Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

User:JohnJustice

2020-07-13T01:39:14Z

JohnJustice: sold

I believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of the Founding Fathers of 1776. I am a history buff and have written an article (and edited) on uboat.net; and also written articles and edited on other sites, over time. American history and World War II history are my forte.

==Some suggested reading==
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'', (1994).
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945'', (1997).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943'', (1998).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'', (2002).
* Beevor, Anthony. ''D-Day, The Battle for Normandy'', (2009).
* Browder, George C. ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State – The Formation of SiPo and SD'', (1990).
* Chamberlain, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two'', (1999).
* Childers, Thomas. ''The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'', (2017).
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'', (1994).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945'', (1995).
* Dollinger, Hans. ''The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan'', (1995) [1965].
* Donovan, Robert J. ''[[PT-109]]: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', (2001) [1961].
* Doyle, William. ''PT 109'', (2015).
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich at War'', (2009) [2008].
* Felton, Mark. ''Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer'', (2014).
* Fleischer, Wolfgang. ''Russian Tanks and Armored Vehicles: 1917-1945'', (1999).
* Forty, George. ''US Army Handbook 1939-1945'', (1995).
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'', (2011).
* Glantz, David M. ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', (2015) [1995].
* Hamilton, A. Stephan. ''Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945'', (2020) [2008].
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1'', (1984).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2'', (1996).
* Healy, Mark. ''Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4-17 July 1943'', (2008).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921-1945'', (2000) [1979].
* Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth'', (1999) [1995].
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'', (1991).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris'', (1999).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis'', (2000).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'', (2008).
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45'', (2013).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939-45'', (2014).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'', (2006).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. II'', (2015).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'', (1990).
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Dec. 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor'', (1991) [1988].
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Miracle at Midway'', (2008) [1982].
* Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', (1994) [1976].
* Spector, Ronald. ''Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan'', (1985).
* Stein, George. ''The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945'', (1984) [1966].
* Stille, Mark. ''The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War'', (2014).
* Tomczyk, Andrzej. ''Japanese Armor Volumes 1 - 5'', (2002 - 2007).
* Weale, Adrian. ''Army of Evil: A History of the SS'', (2012).
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'', (1990).
* Wheeler, Keith. ''The Fall of Japan'', (1983).
* Zaloga, Steve J. ''Japanese Tanks 1939–45'', (2007).
* Zaloga, Steven J. ''Downfall 1945: The Fall of Hitler's Third Reich (Campaign)'', (2016).

==Articles created==
*[[Jagdtiger]]
*[[Jagdpanther]]
*[[Tiger I tank]]
*[[Martin Bormann]]
*[[B-24 Liberator]] heavy bomber

User:JohnJustice

2020-07-13T01:34:15Z

JohnJustice: add

I believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of the Founding Fathers of 1776. I am a history buff and have written an article (and edited) on uboat.net; and also written articles and edited on other sites, over time. American history and World War II history are my forte.

==Some suggested reading==
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'', (1994).
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945'', (1997).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943'', (1998).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'', (2002).
* Beevor, Anthony. ''D-Day, The Battle for Normandy'', (2009).
* Browder, George C. ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State – The Formation of SiPo and SD'', (1990).
* Chamberlain, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two'', (1999).
* Childers, Thomas. ''The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'', (2017).
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'', (1994).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945'', (1995).
* Dollinger, Hans. ''The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan'', (1995) [1965].
* Donovan, Robert J. ''[[PT-109]]: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', (2001) [1961].
* Doyle, William. ''PT 109'', (2015).
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich at War'', (2009) [2008].
* Felton, Mark. ''Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer'', (2014).
* Fleischer, Wolfgang. ''Russian Tanks and Armored Vehicles: 1917-1945'', (1999).
* Forty, George. ''US Army Handbook 1939-1945'', (1995).
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'', (2011).
* Glantz, David M. ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', (2015) [1995].
* Glantz, David M., et al. ''Slaughterhouse: The Encyclopedia of the Eastern Front'', (2004) [2002].
* Hamilton, A. Stephan. ''Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945'', (2020) [2008].
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1'', (1984).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2'', (1996).
* Healy, Mark. ''Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4-17 July 1943'', (2008).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921-1945'', (2000) [1979].
* Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth'', (1999) [1995].
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'', (1991).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris'', (1999).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis'', (2000).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'', (2008).
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45'', (2013).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939-45'', (2014).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'', (2006).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. II'', (2015).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'', (1990).
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Dec. 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor'', (1991) [1988].
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Miracle at Midway'', (2008) [1982].
* Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', (1994) [1976].
* Spector, Ronald. ''Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan'', (1985).
* Stein, George. ''The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945'', (1984) [1966].
* Stille, Mark. ''The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War'', (2014).
* Tomczyk, Andrzej. ''Japanese Armor Volumes 1 - 5'', (2002 - 2007).
* Weale, Adrian. ''Army of Evil: A History of the SS'', (2012).
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'', (1990).
* Wheeler, Keith. ''The Fall of Japan'', (1983).
* Zaloga, Steve J. ''Japanese Tanks 1939–45'', (2007).
* Zaloga, Steven J. ''Downfall 1945: The Fall of Hitler's Third Reich (Campaign)'', (2016).

==Articles created==
*[[Jagdtiger]]
*[[Jagdpanther]]
*[[Tiger I tank]]
*[[Martin Bormann]]
*[[B-24 Liberator]] heavy bomber

Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.

2020-07-13T01:28:32Z

JohnJustice:

{{Officeholder
|name=Robert F. Kennedy
|image=RFK 2.jpg
|party=[[Democrat]]
|spouse=[[Ethel Skakel]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=New York
|terms=January 3, 1965 – June 6, 1968
|preceded=Kenneth Keating
|status=f
|succeeded=Charles Goodell
}}
{{Officeholder/attorneygeneral
|jurisdiction=the United States
|number=64th
|president=[[John F. Kennedy]]
|terms=January 21, 1961 – September 3, 1964
|preceded=[[William P. Rogers]]
|succeeded=Nicholas Katzenbach
}}
|military=y
|allegiance=[[United States]]
|rank=Seaman Apprentice
|branch=United States Naval Reserve
|unit=USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
|serviceyears=1944 – 1946
|battles=[[World War II]]
}}

'''Robert Francis Kennedy''' (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968) was a younger brother of President [[John F. Kennedy]]. Robert, also known as "Bobby" Kennedy or RFK, served as [[Attorney General]] during his brother's presidency. Robert was considered one of John's closest advisers. He was a strong supporter of [[Civil Rights]] issues and was primarily known for his fighting of [[Organized crime]].

Robert Kennedy started his legal career in the Criminal Division of the [[Department of Justice]] in 1951. In 1953, he served with Roy Cohn as counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on Government Operations and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He became nationally known for his anti-Mob activities while working as chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, a post which he left in 1960 to work on his brother's presidential campaign. After the election, John Kennedy appointed him to be Attorney General. At 36, he was the youngest man to serve in this position.

==FBI wiretapping of Martin Luther King==
As Attorney General, Kennedy was alarmed by Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that two of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s closest advisers, [[Stanley Levison]] and [[Hunter Pitts O'Dell|Hunter Pitts "Jack" O'Dell]], were secret operatives of the Communist Party's underground "apparatus."

On June 16, 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy raised “the possibility of effecting technical coverage on ... Martin Luther King,” according to a memo by FBI Assistant Director Courtney Evans, in charge of the Special Investigative Division:
{{cquote|I told the AG that ... in so far as Dr. King was concerned, it was obvious from the reports that he was in a travel status practically all the time, and it was, therefore, doubtful that a technical surveillance on his office or home would be very productive. I also raised the question as to the repercussions if it should ever become known that such a surveillance had been put on Dr. King.
The AG said this did not concern him at all, that in view of the possible Communist influence in the racial situation, he thought it advisable to have as complete coverage as possible. I told him, under the circumstances, that we would check into the matter to see if coverage was feasible, and, if so, would submit an appropriate recommendation to him.<ref>United States Senate, [https://ia600408.us.archive.org/17/items/finalreportofsel03unit/finalreportofsel03unit_bw.pdf Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III]. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. (United States Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 101</ref>}}

On October 10, 1963, the Attorney General authorized the FBI to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King still had associates who were Communists.<ref>David J. Garrow, "[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/07/the-fbi-and-martin-luther-king/302537/ The FBI and Martin Luther King]," ''The Atlantic'', July/August 2002</ref> RFK later privately acknowledged to journalist Anthony Lewis:
{{cquote|I asked the FBI to make an intensive investigation of Martin Luther King ... to see who his companions were and, also, to see what other activities he was involved in. This is also the reason that President Kennedy and I and the Department of Justice were so reserved about him, which I'm sure he felt. We never wanted to get close to him just because of these contacts and connections that he had, which we felt were damaging to the civil rights movement and because we were so intimately involved in the struggle for civil rights, it also damaged us. It damaged what we were trying to do.<ref>John Meroney, "[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/what-really-happened-between-j-edgar-hoover-and-mlk-jr/248319/ What Really Happened Between J. Edgar Hoover and MLK Jr.]," ''The Atlantic'', November 11, 2011</ref>}}

This surveillance was later continued and expanded during [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s presidency.<ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

==Senate==
Robert stayed on after his brother's assassination, resigning in September 1964. He then ran a successful campaign for [[United States Senate|Senate]], and took office as Senator from [[New York]] in early 1965. Kennedy ran for [[President of the United States]] as a [[Democrat]] in the 1968 election, but was assassinated just months before.

==Assassination==
Robert Kennedy was assassinated by [[Sirhan Sirhan]] on June 6, 1968 while running for the [[Democratic Party]] nomination for [[President of the United States]] against his principal opponent, Senator [[Eugene McCarthy]] of [[Minnesota]]. It is believed that Sirhan Sirhan carried out the assassination because of Kennedy's strong support for [[Israel]]. Neither Kennedy nor McCarthy won the party nomination; instead the party choice fell on Vice President [[Hubert Humphrey]], also of Minnesota, who prevailed among delegates without entering a single primary contest following the withdrawal on March 31, 1968, of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Humphrey went on to be defeated for the presidency by Republican [[Richard M. Nixon]] in 1968.

==See also==
*[[Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
*[https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=573 Robert Francis Kennedy at FindAGrave]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, Robert F.}}
[[Category:Kennedy Family]]
[[Category:Massachusetts]]
[[Category:New York]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
[[Category:Democratic Party]]
[[Category:Former United States Senators]]
[[Category:United States Attorneys General]]
[[Category:Liberals]]

Gestapo

2020-07-13T01:26:23Z

JohnJustice:

The '''Gestapo''' was the secret police force of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]]. The word "Gestapo" is short for the German words ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' (Secret State Police).<ref>Miller (2006) p. 502</ref> It was formed by then Interior Minister of Prussia, [[Hermann Göring]] in April 1933 by removing the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police and putting the unit under his command. By the following year, ''Reichsführer-SS'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] had assumed control of all the German state political police departments except for Prussia. Thereafter in April 1934, Göring turned over control of the Gestapo to Himmler and his right-hand man, [[SS]] general [[Reinhard Heydrich]] for use in the purge of the [[SA]], in what became known as the "Night of the Long Knives".<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 149–151, 156, 160</ref>

They molded the force into a national agency to fight "enemies of the state". In 1936, the Gestapo became a sub-branch office of the ''Sicherheitspolizei'' (Security Police; SiPo) along with the ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Criminal Police; Kripo), under Heydrich's overall command. Later on September 27, 1939, the Gestapo and Kripo became departments of the ''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' (RSHA) (Reich Security Main Office) under Heydrich. At that time, Heinrich Müller was made chief of the Gestapo (known as "Amt IV" or Department IV of the RSHA).<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 152, 156–157</ref>

The Nazis used this police/security force to quiet all opposition from 1933 to 1945.<ref>Hoffman (1977) pp. 28–32</ref><ref>McNab (2009) pp. 160, 161</ref> Pursuant to German law passed in 1936, the Gestapo was given the power to arrest, interrogate and imprison people without any judicial review by the courts. German people were terrified of the Gestapo, as they were brutal, often arresting people in the middle of the night, and condemning them without giving them a chance to speak in their own defense. Further, the Gestapo relied on informants and people willing to denounce one another to their agents. The Nazis placed Gestapo agents around Europe in countries occupied by Germany to spread Nazi control and search out opponents.<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 160-163</ref> Gestapo agents were also used to spy on people, including government officials, and military officers. The Gestapo collected histories of people, so when the Nazis invaded that country they would know who would oppose them.

==See also==
*[[SS]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References==
* Browder, George C. ''Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=52769823 online edition]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich'' (2000).
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005).
* Gellately, Robert. ''The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945'' (1990).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945'' (1977).
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'' (2006).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990).

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:World War II]]

Gestapo

2020-07-13T01:25:54Z

JohnJustice:

The '''Gestapo''' was the secret police force of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]]. The word "Gestapo" is short for the German words ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' (Secret State Police).<ref>Miller (2006) p. 502</ref> It was formed by then Interior Minister of Prussia, [[Hermann Göring]] in April 1933 by removing the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police and putting the unit under his command. By the following year, ''Reichsführer-SS'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] had assumed control of all the German state political police departments except for Prussia. Thereafter in April 1934, Göring turned over control of the Gestapo to Himmler and his right-hand man, [[SS]] general [[Reinhard Heydrich]] for use in the purge of the [[SA]], in what became known as the "Night of the Long Knives".<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 149–151, 156, 160</ref>

They molded the force into a national agency to fight "enemies of the state". In 1936, the Gestapo became a sub-branch office of the ''Sicherheitspolizei'' (Security Police; SiPo) along with the ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Criminal Police; Kripo), under Heydrich's overall command. Later on September 27, 1939, the Gestapo and Kripo became departments of the ''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' (RSHA) (Reich Security Main Office) under Heydrich. At that time, Heinrich Müller was made chief of the Gestapo (known as "Amt IV" or Department IV of the RSHA).<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 152, 156–157</ref>

The Nazis used this police/security force to quiet all opposition from 1933 to 1945.<ref>Hoffman (1977) pp. 28–32</ref><ref>McNab (2009) pp. 160, 161</ref> Pursuant to German law passed in 1936, the Gestapo was given the power to arrest, interrogate and imprison people without any judicial review by the courts. German people were terrified of the Gestapo, as they were brutal, often arresting people in the middle of the night, and condemning them without giving them a chance to speak in their own defense. Further, the Gestapo relied on informants and people willing to denounce one another to their agents. The Nazis placed Gestapo agents around Europe in countries occupied by Germany to spread Nazi control and search out opponents.<ref>McNab (2009) pp. 160-163</ref> Gestapo agents were used to spy on people, including government officials, and military officers. The Gestapo collected histories of people, so when the Nazis invaded that country they would know who would oppose them.

==See also==
*[[SS]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References==
* Browder, George C. ''Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=52769823 online edition]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich'' (2000).
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005).
* Gellately, Robert. ''The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945'' (1990).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945'' (1977).
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'' (2006).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990).

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:World War II]]

User:JohnJustice

2020-05-29T23:36:55Z

JohnJustice: /* Some suggested reading */

I believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of the Founding Fathers of 1776. I am a history buff and have written an article (and edited) on uboat.net; and also written articles and edited on other sites, over time. American history and World War II history are my forte.

==Some suggested reading==
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'', (1994).
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945'', (1997).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943'', (1998).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'', (2002).
* Beevor, Anthony. ''D-Day, The Battle for Normandy'', (2009).
* Browder, George C. ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State – The Formation of SiPo and SD'', (1990).
* Chamberlain, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two'', (1999).
* Childers, Thomas. ''The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'', (2017).
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'', (1994).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945'', (1995).
* Dollinger, Hans. ''The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan'', (1995) [1965].
* Donovan, Robert J. ''[[PT-109]]: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', (2001) [1961].
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich at War'', (2009) [2008].
* Felton, Mark. ''Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer'', (2014).
* Fleischer, Wolfgang. ''Russian Tanks and Armored Vehicles: 1917-1945'', (1999).
* Forty, George. ''US Army Handbook 1939-1945'', (1995).
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'', (2011).
* Glantz, David M. ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', (2015) [1995].
* Glantz, David M., et al. ''Slaughterhouse: The Encyclopedia of the Eastern Front'', (2004) [2002].
* Hamilton, A. Stephan. ''Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945'', (2020) [2008].
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1'', (1984).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2'', (1996).
* Healy, Mark. ''Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4-17 July 1943'', (2008).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921-1945'', (2000) [1979].
* Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth'', (1999) [1995].
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'', (1991).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris'', (1999).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis'', (2000).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'', (2008).
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45'', (2013).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939-45'', (2014).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'', (2006).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. II'', (2015).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'', (1990).
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Dec. 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor'', (1991) [1988].
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Miracle at Midway'', (2008) [1982].
* Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', (1994) [1976].
* Spector, Ronald. ''Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan'', (1985).
* Stein, George. ''The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945'', (1984) [1966].
* Stille, Mark. ''The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War'', (2014).
* Tomczyk, Andrzej. ''Japanese Armor Volumes 1 - 5'', (2002 - 2007).
* Weale, Adrian. ''Army of Evil: A History of the SS'', (2012).
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'', (1990).
* Wheeler, Keith. ''The Fall of Japan'', (1983).
* Zaloga, Steve J. ''Japanese Tanks 1939–45'', (2007).
* Zaloga, Steven J. ''Downfall 1945: The Fall of Hitler's Third Reich (Campaign)'', (2016).

