The Soviet Union and Stalin PDF

The Soviet Union and Stalin Source: World History: Patterns of Interaction Textbook, pages 872-879 Lenin Restores Order War and revolution destroyed the...

The Soviet Union and Stalin Source: World History: Patterns of Interaction Textbook, pages 872-879 Lenin Restores Order War and revolution destroyed the Russian economy. Trade was at a standstill. Industrial production dropped, and many skilled workers fled to other countries. Lenin turned to reviving the economy and restructuring the government. In March 1921, Lenin temporarily put aside his plan for a state-controlled economy. Instead, he resorted to a small-scale version of capitalism called the New Economic Policy (NEP). The reforms under the NEP allowed peasants to sell their surplus crops instead of turning them over to the government. The government kept control of major industries, banks, and means of communication, but it let some small factories, businesses, and farms operate under private ownership. The government also encouraged foreign investment. Thanks partly to the new policies and to the peace that followed the civil war, the country slowly recovered. By 1928, Russia’s farms and factories were producing as much as they had before World War I. To keep nationalism in check, Lenin organized Russia into several self- governing republics under the central government. In 1922, the country was named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in honor of the councils that helped launch the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks renamed their party the Communist Party. The name came from the writings of Karl Marx. He used the word communism to describe the classless society that would exist after workers had seized power. In 1924, the Communists created a constitution based on socialist and democratic principles. In reality, the Communist Party held all the power. Lenin had established a dictatorship of the Communist Party, not “a dictatorship of the proletariat,” as Marx had promoted. Stalin Becomes Dictator Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922. He survived, but the incident set in motion competition for heading up the Communist Party. Two of the most notable men were Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Stalin was cold, hard, and impersonal. During his early days as a Bolshevik, he changed his name to Stalin, which means “man of steel” in Russian. Stalin began his ruthless climb to the head of the government between 1922 and 1927. In 1922, as general secretary of the Communist Party, he worked behind the scenes to move his supporters into positions of power. Lenin believed that Stalin was a dangerous man. Shortly before he died in 1924, Lenin wrote, “Comrade Stalin... has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.” By 1928, Stalin was in total command of the Communist Party. Trotsky, forced into exile in 1929, was no longer a threat. Stalin now stood poised to wield absolute power as a dictator. A Government of Total Control The term totalitarianism describes a government that takes total, centralized, state control over every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian leaders appear to provide a sense of security and to give a direction for the future. In the 20th century, the widespread use of mass communication made it possible to reach into all aspects of citizens’ lives. A dynamic leader who can build support for his policies and justify his actions heads most totalitarian governments. Often the leader utilizes secret police to crush opposition and create a sense of fear among the people. No one is exempt from suspicion or accusations that he or she is an enemy of the state. To dominate an entire nation, totalitarian leaders devised methods of control and persuasion. These included the use of terror, indoctrination, propaganda, censorship, and religious or ethnic persecution. Dictators of totalitarian states use terror and violence to force obedience and to crush opposition. Normally, the police are expected to respond to criminal activity and protect the citizens. In a totalitarian state, the police serve to enforce the central government’s policies. They may do this by spying on the citizens or by intimidating them. Sometimes they use brutal force and even murder to achieve their goals. Totalitarian states rely on indoctrination— instruction in the government’s beliefs—to mold people’s minds. Control of education is absolutely essential to glorify the leader and his policies and to convince all citizens that their unconditional loyalty and support are required. Indoctrination begins with very young children, is encouraged by youth groups, and is strongly enforced by schools. Totalitarian states spread propaganda, biased or incomplete information used to sway people to accept certain beliefs or actions. Control of all mass media allows this to happen. No publication, film, art, or music is allowed to exist without the permission of the state. Citizens are surrounded with false information that appears to be true. Suggesting that the information is incorrect is considered an act of treason and severely punished. Individuals who dissent must retract their work or they are imprisoned or killed. Totalitarian leaders often create “enemies of the state” to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups. Often these groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them. Stalin Builds a Totalitarian State Stalin aimed to create a perfect Communist state in Russia. To realize his vision, Stalin planned to transform the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state. He began building his totalitarian state by destroying his enemies—real and imagined. Police State Stalin built a police state to maintain his power. Stalin’s secret police used tanks and armored cars to stop riots. They monitored telephone lines, read mail, and planted informers everywhere. Even children told authorities about disloyal remarks they heard at home. Every family came to fear the knock on the door in the early morning hours, which usually meant the arrest of a family member. The secret police arrested and executed millions of so-called traitors. In 1934, Stalin turned against members of the Communist Party. In 1937, he launched the Great Purge, a campaign of terror directed at eliminating anyone who threatened his power. Thousands of old Bolsheviks who helped stage the Revolution in 1917 stood trial. They were executed or sent to labor camps for “crimes against the Soviet state.” When the Great Purge ended in 1938, Stalin had gained total control of the Soviet government and the Communist Party. Historians estimate that during this time he was responsible for 8 million to 13 million deaths. Russian Propaganda and Censorship Stalin’s government controlled all newspapers, motion pictures, radio, and other sources of information. Many Soviet writers, composers, and other artists also fell victim to official censorship. Stalin would not tolerate individual creativity that did not conform to the views of the state. Soviet newspapers and radio broadcasts glorified the achievements of communism, Stalin, and his economic programs. Under Stalin, the arts also were used for propaganda. Education and Indoctrination Under Stalin, the government controlled all education from nursery schools through the universities. Schoolchildren learned the virtues of the Communist Party. College professors and students who questioned the Communist Party’s interpretations of history or science risked losing their jobs or faced imprisonment. Party leaders in the Soviet Union lectured [about] the ideals of communism. They also stressed the importance of sacrifice and hard work to build the Communist state. State-supported youth groups trained future party members. Religious Persecution Communists aimed to replace religious teachings with the ideals of communism. Under Stalin, the government and the League of the Militant Godless, an officially sponsored group of atheists, spread propaganda attacking religion. “Museums of atheism” displayed exhibits to show that religious beliefs were mere superstitions. Yet many people in the Soviet Union still clung to their faiths. The Russian Orthodox Church was the main target of persecution. Other religious groups also suffered greatly. The police destroyed magnificent churches and synagogues, and many religious leaders were killed or sent to labor camps. An Industrial Revolution As Stalin began to gain complete control of society, he was setting plans in motion to overhaul the economy. He announced, “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years.” In 1928 Stalin’s plans called for a command economy, a system in which the government made all economic decisions. Under this system, political leaders identify the country’s economic needs and determine how to fulfill them. Stalin outlined the first of several Five-Year Plans for the development of the Soviet Union’s economy. The Five-Year Plans set impossibly high quotas, or numerical goals, to increase the output of steel, coal, oil, and electricity. To reach these targets, the government limited production of consumer goods. As a result, people faced severe shortages of housing, food, clothing, and other necessary goods. Stalin’s tough methods produced impressive economic results. Although most of the targets of the first Five-Year Plan fell short, the Soviets made substantial gains. A second plan, launched in 1933, proved equally successful. From 1928 to 1937, industrial production of steel increased more than 25 percent. An Agricultural Revolution In 1928, the government began to seize over 25 million privately owned farms in the USSR. It combined them into large, government-owned farms, called collective farms. Hundreds of families worked on these farms, called collectives, producing food for the state. The government expected that the modern machinery on the collective farms would boost food production and reduce the number of workers. Peasants actively fought the government’s attempt to take their land. Many killed livestock and destroyed crops in protest. Soviet secret police herded peasants onto collective farms at the point of a bayonet. Between 5 million and 10 million peasants died as a direct result of Stalin’s agricultural revolution. By 1938, more than 90 percent of all peasants lived on collective farms. That year the country produced almost twice the wheat than it had in 1928 before collective farming. In areas where farming was more difficult, the government set up state farms. These state farms operated like factories. The workers received wages instead of a share of the profits. These farms were much larger than collectives and mostly produced wheat. Ukrainian Kulaks The kulaks in Ukraine fiercely resisted collectivization. They murdered officials, torched the property of the collectives, and burned their own crops and grain in protest. Recognizing the threat kulaks posed to his policies, Stalin declared that they should “liquidate kulaks as a class.” The state took control of kulak land and equipment, and confiscated stores of food and grain. More than 3 million Ukrainians were shot, exiled, or imprisoned. Some 6 million people died in the government-engineered famine that resulted from the destruction of crops and animals. Daily Life Under Stalin Stalin’s totalitarian rule revolutionized Soviet society. Women’s roles greatly expanded. People became better educated and mastered new technical skills. The dramatic changes in people’s lives, came at great cost. Soviet citizens found their personal freedoms limited, consumer goods in short supply, and dissent prohibited. