When Hitler and the Nazi Party first entered power, they proposed strict and unimaginably radical policies. Their goal as the dominant political power was to create a “pure” German society. The idea of a “pure” German society stemmed from the idea that certain racial groups and ethnicities were undesirable and inferior. With that in mind, they sought to completely eliminate, through annihilation tactics, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, biracial children, handicapped citizens, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and any other individual(s) who opposed their radical ideologies. However, the most questionable part of these tactics was how and why the Nazis chose them. Of the many ways dictators and corrupt governments had tortured their citizens in the past, why was Hitler determined that the Einsatzgruppen, ghettos, and concentration camps were going to be the methods of choice to mass murder the Jewish people. Robert Payne notes in his book The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler that Hitler was not satisfied with a gruesome murder of the Jewish race. He preferred them to die in agony and complete humiliation. Methods of mass murder such as killing squads (the Einsatzgruppen), ghettos, and concentration camps proved themselves as the perfect final solution. These tactics would exterminate Jews at an increasing rate while removing them of their respectable status.
Hitler’s first and foremost goal in Germany was to eliminate all of the Jews. With this plan in mind, he consistently sought different methods to kill Jews. One of the first methods Hitler used to complete this mass murder operation was the Einsatzgruppen. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the Einsatzgruppen were killing units generally composed of German SS and police personnel(...
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...w understood that the Nazis didn’t simply stand as a corrupt and oppressive government; they represented the evil that can result from radical ideologies and their selfish, ignorant, and insane perpetrators.
Works Cited
“Rise of the Nazi Party.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
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Rummel, R.J. “Nazi Germany and Mass Murder.” Democide: Chapter 1. Hawaii EDU. 2002. Web. 18 May 2014.
Spiro, Ken. “The Final Solution.” Jewish History. Simple to Remember: Judaism Online. 2013. Web. 18 May 2014.
“The Camps.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
Florida. 2005. Web. 18 May 2014.
“The Ghettos.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. University of South
Florida. 2005. Web. 18 May 2014.
Trueman, Chris. “Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.” History Learning Site. May 2012. Web. 18 May 2014.
Dr. Michael Mussmanno, a jury in the Nuremberg Trials, stated that the main purpose of constructing the Einsatzgruppen was, “to murder Jews and deprive them of their property.” Many German civilians began persuaded to believe that Jews were the reason for their problems. The Einsatzgruppen were four paramilitary units created for the purpose of murdering Jews and other races. They began by going on massacre missions in Jew communities, then to shoving Jews in gas vans. The gas vans were supposed to make it easier for the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, but it really just made it harder. They heard the victims suffer longer, and it was more painful. They followed Adolf Hitler, in belief that everything that he said was correct. People in the Einsatzgruppen were German civilians that thought what they were doing was helping Germany. It was a nationalistic thing. The Einsatzgruppen had a leading role in the implementation of the Final Solution in territories ruled by Nazi Germany.
We learn about the Holocaust to learn what is right and wrong and to remember the people who died. The main reason we learn about the Holocaust is so it does not happen again.
Adolf Hitler's rise to power was just the start to a horrifying 13 years. Hitler became Chancellor Hitler of Germany in 1933, knowing what his goal was and what he wanted to do, which he called "The Final Solution." According the The Holocaust: An Introductory History, published by Jewish Virtual Library, Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" plan was to exterminate the entire Jewish population, and all of the other undesirerables. Every group of undesirerables is listed in the Nuremburg Race Laws. The Nuremburg Race Laws took away some of the Jews political rights, didn't let Jews marry anoyone of the German desent, and didn't focus on peoples' religious beliefs. Instead of focusing on their religious beliefs, they defined people as a Jew if they had three of four Jewish granparents, whether the individual defined people as a Jew or no...
