The National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Evil starts when the individual human life is not respected. Few, if any, regimes in history fit this description better than the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. From 1933 – 1945, the Nazis ruled Germany and plunged the world into a war that killed tens of millions of people (estimates vary from 50 million to as many as 80 million worldwide), including over 405,000 Americans. Among the long list of Nazi atrocities, one stands out. The murder of more than 6 million innocent Jewish men, women, and children is known in history as the Holocaust.
The Monster
Just who was Adolph Hitler? He is one of the most studied men in history. The synopsis here is not meant to be a comprehensive biography of his life.
Born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889, Hitler’s early life was filled with turbulence. He frequently clashed with his domineering father, who died suddenly in 1903. He was close with his mother, and after her death in 1907, many historians trace this event as the beginning of his transformation from man to monster. He later moved to Vienna and was twice rejected for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts. Hitler struggled to make it in Vienna, sometimes staying in homeless shelters. By 1913, he moved to Munich, Germany, just before the outbreak of World War I the following year. He enlisted in the German army and fought until the end of the war in 1918.
Germany’s defeat in World War I sent an already angry Hitler further over the edge. He blamed the country’s leaders, Marxists, and Jews for Germany’s surrender. He joined a chorus of Germans in denouncing the Treaty of Versailles that, among other provisions, blamed Germany for the war and made it pay retributions to other countries.
In 1919, while still a member of the German military, Hitler received an assignment to spy on a group of a few dozen anti-government men who wanted to overthrow the German government. Hitler undertook his new assignment and was quickly drawn to the group’s anti-Marxist, anti-Jewish, and German nationalist message. Soon, he began to speak at these meetings and became one of its most vocal advocates. The group began to grow.
Finally, in 1921, Hitler became the group’s official leader. He changed the group’s name from the German Workers’ Party to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or Nazi Party for short.
The swastika became the party’s symbol, a design Hitler created himself. The swastika dates back thousands of years as a symbol of good fortune. However, Hitler used it as a symbol of Aryan supremacy. In Hitler’s mind, the “Aryan race” was considered the “pure German race,” based on misguided theories of some 19th-century writers. Historically, the Aryans were descendants of prehistoric Iran who immigrated to Northern India thousands of years ago.
The Nazi Regime – What a monstrous regime looks like.
After Hitler led a failed coup against the German government in which a bullet narrowly missed him, he was imprisoned for acts against the government. During this time, he wrote his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), where Hitler openly discussed his anti-Semitism, thoughts on the superiority of the Aryan race, and his desire for increased living space for Germans.
After his release from prison, Hitler operated as a conventional politician, traveling around Germany and giving speeches. He was even on the ballot in one election and lost. Hitler became a national figure in Germany.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was in the same global depression that affected the United States. Unemployment was high and unease permeated Germany. Hitler and the Nazis took advantage. He blamed the German government and Jews for these problems and the Nazis began to gain greater recognition as a result. The German people either dismissed, did not believe, or embraced Hitler’s racist views. Far too many Germans did not see the danger. Far too few Germans did anything to stop the gathering darkness.
In July 1932, the Nazis captured 230 out of 608 possible seats in the German Reichstag or parliament. In an attempt to appease Hitler and prevent him from trying to overthrow the government, Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933, second only to President Paul von Hindenburg. The monster was one heartbeat away from complete power. This changed shortly after von Hindenburg’s death in 1934. With nobody to stop him, Hitler immediately declared himself “Fuhrer” and became the dictator of Germany. The poorly educated, failed Austrian artist, full of hate and rage, had his power. The world suffered unimaginably as a result.
Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels
Like every dictator or tyrant, Hitler portrayed himself as a near-deity destined to lead Germany to greatness. Hitler talked about the “Thousand Year Reich” that would dominate the world and played into Germans’ basic desire for a better life. Although he did not hide his anti-Semitism, Hitler had to mask much of his true nature.
Hitler quickly employed a tool that would become a hallmark of Nazi power – propaganda. Control over how a person or event was portrayed to the public, whether by misrepresentation or outright lies, was needed to shape public opinion.
Hitler did not come to power without the help of others who shared his views. One of these people was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s “Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.” A fervent Nazi, Goebbels was tasked with always portraying Hitler and the Nazis in the best possible light. Every poster, speech, and public event had this purpose. Nazi rallies were held in large outdoor venues with sometimes hundreds of thousands of people. Hitler would often be the final speaker, slowly building up a speech into a finale meant to inflame the people’s passion for Nazi rule.