==Articles created==
*[[Jagdtiger]]
*[[Jagdpanther]]
*[[Tiger I tank]]
*[[Martin Bormann]]
*[[B-24 Liberator]] heavy bomber

Heinrich Himmler

2020-05-29T23:30:53Z

JohnJustice: /* Finale */

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in April 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933–34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941–42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. On April 21, 1945, he met with Folke Bernadotte at the Swedish consulate and offered to surrender Germany to the Western Allies. After this move was rejected, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions. He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
*[[Kathryn Ruemmler]]
*[[James Comey]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [https://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612–641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206–224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Adolf Hitler

2020-05-29T23:28:01Z

JohnJustice: /* Assassination attempt */

{{Dictator bio
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]
| name =Adolf Hitler
| birth =April 20, 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) Klara Pölzl
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected), [[Pantheism]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=lxphjwEACAAJ&dq=hitler%27s+religion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6kcCK0M7QAhVMJiYKHa5EDWQQ6AEIJDAA Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs That Drove the Third Reich]</ref> [[Atheism]],<ref name="Today's atheists">[https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/03/20/todays-atheists-are-bullies-and-are-doing-their-best-to-intimidate-rest-us-into-silence.html Today's atheists are bullies -- and they are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence] at Fox News</ref> [[Evolutionism]]
| spouse =Eva Braun
| children =none
| death =April 30, 1945 Berlin, Germany
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot
| education =Realschule Linz, Austria
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment Imperial German Army (1914-1918)
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)
|burial = none, burned.
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]] [[National Socialism]] (Nazism)
| party =German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920) [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933
| war =[[World War II]] in Europe
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether

Rummel: 21,000,000
}}

'''Adolf Hitler''' (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and the ''[[Der Fuhrer|Führer]]'' of Germany from August 2, 1934 until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; NSDAP or Nazi Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born and baptized as a Roman Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in his book, ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters and voting blocs. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt in 1944, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries.

Hitler in his youth was a financially-irresponsible [[Bohemia]]n (a German word of the time roughly the same as the English term "[[Hippy]]") who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. Hitler used the teachings of [[Martin Luther]] to promote his anti-Semitic views, similar to the other ways used by the Nazi Party in their effort to reshape and present to the public a much modified version of [[Christianity]]. One which promoted racial purity and Nazi ideology under the false banner known as "positive Christianity." The anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther, prior to his seeing the Jew's refusal of his outreach to accept the Gospel, was highly sympathetic towards the Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided Protestants and others who accepted the culture when it did not conform to biblical teachings.

Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.

After World War I, Hitler acted as an army political agent to investigate a small pan-German nationalist party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party. In February 1920 the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or Nazi Party). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with the belief that weak civilian leaders and Jews were responsible for Germany's loss in the First World War, and his psychotic, megalomaniac view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Führer'') of Germany. Many leaders of the Nazi Party were mentally-unbalanced people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.

Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right." They completely ignore and deny the [[far left]] socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.

Adolf Hitler was an [[evolution]]ary [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref name="icr.org">https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref name="hourofthetime.com">http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler's policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker.

==Early life==
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. Evidence uncovered by Hans Frank, Hitler's lawyer, indicates that Alois's father, and by extension, Adolf's grandfather from this affair was a Jewish man named Frankenberger.<ref>https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Study-suggests-Adolf-Hitler-was-a-quarter-Jewish-597966</ref> By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.

When his father retired, the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain]]. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings.''<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20111015014300/http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.]</ref>

==Who and what he was==
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant [[class warfare|disdain for social and military aristocracies]]; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote>

{{Clear}}

== Beliefs ==
{{See also|Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism}}
According to [[Albert Speer]], Hitler never left the Catholic Church, but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. He and Nazi Party also presented to the public what was known as "positive Christianity," which in reality was only an attempt to mold Christian theology to match Hitler's world view. The "Protestant Reich Church" promoted racial purity, excluded many parts of the Bible, stated that Jesus was not Jewish but Nordic, while proclaiming Hitler as the "new messiah." In the end, any voiced tolerance of true Christianity during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref>

Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm (backup link [https://web.archive.org/web/20071109101106/https://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm here])</ref>

In Hitler's ''Table Talk'', which were published in 1953, it was revealed that Hitler, at some point, embraced [[atheism]] while rejecting Christianity as an invention of Judaism, which he held similar animosity toward:

{{cquote|And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Führer was a rabid atheist: "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity," Hitler stated, "was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew… Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."<ref name="Today's atheists"/>}}

{{See also|Atheists, Adolf Hitler and the no true Scottsman fallacy}}

=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:
[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (Nazi Party) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref name="hourofthetime.com"/><ref>https://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref> ]]
{{cquote|The identification of [[Third Reich|Nazi Germany]] as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}

=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]
The staunch [[evolution]]ist Stephen Gould admitted the following: [[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78.<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}

Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf'').<ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}

Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref name="icr.org">https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in ''Mein Kampf'' — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref>

Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following: [[File:Richard Dawkins in Australia.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|The [[New Atheism|new atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[evolution]]ist. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref name="byfaithonline.com">http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, ''Mein Kampf'' clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society.<ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}

Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" />

[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.

There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}

Evolutionist and [[New Atheism|new atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref name="byfaithonline.com"/> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref name="byfaithonline.com"/>

=== Hitler may have been an atheist ===

Adolf Hitler is theorized to be an [[atheism|atheist]].<ref>https://creation.com/review-hitlers-religion-weikart</ref><ref name="Thomism">http://www.thomism.org/atheism/atheist_murderers.html</ref><ref>https://www.trueorigin.org/hitler01.php</ref> He reportedly loathed Christianity, and his father considered having faith a "scam".<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/04/20/hitler-hated-judaism-he-loathed-christianity-too/</ref>

Richard Weikart, Professor of Modern European History, California State University Stanislaus, theorizes that Hitler was a [[pantheism|pantheist]] (which is a type of atheism).<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy05t0taBkE What were Hitler’s religious beliefs?] by Richard Weikart</ref> See the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy05t0taBkE What were Hitler’s religious beliefs?] by Richard Weikart

=== Adolf Hitler and abortion ===
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]

In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.<ref>https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}

(The [[atheism|atheist]] [[Marquis de Sade]] is credited with providing the first notable impetus to introduce abortion into western society. See: [[Abortion and atheism]])

===Other beliefs===
Hitler supported [[Animal rights|animal "rights"]]<ref>[ https://books.google.com/books?id=e7FME0btkH0C&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=hitler+animal+rights&source=bl&ots=PIxjDRDBj1&sig=tbJisPm39hMcxj1g6xL0Kh0sn7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3qZP7xOPTAhVr4oMKHeTMA_c4FBDoAQhKMAc#v=onepage&q=hitler%20animal%20rights&f=false Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions], pg. 62.</ref><ref>Harrison, David; Paterson, Tony (September 22, 2002). [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1407954/Thanks-to-Hitler-hunting-with-hounds-is-still-verboten.html Thanks to Hitler, hunting with hounds is still verboten]. ''The Telegraph''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref name="EllisWash."/> and [[environmentalism]],<ref name="EllisWash.">Washington, Ellis (March 26, 2011). [https://www.wnd.com/2011/03/279449/ The Nazi Cult of the Organic']. ''WND''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>[http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/nazi_ecology.htm Nazi "Ecology"], Frank Furedi, ''columbia.edu''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>Musser, Mark (February 6, 2016). [https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/yale_professor_on_nazi_environmentalism_so_close_yet_so_far.html Yale Professor on Nazi Environmentalism: So Close, yet So Far]. ''American Thinker''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref> and that support was reflected in the laws created during the Third Reich. Hitler also enacted [[gun control]] laws.<ref>Wolverton, II, J.D., Joe (January 30, 2017). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/14367-nazi-gun-control-laws-a-familiar-road-to-citizen-disarmament Nazi Gun Control Laws: a Familiar Road to Citizen Disarmament?] ''The New American''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>Stupp, Herbert W. (July 13, 2015). [https://spectator.org/63424_hitler-and-gun-control/ Hitler and Gun Control]. ''The American Spectator''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref>

== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto
![[Nazi Party]] Platform
!Analysis
|-
|1
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.
|-
|2
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."
|The points raised in the Nazi platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.
|-
|3
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished."
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.
|-
|4
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."
|The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.
|-
|5
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."
|Central control of the financial system.
|-
|6
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.
|-
|7
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.
|-
|}

==War==
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German Army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany's defeat the following November.

==Path to power==
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.

After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany's defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; DAP); intrigued by the party's apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, the party had changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; NSDAP) or Nazi Party. Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party's propaganda, as well as his own position within.

Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria's traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' ("Popular Observer"), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers' Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler's rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the "Brown Shirts," the violent squads used by the Nazis to attack rival socialists, battle Communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.

==The Beer Hall Putsch==
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'état (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail.

The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would serve eight months).<ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives."

===''Mein Kampf''===
{{main|Mein Kampf}}
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.

Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the ''Führer''), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In ''Mein Kampf'', he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”

From ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref>[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}

{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref>[http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 ''Mein Kampf'' – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read.</ref>
}}

===''Zweites Buch''===
{{main|Zweites Buch}}
Hitler's second book, completed in 1928 but not published until 1961, expands on Hitler's Darwinian views and also puts on display overtones of [[Malthusianism]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=I0TDSnJFGGoC&pg=PA152 The Rise of the Nazis: Second Edition]</ref> In ''Zweites Buch'', particularly chapter 1, he writes about issues in "living space," the "struggle for life," issues in food supply, and other common topics in overpopulation commentary.

==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg‎|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When released in December 1924, he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser's opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.

A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany's leading nationalists, [[Alfred Hugenberg]], whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.

The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.

==In power==
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.

===Night of the Long Knives===
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|200px|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army's side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm's support by persuasion, but Hitler's inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.

On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''

Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler's actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler's rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondi.]]

===Beginnings of expansion===
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany's enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.

Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany's limited ambitious nature.
[[Image:Mufti And Hitler.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Adolf Hitler talking with Grand Mufti [[Mohammed Amin Al-Husseini|Haj Amin al-Husseini]]]]
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.
[[File:Hitler and Mussolini.jpg|thumb|200px|Hitler and [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1936]]
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebiscite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.

==Anschluss and the Munich Agreement==
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.

While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waiving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia.

==Poland==
Poland's turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien's plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium's Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France's Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.

On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.

Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.

Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.

==Barbarossa==
[[File:Nazi diversity.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Nazi [[diversity]]. [[Muslim]] members of the Waffen SS 13th division at prayer during their training at Neuhammer, Germany, in November 1943.]]
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micromanaging military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.

In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler's new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref>

==Beginning of the end==
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg‎|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.

But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler's relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.

===Assassination attempt===
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]
Seeing Germany's chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943–44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel [[Claus von Stauffenberg]] went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army's independence.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by then grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life's work.

On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.

[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler:
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Führer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the [[modernist]] notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of [[social class]] and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his [[psychoanalysis|childhood and self-esteem issues]], for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}

All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.

==Death==
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-182</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref name="Joachimsthaler. 1999 pp. 160-182, 240-260">Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-182, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report a number of alleged sightings of Hitler along with theories that he and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler."<ref>https://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref>

More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researchers.<ref>https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most all historians are very skeptical and dismiss these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref name="Joachimsthaler. 1999 pp. 160-182, 240-260"/><ref>https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler 1936-1945 - Nemesis''. (2000) p. 1038</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Disturbed character]]
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
* [[Police state]]

== External links ==
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From ''Mein Kampf'' by Hitler]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ ''Mein Kampf'' by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]

==Further reading==
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953. Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hitler, Adolf}}

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Heinrich Himmler

2020-05-29T23:19:51Z

JohnJustice: /* Finale */ add detail

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in April 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933–34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941–42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. On April 21, 1945, he met with Folke Bernadotte at the Swedish consulate and offered to surrender Germany to the Western Allies. After this move failed, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions. He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
*[[Kathryn Ruemmler]]
*[[James Comey]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [https://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612–641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206–224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Heinrich Himmler

2020-05-29T23:12:59Z

JohnJustice: minor ce

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in April 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933–34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941–42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. After this move failed, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions.

He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
*[[Kathryn Ruemmler]]
*[[James Comey]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [https://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612–641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206–224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

User:JohnJustice

2019-07-30T18:15:02Z

JohnJustice: /* Some suggested reading */ tweak

I believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of the Founding Fathers of 1776. I am a history buff and have written an article (and edited) on uboat.net; and also written articles and edited on other sites, over time. American history and World War II history are my forte.

==Some suggested reading==
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'', (1994).
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945'', (1997).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943'', (1998).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'', (2002).
* Beevor, Anthony. ''D-Day, The Battle for Normandy'', (2009).
* Browder, George C. ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State – The Formation of SiPo and SD'', (1990).
* Chamberlain, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two'', (1999).
* Childers, Thomas. ''The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'', (2017).
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'', (1994).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945'', (1995).
* Dollinger, Hans. ''The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan'', (1995) [1965].
* Donovan, Robert J. ''[[PT-109]]: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', (2001) [1961].
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich at War'', (2009) [2008].
* Felton, Mark. ''Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer'', (2014).
* Fleischer, Wolfgang. ''Russian Tanks and Armored Vehicles: 1917-1945'', (1999).
* Forty, George. ''US Army Handbook 1939-1945'', (1995).
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'', (2011).
* Glantz, David M. ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', (2015) [1995].
* Glantz, David M., et al. ''Slaughterhouse: The Encyclopedia of the Eastern Front'', (2004) [2002].
* Hamilton, A. Stephan. ''Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945'', (2008).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1'', (1984).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2'', (1996).
* Healy, Mark. ''Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4-17 July 1943'', (2008).
* Hoffmann, Peter. ''Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921-1945'', (2000) [1979].
* Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth'', (1999) [1995].
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'', (1991).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris'', (1999).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis'', (2000).
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'', (2008).
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012).
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich'', (2009).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Elite: The SS 1939-45'', (2013).
* McNab, Chris. ''Hitler's Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939-45'', (2014).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1'', (2006).
* Miller, Michael. ''Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. II'', (2015).
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'', (1990).
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Dec. 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor'', (1991) [1988].
* Prange, Gordon W. ''Miracle at Midway'', (2008) [1982].
* Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', (1994) [1976].
* Spector, Ronald. ''Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan'', (1985).
* Stein, George. ''The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945'', (1984) [1966].
* Stille, Mark. ''The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War'', (2014).
* Tomczyk, Andrzej. ''Japanese Armor Volumes 1 - 5'', (2002 - 2007).
* Weale, Adrian. ''Army of Evil: A History of the SS'', (2012).
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'', (1990).
* Wheeler, Keith. ''The Fall of Japan'', (1983).
* Zaloga, Steve J. ''Japanese Tanks 1939–45'', (2007).
* Zaloga, Steven J. ''Downfall 1945: The Fall of Hitler's Third Reich (Campaign)'', (2016).

==Articles created==
*[[Jagdtiger]]
*[[Jagdpanther]]
*[[Tiger I tank]]
*[[Martin Bormann]]
*[[B-24 Liberator]] heavy bomber

John F. Kennedy

2019-07-30T17:42:28Z

JohnJustice: /* Civil rights */ from cited source

{{Officeholder
|name=John F. Kennedy
|image=John Kennedy by Draper.jpg
|party=[[Democratic]]
|spouse=[[Jacqueline Kennedy|Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=35th
|terms=January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
|vp=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
|preceded=[[Dwight Eisenhower]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Massachusetts
|terms=January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
|preceded=Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
|former=y
|succeeded=Benjamin A. Smith
}}
{{Officeholder/representative
|state=Massachusetts
|district=11th
|terms=January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953
|preceded=James Michael Curley
|former=y
|succeeded=Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.
}}
}}
'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''', often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) was the 35th [[President of the United States of America]], serving for 1036 days in 1961-63. He was the youngest person elected president ([[Theodore Roosevelt]] being the youngest to assume the office) and one of the most glamorous and popular. His record of presidential accomplishments remains a subject of debate among historians and the public, but after his assassination he became a legendary figure in whom admirers saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.

The [[Kennedy Family]] had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]]; Kennedy was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. In Congress the [[Conservative Coalition]] blocked nearly all of his domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained strength.

The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced, Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. This inexperience caused a national humiliation in 1961 as he sent CIA-trained Cuban exiles into an ill-prepared attack on Castro's Cuba. At the [[Bay of Pigs]], all the invaders were killed or captured, and he was forced to negotiate for the survivors release giving Cuba medical and food. Kennedy's supporters blamed the fiasco on Eisenhower and the CIA, for JFK inherited the plan; but Kennedy took the blame himself. Russian leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], seeing for himself Kennedy's inexperience at a summit conference, had built the [[Berlin Wall]] as the Soviets escalated the [[Cold War]] regarding the status of Berlin, predicting that Kennedy's response would be weak. Khrushchev went too far in 1962 when he sent nuclear missiles into Cuba aimed at the U.S. mainland. For the first time since [[Pearl Harbor]]—or indeed since Washington and New Orleans were attacked in the [[War of 1812]]—the U.S. was vulnerable to a major attack by an enemy power. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a compromise whereby the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba publicly, while Kennedy secretly removed obsolete American missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviets, and also promised that America would never invade Cuba. In Vietnam, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000 to prop up the ineffective, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. Historians are uncertain whether Kennedy would have avoided the failures of [[Lyndon Johnson]] in Vietnam.

He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in his convertible limousine in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]. A [[Communist]] sympathizer, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], was allegedly the only assassin, and afterward Kennedy became a national icon and martyr. His reputation has since been dimmed by reports of his philandering. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:
{{cquote|'''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'''|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination. It released its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK, and that there was no conspiracy, though a majority of the population believed that he was part of a conspiracy.<ref>[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530131118AAxW8Rc What was the conclusion of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK?]</ref> Although, among many contradictions, "The Warren committee accepted that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor [[John Connally]]. Yet, Connally distinctly remembers two consecutive shots (as may be seen in the Zapruder film) and he had never changed his testimony." <ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm I am a patsy.]</ref>

==Career==
Educated at private schools and Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book, "Why England Slept" (1940). As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]]. In September 1941, Kennedy attempted to join the U.S. Army but was medically disqualified due the his chronic lower back problems. He then joined the U.S. Navy and attended officer training school. His older brother's death in combat during [[World War II]], combined with JFK's heroic war record as skipper of the [[PT-109]] in 1943, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946.

