World War II Written Assesment

What was the Nuremberg Laws (When)

1935

“Only persons of ‘German blood’ were Reich citizens, Jews were considered untermensch

• Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour: marriage or intimate relatons between Jews and Germans is forbidden

Stripped Jews of their civil rights

What was Kristallnacht (When/other name)

Night of Broken Glass (November 9-10 1938)

Using as a pretext the assassination of Ernst Von Rath, a German diplomat in Paris, by a distraught Jewish youth names Herschel Grynzpan, whose parents has been deported from Germany, the Nazis carried out a large-scale program (organized violent riot against helpless people). Nazi police in Germany and Austria were ordered to burn and destroy Jewish synagogues, shops and homes, as well as arrest individual Jews.

What was the name of the German in Paris who was killed, causing Kristallnacht?

Ernst Von Rath

What was the name of the Jew killed the German, causing Kristallnacht?

Herschel Grynzpan

How many people died in the Holocaust?

6 million European Jews

What was “The Final Solution”?

Extermination Camps had been set up across Nazi occupied territory where all Jews were to be shipped.

What did “The final solution” aim to do?

This industrialized mass slaughter was designed to systematically annihilate the Jewish race.

When was Auschwitz designed as an extermination camp?

In 1942, Auschwitz and 5 other camps were designated as extermination camps.

How were Jews killed in Auschwitz?

• Gas chambers were set up where Jews were forced inside under the pretence of having a shower. The prisoners were locked in a room, and Zyklon B gas was released, killing everyone inside.

• The gas was then pumped out, the bodies were removed (which would take up to four hours), gold fillings in their teeth were extracted with pliers by dentist prisoners, and women's hair was cut. The floor of the gas chamber was cleaned, and the walls whitewashed. This work was done by Jewish prisoners who hoped to buy themselves a few extra months of life.

• At first, the bodies were buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, they were dug up and burned in crematoria.

  
  

When did Himmler order that buried bodies from extermination camps be burned in crematoria?

Between September and November 1942

What was the “death march”

Although the prisoners were already weak or ill after enduring the routine violence, overwork, and starvation of concentration camp life, they were marched for tens of miles in the snow to railway stations; then transported for days at a time without food, water or shelter in freight carriages originally designed for cattle. On arrival at their destination, they were then forced to march again to the new camp. Any prisoners who were unable to keep up due to fatigue or illness were immediately and summarily executed by gunshot.

What is the Holocaust as a four step process? (SOCE)

1. Stripping Jews of their civil rights

2. Organizing Jews in ghettos - took poor people out and put Jewish people there

3. Concentration Camps - moved Jews out of ghettos and used them for labour 

4. Extermination Camps - moved surviving Jews here to be killed

What is the process of annihilating jews (3)

Definition (Define who is jewish) (indications: looks, last names) (criteria)

Concentration (remove them from society) (concentrate them in specific areas)

Annihilation (Kill them)

Who was Heinrich Himmler?

SS Officer

Oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Gestapo. He was one of the principal architects of the Holocaust as overseer of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (literally: task forces, often used as killing squads).

Coordinated the killing of some six million Jews(5 million additional other people), between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live or simply "in the way", including homosexuals, and people with physical and mental disabilities.

Who was Reinhar Heydrich

Himmler’s right hand man

• Came up with the idea to make ghettos

Recommended concentrating all the Polish Jews in ghettos in major cities, where they would be put to work for the German war industry. The ghettos would be in cities located on railway junctions, so that, in Heydrich's words, "future measures can be accomplished more easily.“ (could move Jews more easily without attention)

From ___ to ____, starvation and disease killed hundreds of thousands of Jews crowded in ghettos and the first concentration camps.

1940, 1942

By what year were Jews required to wear the Star of David as a means of identification?

By 1941

When did Heinrich Himmler order the start of deportations to ghettos?

on July 19, 1942

Adolf Hitler birthday, location, country

Born: April 20th, 1889

Location: The Gasthof zum Pommer Inn

Country: Austria

Who was Adolf Hitler’s father?

Alois

When and what school was Adolf Hitler rejected from?

Hitler left for Vienna and was twice rejected for enrolment at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907 and 1908). The institution claimed that he had an “unfitness for painting.”

How was Hitler involved in WWI?

Hitler served as a runner on the Western Front throughout the war. He was never promoted beyond the rank of private first class, supposedly because his superiors thought he lacked leadership skills.

Hitler was involved in the Battle of Ypres, Somme, and Passchendaele.

