How Adolph Hitler Tried to Exterminate the Jewish Race

Adolph Hitler, probably the person, who influenced the past century the most, was at it?s beginning just an unimportant private in the Austrian-Hungarian-Army. As time passed by, he became a quite influential politician in the "Weimarer-Republic". At this time, the communist party of Germany, the KPD, became stronger and stronger. The democratic and conservative parties including the president of the empire, "von Hindenburg", feared that the KPD could achieve a majority at the upcoming elections of the winter 1933/34. Since they thought, that Adolph Hitler, leader of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) would be much easier to control than a communist Chancellor, he was awarded Chancellor of Germany on January 30^th, 1933. This turned out to be the biggest mistake in history. During the time of the "Third Reich", approximately 6 million Jews (the estimates range from 5.100.000 to 5.957.000) were murdered by the SS¹, SA², Waffen-SS³, Gestapo⁴, SD⁵ and even the Wehrmacht⁶. Amongst the other victims were prisoners of war, political enemies, handicapped and gypsies. Their number exceeded 1 million by far. The reasons, why Hitler, and a small group around him, ordered these crimes could not totally be cleared to the present point. There are however several theories about his reasons. One, I recently read in an article, suggests that he tried to connect the country and its people by comitting one big crime. Therefore it is a necessity to know how Hitler?s anti-Semitism lead to the Holocaust during the years 1933 ? 1943. These effects of it were the introduction of anti Jewish laws, the forced emigration and the KZ?s (Concentration Camps).

The first step taken by Hitler to fulfill the goals he described in "Mein Kampf" had to be the introduction of several laws. The most important one?s were the "Pretext of protecting the nation from threats to its security", the "Enabling Act"and the "Law for the Protection of German blood and honor". The "Pretext of protecting the nation from threats to its security" was introduced February 28^th, 1933 and mainly denied basic human rights such as personal freedom, freedom of speech, liberty of press, the right to meet at any time at any place, and many more to all Germans. It also allowed the national government to rule over state government decisions, if it considered its decision not to be appropriate or wrong. The second law was introduced in March 24^th, 1933 and called the "Enabling Act". It permitted the government to introduce new laws, even if they were unconstitutional, without consulting the parliament. Furthermore it allowed the government to sign treaties with other nations without notification of the parliament. The "Law for the Protection of German blood and honor", introduced September 15^th, 1935, stated, that a marriage between Germans and Jews was forbidden and that Jews under the age of 45 years may not be occupied by Germans as maids, cooks or other jobs within private households. Furthermore Jews were not allowed to show, carry or post the new German flag, the Swastika. These three laws were the foundation for every other measurement going to be taken against Jews and other minorities in the future. With them, Hitler was enabled to carry out his evil plans without breaking the existing German laws.

The second stage was the forced emigration of Jewish persons. It started in 1933 and continued till 1939. During these 6 years 140.000 Jews were forced out of Germany by the increasing hostility of the German nation. Large numbers immigrated to the neighboring countries of Germany like Belgium, France, the Netherlands, England, Austria and Poland; Palestine; South and North America. Reasons for emigration were new regulations introduced by the government for Jews. The need to carry the David?s Star, the disallowance to butcher animals after Jewish tradition and many more influenced the lives of the Jewish population. The national socialist government also regulated their possibility to work by forbidding them to become teacher, civil servants, soldiers, artists, doctors and farmers. Another reason was the burning of books written or published by Jews. These burning were organized by SS, SA and youth organizations of the NSDAP, which were also responsible for beatings and anti-Semitic propaganda in front of Jewish owned stores (see Picture). The peak was reached in the "Reichskristallnacht" (Night of Broken Glass) November 9^th 1938, in which 25.000 Jews were taken into custody and later sent to concentration camps; synagogues, stores and homes were set on fire across Germany, Austria and the occupied territories. During these years many Jewish organization were abolished and their capital was declared to be governmental property. The Jewish language, Hebrew, was also abolished. All these factors contributed to the emigration of Jews from Germany. Unfortunately most immigrated to countries, which were later overrun by the Wehrmancht, so once again their lives were controlled by their German enemies. This time however there was no way out and therefore most of these former emigrants were now deported into KZ´s.

Concentration camps have to be differentiated into two groups. The first group were the working camps which already appeared a few weeks after Adolph Hitler was brought to power by the construction of the first real concentration camp in Dachau near Munich on March 22^nd, 1933. The inmates of these camps often died due to over-exhaustion caused by the hard work they had to perform every day. The camps however were not necessarily designed to kill, but to use the workforce of the prisoners for as long as possible. They were sent to work at such well known companies like BMW, Siemens, Mercedes-Benz, Bayer, Porsche or Volkswagen to produce war material like tanks, planes, ammunition, engines, ships and so on. The inmates, which survived this camps for a certain time were sent to pure killing camps, since they were considered to be the "resistant and though center of the Jewish race, which had to be exterminated at all cost" to prevent the continuation of the Jewish race in Europe. The second kinds of KZ?s were the killing or extermination camps, which were invented after finding the "final solution for the Jewish problem" January 20^th, 1942 at the "Wannsee Conference" in Berlin. The most well known representative of these camps is Auschwitz. Here the objective was not to use the prisoners as cheap labor, but to kill as many as possible, as fast as possible. Therefore gas chambers and crematoriums were constructed at every camp. Up to that point the prisoners were simply shot. However it soon became clear, that it was no possible to kill a "large" amount of Jews by simply shooting them, since the ammunition was expensive and could be used in a much better way at the front line. Furthermore the soldiers who performed these shootings were very much psychologically affected. Therefore the search for a more effective way continued. Eventually "Cyclone B", a nerve gas, was found and used. With this method it would have been possible to kill all of the estimated 11 million Jews who were living in Europe at that time in just a view more years.

Nowadays that the Nazi-movement is increasing. Of course they are not as strong as in the days of the "Third Reich", but they should not be underestimated like it was done in 1933 by the politicians of the "Reichstag". Luckily persons, who are usually not interested in politics, but rather in beating up emigrants and people, who do not share their believes, form this movement today,. Therefore their successes in the political landscape of Germany is not even worthwhile mentioning. But nowadays information technologies are much more advanced than they were at the beginning of this century. One major information network that contributes to the spread of racism and anti-Semitism is the Internet. It enables these hate groups to get in touch with each other and to recruit new members around the world. Even supposingly decent online stores like "Amazon.com" or "Barnesandnoble.com" enables members of Nazi- and KKK-members to get a hold of books, which are banned in Germany. The Member of the "Simon Wiesenthal Center" recently succeeded in ordering "Mein Kampf" (by Adolph Hitler ? this book was treated like the bible during the days of the NSDAP in Germany) from the Internet. One smart man said once, that mankind should learn from the mistakes done by our ancestors, but unfortunately nobody did listen to him.

Explanations:

1) SS = Schutz Staffel® protection force,

2) SA = Sturm Abteilung ® storm or assault divisions,

3) Waffen-SS ® equals Special forces of an Army

4) Gestapo = Geheime Staats Polizei ® Secret State Police

5) SD = Sicherheits Dienst ® (National) Security Agency

6) Wehrmacht ® German Army during WWII

Sources:

1) Holocaust Timeline: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html

2) Nazis Open Dachau: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/dach-early.htm

3) Wannsee Conference: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-wannsee.htm

4) Simon Wiesenthal Center: http://www.wiesenthal.com