===Medical===
Kennedy was the sickest president since [[William Henry Harrison]], but he successfully kept his multiple maladies a secret from the press and policy makers. Besides Addison's disease, Kennedy's most serious problem was chronic back pain, which surfaced when he strained an unstable back (probably birth-related) a number of times, both in his youth and during his PT boat service during the war.<ref>Donovan (1961) pp. 106-107</ref><ref>Ballard (2002) pp. 12, 36</ref> Surgery in 1944 only worsened the condition; by 1954 Kennedy found the pain so acute that he underwent back surgery once again despite the risk of an Addisonian crisis, which nearly took his life.<ref>Dallek (2003); James N. Giglio, "Why Another Kennedy Book?" ''Reviews in American History,'' Volume 31, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 645-656 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

As a teenager, Kennedy was in and out of hospitals for chronic colitis, stomach problems, and an undisclosed blood condition, which was at first mistakenly diagnosed as leukemia. Dr. Janet Travell, a specialist in the treatment of muscular disorders, was his primary physician after 1955, but other specialists tried any number of different treatments. As president he took seven powerful prescription drugs daily including hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone acetate, and Meticorten for Addison's disease, a malfunction of the adrenal glands; and T3 for hypothyroidism. In addition he regularly took Equanil for anxiety and tension; for his gastrointestinal problems he took anti-spasmodics Lomotil and Bentyl; for weight gain a daily dose of testosterone; and Chlor-Trimeton for his allergies. White House physicians were alarmed when they learned he was seeing Dr. Max Jacobson, a New York City celebrity physician, who injected him with a concoction of amphetamines, steroids, calcium, placenta, and vitamins, a potentially dangerous combination for his chronic back pain.<ref>Dallek (2003)</ref> Historians have not identified a single policy decision that seems to have been affected by his physical condition or medical treatments; they believe he never took any illegal drugs.<ref>Giglio (2003)</ref>

==Politics==
[[File:Kennedy on the campaign trail.jpg|right|300px|thumb|John Kennedy campaigning.]]
Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK's return to the city restored the family's traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts. Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base. JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics. That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956). JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.

JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee. Kennedy largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches around the country. Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating [[Joe McCarthy]]<ref>JFK's father Joe Kennedy was a major supporter and close personal friend of McCarthy, and Robert worked for a while for McCarthy. McCarthy dated one of JFK's sisters.</ref> and launching attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father's break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family's support for McCarthy. Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate.

===Civil rights===
Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by [[Martin Luther King]] where King made his famous ''I Have A Dream''speech. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

Not until the presidential election of 1960 when John Kennedy intervened for the release of Martin Luther King, who was jailed by local Democrats two weeks before the election in Atlanta following a non-violent protest, did the majority of Blacks begin voting Democratic ''en bloc''. His brother, [[Robert Kennedy]], who managed the campaign, was "downright furious" as to the call with King, and felt it could cost them the election given the promise of "three Southern governors" not to support John Kennedy if he showed support for King.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kLspqSlNjfYC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=three+Southern+governors+told+us+that+if+Jack+supported+Jimmy+Hoffa,+Nikita+Khrushchev,+or+Martin+Luther+King,+they+would+throw+their+states+to+Nixon&source=bl&ots=9PCWxfix0P&sig=ACfU3U2rlCOdSQJLr7w1x8AhpeJODSmG6w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fD9uIngAhWMoYMKHRY0CPAQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=three%20Southern%20governors%20told%20us%20that%20if%20Jack%20supported%20Jimmy%20Hoffa%2C%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%2C%20or%20Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20they%20would%20throw%20their%20states%20to%20Nixon&f=false Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero], [[Chris Matthews]], Simon and Schuster, Nov 6, 2012, p. 309.</ref>

His 1957 book, ''Profiles in Courage'', included Sen. Edmund Ross who voted to acquit in the impeachment of Pres. [[Andrew Johnson]], which ended Republican [[Reconstruction]] reforms and paving the way for Democrat era of [[Jim Crow]] laws and the [[segregation]] era.

==Nomination==
When Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to choose the vice-presidential nominee in 1956, Kennedy sought the position but was narrowly defeated by Stevenson's two-time primary rival, liberal Senator [[Estes Kefauver]] of [[Tennessee]].

By 1960, Kennedy was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination to face [[Richard M. Nixon]], with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] in the 1928 race against [[Herbert Hoover]]. Prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines. The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a fellow liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner. Kennedy won over the party's intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston. There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs. He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issue such as abortion at that time.

Although Kennedy's religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans. With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that provided the narrow margin of victory against Richard Nixon. Apart from a few pockets of anti-popery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism largely disappeared from the voting booth after 1960, and Kennedy gets credit for bringing Catholics into the American political mainstream.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:July2.jpg|right|350px|thumb|President Kennedy reviewing a military parade.]]
Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy. Weeks after his [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|memorable inaugural address]] sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when the invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to pay ransom of $53 million U.S. dollars in food and medicine in exchange for the 1,113 prisoners and 76 other exiles being held in Cuba.<ref>http://onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr60/fcuba1961.htm</ref> Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall in East Berlin, despite Kennedy's later rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!")

===Peace Corps===
He launched the [[Peace Corps]] by executive order in 1961, putting his brother-in-law [[Sargent Shriver]] in charge. It was mainly designed to be a new weapon in the U.S. Cold War arsenal, one that could reach the people directly at the grass roots not merely their national leaders. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign promised to form the agency, saying:
:"I believe that as a counter to the flood of well trained and accomplished tacticians now helping nations with their problems that the Communists are sending out, I believe an American Peace Corps...could be trained to help these people live a life of freedom in agriculture, in handiwork, in road building, in government and other skills, young Americans who will represent the cause of freedom around the globe."<ref>Quote [http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/nov60/jfk041160_chicago02.html Nov. 4, 1960, Chicago speech online] see also T. Zane Reeves, ''The Politics of the Peace Corps & Vista'' (1988) p. 20.</ref>

The Peace Corps has been endorsed by all subsequent presidents; nearly 200,000 Americans have served helping underdeveloped nations through personal humanitarian aid. It is still in operation, albeit with a modest record of achievement.

===Ireland===
Kennedy paid a state visit to [[Ireland]] in 1963 - the first state visit of an American President to the country, which had secured independence from Britain forty years earlier. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, and was greeted by huge crowds in the cities of [[Dublin]], [[Limerick]] and [[Cork]]. He told crowds that once he had completed his term as president, he would like to become US Ambassador to Ireland, and live there.

===Cuban Missile Crisis===
see [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast United States. In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately. Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to agree to removing the older U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey; while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island. Realizing how close they had come to war, Kennedy and Khrushchev became much friendlier in public. In 1963, they signed a [[Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)|test ban treaty]] which eliminated nuclear testing above ground or in space; the treaty was further designed to hobble China and other countries trying to build their first bombs. The Cuban missile crisis reversed Kennedy's image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor.

==Domestic policy==
As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption. Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts. No matter: most all of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere. Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing. He later proposed the civil rights bill, which passed after his death. He boosted the NASA space program and pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, all which occurred after his death.

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the [[civil rights movement]] in the South, led by [[Martin Luther King]], produced dramatic confrontations for JFK with [[segregation]]ist Democrats, especially Governors [[George Wallace]] of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] allowed the [[FBI]] to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were [[Communist]]; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref><ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

In September 1962, Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP's to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Violent resistance by certain townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured. The June 1963 confrontation in Alabama was nonviolent, and although Wallace did back down, the event boosted his visibility as a leader of segregationist southern Democrats.

==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy's assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref> [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.

To deflect attention from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on US conservatives. On November 23, 1963–the day after Kennedy was killed–a memo from KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny asked the Kremlin immediately to publish an article in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries …exposing the attempt by [http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/11/20/the-new-proof-of-the-kgbs-hand-in-jfks-assassination/?singlepage=true reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, [i.e.,] the racists and ultra-right elements] guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Struggle_for_Russia.html?id=GSyaAAAACAAJ According to Boris Yeltsin], the result was an article appearing two months later in the communist-controlled British journal ''Labour Monthly'', stating, “[M]ost commentators, have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas . . . [that], with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a CIA job.” Next, Joachim Joesten, a former member of the German Communist Party, wrote ''Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?'' claiming that Oswald was “an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background.”

To further link the assassination to the CIA, the [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures produce a clumsy forgery of a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists; it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].

Joesten's book was published in the US in 1964 by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani (code-named "Nord"), who was paid $672,000 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s, according to Mitrokhin's documents. The book was positively reviewed by [[Victor Perlo]] (an American KGB agent code-named "Raid") in ''New Times'', which was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania, according to Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the East bloc. [[I.F. Stone]], a Soviet "agent of influence" code-named "Blin," followed with an article suggesting that Oswald may have been "the tool of some rightist plot." In 1966 came Mark Lane's bestseller ''Rush to Judgment'', alleging that Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing US group. Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane $2,000, and that KGB operative Genrikh Borovik was in regular contact with him. According to Pacepa, Semichastny's memo thus "generated the Kennedy conspiracy that has never stopped."

Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Reports of JFK's affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people's faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event. Donald Trump has since reaffirmed that he will release the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, despite earlier reports indicating he'll delay them.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-will-allow-release-of-classified-jfk-assassination-files/article/2638250</ref>

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]] (who held both liberal and conservative positions). Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.

===Was Kennedy a liberal or a conservative?===
Kennedy was arguably a moderate; his policies appeal to both conservatives and liberals. He apparently offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and most of his domestic policy. After his death Kennedy's legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a progressive in the same vain as his successor, Lyndon Johnson.<ref>The best studies of Kennedy's relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan'' (2001) pp 63-120 [ excerpt and text search]; Alonzo Hamby, ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Its-Challengers-F-D-R-Bush/dp/0195070305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257264863&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]. Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.</ref>

To be a liberal in the days when Kennedy was in politics, 1946–63, meant supporting the programs of the [[New Deal]], following in the footsteps of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and upholding the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Support for labor unions was important; support for civil rights had been a minor issue (and one more associated with the Republican Party). Hostility to the Catholic Church was common among liberals. In foreign policy liberals had turned away from Roosevelt's détente with the Soviets and had adopted the [[containment]] policy. Liberals rejected [[rollback]], that is efforts to remove Communists regimes from power. Verbal support for the United Nations was standard rhetoric, although in practice it meant little. The symbolically most important issue of them all for liberals was opposition to [[Joe McCarthy]] and his style of aggressive anti-Communism.

On most of these points Kennedy was largely on the conservative or moderate side. He had a base in Massachusetts with many strong liberals in academe and labor unions that had to be appeased, so he never attacked liberalism too loudly. He solved the state problem by a close alliance with the Democratic party organizations in the cities, controlled mostly by Irish politicians. JFK's campaign manager and chief confidante was his brother Bobby, a devout Catholic who was in close touch with the Catholic establishment and the local machines. JFK thus maintained very close ties to the Catholic establishment; he carefully followed the required public rituals of the Catholic church. It was a major achievement by Kennedy in 1960 to resolve the religious issue and bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life and to the top ranks of national leadership.<ref>By contrast, the only Catholic in Eisenhower's cabinet was a plumber who was Secretary of Labor.</ref>

On foreign policy he was a leading anti-Communist hawk; he won in 1960 by attacking Eisenhower's foreign policies as not aggressive enough. When elected he sent forces to invade Cuba and rollback Communism; he increased the military presence in Vietnam; he sent the Navy to confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw. Liberals have misread these episodes—saying that the Cuban invasion was really Eisenhower's idea; that in Vietnam he might have changed his mind in a second term; and that in Cuba he was liberal because he did not blow the world up.

On the liberal side, he achieved the creation of the Peace Corps. To combat Communism in Latin America he proposed a liberal program of financial and technical assistance and free-food programs, and indicated he would take a sympathetic view of revolutionary movements that have the legitimate objective of bettering the life of the hemisphere's poor and downtrodden. Kennedy explicitly exempted any such movements dominated by "external"—meaning Communist—forces, thereby shutting the door on renewed diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba. On domestic issues, a pilot program for food stamps for low-income Americans was launched in 1961. Further, Social Security benefits and food distribution to poor Americans was increased; including free school lunches. In 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required affirmative action by government contractors as to both applicants and employees. It also established the "President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity". Kennedy also established the "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" which was an advisory commission to investigate: education, income and workplace issues of women. Thereafter, in June 1963, Kennedy signed the "Equal Pay Act" which was to close the so-called wage gap based on sex.

Kennedy also endorsed the 1960 Democratic Party platform which expressed support for civil rights and universal healthcare. Although a staunch supporter of [[Keynesian]] economics, as Kennedy is often called the first president to openly endorse this economic policy, he reduced the top income tax bracket from 91% to 65%. These tax cuts are heralded by many conservatives as landmark since they, like all other tax cuts, brought economic growth. Kennedy planned deficit spending to promote growth but was hesitant to the displeasure of his more liberal advisers. Liberals argue that he'd support raising the top income tax bracket rate today.<ref>https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter</ref> Civil rights were not a major concern until 1963. As a senator, Kennedy voted mildly on civil rights legislation and supported then Senate leader Lyndon Johnson's move of having Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee which at the time was controlled by southern Democrats. On unions, he built up a reputation of strong opposition to union corruption, especially in the Teamsters; he quietly kept on good terms with [[George Meany]], the AFL-CIO leader, while avoiding [[Walter Reuther]], the leader of the liberal wing of the AFL-CIO.

Kennedy had a pro-business reputation and sponsored policies such as tax cuts and low inflation that conservative businessmen wanted. On taking office he called for a "full-fledged alliance" with business. He did get into a brush-up with the steel industry when the steelmen broke their promise to him to keep prices down; that move made Kennedy more popular among the anti-business liberals, but Kennedy never proposed major legislation that business opposed. He named Douglas Dillon, a leading Republican businessman, as his Secretary of the Treasury. On dealing with unemployment, he never proposed New-Dealish programs but instead had a package that was acceptable to conservative Republicans.<ref>House Republican Minority Leader Charles Halleck said of those proposals: "We find no great quarrel with them, but we do not find them earthshaking." ''Time'' Feb. 10, 1961</ref>

Crime was a signature issue for Kennedy, and on taking office he promised a major crackdown on organized crime, thus appealing to conservatives. On appointing Brother Bobby as Attorney General, he quipped, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." On the liberal side, Kennedy asked Congress for federal aid for school construction and more money for federally assisted housing. They did not oblige. Although liberals assert that the Vietnam War was initiated and supported by conservatives, Kennedy did increase the number of military advisers and special forces there which helped set up the full military combat commitment made by his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

Joe McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy was his biggest financial backer. Bobby Kennedy began his career as an aide to McCarthy. JFK was not close to McCarthy, but he refused to attack him publicly or to vote for his Senate censure in 1954 when McCarthy's career was collapsing. Kennedy was very friendly towards Republicans and appointed some to positions in his cabinet, namely Robert S. McNamara.

==Quotes==

* "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

* "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us." Oct 26, 1963

* "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

* "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

* {{Jfk-liberty}}

== Trivia ==

* Kennedy's alleged murder was '''Lee''' H. Oswald and his wife was Jaqueline '''Lee''' Bouvier Kennedy.
* Both presidents, [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Kennedy were elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in '46.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were elected the President of the United States in '60.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on a Friday.
* Lincoln was shot in "Ford's Theater". Kennedy was shot in a "Lincoln" car made by "Ford".

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography & Further reading==
* Ballard, Robert. ''Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)
* Balmer, Randall. ''God in the White House: A History--How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.'' (2008)
* Bryant, Nick. ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality'' (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Bystander-Kennedy-Struggle-Black-Equality/dp/0465008267/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Bugliosi, Vincent. ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President,'' (2007). Debunks dozens of conspiracy theories and concludes Oswald acted alone. [https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227416692&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
* Clarke, Thurston. ''Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America'' ISBN 0805072136 [https://www.amazon.com/Ask-Not-Inauguration-Kennedy-Changed/dp/0805072136/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search]
* Clarke, Thurston. ''JFK's Last Hundred Days'' (2013), balanced assessment
* Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003), standard scholarly biography; stress on medical issues [https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-Dynasty/dp/0316907928/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Donaldson, Gary A. ''The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960'' (2007)
* Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (2001) [1961]. JFK's World War II U.S. Navy service; [[PT-109]] and PT-59
* Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Wars-Berlin-Cuba-Vietnam/dp/0195152433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218513&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.questia.com/library/book/kennedys-wars-berlin-cuba-laos-and-vietnam-by-lawrence-freedman.jsp full text online]
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/One-Hell-Gamble-Khrushchev-1958-1964/dp/0393317900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218554&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search] adds information from Russian sources
* Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
* Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency [http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15070503 online edition]
* Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment focused on scandals
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991), balanced assessment
* Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
* Lichtenstein. Nelson, ed. ''Political Profiles: The Kennedy Years'' (1976) 621pp; very good short, analytical biographies of 500 major players
* Leuchtenburg, William E. ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama'' (2009) excellent analysis of how JFK tried to replicate FDR's appeal without his liberalism [https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-FDR-Harry-Truman-George/dp/0801487374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257738655&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), most detailed scholarly biography [https://www.amazon.com/John-Kennedy-Biography-Michael-OBrien/dp/0312281293/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]
* Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980); ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983), scholarly biography
* Paterson, Thomas G. ''Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963'' (1989) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Quest-Victory-American-1961-1963/dp/019504584X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search], Leftists approach disparages anti-Communism
* Piereson, James. ''Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Camelot-Cultural-Revolution-Assassination-Liberalism/dp/1594031886/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227415678&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search], conservative interpretation
* Pietrusza, David. ''1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies'' (2008)
* Preble, Christopher A. ''John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap'' (2004)
* Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
* Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) highly critical assessment of his character flaws by conservative historian [https://www.amazon.com/Question-Character-Life-John-Kennedy/dp/076151287X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (2002) [1965], major biography by a close advisor; Pulitzer Prize for Biography and National Book Award winner [https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Kennedy-White-House/dp/1579124496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218430&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002) [1978], scholarly biography and National Book Award winner
* Smith, Jean Edward. "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years". ''Air University Review'' (March–April 1967) [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html online]
* Sundquist, James L. ''Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1968), excellent analysis of the major political issues of the era.

