History

Unit 1 The rise of Nazi Germany

You have already learned about World War I. Many factors had led to this war, one of which was Germany's occupation of land due to its growing nationalism. Although Germany was defeated in the war, the Germans were still proud of their country. The Allies blamed Germany for the war and the terms were so harsh that the Weimar Republic (the new name for Germany) had severe problems.

End of World War I; Weimar Republic; Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles (1919), which ended the War, laid down the following peace terms:

1. Germany had to pay for damages caused by the war.

2. Germany lost the land it had occupied before World War I, as well as its four colonies in Africa.

3. Germany was allowed only a reduced, small army and navy and no air force.

4. Germany had to agree that they alone had caused the war, which many Germans thought was unfair.

5 weren't allowed with weapons of Nar

The huge war debt meant that the Weimar Republic struggled financially: prices of goods and services rose and their currency became almost worthless. In 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied Germany's main industrial region - the Ruhr River Valley – because Germany had not paid back their war debt or delivered enough coal or steel. This occupation of the centre of the German coal and steel industries made the German people angry and they stopped working. The result was inflation and unemployment (around 30%) and morale was low. Politically,

the country was divided.

Hitler and the Nazis, 1920s

The National Socialist German Workers' Party, called the Nazi Party, was formed in Munich on 5 January, 1919. Adolph Hitler became the seventh member in that year. By 1921 he was playing a big role in the party. The Nazis made popular promises:

⚫ to create jobs

⚫ to make Germany strong and united

⚫ to resist carrying out the instructions of the Treaty of Versailles.

Because Hitler worked against the Weimar Republic, he was arrested in 1923 and sent to jail where he wrote a book called Mein Kampf ('My Struggle'). He spelt out his master plan for Germany, a country to be populated only by the pure German race which he called the Aryan race. He promoted nationalism and hatred of the Jews or anti-Semitism.

In 1924, he was released from prison and promised to seek power by legal means.

The Great Depression of 1929 and effects on

Germany

After the Ruhr occupation, Germany could not continue to pay the war debt imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. America lent Germany money in the agreements called the Dawes Plan (in 1924) and the Young Plan (in 1929). In October 1929, the Wall Street stock market crash meant the end of the strength of America's economy. The result of this was the onset of the so-called Great Depression of 1929 and it affected countries all over the world. As Germany had built up its economy on American loans, it was hugely affected when America wanted the money back. Germany was given 90 days to start repayments. This was impossible and the effect on Germany was that German companies went bankrupt and millions of workers were laid off. Hyperinflation meant that money lost most of its value. Those who saw no end to their troubles turned to the more extreme political parties in Germany - the Nazi and Communist Parties.

Failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic

Because the Weimar Republic had accepted the Treaty of Versailles, German people saw it as a sell-out. They were dissatisfied and bitter, and wanted a scapegoat (someone to blame). After the Wall Street crash, people encountered great hardship and the government was incapable of helping them. They liked the Nazis' direct and simple solutions which were publicised through rallies, on radio, in films and posters. All the Nazi propaganda promoted German unity and a sense of belonging to a powerful nation.

There were many attempts to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and these contributed to its instability. Three of these were the Spartacusbund revolt of January 1919, the Kapp revolt of March 1920 and the Munich Putsch of November 1923, which resulted in Hitler going to prison.

Reasons for public support for Nazi Party

For over ten years, the German people had been suffering loss of national pride, economic and financial hardship and a feeling of hopelessness, especially after the Wall Street crash when the loans made to them were called in. The Nazis offered hope by promising a strong, united Germany with jobs and renewed purpose in building Germany up.

The Nazis used a great deal of propaganda. They spread their ideas throughout Germany so people saw posters, heard radio broadcasts and attended rallies where they participated enthusiastically and felt proud to be German again. Hitler was an excellent public speaker himself, and he used Josef Goebbels to make Nazi policies. public and well- known. Hitler was presented as the German people's last hope. Goebbels later became Hitler's Minister of Propaganda.