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 declared men and women equal. Laws were passed to grant women equal rights. Under his Five-Year Plans, [women] had no choice but to join the labor force. The state provided child care for all working mothers. Some young women performed the same jobs as men. Millions of women worked in factories and in construction. However, men continued to hold the best jobs. Given new educational opportunities, women prepared for careers in engineering and science. Medicine, in particular, attracted many women. By 1950, they made up 75 percent of Soviet doctors. Soviet women paid a heavy price for their rising status in society. Besides having full-time jobs, they were responsible for housework and child care. Motherhood is considered a patriotic duty in totalitarian regimes. Soviet women were expected to provide the state with future generations of loyal, obedient citizens. ***Note: There are debates about if governments such as the Soviet Union really did have “total control.” Some historians argue that authoritarian [a government with a large degree of power] would be a better description of these governments. Countering Textbook Distortion: War Atrocities in Asia, 1937–1945 Source: Yali Zhao and John D. Hoge. Social Education 70(7), pp. 424–430 ©2006 National Council for the Social Studies In the early months of 2005, much of the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the World War II Allied victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Around the same time, protests erupted in Asia against a revised Japanese history textbook, The New History Textbook, which critics said covered up Japanese World War II atrocities. The contrast of these two events should inspire teachers to teach about the Asian war crimes, the effects of which are still felt by millions of people in China, Korea, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and which negatively impact Japan’s relationship with these countries. History textbooks often have political and cultural biases intending to instill national pride and patriotism; as Laura Hein and Mark Selden state, “History and civics textbooks in most societies present an ‘official’ story highlighting narratives that shape contemporary patriotism.” As a result, history textbook writers usually “... leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character.” One example of this in American history textbooks is coverage of the Vietnam War, which is treated cautiously, despite widespread criticism of the war among Americans. This type of sanitized history makes it hard to discuss important issues related to the Vietnam War, and it insulates high school students from the strong feelings and wounds associated with this aspect of American and world history. To help students better understand the past, and its direct impact on current events, textbooks and classroom teaching should accommodate multiple perspectives of important historical events, and inform students of both the Western and non-Western perspectives. In this article, we will delve into the tension between Japan and some Asian countries regarding the aforementioned Japanese history textbook and discuss the three principal Japanese war crimes. The Issues Behind the Controversy Textbooks have an enormous aura of authority, and young people tend to believe what they read in them. As a result, they are left with an incomplete view of the past. In this case, the new history textbook not only transmitted incorrect information to students about Japan’s invasion of Asia in World War II, but also reignited the hurt of war victims, and damaged regional relations. The controversial textbook was compiled by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a group of right-wing nationalists, who sought to portray a positive view of Japan’s past by removing negative depictions of Japanese aggression. The Japanese Ministry of Education’s approval of the first version of the textbook in 2001 raised tensions with China and Korea. The 2001 version portrays the Japanese invasion of Asia as an attempt to liberate Asia, denies the Nanjing Massacre, denies biological experiments on live human beings in China, and ignores the forced sexual slavery of tens of thousands of mostly Korean women for the Japanese military (“comfort women”). Following the textbook’s original approval, critics and scholars (including many Japanese and Japanese Americans) wrote articles arguing that wartime history should be fairly presented in textbooks. Despite these objections, the 2005 edition also glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities, referring to the Nanjing Massacre, in which the Japanese army slaughtered 300,000 Chinese civilians in two months, as an “incident,” de-emphasizing the subject of comfort women, ignoring the biological weapon experiments committed on the Chinese, or the fact that Chinese people are still frequently injured or killed by poisonous gas buried in northeast China by the Japanese in World War II. The Nanjing Massacre From December 1937 to February 1938, the Japanese army carried out systematic looting, raping, and killing of civilians in Nanjing (then the capital of China, called Nanking), in what became know as the Nanjing Massacre, the Nanjing Holocaust, or the Rape of Nanking. Testimonies of Japanese soldiers who participated in the event, recordings of American missionaries residing in Nanjing, official documents of the German Embassy in Nanjing, photographs taken by Japanese soldiers and Westerners living in Nanjing, as well as the verdict of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial (The International Military Tribunal for the Far East) backed estimates that 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed in those two months. At least 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped by the Japanese army, according to testimonies of Westerners in Nanjing at the time, and the verdict of the Tokyo Trial. The Nanjing Holocaust Memorial, located in Nanjing, displays evidence of the massacre. To this day, the massacre continues to stir Chinese anger because some Japanese deny its occurrence, the government refuses to make a sincere apology to China, and the prime minister continues to make annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Comfort Women Women in Taiwan stage a protest outside Japan’s representative office in Taipei, Taiwan, August 15, 2005. A placard reads, “Build a comfort women museum” in Chinese. The term “comfort women” refers to [the women who were enslaved and forcibly sexually assaulted] in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. Most comfort women were from Korea, but a significant number also came from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Estimates put the number of comfort women during the war at a minimum of 50,000 and possibly as high as 200,000. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was set up after World War II by the Allies to prosecute Japan’s war criminals; however, the issue of military comfort women was not addressed at the time. In recent years, the Japanese government has begun to pay some “consolation money” to some Korean victims, but not yet to victims from other nations. Unit 731 Biochemical Warfare Experiments Unit 731 was a secret military medical unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that researched biological warfare through human experiments during its occupation of China and other Asian countries (1932-1945). It was first started at Harbin in northern Manchuria (China) in 1932 by the order of Japan’s highest military command, with the approval of Emperor Hirohito. It had four bases in northern Manchuria and one at Dalian in the south. As war progressed, Unit 731 established branches all over China, and later in Singapore and Myanmar in Southeast Asia. All of these bases were engaged in human experiments. Some of these experiments included performing invasive surgery on living beings to remove and study organs, using humans as bacteriological experiments, and infesting populated areas with disease-ridden fleas. Although large amounts of evidence exist about Unit 731’s biochemical warfare experiments, precise estimates on the number of Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, Allied civilians and prisoners of war (especially Russian POWs) who were directly or indirectly killed by Unit 731’s experiments are difficult to establish (ranging from several thousand to 200,000). Sheldon Harris, author of Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-up, estimated the deaths from human experimentation at 20,000 in East and Southeast Asia. No state other than Nazi Germany has ever engaged in such broad scale, inhumane, pseudo-scientific experimentation on humans. American Textbook Coverage of World War II in East Asia Instruction on Japanese atrocities committed in Asia during World War II has been largely absent in American social studies classrooms. Yali Zhao, one of the authors of this article, examined eight American and world history textbooks commonly used in middle and high school social studies classrooms… Review of World War II contents in these textbooks revealed no mention of any of the three major war crimes committed by Japanese troops. Zhao also conducted an informal survey with 55 social studies teachers, which indicated that only 7 out of 55 knew about the Nanjing Massacre. None of them had ever taught about these war crimes in their history classrooms. There could be a variety of complicated social and political reasons for the absence of these atrocities from American textbooks: the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union; the establishment of a communist regime in China; the Korean War in 1950; and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. While these are all important events and deserve to be studied, the Asian war atrocities must not be omitted. 