===Primary sources===
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistcial tables
* Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), major biography by a close advisor

== See also ==
*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[John F. Kennedy, Jr.]]
*[[JFK Assassination Records]]

== External links ==
*[http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy]
*[http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum]
*[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnfkennedy John F. Kennedy.] The White House.
*[http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html Inaugural Address.] January 20, 1961.
*[https://librivox.org/author/2572 Works by John F. Kennedy - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]

{{USPresidents}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, John F.}}
[[Category:Democratic Party]]
[[Category:Irish-Americans]]
[[Category:American War Heroes]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
[[Category:1950s]]
[[Category:1960s]]
[[Category:Catholic Politicians]]
[[Category:Kennedy Family]]
[[Category:Religion and Politics]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
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[[Category:Moderates]]
[[Category:Patriots]]
[[Category:Best Selling Authors]]

John F. Kennedy

2019-07-30T17:38:13Z

JohnJustice: Undo revision 1543622 by RobSmith (talk) no not according to your own linked source as cite

{{Officeholder
|name=John F. Kennedy
|image=John Kennedy by Draper.jpg
|party=[[Democratic]]
|spouse=[[Jacqueline Kennedy|Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=35th
|terms=January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
|vp=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
|preceded=[[Dwight Eisenhower]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Massachusetts
|terms=January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
|preceded=Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
|former=y
|succeeded=Benjamin A. Smith
}}
{{Officeholder/representative
|state=Massachusetts
|district=11th
|terms=January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953
|preceded=James Michael Curley
|former=y
|succeeded=Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.
}}
}}
'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''', often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) was the 35th [[President of the United States of America]], serving for 1036 days in 1961-63. He was the youngest person elected president ([[Theodore Roosevelt]] being the youngest to assume the office) and one of the most glamorous and popular. His record of presidential accomplishments remains a subject of debate among historians and the public, but after his assassination he became a legendary figure in whom admirers saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.

The [[Kennedy Family]] had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]]; Kennedy was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. In Congress the [[Conservative Coalition]] blocked nearly all of his domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained strength.

The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced, Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. This inexperience caused a national humiliation in 1961 as he sent CIA-trained Cuban exiles into an ill-prepared attack on Castro's Cuba. At the [[Bay of Pigs]], all the invaders were killed or captured, and he was forced to negotiate for the survivors release giving Cuba medical and food. Kennedy's supporters blamed the fiasco on Eisenhower and the CIA, for JFK inherited the plan; but Kennedy took the blame himself. Russian leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], seeing for himself Kennedy's inexperience at a summit conference, had built the [[Berlin Wall]] as the Soviets escalated the [[Cold War]] regarding the status of Berlin, predicting that Kennedy's response would be weak. Khrushchev went too far in 1962 when he sent nuclear missiles into Cuba aimed at the U.S. mainland. For the first time since [[Pearl Harbor]]—or indeed since Washington and New Orleans were attacked in the [[War of 1812]]—the U.S. was vulnerable to a major attack by an enemy power. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a compromise whereby the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba publicly, while Kennedy secretly removed obsolete American missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviets, and also promised that America would never invade Cuba. In Vietnam, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000 to prop up the ineffective, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. Historians are uncertain whether Kennedy would have avoided the failures of [[Lyndon Johnson]] in Vietnam.

He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in his convertible limousine in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]. A [[Communist]] sympathizer, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], was allegedly the only assassin, and afterward Kennedy became a national icon and martyr. His reputation has since been dimmed by reports of his philandering. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:
{{cquote|'''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'''|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination. It released its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK, and that there was no conspiracy, though a majority of the population believed that he was part of a conspiracy.<ref>[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530131118AAxW8Rc What was the conclusion of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK?]</ref> Although, among many contradictions, "The Warren committee accepted that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor [[John Connally]]. Yet, Connally distinctly remembers two consecutive shots (as may be seen in the Zapruder film) and he had never changed his testimony." <ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm I am a patsy.]</ref>

==Career==
Educated at private schools and Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book, "Why England Slept" (1940). As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]]. In September 1941, Kennedy attempted to join the U.S. Army but was medically disqualified due the his chronic lower back problems. He then joined the U.S. Navy and attended officer training school. His older brother's death in combat during [[World War II]], combined with JFK's heroic war record as skipper of the [[PT-109]] in 1943, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946.

===Medical===
Kennedy was the sickest president since [[William Henry Harrison]], but he successfully kept his multiple maladies a secret from the press and policy makers. Besides Addison's disease, Kennedy's most serious problem was chronic back pain, which surfaced when he strained an unstable back (probably birth-related) a number of times, both in his youth and during his PT boat service during the war.<ref>Donovan (1961) pp. 106-107</ref><ref>Ballard (2002) pp. 12, 36</ref> Surgery in 1944 only worsened the condition; by 1954 Kennedy found the pain so acute that he underwent back surgery once again despite the risk of an Addisonian crisis, which nearly took his life.<ref>Dallek (2003); James N. Giglio, "Why Another Kennedy Book?" ''Reviews in American History,'' Volume 31, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 645-656 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

As a teenager, Kennedy was in and out of hospitals for chronic colitis, stomach problems, and an undisclosed blood condition, which was at first mistakenly diagnosed as leukemia. Dr. Janet Travell, a specialist in the treatment of muscular disorders, was his primary physician after 1955, but other specialists tried any number of different treatments. As president he took seven powerful prescription drugs daily including hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone acetate, and Meticorten for Addison's disease, a malfunction of the adrenal glands; and T3 for hypothyroidism. In addition he regularly took Equanil for anxiety and tension; for his gastrointestinal problems he took anti-spasmodics Lomotil and Bentyl; for weight gain a daily dose of testosterone; and Chlor-Trimeton for his allergies. White House physicians were alarmed when they learned he was seeing Dr. Max Jacobson, a New York City celebrity physician, who injected him with a concoction of amphetamines, steroids, calcium, placenta, and vitamins, a potentially dangerous combination for his chronic back pain.<ref>Dallek (2003)</ref> Historians have not identified a single policy decision that seems to have been affected by his physical condition or medical treatments; they believe he never took any illegal drugs.<ref>Giglio (2003)</ref>

==Politics==
[[File:Kennedy on the campaign trail.jpg|right|300px|thumb|John Kennedy campaigning.]]
Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK's return to the city restored the family's traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts. Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base. JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics. That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956). JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.

JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee. Kennedy largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches around the country. Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating [[Joe McCarthy]]<ref>JFK's father Joe Kennedy was a major supporter and close personal friend of McCarthy, and Robert worked for a while for McCarthy. McCarthy dated one of JFK's sisters.</ref> and launching attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father's break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family's support for McCarthy. Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate.

===Civil rights===
Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by [[Martin Luther King]] where King made his famous ''I Have A Dream''speech. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

Not until the presidential election of 1960 when John Kennedy intervened for the release of Martin Luther King, who was jailed by local Democrats two weeks before the election in Atlanta following a non-violent protest, did the majority of Blacks begin voting Democratic ''en bloc''. His brother, [[Robert Kennedy]], who managed the campaign, was furious as to the call with King, and felt it could cost them the election given the promise of three Southern governors not to support John Kennedy if he showed support for King.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kLspqSlNjfYC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=three+Southern+governors+told+us+that+if+Jack+supported+Jimmy+Hoffa,+Nikita+Khrushchev,+or+Martin+Luther+King,+they+would+throw+their+states+to+Nixon&source=bl&ots=9PCWxfix0P&sig=ACfU3U2rlCOdSQJLr7w1x8AhpeJODSmG6w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fD9uIngAhWMoYMKHRY0CPAQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=three%20Southern%20governors%20told%20us%20that%20if%20Jack%20supported%20Jimmy%20Hoffa%2C%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%2C%20or%20Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20they%20would%20throw%20their%20states%20to%20Nixon&f=false Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero], [[Chris Matthews]], Simon and Schuster, Nov 6, 2012, p. 309.</ref>

His 1957 book, ''Profiles in Courage'', included Sen. Edmund Ross who voted to acquit in the impeachment of Pres. [[Andrew Johnson]], which ended Republican [[Reconstruction]] reforms and paving the way for Democrat era of [[Jim Crow]] laws and the [[segregation]] era.

==Nomination==
When Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to choose the vice-presidential nominee in 1956, Kennedy sought the position but was narrowly defeated by Stevenson's two-time primary rival, liberal Senator [[Estes Kefauver]] of [[Tennessee]].

By 1960, Kennedy was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination to face [[Richard M. Nixon]], with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] in the 1928 race against [[Herbert Hoover]]. Prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines. The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a fellow liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner. Kennedy won over the party's intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston. There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs. He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issue such as abortion at that time.

Although Kennedy's religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans. With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that provided the narrow margin of victory against Richard Nixon. Apart from a few pockets of anti-popery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism largely disappeared from the voting booth after 1960, and Kennedy gets credit for bringing Catholics into the American political mainstream.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:July2.jpg|right|350px|thumb|President Kennedy reviewing a military parade.]]
Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy. Weeks after his [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|memorable inaugural address]] sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when the invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to pay ransom of $53 million U.S. dollars in food and medicine in exchange for the 1,113 prisoners and 76 other exiles being held in Cuba.<ref>http://onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr60/fcuba1961.htm</ref> Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall in East Berlin, despite Kennedy's later rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!")

===Peace Corps===
He launched the [[Peace Corps]] by executive order in 1961, putting his brother-in-law [[Sargent Shriver]] in charge. It was mainly designed to be a new weapon in the U.S. Cold War arsenal, one that could reach the people directly at the grass roots not merely their national leaders. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign promised to form the agency, saying:
:"I believe that as a counter to the flood of well trained and accomplished tacticians now helping nations with their problems that the Communists are sending out, I believe an American Peace Corps...could be trained to help these people live a life of freedom in agriculture, in handiwork, in road building, in government and other skills, young Americans who will represent the cause of freedom around the globe."<ref>Quote [http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/nov60/jfk041160_chicago02.html Nov. 4, 1960, Chicago speech online] see also T. Zane Reeves, ''The Politics of the Peace Corps & Vista'' (1988) p. 20.</ref>

The Peace Corps has been endorsed by all subsequent presidents; nearly 200,000 Americans have served helping underdeveloped nations through personal humanitarian aid. It is still in operation, albeit with a modest record of achievement.

===Ireland===
Kennedy paid a state visit to [[Ireland]] in 1963 - the first state visit of an American President to the country, which had secured independence from Britain forty years earlier. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, and was greeted by huge crowds in the cities of [[Dublin]], [[Limerick]] and [[Cork]]. He told crowds that once he had completed his term as president, he would like to become US Ambassador to Ireland, and live there.

===Cuban Missile Crisis===
see [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast United States. In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately. Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to agree to removing the older U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey; while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island. Realizing how close they had come to war, Kennedy and Khrushchev became much friendlier in public. In 1963, they signed a [[Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)|test ban treaty]] which eliminated nuclear testing above ground or in space; the treaty was further designed to hobble China and other countries trying to build their first bombs. The Cuban missile crisis reversed Kennedy's image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor.

==Domestic policy==
As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption. Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts. No matter: most all of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere. Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing. He later proposed the civil rights bill, which passed after his death. He boosted the NASA space program and pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, all which occurred after his death.

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the [[civil rights movement]] in the South, led by [[Martin Luther King]], produced dramatic confrontations for JFK with [[segregation]]ist Democrats, especially Governors [[George Wallace]] of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] allowed the [[FBI]] to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were [[Communist]]; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref><ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

In September 1962, Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP's to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Violent resistance by certain townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured. The June 1963 confrontation in Alabama was nonviolent, and although Wallace did back down, the event boosted his visibility as a leader of segregationist southern Democrats.

==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy's assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref> [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.

To deflect attention from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on US conservatives. On November 23, 1963–the day after Kennedy was killed–a memo from KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny asked the Kremlin immediately to publish an article in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries …exposing the attempt by [http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/11/20/the-new-proof-of-the-kgbs-hand-in-jfks-assassination/?singlepage=true reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, [i.e.,] the racists and ultra-right elements] guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Struggle_for_Russia.html?id=GSyaAAAACAAJ According to Boris Yeltsin], the result was an article appearing two months later in the communist-controlled British journal ''Labour Monthly'', stating, “[M]ost commentators, have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas . . . [that], with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a CIA job.” Next, Joachim Joesten, a former member of the German Communist Party, wrote ''Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?'' claiming that Oswald was “an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background.”

To further link the assassination to the CIA, the [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures produce a clumsy forgery of a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists; it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].

Joesten's book was published in the US in 1964 by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani (code-named "Nord"), who was paid $672,000 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s, according to Mitrokhin's documents. The book was positively reviewed by [[Victor Perlo]] (an American KGB agent code-named "Raid") in ''New Times'', which was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania, according to Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the East bloc. [[I.F. Stone]], a Soviet "agent of influence" code-named "Blin," followed with an article suggesting that Oswald may have been "the tool of some rightist plot." In 1966 came Mark Lane's bestseller ''Rush to Judgment'', alleging that Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing US group. Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane $2,000, and that KGB operative Genrikh Borovik was in regular contact with him. According to Pacepa, Semichastny's memo thus "generated the Kennedy conspiracy that has never stopped."

Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Reports of JFK's affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people's faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event. Donald Trump has since reaffirmed that he will release the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, despite earlier reports indicating he'll delay them.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-will-allow-release-of-classified-jfk-assassination-files/article/2638250</ref>

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]] (who held both liberal and conservative positions). Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.

===Was Kennedy a liberal or a conservative?===
Kennedy was arguably a moderate; his policies appeal to both conservatives and liberals. He apparently offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and most of his domestic policy. After his death Kennedy's legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a progressive in the same vain as his successor, Lyndon Johnson.<ref>The best studies of Kennedy's relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan'' (2001) pp 63-120 [ excerpt and text search]; Alonzo Hamby, ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Its-Challengers-F-D-R-Bush/dp/0195070305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257264863&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]. Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.</ref>

To be a liberal in the days when Kennedy was in politics, 1946–63, meant supporting the programs of the [[New Deal]], following in the footsteps of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and upholding the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Support for labor unions was important; support for civil rights had been a minor issue (and one more associated with the Republican Party). Hostility to the Catholic Church was common among liberals. In foreign policy liberals had turned away from Roosevelt's détente with the Soviets and had adopted the [[containment]] policy. Liberals rejected [[rollback]], that is efforts to remove Communists regimes from power. Verbal support for the United Nations was standard rhetoric, although in practice it meant little. The symbolically most important issue of them all for liberals was opposition to [[Joe McCarthy]] and his style of aggressive anti-Communism.

On most of these points Kennedy was largely on the conservative or moderate side. He had a base in Massachusetts with many strong liberals in academe and labor unions that had to be appeased, so he never attacked liberalism too loudly. He solved the state problem by a close alliance with the Democratic party organizations in the cities, controlled mostly by Irish politicians. JFK's campaign manager and chief confidante was his brother Bobby, a devout Catholic who was in close touch with the Catholic establishment and the local machines. JFK thus maintained very close ties to the Catholic establishment; he carefully followed the required public rituals of the Catholic church. It was a major achievement by Kennedy in 1960 to resolve the religious issue and bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life and to the top ranks of national leadership.<ref>By contrast, the only Catholic in Eisenhower's cabinet was a plumber who was Secretary of Labor.</ref>

On foreign policy he was a leading anti-Communist hawk; he won in 1960 by attacking Eisenhower's foreign policies as not aggressive enough. When elected he sent forces to invade Cuba and rollback Communism; he increased the military presence in Vietnam; he sent the Navy to confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw. Liberals have misread these episodes—saying that the Cuban invasion was really Eisenhower's idea; that in Vietnam he might have changed his mind in a second term; and that in Cuba he was liberal because he did not blow the world up.

On the liberal side, he achieved the creation of the Peace Corps. To combat Communism in Latin America he proposed a liberal program of financial and technical assistance and free-food programs, and indicated he would take a sympathetic view of revolutionary movements that have the legitimate objective of bettering the life of the hemisphere's poor and downtrodden. Kennedy explicitly exempted any such movements dominated by "external"—meaning Communist—forces, thereby shutting the door on renewed diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba. On domestic issues, a pilot program for food stamps for low-income Americans was launched in 1961. Further, Social Security benefits and food distribution to poor Americans was increased; including free school lunches. In 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required affirmative action by government contractors as to both applicants and employees. It also established the "President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity". Kennedy also established the "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" which was an advisory commission to investigate: education, income and workplace issues of women. Thereafter, in June 1963, Kennedy signed the "Equal Pay Act" which was to close the so-called wage gap based on sex.

Kennedy also endorsed the 1960 Democratic Party platform which expressed support for civil rights and universal healthcare. Although a staunch supporter of [[Keynesian]] economics, as Kennedy is often called the first president to openly endorse this economic policy, he reduced the top income tax bracket from 91% to 65%. These tax cuts are heralded by many conservatives as landmark since they, like all other tax cuts, brought economic growth. Kennedy planned deficit spending to promote growth but was hesitant to the displeasure of his more liberal advisers. Liberals argue that he'd support raising the top income tax bracket rate today.<ref>https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter</ref> Civil rights were not a major concern until 1963. As a senator, Kennedy voted mildly on civil rights legislation and supported then Senate leader Lyndon Johnson's move of having Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee which at the time was controlled by southern Democrats. On unions, he built up a reputation of strong opposition to union corruption, especially in the Teamsters; he quietly kept on good terms with [[George Meany]], the AFL-CIO leader, while avoiding [[Walter Reuther]], the leader of the liberal wing of the AFL-CIO.

Kennedy had a pro-business reputation and sponsored policies such as tax cuts and low inflation that conservative businessmen wanted. On taking office he called for a "full-fledged alliance" with business. He did get into a brush-up with the steel industry when the steelmen broke their promise to him to keep prices down; that move made Kennedy more popular among the anti-business liberals, but Kennedy never proposed major legislation that business opposed. He named Douglas Dillon, a leading Republican businessman, as his Secretary of the Treasury. On dealing with unemployment, he never proposed New-Dealish programs but instead had a package that was acceptable to conservative Republicans.<ref>House Republican Minority Leader Charles Halleck said of those proposals: "We find no great quarrel with them, but we do not find them earthshaking." ''Time'' Feb. 10, 1961</ref>

Crime was a signature issue for Kennedy, and on taking office he promised a major crackdown on organized crime, thus appealing to conservatives. On appointing Brother Bobby as Attorney General, he quipped, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." On the liberal side, Kennedy asked Congress for federal aid for school construction and more money for federally assisted housing. They did not oblige. Although liberals assert that the Vietnam War was initiated and supported by conservatives, Kennedy did increase the number of military advisers and special forces there which helped set up the full military combat commitment made by his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

Joe McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy was his biggest financial backer. Bobby Kennedy began his career as an aide to McCarthy. JFK was not close to McCarthy, but he refused to attack him publicly or to vote for his Senate censure in 1954 when McCarthy's career was collapsing. Kennedy was very friendly towards Republicans and appointed some to positions in his cabinet, namely Robert S. McNamara.

