Those students who need to take the Make-Up Chapter 17 Section 3 Quiz may do so. Other students who need to make up the earlier Quizzes should have done so already; they are available.
Section 3 The New Order and the Holocaust
To further their war effort and Hitler's plans for Aryan expansion, the Nazis forced millions of people to resettle as forced laborers. No aspect of the Nazi New Order was more terrifying than the deliberate attempt to exterminate the Jews. As part of the Nazis' Final Solution, Jews were locked into cramped, unsanitary ghettos or forced to dig their own mass graves before being killed. When this proved too slow for the Nazis, they transported Europe's Jews to death camps where they were worked to death or sent to die in gas chambers. The Nazis killed between five and six million Jews and nine to ten million non-Jews. In Asia, Japan showed little respect for the conquered peoples in its effort to secure industrial markets and raw materials. Japanese treatment of prisoners of war was equally harsh. Japan professed a commitment to ending Western colonialism, but the brutality of the Japanese convinced many Asians to resist Japanese occupation.
In April, 1937, Hadj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, visited Hitler because he wanted to know how open the Germans were to support Muslims against the Jews; the video is in French.
Reading and Note Taking Skill: Identify Supporting Details
In a concept web like the one below, fill in details about how the Nazis and Japanese military treated people under their power during World War II. Add circles as necessary.
The New Order in Europe
Hitler’s new order grew out of his racial obsessions. As his forces conquered most of Europe, Hitler set up puppet governments in Western European countries that were peopled by Aryans, or light-skinned Europeans, whom Hitler and his followers believed to be a “master race.” The Slavs of Eastern Europe were considered to be an inferior “race.” They were shoved aside to provide more “living space” for Germans, the strongest of the Aryans.
To the Nazis, occupied lands were an economic resource to be plundered and looted. The Nazis systematically stripped conquered nations of their works of art, factories, and other resources. To counter resistance movements that emerged in occupied countries, the Nazis took savage revenge, shooting hostages and torturing prisoners.
But the Nazis’ most sinister plans centered on the people of the occupied countries. During the 1930s, the Nazis had sent thousands of Jewish people and political opponents to concentration camps, detention centers for civilians considered enemies of the state. Over the course of the war, the Nazis forced these people, along with millions of Polish and Soviet Slavs and people from other parts of Europe, to work as slave laborers. Prisoners were poorly fed and often worked to death.
Resettlement in the East
Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was an unsuccessful chicken farmer and fertilizer salesman who became a leader in the Nazi party in the mid-1920s. As head of the SS as well as the Gestapo, he was a cold, efficient, ruthless administrator. He was the organizer of the mass murder of Jews, the man in charge of the concentration and death camps.
Himmler established the Nazi Party's intelligence service in 1931, appointing Reinhard Heydrich as its chief. This section of the SS was created to uncover the Party's enemies and keep them under surveillance. After the outbreak of the war, the SD was assigned operational tasks, joined the Einsatzgruppen,and played a central role in organizing and implementing the "Final Solution."
The Gestapo was composed of professional police agents, unlike the SS or SA. The Gestapo, in addition to their own agents, had block wardens, who kept close watch on the tenants of their block. The Gestapo was everywhere. Even a hint of criticism of the National Socialist Regime could result in arrest.
The Nazi party military and police agencies wielded their power violently, leaving a wake of terror and fatalities. Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich orchestrated a night of terror in Germany, destroying synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish businesses and homes, looting, physically beating Jews, and arresting thousands of Jews who were then sent to concentration camps. On November 9 and 10, 1938, Kristallnacht,or "The Night of Broken Glass," was a turning point in the escalation of terror against Jews.
Heinrich Himmler: Anatomy of a Mass Murderer, 4:05
Hitler pursued a vicious program to kill all people he judged “racially inferior,” particularly Europe’s Jews. The Nazis also targeted other groups who did not meet the Aryan racial ideal, including Slavs, Romas (Gypsies), homosexuals, and the disabled. Political and religious leaders who spoke out against Nazism also suffered abuse. Starting in 1939, the Nazis forced Jews in Poland and other countries to live in ghettos, or sections of cities where Jewish people were confined. Many died from starvation, disease, overwork and the harsh elements. By 1941, however, German leaders had devised plans for the “Final Solution of the Jewish problem”—the genocide of all European Jews.
To accomplish this goal, Hitler had six special “death camps” built in Poland. The Nazis shipped “undesirables” from all over occupied Europe to the camps. There, Nazi engineers designed the most efficient means of killing millions of men, women, and children.
As the prisoners reached the camps, they were stripped of their clothes and valuables. Their heads were shaved. Guards separated men from women and children from their parents. The young, elderly, and sick were targeted for immediate killing. Within a few days, they were herded into “shower rooms” and gassed. The Nazis worked others to death or used them for perverse “medical” experiments. By 1945, the Nazis had massacred some six million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust. Nearly six million other people were killed as well.
