Nazification of Germany
Good Intro video – Persecution of Jews
Good Activity – draw name with 8
sections
End good propaganda video
1.
The Enabling Act
video
(German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) was a 1933 law that made
Hitler dictator of Nazi Germany. It was passed by Germany's Reichstagand
signed by President Paul von Hindenburg on 23 March 1933. It was the second
major step, after the Reichstag Fire Decree,
through whichChancellor Adolf Hitler legally
obtained plenary powers and established his dictatorship. It
received its name from its legal status as an enabling actgranting the Cabinet the authority to enact laws without
the participation of the Reichstag.
The act stated that it was to last for four years unless renewed by the
Reichstag, which occurred twice.
The formal name of the Enabling
Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (English: "Law to Remedy the Distress of
People andReich").
EXPLAINS HOW H EGOT FROM
DEMOCRACY TO DICTATORSHIP
2.
The Nazi Boycott of Jewish Stores,
April 1933
VIDEO
- After the Enabling Act was passed, violence
against Jews escalated and Julius Streicher, editor of the vehemently
anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, was told to form a boycott committee. Lists
of specific businesses and individuals to be boycotted were published. On April
1st, Nazi pickets were posted in front of stores and factories belonging to
Jews and in front of Jewish professional offices to prevent anyone from
entering. Hermann Göring, meanwhile, had ordered German Jewish leaders to deny
reports of Nazi atrocities committed against Jews. Germans who tried to buy
from Jews were shamed and exposed publicly.
The boycott
lasted only three days but it had important implications and consequences.
Moreover, it revealed the completeness and efficiency of Nazi information on
Jewish economic life. It also strengthened the idea that it was permissible to
damage and even destroy that life with impunity. Later measures were based on
this assumption.
- Book Burnings
On April 6, 1933, the Nazi German Student Association's Main Office for Press and Propaganda proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” to climax in a literary purge or “cleansing” (Säuberung) by fire. Local chapters were to supply the press with releases and commissioned articles, offer blacklists of “un-German” authors, sponsor well-known Nazi figures to speak at public gatherings, and negotiate for radio broadcast time. On April 8 the students’ association also drafted its twelve "theses"—a deliberate evocation of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: declarations which described the fundamentals of a "pure" national language and culture. Placards publicized the theses, which attacked “Jewish intellectualism,” asserted the need to “purify” the German language and literature, and demanded that universities be centers of German nationalism. The students described the “action” as a response to a worldwide Jewish “smear campaign” against Germany and an affirmation of traditional German values.
In a symbolic act of ominous significance, on May 10, 1933, university students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. On the evening of May 10, in most university towns, right-wing students marched in torchlight parades “against the un-German spirit.” The scripted rituals called for high Nazi officials, professors, university rectors, and university student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged and “unwanted” books onto bonfires with great ceremony, band-playing, and so-called “fire oaths.” In Berlin, some 40,000 persons gathered in the Opernplatz to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!” Goebbels enjoined the crowd. “Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Gläser, Erich Kästner.”
Among the authors whose books student leaders burned that night numbered well-known socialists such as Bertolt Brecht and August Bebel; the founder of the concept of communism, Karl Marx; critical “bourgeois” writers like the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and “corrupting foreign influences,” among them American author Ernest Hemingway. The fires also consumed several writings of the 1929 Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann, whose support of the Weimar Republic and critique of fascism raised Nazi ire, and the works of international best-selling author Erich Maria Remarque, whose unflinching description of war, All Quiet on the Western Front, Nazi ideologues vilified as "a literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War." Erich Kästner, Heinrich Mann, and Ernst Gläser, denigrated in Goebbels’ blistering rhetoric, represented early German literary critics of the Nazi regime, although Heinrich Mann had gained fame as the author of Professor Unrat, which appeared in German cinemas in 1930 as “The Blue Angel”; and Kästner was primarily known for his literature for children and young adults. Other writers included on the blacklists were American authors Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Helen Keller, whose belief in social justice encouraged her to champion the disabled, pacifism, improved conditions for industrial workers, and women's voting rights.
4.