==Quotes==

* "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

* "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us." Oct 26, 1963

* "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

* "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

* {{Jfk-liberty}}

== Trivia ==

* Kennedy's alleged murder was '''Lee''' H. Oswald and his wife was Jaqueline '''Lee''' Bouvier Kennedy.
* Both presidents, [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Kennedy were elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in '46.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were elected the President of the United States in '60.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on a Friday.
* Lincoln was shot in "Ford's Theater". Kennedy was shot in a "Lincoln" car made by "Ford".

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography & Further reading==
* Ballard, Robert. ''Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)
* Balmer, Randall. ''God in the White House: A History--How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.'' (2008)
* Bryant, Nick. ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality'' (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Bystander-Kennedy-Struggle-Black-Equality/dp/0465008267/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Bugliosi, Vincent. ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President,'' (2007). Debunks dozens of conspiracy theories and concludes Oswald acted alone. [https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227416692&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
* Clarke, Thurston. ''Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America'' ISBN 0805072136 [https://www.amazon.com/Ask-Not-Inauguration-Kennedy-Changed/dp/0805072136/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search]
* Clarke, Thurston. ''JFK's Last Hundred Days'' (2013), balanced assessment
* Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003), standard scholarly biography; stress on medical issues [https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-Dynasty/dp/0316907928/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Donaldson, Gary A. ''The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960'' (2007)
* Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (2001) [1961]. JFK's World War II U.S. Navy service; [[PT-109]] and PT-59
* Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Wars-Berlin-Cuba-Vietnam/dp/0195152433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218513&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.questia.com/library/book/kennedys-wars-berlin-cuba-laos-and-vietnam-by-lawrence-freedman.jsp full text online]
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/One-Hell-Gamble-Khrushchev-1958-1964/dp/0393317900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218554&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search] adds information from Russian sources
* Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
* Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency [http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15070503 online edition]
* Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment focused on scandals
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991), balanced assessment
* Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
* Lichtenstein. Nelson, ed. ''Political Profiles: The Kennedy Years'' (1976) 621pp; very good short, analytical biographies of 500 major players
* Leuchtenburg, William E. ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama'' (2009) excellent analysis of how JFK tried to replicate FDR's appeal without his liberalism [https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-FDR-Harry-Truman-George/dp/0801487374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257738655&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), most detailed scholarly biography [https://www.amazon.com/John-Kennedy-Biography-Michael-OBrien/dp/0312281293/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]
* Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980); ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983), scholarly biography
* Paterson, Thomas G. ''Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963'' (1989) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Quest-Victory-American-1961-1963/dp/019504584X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search], Leftists approach disparages anti-Communism
* Piereson, James. ''Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Camelot-Cultural-Revolution-Assassination-Liberalism/dp/1594031886/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227415678&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search], conservative interpretation
* Pietrusza, David. ''1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies'' (2008)
* Preble, Christopher A. ''John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap'' (2004)
* Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
* Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) highly critical assessment of his character flaws by conservative historian [https://www.amazon.com/Question-Character-Life-John-Kennedy/dp/076151287X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (2002) [1965], major biography by a close advisor; Pulitzer Prize for Biography and National Book Award winner [https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Kennedy-White-House/dp/1579124496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218430&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002) [1978], scholarly biography and National Book Award winner
* Smith, Jean Edward. "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years". ''Air University Review'' (March–April 1967) [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html online]
* Sundquist, James L. ''Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1968), excellent analysis of the major political issues of the era.

===Primary sources===
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistcial tables
* Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), major biography by a close advisor

== See also ==
*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[John F. Kennedy, Jr.]]
*[[JFK Assassination Records]]

== External links ==
*[http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy]
*[http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum]
*[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnfkennedy John F. Kennedy.] The White House.
*[http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html Inaugural Address.] January 20, 1961.
*[https://librivox.org/author/2572 Works by John F. Kennedy - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]

{{USPresidents}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, John F.}}
[[Category:Democratic Party]]
[[Category:Irish-Americans]]
[[Category:American War Heroes]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
[[Category:1950s]]
[[Category:1960s]]
[[Category:Catholic Politicians]]
[[Category:Kennedy Family]]
[[Category:Religion and Politics]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
[[Category:Pro Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Moderates]]
[[Category:Patriots]]
[[Category:Best Selling Authors]]

John F. Kennedy

2019-07-26T22:49:09Z

JohnJustice: /* Civil rights */copy edit

{{Officeholder
|name=John F. Kennedy
|image=John Kennedy by Draper.jpg
|party=[[Democratic]]
|spouse=[[Jacqueline Kennedy|Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=35th
|terms=January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
|vp=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
|preceded=[[Dwight Eisenhower]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Massachusetts
|terms=January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
|preceded=Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
|former=y
|succeeded=Benjamin A. Smith
}}
{{Officeholder/representative
|state=Massachusetts
|district=11th
|terms=January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953
|preceded=James Michael Curley
|former=y
|succeeded=Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.
}}
}}
'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''', often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) was the 35th [[President of the United States of America]], serving for 1036 days in 1961-63. He was the youngest person elected president ([[Theodore Roosevelt]] being the youngest to assume the office) and one of the most glamorous and popular. His record of presidential accomplishments remains a subject of debate among historians and the public, but after his assassination he became a legendary figure in whom admirers saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.

The [[Kennedy Family]] had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]]; Kennedy was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. In Congress the [[Conservative Coalition]] blocked nearly all of his domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained strength.

The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced, Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. This inexperience caused a national humiliation in 1961 as he sent CIA-trained Cuban exiles into an ill-prepared attack on Castro's Cuba. At the [[Bay of Pigs]], all the invaders were killed or captured, and he was forced to negotiate for the survivors release giving Cuba medical and food. Kennedy's supporters blamed the fiasco on Eisenhower and the CIA, for JFK inherited the plan; but Kennedy took the blame himself. Russian leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], seeing for himself Kennedy's inexperience at a summit conference, had built the [[Berlin Wall]] as the Soviets escalated the [[Cold War]] regarding the status of Berlin, predicting that Kennedy's response would be weak. Khrushchev went too far in 1962 when he sent nuclear missiles into Cuba aimed at the U.S. mainland. For the first time since [[Pearl Harbor]]—or indeed since Washington and New Orleans were attacked in the [[War of 1812]]—the U.S. was vulnerable to a major attack by an enemy power. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a compromise whereby the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba publicly, while Kennedy secretly removed obsolete American missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviets, and also promised that America would never invade Cuba. In Vietnam, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000 to prop up the ineffective, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. Historians are uncertain whether Kennedy would have avoided the failures of [[Lyndon Johnson]] in Vietnam.

He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in his convertible limousine in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]. A [[Communist]] sympathizer, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], was allegedly the only assassin, and afterward Kennedy became a national icon and martyr. His reputation has since been dimmed by reports of his philandering. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:
{{cquote|'''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'''|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination. It released its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK, and that there was no conspiracy, though a majority of the population believed that he was part of a conspiracy.<ref>[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530131118AAxW8Rc What was the conclusion of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK?]</ref> Although, among many contradictions, "The Warren committee accepted that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor [[John Connally]]. Yet, Connally distinctly remembers two consecutive shots (as may be seen in the Zapruder film) and he had never changed his testimony." <ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm I am a patsy.]</ref>

==Career==
Educated at private schools and Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book, "Why England Slept" (1940). As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]]. In September 1941, Kennedy attempted to join the U.S. Army but was medically disqualified due the his chronic lower back problems. He then joined the U.S. Navy and attended officer training school. His older brother's death in combat during [[World War II]], combined with JFK's heroic war record as skipper of the [[PT-109]] in 1943, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946.

===Medical===
Kennedy was the sickest president since [[William Henry Harrison]], but he successfully kept his multiple maladies a secret from the press and policy makers. Besides Addison's disease, Kennedy's most serious problem was chronic back pain, which surfaced when he strained an unstable back (probably birth-related) a number of times, both in his youth and during his PT boat service during the war.<ref>Donovan (1961) pp. 106-107</ref><ref>Ballard (2002) pp. 12, 36</ref> Surgery in 1944 only worsened the condition; by 1954 Kennedy found the pain so acute that he underwent back surgery once again despite the risk of an Addisonian crisis, which nearly took his life.<ref>Dallek (2003); James N. Giglio, "Why Another Kennedy Book?" ''Reviews in American History,'' Volume 31, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 645-656 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

As a teenager, Kennedy was in and out of hospitals for chronic colitis, stomach problems, and an undisclosed blood condition, which was at first mistakenly diagnosed as leukemia. Dr. Janet Travell, a specialist in the treatment of muscular disorders, was his primary physician after 1955, but other specialists tried any number of different treatments. As president he took seven powerful prescription drugs daily including hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone acetate, and Meticorten for Addison's disease, a malfunction of the adrenal glands; and T3 for hypothyroidism. In addition he regularly took Equanil for anxiety and tension; for his gastrointestinal problems he took anti-spasmodics Lomotil and Bentyl; for weight gain a daily dose of testosterone; and Chlor-Trimeton for his allergies. White House physicians were alarmed when they learned he was seeing Dr. Max Jacobson, a New York City celebrity physician, who injected him with a concoction of amphetamines, steroids, calcium, placenta, and vitamins, a potentially dangerous combination for his chronic back pain.<ref>Dallek (2003)</ref> Historians have not identified a single policy decision that seems to have been affected by his physical condition or medical treatments; they believe he never took any illegal drugs.<ref>Giglio (2003)</ref>

==Politics==
[[File:Kennedy on the campaign trail.jpg|right|300px|thumb|John Kennedy campaigning.]]
Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK's return to the city restored the family's traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts. Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base. JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics. That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956). JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.

JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee. Kennedy largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches around the country. Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating [[Joe McCarthy]]<ref>JFK's father Joe Kennedy was a major supporter and close personal friend of McCarthy, and Robert worked for a while for McCarthy. McCarthy dated one of JFK's sisters.</ref> and launching attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father's break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family's support for McCarthy. Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate.

===Civil rights===
Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by [[Martin Luther King]] where King made his famous ''I Have A Dream''speech. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

Not until the presidential election of 1960 when John Kennedy intervened for the release of Martin Luther King, who was jailed by local Democrats two weeks before the election in Atlanta following a non-violent protest, did the majority of Blacks begin voting Democratic ''en bloc''. His brother, [[Robert Kennedy]], who managed the campaign, was furious as to the call with King, and felt it could cost them the election given the promise of three Southern governors not to support John Kennedy if he showed support for King.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kLspqSlNjfYC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=three+Southern+governors+told+us+that+if+Jack+supported+Jimmy+Hoffa,+Nikita+Khrushchev,+or+Martin+Luther+King,+they+would+throw+their+states+to+Nixon&source=bl&ots=9PCWxfix0P&sig=ACfU3U2rlCOdSQJLr7w1x8AhpeJODSmG6w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fD9uIngAhWMoYMKHRY0CPAQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=three%20Southern%20governors%20told%20us%20that%20if%20Jack%20supported%20Jimmy%20Hoffa%2C%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%2C%20or%20Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20they%20would%20throw%20their%20states%20to%20Nixon&f=false Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero], [[Chris Matthews]], Simon and Schuster, Nov 6, 2012, p. 309.</ref>

His 1957 book, ''Profiles in Courage'', included Sen. Edmund Ross who voted to acquit in the impeachment of Pres. [[Andrew Johnson]], which ended Republican [[Reconstruction]] reforms and paving the way for Democrat era of [[Jim Crow]] laws and the [[segregation]] era.

==Nomination==
When Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to choose the vice-presidential nominee in 1956, Kennedy sought the position but was narrowly defeated by Stevenson's two-time primary rival, liberal Senator [[Estes Kefauver]] of [[Tennessee]].

By 1960, Kennedy was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination to face [[Richard M. Nixon]], with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] in the 1928 race against [[Herbert Hoover]]. Prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines. The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a fellow liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner. Kennedy won over the party's intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston. There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs. He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issue such as abortion at that time.

Although Kennedy's religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans. With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that provided the narrow margin of victory against Richard Nixon. Apart from a few pockets of anti-popery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism largely disappeared from the voting booth after 1960, and Kennedy gets credit for bringing Catholics into the American political mainstream.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:July2.jpg|right|350px|thumb|President Kennedy reviewing a military parade.]]
Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy. Weeks after his [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|memorable inaugural address]] sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when the invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to pay ransom of $53 million U.S. dollars in food and medicine in exchange for the 1,113 prisoners and 76 other exiles being held in Cuba.<ref>http://onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr60/fcuba1961.htm</ref> Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall in East Berlin, despite Kennedy's later rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!")

===Peace Corps===
He launched the [[Peace Corps]] by executive order in 1961, putting his brother-in-law [[Sargent Shriver]] in charge. It was mainly designed to be a new weapon in the U.S. Cold War arsenal, one that could reach the people directly at the grass roots not merely their national leaders. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign promised to form the agency, saying:
:"I believe that as a counter to the flood of well trained and accomplished tacticians now helping nations with their problems that the Communists are sending out, I believe an American Peace Corps...could be trained to help these people live a life of freedom in agriculture, in handiwork, in road building, in government and other skills, young Americans who will represent the cause of freedom around the globe."<ref>Quote [http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/nov60/jfk041160_chicago02.html Nov. 4, 1960, Chicago speech online] see also T. Zane Reeves, ''The Politics of the Peace Corps & Vista'' (1988) p. 20.</ref>

The Peace Corps has been endorsed by all subsequent presidents; nearly 200,000 Americans have served helping underdeveloped nations through personal humanitarian aid. It is still in operation, albeit with a modest record of achievement.

===Ireland===
Kennedy paid a state visit to [[Ireland]] in 1963 - the first state visit of an American President to the country, which had secured independence from Britain forty years earlier. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, and was greeted by huge crowds in the cities of [[Dublin]], [[Limerick]] and [[Cork]]. He told crowds that once he had completed his term as president, he would like to become US Ambassador to Ireland, and live there.

===Cuban Missile Crisis===
see [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast United States. In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately. Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to agree to removing the older U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey; while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island. Realizing how close they had come to war, Kennedy and Khrushchev became much friendlier in public. In 1963, they signed a [[Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)|test ban treaty]] which eliminated nuclear testing above ground or in space; the treaty was further designed to hobble China and other countries trying to build their first bombs. The Cuban missile crisis reversed Kennedy's image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor.

==Domestic policy==
As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption. Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts. No matter: most all of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere. Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing. He later proposed the civil rights bill, which passed after his death. He boosted the NASA space program and pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, all which occurred after his death.

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the [[civil rights movement]] in the South, led by [[Martin Luther King]], produced dramatic confrontations for JFK with [[segregation]]ist Democrats, especially Governors [[George Wallace]] of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] allowed the [[FBI]] to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were [[Communist]]; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref><ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

In September 1962, Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP's to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Violent resistance by certain townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured. The June 1963 confrontation in Alabama was nonviolent, and although Wallace did back down, the event boosted his visibility as a leader of segregationist southern Democrats.

==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy's assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref> [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.

To deflect attention from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on US conservatives. On November 23, 1963–the day after Kennedy was killed–a memo from KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny asked the Kremlin immediately to publish an article in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries …exposing the attempt by [http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/11/20/the-new-proof-of-the-kgbs-hand-in-jfks-assassination/?singlepage=true reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, [i.e.,] the racists and ultra-right elements] guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Struggle_for_Russia.html?id=GSyaAAAACAAJ According to Boris Yeltsin], the result was an article appearing two months later in the communist-controlled British journal ''Labour Monthly'', stating, “[M]ost commentators, have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas . . . [that], with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a CIA job.” Next, Joachim Joesten, a former member of the German Communist Party, wrote ''Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?'' claiming that Oswald was “an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background.”

To further link the assassination to the CIA, the [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures produce a clumsy forgery of a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists; it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].

Joesten's book was published in the US in 1964 by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani (code-named "Nord"), who was paid $672,000 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s, according to Mitrokhin's documents. The book was positively reviewed by [[Victor Perlo]] (an American KGB agent code-named "Raid") in ''New Times'', which was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania, according to Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the East bloc. [[I.F. Stone]], a Soviet "agent of influence" code-named "Blin," followed with an article suggesting that Oswald may have been "the tool of some rightist plot." In 1966 came Mark Lane's bestseller ''Rush to Judgment'', alleging that Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing US group. Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane $2,000, and that KGB operative Genrikh Borovik was in regular contact with him. According to Pacepa, Semichastny's memo thus "generated the Kennedy conspiracy that has never stopped."

Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Reports of JFK's affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people's faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event. Donald Trump has since reaffirmed that he will release the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, despite earlier reports indicating he'll delay them.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-will-allow-release-of-classified-jfk-assassination-files/article/2638250</ref>

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]] (who held both liberal and conservative positions). Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.

===Was Kennedy a liberal or a conservative?===
Kennedy was arguably a moderate; his policies appeal to both conservatives and liberals. He apparently offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and most of his domestic policy. After his death Kennedy's legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a progressive in the same vain as his successor, Lyndon Johnson.<ref>The best studies of Kennedy's relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan'' (2001) pp 63-120 [ excerpt and text search]; Alonzo Hamby, ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Its-Challengers-F-D-R-Bush/dp/0195070305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257264863&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]. Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.</ref>

To be a liberal in the days when Kennedy was in politics, 1946–63, meant supporting the programs of the [[New Deal]], following in the footsteps of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and upholding the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Support for labor unions was important; support for civil rights had been a minor issue (and one more associated with the Republican Party). Hostility to the Catholic Church was common among liberals. In foreign policy liberals had turned away from Roosevelt's détente with the Soviets and had adopted the [[containment]] policy. Liberals rejected [[rollback]], that is efforts to remove Communists regimes from power. Verbal support for the United Nations was standard rhetoric, although in practice it meant little. The symbolically most important issue of them all for liberals was opposition to [[Joe McCarthy]] and his style of aggressive anti-Communism.