10th Grade Global Name_____________________________ World War II Date____________________Section____ Displaced Persons Camps Source: US Holocaust Museum https://www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections/search-the-collections/bibliography/displaced-persons Displaced Persons Throughout the spring of 1945, Allied troops liberated more than ten million forced and slave laborers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors on German soil. From 1945 to 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps and urban centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy. These facilities were administered by Allied authorities and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Among the remaining DPs in Germany were a small number of Jews who wished to emigrate from Europe, and saw Germany only as a transit area. In the immediate aftermath of the war, many of these individuals recovered physically, emotionally, and mentally from their brutal treatment, searched for information about their families, and began to rebuild their communities. They quickly established a political structure, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, printed newspapers and religious texts, and organized cultural, educational, and religious activities. Soon after liberation, survivors began searching for their families. UNRRA established the Central Tracing Bureau to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps. Public radio broadcasts and newspapers contained lists of survivors and their whereabouts. Initially the occupation authorities refused to recognize them as a distinct group and often housed them in DP camps with hostile populations. Following a scathing report prepared by Earl Harrison in August 1945 that accused the United States military of treating the Jews in a manner similar to the Nazis, the occupation authorities finally established camps solely for Jews, which helped to foster community growth and cohesiveness. Beginning in late 1945, tens of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union streamed into the western occupied zones of Germany and Austria, seeking relatives, emigration assistance, and protection from continuing antisemitism. They forced the occupation authorities to open additional camps and swelled the ranks of DPs already there. Emigration [the act of leaving one's own country to settle permanently in another] The Allies deliberated and procrastinated for years before resolving the emigration crisis. In increasing numbers from 1945-1948, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, their nationalism heightened by lack of autonomy in the camps and having few options, chose British-controlled Palestine [a British Mandate after World War I] as their desired destination. Earl Harrison, in his August 1945 report to President Truman, recommended mass population transfer from Europe and resettlement in British-controlled Palestine or the United States. The report influenced President Truman to order that preference be given to DPs, especially widows and orphans, in US immigration quotas. Great Britain, however, claimed that the United States had no right to dictate British policy. Truman alone could not raise restrictive US and British immigration quotas, but he did succeed in pressuring Great Britain into sponsoring the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. This bi-national delegation worked on the resettlement of Jewish citizens. The vast majority of the Jewish DPs emigrated between 1948 and 1952, but a small Jewish population remained in Germany. With over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa, the DP emigration crisis came to an end. The Jewish displaced persons began new lives in their new homelands around the world. Almost all of the DP camps were closed by 1952. The last camp, at Föhrenwald, was closed by the German government in 1957; by then, all remaining DPs were resettled into existing communities. A girl in the Kloster Indersdorf children's center A girl in the Kloster Indersdorf children's center who was photographed in an attempt to help who was photographed in an attempt to help locate surviving relatives. Such photographs of locate surviving relatives. The photographs were both Jewish and non-Jewish children were published in newspapers to facilitate the published in newspapers to facilitate the reunification of families. Germany, after May reunification of families. Germany, after May 1945. 1945. 10th Grade Global Name___________________________ World War II Date__________________Section____ Resistance in the Holocaust Source: United States Holocaust Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005213 Students commonly ask, “Why wasn’t there more resistance?” The impression that Jews did not fight back against the Nazis is a myth. Jews carried out acts of resistance in every country of Europe that the Germans occupied, as well as in satellite states. They even resisted in ghettos, concentration camps and killing centers, under the most harrowing of circumstances. Why is it then that the myth endures? Period photographs and contemporary feature films may serve to perpetuate it because they often depict large numbers of Jews boarding trains under the watchful eyes of a few lightly armed guards. Not seen in these images, yet key to understanding Jewish response to Nazi terror, are the obstacles to resistance. The real question isn't why wasn't there more resistance, the real question is, how could there have been so much?” Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. During the same year, ghetto inhabitants rose against the Germans in Vilna (Vilnius), Bialystok, and a number of other ghettos. Many ghetto fighters took up arms in the knowledge that the majority of ghetto inhabitants had already been deported to the killing centers; and also in the knowledge that their resistance even now could not save from destruction the remaining Jews who could not fight. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the slaughter of so many Jews. Thousands of young Jews resisted by escaping from the ghettos into the forests. There they joined Soviet partisan units or formed separate partisan units to harass the German occupiers. Although many Jewish council (Judenrat) members cooperated under compulsion with the Germans until they themselves were deported, some, such as Jewish council chairman Moshe Jaffe in Minsk, resisted by refusing to comply when the Germans ordered him to hand over Jews for deportation in July 1942. Jewish prisoners rose against their guards at three killing centers. At Treblinka in August 1943 and Sobibor in October 1943, prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the SS staff and the Trawniki-trained auxiliary guards. The Germans and their auxiliaries killed most of the rebels, either during the uprising or later, after hunting down those who escaped. Several dozen prisoners eluded their pursuers and survived the war, however. In October 1944, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, members of the Jewish Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) mutinied against the SS guards. Nearly 250 died during the fighting; the SS guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying the members of the Sonderkommando with explosives to blow up a crematorium. All five women were killed. Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with various forms of spiritual resistance. They made conscious attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people despite Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews from human memory. These efforts included: creating Jewish cultural institutions, continuing to observe religious holidays and rituals, providing clandestine education, publishing underground newspapers, and collecting and hiding documentation. The best known of these archives was that of the Warsaw ghetto, code-named Oneg Shabbat ("Joy of the Sabbath") and founded by historian Emanuel Ringelblum (1900–44). Some of the containers holding the archives were dug up from the rubble of the Warsaw ghetto after the war. The papers found inside have provided valuable documentation of life and death inside the ghetto. In the Bialystok ghetto, activist Mordechai Tenenbaum, who had come to Bialystok from Warsaw in November 1942 to organize the resistance movement, established ghetto archives modeled after Oneg Shabbat.  Resistance Fighter # 1 Raoul Wallenberg https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/raoul-wallenbergs-biographer-uncovers-importan t-clues-his-final-days-180957837/ 1. RAOUL WALLENBERG AND THE RESCUE OF JEWISH CITIZENS IN BUDAPEST https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005211 Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden. After studying in the United States in the 1930s and establishing himself in a business career in Sweden, Wallenberg was recruited by the US War Refugee Board (WRB) in June 1944 to travel to Hungary. Given status as a diplomat by the Swedish legation, Wallenberg's task was to do what he could to assist and save Hungarian Jews. [Sweden was officially neutral during the war.] Assigned as first secretary to the Swedish legation in Hungary, Wallenberg arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944. Despite a complete lack of experience in diplomacy and clandestine [secret] operations, he led one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Holocaust. His work with the WRB prevented the deportation of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Hungary had been an ally of Germany, but German defeats and mounting Hungarian losses led Hungary to seek an armistice [peace] with the western Allies. To forestall [stop] these [actions,] German forces occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, and forced the Hungarian head of state, Miklos Horthy, to appoint a pro-German government under Dome Sztojay. The Sztojay government was prepared not only to continue the war but also to deport Hungarian Jews to German-occupied Poland. Shortly after the occupation, Hungarian officials began to round up Hungarian Jews and to transfer them into German custody. By July 1944, the Hungarians and the Germans had deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary, almost all of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the SS killed approximately 320,000 of them upon arrival and deployed the rest at forced labor in Auschwitz and other camps. Nearly 200,000 Jews remained in Budapest; the Hungarian authorities intended to deport them as well, in compliance with German requests. With authorization from the Swedish government, Wallenberg began distributing certificates of protection issued by the Swedish [government] to Jews in Budapest shortly after his arrival in the Hungarian capital. He used WRB and Swedish funds to establish hospitals, nurseries and a soup kitchen, and to designate more than 30 “safe” houses. As Soviet troops had already cut off rail transport routes to Auschwitz, Hungarian authorities forced tens of thousands of Budapest Jews to march west to the Hungarian border with Austria. During the autumn of 1944, Wallenberg repeatedly—and often personally—intervened to secure the release of those with certificates of protection or forged papers, saving as many people as he could. Wallenberg's colleagues in the Swedish legation and diplomats from other neutral countries also participated in rescue operations. Carl Lutz, the consul general in the Swiss legation, issued certificates of emigration, placing nearly 50,000 Jews in Budapest under Swiss protection. Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca posed as a Spanish diplomat. Closely assisted by Laszlo and Eugenia Szamosi, Perlasca issued to many Jews in Budapest certificates of protection for nations whose interests neutral Spain represented and established safe houses, including one for Jewish children. Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews in WW2, then disappeared http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/08/kgb-chiefs-diaries-may-shed-light-on-fate-of-swedish-diplomat-wh/ Raoul Wallenberg is honoured around the world for rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis by issuing them with fake Swedish passports or housing them in diplomatic buildings. But in January 1945 he vanished from the streets of Soviet-occupied Budapest and was never seen again. His family has long suspected that he was kidnapped by the Soviet Union but have never received definitive proof of what happened to him. Moscow's story has changed over the decades. At first Russia claimed that Soviet intelligence had nothing to do with Wallenberg's case, they later said he died of a heart attack in a prison camp. Now, the memoirs of KGB chief Ivan Serov offer another explanation - he was executed at Stalin's orders [because he was viewed as a threat to the Soviet regime]. Resistance Fighter 2 Vitka Kempner 2. Vitka Kempner https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/vitka-kempner Vitka Kempner was born in Kalish, Poland, on the Polish-German border, in 1922. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kalish fell and Vitka escaped to Vilna, Lithuania. When Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, was launched in 1941, Vilna was occupied and the Jews forced into a ghetto. Hearing the rumors about the death camps, Vitka decided to take her destiny into her own hands. Vitka joined the Vilna chapter of Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa'ir, a Zionist youth group. The group decided to transform itself into a resistance cell, led by Abba Kovner. Vitka became a founding member of the ‘Avengers’, which would go on to become one of the most famous and most successful all-Jewish partisan units during the war. Vitka was responsible for the FPO's first act of sabotage, smuggling a homemade bomb out of the ghetto and blowing up a Nazi train line. The group began to arm themselves, smuggling weapons through the sewer system, and helped successfully organize the larger Vilna resistance movement, known as the United Partisan Organization (FPO). Eventually, Vitka became one of Kovner’s chief lieutenants; they would marry after the war. After a failed uprising, Vitka helped the FPO to evacuate much of the population through the sewer system to the surrounding forests. Several of the escapees became soldiers in their unit. The Avengers continued their sabotage operations, destroying both the power plant and the waterworks of Vilna, the city they once loved. As the Soviets advanced westward, the Avengers emerged from the forest and joined the struggle openly, helping to liberate Vilna. Following the war, Abba Kovner helped surviving Jews reach mandate Palestine. He also formed a new organization with 50 other partisans, reportedly attempting to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. Accounts differ as to how many Germans were injured or killed. Besides avenging the Jews killed by Nazis, Abba and Vitka also reached out to the survivors. They helped smuggle hundreds of European Jews into British-occupied Palestine. Vitka and Abba followed in 1946, settling at Kibbutz Ein Horesh and raising two children. Vitka passed away in February 2012 in her home in Israel, two and a half decades after Abba’s death. She is survived by four grandchildren.  Resistance Fighter 3 Forgotten Women of the French Resistance Dressed to suppress: Parisian women, photographed here by Robert Doisneau at an impromptu hairdresser in 1943, kept up their chic to avoid being suspected of resistance work https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/the-forgotten-women-of-the-french-resistance/ 3. The Forgotten Women of the French Resistance http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/the-forgotten-women-of-the-french-resistance/ The myth of the French Resistance goes something like this. French men, except for a “miserable fistful”, all resisted. French women, on the other hand, let the side down. But [many] women, faced with the German occupiers, chose different, riskier paths. Vivou Chevrillon, a young music student, went to play her violin outside the walls of the Nazi concentration camp at Compiègne, hoping that her friend inside would recognise the tune and take heart. She came close to being arrested. Later, she forged ID cards. These spontaneous acts of resistance by women didn’t fit with the narrative that general and president Charles de Gaulle [tried] to weave about the Occupation [directly after the war]. He didn’t want the men to feel humiliated even further – shown up by their wives and daughters. French women, for their part, did not contradict de Gaulle’s version of events, which said that their experience of war had been less dangerous or less brave than the men’s. After six years of fighting, most women simply wanted to push the horrors they had witnessed to the back of their minds. Even 70 years on, when I interviewed them about their resistance work, they remained self-effacing, insisting they did “nothing” really, “simply” delivering pamphlets or “just” acting as couriers. Cécile Rol-Tanguy, now 97, for instance, worked as the personal Agent de Liaison for her husband Henri Rol-Tanguy, carrying orders around Paris in the bedding of her baby’s pram [stroller], as well as revolvers, grenades and ammunition hidden in potato sacks. But she insisted it was “of little importance”, simply what one did. Getting enough to eat was a form of resistance, showing the Germans that Parisians were not to be starved into submission. Food was the constant topic of conversation. What can you eat, how to cook it and where can you get it? Paris was emptied of men: almost two million were prisoners of war; others had fled to be with General de Gaulle and the Free French in London; thousands more were missing in action or in hiding. To be a young man in occupied Paris was so unusual that it was dangerous and invited questions. Because women did not attract the same attention, they became useful for carrying weapons and incriminating documents. For the first time, women found themselves truly in charge of their own lives. Many of the women I interviewed were teenagers when they began their resistance work, something they played up to pass unnoticed. Jacqueline Marié, aged 17 in 1940, wore short white ankle socks when she travelled on the Métro to deliver political leaflets. Aware that she might have to slip through the underground tunnels to another station if the Gestapo rounded up people at a street exit, she hoped the Germans, if it came to it, would not question “a child”. She was caught, eventually, and sent to Ravensbrück, alongside her mother. Incredibly, both survived the 1945 death march. The women who resisted came from a variety of backgrounds: working-class communist as well as aristocratic, young and middle aged. For returning female prisoners,… many of whom would remain invalid [unwell] for the rest of their lives, homecoming was often a bitter disappointment. Exhilarated at the thought of returning to a “normal life”, they were now disillusioned and distraught to find their families destroyed, their homes looted, and an acute lack of empathy. Amid the general fervour for punishing women, some of the thousands of emaciated, skeletal women with shaven heads who returned from camps were heckled in the street. Simone Weil, the Jewish lawyer and politician who survived Auschwitz, spoke of “being forgotten” on her return to Paris as akin to a second death. Marceline Rozenberg also felt muted. “Don’t say anything – they won’t understand,” she was told. Only at 86, in her memoir last year, was she able to articulate how Auschwitz had killed off her humanity, and the little girl she had been; and how impossible it was for others to understand.  Resistance Fighter 4 Marsha Sharp https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/defying-the-nazis-the-sharps-war/photos/ 4. War Refugees Honor Their Deliverer - Martha Sharp http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/10/nyregion/war-refugees-honor-their-deliverer.html Clement Brown remembered being taken from his school in Paris one day to walk with his mother and sister to Marseilles, 400 miles away, as German planes flew overhead. Catherine Vakar Chvany recalled "feeling that I was being sent away from my parents because I was bad." They were among a group of children that a Massachusetts woman brought out of France 50 years ago, during World War II. As they gathered at the Mark Hotel in Manhattan last week to honor that woman, Martha Sharp Cogan, memories buried in childhood, hazy impressions of a war not understood, rose to the surface with poignancy and gratitude. It was the first time since the war that the former refugees, now in their 50's and 60's, had been together or had seen Mrs. Cogan, who is now 85 years old. Of the 27 children who arrived here on Dec. 23, 1940, on the S.S. Excambion, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which had sponsored the refugee mission, tracked down 18 and assembled 11 of them from France, the United States and Canada for the gathering. There were the six Theis sisters, daughters of a French Protestant minister who saved Jews during the war: Jeanne Whitaker, Jacqueline Gregory, Louise Theis, Marguerite Kopp, Francoise Jezequel and Cecile du Pury. Others included the Vakar sisters, daughters of Russian refugees; Clement and Mercedes Brown, children of an American painter and a French nurse; and Tes Huger, the only child to make the journey with no sibling. At the time of the journey they ranged in age from 3 to 14. Throughout the events, much of the talk focused on the heroism of Mrs. Cogan, then Mrs. Waitstill H. Sharp, wife of a Unitarian minister in Wellesley Hills, Mass. In 1939, the Sharps went to Czechoslovakia, where they worked for five months under Nazi occupation helping refuges secure exit papers and surmount red tape, leaving only when arrest seemed imminent. In 1940, they returned to Europe as part of the newly formed Unitarian Service Committee. They worked in Lisbon and southern France, helping intellectuals escape, among them the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Meyerhof and the writers Lion Feuchtwanger and Franz Werfel. During the course of distributing milk for starving babies in Pau, in the French Pyrenees, Mrs. Cogan, deluged with requests from desperate parents, began to arrange for emigration of children. "All sorts of organizations, Jewish, Quaker, the Red Cross, were keeping lists of children to be transported out," she said as she greeted luncheon guests last week. "The ones selected were those with some American connection, a parent, an aunt or uncle. The State Department would not issue visas for children from the continent. "The parents who sent their children were very daring," she said. "I told them the children might not come back and that we couldn't protect them. We were American citizens representing the Unitarian Service Committee, with no special status ourselves." Clement Brown, who came to the reunion from Conyers, Ga., recalled the long journey to Marseilles: "I remember my mother crying and I remember that the Germans tried to gun us down on the road. I would probably have died had it not been for a farmer who pushed me down on the ground during the [bombing] and saved my life." The children assembled in Marseilles and went to Lisbon, where they spent 10 days waiting for a ship. They left on Nov. 25, 1940, and docked in Hoboken, N.J., on Dec. 23. To this day, few of the group know how their parents made the connections with Mrs. Cogan and her committee. "We didn't understand our odyssey, or how we got from Marseilles to Lisbon and then to America," Ms. Brown said. Mercedes Brown spoke for the group, who believe they were the first group of refugee children to escape occupied France: "We were the first travelers," she said. "We salute you and thank you for our journey to freedom. We are here." Martha’s organization of the children’s transport became a model for other organizations that worked to bring hundreds of children out of Europe during World War II.  