Transcript Status of Women, Treatment of Minorities, and Religious Groups

Status of Women, Treatment of
Minorities, and Religious Groups
Role of Women in the Third Reich
• Women played a vital role in Hitler's
plan to create an ideal German
Community (Volksgemeinschaft)
• Hitler believed a larger, racially purer
population would enhance Germany's
military strength and provide settlers to
colonize conquered territory in eastern
Europe
• The Third Reich's aggressive
population policy encouraged "racially
pure" women to bear as many "Aryan"
children as possible
Role of Women in the Third Reich
• This policy took its most radical form in
1936 when SS leaders created the
state-directed program known as
Lebensborn (Fount of Life)
• In an extension of the SS Marriage
Order of 1932, the 1936 Lebensborn
ordinance prescribed that every SS
member should father four children, in
or out of wedlock
• Lebensborn homes sheltered
illegitimate offspring and their mothers,
provided birth documents and financial
support, and recruited adoptive parents
for the children
Role of Women in the Third
Reich
• The state encouraged births, whether through
wedlock or not:
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Restrictions on entry into certain jobs
Marriage loans
Family income supplements for each new child
Bestowed the Cross of Honor of the German Mother
on women bearing four or more babies
– Increased punishments for abortion
• In the end, women were needed in the
workplace, while men were needed at the front
Role of Women in the Third Reich
• The National Socialist Women's
Union and German Women's Agency
used Nazi propaganda to encourage
women to focus on their roles as
wives and mothers
• Besides increasing the population,
the regime also sought to enhance
its "racial purity" through “species
upgrading”
• Laws prohibited marriage between
"Aryans" and "non-Aryans" while
preventing those with handicaps and
certain diseases from marrying at all;
some deemed unfit were sterilized
Role of Women in the Third Reich
• Girls were taught to embrace the role
of mother and obedient wife in school
and through compulsory membership
in the League of German Maidens
• However, rearmament followed by
total war obliged the Nazis to abandon
the domestic ideal for women
• The need for labor prompted the state
to prod women into the workforce
(there was a compulsory-service plan
for all women) and even into the
military (the number of females in the
German armed forces approached
500,000 by 1945)
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• Believed that Jews’:
– Blood was tainted and therefore subhuman
– Didn’t work, but lived off the country
– Evaded military service
– Egoistic
– Are corrupting Germany morally
– Are corrupt in business
– Used people to achieve their ends (to make a life)
– Wanted to dominate the globe
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• Germany was a police state where political
opponents were arrested and imprisoned by the
SS or the Gestapo
• Under the command of Heinrich Himmler, the
SS were responsible for suppressing hostility to
the regime at home and organizing
concentration camps
• The Jews were a particular target of SS hostility
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• Jews were the long-standing targets of
Hitler’s hatred and an obstacle in his
design for a new Germany
• As early as April 1933, Jews were
excluded from:
– Holding public office
– Joining the civil service (Career Civil Service
Act)
– Being a teacher, doctor, journalist, being an
officer in the armed forces
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• The Nazis also set up the first concentration
camp at Dachau to hold 200 Communists
• In 1934, Jewish newspapers could no longer be
sold in the streets
• In 1935, Jews were deprived of their citizenship
and other basic rights (Nuremburg Laws)
• Jews were also prevented from marriage with
Germans (Blood Protection Act)
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• In 1936, the Nazis boycotted Jewishowned businesses
• Jews no longer had the right to vote in
Germany
General
Eisenhower
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• In 1938, on Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”)
Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and
Austria
• 30,000 Jews were arrested
• Jews:
– Were forced to carry identification cards and Jewish
passports were marked with a “J”
– Had to wear the Star of David
– Could no longer head businesses
– Could not attend plays or concerts
– Were moved to Jewish schools
– Were forced to hand over drivers’ licenses and car
registrations
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• In 1940, Goring ordered
Heydrich to begin the
enslavement of all Jews in the
German occupied territories
• In 1941, corps of SS men
known as Einsatzgruppen
accompanied the Wehrmacht
into the USSR to eliminate Jews
and other “undesirables”
• In January 1942 at the
Wannsee Conference, the
“Final Solution to the Jewish
Question” was considered
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• Shortly afterward, the first gassings
began by use of cars
• Later, gas chambers were built at
Death Camps (AuschwitzBirkenau), Belzec, Chelmo,
Maidenek, Sobibor, and Treblinka)
• In 1944, the camps were
threatened by the advance of the
Red Army. The Germans forced
the prisoners to march to the
interior of Germany
• Six million Jews died in the
Holocaust
Jews also died of
hunger in ghettos
Auschwitz
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• The T-4 or euthanasia program was set up to
oversee the identification and elimination of
defectives and the sterilization of those weaker
members of society who might pass on
hereditary diseases
• Handicapped, mentally disabled, homeless
were included
• It was responsible for 70,000 deaths
Nazi Treatment of Minorities and
Religious Groups
• 5 million others were killed besides the
Jews, including:
– Sinti and Roma (gypsies)
– Poles
– Soviet POWs
– Mentally or physically disabled
– Homosexuals
– Blacks
– Jehovah’s Witnesses
– Political dissidents
– Trade unionists
– Priests and clergy
Harrisburg, PA
Memorials
Miami, FL
San Francisco, CA
Baltimore’s Holocaust Memorial was
built to resemble a train which is how
Jews were taken to the concentration
camps. It was built through a teacher
who told the Baltimore Jewish
Council that his class didn’t believe in
the Holocaust
This flame,
memorializing
Kristallnacht, is also at
the Baltimore Holocaust
Memorial. It’s located on
the corner of Water and
Gay Streets
Warsaw Ghetto
Memorial
Berlin Holocaust
Memorial