NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER ( updated Notes 2019)

  

Q.1. Write a short note on the genocidal war waged by Germany.

ANS: i) Under the shadow of the Second World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war, which resulted in the mass murder of selected groups of innocent civilians of Europe. The number of people killed included 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians and 70,000 Germans who were considered mentally and physically disabled, besides innumerable political opponents.

1. ii) Nazis devised an unprecedented means of killing people, that is, by gassing them in various killing centres’ like Auschwitz.

 Q.2.What was the Weimar Republic? How was it formed?

ANS: The defeat of Imperial Germany and the abdication of the emperor gave an opportunity to parliamentary parties to recast German polity. A national Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. Deputies were now elected to the German Parliament or Reichstag, on the basis of equal and universal votes cast by all adults including women.

 Q.3.What were the problems faced by the Weimar republic?

ANS: i) The Weimar republic was not received well by its own people largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of First World War. Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat in the war but the disgrace at Versailles.

1. ii) It was financially crippled by being forced to pay compensation.

iii) The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable and vulnerable to dictatorship. One was proportional representation. This made achieving a majority by any one party a near impossible task, leading to a rule by coalitions.

1. iv) Another defect was article 48, which gave the President the powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights and rule by decree.

What were the inherent defects of Weimar Republic? (Ans: Points iii and iv )

 Q.4.Write any 4 provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Or What was the experience of Germany at the end of First World War?

ANS:  i) Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13% of its territories, 75% of its iron and 26% of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark, and Lithuania.

1. ii) The allied powers demilitarized Germany to weaken its power. Its army strength was reduced and should not produce any war weapons.

iii) The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for the war and damages the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to 6 billion pounds.

1. iv) The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for many years.

 Q.5.What were the effect of World War I on Europe?

ANS: i) The war had a devastating impact on the entire continent both psychologically and financially. From a continent of creditors, Europe turned into one of the debtors.

1. ii) The infant Weimar Republic in Germany was being made to pay for the sins of the old empire. The republic carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially crippled by being forced to pay compensation.

iii) The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and polity. Soldiers came to be placed above civilians.

1. iv) Politicians and publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong, and masculine. The media glorified trench life.

 Q.6. Who were the November criminals?

ANS: The people who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and Democrats, became easy targets of attack in the conservative nationalist circles. They were mockingly called the ‘November criminals’.

 Q.7. What were the factors that led to hyper inflation in Germany?

ANS: i) In 1923 Germany refused to pay the war compensation, and the French occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr to claim their coal.

1. ii) Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency recklessly. With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German mark fell. In April the US dollar was equal to 24,000 marks and by December, the figure had run into trillions.

iii) As the value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods increased. The image of Germans carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy a loaf of bread was widely publicized evoking worldwide sympathy. The crisis came to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise phenomenally high.

 Q.8. What was the impact of the Economic Crisis in Germany?

ANS: i) The German economy was worst hit by the economic crisis. By 1932, industrial production was reduced to 40% of the 1929 level. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages.

1. ii) As jobs disappeared, the youth took o criminal activities and total despair became commonplace. The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people.

iii) The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings diminish when the currency lost its value. Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their businesses got ruined. These sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation.

1. iv) Unemployment weakened their bargaining power. Big business was in crisis. The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural prices and women, unable to fill their children’s stomachs, were filled with a sense of deep despair.

 Q.9. What is meant by Proletarianisation?

ANS: Proletarianisation was the anxiety of German people during the Great Depression, being reduced to the status of working class.

 Q.10. How did Hitler come to power in Germany? Or Examine the circumstances that led to the rise of Hitler in Germany.

ANS: i) Born in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent his youth in poverty. When the First World War broke out, he enrolled for the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became a corporal and earned medals for bravery.

1. ii) The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious. In1919, he joined a small group called the German Worker’s Party. He subsequently took over the organization and renamed it the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This party came to be known as the Nazi party.

iii) It was during the Great depression that Nazism became a mass movement. During the Great Depression, banks collapsed and businesses shut down, workers lost their jobs and the middle classes were threatened with poverty. In such a situation Nazi propaganda gave hopes for a better future.

1. iv) Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people. He promised to build a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the German people. He promised employment for the youth. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany.
2. vi) Hitler devised a new style of politics. He understood the significance of rituals and spectacle in mass mobilization. Nazis held massive rallies and public meetings to demonstrate the support for Hitler and instill a sense of unity among the people.

vii) Nazi propaganda skill fully projected Hitler as a messiah, a savior, as someone who had to deliver people from their distress.