The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. Gypsies, people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. However, did The Nazis party ever unravel the true intent behind Hitler’s desires to extinguish the inferior race? This question is one of the most difficult to answer. While Hitler made several references to killing Jews, both in his
In the Summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler started exterminating Jews and other non-Aryans, as a part of his plan to create a perfect Germany and to carry out his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. Before exterminating 6,000,000 Jewish people, Adolf Hitler had already performed several actions which singled out the Jew as an evil person and one who should be killed. In 1923, Hitler was caught while trying to overturn the Bavarian government and was imprisoned for 5 years. In prison, he wrote the famed autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he stated his first publicly known anti-Semitic beliefs and his ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Question’. While imprisoned, there was a worldwide depression as economic markets crashed worldwide. This would help Hitler because once out of prison he would use this to help gain power both for the Nazi’s and for himself politically by promising better things to come in the future. In 1933, while preaching in front of a large Nazi crowd, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s loss in World War One. “If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.'; Many people were upset at the loss, and blaming the Jews made many people anti-Semites. Once he was named chancellor in 1933, Hitler preached about creating a Germany for true German people and a more centralized Germany. This included eliminating those who were non-Aryans and/or non-German. He would later detail about what a true German was in the Nuremberg Laws. He stated that Jews were not really Germans but instead, they were non-Aryan, and they were malignant tumors.
Support for the Nazi party was due to the growing belief that it was a
The overall purpose of Einsatzgruppen was to kill off the Jewish population. The reasoning for this was because Germany was becoming
The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp that carried out Hitler's ‘final solution' in greater numbers than any other.
Centuries later and the name Adolf Hitler still rings volumes till this present day: discussed in history books, talked about amongst intellects and commoners alike, and despised by many for years to come. Upon hearing his name many may think of all the negative things Hitler has done, but few fail to analyze just how one man created such controversy amongst a nation without being stopped. The question then lies how does a man reign over country and devastate it for years to come? Adolf Hitler, a man who excelled in persuasion and charisma was able to reign over Germany for years. Born in Austria April 20th 1889, Hitler grew up with many hardships in his life.
But Hitler made it his goal to kill this imperfect race. “Born in Austria,Hitler served in the German army during World War One.” ( The Holocaust) To him the Jews were an inferior race the needed to be eliminated. He thought that by using anti-semitism he would become more popular with the crowd.
Beginning in 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party targeted not only those of the Jewish religion but many other sets. Hitler was motivated by religion and nationalism to eradicate any threats to his state. It was Hitler’s ideology that his Aryan race was superior to any other. Hitler’s goal was to create a “master race” by eliminating the chance for “inferiors” to reproduce. Besides the Jews the other victims of the genocide include the Roma (Gypsies), African-Germans, the mentally disabled, handicapped, Poles, Slavs, Anti-Nazi political parties, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Homosexuals. In Hitler’s eyes all of these groups needed to be eliminated in order for his master race to be a success.
Hitler had thought that the Jews did not believe in the “right” thing so he tried to eliminate the race. He did not want them to believe in what they did and still do. He thought that the Jewish race was inferior and did not mean anything. The way that Hitler treated the Jews were crimes against humanity and I know that many non Jews saw that but did...
Adolf Hitler (the Führer or leader of the Nazi party) “believed that a person's characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her so-called racial make-up.” He thought that those “inherited characteristics (did not only affect) outward appearance and physical structure”, but also determined a person’s physical, emotional/social, and mental state. Besides these ideas, the Nazi’s believed tha...
The time, 1941, the place, the then Soviet Union, the Red Army is in retreat from the German forces, following closely behind the German frontline is an unspeakable force coming over the conquered lands like a deadly plague. The Einsatzgruppen were considered as mobile death dealers by their victims. The major occupation of the Einsatzgruppen was the humiliation, extermination, and complete of annihilation of Jews, Romany or gypsies, members of the communist party, and intellectsia or major thinkers. They were organized to be the most efficient at occupying and murdering the undesirables. The leaders of these hounds of war were hand selected by Heydrich Himmler from the brightest, bravest, and most loyal of the Nazi members. The Einsatzgruppen were broken down to cover more area and to cause more chaos. Their techniques for killing were horrific, and in some cases could even tax the mind of the executioner. They were responsible for most of the murders of Jews during World War 2. Almost every huge massacre site they were at it killing undesirables.
The treatment of Jews and other minority groups by the Nazi’s can be described as actions that could only be done by a totalitarian state. Hitler believed in eugenics, the idea of improving a race by selective breeding. Nazi ideology of the Jewish race was severe anti-Semitism and pure hatred. The Nazi policy towards the Jews has been said to be the most brutal and horrific example of anti-Semitism in history.