Nazi+Germany

"Racism Ruins Lives" (In this case, 6 million lives)

Race has been around for a long time. It's influenced millions of people worldwide. Racism has affected people on different levels, whether it was hurt feelings or even death. However, in 1933 in Germany, racism was taken to a whole new level.

__Holocaust__ The Holocaust was a genocide of millions of European Jews during World War II.The Nazis wanted a society with no diversity and wanted the “Aryan” race to take its place as the master race. An Aryan was someone with blue eyes and blonde hair and a German heritage. The Nazis classified the Jews as a dangerous anti-race that posed a significant threat to the welfare of the world. They decided to get rid of the so-called "enemy races." The Nazi leaders referred to it as an "ethnic housecleaning" in the occupied Eastern territories of Poland and the Soviet Union. The german people were taught to hate and kill Jews, which was later called Antisemitism. Basically, because Jews had different beliefs, they were murdered in mass quantities.

__Nuremberg Race Laws__ The [|Nuremberg Race Laws] were created in 1935 and were against the Jews. The first two laws were: "The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor" and "The Reich Citizenship Law." The first law stated that Jews weren't allowed to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans. The second law stated that Jews were not citizens and were instead "subjects." However, the Nuremberg Laws surprisingly caused a lot of debate and controversy over who was a "full Jew" and whether Jews were even considered a "race." (See Meredith's page for more information on that) The Nuremberg Race Laws were followed by even harsher laws called the Nazi decrees. These laws declared that Jews didn't even have the right to be considered human. [|Here's a link if you are interested in the Nazi decrees.]

__Other "Races" affected by Nazi Idealogy__ Jews were not the only types of people that were targeted by the Nazis. Nazi racists viewed the mentally and physically ill as blemishes upon the genetic landscape of the so-called master race and, when they reproduced, as a biological danger to the purity of the Aryan race.

__Nazi Propaganda:__

Adolf Hitler's book //Mein Kampf,// In English: My Struggle

In his book, he uses the idea of "the Jewish peril," which talks about an alleged Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. Hitler also discusses why he became anti-Semitic and his hatred of the "world's twin evils": Communism and Judaism. Volume 1 of //Mein Kampf// was published in 1925 and Volume 2 was published in 1926.

Quotes:

"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." [|-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)]

"Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff."[| -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)]

//Poisonous Mushroom// was book used to brainwash children and make them hate Jews. The children's book was was published in 1938 and was a collection of 17 short stories by the Nazi writer Ernst Hiemer.

Das Ergebnis! In English- The result: a loss of racial pride

Adolf Hitler wrote this in his book //Mein Kampf//: "Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." The ideology that Jew's are "subhuman" and need to be destroyed is very extreme. Hitler realized it would take a lot of effort and persuasion to make the people believe that. So in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that was headed by Joseph Goebbels.The purpose of the Ministry was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.

[|Here are other interesting propoganda books]

Where do I want to go from here?

1. Find interviews with Holocaust survivors and get their side of the story 2. Look into how the Nazi ideas affect people in Germany now. In other words, what racist ideas started by Hitler havn't gone away 3. Compare the Holocaust to other murders/genocides caused by racism. Is there anything similar to the Holocaust?

AnnBibHutzenbuhler