 ( What was the new style of politics devised by Hitler?

Ans. Point No. vi above)

 Q.11. Describe the reign of terror let loose by Hitler soon after coming to power.

ANS: i) Having acquired power, Hitler set out to destroy the structures of democratic rule. A mysterious fire that broke out in the German Parliament building in February facilitated his move. The fire decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution

1. ii) Then he turned on his arch-enemies, the Communists and democrats most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps.

iii) On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates.

1. iv) The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.

 Q.12. Why did Hitler pass the Enabling Act? What were its features?

ANS: On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates.

 Q.13. How did Hitler violate the Treaty of Versailles? Or Examine the foreign policy of Hitler soon after coming to power.

ANS: i) Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations in 1933, re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan,’One people, One empire and One Leader’.

1. ii) He then went on to wrest German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and gobbled up the entire country. Germany increased the army against the treaty.

iii) In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England. In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan, strengthening Hitler’s claim to international powers.

 Q 14 what was the historical blunder that Hitler did?

ANS:  Hitler wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans. He attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. In this historic blunder Hitler exposed the German western front to the British aerial bombing and the eastern front to the powerful Soviet armies.

 Q15. Why did USA enter the Second World War?

ANS: Japan was expanding its power in the east during the Second World War. It had occupied French Indo-China, Philippines under the US and the Dutch East Indies. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed the US naval bases at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, the US entered the Second World War. The war ended with Hitler’s defeat and the US dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.

 Q16.What are the peculiar features of Nazi thinking?

ANS: i) According to Nazism there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy existed. In this view, blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans.

1. ii) Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. According to this idea, only those species survived on the earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered people.

iii) The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish.

1. iv) He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement and believed in establishment of a racial state.
2. v) At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organisation– Hitler Youth – where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those categorized as ‘undesirable’.

Q17. How did Hitler establish a racist state?

ANS: i) Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.

1. ii) Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’. They were alone considered ‘desirable’. Only they were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all others who were classed as ‘undesirable’.

iii) This meant that even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist. Under the Euthanasia Programme, Nazi officials had condemned to death many Germans who were considered mentally or physically unfit.

1. iv) Jews were not the only community classified as ‘undesirable’. There were others. Many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial `inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity of the `superior Aryan’ race. They were widely persecuted.
2. vi) Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. They had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and usurers. They were often persecuted through periodic organized violence, and expulsions from the land.

Q.18. Why did Hitler develop hatred towards Jews?

ANS: i) Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. Nazi hatred of Jews had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews. They had been stereotyped as killers Christ and usurers.

1. ii) Until the medieval times Jews were barred from owning land. They survived mainly through trade and money lending. They lived in separately marked areas called Ghettos.

iii) They were often persecuted through periodic organized violence, and expulsion from the land. However, Hitler’s hatred of Jews was based on pseudoscientific theories of race, which held that conversion was no solution to ‘the Jewish problem’. It could be solved only through their total elimination.

 Q19. How was Nazi schooling different from other schools?

ANS: i) All schools were cleansed and purified. This meant that teachers who were Jews or seen as politically unreliable’ were dismissed.

1. ii) Children were first segregated: Germans and Jews could not sit together or play together. Subsequently, ‘undesirable children’ – Jews, the physically handicapped, Gypsies – were thrown out of schools. And finally in the 1940s, they were taken to the gas chambers.

iii) ‘Good German’ children were subjected to a process of Nazi schooling, a prolonged period of ideological training. School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of race; stereotypes about Jews were popularized even through maths classes.

1. iv) Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler. Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among children.
2. v) Hitler believed that boxing could make children iron-hearted, strong and masculine. ) Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth in the ‘the spirit of National Socialism’. Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organization – Hitler Youth – where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those categorized as ‘undesirable’.

 Q20. What were the Nazi ideas of motherhood?

ANS: i) Children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically different from men. The fight for equal rights for men and women that had become part of democratic struggles everywhere was wrong and it would destroy society.

1. ii) While boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel hearted, girls were told that they had to become good mothers and rear pure blooded Aryan children.

iii) Girls had to maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the home, and teach their children Nazi values. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan culture and race.