On most of these points Kennedy was largely on the conservative or moderate side. He had a base in Massachusetts with many strong liberals in academe and labor unions that had to be appeased, so he never attacked liberalism too loudly. He solved the state problem by a close alliance with the Democratic party organizations in the cities, controlled mostly by Irish politicians. JFK's campaign manager and chief confidante was his brother Bobby, a devout Catholic who was in close touch with the Catholic establishment and the local machines. JFK thus maintained very close ties to the Catholic establishment; he carefully followed the required public rituals of the Catholic church. It was a major achievement by Kennedy in 1960 to resolve the religious issue and bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life and to the top ranks of national leadership.<ref>By contrast, the only Catholic in Eisenhower's cabinet was a plumber who was Secretary of Labor.</ref>

On foreign policy he was a leading anti-Communist hawk; he won in 1960 by attacking Eisenhower's foreign policies as not aggressive enough. When elected he sent forces to invade Cuba and rollback Communism; he increased the military presence in Vietnam; he sent the Navy to confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw. Liberals have misread these episodes—saying that the Cuban invasion was really Eisenhower's idea; that in Vietnam he might have changed his mind in a second term; and that in Cuba he was liberal because he did not blow the world up.

On the liberal side, he achieved the creation of the Peace Corps. To combat Communism in Latin America he proposed a liberal program of financial and technical assistance and free-food programs, and indicated he would take a sympathetic view of revolutionary movements that have the legitimate objective of bettering the life of the hemisphere's poor and downtrodden. Kennedy explicitly exempted any such movements dominated by "external"—meaning Communist—forces, thereby shutting the door on renewed diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba. On domestic issues, a pilot program for food stamps for low-income Americans was launched in 1961. Further, Social Security benefits and food distribution to poor Americans was increased; including free school lunches. In 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required affirmative action by government contractors as to both applicants and employees. It also established the "President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity". Kennedy also established the "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" which was an advisory commission to investigate: education, income and workplace issues of women. Thereafter, in June 1963, Kennedy signed the "Equal Pay Act" which was to close the so-called wage gap based on sex.

Kennedy also endorsed the 1960 Democratic Party platform which expressed support for civil rights and universal healthcare. Although a staunch supporter of [[Keynesian]] economics, as Kennedy is often called the first president to openly endorse this economic policy, he reduced the top income tax bracket from 91% to 65%. These tax cuts are heralded by many conservatives as landmark since they, like all other tax cuts, brought economic growth. Kennedy planned deficit spending to promote growth but was hesitant to the displeasure of his more liberal advisers. Liberals argue that he'd support raising the top income tax bracket rate today.<ref>https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter</ref> Civil rights were not a major concern until 1963. As a senator, Kennedy voted mildly on civil rights legislation and supported then Senate leader Lyndon Johnson's move of having Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee which at the time was controlled by southern Democrats. On unions, he built up a reputation of strong opposition to union corruption, especially in the Teamsters; he quietly kept on good terms with [[George Meany]], the AFL-CIO leader, while avoiding [[Walter Reuther]], the leader of the liberal wing of the AFL-CIO.

Kennedy had a pro-business reputation and sponsored policies such as tax cuts and low inflation that conservative businessmen wanted. On taking office he called for a "full-fledged alliance" with business. He did get into a brush-up with the steel industry when the steelmen broke their promise to him to keep prices down; that move made Kennedy more popular among the anti-business liberals, but Kennedy never proposed major legislation that business opposed. He named Douglas Dillon, a leading Republican businessman, as his Secretary of the Treasury. On dealing with unemployment, he never proposed New-Dealish programs but instead had a package that was acceptable to conservative Republicans.<ref>House Republican Minority Leader Charles Halleck said of those proposals: "We find no great quarrel with them, but we do not find them earthshaking." ''Time'' Feb. 10, 1961</ref>

Crime was a signature issue for Kennedy, and on taking office he promised a major crackdown on organized crime, thus appealing to conservatives. On appointing Brother Bobby as Attorney General, he quipped, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." On the liberal side, Kennedy asked Congress for federal aid for school construction and more money for federally assisted housing. They did not oblige. Although liberals assert that the Vietnam War was initiated and supported by conservatives, Kennedy did increase the number of military advisers and special forces there which helped set up the full military combat commitment made by his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

Joe McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy was his biggest financial backer. Bobby Kennedy began his career as an aide to McCarthy. JFK was not close to McCarthy, but he refused to attack him publicly or to vote for his Senate censure in 1954 when McCarthy's career was collapsing. Kennedy was very friendly towards Republicans and appointed some to positions in his cabinet, namely Robert S. McNamara.

==Quotes==

* "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

* "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us." Oct 26, 1963

* "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

* "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

* {{Jfk-liberty}}

== Trivia ==

* Kennedy's alleged murder was '''Lee''' H. Oswald and his wife was Jaqueline '''Lee''' Bouvier Kennedy.
* Both presidents, [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Kennedy were elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in '46.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were elected the President of the United States in '60.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on a Friday.
* Lincoln was shot in "Ford's Theater". Kennedy was shot in a "Lincoln" car made by "Ford".

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography & Further reading==
* Ballard, Robert. ''Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)
* Balmer, Randall. ''God in the White House: A History--How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.'' (2008)
* Bryant, Nick. ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality'' (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Bystander-Kennedy-Struggle-Black-Equality/dp/0465008267/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Bugliosi, Vincent. ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President,'' (2007). Debunks dozens of conspiracy theories and concludes Oswald acted alone. [https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227416692&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
* Clarke, Thurston. ''Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America'' ISBN 0805072136 [https://www.amazon.com/Ask-Not-Inauguration-Kennedy-Changed/dp/0805072136/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search]
* Clarke, Thurston. ''JFK's Last Hundred Days'' (2013), balanced assessment
* Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003), standard scholarly biography; stress on medical issues [https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-Dynasty/dp/0316907928/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Donaldson, Gary A. ''The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960'' (2007)
* Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (2001) [1961]. JFK's World War II U.S. Navy service; [[PT-109]] and PT-59
* Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Wars-Berlin-Cuba-Vietnam/dp/0195152433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218513&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.questia.com/library/book/kennedys-wars-berlin-cuba-laos-and-vietnam-by-lawrence-freedman.jsp full text online]
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/One-Hell-Gamble-Khrushchev-1958-1964/dp/0393317900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218554&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search] adds information from Russian sources
* Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
* Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency [http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15070503 online edition]
* Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment focused on scandals
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991), balanced assessment
* Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
* Lichtenstein. Nelson, ed. ''Political Profiles: The Kennedy Years'' (1976) 621pp; very good short, analytical biographies of 500 major players
* Leuchtenburg, William E. ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama'' (2009) excellent analysis of how JFK tried to replicate FDR's appeal without his liberalism [https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-FDR-Harry-Truman-George/dp/0801487374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257738655&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), most detailed scholarly biography [https://www.amazon.com/John-Kennedy-Biography-Michael-OBrien/dp/0312281293/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]
* Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980); ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983), scholarly biography
* Paterson, Thomas G. ''Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963'' (1989) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Quest-Victory-American-1961-1963/dp/019504584X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search], Leftists approach disparages anti-Communism
* Piereson, James. ''Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Camelot-Cultural-Revolution-Assassination-Liberalism/dp/1594031886/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227415678&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search], conservative interpretation
* Pietrusza, David. ''1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies'' (2008)
* Preble, Christopher A. ''John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap'' (2004)
* Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
* Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) highly critical assessment of his character flaws by conservative historian [https://www.amazon.com/Question-Character-Life-John-Kennedy/dp/076151287X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (2002) [1965], major biography by a close advisor; Pulitzer Prize for Biography and National Book Award winner [https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Kennedy-White-House/dp/1579124496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218430&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002) [1978], scholarly biography and National Book Award winner
* Smith, Jean Edward. "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years". ''Air University Review'' (March–April 1967) [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html online]
* Sundquist, James L. ''Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1968), excellent analysis of the major political issues of the era.

===Primary sources===
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistcial tables
* Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), major biography by a close advisor

== See also ==
*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[John F. Kennedy, Jr.]]
*[[JFK Assassination Records]]

== External links ==
*[http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy]
*[http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum]
*[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnfkennedy John F. Kennedy.] The White House.
*[http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html Inaugural Address.] January 20, 1961.
*[https://librivox.org/author/2572 Works by John F. Kennedy - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]

{{USPresidents}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, John F.}}
[[Category:Democratic Party]]
[[Category:Irish-Americans]]
[[Category:American War Heroes]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
[[Category:1950s]]
[[Category:1960s]]
[[Category:Catholic Politicians]]
[[Category:Kennedy Family]]
[[Category:Religion and Politics]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
[[Category:Pro Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Moderates]]
[[Category:Patriots]]
[[Category:Best Selling Authors]]

John F. Kennedy

2019-07-26T22:46:16Z

JohnJustice: /* Civil rights */

{{Officeholder
|name=John F. Kennedy
|image=John Kennedy by Draper.jpg
|party=[[Democratic]]
|spouse=[[Jacqueline Kennedy|Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=35th
|terms=January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
|vp=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
|preceded=[[Dwight Eisenhower]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Massachusetts
|terms=January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
|preceded=Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
|former=y
|succeeded=Benjamin A. Smith
}}
{{Officeholder/representative
|state=Massachusetts
|district=11th
|terms=January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953
|preceded=James Michael Curley
|former=y
|succeeded=Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.
}}
}}
'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''', often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) was the 35th [[President of the United States of America]], serving for 1036 days in 1961-63. He was the youngest person elected president ([[Theodore Roosevelt]] being the youngest to assume the office) and one of the most glamorous and popular. His record of presidential accomplishments remains a subject of debate among historians and the public, but after his assassination he became a legendary figure in whom admirers saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.

The [[Kennedy Family]] had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]]; Kennedy was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. In Congress the [[Conservative Coalition]] blocked nearly all of his domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained strength.

The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced, Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. This inexperience caused a national humiliation in 1961 as he sent CIA-trained Cuban exiles into an ill-prepared attack on Castro's Cuba. At the [[Bay of Pigs]], all the invaders were killed or captured, and he was forced to negotiate for the survivors release giving Cuba medical and food. Kennedy's supporters blamed the fiasco on Eisenhower and the CIA, for JFK inherited the plan; but Kennedy took the blame himself. Russian leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], seeing for himself Kennedy's inexperience at a summit conference, had built the [[Berlin Wall]] as the Soviets escalated the [[Cold War]] regarding the status of Berlin, predicting that Kennedy's response would be weak. Khrushchev went too far in 1962 when he sent nuclear missiles into Cuba aimed at the U.S. mainland. For the first time since [[Pearl Harbor]]—or indeed since Washington and New Orleans were attacked in the [[War of 1812]]—the U.S. was vulnerable to a major attack by an enemy power. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a compromise whereby the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba publicly, while Kennedy secretly removed obsolete American missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviets, and also promised that America would never invade Cuba. In Vietnam, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000 to prop up the ineffective, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. Historians are uncertain whether Kennedy would have avoided the failures of [[Lyndon Johnson]] in Vietnam.

He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in his convertible limousine in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]. A [[Communist]] sympathizer, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], was allegedly the only assassin, and afterward Kennedy became a national icon and martyr. His reputation has since been dimmed by reports of his philandering. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:
{{cquote|'''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'''|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination. It released its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK, and that there was no conspiracy, though a majority of the population believed that he was part of a conspiracy.<ref>[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530131118AAxW8Rc What was the conclusion of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK?]</ref> Although, among many contradictions, "The Warren committee accepted that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor [[John Connally]]. Yet, Connally distinctly remembers two consecutive shots (as may be seen in the Zapruder film) and he had never changed his testimony." <ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm I am a patsy.]</ref>

==Career==
Educated at private schools and Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book, "Why England Slept" (1940). As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]]. In September 1941, Kennedy attempted to join the U.S. Army but was medically disqualified due the his chronic lower back problems. He then joined the U.S. Navy and attended officer training school. His older brother's death in combat during [[World War II]], combined with JFK's heroic war record as skipper of the [[PT-109]] in 1943, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946.

===Medical===
Kennedy was the sickest president since [[William Henry Harrison]], but he successfully kept his multiple maladies a secret from the press and policy makers. Besides Addison's disease, Kennedy's most serious problem was chronic back pain, which surfaced when he strained an unstable back (probably birth-related) a number of times, both in his youth and during his PT boat service during the war.<ref>Donovan (1961) pp. 106-107</ref><ref>Ballard (2002) pp. 12, 36</ref> Surgery in 1944 only worsened the condition; by 1954 Kennedy found the pain so acute that he underwent back surgery once again despite the risk of an Addisonian crisis, which nearly took his life.<ref>Dallek (2003); James N. Giglio, "Why Another Kennedy Book?" ''Reviews in American History,'' Volume 31, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 645-656 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

As a teenager, Kennedy was in and out of hospitals for chronic colitis, stomach problems, and an undisclosed blood condition, which was at first mistakenly diagnosed as leukemia. Dr. Janet Travell, a specialist in the treatment of muscular disorders, was his primary physician after 1955, but other specialists tried any number of different treatments. As president he took seven powerful prescription drugs daily including hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone acetate, and Meticorten for Addison's disease, a malfunction of the adrenal glands; and T3 for hypothyroidism. In addition he regularly took Equanil for anxiety and tension; for his gastrointestinal problems he took anti-spasmodics Lomotil and Bentyl; for weight gain a daily dose of testosterone; and Chlor-Trimeton for his allergies. White House physicians were alarmed when they learned he was seeing Dr. Max Jacobson, a New York City celebrity physician, who injected him with a concoction of amphetamines, steroids, calcium, placenta, and vitamins, a potentially dangerous combination for his chronic back pain.<ref>Dallek (2003)</ref> Historians have not identified a single policy decision that seems to have been affected by his physical condition or medical treatments; they believe he never took any illegal drugs.<ref>Giglio (2003)</ref>

==Politics==
[[File:Kennedy on the campaign trail.jpg|right|300px|thumb|John Kennedy campaigning.]]
Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK's return to the city restored the family's traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts. Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base. JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics. That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956). JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.

JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee. Kennedy largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches around the country. Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating [[Joe McCarthy]]<ref>JFK's father Joe Kennedy was a major supporter and close personal friend of McCarthy, and Robert worked for a while for McCarthy. McCarthy dated one of JFK's sisters.</ref> and launching attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father's break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family's support for McCarthy. Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate.

===Civil rights===
Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by [[Martin Luther King]] where King made his famous ''I Have A Dream''speech. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

Not until the presidential election of 1960 when John Kennedy intervened for the release of Martin Luther King, who was jailed by local Democrats two weeks before the election in Atlanta following a non-violent protest, did the majority of Blacks begin voting Democratic ''en bloc''. His brother, [[Robert Kennedy]], who managed the campaign, was furious as to the call with King, and felt it could cost them the election.
was furious as to the outreach as a number of to Black voters and sided with traditional Southern racists of the New Deal coalition.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kLspqSlNjfYC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=three+Southern+governors+told+us+that+if+Jack+supported+Jimmy+Hoffa,+Nikita+Khrushchev,+or+Martin+Luther+King,+they+would+throw+their+states+to+Nixon&source=bl&ots=9PCWxfix0P&sig=ACfU3U2rlCOdSQJLr7w1x8AhpeJODSmG6w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fD9uIngAhWMoYMKHRY0CPAQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=three%20Southern%20governors%20told%20us%20that%20if%20Jack%20supported%20Jimmy%20Hoffa%2C%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%2C%20or%20Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20they%20would%20throw%20their%20states%20to%20Nixon&f=false Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero], [[Chris Matthews]], Simon and Schuster, Nov 6, 2012, p. 309.</ref>

His 1957 book, ''Profiles in Courage'', included Sen. Edmund Ross who voted to acquit in the impeachment of Pres. [[Andrew Johnson]], which ended Republican [[Reconstruction]] reforms and paving the way for Democrat era of [[Jim Crow]] laws and the [[segregation]] era.

==Nomination==
When Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to choose the vice-presidential nominee in 1956, Kennedy sought the position but was narrowly defeated by Stevenson's two-time primary rival, liberal Senator [[Estes Kefauver]] of [[Tennessee]].

By 1960, Kennedy was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination to face [[Richard M. Nixon]], with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] in the 1928 race against [[Herbert Hoover]]. Prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines. The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a fellow liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner. Kennedy won over the party's intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston. There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs. He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issue such as abortion at that time.

Although Kennedy's religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans. With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that provided the narrow margin of victory against Richard Nixon. Apart from a few pockets of anti-popery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism largely disappeared from the voting booth after 1960, and Kennedy gets credit for bringing Catholics into the American political mainstream.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:July2.jpg|right|350px|thumb|President Kennedy reviewing a military parade.]]
Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy. Weeks after his [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|memorable inaugural address]] sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when the invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to pay ransom of $53 million U.S. dollars in food and medicine in exchange for the 1,113 prisoners and 76 other exiles being held in Cuba.<ref>http://onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr60/fcuba1961.htm</ref> Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall in East Berlin, despite Kennedy's later rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!")

===Peace Corps===
He launched the [[Peace Corps]] by executive order in 1961, putting his brother-in-law [[Sargent Shriver]] in charge. It was mainly designed to be a new weapon in the U.S. Cold War arsenal, one that could reach the people directly at the grass roots not merely their national leaders. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign promised to form the agency, saying:
:"I believe that as a counter to the flood of well trained and accomplished tacticians now helping nations with their problems that the Communists are sending out, I believe an American Peace Corps...could be trained to help these people live a life of freedom in agriculture, in handiwork, in road building, in government and other skills, young Americans who will represent the cause of freedom around the globe."<ref>Quote [http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/nov60/jfk041160_chicago02.html Nov. 4, 1960, Chicago speech online] see also T. Zane Reeves, ''The Politics of the Peace Corps & Vista'' (1988) p. 20.</ref>

The Peace Corps has been endorsed by all subsequent presidents; nearly 200,000 Americans have served helping underdeveloped nations through personal humanitarian aid. It is still in operation, albeit with a modest record of achievement.

===Ireland===
Kennedy paid a state visit to [[Ireland]] in 1963 - the first state visit of an American President to the country, which had secured independence from Britain forty years earlier. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, and was greeted by huge crowds in the cities of [[Dublin]], [[Limerick]] and [[Cork]]. He told crowds that once he had completed his term as president, he would like to become US Ambassador to Ireland, and live there.

===Cuban Missile Crisis===
see [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast United States. In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately. Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to agree to removing the older U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey; while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island. Realizing how close they had come to war, Kennedy and Khrushchev became much friendlier in public. In 1963, they signed a [[Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)|test ban treaty]] which eliminated nuclear testing above ground or in space; the treaty was further designed to hobble China and other countries trying to build their first bombs. The Cuban missile crisis reversed Kennedy's image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor.