Goebbels played another sinister role for the Nazis. Through propaganda, Goebbels demonized one group of citizens in particular – Jews. After Hitler became a dictator, Jews became the scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems, even though they represented only 1% of the German population. This was needed for the Nazis to implement their racial purity laws and ideas of Aryan superiority.
The Nazis began to implement a series of laws to persecute Jews. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews were not considered part of a religious community but instead were classified as a race. A person was considered Jewish if they had three or four Jewish grandparents, regardless of whether they practiced the religion. Non-Aryans were not allowed in the civil services. Jewish businesses were routinely targeted, as were Jewish professionals. Jewish Germans could not marry non-Jewish Germans. By 1938, Jews had to carry identity cards stamped with a “J.” The message was not subtle. German Jews were not welcomed and needed to leave.
In November 1938, Jewish synagogues and businesses were burned, about 100 Jews were killed, and thousands more were arrested in “Kristallnacht” or the “Night of Broken Glass.” Nazis set fire to the Reichstag building and blamed Jews as a pretext for the violence. Goebbels knew that as long as he portrayed Jews as hostile to Germany, he could justify any treatment of them. This was the goal.
If anyone needs to understand the danger of propaganda, remember this quote from Joseph Goebbels:
“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
The Nazi regime had every element of tyranny:
- Indoctrinate the youth – German children were indoctrinated in every aspect of Nazi propaganda. Parents were secondary to the state. By 1941, every child age ten and above was required to be a member of the “Hitler Youth.”
- Control Information – As discussed above, propaganda ruled Germany. Everything shown to the public was tightly controlled. Hitler and the Nazi Party were always made to look heroic.
- Instill fear – The Nazi Party had its own thugs. The Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as “Brownshirts” or “Storm Troopers,” used violence and intimidation against German citizens who did not comply with the Nazi agenda. After Hitler deemed the group a threat to his power, he had their leaders killed. They were replaced in the hierarchy with the Schutzstaffel (SS). This group of the most fanatical Nazis, led by Heinrich Himmler, perpetrated Nazi atrocities. They controlled all police forces, including the Gestapo or secret police. Concerned Germans were intimidated into silence. Strangers could not be trusted.
- Complete obedience to Hitler – Despite declarations of the superiority of the individual German, in actuality, the individual meant nothing to the Nazis. Hitler and the Nazi Party were all that mattered. The German military was required to take an oath to Hitler directly.
- No fair system of justice – In Nazi Germany, there was no due process, jury trials, or ability to contest charges against you. If the regime said you were guilty, your only hope was a bribe or political connection. Many endured a “show trial” with a predetermined outcome. Its purpose was to humiliate and make an example of the individual.
- Disarm the people – Firearms were limited in Germany, dating back to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. However, these terms were often ignored. When the Nazis came to power, they disarmed all those they considered a threat to them. In 1938, Jews were specifically excluded from owning firearms.
- No free speech, religion, petition, assembly, or press. There was no First Amendment in Nazi Germany. There was religion in Nazi Germany, mainly Protestant Christianity, but like every other aspect of German life, the regime tightly controlled and monitored it. The Nazis promoted the burning of more than 25,000 books deemed “un-German.”
- Eliminate political opposition – The Nazi Party was the only legal party in Germany. All those who opposed it were killed or arrested.
Fascism
Nazism shares its core values with another “ism” of the 20th century – fascism. An ideology developed by an obscure Italian socialist named Giovanni Gentile, fascism was a commitment to, above all else, the state. Strong nationalism is the hallmark of fascism, not to be confused with patriotism. As understood by fascists, nationalism is superiority over other nations by its very existence, whereas patriotism is pride in one’s country. Every action, whether private or public, has the purpose of serving the state. This includes all industry and commerce. The state controls every aspect of people’s lives. The individual exists to serve the centralized state power. Violence and intimidation are used to keep the population compliant with the state’s demands.
As the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, stated, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
What sets Nazism apart from other fascist regimes, such as Mussolini’s in Italy, was its desire to dominate the world and transform it into one with a racial pyramid with Aryans at the top. This made Nazi Germany uniquely evil because the Nazis were not satisfied with only making “inferior” races second-class citizens. Death was what was needed.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Nazi Germany’s depravity grew substantially with the outbreak of the war.
Only after the United States, Great Britain, and its allies marched through Western Europe and the Soviet Union marched through Eastern Europe was Nazi Germany defeated. The world would not know the true nature of Nazi evil until after its defeat in April 1945.
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