in opposition to those they saw as backwards, inferior 'other'.

• This was done heavily in regions they had power over prior to WW1 (like Southwest Africa, East Africa etc)

• Herero and Nama Genocide: 1904 issue of killing of every male, while driving women and children into starvation in the desert (80K indigenous people killed)

  • Prisoners held in concentration camps, enslaved to German businesses where many died of illness:

  • Showcases the violence of colonial war and genocidal tendencies

• Could be considered a prelude to the Holocaust, however Nazism imperial project was mainly intertwined with an obscure racial hierarchy.

1. Continuation with them seeming superior to other nations - led them to justify the violence. Genocide of the Herero and Nama -> could be considered similar to European Jews) connection between Nazi violence + military and genocidal violence in colonial settings.

2. Colonialism as first was mainly done for economic gain and to seem superior to other nations, Nazi ideology was mainly due to racial belief and the idea of 'cleansing Europe' to have

3. Continuation but colonialism was due to mainly economic gain and to seem equal in terms of superiority with other European nations, whereas nazi ideology was more racial to expand German authority

Doris Bergen, concise history of the holocaust, 2024

The destruction of dignity and identity was central to Nazi persecution, yet resistance existed in many forms across Europe, while the final years of the war saw continued radicalisation of violence even as Germany was losing.

• Nazi persecution often began by stripping victims of dignity and gender identity, humiliating both men and women → Jews in hiding were often children or girls, as boys/men could be identified through circumcision.

• Resistance should be defined broadly as intentional actions aimed at undermining Nazi goals, even if small or ineffective.

• Acts included intelligence gathering, information transmission, and moral protest, not only armed rebellion.

• Jewish resistance was significant but often downplayed by Nazi propaganda.

• Jews fought in many Allied armies, especially the Soviet Red Army.

• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed armed Jewish resistance despite limited resources (fewer than 500 fighters initially).

Resistance inside Germany

• Opposition increased later in the war as defeat became clear.

• The White Rose, led by figures such as Sophie Scholl, spread leaflets exposing Nazi crimes.

War destruction and mobilisation

• Allied bombing (especially by the RAF and USAAF) killed up to 500,000 German civilians and destroyed millions of homes.

• War production still expanded due to mass forced labour (300,000 in 1939 → ~7.5 million by 1944).

Radicalisation despite defeat

• Even as Germany lost the war, Nazi leadership prioritised the Holocaust over military strategy (e.g., deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz).

• Camps were evacuated and prisoners forced on death marches as the Allies advanced.

Final phase of the regime

• Hitler mobilised desperate measures like the Volkssturm (men aged 15–60).

• The Nero Decree aimed to destroy resources rather than let them fall to the enemy.

• Nazi leadership continued blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat

Mary Fulbrook, consise history of germany, 2007 on Hololcaust, resistance, foreign policy

Hitler’s foreign policy aims

• Hitler’s goals were outlined in Mein Kampf:

  • Revise the Treaty of Versailles

  • Unite Germany with Austria

  • Turn Czechoslovakia and Poland into dependent states

  • Defeat France, then expand east to conquer Russia for Lebensraum.

Foreign policy expansion (1933–1936)

• Nazi policy combined rearmament with diplomatic manoeuvres:

  • Withdrawal from the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

  • Anglo-German Naval Agreement allowed Germany to expand its navy.

  • Remilitarization of the Rhineland gained domestic popularity and little foreign resistance.

• The Four Year Plan aimed to prepare Germany economically and militarily for war.

War and racial expansion

• Hitler sought Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and a racially pure Volksgemeinschaft.

• Jews were excluded from the national community after 1933 and targeted for removal.

Development of the Holocaust

• Early policy focused on forced emigration and deportation.

• After the Operation Barbarossa, mass shootings by mobile killing units escalated violence.

• The Wannsee Conference formalised plans for systematic extermination in death camps.

Responsibility and German society

• Hitler created the ideological climate for genocide, but the Holocaust cannot be explained by his leadership alone.

• Many Germans facilitated or tolerated persecution, while others chose to ignore it because it did not directly affect them.

Christopher Browning, the Nazi empire

Nazi expansion and genocide in Eastern Europe developed from a combination of ideological antisemitism, imperial ambitions in the East, and earlier German experiences of occupation and violence, rather than from antisemitism alone.

Origins in World War I occupation

• Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius argues that German rule in Ober Ost shaped later Nazi policies.

• German authorities tried to control and “civilize” the region through Kulturpolitik, aiming to discipline and reorganise local populations.

• After defeat in 1918, many Germans felt cheated of their eastern empire, shifting thinking from “cultivating peoples” to racial conquest of space.

Postwar violence and radicalisation

• Freikorps violence in Eastern Europe after WWI reflected anti-Bolshevism, imperial ambitions, and resentment over defeat, foreshadowing Nazi brutality.

Antisemitism before Nazism

• Jews were highly assimilated and legally equal in Imperial Germany.

• Antisemitic parties had limited electoral success, suggesting the Holocaust cannot be explained simply by long-standing popular antisemitism.

Hitler’s ideological antisemitism

• Adolf Hitler saw Jews as a parasitic force threatening nations biologically and politically.

• He believed Jews were responsible for liberalism, Christianity, and Marxism, making their destruction necessary.

War, empire, and genocide

• Nazi expansion eastward aimed at Lebensraum and racial domination over Slavs and Jews.

• The war against the Soviet Union became a racial and ideological war, producing genocidal policies.

Radical racial policies

• Before the war, Nazi racial policy included mass sterilisation of “undesirables” (over 300,000 people).

• Nazi leadership anticipated enormous death tolls in the East; plans envisioned tens of millions of Jews and Slavs dying during German conquest.

The Jewish question as a sworld problem, 1941 - Alfred Rosenberg - primary source

• Propaganda has obviously fuelled such Germans into believing Jews collectively control international finance, government (UK, France, USA), the press, diplomacy and culture.

• Jews are a single group manipulating world events (like WW1, Versailles)

• Zionism was used to dominate others

• Blamed Jews for Germany defeat - enslaving them economically with Versailles

• Nazi Nuremberg Laws was 'biological cleansing' as Jewish influence was destroyed in 1933

• WW2 is a racial war to cleanse Europe, benefiting all civilised races

Joseph goebbels, now, people, rise up and let the storm winds blow 1943

• Admits Stalingrad was a blow of fate, but it persuades Germany to fight harder, surrender is unthinkable.

• German people are united behind hitler, the government and people are one

• People are deluded saying yes to 'total war'

• Wants women to enter full war labour, absolute obedience, 10-14 hour workdays, acceptance of harsher living conditions - every aspect of civilian life is subordinate