The 1932 and 1933 elections

After the Great Depression struck Germany, the government was struggling and people wanted a more stable party. The Nazis found the money to finance three massive election campaigns between 1930 and 1932. In 1929 they had only 12 seats in the Reichstag. By July 1932 the Nazi Party was the strongest with 230 seats, but there were also other parties such as the Communist Party, and the Nazis failed to get the majority vote. Powerful forces in the government decided to promote Hitler President Paul von Hindenburg made Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government in January 1933 and in the March 1933 elections, Hitler won 288 seats.

Enabling Act 1933 and dictatorship

Because the Nazis won so many seats, they were immediately able to force through an Enabling Act, giving Hitler dictatorial powers for four years.

He set about eradicating all opposition by:

muzzling the press

abolishing other political parties

imprisoning other leaders

prohibiting trade unions

burning non-Nazi books.

Hitler succeeded in giving Germans back their national pride, but he did not tolerate any opposition. Ernst Röhm was the leader of the Brownshirts or SA (Sturmabteilung). He wanted to redistribute wealth to improve the financial welfare of the masses. Hitler found that Röhm was becoming a threat, so even though the Brownshirts had helped Hitler come to power, Hitler had their leaders (including Röhm) killed during the 'Night of the Long Knives' in June 1934. Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the regime's secret police. Concentration camps were set up to confine and question or sometimes torture the Nazis' political opponents. When the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler combined the role of president and chancellor in one and proclaimed himself Eühter. The German army had to swear an oath of loyalty to him. Thus Germany had become a dictator's state,

Nuremberg Laws and loss of basic rights of Jewish people, 1935

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced 19 the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology, including anti-Semitism as a form of racism.

The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood', while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of 'mixed blood'. These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.

The reason for this was that Hitler wished to produce a pure German Aryan race of Ubermensch, a 'master race'. The ideal Germany (the 'Third Reich') and the countries they took over should be ruled by the 'master race'. They idealised the powerful, muscular, blue-eyed, blond features. Hitler hated the Jewish people. This bias is called anti-Semitism.

Persecution of political opponents: Jehovah's Witnesses; Roma (gypsies); homosexuals; Slavs; black people; disabled people

Aside from the Jews, there were other people who were also considered inferior (not good enough) to live in Germany. These included Jehovah's Witnesses who had beliefs different from other Christians; the Roma (gypsies); homosexuals; Slavs, people from the Slavic race; black people; and disabled people. There was no place for these people in an Aryan homeland. Anti-Semitism had a long history in Germany and many Germans supported the Nazis' racist views.

By 1938 the Nazis started on a full-scale programme against Jews. On the night of 9 November 1938, SS men killed at least 100 Jews and took 30 000 more to concentration camps. They burnt down and demolished hundreds of synagogues and shattered the glass fronts of over 7 500 Jewish-owned stores and businesses throughout Germany. This night is known as Kristallnacht because of the shattering of the glass. Kristallnacht was planned by Goebbels as revenge for the shooting of a German diplomat.

Kristallnacht is generally seen as the start of a very systematic persecution of Jews. After Kristallnacht, various laws were passed to exclude Jews completely from public life. Jewish people were not allowed to use public facilities or be in any profession where they dealt with 'non-Jewish' people; they were treated as less than human.

Nazi Germany as an example of a fascist state (compared with democracy)

In a fascist state, the nation is all-important. The people are bound together by common ancestry and culture, and national spirit is of overriding importance. Paramilitary organisations, such as the e Gestapo and SS in Germany, threaten opponents with violence, Discipline is strong and all must conform. This is in contrast to a democracy where everyone has a vote and individual human rights are regarded as very important.

Unit 2 World War II: Europe

Nazi policies made the German people change from feeling hopeless and crushed, by the Treaty of Versailles, to pulling together and feeling national pride. Nazi ideas were, however, taken to extremes, and other nations began to fear Hitler's expansionist policy which allowed for no minority groups or other opinions.

Nazi's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy for Lebensraum

Lebensraum literally means 'living space' in German. Nazis believed that extra space was needed for the growth of the German population, both in land and in raw materials. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that inferior Slavic populations should make way for German people. In 1938 Hitler united Austria and Germany. The Allies, Britain and France, did nothing to stop him although the Treaty of Versailles had forbidden this. Then Hitler took Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with many Germans in it, and after that, other parts as well. When Hitler reached the border of Poland, the Allies said they would declare war if he attacked Poland.

