Life in Nazi Germany and WW2

• Causes for Holocaust: 1) Hitler had a tough childhood (mother died of cancer and the doctor was jewish, rejected from art school and blamed it on jewish people) leading to him being anti-semitic. 2) historical scapegoating: jews had been wrongly blamed for many atrocities in history. 3) impact of WW1: jews were blamed for causing germany to surrender after ww1, economic depression and social problems. 4) propaganda: jews were portrayed in a negative light and people were brainwashed from an early age to hate jews.
• Nuremberg laws discriminated against jews, like they weren’t allowed to marry germans and had to wear the star of david
• On the Night of Broken Glass, nazis attacked jewish stores and synagogues, 90 jews were killed and others were sent to concentration camps
• Ghettos were set up to deal with the large number of jews, they sealed off entire cities by building walls around them
• The “Final Solution” was the nazi term to eliminate all jewish people in europe
• consequences of the holocaust: 1) 6 million jews were killed. 2) nuremberg trials were held to try nazi leaders from crimes committed during the war. 3) huge refugee crisis as jews were released from concentration camps (their previous homes were destroyed or now occupied). 4) state of israel was formed and led to conflict between israel and surrounding arab states
• Fascism is based on extreme nationalism (idea of loving your country to the point of wanting to expand it), the use of military forces, and the idea of a strong leader/dictator
• Hitler became dictator by 1) using the brown shirts and his own secret police to kill political opponents, 2) the reichstag building was set on fire (by a communist) which he used as an excuse to ban the communist party. 3) he passed the “enabling law“ which said he could pass any laws he wanted without government approval. 4) placed anyone who opposed him in concentration camps. 5) Night of the long knives: killed the leader of his personal army the SA as they posed as a potential threat
• The reasons the nazis rose to power was: the treaty of versailles, propaganda, the economy
• Treaty of Versailles: germany lost 13% of their land, army was reduced to 100,000, reparations of £6.6 billion, and had to take full blame for world war 1
• After world war 1, germanys economy was suffering, 1 in 5 were unemployed and germany had to pay fines for TOV. Hitler and the Nazis promised to get jobs and improve economy
• To promote people having more kids; there was a loan system for couples to have more kids, the motherhood medal which was awarded to women who had the most children
• There were youth organisations for kids, for boys there was “hitler youth” and for girls there was “league of german maidens”, where they were indoctrinated
• The number of unemployed people shrank from 6 million to none in only 6 years
• Causes for WW2: Treaty of Versailles, Hitlers foreign policy (Hitler wanted to unite all German speaking people, and use the east of Germany for living space), weakness of the League of Nations (American didn’t join, and all decisions had to be unanimous), the allies policy os appeasement (Britain and France believed if they gave in to Hitlers demands it would prevent a future war—it led to him invading Austria and Sudenland), Nazi invasion of Poland (Britain and France declared war on Germany afterward)
• Long term results from WW2: Germany was split into 2, East was controlled by USSR whereas west was controlled by USA, Britain and France. United Nations was set up, USA and USSR joined which made it stronger. USA and USSR emerged more powerful after the war
• Short term effects from WW2: Buildings and roads destroyed, more than 40million people died, huge refugee crisis, Nuremberg trials were held
• operation barbarossa: 1941, germany invaded russia (hitler wanted to use russias land to expand his empire)
• how many russians had been killed or captured by december of 1941 in operation barbarossa?

  4 million
• scorched earth policy (used in operation barbarossa by russians): they retreated and burned any resources germans could have used
• in december 1941, russians launched a massive counterattack which led to moscow being saved (operation barbarossa)