A Thematic Study in 20th Century History

Task 2: A Thematic Study in Twentieth Century History
Introduction
This essay will attempt to answer the question: “Did changes in anti-Semitism behaviour happen at the same rate over the period 1933-1945 in Germany?” I will demonstrate that changes in anti-semitism behaviour did not occur at the same rate during the period 1933-1945. Anti-Semitism began slowly when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on the 30th January 1933. Initially the restriction of Jewish rights and freedom was slow and gradual, once changes had been accepted as almost ‘normal’ by the German people, then it became easier over time to introduce more extreme measures. First it was the boycott of Jewish businesses, this was followed by the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which prevented Jews from working in all government bodies and public services (teachers, professors and judges etc.,). Jewish children were withdrawn from school and students not allowed to attend university. The same year there was a public burning of books written by Jewish authors and in addition German citizenship was withdrawn from all Jews. This all happened in less than a year of Hitler becoming chancellor and over the next few years all Jewish rights were increasingly destroyed until the “Final Solution” came into effect which called for the extermination of all Jewish people.
1933: Changes in Jewish Liberties under the Nazi regime
Anti-Semitism is discrimination, prejudice, hatred or hostility directed specifically against Jews. The Holocaust, which was the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany between 1933-1945, is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism (1).
Changes in anti-Semitism behaviour did not happen overnight in Germany, and it is still argued today how many German civilians were aware of the atrocities committed against the Jewish population. I believe changes in anti-Semitism started slowly as the Nazi regime gained power and then gradually started stripping away Jewish human rights. The Nazi’s also used propaganda and speeches to persuade German citizens that Jewish people were an inferior race and were poisoning the German blood. The National Socialist treatment of the Jews in the early months of 1933 marked the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society (2). The plan to remove Jews altogether from Germany was at the core of Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution”. The restriction of Jewish liberties began in earnest when Hitler became chancellor of Germany at the start of 1933. Less than two months later Dachau concentration camp was opened which would serve to imprison, torture and kill hundreds of thousands of Jews. In 1933, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany, less than one percent of the total population (3). When Hitler became dictator of Germany, a boycott of Jewish businesses was decided upon by the Nazi leadership. Shops were plastered with signs warning German citizens not enter and buy goods from Jews.
The same year many new laws were put in place which made Jewish life extremely difficult, such as the Law for Restoration of the Civil Service, which meant all Jews employed in the civil service at the time were either fired or forced into retirement. Other laws prevented Jewish people from working in the professions such as doctors, lawyers, dentists and lecturers. All mass media was put under Nazi control so Jews could not work as journalists. Furthermore, Jews were banned from all cultural and entertainment activities including literature, art, film and theatre (4). In Germany in 1933 anti-Semitism behaviour was encouraged by the Nazi government and was condoned by the state. Because of the initial gradual nature of the stripping away of Jewish human rights many Jews did not see the imminent danger that was unfolding around them. Even the Jews that fled Germany for other European countries were still in grave danger as Germany invaded and occupied the countries in which Jewish people had sought refuge. 1934-1936: Hitler as Fuehrer
In August 1934, following the death of the German President, Hitler proclaimed himself as Fuehrer of Germany und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor) (5). The German Armed Forces now swore an oath of loyalty and allegiance to Hitler. Hitler was very quick to combine and consolidate all power to himself and so became the most powerful man in Germany. Following the many restrictions introduced in 1933 in anti-Semitism behaviour, 1934 did not bring further great changes, in a way for Germans this could have served to almost ‘normalise’ or at least desensitise them to anti-Semitism, while at the same time paving the way for more extreme measures to come.
In 1935 there was a lot of racial segregation in Germany as Jewish people were separated and segregated from the rest of German society. Jews were now no longer able to join the Army, and were also stripped of German citizenship under the Nuremberg Laws which were anti-Semitism laws introduced under Nazi Germany to control Jewish people’s lives and take away their basic human rights. Some of the restrictions put in place by these laws meant that Jew and German marriages and relationships were prohibited by law; in addition Jews were not allowed to fly the German flag. Towards the end of 1935 people of Jewish ethnicity were starting to be categorised as an individual who had descended from 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents. If an individual was descended from 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents they were considered a half-breed. The Nazi’s clearly attempted to dehumanize Jewish people and encouraged the German people to view Jews as less than human. There were also anti-Jewish riots in Munich and violent demonstrations against Jews in Berlin. In 1935 the rate of anti-Semitism behaviour rapidly increased in Germany, and since Jewish peoples human rights had already been taken away from them they was no protection from the violent anti-Semitism protests which broke out and the police did nothing to protect the Jewish people.
The year 1936 started with more anti-Semitism laws put in place making it impossible for Jewish doctors to practice medicine in German institutions. Moreover, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established and opened in July where a gas chamber was later constructed for the mass extermination of Jews.
1937-1938: Increased anti-Semitism behaviour in Nazi Germany
By July 1937 the Buchenwald concentration camp was opened in Germany and it would later be used to imprison, kill, torture, starve and experiment on Jews and others groups of people Nazi Germany did not approve of. In 1937 there was a slow rate of change in anti-Semitism behaviour, it did not get worse but since it was already severe it was also not better for Jews at this time. We can see that plans were forming and concentration camps were being made during this time to imprison Jews and those who opposed the Nazi regime. In addition to Jewish people the Nazis did not approve of homosexuals, gypsies and people with mental and physical disabilities.
At the start of 1938 Jews were prohibited from becoming members of the Red Cross in Germany and when Germany successfully invaded and unified Austria and Germany (Anschluss), Austria’s 200,000 Jews were now subject to the same anti-Semitic legislation as the German Jews (6).