Resistance Fighter 5 Marek Edelman https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marek-edelman 5. Warsaw Ghetto fighter Marek Edelman hailed http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/05/warsaw.ghetto.obit/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD Leading figures from Poland to the United States have been paying tribute to Marek Edelman, the anti-Nazi resistance fighter and Solidarity movement supporter who died Friday. Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, "the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising" against the Nazis during World War II, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk both issued statements mourning Edelman. Tusk called him an "exceptional man," saying "his bravery was a testament to the courage of the fighters of the Jewish Fighting Organization," as the largest Jewish resistance movement in the ghetto was known. The prime minister also praised him for standing up against the Polish Communist government's anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, and hailed him as an example for free, democratic Poland. The U.S. State Department saluted "his life dedicated to the defense of human dignity and freedom. The United States stands with Poland as it mourns the loss of a great man." Edelman is thought to have been the last surviving commander of the uprising, in which Jews fought Nazi efforts to send them to concentration camps. Armed with pistols, some rifles and automatic weapons, and hand-made grenades, the resistance fighters attacked the Germans and their allies when they tried to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. The Nazis had planned to round up all the ghetto's Jews in three days, but in the end it took them more than a month -- longer than some countries held out against Hitler's armies. The Nazis reduced the ghetto to rubble in the process of flushing resistance fighters out of their bunkers. Edelman was in one of the last groups to hold out in the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization at 18 Mila Street. In the final days of the uprising he was able to sneak out of the ghetto by way of the city's sewers, he wrote after the war. He went on to fight in the Warsaw Polish Uprising, a two-month battle against the Nazis in 1944, undertaken primarily by non-Jewish Poles. After the war, Edelman became a cardiologist. In the late 1940s, he published a short history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Polish, Yiddish, and English, called "The Ghetto Fights." In it, he described the creation of the ghetto by the Nazis. "In November 1940, the Germans finally established the Warsaw Ghetto. The Jewish population still living outside the 'Seuchensperrgebiet' ('Quarantined Zone') was brought inside the special area. Poles living within the designated ghetto boundaries were ordered to move out," he wrote. "Beginning with November 15, no Jew was allowed to leave the Jewish precincts. All houses vacated by Jews were immediately locked by the Germans and then, with all their contents, gratuitously given to Polish merchants and hucksters.... The walls and barbed wire surrounding the ghetto grew higher every day until, on November 15, they completely cut off the Jews from the outside world." Hunger and disease were rife in the ghetto, he wrote. "People began to die of hunger in the streets. Every morning, about 4-5 a.m., funeral carts collected a dozen or more corpses on the streets that had been covered with a sheet of paper and weighted down with a few rocks. Some simply fell in the streets and remained there," Edelman remembered. Nazis then began deporting Jews to concentration camps. By that time, many in the ghetto knew the Nazis were systematically murdering Jews in the camps, he recalled. He describes in detail the spring 1943 uprising, a street-by-street battle that ended with the ghetto in ruins. Edelman's history finishes simply, listing the handful of survivors of the hundreds who fought back: "Those who had gone over to the 'Aryan side' continued the partisan fight in the woods. The majority perished eventually. At present the following of our comrades are still among the living: Chajka Betchatowska, B. Szpigel, Chana Krysztal, Masza Glejtman, and Marek Edelman." Resistance Fighter 6 Faye Schulman 6. Faye Schulman Dies; Fought Nazis With a Rifle and a Camera https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/europe/faye-schulman-dead.html She joined the Resistance brigade after her family was executed and used her photographs as proof of German barbarity and Jews’ determination to fight back. On Aug. 14, 1942, a year after German troops invaded Soviet-occupied Poland, they massacred the last 1,850 Jews from a shtetl named Lenin near the Sluch River. Only 27 were spared, their skills deemed essential by the invaders. The survivors included shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, a barber and a young novice photographer named Faigel Lazebnik, who later in marriage would become known as Faye Schulman. The Germans enlisted her to take commemorative photographs of them and, in some cases, their newly acquired mistresses. (“It better be good, or else you’ll be kaput,” she recalled a Gestapo commander warning her before, trembling, she asked him to smile.) They thus spared her from the firing squad because of their vanity and their obsession with bureaucratic record-keeping — two weaknesses that she would ultimately wield against them. At one point the Germans witlessly gave her film to develop that contained pictures they had taken of the three trenches into which they, their Lithuanian collaborators and the local police had machine-gunned Lenin’s remaining Jews, including her parents, sisters and younger brother. Mrs. Schulman realized that among the photographs she was processing for the Germans that August were images of the bodies of her own family members. “I just was crying,” she told the Memory Project, a Canadian historic preservation program. “And I — I lost my family. I’m alone. I’m a young girl. What shall I do now? Where shall I go? What shall I do?” The Germans ordered her to train a young Ukrainian woman as an assistant, but she stalled, knowing what would happen when she was no longer considered essential. After Soviet partisans (resistance fighters) attacked the town that September, she fled with them. She kept a copy of the photos as evidence of the atrocity. As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths. “I want people to know that there was resistance,” she was quoted as saying by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. “Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.” Mrs. Schulman, who emigrated to Canada in 1948, continued offering up that proof, in exhibitions of her photographs, in a 1995 autobiography titled “A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust,” and in a 1999 PBS documentary, “Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust.” She recounted her life in pre-World War II Eastern Europe and how a ragtag band of Red Army stragglers, escaped prisoners of war and Jewish and gentile Resistance fighters — including some women — harassed the Germans behind the Wehrmacht’s front lines in the forests and swamps of what is now Belarus. “We faced hunger and cold; we faced the constant threat of death and torture; added to this we faced anti-Semitism in our own ranks,” she wrote in her memoir. “Against all odds we struggled.” “The main part of being a partisan was not the killing but keeping the wounded alive,” she said, “bringing the wounded back to life so they could continue fighting and bring the war to an end.” She died on April 24 in Toronto, her daughter, Dr. Susan Schulman, said. Mrs. Schulman was believed to be 101. According to the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, as many as 30,000 Jews joined Resistance groups on the Eastern Front during World War II; only hundreds are still living. The 100 or so photos that she took during the war and preserved in her move to Canada will remain her legacy, Dr. Schulman said. And among the few other belongings that Mrs. Schulman was able to bring from Europe was her Compur camera, the folding bellows model that she had used in August 1942. She treasured it, her daughter said, but she apparently never used it to take another photograph again.  Resistance Fighter 7 Chiune Sugihara https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/sugihara-moral-heroism-refugees.html 7. The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting - Chiune Sugihara The New York Times, October 15, 2018, By David Wolpe https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/sugihara-moral-heroism-refugees.html The astonishing Chiune Sugihara raises again the questions: What shapes a moral hero? And how does someone choose to save people that others turn away? Research on those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust shows that many exhibited a streak of independence from an early age. [This] willfulness was on display when he entered the diplomatic corps and, as vice minister of the Foreign Affairs Department for Japan in Manchuria in 1934, resigned in protest of the Japanese treatment of the Chinese. A second characteristic of such heroes and heroines, as the psychologist Philip Zimbardo writes, is “that the very same situations that inflame the hostile imagination in some people, making them villains, can also instill the heroic imagination in other people, prompting them to perform heroic deeds.” While the world around him disregarded the plight of the Jews, Sugihara was unable to ignore their desperation. In 1939 Sugihara was sent to Lithuania, where he ran the consulate. There he was soon confronted with Jews fleeing from German-occupied Poland. Three times Sugihara cabled his embassy asking for permission to issue visas to the refugees. [His embassy responded that he must not issue any visas to refugees trying to flee Europe.] Sugihara talked about the refusal with his wife, Yukiko, and his children and decided that despite the inevitable damage to his career, he would defy his government. Mr. Zimbardo calls the capacity to act differently the “heroic imagination,” a focus on one’s duty to help and protect others. This ability is exceptional, but the people who have it are often understated. Years after the war, Sugihara spoke about his actions as natural: “We had thousands of people hanging around the windows of our residence,” he said in a 1977 interview. “There was no other way.” Day and night he wrote visas. He issued as many visas in a day as would normally be issued in a month. His wife, Yukiko, massaged his hands at night, aching from the constant effort. When Japan finally closed down the embassy in September 1940, he took the stationery with him and continued to write visas that had no legal standing but worked because of the seal of the government and his name. At least 6,000 visas were issued for people to travel through Japan to other destinations, and in many cases entire families traveled on a single visa. It has been estimated that over 40,000 people are alive today because of this one man. With the consulate closed, Sugihara had to leave. He gave the consulate stamp to a refugee to forge more visas, and he literally threw visas out of the train window to refugees on the platform. After the war, Sugihara was dismissed from the foreign office. He and his wife lost a 7-year-old child and he worked at menial jobs. It was not until 1968 when a survivor, Yehoshua Nishri, found him that his contribution was recognized. Nishri had been a teenager in Poland saved by a Sugihara visa and was now at the Israeli embassy in Tokyo. In the intervening years Sugihara never spoke about his wartime activities. Even many close to him had no idea that he was a hero. Sugihara died in 1986. Nine years earlier he gave an interview and was asked why he did it: “I told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was a matter of humanity. I did not care if I lost my job. Anyone else would have done the same thing if they were in my place.” Of course many were in his place — and very few acted like Sugihara. Moral courage is rare and moral greatness even rarer. It requires a mysterious and potent combination of empathy, will and deep conviction that social norms cannot shake.  