"Retirement"
On April 7th,
the German government issued an order firing all civil service workers not of
"Aryan" descent. This was the first instance of discrimination on the
basis of "race" which was consistent with German law. City
governments responded by passing other laws discriminating against Jews. In
Frankfurt, Jewish teachers were excluded from universities, and Jewish
performers were barred from the stage and concert halls. In other cities, Jews
were excluded from admission to the legal profession. These actions created
thousands of jobs for "Aryans." A decree was issued on April 11th
defining "non-Aryans" as those who were descended from
"non-Aryan" parents or grandparents, even if only one grandparent was
"non-Aryan."
5. Religious
Persecution
The slaughter of animals for food under Jewish
kosher laws was banned on April 21st.
6. Quota Law
On April 25th,
a numerus
clausus, or quota law, limited admission of Jews to institutions of higher
learning to 1.5 percent of the total.
7. Exclusion
On September
28th, Jews were excluded from all artistic, dramatic, literary and film
enterprises.
8. Land
Restrictions
On September
29th, Jews could no longer own farmland.
Eventually, 400
specific anti-Jewish laws and decrees were passed, each based on the Nazi
racist definition of a non-Aryan.
9.
Nuremebrg Laws
VIDEO
A conference of
ministers
was held on August 20, 1935, to discuss the economic effects of Party actions
against Jews. Adolf Wagner, the Party representative at the conference, argued
that such actions would cease, once the Government decided on a firm policy
against the Jews.
Dr. Schacht,
the Economics Minister, criticized arbitrary behavior
by Party members as this inhibited his policy of rebuilding Germany's economy.
It made no economic sense since Jews had certain entrepreneurial skills that
could be usefully employed to further his policies. Schacht made no moral
condemnation of Jewish policy and advocated the passing of legislation to
clarify the situation.
The following
month two measures were announced at the annual Party Rally in Nuremberg,
becoming known as the Nuremberg Laws. Both measures were hastily improvised
(there was even a shortage of drafting paper so that menu cards had to be used)
and Jewish experts from the Ministry of the Interior were ordered to Nuremberg
by plane.
The first law, The
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, prohibited
marriages and extra-marital intercourse between “Jews ” (the name was now
officially used in place of “non-Aryans ”) and “Germans ” and also the
employment of “German ” females under forty-five in Jewish households. The
second law, The
Reich Citizenship Law, stripped Jews of their German citizenship and
introduced a new distinction between “Reich citizens ” and “nationals.”
The Nuremberg
Laws by their general nature formalized the unofficial and particular measures
taken against Jews up to 1935. The Nazi leaders made a point of stressing the
consistency of this legislation with the Party program which demanded that Jews
should be deprived of their rights as citizens.
1.
New Marriage
Requirements
OCTOBER 18, 1935The "Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People" requires all prospective marriage partners to obtain from the public health authorities a certificate of fitness to marry. Such certificates are refused to those suffering from "hereditary illnesses" and contagious diseases and those attempting to marry in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.
Nuremberg Laws
The Laws for
the Protection of German Blood and German Honour
(5 September
1935) Moved by the understanding that the purity of German blood is essential
to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the
uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the
Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated
herewith:
Section 1
1.
Marriages between Jews and citizens (German:
Staatsangehörige) of German or
kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are
void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.
2.
Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public
Prosecutor.
Section 2
Section 3
Jews will not be permitted to employ
female citizens under the age of 45, of German or kindred blood, as domestic
workers.
Section 4
1.
Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national
flag or the national colours.
2.
On the other hand they are permitted to display the
Jewish colours. The exercise of this right is protected by the State.
Section 5
1.
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section
1 will be punished with hard labour.
2.
A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section
2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labour.
3.
A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections
3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine,
or with one of these penalties.
Section 6
The Reich Minister of the Interior in
agreement with the Deputy Führer and the Reich Minister of Justice will issue the legal and
administrative regulations required for the enforcement and supplementing of
this law.
Section 7
The law will become effective on the day after its promulgation; Section 3,
however, not until 1 January 1936.
10. Reactions
Terror, much of
it state-condoned, continued against Jews and leftists. Many were beaten to
death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some in despair committed
suicide. Many others fled to Palestine or to other countries where they
perceived they would be safe.
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