Outbreak of World War II: Axis vs. Allies

The Axis Alliance, or Axis, was a

group of nations that fought against the Allies. The Axis alliance began in 1936 when Germany signed treaties with Italy and Japan. In 1939 this became a military alliance. When Germany invaded Poland, the Allies (Britain and France) declared war on the Axis countries. Germany invaded the Netherlands and France, but in the Battle of Britain, British pilots prevented the German Luftwaffe (air force) from gaining air superiority. In June 1941, Hitler decided to invade Russia instead of Britain. This proved to be a mistake. Thousands of German soldiers died in Russia, especially in the cold winter, and Hitler never defeated Russia, which was a communist country led by Josef Stalin Somdefeat of an entire German army at Stalingrad was a disaster for the Germanse Some historians consider this battle the Stalingrad was a disaster for Il because the German army could now only go in one direction, and that was back to Germany.

Extermination camps and genocide, the Holocaust and the 'final solution'

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic genocide of various ethnic, religious, national and other groups during World War II.

The Jews of Europe were the main victims of the Holocaust. What the Nazis called the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' was formally instituted in September 1941. The 'final solution' was to kill them all. The commonly used figure for the number of Jewish victims is 6 million. Other 'undesirables', especially Slavs (Poles, Russians and others), Roma (gypsies), the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political dissidents, were also persecuted and murdered. Taking these other groups into account, the total death toll rises considerably, to at least 11 million.

The Holocaust was Hitler and the Nazis' 'final solution'. Jewish people and others were taken, by force, to 'work camps' which were concentration camps. Because very few people came out of these alive, these camps were also known as death camps. Possessions were taken away from the prisoners. They had their heads shaved and were forced to do hard physical labour. They were starved, humiliated and tortured. Children and parents were separated.

At first, victims were shot or beaten to death, but later they were gassed to death and then burnt in large rooms known as crematoria, after having had their gold teeth pulled out. There were 22 extermination camps, the most notorious being Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the world.

Another Jewish child was Anne Frank. She wrote about her experiences, and her book was later published as The Diary of Anne Frank. She was born in Germany but lost her citizenship because of the Nuremberg Laws. Her family moved to Amsterdam where they were trapped when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. The family went into hiding in July 1942, in the hidden rooms of the office building of Anne's father, Otto Frank. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945. Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, tells about her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.

Examples of resistance to Nazism in Germany

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Movement

Did everybody in Germany support Hitler? Initially, no. Не was seen as too violent by some. After Kristallnacht many Germans were shocked - not by the fact that Jews were persecuted, but by the fact that they were so viciously and publicly beaten up and that violence spread to the streets and Figure 5.11 Christopher Probst and that there was such destruction of property. However, even Sophie Scholl though they were disapproving, these Germans did little to help the Jews.

The White Rose Society was a resistance movement in Germany calling for non- violent resistance against the Nazi regime. Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend, Christoph Probst, were the leaders of a group of five students who released six leaflets in 1942 and 1943. A seventh leaflet, which may have been prepared, was never released because the group was captured. Sophie Scholl shocked everyone in the courtroom when she remarked: "Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare to express themselves as we did." They were all found guilty of treason and were executed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer became known for his resistance against the Nazi dictatorship by strongly opposing Hitler's euthanasia programs and the genocide against the Jews. He was also involved in plans by members of the German Military Intelligence Office to assassinate Adolph Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and executed by hanging in April 1945, 23 days before the Nazi surrendered. He was only 39 years old.

Warsaw ghetto uprising

This was the largest single revolt by the Jews during World War II and was the first mass uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Warsaw GHETTO in German- occupied Poland, concentrated 300 000 – 400 000 people into a densely packed central area of Warsaw. In 1942, thousands of these people were sent to the extermination camp at Treblinka. By the end of 1942, ghetto inhabitants had found out about the extermination process. Many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The Polish Resistance supported the Jews by attacking German units near the ghetto walls. 13 000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising of the remaining 50 000 residents, most were captured and shipped to concentration and extermination camps, in particular to Treblinka. The suppression of the uprising officially ended on 16 May 1943.

