HIST-1103, W12: WW2 in Europe & The Holocaust

Class of July 23rd.

RR: Spring 1942 – Leaflets of the White Rose

What do you think the White Rose group hoped to accomplish by distributing this leaflet?

• Educate the public on what was going on (if I can recall, the world didn’t realize the extent of the mass murder)

• Bring in the concept of race

• Interesting - “But why are we bothering to tell you all this, since you know everything anyway? If you are not aware of these specific crimes, then surely you are aware of equally heinous crimes committed by these terrible subhumans? Because this touches on a question that affects all of us deeply, a question that must make us all stop and think: Why is the German nation behaving so apathetically in the face of all these most abominable, most degrading crimes?”

• Spring 1942 - calling out the German nation to “share the guilt.” Separates the nation from the people inside it, interesting. 

• In bold, the final words: “everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!” 

• Group thoughts - spread awareness, acknowledge what is happening; uni students (radical).

RR: Richard Evans, “Was the Final Solution Unique?” The Third Reich in History and Memory

Why does Evans argue that it is important to compare the Final Solution to “other large-scale historical phenomenon”? What comparisons does Evans make and what are his assessments?

• “Unless we compare it to over events, we cannot establish its uniqueness. Comparison doesn’t mean simply drawing out similarities, it also means isolating differences and weighing up the two.” (p. 365)

• Saying “never again” doesn’t actually do anything, because it concludes the ‘Final Solution’ is meaningless to actually studying and comparing it to the present day

• Starting point is Poland invasion, September 1939. Casualties were more attributed to Soviet goal of social revolution (class grounds vs racial). Conversion and “political neutralisation” in comparison to complete murder.

• Stalin led multiple pop transfers/murders/nasty works - notable genocidal programme being the Ukrainian famine of 1930s (Holodomor)

  • “The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Rights Association sent out a postcard with a picture of a pig, taken from Orwell's Animal Farm, with the words: 'All galleries are equal, but some galleries are more equal than others.” (p. 368)

  • Grain of salt - typhus, inflated numbers, was it actually genocide? So it didn’t target Ukrianians specifically, and therefore not genocide. I think it targeted Ukraine as a whole, “famine broke the will of independent peasants.) (p. 370)

• Nazis set w/ racist eugenics ideology, ethnicity mattered. “Germanization” of populations like parts of west Poland were deemed acceptable

• Lebenstraum, ‘living space’ would require millions to die purposefully (no access to food or medicine) to expand German population and farmland. Did so through forced extermination, through labour. Propaganda included Jews being smart, cunning, and Slavs being in on the “Jewish conspiracy,” such as them being responsible for the miserable 1918 conditions in Germany/international Communism (whereas in reality they were not revolutionaries but nationalists integrated into society and who backed the war effort)

  • Poles were treated bad (see murder, torture, inhuman), but Jews in a particularly humiliating/sadistic manner

  • Comparison to Croatia/Romania, where a religious aspect was used against Jews (spawn of Satan), distinctly different than Nazi antisemitism 

• Hitler’s use of Jews was to justify war, ridding them in Europe was Germany’s way of mastering Europe and then the world. Not only rounded up and dispatched Jews in controlled territories, but tried to convince other countries to give him their Jews to be murdered

  • Total, comprehensive throughallness is distinguishing factor

  • Integral part of the war, backdated to Sept 1/1939. Gypsies and other important leaders like Churchill, Stalin, & Roosevelt integrated into antisemetic campaign to create a ‘genocidal climate’

• Poison gas use was used against nonactive combatants (no parallel, unprecedented)

• Why more important than how: Jews were a “deadly, universal threat to their existence, and must be eliminated ASAP.” 

• Other genocides in the century, like the Young Turks/Armenians in Anatolia. Similarities to Nazis, notably not viewed as part of a world conspiracy/killed in death camps/shooting pits

• Mention of 1994 Tutsi minority genocide by the Hutu in Rwanda. Still regionally limited

THUS, while it was one genocide among many, the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ stood out because of it’s global aims, massive scale, ideologies connected to race.