During 1938 the rate of anti-Semitism behaviour increases exponentially as opposed to some period’s during1934 and 1937. As of March 1938 all Jewish cultural (ethnic) organisations loose their official status. Later that same year Jewish owned or run businesses needed to be registered with the Nazi government so they could be marked and identified as Jewish, the following day all Jews who had been convicted or previously convicted of a crime were arrested and transported to concentration camps, no matter what the severity of the crime was. It later became law that all Jewish citizens in Germany had to have a middle name on all of their official documents so they could be easily identified as Jews. Jewish people also had their passports stamped with a letter “J” to make it more difficult for them to flee to Switzerland. Furthermore 18,000 Jews living in Germany at that time holding Polish passports were deported back to Poland to live in ghettos. During 10th November 1938 30,000 Jewish men were forcefully taken to concentration camps and many were killed. Jewish shops and synagogues were looted and destroyed. Just a few days later Jewish children were forced to attend Jewish only schools.

1939-1945: The “Final Solution” and the Holocaust
In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews by religious definition lived in Germany. Over half of these individuals, approximately 304,000 Jews, emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, leaving only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany on the eve of World War II (7). In November 1939 it became compulsory for Jews to wear a Star of David armband; this made Jews easily recognisable and made them more susceptible to discrimination. The years 1939-1945 witnessed the peak of anti-Semitism behaviour and it became progressively worse until 1945 when the Nazi regime fell.
During 1939-1945 the Nazis created the ghettos to separate Jews from the rest of society, the Jews in these ghettos would later be transported to concentration camps if they survived. The chance of survival in the ghettos was very low as the people were starved and malnourished, disease also spread fast due to the close confined spaces they were enclosed in. They were separated from the non-Jewish population first by barbed wire, then by walls impregnated with shards of glass. New arrivals were crowded into rooms with other families, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to live in a space of a few city blocks. A Nazi report estimated that there were seven Jews living in every room in the Warsaw (Poland) ghetto (8).

