Course Work Question - Nazi Germany

Coursework. PART ONE 1. Outline the nature and purpose of the League of German Maidens. (7) 2. Explain the reasons for the Nazi use of propaganda. (8) 3. ‘Controlling the young was the most important way of pacifying Germans under Nazi rule.’ Do you agree? Explain your answer (10)

PART TWO

1. Study sources A and B. Which would be more useful to a historian explaining the causes of the Holocaust? (7) 2. Study source C. To what extent does it reveal the extent to which Nazi party members took responsibility for their actions? (6) 3. Study sources A, B and C. If Hitler was being put on trial, which of these sources would be most useful as evidence? Explain your reasoning. (9) 4. Study sources C and D. Which source is more reliable? Explain. (7) 5. Study sources E and F. How far does source F prove source E is a lie? (8) 6. Study sources H and I. Which source is more useful to a historian studying the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany? (7) 7. Study all the sources. ‘The only reason the holocaust happened was because people were afraid of not obeying Hitler.’ Do you agree? Explain your answer (10)

Source A

Speech by Adolf Hitler, January 31, 1939. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol XIII, p. 131: Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! ______________________________________________________________________________ Source B

Message from SS-GrupenfŸhrer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field Offices, November 10 1938 (before Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass," the first large scale pogrom against the Jews). Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. III, p. 545-547. Regards: Measures against Jews tonight. . . . a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods). b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives and to arrest looters. c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will be safeguarded at all cost against damage. . . . As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be arrested in all districts. Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested. After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews to the camps.... _______________________________________________________________________________ Source C

From the statement of Hans Stark, registrar of new arrivals, Auschwitz. Quoted in "'The Good Old Days'" - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988, p. 255: At another, later gassing--also in autumn 1941--Grabner* ordered me to pour Zyklon B into the opening because only one medical orderly had

shown up. During a gassing Zyklon B had to be poured through both openings of the gas-chamber room at the same time. This gassing was also a transport of 200-250 Jews, once again men, women and children. As the Zyklon B--as already mentioned--was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them. I did not look through the opening because it had to be closed as soon as the Zyklon B had been poured in. After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten to fifteen minutes, the gas chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggedly all over the place. It was a dreadful sight. * Maximillian Grabner, Head of Political Department, Auschwitz _______________________________________________________________________________ Source D

Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum quoted in Yad Vashem Documents on the Holocaust, pp 228-229: Smuggling began at the very moment that the Jewish area of residence was established; its inhabitants were forced to live on 180 grams of bread a day, 220 grams of sugar a month, 1 kg. of jam and 1 kg. of honey, etc. It was calculated that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10 percent of the normal requirements. If one had wanted really to restrict oneself to the official rations then the entire population of the ghetto would have had to die of hunger in a very short time.... The German authorities did everything to seal off the ghetto hermetically and not to allow in a single gram of food. A wall was put up around the ghetto on all sides that did not leave a single millimeter of open space.... They fixed barbed wire and broken glass to the top of the wall. When that failed to help, the Judenrat was ordered to make the wall higher, at the expense of the Jews, of course.... Several kinds of guards were appointed for the walls and the passages through them; the categories of guards were constantly being changed and their numbers increased. The walls were guarded by the gendarmerie together with the Polish police; at the ghetto wall there were gendarmerie post, Polish police and Jewish police...The victims of the smuggling were mainly Jews, but they were not lacking either among the Aryans (Poles). Auerswald, too, employed sharply repressive measures to stop the smuggling. Several times smugglers were shot at the central lock-up on Gesiowka Street. Once there was a veritable slaughter (100 persons were shot near Warsaw). Among the Jewish victims of the smuggling there were tens of Jewish children between 5 and 6 years old, whom the German killers shot in great numbers near the passages and at the walls.... And despite that, without paying attention to the victims, the smuggling never stopped for a moment. When the street was still slippery with the

blood that had been spilled, other smugglers already set out, as soon as the "candles" had signaled that the way was clear, to carry on with the work.... ________________________________________________________________________________ Source E

...the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more consolidated will the situation in Europe be after this war. Joseph Goebbels, March 6, 1942 __________________________________________________________________________________ Source F

I am very familiar with the Goebbels diaries... There is no explicit reference either implicit in these documents or legible in these documents to liquidation of Jews. David Irving, April 22, 1988 _________________________________________________________________________________ Source G

Propaganda Poster:“He (the Jew) is responsible for the war.” From FHM Photo Archives.

_________________________________________________________________________________ Source H

Picture (Joanna Duncan) Berlin Holocaust Museum _________________________________________________________________________________ Source I

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Source J Shema by Primo Levi (1975) You who live secure In your warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces: Consider whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name With no more strength to remember Eyes empty and womb cold As a frog in winter. Consider that this has been: I commend these words to you. Engrave them on your hearts When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,

When you go to bed, when you rise. Repeat them to your children. Or may your house crumble, Disease render you powerless, Your offspring avert their faces from you.

_________________________________________________________________________________ http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/RESOURCE/document/document.htm# (A-D) http://www.holocaust-history.org/pamphlets/irving/pamphlet.shtm (E-F) http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/history_wing/assets/room1/17407.jpg (G) Photo taken Oct 2007 in Berlin Museum (I) http://shalomrav.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/holocaust2.jpg (J)