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Event (Name) Date → Property 2
Birth of Hitler 1889
US joins WW1 1917
Defeat of Germany November 1918
Hitler joins German 1919
Workers' Party
Youth League of the Nazis 1922
founded
French occupy Ruhr 1923
2.6% votes for Nazis 1928
Crash of the Wall Street 1929
Exchange
37% votes for Nazis 1932
Chancellorship to Hitler 30 January 1933
Fire Decree 28 February 1933
Enabling Act 3 March 1933
Germany pulls out of the 1933
League of Nations
Nuremberg Laws September 1935
Germany reoccupies 1936
Rhineland
Germany and Austria 1938
integrated into one
Night of Broken Glass November 1938
Germany invades Poland September 1939
Tripartite Pact signed September 1940
Hitler's Defeat May 1945

First World War

After the defeat of Imperial Germany in the First World War, the Weimar
Republic emerged from its ashes.
During WW1, Germany had made initial gains like those in France and
Germany.
But, Germany was weakened when the → United States joined the war
in 1917 leading to defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918.
Defeat
The defeat of Germany gave opportunities to parliamentary parties to
change the German political system.
A National Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic
constitution with a federal structure.
Deputies were elected to the German parliament or the Reichstag on the
basis of equal universal votes cast by all adult men and women
Treaty of Versailles
The peace treaty at the end of the First World War was the Treaty of
Versailles
It was a harsh and humiliating peace treaty
Conditions
Germany lost all its overseas colonies, one-tenth of its quality
population, 13% of its territories, 75% of its iron and 26% of its coal to
France, Poland, Lithuania and Denmark.
The Allied powers demilitarized Germany to weaken its power
War Guilt Clause
 The War Guilt Clause held Germany liable for all the damages
inflicted on the Allied powers during the war
Consequently, Germany was forced to pay war reparations
amounting to 6 billion pounds to the Allies
The Allied Armies occupied resource rich Rhineland
Impact of the First World War
On Weimar Republic
After the war, Weimar Republic had to pay for the sins of Imperial
Germany
It was crippled under the burden of war guilt and national humiliation
The Weimar Republic was financially crippled because of → being
forced to pay compensation to the Allies
Within the conservative nationalist circles, the Weimar Republic was
mocked along with its supporters
The Socialists, the Democrats and the Catholics were called
the → 'November Criminals'
On Europe
Soldiers were prioritized over civilians
Politicians and publicists developed the idea → of males to be
strong, aggressive and 'masculine'
The media glorified trench life
Aggressive war propaganda and national honor took centre stage in
national politics
Europe saw the rise of radical conservative nationalism and of the Italian
idea of "Fascismo"
Weimar Republic
Political Radicalism
The genesis of the Weimar Republic also saw the rise of the revolutionary
uprising of the Spartacists
The Spartacists based themselves → on the Soviet style of
governance
Soviets of workers and sailors were established in many cities
 The Socialists, the Democrats and the Catholics who were opposed to
the Soviet style of governance met in Weimar to give shape to the
democratic republic
The Weimar Republic successfully crushed the uprising with the help
of a war veteran's organisation called the Free Corps
As a result of this, the Communists and the Socialists became
irreconcilable enemies and could not make common cause against Hitler
and this contributed to the rise of Nazism
Economic depression
Hyperinflation
Germany had accumulated a lot of debt during the First World War
and had to pay reparations in gold
Consequently, the economic and financial burden on Germany
increased
In 1923, Germany refused to pay and the French occupied its
leading industrial area, Ruhr to claim their coal → This further
exacerbated the economic condition of Germany
In retaliation, Germany printed paper currency recklessly
With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German
mark fell
As the value of the mark collapsed, the prices of goods soared
This crisis came to be known as 'hyperinflation' meaning → a
situation where the prices of goods rise exponentially
The Americans intervened by introducing the Dawes plan
which → reworked the terms of reparation to ease the financial
burden on Germans
Great Economic Depression
Germany saw short term recovery dependent on help from the United
States
However, this help was withdrawn after the crash of the Wall Street
Exchange in 1929.