1. iv) In Nazi Germany all mothers were not treated equally .Women who bore racially undesirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment in hospitals and were also entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway fares.
2. v) To encourage women to produce many children, honour crosses were awarded. A bronze cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight and more.
3. vi) All `Aryan’ women who deviated from the prescribed code of conduct were publicly condemned, and severely punished.

 Q 21 What were the various terms used by the Nazis to kill people?

ANS: i) Nazis never used the words `kill’ or `murder’ in their official communications.

1. ii) Mass killings were special treatment, final solutions for the Jews, euthanasia for the disabled, selections and disinfections.

iii) Gas chambers were labelled `disinfections-areas, and looked liked bathrooms equipped with fake showerheads.

Q22) Explain why Nazi propaganda was effective in creating a hatred for Jews?

ANS: i) Nazi ideas were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters, catchy slogans and leaflets. In posters, groups identify as the `enemies’ of Germans were stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as evil.

1. ii) Socialists and liberals were represented as weak and degenerate. They were attacked as malicious foreign agents.

iii) Propaganda films were made to create hatred for Jews. The most infamous film was The Eternal Jew.

1. iv) Orthodox Jews were stereotyped and marked. They were shown with flowing beards wearing kaftans, whereas in reality it was difficult to distinguish German Jews by their outward appearance. They were referred as vermin, rats and pests. Their movements were compared to those of rodents.
2. v) Nazism worked on the minds of the people, tapped their emotions and turned their hatred and anger at those marked as ‘undesirable’.

 Q23. How did the common people react to Nazism?

ANS: i) Many saw the world through Nazi eyes, and spoke their mind in Nazi language. They felt hatred and anger surge inside them when they saw someone who looked like a Jew. They marked the houses of Jews and reported suspicious neighbours. They genuinely believed Nazism would bring prosperity and improve general well-being.

1. ii) But not every German was a Nazi. Many organized active resistance to Nazism, braving police repression and death. The large majority of Germans, however, were passive onlookers and apathetic witnesses. They were too scared to act, to differ. They preferred to look away.

 Q24. How did we know about the Nazi Cruelties and holocaust?

ANS: i) It was only after the Second World War when Germany was defeated that the world came to realize the horrors of what had happened.

1. ii) The indomitable spirit to bear witness and to preserve the documents can be seen in many ghetto and camp inhabitants who wrote diaries, kept notebooks and created archives.

iii) The memory of the holocaust live on memoirs, fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials and museums in many parts of the word today. These are a tribute to those who resisted it, an embarrassing reminder to those who collaborated and a warning to those who watched in silence.

Q25. In What ways did the Nazi state seek to establish total control over its people?

ANS: i) The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 which was passed immediately after burning of parliament building, indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution.

1. ii) Then he turned on his archenemies, the Communists, most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps. The repression of the Communists was severe. They were about 52 types of victims persecuted by the Nazis across the country.

iii) On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.

1. iv) Special surveillance and security forces were created to control and order society in ways that the Nazis wanted. Apart from the already existing regular police in green uniform and the SA or the Storm Troopers, these included the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS (the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service (SD).
2. v) Good German’ children were subjected to a process of Nazi schooling, a prolonged period of ideological training. School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of race.
3. vi) Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth in the ‘the spirit of National Socialism’. Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organization – Hitler Youth – where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those categorized as ‘undesirable’.

 Q26. Why was the invasion of Soviet Union considered a historic blunder on the part of Germany?

ANS:i) Germany was successful in its conquest till it attacked Soviet Union. Hitler exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing and eastern front to the powerful Soviet army.

1. ii) The Soviet Red Army inflicted a crushing and humiliating defeat on Germany at Stalingrad. After this the Soviet Red Army hounded out the retreating German soldiers until they reached the heart of Berlin, establishing Soviet hegemony over the entire Eastern Europe for half a century thereafter.

 Q27. What was Herbert Spenser’s idea of ‘survival of the fittest’?

ANS: According to this idea, only those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions. We should bear in mind that Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of selection. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered peoples.

 Q28. What is meant by ‘Lebensraum’?

ANS: Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum means living space. He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement. This would enhance the area of the mother country, while enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin. It would also enhance the material resources and power of the German nation.

Q29. What was the Euthanasia Programme of Hitler?

ANS: Nazi officials had condemned to death many Germans who were considered mentally or physically unfit. They were categorized as undesirables and killed brutally calling it mercy killing.