Acknowledgements
This unit was written by Professor Clive Emsley Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons...
View ArticleReferences
Aly, G. (1999) ‘Final Solution’: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, Arnold.Bartov, O. (1985) The Eastern Front 1941–1945: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare,...
View Article5.2 The aftermath of the Holocaust
In interwar Europe ethnic Germans had been in an overwhelming majority in the populations of both Germany and Austria. In addition, the two largest minorities spread across the states of interwar...
View Article5.1 Relativising the Holocaust?
In the wake of the Soviet armies during 1944–45 came police units. In Poland the communist Office of State Security (Urzad Bezpieczerstwa Publicznego, UB) refilled former Nazi camps and prisons with...
View Article4.3 The response of some of Germany's allies to Nazi anti-Semitism and the...
The Hungarians were latecomers to the killing of Jews, but when they became involved in 1944 their police and administrators appear generally to have acted with an unpleasant enthusiasm for the...
View Article4.2 Who to blame
Browning developed his work on Police Battalion 101 into a book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992b). The same material was subsequently used, and...
View Article4.1 The killers – portrayal and reality
Activity 5Read Document II.11, Himmler's speech to the Gauleiter (leaders of the territorial divisions of the Nazi Party, found under the link below) of 6 November 1943, and answer the following...
View Article3.4 The mass production of death
Mass shootings by soldiers and Einsatzgruppen and the use of the mobile gas vans took time and energy. There was concern about the effects on the morale of the men involved. Towards the end of 1941,...
View Article3.3 Factors leading to the ‘Final Solution’
Activity 4Two questions:What was east of Nazi-occupied Poland?On what would this new resettlement depend?DiscussionSoviet-occupied Poland, and then the USSR.On seizing and occupying Soviet...
View Article3.2 Plans for ‘resettlement’ of the Jews
The occupation of western Poland after the brief campaign of 1939 gave the Nazis Lebensraum to colonise with ethnic Germans, some of whom were soon to be repatriated to the Reich (and thence, often...
View Article3.1 Terminology used during the ‘Final Solution’
The term ‘Final Solution’ (Die Endlösung) was a euphemism. Himmler was fully prepared to talk about killing to his immediate subordinates, but much of the Nazi killing machine was shrouded in...
View Article2.3 The significance of Volksgemeinschaft in Nazi ideology
Hitler made no reference to Kristallnacht in his speeches at the time of the event. Less than three months later, however, on 30 January 1939, he gave a two-hour address to the Reichstag. The speech...
View Article2.2 Early anti-Jewish policies in the Nazi government
Hitler's government was sworn in on 30 January 1933. On 28 March all Nazi Party organisations were urged to carry out a boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals on 1 April. The exhortation came...
View Article2.1 Anti-Semitism and Hitler
Anti-Semitism was central to Hitler's world view and to that of most Nazi activists. Hitler considered Jews to have been foremost among profiteers and racketeers during World War I; they engineered the...
View Article1.3 Eugenics
Just as anti-Semitism was not unique to Nazi Germany, neither were ideas of racial superiority or attempts to create a society peopled by ‘better’ human beings. Politicians, scientists and social...
View Article1.2 Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism was not an invention of the twentieth century, nor was it simply a German phenomenon. In the years before 1914 violent pogroms were directed against Jews, who were made scapegoats for the...
View Article1.1 The Holocaust: a unique event?
World War I has a claim to being called the first industrialised war in the sense that, for the first time, the full power of industrial technology was deployed in concentrated ways on the...
View ArticleLearning outcomes
By the end of this unit you should have:a perception of the enormity of the events under discussion;a recognition of the kinds of ideas and incidents which may have prompted them;an awareness of the...
View ArticleIntroduction
This unit explores the Holocaust, as the destruction of European Jewry is commonly known. The mass killing represented by the Holocaust raises many questions concerning the development of European...
View ArticleAcknowledgements
This unit was written by Professor Clive Emsley Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons...
View Article