Fearing a fall in the prices of stocks, people frantically sold stocks
Over the next three years between 1929 and 1932, the national
income of the United States fell by half
As a result of the Great economic depression ↓
Factories shut down
 Exports fell
Farmers were badly hit
Speculators withdrew their money from the market
The Impact of the Great Economic Depression on the economy of
Germany
The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis
By 1932, industrial production was reduced to 40% of the
1929 level
Workers lost their jobs or were paid lower wages
The number of unemployed touched 6 million
Unemployed youth resorted to criminal activities while jobs
disappeared
Middle classes especially the salaried employees and pensioners
was their savings diminish when the currency lost its value
Small business owners, self employed and the retailers suffered
losses as their businesses got ruined
Different sections of society were filled with the fear of
proletarianization which is → to become impoverished to the
level of working classes
Political system
Politically, the Weimar Republic was fragile and held inherent defects
that made it unstable and vulnerable to dictatorships ↓
Proportional Representation
This made achieving a majority almost impossible for any party
leading to rule by coalitions
Article 48
Article 48 empowered the President to impose an emergency,
suspend civil rights and rule by decree
Within its short life span, the Weimar Republic saw twenty different
cabinets lasting an average of 239 days and a liberal use of article 48
As a result of the political instability of the Weimar Republic → the
people lost confidence in the democratic system
Rise of Nazism
Hitler
 Hitler was born in Austria in 1889
When the first world war broke out, he acted as a messenger in the front
and then became a corporal receiving medals for bravery
The German defeat horrified him and the Treaty of Versailles made him
furious
In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party
He would subsequently take over the organization and renamed it the
National Socialist German Workers' Party, also known as, the Nazi Party.
Uprising
In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria, march to Berlin and
capture power
He failed, was arrested and tried for treason but later released
Nazi Party
During the Great Depression, Nazism became a mass movement as
during the despair of the great depression → Nazi propaganda
stirred hope for a better future
The Nazis were not successfully able to mobilize popular support till the
early 1930s
In 1928 elections, the Nazi party got no more than 2.6% of the votes in
the Reichstag
By 1932, the Nazi party became the largest party with 37% votes
Characteristics of Hitler
Hitler was a powerful speaker
His passion and his words moved people
His promises ↓
to build a strong nation
undo the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles
to restore the dignity of the German people
employment for those looking for work
a secure future for the youth
to weed out all foreign influences
to resist all foreign conspiracies against Germany
Nazi Publicity
 Nazis held massive rallies and public meetings → to demonstrate
support for Hitler and instill a sense of unity amongst the people
Part of this spectacle were ↓
Red banners
The Swastika
The Nazi Salute
Ritualized rounds of applause after the speeches
Nazi propaganda projected Hitler as a 'messiah', a saviour who had come
to deliver the German people from their distress
This image captured the imagination of a people whose sense of dignity,
pride and national honor had been shattered and were living in a time of
acute economic and political crises
Death of Liberty
On 30th January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the
Chancellorship(highest position in the council of ministers) to Hitler
By this time, The Nazis had managed to rally the conservatives to their
cause
A mysterious fire broke out in the German Parliament in February 1933
The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933
Indefinitely suspended civic rights
Allowed Hitler to openly oppress his victims
Repression of the Communists
Hitler hurried the Communists to the newly established concentration
camps
Out of the surviving 6808 arrest files of Duesseldorf(a city of half a
million), 1440 were of the communists alone
However, the communists were only one of the 52 types of victims
that the Nazis persecuted across the country
The Enabling Act of 3 March 1933
Empowered Hitler to sideline Parliament
Further empowered him to rule by decree
Banned all political parties except the Nazi party and its affiliates
The state established complete control over the economy, the army, the
media and the judiciary
 Police State
Nazis made Germany into a police state using the state apparatus and
newly organized forces such as the SA(Storm Troopers), Gestapo(Secret
Police), SS(Protection Squads), the criminal police and the SD(Security
Forces)
Extra constitutional powers were given to these forces: people could
be ↓
Detained and arrested without due process
Tortured
Sent to concentration camps
Deported at will
Thus, the police forces acquired the ability to act with criminal impunity
under a strict police state
Hitler's Policies & Radicalization
Reconstruction
Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the
economist Hjalmar Schacht who aimed at full production and full
employment through a state funded work creation program
This project produced the famous German superhighways and the
people's car, the Volkswagen
Foreign policy
Initial
In 1933, Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations
He reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936
He integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan of "One
people, One empire, and One leader"
He then captured German speaking Sudetenland from
Czechoslovakia and then gobbled up the entire country
In all of this, he had the support of England, which had considered the
Treaty of Versailles to be too harsh
WW2
In September of 1939, Germany invaded Poland, this started the
Second World War with England and France
 In September of 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between
Germany, Italy and Japan, strengthening Hitler's claim to
international power
Puppet regimes, supportive of Nazi Germany, were established across
parts of occupied Europe
Hitler aimed to conquer Eastern Europe for two reasons: ↓
To ensure food supplies for Germans
To ensure living space for Germans
Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. In this historic blunder,
Hitler exposed his western front to the British and the eastern front to
the Soviets
The Soviet Red Army suffered initial losses but inflicted a
crushing defeat at Stalingrad and hounded out the retreating
Germans till the heart of Berlin, this victory → established Soviet
Hegemony over Eastern Europe for half a century thereafter
The United States had resisted involvement in the war but after Japan
bombed the port of Pearl Harbour, the United States entered the
Second World War
The war ended in May 1945 after Hitler's defeat and suicide
Lebensraum or Living Space
Hitler believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement
This would enhance the area of the mother country, while enabling
settlers on new lands to → retain an intimate link with their place of
origin
It would also enhance the material resources of the German nation
Genetics & Racial Eugenics
Genetics & Eugenics
According to Nazi ideology, there was no equality amongst people,
but only a racial hierarchy. At the top of which were Nordic Blond
haired, Blue eyed Aryans while the Jews were located at the bottom.
These ideas were borrowed from natural scientists such as Charles
Darwin who tried to explain the creation of certain plants and animals
through the concept of evolution and natural selection. Herbert
Spencer later added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to
this idea, only those species survived on earth which could adapt
themselves to the specific and changing climatic conditions
 Race
The Nazis desired a society of only pure and healthy Nordic
Aryans. They alone were considered desirables and only they
were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all
others who were classed as undesirables
The undesirables were considered 'racial inferiors' in Nazi Germany
who threatened the biological purity of the 'superior Aryan' race
Jews
Jews were among the various communities that had been
classified as undesirables
They had been stereotyped as 'killers of Christ' and usurers and
until the medieval times, Jews had been barred from owning land
The Jews had to live in separate marked areas known ghettos
They were persecuted through periodic organized violence and
expulsion from land
The Nazis pauperized the Jews and segregated them
Racial utopia
During the war, the Nazis proceeded to realize their idea of a racial
utopia
In Occupied Poland, Poles were forced to leave their homes and
properties to be occupied by ethnic Germans brought in from
occupied Europe
Poles were herded in the other part of Poland called the 'General
Government' which was the destination of all undesirables residing
within the borders of the empire
Members of the Polish intelligentsia were murdered in large numbers
in order to keep the entire people intellectually and spiritually servile.
Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from
their mothers and examined by 'race experts'
If they passed race tests, they were raised in German families and if
not, they were deposited into orphanages where most of them
perished
Education & Youth
Education
Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by
teaching children Nazi ideology.
 All schools were cleansed and "purified" by dismissing
teachers who were Jew or seen as politically unreliable
Children were segregated: Germans and Jews could not sit together
or play together.
Subsequently all undesirable children such as the Jews, the Gypsies
and the physically disabled were thrown out of schools.
Good German children were subjected to a process of Nazi schooling
and a prolonged period of ideological training.
School textbooks were rewritten to propagate Nazi ideals and
racial science was introduced to → justify Nazi ideas on race and
eugenics
Children were taught to ↓
To be loyal and submissive
Hate Jews
Worship Hitler
Sports were introduced in order to nurture a spirit of violence and
aggression.
Hitler believed boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and
masculine
Youth organizations
Youth organizations were made responsible → for educating
German youth in 'the spirit of National Socialism'
Ten year olds had to join Jungvolk
At 14, all children had to join Hitler Youth where they learnt ↓
To worship war
To glorify aggression and violence
To condemn democracy
Hate all those categorized as undesirables
After a period of rigorous physical and ideological training, they
joined the Labour Service, usually at the age 18 and then → had
to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi
organizations
To unify the youth movement under Nazi control, all other youth
organizations were systematically dissolved and finally banned.