==Domestic policy==
As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption. Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts. No matter: most all of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere. Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing. He later proposed the civil rights bill, which passed after his death. He boosted the NASA space program and pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, all which occurred after his death.

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the [[civil rights movement]] in the South, led by [[Martin Luther King]], produced dramatic confrontations for JFK with [[segregation]]ist Democrats, especially Governors [[George Wallace]] of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] allowed the [[FBI]] to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were [[Communist]]; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref><ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

In September 1962, Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP's to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Violent resistance by certain townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured. The June 1963 confrontation in Alabama was nonviolent, and although Wallace did back down, the event boosted his visibility as a leader of segregationist southern Democrats.

==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy's assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref> [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.

To deflect attention from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on US conservatives. On November 23, 1963–the day after Kennedy was killed–a memo from KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny asked the Kremlin immediately to publish an article in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries …exposing the attempt by [http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/11/20/the-new-proof-of-the-kgbs-hand-in-jfks-assassination/?singlepage=true reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, [i.e.,] the racists and ultra-right elements] guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Struggle_for_Russia.html?id=GSyaAAAACAAJ According to Boris Yeltsin], the result was an article appearing two months later in the communist-controlled British journal ''Labour Monthly'', stating, “[M]ost commentators, have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas . . . [that], with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a CIA job.” Next, Joachim Joesten, a former member of the German Communist Party, wrote ''Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?'' claiming that Oswald was “an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background.”

To further link the assassination to the CIA, the [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures produce a clumsy forgery of a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists; it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].

Joesten's book was published in the US in 1964 by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani (code-named "Nord"), who was paid $672,000 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s, according to Mitrokhin's documents. The book was positively reviewed by [[Victor Perlo]] (an American KGB agent code-named "Raid") in ''New Times'', which was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania, according to Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the East bloc. [[I.F. Stone]], a Soviet "agent of influence" code-named "Blin," followed with an article suggesting that Oswald may have been "the tool of some rightist plot." In 1966 came Mark Lane's bestseller ''Rush to Judgment'', alleging that Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing US group. Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane $2,000, and that KGB operative Genrikh Borovik was in regular contact with him. According to Pacepa, Semichastny's memo thus "generated the Kennedy conspiracy that has never stopped."

Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Reports of JFK's affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people's faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event. Donald Trump has since reaffirmed that he will release the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, despite earlier reports indicating he'll delay them.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-will-allow-release-of-classified-jfk-assassination-files/article/2638250</ref>

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]] (who held both liberal and conservative positions). Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.

===Was Kennedy a liberal or a conservative?===
Kennedy was arguably a moderate; his policies appeal to both conservatives and liberals. He apparently offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and most of his domestic policy. After his death Kennedy's legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a progressive in the same vain as his successor, Lyndon Johnson.<ref>The best studies of Kennedy's relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan'' (2001) pp 63-120 [ excerpt and text search]; Alonzo Hamby, ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Its-Challengers-F-D-R-Bush/dp/0195070305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257264863&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]. Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.</ref>

To be a liberal in the days when Kennedy was in politics, 1946–63, meant supporting the programs of the [[New Deal]], following in the footsteps of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and upholding the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Support for labor unions was important; support for civil rights had been a minor issue (and one more associated with the Republican Party). Hostility to the Catholic Church was common among liberals. In foreign policy liberals had turned away from Roosevelt's détente with the Soviets and had adopted the [[containment]] policy. Liberals rejected [[rollback]], that is efforts to remove Communists regimes from power. Verbal support for the United Nations was standard rhetoric, although in practice it meant little. The symbolically most important issue of them all for liberals was opposition to [[Joe McCarthy]] and his style of aggressive anti-Communism.

On most of these points Kennedy was largely on the conservative or moderate side. He had a base in Massachusetts with many strong liberals in academe and labor unions that had to be appeased, so he never attacked liberalism too loudly. He solved the state problem by a close alliance with the Democratic party organizations in the cities, controlled mostly by Irish politicians. JFK's campaign manager and chief confidante was his brother Bobby, a devout Catholic who was in close touch with the Catholic establishment and the local machines. JFK thus maintained very close ties to the Catholic establishment; he carefully followed the required public rituals of the Catholic church. It was a major achievement by Kennedy in 1960 to resolve the religious issue and bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life and to the top ranks of national leadership.<ref>By contrast, the only Catholic in Eisenhower's cabinet was a plumber who was Secretary of Labor.</ref>

On foreign policy he was a leading anti-Communist hawk; he won in 1960 by attacking Eisenhower's foreign policies as not aggressive enough. When elected he sent forces to invade Cuba and rollback Communism; he increased the military presence in Vietnam; he sent the Navy to confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw. Liberals have misread these episodes—saying that the Cuban invasion was really Eisenhower's idea; that in Vietnam he might have changed his mind in a second term; and that in Cuba he was liberal because he did not blow the world up.

On the liberal side, he achieved the creation of the Peace Corps. To combat Communism in Latin America he proposed a liberal program of financial and technical assistance and free-food programs, and indicated he would take a sympathetic view of revolutionary movements that have the legitimate objective of bettering the life of the hemisphere's poor and downtrodden. Kennedy explicitly exempted any such movements dominated by "external"—meaning Communist—forces, thereby shutting the door on renewed diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba. On domestic issues, a pilot program for food stamps for low-income Americans was launched in 1961. Further, Social Security benefits and food distribution to poor Americans was increased; including free school lunches. In 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required affirmative action by government contractors as to both applicants and employees. It also established the "President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity". Kennedy also established the "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" which was an advisory commission to investigate: education, income and workplace issues of women. Thereafter, in June 1963, Kennedy signed the "Equal Pay Act" which was to close the so-called wage gap based on sex.

Kennedy also endorsed the 1960 Democratic Party platform which expressed support for civil rights and universal healthcare. Although a staunch supporter of [[Keynesian]] economics, as Kennedy is often called the first president to openly endorse this economic policy, he reduced the top income tax bracket from 91% to 65%. These tax cuts are heralded by many conservatives as landmark since they, like all other tax cuts, brought economic growth. Kennedy planned deficit spending to promote growth but was hesitant to the displeasure of his more liberal advisers. Liberals argue that he'd support raising the top income tax bracket rate today.<ref>https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter</ref> Civil rights were not a major concern until 1963. As a senator, Kennedy voted mildly on civil rights legislation and supported then Senate leader Lyndon Johnson's move of having Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee which at the time was controlled by southern Democrats. On unions, he built up a reputation of strong opposition to union corruption, especially in the Teamsters; he quietly kept on good terms with [[George Meany]], the AFL-CIO leader, while avoiding [[Walter Reuther]], the leader of the liberal wing of the AFL-CIO.

Kennedy had a pro-business reputation and sponsored policies such as tax cuts and low inflation that conservative businessmen wanted. On taking office he called for a "full-fledged alliance" with business. He did get into a brush-up with the steel industry when the steelmen broke their promise to him to keep prices down; that move made Kennedy more popular among the anti-business liberals, but Kennedy never proposed major legislation that business opposed. He named Douglas Dillon, a leading Republican businessman, as his Secretary of the Treasury. On dealing with unemployment, he never proposed New-Dealish programs but instead had a package that was acceptable to conservative Republicans.<ref>House Republican Minority Leader Charles Halleck said of those proposals: "We find no great quarrel with them, but we do not find them earthshaking." ''Time'' Feb. 10, 1961</ref>

Crime was a signature issue for Kennedy, and on taking office he promised a major crackdown on organized crime, thus appealing to conservatives. On appointing Brother Bobby as Attorney General, he quipped, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." On the liberal side, Kennedy asked Congress for federal aid for school construction and more money for federally assisted housing. They did not oblige. Although liberals assert that the Vietnam War was initiated and supported by conservatives, Kennedy did increase the number of military advisers and special forces there which helped set up the full military combat commitment made by his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

Joe McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy was his biggest financial backer. Bobby Kennedy began his career as an aide to McCarthy. JFK was not close to McCarthy, but he refused to attack him publicly or to vote for his Senate censure in 1954 when McCarthy's career was collapsing. Kennedy was very friendly towards Republicans and appointed some to positions in his cabinet, namely Robert S. McNamara.

==Quotes==

* "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

* "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us." Oct 26, 1963

* "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

* "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

* {{Jfk-liberty}}

== Trivia ==

* Kennedy's alleged murder was '''Lee''' H. Oswald and his wife was Jaqueline '''Lee''' Bouvier Kennedy.
* Both presidents, [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Kennedy were elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in '46.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were elected the President of the United States in '60.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on a Friday.
* Lincoln was shot in "Ford's Theater". Kennedy was shot in a "Lincoln" car made by "Ford".

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography & Further reading==
* Ballard, Robert. ''Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)
* Balmer, Randall. ''God in the White House: A History--How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.'' (2008)
* Bryant, Nick. ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality'' (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Bystander-Kennedy-Struggle-Black-Equality/dp/0465008267/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Bugliosi, Vincent. ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President,'' (2007). Debunks dozens of conspiracy theories and concludes Oswald acted alone. [https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227416692&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
* Clarke, Thurston. ''Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America'' ISBN 0805072136 [https://www.amazon.com/Ask-Not-Inauguration-Kennedy-Changed/dp/0805072136/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search]
* Clarke, Thurston. ''JFK's Last Hundred Days'' (2013), balanced assessment
* Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003), standard scholarly biography; stress on medical issues [https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-Dynasty/dp/0316907928/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Donaldson, Gary A. ''The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960'' (2007)
* Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (2001) [1961]. JFK's World War II U.S. Navy service; [[PT-109]] and PT-59
* Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Wars-Berlin-Cuba-Vietnam/dp/0195152433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218513&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.questia.com/library/book/kennedys-wars-berlin-cuba-laos-and-vietnam-by-lawrence-freedman.jsp full text online]
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/One-Hell-Gamble-Khrushchev-1958-1964/dp/0393317900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218554&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search] adds information from Russian sources
* Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
* Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency [http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15070503 online edition]
* Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment focused on scandals
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991), balanced assessment
* Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
* Lichtenstein. Nelson, ed. ''Political Profiles: The Kennedy Years'' (1976) 621pp; very good short, analytical biographies of 500 major players
* Leuchtenburg, William E. ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama'' (2009) excellent analysis of how JFK tried to replicate FDR's appeal without his liberalism [https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-FDR-Harry-Truman-George/dp/0801487374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257738655&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), most detailed scholarly biography [https://www.amazon.com/John-Kennedy-Biography-Michael-OBrien/dp/0312281293/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]
* Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980); ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983), scholarly biography
* Paterson, Thomas G. ''Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963'' (1989) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Quest-Victory-American-1961-1963/dp/019504584X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search], Leftists approach disparages anti-Communism
* Piereson, James. ''Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Camelot-Cultural-Revolution-Assassination-Liberalism/dp/1594031886/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227415678&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search], conservative interpretation
* Pietrusza, David. ''1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies'' (2008)
* Preble, Christopher A. ''John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap'' (2004)
* Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
* Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) highly critical assessment of his character flaws by conservative historian [https://www.amazon.com/Question-Character-Life-John-Kennedy/dp/076151287X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (2002) [1965], major biography by a close advisor; Pulitzer Prize for Biography and National Book Award winner [https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Kennedy-White-House/dp/1579124496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218430&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002) [1978], scholarly biography and National Book Award winner
* Smith, Jean Edward. "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years". ''Air University Review'' (March–April 1967) [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html online]
* Sundquist, James L. ''Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1968), excellent analysis of the major political issues of the era.

===Primary sources===
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistcial tables
* Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), major biography by a close advisor

== See also ==
*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[John F. Kennedy, Jr.]]
*[[JFK Assassination Records]]

== External links ==
*[http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy]
*[http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum]
*[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnfkennedy John F. Kennedy.] The White House.
*[http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html Inaugural Address.] January 20, 1961.
*[https://librivox.org/author/2572 Works by John F. Kennedy - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]

{{USPresidents}}
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John F. Kennedy

2019-07-26T22:45:09Z

JohnJustice: /* Civil rights */ copy edit

{{Officeholder
|name=John F. Kennedy
|image=John Kennedy by Draper.jpg
|party=[[Democratic]]
|spouse=[[Jacqueline Kennedy|Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]
|offices=
{{Officeholder/president
|country=the United States
|number=35th
|terms=January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
|vp=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
|preceded=[[Dwight Eisenhower]]
|former=y
|succeeded=[[Lyndon Johnson]]
}}
{{Officeholder/senator
|state=Massachusetts
|terms=January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
|preceded=Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
|former=y
|succeeded=Benjamin A. Smith
}}
{{Officeholder/representative
|state=Massachusetts
|district=11th
|terms=January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953
|preceded=James Michael Curley
|former=y
|succeeded=Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.
}}
}}
'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''', often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) was the 35th [[President of the United States of America]], serving for 1036 days in 1961-63. He was the youngest person elected president ([[Theodore Roosevelt]] being the youngest to assume the office) and one of the most glamorous and popular. His record of presidential accomplishments remains a subject of debate among historians and the public, but after his assassination he became a legendary figure in whom admirers saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.

The [[Kennedy Family]] had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]]; Kennedy was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. In Congress the [[Conservative Coalition]] blocked nearly all of his domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained strength.

The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced, Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. This inexperience caused a national humiliation in 1961 as he sent CIA-trained Cuban exiles into an ill-prepared attack on Castro's Cuba. At the [[Bay of Pigs]], all the invaders were killed or captured, and he was forced to negotiate for the survivors release giving Cuba medical and food. Kennedy's supporters blamed the fiasco on Eisenhower and the CIA, for JFK inherited the plan; but Kennedy took the blame himself. Russian leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], seeing for himself Kennedy's inexperience at a summit conference, had built the [[Berlin Wall]] as the Soviets escalated the [[Cold War]] regarding the status of Berlin, predicting that Kennedy's response would be weak. Khrushchev went too far in 1962 when he sent nuclear missiles into Cuba aimed at the U.S. mainland. For the first time since [[Pearl Harbor]]—or indeed since Washington and New Orleans were attacked in the [[War of 1812]]—the U.S. was vulnerable to a major attack by an enemy power. Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a compromise whereby the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba publicly, while Kennedy secretly removed obsolete American missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviets, and also promised that America would never invade Cuba. In Vietnam, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000 to prop up the ineffective, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. Historians are uncertain whether Kennedy would have avoided the failures of [[Lyndon Johnson]] in Vietnam.

He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in his convertible limousine in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]. A [[Communist]] sympathizer, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], was allegedly the only assassin, and afterward Kennedy became a national icon and martyr. His reputation has since been dimmed by reports of his philandering. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:
{{cquote|'''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'''|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination. It released its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK, and that there was no conspiracy, though a majority of the population believed that he was part of a conspiracy.<ref>[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530131118AAxW8Rc What was the conclusion of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK?]</ref> Although, among many contradictions, "The Warren committee accepted that the same bullet killed Kennedy and gravely wounded Governor [[John Connally]]. Yet, Connally distinctly remembers two consecutive shots (as may be seen in the Zapruder film) and he had never changed his testimony." <ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm I am a patsy.]</ref>

==Career==
Educated at private schools and Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book, "Why England Slept" (1940). As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]]. In September 1941, Kennedy attempted to join the U.S. Army but was medically disqualified due the his chronic lower back problems. He then joined the U.S. Navy and attended officer training school. His older brother's death in combat during [[World War II]], combined with JFK's heroic war record as skipper of the [[PT-109]] in 1943, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946.

===Medical===
Kennedy was the sickest president since [[William Henry Harrison]], but he successfully kept his multiple maladies a secret from the press and policy makers. Besides Addison's disease, Kennedy's most serious problem was chronic back pain, which surfaced when he strained an unstable back (probably birth-related) a number of times, both in his youth and during his PT boat service during the war.<ref>Donovan (1961) pp. 106-107</ref><ref>Ballard (2002) pp. 12, 36</ref> Surgery in 1944 only worsened the condition; by 1954 Kennedy found the pain so acute that he underwent back surgery once again despite the risk of an Addisonian crisis, which nearly took his life.<ref>Dallek (2003); James N. Giglio, "Why Another Kennedy Book?" ''Reviews in American History,'' Volume 31, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 645-656 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

As a teenager, Kennedy was in and out of hospitals for chronic colitis, stomach problems, and an undisclosed blood condition, which was at first mistakenly diagnosed as leukemia. Dr. Janet Travell, a specialist in the treatment of muscular disorders, was his primary physician after 1955, but other specialists tried any number of different treatments. As president he took seven powerful prescription drugs daily including hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone acetate, and Meticorten for Addison's disease, a malfunction of the adrenal glands; and T3 for hypothyroidism. In addition he regularly took Equanil for anxiety and tension; for his gastrointestinal problems he took anti-spasmodics Lomotil and Bentyl; for weight gain a daily dose of testosterone; and Chlor-Trimeton for his allergies. White House physicians were alarmed when they learned he was seeing Dr. Max Jacobson, a New York City celebrity physician, who injected him with a concoction of amphetamines, steroids, calcium, placenta, and vitamins, a potentially dangerous combination for his chronic back pain.<ref>Dallek (2003)</ref> Historians have not identified a single policy decision that seems to have been affected by his physical condition or medical treatments; they believe he never took any illegal drugs.<ref>Giglio (2003)</ref>

==Politics==
[[File:Kennedy on the campaign trail.jpg|right|300px|thumb|John Kennedy campaigning.]]
Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK's return to the city restored the family's traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts. Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base. JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics. That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956). JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.

JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee. Kennedy largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches around the country. Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating [[Joe McCarthy]]<ref>JFK's father Joe Kennedy was a major supporter and close personal friend of McCarthy, and Robert worked for a while for McCarthy. McCarthy dated one of JFK's sisters.</ref> and launching attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]]. Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father's break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family's support for McCarthy. Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate.

