Consequences of Inaction: Genocide and the Holocaust

Flashcards reviewing the causes, events, and key figures of the Holocaust, based on lecture notes.

What is the UN definition of Genocide?

Any acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, including killing, causing harm, inflicting destructive conditions, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children.

What was the Holocaust?

The systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

What was the Nazi's belief about race?

A hierarchy of races, with Germans of Aryan descent at the top.

What was the key idea of Nazi policy known as Volksgemeinschaft?

The creation of a society containing healthy, pure Aryans all working together for the good of the state.

Who did the 'Associals' include and what happened to them?

Beggars, criminals, and alcoholics who were rounded up in 1933 and sent to concentration camps.

Why were homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis?

They were brutally persecuted as they were seen to go against the laws of nature and a threat to Nazi goals of increasing the population.

What happened to the mentally ill and physically disabled under the Nazi regime?

Sterilization was made compulsory for the hereditary ill, later changed to 'mercy killings'.

Who were some of the ideological opponents to Nazism?

Socialists and communists.

Which non-Aryan groups were targeted by the Nazis?

Roma, Jews, and Black people.

Which group faced the most systematic discrimination?

They faced the most systematic discrimination and persecution from 1933 onwards.

What did Hitler blame the Jews for?

Germany's problems since 1919, including defeat in WWI, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression.

What was the result of Hitler's hatred of jews?

Hitler's determination to eliminate them from German society led to a series of anti-Jewish laws passed between 1933-1939

What was the aim of the relentless propaganda campaign launched by Goebbels?

To convince the German people of the inferiority of Jewish people and persuade them that anti-Jewish laws were acceptable and necessary.

What was Kristallnacht?

Attacks on Jews on November 9-10, 1938, triggered by the assassination of a German official in Paris by a young Polish Jew.

What role did the SA (Brown Shirts) play?

They played a key role in helping Hitler gain power by providing protection for Nazi rallies and attacking political opponents.

What role did the SS play?

They acted as Hitler's bodyguard and later played a key role in carrying out the genocide of Jews in concentration camps.

What did the Einsatzgruppen do?

They carried out killings of Jews during the invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union.

How did the outbreak of WWII affect the Jews?

The Nazis no longer had to worry about international opinion regarding their actions.

What were ghettos?

Walled-off areas of towns where Jews were forced to live under appalling conditions.

Who were the Einsatzgruppen?

They were Schutzstaffel (SS) death squads set up for killings in newly occupied territories.

What was the Final Solution?

The mass murder of all Jews under German control, decided at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

How did the Nazi State contribute to the Holocaust?

Totalitarian nature where obedience was expected and violence was used to maintain control and Relentless anti-Semitic propaganda.

Who was Joseph Goebbels?

Head of Nazi propaganda, used media to spread anti-Semitism, orchestrated Kristallnacht.

Who was Heinrich Himmler?

Ran the SS, put in charge of carrying out the Final Solution.

Who was Reinhard Heydrich?

Organized the ghettos and Einsatzgruppen, led the planning of death camps and gas chambers.

What was the role of WWII in causing the Holocaust?

War brutalized people and made them more able to carry out horrific acts, and without it, the Holocaust may not have happened.