A. Plan of Investigation
Subject of the Investigation:
Did Hitler truly believe what he preached about antisemitism or did he express these views in order to inspire and gain support from the masses? It has long been recognized
Methods:
Will examine primary evidence, including personal writing and speeches of Hitler, and secondary evidence composed of various books written by different historians. Summary section will be an annotated bibliography with sections on:
Childhood and background of Hitler
Views expressed by Hitler on antisemitism in Mein Kampf and other works and speeches
Policies undertaken by Germany under Hitler regarding antisemitism pre-war
Antisemitic policies during the war
The two books written by Lord Bullock on Hitler, Hitler and Stalin Parallel Lives an A History of Tyranny will be evaluated in section C with emphasis on origin, purpose, value and limitation, the position expressed by Historians and evidence from primary sources will then be examined, compared, and analyzed in section D, and a conclusion reached with justification in section E.
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B. Summary of Evidence:
Hitler was born in the town Branau in Austria on April 20, 1889. He was the fourth child of Alois Hitler and Clara Pölzl. Hitler's farther was a fairly well off customs and Hitler had the opportunity to go to the Linz Realschule a good secondary school, but following his father's death in 1903 he moved to another school in Steyr. Hitler's results seem to indicate an indifference to his education and in 1905 at the age of 16 he dropped out of school altogether. He first visited Vienna in 1906 and later moved their in 1907 in pursuing his dream to enter the Academy of Fine Arts there. He was however, rejected twice the school claiming he was unfit to be a painter. Following his second rejection from the school and the death of his mother in 1907 Hitler, lived a life of relative obscurity for a number of years. In 1913 he moved to Munich and when Germany entered the Great War in 1914 he petitioned to serve in the German army, a request that was granted. Hitler served admirably in the army receiving a number of awards and honors including the Iron Cross, First Class in 1918. Upon Germany's defeat in the Great War Hitler returned to Munich where he joined, what would later become known as the Nazi party, the German Worker's Party. He quickly became a member of the parties executive committee and he soon turned full time to politics.
Hitler's best known work is probably Mein Kampf written while in jail 1924 was originally written in to volumes released respectively in 1925 and 1926.
The first well known and documented pre-war antisemitic policies was “Law for the Restoration of the Public Civil Service”, which hindered Jews ability to hold various positions, join different organizations and curtailed other parts of daily life, created in 1933. This law was later followed by the Nuremberg Laws. The Nuremberg Laws are the two measures announced in Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg on September 15th. The two laws were “The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and “The Reich Citizenship Law”. The first one dealt primarily with the forbidding of sexual interaction between Jews and non-Jews, and the second stripped all “non-Germans” of their citizenship. Possibly the most important of the laws passed before 1939 was the one defining who was a Jew as this outlined who was to be persecuted. Some comparisons can be drawn between the collective antisemitic legislation passed by the Nazi's, especially “The Law of the Protection of German Blood and German Honor”, and the racial discrimination laws seen in some US states a fact Hitler freely acknowledged. Numerous pogroms and boycotts also occurred pre-war including the largest, Kristallnacht, on November 9-10, 1938, during which an estimated 7,500 Jewish stores and businesses were broken into, about 100 Jews were killed and about 30,000 more taken to concentration camps, what Daniel Holdhagen referred to as the “crowning moment in the wild domestic terror Germans perpetrated on Jews” (99).
During the WWII what some now refer to as the Nazi's “final solution” was implemented by Hitler's regime. The death camps Treblinka, Sobibór, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwitz, all built between 1940 and 1942, were running at full capacity. About 3 million are thought to have been killed at these extermination camps alone. Many Jews also died in ghettos and work camps due to malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions. Execution carried out by police squads and other German sponsored groups were very common happening throughout the war. Death marches where Jews were forced to literally walk mile upon mile until they were dead also occurred numerous times. Collectively these measures are thought to have killed 6 million Jews.
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