Resistance Fighter 8 GERTRUDE BOYARSKI Portrait of Gertrude Boyarski, 1946. Courtesy of Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. 8. Gertrude Boyarski, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gertrude-boyarski Despite great obstacles, Jews throughout occupied Europe attempted armed resistance against the Germans and their Axis partners. They faced overwhelming odds and desperate scenarios, including lack of weapons and training, operating in hostile zones, parting from family members, and facing an ever-present Nazi terror. Yet thousands resisted by joining or forming partisan units. Among them was Gertrude Boyarski. Gertrude 'Gertie' Boyarski, born in 1922, was a teenager with a family and a home until the Germans invaded her town of Derechin, Poland. The Nazis forced the town's Jews into a ghetto. But Gertie's father—a butcher and a housepainter—was regarded by the Germans as a 'useful' Jew, so the Boyarskis were moved to a guarded building just in front of the ghetto's entrance. On July 24, 1942, a night of terror descended on the ghetto. When the Nazis started massacring over 3,000 Jews, the Boyarski family managed to escape to a nearby forest. To get into a partisan unit, Gertie's father, brother, and other Jews had to prove themselves by attacking the town's police station. Literally barehanded, they killed the guards and took the station's weapons and ammunition stash. In the months that followed, Gertie saw her mother, father, sister, and brother murdered before her eyes in surprise attacks by German soldiers and by antisemitic Poles who hunted the woods for Jews. Bereft of family and seeking revenge, she left the shelter of the family camp where she had been living and sought to join a partisan detachment under the leadership of the Russian Commander Bulak, who initially brushed her off. But Gertie insisted, “I want to fight and take revenge for my whole family.” Impressed by her conviction, Bulak agreed under one condition: she must prove her worth by standing guard alone, for two weeks, a mile from the partisan encampment. “I was alone in the woods…each time I hear a little noise I thought it's Germans… Two weeks—it was like two years.” But Gertie persisted and was accepted into the group. She fought as a partisan for three years, aggressively attacking German soldiers who came to the surrounding villages. In honor of International Women's Day, Gertie and her friend—both in their teens—volunteered to demolish a wooden bridge used by the Germans. However, they had no supplies, so they asked for kerosene and straw at a local village. When the villagers replied that they had none, the two partisans unslung their rifles and gave them five minutes to find the supplies. The villagers quickly complied and the two partisans made their way to the bridge. When the German soldiers saw the fire Gertie and her friend had lit, they began shooting. But Gertie and her friend stuck around to toss burning chunks of the bridge into the river until it was destroyed. “We didn't chicken out,” Gertie says. Instead, they grabbed burning pieces of the bridge and tossed them into the river until the bridge was destroyed. After the war, Gertie married a fellow partisan and they settled in the United States, though the memories of war would haunt her for many years to come. 1‭ 0th Grade Global‬ ‭ ame________________________‬ N ‭World War II‬ ‭Date_______________Section____‬ ‭Holocaust Background HW‬ ‭Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust‬ ‭ he Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and‬ T ‭murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi‬ ‭persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic‬ ‭enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II,‬ ‭millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.‬ ‭ he Nazis classified Jews as the priority “enemy.” However, they also targeted other‬ T ‭groups as threats to the health, unity, and security of the German people. The first group‬ ‭targeted by the Nazi regime consisted of political opponents. These included officials and‬ ‭members of other political parties and trade union activists. Political opponents also‬ ‭included people simply suspected of opposing or criticizing the Nazi regime. Political‬ ‭enemies were the first to be incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. Jehovah’s‬ ‭Witnesses were also incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. They were arrested‬ ‭because they refused to swear loyalty to the government or serve in the German military.‬ ‭ he Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to‬ T ‭German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being‬ ‭professional or habitual criminals, and so-called‬‭*‬‭“asocials.” Tens of thousands of these‬ ‭victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly‬ ‭sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans.‬ ‭ eople with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II,‬ P ‭Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly‬ ‭sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities,‬ ‭especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial‬ ‭burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia‬ ‭Program.‬ ‭ he Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial,‬ T ‭civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma, Poles (especially the Polish‬ ‭intelligentsia and elites), Soviet officials, and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis‬ ‭perpetrated mass murder against these groups.‬ ‭1‬ *‭ ‬‭The Nazis used the terms 'asocial' to categorize together a group of people who did not‬ ‭conform to their social norms. This group included people experiencing homelessness,‬ ‭people who were addicted to alcohol or drugs, sex workers, and pacifists (people who‬ ‭believe war is unjustified).‬ ‭Eugenics Introduction‬ ‭Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/eugenics‬ ‭ ackground‬ B ‭A significant number of Nazi persecutory policies stemmed from theories of racial‬ ‭hygiene, or eugenics. Such theories were prevalent among the international scientific‬ ‭community in the first decades of the twentieth century. The term “eugenics” (from the‬ ‭Greek for “good birth or stock”) was coined in 1883 by the English naturalist Sir Francis‬ ‭Galton. The term's German counterpart, “racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene), was first‬ ‭employed by German economist Alfred Ploetz in 1895. At the core of the movement’s‬ ‭belief system was the principle that human heredity was fixed and immutable.‬ ‭ ugenic Theories‬ E ‭For eugenicists, the social ills of modern society—criminality, mental illness, alcoholism,‬ ‭and even poverty—stemmed from hereditary factors. Supporters of eugenic theory did‬ ‭not believe that these problems resulted from environmental factors, such as the rapid‬ ‭industrialization and urbanization of the late 19th century in Europe and North America.‬ ‭Rather, they advanced the science of eugenics to address what they regarded as a decline‬ ‭in public health and morality.‬ ‭ ugenicists had three primary objectives. First, they sought to discover “hereditary” traits‬ E ‭that contributed to societal ills. Second, they aimed to develop biological solutions to‬ ‭these problems. Finally, eugenicists sought to campaign for public health measures to‬ ‭combat them.‬ ‭ ource: Terman, Lewis.‬‭The‬ S ‭Intelligence of School Children: How‬ ‭Children Differ in Ability, the Use of‬ ‭Mental Tests in School Grading and‬ ‭the Proper Education of Exceptional‬ ‭Children. 1919.‬‭Terman was a‬ ‭Professor of Education at Stanford‬ ‭ niversity. He studied the “mental abilities of different races of children.”‬ U ‭2‬ ‭ he International Impact of Eugenic Theories‬ T ‭Eugenics found its most radical interpretation in Germany, but its influence was by no‬ ‭means limited to that nation alone. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth‬ ‭centuries, eugenic societies sprang up throughout most of the industrialized world. In‬ ‭Western Europe and the United States, the movement was embraced in the 1910s and‬ ‭1920s. Most supporters in those places endorsed the objectives of American advocate‬ ‭Charles Davenport. Davenport advocated for the development of eugenics as “a science‬ ‭devoted to the improvement of the human race through better breeding.” Its supporters‬ ‭lobbied for “positive” eugenic efforts. They advocated for public policies that aimed to‬ ‭maintain physically, racially, and hereditarily “healthy” individuals. For example, they‬ ‭sought to provide marital counseling, motherhood training, and social welfare to‬ ‭“deserving” families. In doing so, eugenics supporters hoped to encourage “better”‬ ‭families to reproduce.‬ ‭ fforts to support the “productive” members of society brought negative measures. For‬ E ‭instance, there were efforts to redirect economic resources from the “less valuable” in‬ ‭order to provide for the “worthy.” Eugenicists also targeted the mentally ill and‬ ‭cognitively impaired. Many members of the eugenics community in Germany and the‬ ‭United States promoted strategies to marginalize segments of society with limited mental‬ ‭or social capacity. They promoted limiting their reproduction through voluntary or‬ ‭compulsory sterilization. Eugenicists argued that there was a direct link between‬ ‭diminished capacity and depravity, promiscuity, and criminality.‬ ‭ embers of the eugenic community in Germany and the US also viewed the racially‬ M ‭“inferior” and poor as dangerous. Eugenicists maintained that such groups were tainted‬ ‭by deficiencies they inherited. They believed that these groups endangered the national‬ ‭community and financially burdened society.‬ ‭ ore often than not eugenicists’ “scientifically-drawn” conclusions did little more than‬ M ‭to incorporate popular prejudice. However, by employing “research” and “theory” to their‬ ‭efforts, eugenicists could assert their beliefs as scientific fact.‬ ‭ azi Racial Hygiene‬ N ‭German eugenics pursued a separate and terrible course after 1933. Before 1914, the‬ ‭German racial hygiene movement did not differ greatly from its British and American‬ ‭3‬ c‭ ounterparts. The German eugenics community became more radical shortly after World‬ ‭War I. The war brought unprecedented carnage. In addition, Germany saw economic‬ ‭devastation in the years between World War I and World War II. These factors heightened‬ ‭the division between those considered hereditarily “valuable” and those considered‬ ‭“unproductive.” For instance, some believed that hereditarily “valuable” Germans had‬ ‭died on the battlefield, while the “unproductive” Germans institutionalized in prisons,‬ ‭hospitals, and welfare facilities remained behind. Such arguments resurfaced in the‬ ‭Weimar and early Nazi eras as a way to justify eugenic sterilization and a decrease in‬ ‭social services for the disabled and institutionalized.