Nazism And World War II (2352 words) Essay Example For Students

Nazism And World War II (2352 words) Essay Nazism and World War IIThe National Socialist German Workers Party almost died one morning in 1919. It numbered only a few dozen grumblers it had no organization and no political ideas. But many among the middle class admired the Nazis muscular opposition to the Social Democrats. And the Nazis themes of patriotism and militarism drew highly emotional responses from people who could not forget Germanys prewar imperial grandeur. In the national elections of September 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly 6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as the most popular party in Germany. In Northeim, where in 1928 Nazi candidates had received 123 votes, they now polled 1,742, a respectable 28 percent of the total. The nationwide success drew even faster in just three years, party membership would rise from about 100,000 to almost a million, and the number of local branches would increase tenfold. The new members included working-class people, farmers, and middle-class professionals. They were both better educated and younger then the Old Fighters, who had been the backbone of the party during its first decade. The Nazis now presented themselves as the party of the young, the strong, and the pure, in opposition to an establishment populated by the elderly, the weak, and the dissolute. Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. As a young boy, he showed little ambition. After dropping out of high school, he moved to Vienna to study art, but he was denied the chance to join Vienna academy of fine arts. When WWI broke out, Hitler joined Kaiser Wilhelmers army as aCorporal. He was not a person of great importance. He was a creatureof a Germany created by WWI, and his behavior was shaped by that war and its consequences. He had emerged from Austria with many prejudices, including a powerful prejudice against Jews. Again, he was a product of his times for many Austrians and Germans were prejudiced against the Jews. In Hitlers case the prejudice had become maniacal it was a dominant force in his private and political personalities. Anti-Semitism was not a policy for Adolf Hitlerit was religion. And in the Germany of the 1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, it was not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of the nations society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it. The fact is that Hitlers anti-Semitism was se lf-inflicted obstacle to his political success. The Jews, like other Germans, were shocked by the discovery that the war had not been fought to a standstill, as they were led to believe in November 1918, but that Germany had , in fact, been defeated and was to be treated as a vanquished country. Had Hitler not embarked on his policy of disestablishing the Jews as Germans, and later of exterminating them in Europe, he could have counted on their loyalty. There is no reason to believe anything else. On the evening of November 8, 1923, Wyuke Vavaruab State Cinnussuiber Gustav Rutter von Kahr was making a political speech in Munichs sprawling B?rgerbr?ukeller, some 600 Nazis and right-wing sympathizers surrounded the beer hall. Hitler burst into the building and leaped onto a table, brandishing a revolver and firing a shot into the ceiling. ?The National Revolution,? he cried, ?has begun!? At that point, informed that fighting had broken out in another part of the city, Hitler rushed to that scene. His prisoners were allowed to leave, and they talked about organizing defenses against the Nazi coup. Hitler was of course furious. And he was far from finished. At about 11 oclock on the morning of November 9the anniversary of the founding of the German Republic in 19193,000 Hitler partisans again gathered outside the B?rgerbr?ukeller. To this day, no one knows who fired the first shot. But a shot rang out, and it was followed by fusillades from both sides. Hermann G?ring fell wounded in the thigh and both legs. Hitler flattened himself against the pavement; he was unhurt. General Ludenorff continued to march stolidly toward the police line, which parted to let him pass through (he was later arrested, tried and acquitted). Behind him, 16 Nazis and three policemen lay sprawled dead among the many wounded. The next year, R?hm and his band joined forces with the fledgling National Socialist Party in Adolf Hitlers Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Himmler took part in that uprising , but he played such a minor role that he escaped arrest. The R?hm-Hitler alliance survived the Putsch, and ?hms 1,500-man band grew into the Sturmabteilung, the SA, Hitlers brown-shirted private army, that bullied the Communists and Democrats. Hitler recruited a handful of men to act as his bodyguards and protect him from Communist toughs, other rivals, and even the S.A. if it got out of hand. This tiny group was the embryonic SS. Setting the Record straight EssayThe ?experimental people? were also used by Nazi doctors who needed practice performing various operations. One doctor at Auschwitzperfected his amputation technique on live prisoners. After he hadfinished, his maimed patients were sent off to the gas chamber. A few Jews who had studied medicine were allowed to live if they assisted the SS doctors. ?I cut the flesh of healthy young girls,? recalled a Jewish physician who survived at terrible cost. ?I immersed the bodies of dwarfs and cripples in calcium chloride (to preserve them), or had them boiled so the carefully prepared skeletons might safely reach the Third Reichs museums to justify, for future generations, the destruction of an entire race. I could never erase these memories from my mind.? But the best killing machine were the ?shower baths? of death. After their arrival at a death camp, the Jews who had been chosen to die at once were told that they were to have a shower. Filthy by their lo ng, miserable journey, they sometimes applauded the announcement. Countless Jews and other victims went peacefully to the shower roomswhich were gas chambers in disguise. In the anterooms to the gas chambers, many of the doomed people found nothing amiss. At Auschwitz, signs in several languages said, ?Bath and Disinfectant,? and inside the chambers other signs admonished, ?Dont forget your soap and towel.? Unsuspecting victims cooperated willingly. ?They got out of their clothes so routinely,? Said a Sobibor survivor. ?What could be more naturalIn time, rumors about the death camps spread, and undergroundnewspapers in the Warsaw ghetto even ran reports that told of the gaschambers and the crematoriums. But many people did not believe thestoried, and those who did were helpless in any case. Facing the gunsof the SS guards, they could only hope and pray to survive. As oneJewish leader put it, ?We must be patient and a miracle will occur.?There were no miracles. The victims, naked and bewildered, were shovedinto a line. Their guards ordered them forward, and flogged those whohung back. The doors to the gas chambers were locked behind them. Itwas all ove r quickly. The war came home to Germany. Scarcely had Hitler recovered from the shock of the July 20 bombing when he was faced with the loss of France and Belgium and of great conquests in the East. Enemy troops inoverwhelming numbers were converging on the Reich. By the middle of August 1944, the Russian summer offensives, beginning June 10 and unrolling one after another, had brought the Red Army to theborder of East Prussia, bottled up fifty German divisions in the Baltic region, penetrated to Vyborg in Finland, destroyed Army Group Center and brought an advance on this front of four hundred miles in six weeks to the Vistula opposite Warsaw, while in the south a new attack which began on August 20 resulted in the conquest of Rumania by the end of the month and with it the Ploesti oil fields, the only major source of natural oil for the German armies. On August 26 Bulgaria formally withdrew from the war and the Germans began to hastily clear out of that country. In September Finland gave up a nd turned on the German troops which refused to evacuate its territory. In the West, France was liberated quickly. In General Patton, thecommander of the newly formed U.S. Third Army, the Americans had found a tank general with the dash and flair of Rommel in Africa. After thecapture of Avranches on July 30, he had left Brittany to wither on thevine and begun a great sweep around the German armies in Normandy,moving southeast to Orleans on the Loire and then due east toward theSeine south of Paris. By August 23 the Seine was reached southeast andnorthwest of the capital, and two days later the great city, the gloryof France, was liberated after four years of German occupation whenGeneral Jacques Leclercs French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4thInfantry Division broke into it and found that French resistance unitswere largely in control.