He received two Iron Crosses for bravery. (decorated soldier)

How did Hitler come across the NAZI party?

In 1919, Hitler was working as a police spy. He was assigned to infiltrate a new (and very small) political party called the German Workers' Party

What is the NAZI party’s official name?

National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI).

• Took “NA” from National

• Took “ZI” from Socialist

What policies did the NAZI party support?

The party`s platform was very nationalistic, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist, and anti-communist.

What member of the NAZI party was Hitler? (Number/positon)

Hitler joins the party (55th member) and quickly establishes himself as the leader.

What is the Beer Hall Putsch? +when/where

Attempted coup

In 1923, Hitler and his cronies and captured members of the governing body. The next day, Hitler and company marched on the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government.

Hitler is arrested and sentenced to 5 years in jail.

The coup is broken up by police and 14 NAZIs are killed, and 4 cops were killed.

• Captured, Hiter arrested and sentenced to 5 years in jail.

• Aldof Hitler uses his trial (he takes the stand) to promote his ideology and becomes somewhat of a folk hero.

• He only serves 9 months

How did Hitler campaign for Chacellor?

• Hitler uses violence and terror to break up community gatherings, to abuse Jews and to intimidate anyone who dare oppose the Nazi party.

• He campaigns on a promise to restore law and order to Germany, even though it was his thugs who were creating the lawlessness and disorder. 

• Hitler builds a private army called the SA (of 1 million young angry men)

When was Hitler elected as the chancellor of Germany?

Elected in 1933

What was the Enabling act and what did it do?

Hitler held a parliamentary election to vote on the this act, which would give the Chancellor the powers of a Dictator

• Hitler’s SA paramilitary barred many of Hitler’s opponents from entering the building to vote

• Hitler wins the vote and becomes the Dictator (stops them from entering, or beats/threatens them into voting yes)

• In 1934, Hitler officially transfers all power to the head of state and took the title of Führer (leader)

Who was Ava Braun?

Lifelong mistress and for a brief period, Adolf Hitler’s wife. She met Hitler when she was 17 and he was 40. They were together for 15 years. 

Who was Dr. Josef Mengele?

“The Angel of Death”

Physician at Auschwitz (Nazi Extermination Camp) - Industrial killing compound

Joined the SS in 1938. In 1942, was wounded on the Russian front and pronounced unfit for duty. After that, he volunteered to go to concentration camps as a doctor, was sent to the death camp, Auschwitz.

Supervided the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed, who was to become a forced labourer, and who was to be used to perform human experiments .

How was Dr. Josef Mengele disturbing?

Mengele injected chemicals into the eyes of children in an attempt to change their eye color.

He experimented on the physical and psychological; experimental surgeries were performed without an anesthetic, transfusions of blood from one twin to another, isolation endurance, and reaction to various stimuli. He made injections with lethal germs, sex change operations, the removal of organs and limbs, iand ncestuous impregnations.

His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, and various amputations and other brutal surgeries.

The survivors tell how, as children in Auschwitz, they were visited by a smiling "Uncle Mengele" who brought them candy and clothes.

Despite international efforts to track him down, he was never apprehended and lived for 35 years hiding under various aliases. He lived in Paraguay and Brazil until his death in 1979.

What is the SS?

Schutzstaffel (Protective Echelon)

• Served as Hitler’s guards

• A Shield Squadron that had men on the front lines, working as political police, and operating the Death Camps

What is the Gestapo?

Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

• Official secret police of Nazi Germany

• It was administered by Himmler and the SS

What are the reasons Hitler was supported?

(Some Find School Rather Interesting When Playing)

1. STRONG man: In charge - Solve Germany’s problems

2. FEAR: many supported Hitler out of fear - ie. Hitler’s private army of Storm Troopers paraded through the streets - broke up Political meetings - SS and Gestapo were everywhere

3. SCAPEGOATS: Hitler gave Germans “Scape goats” to blame for problems- especially Jews and Communists

4. RACIAL PURITY: Hitler preached the Aryan/Master Race theme - Jews and Slavs and other minioities were undermench - underman/inferior/inpure aliens

5. INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKER: became a brilliant/hypnotic speaker - nazi rallies - colourful parades - rousing marching songs - ritualistic symbols - people thought that they were part of something huge and powerful

6. WORK: Hitler put people back to work - kept his promise - new roads, bridges, guns, tanks, planes - young men flock to army

7. PROPAGANDA: brainwashing the public - had his own Minsiter of Propaganda - Josef Goebbels