‬ ‭ y 1933, the theories of racial hygiene were embedded into the professional and public‬ B ‭mindset. These theories influenced the thinking of Adolf Hitler and many of his‬ ‭followers. They embraced an ideology that blended racial antisemitism with eugenic‬ ‭theory. In doing so, the Hitler regime provided context and latitude for the‬ ‭implementation of eugenic measures in their most concrete and radical forms.‬ ‭ acial hygiene shaped many of Nazi Germany’s racial policies. Medical professionals‬ R ‭implemented many of these policies and targeted individuals the Nazis defined as‬ ‭“hereditarily ill”: those with mental, physical, or social disabilities. Nazis claimed these‬ ‭individuals placed both a genetic and a financial burden upon society and the state.‬ ‭ azi authorities resolved to intervene in the reproductive capacities of persons classified‬ N ‭as “hereditarily ill.” One of the first eugenic measures they initiated was the 1933 Law‬ ‭for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (“Hereditary Health Law”). The‬ ‭law mandated forcible sterilization for nine disabilities and disorders, including‬ ‭schizophrenia and “hereditary feeblemindedness.” As a result of the law, 400,000‬ ‭Germans were ultimately sterilized in Nazi Germany. In addition, eugenic beliefs shaped‬ ‭Germany’s 1935 Marital Hygiene Law. This law prohibited the marriage of persons with‬ ‭“diseased, inferior, or dangerous genetic material” to “healthy” German “Aryans.”‬ ‭ onclusion‬ C ‭Eugenic theory provided the basis for the “euthanasia” (T4) program. This clandestine‬ ‭program targeted disabled patients living in institutions throughout the German Reich for‬ ‭killing. An estimated 250,000 patients, the overwhelming majority of them German‬ ‭“Aryans,” fell victim to this clandestine killing operation.‬ ‭4‬ ‭ lobal History 10‬ G ‭ ame______________________________‬ N ‭World War II‬ ‭Date_____________________Section____‬ ‭What caused the Holocaust? HW‬ ‭https://www.ushmm.org/teach/fundamentals/holocaust-questions‬ ‭ he Holocaust was caused by many factors, including millions of individual decisions made by ordinary people who chose to‬ T ‭actively participate in—or at least tolerate—the persecution and murder of their neighbors. The following factors contributed to‬ ‭the Holocaust:‬ ‭ acial Antisemitism:‬‭Antisemitism, the fear or hatred‬‭of Jews, existed in Europe for centuries before the Holocaust. In the late‬ R ‭19th century, eugenics became popular.‬‭Eugenics‬‭was‬‭the theory that humans can be categorized in specific races. Each “race”‬ ‭had its own unchangeable traits. Some “races” were biologically, culturally, and morally superior to others. Eugenics has now‬ ‭been proven false. The Nazis promoted racial antisemitism. It did not matter whether a person practiced the Jewish faith. The‬ ‭Nazis believed Jews belonged to a separate race and had distinct “Jewish blood.” This belief was false: there is no biological‬ ‭difference between Jews and non-Jews. The Nazis attributed many negative stereotypes to Jews and “Jewish” behavior. The‬ ‭Nazis saw Jews as the source of all evil: disease, social injustice, cultural decline, capitalism, and communism.‬ ‭ olitical Instability:‬‭Many Germans were willing to‬‭tolerate Nazi antisemitism. Germany suffered a humiliating defeat in World‬ P ‭War I (1914–1918). Many believed the Nazi Party was restoring Germany’s status as a world power. The Nazis also promised to‬ ‭restore Germany’s economy. They vowed to end political instability and violence. Hitler was a strong and popular leader. He‬ ‭blamed Jews for all of Germany’s problems. The Nazi regime economically, politically, and socially marginalized the Jewish‬ ‭community. They tried to force Jews to leave German territory. German Jews made up less than one percent of Germany’s‬ ‭population. The Nazi regime was able to marginalize such a small community with virtually no public protest.‬ ‭ ar:‬‭In defiance of the‬‭Treaty of Versailles‬‭, Germany‬‭remilitarized and prepared for war. The United States and other‬ W ‭countries, still suffering under the Great Depression and remembering the horror of World War I, did not meaningfully intervene‬ ‭to protest until Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then, the United States remained neutral in World War II until December‬ ‭1941. It prioritized the defeat of Nazi Germany over the rescue of Jews. During World War II, as the German military invaded‬ ‭and conquered territories, millions of European Jews came under Nazi control. Nazi policy moved from forced emigration to‬ ‭mass murder. By 1945, when the Allied nations defeated Germany in World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators had‬ ‭murdered six million European Jews.‬ ‭ ollaboration:‬‭The Holocaust could not have happened‬‭without the active or passive participation of millions of people. Some‬ C ‭people recognized that they could personally benefit from the persecution and murder of Jews. They acquired the property or‬ ‭homes of Jews who were deported and murdered. Some took over the businesses of Jews forced to emigrate or sent to‬ ‭concentration camps. Other people found jobs in the Nazi regime. These jobs gave them money, political power, and influence.‬ ‭In countries that Germany invaded, many collaborators saw the benefit of assisting their new leaders. They chose to denounce‬ ‭their Jewish neighbors.‬ ‭ ropaganda and Societal Pressure:‬‭There was a great‬‭deal of pressure to conform. Even if people were not antisemitic to begin‬ P ‭with, Nazi leaders and propaganda urged people to hate Jews. Nazi ideas about “race” and the supposed inferiority of Jews were‬ ‭taught in schools. The government arrested political opponents or members of the press who criticized Hitler or the Nazi Party.‬ ‭They were put in jails and concentration camps. Few people were brave enough to publicly speak out or to help Jews, especially‬ ‭when they could be arrested or killed for doing so.‬ I‭ ntroduction to Nazi Propaganda‬ ‭Source:‬‭https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/propaganda/home/what-is-propaganda‬ ‭WHAT IS PROPAGANDA‬‭?‬ ‭HOW DOES PROPAGANDA WORK‬‭?‬ ‭ ropaganda is biased information designed to‬ P ‭Propaganda involves one or a combination of the following activities:‬ ‭shape public opinion and behavior.‬ ‭Its power depends on the following:‬ -‭ uses truths, half-truths, or lies -omits information selectively‬ ‭-simplifies complex issues or ideas‬ -‭ plays on emotions‬ -‭ message‬ -‭ technique‬ ‭advertises a cause‬ ‭-attacks opponents‬ ‭-means of communication‬ ‭-environment‬ ‭-targets desired audiences‬ ‭-audience receptivity‬ ‭ ommunicating the Nazi Message‬ C ‭Source:‬‭https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda‬ ‭ ollowing the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda‬ F ‭headed by‬‭Joseph Goebbels‬‭. The Ministry's aim was‬‭to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through‬ ‭art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.‬ ‭ here were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish‬ T ‭subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an‬ ‭atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews. Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures‬ ‭against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and “restoring order.”‬ ‭ eal and perceived discrimination against ethnic Germans in east European nations which had gained territory at Germany's‬ R ‭expense following World War I, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, was the subject of Nazi propaganda. This propaganda‬ ‭sought to elicit political loyalty and so-called race consciousness among the ethnic German populations. It also sought to mislead‬ ‭foreign governments—including the European Great Powers—that Nazi Germany was making understandable and fair demands‬ ‭for concessions and annexations.‬ ‭ fter the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazi propaganda stressed to both civilians at home and to soldiers, police‬ A ‭officers, and non-German auxiliaries serving in occupied territory themes linking Soviet Communism to European Jewry,‬ ‭presenting Germany as the defender of “Western” culture against the “Judeo-Bolshevik threat," and painting an apocalyptic‬ ‭picture of what would happen if the Soviets won the war. This was particularly the case after the catastrophic German defeat at‬ ‭Stalingrad in February 1943. These themes may have been instrumental in inducing Nazi and non-Nazi Germans as well as local‬ ‭collaborators to fight on until the very end.‬ ‭ he Role of Film‬ T ‭Films in particular played an important role in disseminating racial antisemitism, the superiority of German military power, and‬ ‭the intrinsic evil of the enemies as defined by Nazi ideology. Nazi films portrayed Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating‬ ‭Aryan society. For example, The Eternal Jew (1940), directed by Fritz Hippler, portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites,‬ ‭consumed by sex and money. Some films, such as The Triumph of the Will (1935) by Leni Riefenstahl, glorified Hitler and the‬ ‭National Socialist movement. Two other Riefenstahl works, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty (1938), depicted the‬ ‭1936 Berlin Olympic Games and promoted national pride in the successes of the Nazi regime at the Olympic‬‭s.‬ ‭ he Role of Newspapers‬ T ‭Newspapers in Germany, above all Der Stürmer (The Attacker), printed cartoons that used antisemitic caricatures to depict Jews.‬ ‭After the Germans began World War II with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi regime employed propaganda to‬ ‭impress upon German civilians and soldiers that the Jews were not only subhuman, but also dangerous enemies of the German‬ ‭Reich. The regime aimed to elicit support, or at least acquiescence, for policies aimed at removing Jews permanently from areas‬ ‭of German settlement.‬ ‭ overing up Atrocities and Mass Murder‬ C ‭During the implementation of the "Final Solution," the mass murder of European Jews, SS officials at killing centers compelled‬ ‭the victims of the Holocaust to maintain the deception necessary to deport the Jews from Germany and occupied Europe as‬ ‭smoothly as possible. Concentration camp and killing center officials compelled prisoners, many of whom would soon die in the‬ ‭gas chambers, to send postcards home stating that they were being treated well and living in good conditions. Here, the camp‬ ‭authorities used propaganda to cover up atrocities and mass murder.‬ I‭ n June 1944, the German Security Police permitted an International Red Cross team to inspect the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto,‬ ‭located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (today: Czech Republic). The SS and police had established Theresienstadt‬ ‭in November 1941 as an instrument of propaganda for domestic consumption in the German Reich. The camp-ghetto was used as‬ ‭an explanation for Germans who were puzzled by the deportation of German and Austrian Jews who were elderly, disabled war‬ ‭veterans, or locally known artists and musicians “to the East” for “labor.” In preparation for the 1944 visit, the ghetto underwent‬ ‭a “beautification” program. In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents‬ ‭as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish “residents” of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. When the film was‬ ‭completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the‬‭Auschwitz-Birkenau‬‭killing center‬ ‭ obilizing the Population‬ M ‭The Nazi regime used propaganda effectively to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest until the very‬ ‭end of the regime. Nazi propaganda was likewise essential to motivating those who implemented the mass murder of the‬ ‭European Jews and of other victims of the Nazi regime. It also served to secure the acquiescence of millions of others—as‬ ‭bystanders—to racially targeted persecution and mass murder.