Jewish people resisted the Nazis even though they knew their efforts could not succeed. In July 1942, the Nazis began sending Polish Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp at a rate of about 5,000 per day. In the spring of 1943, knowing that their situation was hopeless, the Jews took over the ghetto and used a small collection of guns and homemade bombs to damage the Nazi forces as much as possible. On May 16, the Nazis regained control of the ghetto and eliminated the remaining Warsaw Jews. Still, their courage has inspired many over the years.
In some cases, friends, neighbors, or strangers protected Jews. Italian peasants hid Jews in their villages. Denmark and Bulgaria saved almost all their Jewish populations. Many people, however, pretended not to notice what was happening. Some even became collaborators and cooperated with the Nazi’s. In France, the Vichy government helped ship thousands of Jewish people to their deaths. Strict immigration policies in many Western countries as well as conscious efforts to block Jewish immigration prevented many Jews from gaining refuge elsewhere.
The scale and savagery of the Holocaust are unequaled in history. The Nazis deliberately set out to destroy the Jews for no reason other than their religious and ethnic heritage. Today, the record of that slaughter is a vivid reminder of the monstrous results of racism and intolerance.
Slave Labor in Germany
At the concentration camps, very young children and the elderly were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Older children and young adults were kept for slave labor. The conditions in these labor camps were deplorable including malnutrition, poor protection from the elements, and hard labor. The work that the people at the camps were forced into ranged from electrical work to carrying heavy stones for construction to burying the dead. The laborers were kept in the camps until they reached a point where they could no longer work at which time they were exterminated.
In order to survive these conditions, the young people in the camps formed very close ties with each other. Oftentimes they had become separated from their family members and developed new relationships within their barracks. Despite this tenuous support, all of these children suffered emotionally from the horrible conditions and treatment they endured and witnessed.
People in History
Anne Frank
Reading Check
Describing
What was Hitler's vision for the residents of eastern Europe?
The Holocaust
The Einsatzgruppen
Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) became the chief of the SD. His more notorious achievements included the establishment of ghettos in Poland, his leadership of the Einsatzgruppen, and the convening of the Wannsee Convention. His assassination in 1942 caused merciless German reprisals, continuing after his death the terror and intimidation that characterized his life.
Starting early in 1942, the Jewish genocide (sometimes called the Judeocide) went into full operation. Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór began operations as death camps. There was no selection process; Jews were destroyed upon arrival.
Ultimately, the Nazis were responsible for the deaths of some 2.7 million Jews in the death camps. These murders were done secretly under the ruse of resettlement. The Germans hid their true plans from citizens and inhabitants of the ghettos by claiming that Jews were being resettled in the East. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send reassuring postcards back to the ghettos. Thus did millions of Jews go unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance.
The total figure for the Jewish genocide, including shootings and the camps, was between 5.2 and 5.8 million, roughly half of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war. About 5 million other victims perished at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy. It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. The Nazi machinery was dedicated to eradicating millions of people it deemed undesirable. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions. These included Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, and people with physical or mental disabilities. Others were Nazi victims because of what they did. These victims of the Nazi regime included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, Communists, Socialists, a-socials, and other political enemies.
Those believed by Hitler and the Nazis to be enemies of the state were banished to camps. Inside the concentration camps, prisoners were forced to wear various colored triangles, each color denoting a different group. The letters on the triangular badges below designate the prisoners' countries of origin.
During the Holocaust, children were subjected to many injustices and cruelties. At first, Jewish and Gypsy children were restricted from going to school, and German children were taught that the Jews and Gypsies were racially inferior. One of the methods used to teach Gentile children about this inferiority was to have Jewish children come to the front of the classroom while the teacher pointed out their distinguishing features. Shortly, restrictions were placed on the Jews and later they were forbidden to go to German schools at all.
Japanese forces took control across Asia and the Pacific. Their self-proclaimed mission was to help Asians escape Western colonial rule. In fact, the real goal was a Japanese empire in Asia. The Japanese invaders treated the Chinese, Filipinos, Malaysians, and other conquered people with great brutality, killing and torturing civilians throughout East and Southeast Asia. The occupiers seized food crops, destroyed cities and towns, and made local people into slave laborers. Whatever welcome the Japanese had first met as “liberators” was soon turned to hatred. In the Philippines, Indochina, and elsewhere, nationalist groups waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese invaders.
Japanese Policies
Japanese Behavior
Reading Check
Examining
How did the Japanese treat the native people in occupied lands?
Thomas Sowell talks about his new book Economic Facts and Fallacies, 33:22
Peter Robinson speaks with Thomas Sowell about his new book Economic Facts and Fallacies in which Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues. Sowell takes on the conventional thinking on a wide swath of Americas economic life, from male-female economic differences to income stagnation, executive pay, and social mobility to economics of higher education. In all cases he demonstrates how economics relates to the social issues that deeply affect our country.