In 1941 the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was established in Auschwitz. It soon became the most brutal and over-crowded of the camps at Auschwitz. In 1942 the Final Solution was fully implemented which was described by Hitler to be: “the final solution to the Jewish question” (9). The Final Solution was Hitler’s plan to kill all Jews living in Europe, this resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust as camps were now installing gas chambers and their purpose was now to murder as many Jews as possible. By the end of 1945 it was estimated that 1 million Jews had already been killed before the Final Solution was fully activated in 1942, so an estimated 5 million Jews were killed in extermination camps in just 3 years. Approximately six million Jewish men, women, and children were killed during the Holocaust -- two-thirds of the Jewish population living in Europe before World War II (10).
However, it wasn’t just starvation, mass murder, denying of liberties and torture that the Nazis inflicted upon the Jews in the concentration camps, they also medically experimented on them. Another distinctive feature of the Holocaust was the extensive use of human subjects in medical experiments. German physicians carried out such experiments at Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler concentration camps (11). The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele, who worked in Auschwitz. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye colour by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries (12). Josef Mengele was named the “Angel of Death” because of his sadistic nature and cruel experiments, he is said to have been one of the most heinous Nazi criminals, and those who did survive his twisted experiments we usually killed straight after.

This source was most likely describing a medical experiment that occurred in the early 1940s (before the Final Solution) when medical experimentation was carried out on thousands of prisoners in the concentration camps, especially on children. As the majority of people were Jews in the concentration camp it can be assumed that these twins were Jews and so this is a form of anti-Semitism behaviour at its cruellest. From this we can see that the rate of anti-Semitism behaviour has increased drastically since the start of WW2, no longer are they just taking away Jewish peoples liberties but they are physically destroying them. The Nazi’s went from disliking the Jewish people to an intense hatred for them.
The End of the Holocaust Even in the final months of the war the suffering Jewish people endured continued as SS guards moved Jewish people from concentration camps and forced them on long marches from one camp to another. These marches were often referred to as “death marches,” because many Jewish people died on these marches, either due to starvation, exhaustion or were murdered by Nazi guards. The ‘death marches’ were an attempt by the Nazi’s to prevent the liberation of Jewish prisoners (13). The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied Eastern Europe entirely.
Impact of Anti-Semitism behaviour in Education in Nazi Germany
Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 Jews were heavily discriminated against in education and German children were taught anti-Semitism ideas in schools, this impacted greatly on how German children growing up in the Nazi regime thought about the Jews as they grew up thinking they were lesser beings and sought to harm Germany, this made them naturally defensive to them i.e. they didn’t want to associate themselves with Jews and even aggressive towards them. Furthermore, Jews were discriminated against by teachers, for example, they were subject to ridicule by their teachers and the bullying of Jewish children by other pupils was permitted until they were forced to withdraw from schools and attend Jewish only schools. Overall, Hitler used schools in Nazi Germany as a platform in which he used to spread his anti-Semitism ideologies to German children.

Conclusion
The concentration camps original purpose was not to exterminate all Jews, however, when the Nazi Party decided upon the extermination of all Jews they constructed gas chambers within most camps and mass killings occurred on a daily basis. The Final Solution was the peak of anti-Semitism behaviour and because it wasn’t fully implemented until 1942 it tells us rate of anti-Semitism behaviour could not have happened at the same rate over the whole period between 1933-1945. Furthermore, I believe the rate of anti-Semitism behaviour in Nazi Germany intensified over two distinct period of time:
1. From 1933-1938 German citizens under the Nazi regime were influenced by speeches and propaganda into disliking and not trusting the Jewish people and becoming suspicious of them.
2. From 1939-1945 The German people developed an intense hatred towards the Jewish people, this might’ve been influenced by WW2 and the lies the Nazis were circulating about Jews.
Even today it is incredible to believe that some individuals contend that anti-Semitism behaviour was non-existent and that the Holocaust was a myth or that the number of Jews who died were greatly exaggerated (Holocaust Denial). The current President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, is the most notable person who believes the Holocaust is a myth and that there is not enough evidence to support it. Most Holocaust deniers claim that Nazis had no official policy or intent in killing all Jews or that the Holocaust was a lie created by the Allies. Holocaust deniers are probably driven by their own internal motivations into denying that mass murder occurred. It could also be argued that ‘Holocaust Denial’ in itself is a form of ongoing anti-Semitism. It is clear the Jewish people suffered greatly under Nazi Germany and that their suffering intensified towards the end of the war due to the policy of Hitler’s ‘final solution’. People should never forget the suffering of the Jewish people or the cruelty that humans are capable of inflicting on one another. Hopefully by remembering we will ensure an atrocity like the holocaust is never allowed to happen again.