‬  “The Path to Nazi Genocide” Video Transcript https://www.ushmm.org/learn/holocaust/path-to-nazi-genocide/the-path-to-nazi-genocide/full-film Note: This film contains difficult subject matter and imagery. Some segments may not be appropriate for younger audiences. NARRATOR: Paris, 1900. More than fifty million people from around the world visited the Universal Exposition—a world’s fair intended to promote greater understanding and tolerance among nations, and to celebrate the new century, new inventions, exciting progress. The 20th century began much like our own—with hope that education, science and technology could create a better, more peaceful world. What followed soon after were two devastating wars. TEXT ON SCREEN: The Path to Nazi Genocide NARRATOR: The first “world war,” from 1914 to 1918, was fought throughout Europe and beyond. It became known as “the war to end all wars.” It cast an immense shadow on tens of millions of people. “This is not war,” one wounded soldier wrote home. “It is the ending of the world.” Half of all Frenchmen aged 20 to 32 at war’s outbreak were dead when it was over. More than one third of all German men aged 19 to 22 were killed. Millions of veterans were crippled in body and in spirit. Advances in the technology of killing included the use of poison gas. Under the pressure of unending carnage, governments toppled and great empires dissolved. It was a cataclysm that darkened the world’s view of humanity and its future. Winston Churchill said the war left “a crippled, broken world.” TEXT ON SCREEN: Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Nazism, 1918-1933 NARRATOR: The humiliation of Germany’s defeat and the peace settlement that followed in 1919 would play an important role in the rise of Nazism and the coming of a second “world war” just 20 years later. What shocked so many in Germany about the treaty signed near Paris, at the Palace of Versailles, was that the victors dictated a future in which Germany was deprived of any significant military power. Germany’s territory was reduced by 13%. Germany was forced to accept full responsibility for starting the war and to pay heavy reparations. To many, including 30-year old former army corporal Adolf Hitler, it seemed the country had been “stabbed in the back”—betrayed by subversives at home and by the government who accepted the armistice. In fact, the German military had quietly sought an end to the war it could no longer win in 1918. “It cannot be that two million Germans should have fallen in vain,” Adolf Hitler later wrote. “We demand vengeance!” Many veterans and other citizens struggled to understand Germany’s defeat and the uncertain future. Troops left the bloody battlefields and returned to a bewildering society. A new and unfamiliar democratic form of government—the Weimar Republic—replaced the authoritarian empire and immediately faced daunting challenges. Thousands of Germans waited in lines for work and food in the early 1920s. Middle class savings were wiped out as severe inflation left the currency worthless. Some burned it for fuel. Economic conditions 1 stabilized for a few years, then the worldwide depression hit in 1929. The German banking system collapsed, and by 1930 unemployment skyrocketed to 22%. In a country plagued by joblessness, embittered by loss of territory, and demoralized by ineffective government, political demonstrations frequently turned violent. Many political parties had their own paramilitary units to attack opponents and intimidate voters. In 1932, ninety-nine people were killed in the streets in one month. Right–wing propaganda and demonstrations played on fears of a Communist revolution spreading from the Soviet Union. New social problems emerged from the impact of rapid industrialization and the growth of cities. Standards of behavior were changing. Crime was on the rise. Sexual norms were in flux. For the first time, women were working outside the home in large numbers, and the new constitution gave women the right to vote. Germany’s fledgling democracy was profoundly tested by the crumbling of old values and fears of what might come next. Adolf Hitler had been undisputed leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party—known as Nazis—since 1921. In 1923, he was imprisoned for trying to overthrow the government. His trial brought him fame and followers. He used the jail time to dictate his political ideas in a book, Mein Kampf—My Struggle. Hitler’s ideological goals included territorial expansion, consolidation of a racially pure state, and elimination of the European Jews and other perceived enemies of Germany. He served only a short jail sentence, and after the ban was lifted on his National Socialist Party, Hitler and his followers rejoined the battle in the streets and in the countryside. The Nazi Party recruited, organized, and produced a newspaper to spread its message. While downplaying more extreme Nazi goals, they offered simple solutions to Germany’s problems, exploiting people’s fears, frustrations, and hopes. In the early 1930s, the frequency of elections was dizzying. So was the number of parties and splinter groups vying for votes. Hitler proved to be a charismatic campaigner and used the latest technology to reach people. The Nazi Party gained broad support, including many in the middle class—intellectuals, civil servants, students, professionals, shopkeepers and clerks ruined by the Depression. But the Nazis never received more than 38% of the vote in a free national election. No party was able to win a clear majority, and without political consensus, successive governments could not effectively govern the nation. Adolf Hitler was not elected to office and he did not have to seize power. He was offered a deal just as the Nazis started to lose votes. In January 1933, when the old war hero, President Paul von Hindenburg, invited Hitler to serve as Chancellor in a coalition government, the Nazis could hardly believe their luck. The Nazis were revolutionaries who wanted to radically transform Germany. The conservative politicians in the new Cabinet didn’t like or trust Hitler, but they liked democracy even less, and they saw the leftist parties as a bigger threat. They reached out to the Nazis to help build a majority in Parliament. They were confident they could control Hitler. One month later, when arson gutted the German parliament building, Hitler and his nationalist coalition partners seized their chance. Exploiting widespread fears of a communist uprising, they blamed Communists for the fire, 2 and declared emergency rule. President Hindenburg signed a decree that suspended all basic civil rights and constitutional protections, providing the basis for arbitrary police actions. The new government’s first targets were political opponents. Under the emergency decree, they could be terrorized, beaten and held indefinitely. Leaders of trade unions and opposition parties were arrested. German authorities sent thousands, including leftist members of Parliament, to newly established concentration camps. Despite Nazi terror and brutal suppression of their opponents, many German citizens willingly accepted or actively supported these extreme measures in favor of order and security. Many Germans felt a new hope and confidence in the future of their country with the prospect of a bold, young charismatic leader. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels planned to win over those who were still unconvinced. GOEBBELS [speaking German]: One must govern well, and for good government one must also practice good propaganda. They work together. A good government without propaganda is not more possible than good propaganda without a good government. NARRATOR: Hitler spoke to the SA, his army of storm troopers. HITLER [speaking German]: Germany has awakened! We have won power in Germany. Now we must win the German people. TEXT ON SCREEN: Building a “National Community,” 1933-1936 NARRATOR: The ceremonial reopening of Parliament, orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, aimed to link the Hitler government to Germany’s imperial past and portray the Nazis as saviors of the nation’s future. The event was carefully staged to reassure the German establishment, including the military, that Hitler would respect their traditions. Nazi–controlled newsreels then gave the impression that the Army supported the new government. Though Hitler walked behind longtime President Hindenburg for now, the new chancellor would soon be Germany’s absolute dictator. NEWSREEL VOICEOVER: Today was dedicated to the New Germany. And more than one hundred thousand schoolchildren stood, shoulder to shoulder, as the car bearing the aged President and the Chancellor proceeded through the crowd to the speaker’s stand. Whether you agree with his doctrines or not, it must be admitted that the leadership of Hitler has united the German people for the first time since the war. Their almost fanatical enthusiasm is a marvel to the entire world… NARRATOR: Hindenburg remained President until his death in August 1934. With Hindenburg gone, Hitler, by agreement with the army, abolished the office of President, declaring himself Führer and Reich Chancellor, leader of the nation and head of the government. Now there 3 was no authority above or beside him. Immediately, the armed forces swore an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. GERMAN ARMED FORCES [taking oath in German]: I swear by God this sacred oath to the Führer Adolf Hitler to render unconditional obedience… NARRATOR: All civil servants, including teachers and police, members of parliament and the judiciary, swore an oath of loyalty—not to any constitution—but to Hitler as Führer of the German nation. The economy had reached rock bottom when the Nazis came to power. They boosted its recovery with huge public works projects for the unemployed. NAZI NEWSREEL VOICEOVER [speaking German]: A half million folk comrades have gone back to work this year. Since the takeover of power, unemployment has fallen by more than half. NARRATOR: Hitler christened new autobahns triumphantly in a display of national will that would unite the country and facilitate the secret expansion of Germany’s armed forces. In 1935, Germany openly defied the 1919 Treaty of Versailles by reinstituting the draft and increasing its military strength. The Nazis were delivering on their promises to restore and strengthen the nation. Their achievements encouraged many people to overlook radical Nazi policies, or even to support them. In September 1935, the Nazi Party gathered in Nuremberg for its annual rally. It opened with a traditional hymn that added solemnity and a sense of continuity with the past. It ended with a special session of Parliament far from Berlin. New race laws were introduced by Hitler and read by Parliament President Hermann Göring. GÖRING [speaking German]: German citizenship is restricted to persons of German or kindred blood. Mar