Although the Warsaw Uprising ended with the killing of the Jews in the ghetto, it was an indication that what the Nazis were doing was completely unacceptable and had to be resisted. The Russians had defended their country against Hitler's invading forces, and after America came into the War, Britain and America were in a better position to start attacking Hitler's forces in occupied Europe.

The end of World War II in Europe

The German army was badly weakened by the Russian campaign. The Americans

joined the war and on D-Day on 6 June 1944, the Allies, under General Eisenhower, invaded Europe by crossing the English Channel and landing on the beaches of France. They progressed steadily across France and also up into Italy. The Italians surrendered and the Allies and Russians met in Berlin. The Germans were defeated: cities were in ruins and Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. The final surrender took place on VE Day, 8 May 1945, when the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, declared that the war was over. Both Germany and Berlin itself were occupied by the British, Americans and Russians. Prisoners of war

and the people still in concentration camps were freed.

Unit 3 World War II in the Pacific

America in the War vs. Japan: Pearl Harbor

In the years before World War II, Japan wanted to expand its empire in order to be a self-reliant superpower. Japan was able to do this because it gained control of the former German colonies in the Pacific after World War I. Japan also gradually pulled away from international agreements and this angered the Western countries. Japan had relied on vital imports of rice and rubber from countries like Malaysia and China. One of Japan's rivals was America which had become a colonial power in the Philippines. In 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan. This recognised Japan's right to a New Order in Asia. Now Japan could take positive steps to conquer new territories. The result was that Japan fought the Allies for control over the entire East Asian region in the war in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945.

The Japanese air force attack of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of 7 December, 1941. The attack was intended to keep the American Pacific fleet from interfering with military actions which the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia.

Japan launched 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes from six aircraft carriers. As there had been no declaration of war, America was caught off-guard. Sixteen American ships were damaged or destroyed, 2 402 Americans were killed and 1 282 wounded while Japanese losses were light with only 65 servicemen killed or wounded.

America and Britain immediately declared war on Japan, and soon the USA was at war with Germany and Italy too.

Japanese-Americans forcibly moved into internment camps in the USA

As a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Americans interned Japanese- Americans. In February 1942 about 120 000 people of Japanese descent living in America were removed from their homes and sent to 10 different internment camps in case they spied for the Japanese. Life in the camps was hard. They lived in barracks and had to use communal areas for washing, laundry and eating. All of them suffered hardships, particularly the children. At the end of the war, some remained in America and rebuilt their lives. Others, though, were unforgiving and returned to Japan. In 1983, the USA acknowledged the injustice of internment.

Japanese expansion and atrocities in China

Japan sought to expand into Asia and fought a brutal war against China from 1931 onwards. This lasted for fifteen years until 1945.

Japan wanted to be economically self-sufficient so looked to occupy other countries to provide raw materials. Japan first occupied Manchuria, then went into China, but this was a much bigger country and many soldiers were needed to keep control to put down resistance. This developed into full-scale war, known as the Sino-Japanese war. Many atrocities were committed by the Japanese, such as in Nanking where 200 000 men were used for bayonet practice, machine gunned or set on fire. Many other people were mutilated or murdered, some by decapitation. Japan wanted China to surrender, but this did not happen.

Japanese prisoner-of-war camps for Allied soldiers

Japan did not treat prisoners-of-war (POWs) in accordance with international agreements, because the Japanese viewed surrender as dishonourable. Prisoners of the Japanese found themselves in camps in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and other Japanese-occupied countries. Prisoner-of-war camps in Japan housed both captured military personnel and civilians who had been in the East before the outbreak of war.

The Japanese inflicted starvation rations, beatings, murder and forced labour on Allied prisoners, such as forcing them to build the bridge on the River Kwai, part of the notorious Thailand-Burma railway built to carry supplies for the Japanese army. The death rate of western prisoners was seven times more than those taken prisoner in Germany of Italy. POWs had no access to the International Red Cross and it was difficult for them to escape as they looked western and could not hide amongst the Asiatic people who looked so different.