Women
 Children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically
different than men
The fight for equal rights for men and women that had become a part of
the democratic struggle everywhere was thought to be wrong and that it
would destroy society.
Girls
Boys were taught to be strong and masculine while girls were taught
that they had to become good mothers and rear pure blooded Aryan
children.
Girls had to ↓
maintain the purity of the race
distance themselves from Jews
Look after the home
Teach their children Nazi values
Women & Motherhood
In 1933, Hitler stated → that in his state, the mother is the most
important citizen.
Contrary to this, all mothers were not treated equally
Women who bore undesirable children were punished while those who
beared desirable children were awarded.
Women who gave birth to racially desirable children were ↓
Given favoured treatment in hospitals
Entitled to concessions in shops, theatre tickets and railway fares
To encourage women to have more children → honor crosses
were awarded, bronze for four children, silver for six children and
gold for eight or more
Meanwhile, all Aryan women who deviated from the prescribed code
of conduct were publicly condemned and severely punished.
Women who maintained contact with Jews, Poles or Russians were
paraded through the town with shaved heads, blackened faces and
placards around their necks announcing "I have sullied the honor of
the nation"; many of them received jail sentences and lost their civic
honor as well as their families for this 'criminal offence'
Propaganda
The Nazi regime used language and media with care, and often with
great effect. They used deceptive words to describe their killings.
 Mass killings were termed:
For jews → final solution
For disabled → euthanasia
Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularize its
worldview. Nazi ideas were spread through visual images, films, radios
and posters.
In posters, groups identified as 'enemies' of Germans were
stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as 'evil'. They were
attacked as malicious foreign agents. Socialists and Liberals were
represented as weak and degenerate
Propaganda films were made to create hatred for the jews, the most
infamous film was The Eternal Jew
Orthodox Jews were stereotyped as the ones with flowing beards,
wearing kaftans whereas in reality it was difficult to distinguish
German Jews by their outward appearance as they were a highly
assimilated community. Jews were referred to as vermin , rats and
pests
Nazism worked by suggesting to the people that Nazism was the only
solution to all their problems
Holocaust
Exclusion
Nuremburg Laws of Citizenship of September 1935
Only persons of German or related blood would henceforth be German
citizens enjoying the protection of the German empire.
Marriages between Jews and Germans were forbidden
Extramarital relations between Jews and Germans became a crime.
Jews were forbidden to fly the national flag
Other Legal measures
Boycott of Jewish businesses
Expulsion from government services
Forced selling and confiscation of Jewish properties
Night of broken glass
Night of Broken glass → Jewish properties were vandalised and
looted, houses attacked, synagogues burnt and men arrested in a
pogrom in November, 1938.
 Ghettoisation
From September 1941, all Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David on
their breasts.
This identity mark was stamped on their passports, all legal documents
and houses.
They were kept in Jewish houses in Germany and in Ghettos like Lodz
and Warsaw in the east, these became sites of extreme misery and
poverty.
Jews had to surrender all their wealth and property before they entered a
ghetto
The ghettos brimmed with hunger, starvation and disease due to
deprivation and poor hygiene
Annihilation
Jews from Jewish houses, concentration camps and ghettos from
different parts of Europe were brought to death factories by goods trains.
In Poland and elsewhere in the east, had many concentration camps that
were charred with gas chambers. Mass killings took place within minutes
with scientific precision.
Give three examples of concentration camps ↓
Auschwitz
Treblinka
Sobibor
The Nuremburg Tribunal
At the end of the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal was
set up at Nuremberg to prosecute Nazi war criminals, especially those who
committed acts that were named 'Crimes Against Humanity'
In the name of the Second World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war,
which resulted in the mass murder of many groups of innocent civilians of
Europe.
Over 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians
and 70,000 Germans who were deemed mentally or physically unfit
were killed along with an innumerable number of political opponents
The Nazis had devised a new method of killing people- by gassing them- in
concentration camps like Auschwitz
The Nuremberg Tribunal only sentenced 11 Nazis to death and many
others to life sentences