RR: Sabaton, “Night Witches”

• Read a book called “The Huntress” by Kate Quinn about the night witches

• A bit of a “heroic vibe” I’m not vibing with, even if I think the story is good

• Too glamorized? I wonder what the Night Witches would think of this song.

• Cool that it’s spreading the knowledge of who the Night Witches were, just like I read about them in that book by Kate Quinn

• Maybe because it’s animated it’s more “corny” but after listening more, it’s a decent song, and I see why Sabaton chose to do an “animated story video” instead of releasing just the music.

The Road to War

• Hitler & Mein Kampf - unifying Volk (German people), making Lebensraum from Slavs (inferior) & clearing Jews/Roma (lowest untermenschen)

• Back to food security/economic autarchy 

• German rearming (LON withdraw, non-aggression pact w/ Poland [time play], fuck Versailles treaty, conscription)

Italy attacks Abyssinia, appeased by Fr/UK

• Hitler unconvinced by Western powers (Rhineland Mar 1936) - negotiate, Rome-Berlin Axis Pact 1936

Declare anschluss (unification of Austria/Germany)

German troops march into Sudetenland, 1938 (Neville Chamberlain appeasement)

• 1939, Hitler sends troops into Prague, occupies Czechoslovakia

Beginning of the War, WW2 1939-42

• Nazi-Soviet pact (Aug 1939) - agree to divide Poland

• Britain/France declare war on Germany, September 3rd, 1939

• RIP Poland via Blitzkrieg “lightning warfare”

• British navy blockades Germany

• German forces invade Denmark/Norway, Apr 1940

• Belgium, Netherlands, France May-June 1940. French/British retreat, British evac (Dunkirk)

• Psychological impact - “unstoppable Germany.”

• Pervitin (meth pills OTC) - Blitzed by Norman Ohler (society was running on meth)

Battle of Britain, Germany invades USSR

• Chamberlain replaced by Churchill. Germany bombardment begins, losing 2x planes as British, unable to invade Britain (operation Sea Lion)

• Operation Barbarossa: destroy Russia before winter (June 1941)

• Soviets surprised, big losses Stalin didn’t expect Hitler to violate pact.

• Flaw: Germany overstretched, army doesn’t have enough supplies

• Soviets in business w/ Britain against Germans

• Japanese attack Pearl Harbor Dec 7/1941 (slap in face for US)

Dec 1941 - why so important? (EXAM)

• Nazi advance halted short of Moscow (war of attrition, slow wear down)

• USA in war b/c of Pearl Harbor (World war)

• Hitler & his Jewish conspiracy, Germany on the defensive. Annihilation necessary. 

  • 1942 - Axis Powers control most of Europe/North Africa, unable to defeat Britain/USSR

The ‘Final Solution,’ Jewish pop in Germany

• “Jews would not be safe in Europe” - Zionism

• Anti-Semitism: discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)

  • Hitler & co. would blame Jews for their problems (race, eugenics). Classic antisemitism linked to evil

• Jewish Conspiracy - “stabbed in the back” (Versailles Treaty), Bolshevik Russia, capitalist 

• SS (schutzstaffel) w/ Himmler orchestrates 

  • Gestapo (Nazi secret police)

• German Jews: 1933, <1% pop

  • Middle class, secular, increasingly assimilated (intermarriage rate up to 28%)

  • Made illegal

The Holocaust - Kristallnacht +

• “Perhaps the anti-Semitism of the Nazis is best understood as a reaction to the very success of German-Jewish assimilation.” –Niall Ferguson

• Added to by: social darwinism, Eugenics. Ain’t no mankind, racial hierarchy. Rid the “German Body” of “impurities”

• 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Ger Jews denied citizenship, can’t intermarry, publicly humiliated, boycotted shops

Kristallnacht, 1938

• Jews forbidden to be in business

• Thousands of stores/synagogues destroyed

• Encouraged voluntary emigration