Nazism (2206 words) Essay Example For Students

Nazism (2206 words) Essay NazismNAZISMThe National Socialist German Workers Party almost died one morning in1919. It numbered only a few dozen grumblers it had no organizationand no political ideas. But many among the middle class admired the Nazis muscular oppositionto the Social Democrats. And the Nazis themes of patriotism andmilitarism drew highly emotional responses from people who could notforget Germanys prewar imperial grandeur. In the national elections of September 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as themost popular party in Germany. In Northeim, where in 1928 Nazicandidates had received 123 votes, they now polled 1,742, a respectable28 percent of the total. The nationwide success drew even faster injust three years, party membership would rise from about 100,000 toalmost a million, and the number of local branches would increasetenfold. The new members included working-class people, farmers, andmiddle-class professionals. They were both better educated and youngerthen the Old Fighters, who had been the backbone of the party during itsfirst decade. The Nazis now presented themselves as the party of theyoung, the strong, and the pure, in opposition to an establishmentpopulated by the elderly, the weak, and the dissolute. Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. As a young boy, heshowed little ambition. After dropping out of high schoo l, he moved toVienna to study art, but he was denied the chance to join Viennaacademy 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 andits consequences. He had emerged from Austria with many prejudices,including a powerful prejudice against Jews. Again, he was a product ofhis times for many Austrians and Germans were prejudiced against theJews. In Hitlers case the prejudice had become maniacal it was a dominantforce in his private and political personalities. Anti-Semitism was nota policy for Adolf Hitlerit was religion. And in the Germany of the1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, itwas not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of thenations society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it. The fact is that Hitlers anti-Semitism was self-inflicted obstacle tohis political success. The Jews, like other Germans, were shocked bythe discovery that the war had not been fought to a standstill, as theywere led to believe in November 1918, but that Germany had , in fact,been defeated and was to be treated as a vanquished country. Had Hitlernot embarked on his policy of disestablishing the Jews as Germans, andlater of exterminating them in Europe, he could have counted on theirloyalty. There is no reason to believe anything else. On the evening of November 8, 1923, Wyuke Vavaruab State CinnussuiberGustav Rutter von Kahr was making a political speech in Munichssprawling B?rgerbr?ukeller, some 600 Nazis and right-wing sympathizerssurrounded the beer hall. Hitler burst into the building and leapedonto a table, brandishing a revolver and firing a shot into theceiling. ?The National Revolution,? he cried, ?has begun!?At that point, informed that fighting had broken out in another par t ofthe city, Hitler rushed to that scene. His prisoners were allowed toleave, and they talked about organizing defenses against the Nazi coup. Hitler was of course furious. And he was far from finished. At about11 oclock on the morning of November 9the anniversary of the foundingof the German Republic in 19193,000 Hitler partisans again gatheredoutside the B?rgerbr?ukeller. To this day, no one knows who fired the first shot. But a shot rangout, and it was followed by fusillades from both sides. Hermann G?ringfell wounded in the thigh and both legs. Hitler flattened himselfagainst the pavement; he was unhurt. General Ludenorff continued tomarch stolidly toward the police line, which parted to let him passthrough (he was later arrested, tried and acquitted). Behind him, 16Nazis and three policemen lay sprawled dead among the many wounded. The next year, R?hm and his band joined forces with the fledglingNational Socialist Party in Adolf Hitlers Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Himmler took part in that uprising, but he played such a minor role thathe escaped arrest. The R?hm-Hitler alliance survived the Putsch, and?hms 1,500-man band grew into the Sturmabteilung, the SA, Hitlersbrown-shirted private army, that bullied the Communists and Democrats. Hitler recruited a handful of men to act as his bodyguards and protecthim from Communist toughs, other rivals, and even the S.A. if it got outof hand. This tiny group was the embryonic SS. Health Care Reform EssayThe ?experimental people? were also used by Nazi doctors who neededpractice 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 theyassisted the SS doctors. ?I cut the flesh of healthy young girls,?recalled a Jewish physician who survived at terrible cost. ?I immersedthe bodies of dwarfs and cripples in calcium chloride (to preservethem), or had them boiled so the carefully prepared skeletons mightsafely reach the Third Reichs museums to justify, for futuregenerations, the destruction of an entire race. I could never erasethese memories from my mind.? But the best killing machine were the ?shower baths? of death. Aftertheir arrival at a death camp, the Jews who had been chosen to die atonce were told that they were to have a shower. Filthy by their long,miserable journey, they sometimes applauded the announcement. CountlessJews and other victims went peacefully to the shower roomswhich weregas chambers in disguise. In the anterooms to the gas chambers, many of the doomed people foundnothing amiss. At Auschwitz, signs in several languages said, ?Bath andDisinfectant,? and inside the chambers other signs admonished, ?Dontforget 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 over q uickly. The war came home to Germany. Scarcely had Hitler recovered from theshock of the July 20 bombing when he was faced with the loss of Franceand 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, beginningJune 10 and unrolling one after another, had brought the Red Army to theborder of East Prussia, bottled up fifty German divisions in the Balticregion, penetrated to Vyborg in Finland, destroyed Army Group Center andbrought an advance on this front of four hundred miles in six weeks tothe Vistula opposite Warsaw, while in the south a new attack which beganon August 20 resulted in the conquest of Rumania by the end of the monthand with it the Ploesti oil fields, the only major source of natural oilfor the German armies. On August 26 Bulgaria formally withdrew from thewar and the Germans began to hastily clear out of that country. InSeptember Finland gave up and turned on the German troops which refusedto 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 atank 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. History Reports