===Civil rights===
Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by [[Martin Luther King]] where King made his famous ''I Have A Dream''speech. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

Not until the presidential election of 1960 when John Kennedy intervened for the release of Martin Luther King, who was jailed by local Democrats two weeks before the election in Atlanta following a non-violent protest, did the majority of Blacks begin voting Democratic ''en bloc''. His brother, [[Robert Kennedy]], who managed the campaign, was furious as to the call with King, and felt it could cost them the election.
was furious as to the outreach as a number of to Black voters and sided with traditional Southern racists of the New Deal coalition.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kLspqSlNjfYC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=three+Southern+governors+told+us+that+if+Jack+supported+Jimmy+Hoffa,+Nikita+Khrushchev,+or+Martin+Luther+King,+they+would+throw+their+states+to+Nixon&source=bl&ots=9PCWxfix0P&sig=ACfU3U2rlCOdSQJLr7w1x8AhpeJODSmG6w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fD9uIngAhWMoYMKHRY0CPAQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=three%20Southern%20governors%20told%20us%20that%20if%20Jack%20supported%20Jimmy%20Hoffa%2C%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%2C%20or%20Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20they%20would%20throw%20their%20states%20to%20Nixon&f=false Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero], [[Chris Matthews]], Simon and Schuster, Nov 6, 2012, p. 309.</ref>

His 1957 book, ''Profiles in Courage'', included Sen. Edmund Ross who voted to acquit the impeachment of Pres. [[Andrew Johnson]], which ended Republican [[Reconstruction]] reforms and paving the way for Democrat era of [[Jim Crow]] laws and the [[segregation]] era.

==Nomination==
When Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to choose the vice-presidential nominee in 1956, Kennedy sought the position but was narrowly defeated by Stevenson's two-time primary rival, liberal Senator [[Estes Kefauver]] of [[Tennessee]].

By 1960, Kennedy was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination to face [[Richard M. Nixon]], with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] in the 1928 race against [[Herbert Hoover]]. Prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines. The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a fellow liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner. Kennedy won over the party's intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston. There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs. He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issue such as abortion at that time.

Although Kennedy's religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans. With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that provided the narrow margin of victory against Richard Nixon. Apart from a few pockets of anti-popery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism largely disappeared from the voting booth after 1960, and Kennedy gets credit for bringing Catholics into the American political mainstream.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:July2.jpg|right|350px|thumb|President Kennedy reviewing a military parade.]]
Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy. Weeks after his [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|memorable inaugural address]] sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when the invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to pay ransom of $53 million U.S. dollars in food and medicine in exchange for the 1,113 prisoners and 76 other exiles being held in Cuba.<ref>http://onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr60/fcuba1961.htm</ref> Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall in East Berlin, despite Kennedy's later rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!")

===Peace Corps===
He launched the [[Peace Corps]] by executive order in 1961, putting his brother-in-law [[Sargent Shriver]] in charge. It was mainly designed to be a new weapon in the U.S. Cold War arsenal, one that could reach the people directly at the grass roots not merely their national leaders. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign promised to form the agency, saying:
:"I believe that as a counter to the flood of well trained and accomplished tacticians now helping nations with their problems that the Communists are sending out, I believe an American Peace Corps...could be trained to help these people live a life of freedom in agriculture, in handiwork, in road building, in government and other skills, young Americans who will represent the cause of freedom around the globe."<ref>Quote [http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/nov60/jfk041160_chicago02.html Nov. 4, 1960, Chicago speech online] see also T. Zane Reeves, ''The Politics of the Peace Corps & Vista'' (1988) p. 20.</ref>

The Peace Corps has been endorsed by all subsequent presidents; nearly 200,000 Americans have served helping underdeveloped nations through personal humanitarian aid. It is still in operation, albeit with a modest record of achievement.

===Ireland===
Kennedy paid a state visit to [[Ireland]] in 1963 - the first state visit of an American President to the country, which had secured independence from Britain forty years earlier. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, and was greeted by huge crowds in the cities of [[Dublin]], [[Limerick]] and [[Cork]]. He told crowds that once he had completed his term as president, he would like to become US Ambassador to Ireland, and live there.

===Cuban Missile Crisis===
see [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast United States. In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately. Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to agree to removing the older U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey; while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island. Realizing how close they had come to war, Kennedy and Khrushchev became much friendlier in public. In 1963, they signed a [[Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)|test ban treaty]] which eliminated nuclear testing above ground or in space; the treaty was further designed to hobble China and other countries trying to build their first bombs. The Cuban missile crisis reversed Kennedy's image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor.

==Domestic policy==
As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption. Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts. No matter: most all of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere. Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats. Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing. He later proposed the civil rights bill, which passed after his death. He boosted the NASA space program and pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, all which occurred after his death.

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the [[civil rights movement]] in the South, led by [[Martin Luther King]], produced dramatic confrontations for JFK with [[segregation]]ist Democrats, especially Governors [[George Wallace]] of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] allowed the [[FBI]] to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were [[Communist]]; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref><ref>Herst, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edger''. pp. 372–74</ref>

In September 1962, Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP's to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Violent resistance by certain townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured. The June 1963 confrontation in Alabama was nonviolent, and although Wallace did back down, the event boosted his visibility as a leader of segregationist southern Democrats.

==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy's assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref> [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.

To deflect attention from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated a disinformation campaign to blame the assassination on US conservatives. On November 23, 1963–the day after Kennedy was killed–a memo from KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny asked the Kremlin immediately to publish an article in a “progressive paper in one of the Western countries …exposing the attempt by [http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/11/20/the-new-proof-of-the-kgbs-hand-in-jfks-assassination/?singlepage=true reactionary circles in the USA to remove the responsibility for the murder of Kennedy from the real criminals, [i.e.,] the racists and ultra-right elements] guilty of the spread and growth of violence and terror in the United States.” [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Struggle_for_Russia.html?id=GSyaAAAACAAJ According to Boris Yeltsin], the result was an article appearing two months later in the communist-controlled British journal ''Labour Monthly'', stating, “[M]ost commentators, have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas . . . [that], with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a CIA job.” Next, Joachim Joesten, a former member of the German Communist Party, wrote ''Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?'' claiming that Oswald was “an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background.”

To further link the assassination to the CIA, the [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures produce a clumsy forgery of a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists; it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].

Joesten's book was published in the US in 1964 by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani (code-named "Nord"), who was paid $672,000 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s, according to Mitrokhin's documents. The book was positively reviewed by [[Victor Perlo]] (an American KGB agent code-named "Raid") in ''New Times'', which was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania, according to Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the East bloc. [[I.F. Stone]], a Soviet "agent of influence" code-named "Blin," followed with an article suggesting that Oswald may have been "the tool of some rightist plot." In 1966 came Mark Lane's bestseller ''Rush to Judgment'', alleging that Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing US group. Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane $2,000, and that KGB operative Genrikh Borovik was in regular contact with him. According to Pacepa, Semichastny's memo thus "generated the Kennedy conspiracy that has never stopped."

Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Reports of JFK's affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people's faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event. Donald Trump has since reaffirmed that he will release the documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, despite earlier reports indicating he'll delay them.<ref>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-will-allow-release-of-classified-jfk-assassination-files/article/2638250</ref>

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]] (who held both liberal and conservative positions). Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.

===Was Kennedy a liberal or a conservative?===
Kennedy was arguably a moderate; his policies appeal to both conservatives and liberals. He apparently offered symbols for the liberals while following a conservative course in foreign and most of his domestic policy. After his death Kennedy's legacy was picked up by liberals, and there is a vague notion to the effect that Kennedy was a progressive in the same vain as his successor, Lyndon Johnson.<ref>The best studies of Kennedy's relations with liberalism are William E. Leuchtenburg, ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan'' (2001) pp 63-120 [ excerpt and text search]; Alonzo Hamby, ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Its-Challengers-F-D-R-Bush/dp/0195070305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257264863&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]. Leuchtenburg is a liberal and Hamby is a conservative; both are excellent historians.</ref>

To be a liberal in the days when Kennedy was in politics, 1946–63, meant supporting the programs of the [[New Deal]], following in the footsteps of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and upholding the [[New Deal Coalition]]. Support for labor unions was important; support for civil rights had been a minor issue (and one more associated with the Republican Party). Hostility to the Catholic Church was common among liberals. In foreign policy liberals had turned away from Roosevelt's détente with the Soviets and had adopted the [[containment]] policy. Liberals rejected [[rollback]], that is efforts to remove Communists regimes from power. Verbal support for the United Nations was standard rhetoric, although in practice it meant little. The symbolically most important issue of them all for liberals was opposition to [[Joe McCarthy]] and his style of aggressive anti-Communism.

On most of these points Kennedy was largely on the conservative or moderate side. He had a base in Massachusetts with many strong liberals in academe and labor unions that had to be appeased, so he never attacked liberalism too loudly. He solved the state problem by a close alliance with the Democratic party organizations in the cities, controlled mostly by Irish politicians. JFK's campaign manager and chief confidante was his brother Bobby, a devout Catholic who was in close touch with the Catholic establishment and the local machines. JFK thus maintained very close ties to the Catholic establishment; he carefully followed the required public rituals of the Catholic church. It was a major achievement by Kennedy in 1960 to resolve the religious issue and bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life and to the top ranks of national leadership.<ref>By contrast, the only Catholic in Eisenhower's cabinet was a plumber who was Secretary of Labor.</ref>

On foreign policy he was a leading anti-Communist hawk; he won in 1960 by attacking Eisenhower's foreign policies as not aggressive enough. When elected he sent forces to invade Cuba and rollback Communism; he increased the military presence in Vietnam; he sent the Navy to confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw. Liberals have misread these episodes—saying that the Cuban invasion was really Eisenhower's idea; that in Vietnam he might have changed his mind in a second term; and that in Cuba he was liberal because he did not blow the world up.

On the liberal side, he achieved the creation of the Peace Corps. To combat Communism in Latin America he proposed a liberal program of financial and technical assistance and free-food programs, and indicated he would take a sympathetic view of revolutionary movements that have the legitimate objective of bettering the life of the hemisphere's poor and downtrodden. Kennedy explicitly exempted any such movements dominated by "external"—meaning Communist—forces, thereby shutting the door on renewed diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba. On domestic issues, a pilot program for food stamps for low-income Americans was launched in 1961. Further, Social Security benefits and food distribution to poor Americans was increased; including free school lunches. In 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required affirmative action by government contractors as to both applicants and employees. It also established the "President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity". Kennedy also established the "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" which was an advisory commission to investigate: education, income and workplace issues of women. Thereafter, in June 1963, Kennedy signed the "Equal Pay Act" which was to close the so-called wage gap based on sex.

Kennedy also endorsed the 1960 Democratic Party platform which expressed support for civil rights and universal healthcare. Although a staunch supporter of [[Keynesian]] economics, as Kennedy is often called the first president to openly endorse this economic policy, he reduced the top income tax bracket from 91% to 65%. These tax cuts are heralded by many conservatives as landmark since they, like all other tax cuts, brought economic growth. Kennedy planned deficit spending to promote growth but was hesitant to the displeasure of his more liberal advisers. Liberals argue that he'd support raising the top income tax bracket rate today.<ref>https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter</ref> Civil rights were not a major concern until 1963. As a senator, Kennedy voted mildly on civil rights legislation and supported then Senate leader Lyndon Johnson's move of having Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee which at the time was controlled by southern Democrats. On unions, he built up a reputation of strong opposition to union corruption, especially in the Teamsters; he quietly kept on good terms with [[George Meany]], the AFL-CIO leader, while avoiding [[Walter Reuther]], the leader of the liberal wing of the AFL-CIO.

Kennedy had a pro-business reputation and sponsored policies such as tax cuts and low inflation that conservative businessmen wanted. On taking office he called for a "full-fledged alliance" with business. He did get into a brush-up with the steel industry when the steelmen broke their promise to him to keep prices down; that move made Kennedy more popular among the anti-business liberals, but Kennedy never proposed major legislation that business opposed. He named Douglas Dillon, a leading Republican businessman, as his Secretary of the Treasury. On dealing with unemployment, he never proposed New-Dealish programs but instead had a package that was acceptable to conservative Republicans.<ref>House Republican Minority Leader Charles Halleck said of those proposals: "We find no great quarrel with them, but we do not find them earthshaking." ''Time'' Feb. 10, 1961</ref>

Crime was a signature issue for Kennedy, and on taking office he promised a major crackdown on organized crime, thus appealing to conservatives. On appointing Brother Bobby as Attorney General, he quipped, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." On the liberal side, Kennedy asked Congress for federal aid for school construction and more money for federally assisted housing. They did not oblige. Although liberals assert that the Vietnam War was initiated and supported by conservatives, Kennedy did increase the number of military advisers and special forces there which helped set up the full military combat commitment made by his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

Joe McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy was his biggest financial backer. Bobby Kennedy began his career as an aide to McCarthy. JFK was not close to McCarthy, but he refused to attack him publicly or to vote for his Senate censure in 1954 when McCarthy's career was collapsing. Kennedy was very friendly towards Republicans and appointed some to positions in his cabinet, namely Robert S. McNamara.

==Quotes==

* "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

* "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us." Oct 26, 1963

* "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

* "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." Speech in Indianapolis, April 12, 1959

* {{Jfk-liberty}}

== Trivia ==

* Kennedy's alleged murder was '''Lee''' H. Oswald and his wife was Jaqueline '''Lee''' Bouvier Kennedy.
* Both presidents, [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Kennedy were elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in '46.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were elected the President of the United States in '60.
* Both presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on a Friday.
* Lincoln was shot in "Ford's Theater". Kennedy was shot in a "Lincoln" car made by "Ford".

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography & Further reading==
* Ballard, Robert. ''Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)
* Balmer, Randall. ''God in the White House: A History--How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.'' (2008)
* Bryant, Nick. ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality'' (2006) [https://www.amazon.com/Bystander-Kennedy-Struggle-Black-Equality/dp/0465008267/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-9 excerpt and text search]
* Bugliosi, Vincent. ''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President,'' (2007). Debunks dozens of conspiracy theories and concludes Oswald acted alone. [https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227416692&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
* Clarke, Thurston. ''Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America'' ISBN 0805072136 [https://www.amazon.com/Ask-Not-Inauguration-Kennedy-Changed/dp/0805072136/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search]
* Clarke, Thurston. ''JFK's Last Hundred Days'' (2013), balanced assessment
* Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003), standard scholarly biography; stress on medical issues [https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-Dynasty/dp/0316907928/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Donaldson, Gary A. ''The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960'' (2007)
* Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (2001) [1961]. JFK's World War II U.S. Navy service; [[PT-109]] and PT-59
* Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Wars-Berlin-Cuba-Vietnam/dp/0195152433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218513&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]; [http://www.questia.com/library/book/kennedys-wars-berlin-cuba-laos-and-vietnam-by-lawrence-freedman.jsp full text online]
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997) [https://www.amazon.com/One-Hell-Gamble-Khrushchev-1958-1964/dp/0393317900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218554&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search] adds information from Russian sources
* Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
* Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency [http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15070503 online edition]
* Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment focused on scandals
* Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991), balanced assessment
* Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
* Lichtenstein. Nelson, ed. ''Political Profiles: The Kennedy Years'' (1976) 621pp; very good short, analytical biographies of 500 major players
* Leuchtenburg, William E. ''In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama'' (2009) excellent analysis of how JFK tried to replicate FDR's appeal without his liberalism [https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-FDR-Harry-Truman-George/dp/0801487374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257738655&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), most detailed scholarly biography [https://www.amazon.com/John-Kennedy-Biography-Michael-OBrien/dp/0312281293/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]
* Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980); ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983), scholarly biography
* Paterson, Thomas G. ''Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963'' (1989) [https://www.amazon.com/Kennedys-Quest-Victory-American-1961-1963/dp/019504584X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search], Leftists approach disparages anti-Communism
* Piereson, James. ''Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Camelot-Cultural-Revolution-Assassination-Liberalism/dp/1594031886/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227415678&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search], conservative interpretation
* Pietrusza, David. ''1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies'' (2008)
* Preble, Christopher A. ''John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap'' (2004)
* Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
* Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) highly critical assessment of his character flaws by conservative historian [https://www.amazon.com/Question-Character-Life-John-Kennedy/dp/076151287X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218173&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (2002) [1965], major biography by a close advisor; Pulitzer Prize for Biography and National Book Award winner [https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Kennedy-White-House/dp/1579124496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195218430&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002) [1978], scholarly biography and National Book Award winner
* Smith, Jean Edward. "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years". ''Air University Review'' (March–April 1967) [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html online]
* Sundquist, James L. ''Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1968), excellent analysis of the major political issues of the era.

===Primary sources===
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistcial tables
* Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), major biography by a close advisor

== See also ==
*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[John F. Kennedy, Jr.]]
*[[JFK Assassination Records]]

== External links ==
*[http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy]
*[http://www.jfklibrary.org/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum]
*[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnfkennedy John F. Kennedy.] The White House.
*[http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html Inaugural Address.] January 20, 1961.
*[https://librivox.org/author/2572 Works by John F. Kennedy - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]

{{USPresidents}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, John F.}}
[[Category:Democratic Party]]
[[Category:Irish-Americans]]
[[Category:American War Heroes]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
[[Category:1950s]]
[[Category:1960s]]
[[Category:Catholic Politicians]]
[[Category:Kennedy Family]]
[[Category:Religion and Politics]]
[[Category:United States Veterans]]
[[Category:Pro Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Moderates]]
[[Category:Patriots]]
[[Category:Best Selling Authors]]

Sturmabteilung

2019-07-26T22:32:35Z

JohnJustice: /* Socialist revolution */ grammar

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops," (''Ordnertruppen'') and were also given several name changes, including ''Sportabteilung''/''Turn -und sportabteilung'' (German: "Sports Division"/"Gymnastics and Sports Division"). Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merged with another group in 1919 to form the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">Toland, John (1976). Adolf Hitler. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-03724-4. p. 220</ref>

===Socialist revolution===
The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, ''Freikorps'' (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause, i.e. [[socialist]] [[revolution]] and [[class warfare]] against the [[bourgeois]] [[capitalist]] commercial interests perceived to be dominated by [[Jew]]s; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents and Jewish shops, and intimidate voters during elections. While soldiers and workers endured many hardships during the war, in the immediate aftermath commercial interests and tradesmen were perceived to have [[profit]]ed from the collapse of the [[Imperial German regime]] and had not made the same sacrifices during the war as did the workers and soldiers.

One particular political party that the SA frequently assaulted was the [[Moscow]]-controlled German Communist Party, which contrary to contemporary telling of history had nothing to do with the latter party adhering to Socialism, but instead dealt with the latter party affiliation with [[Communist International]] instead of Germany. One inspiration for the SA brownshirts, in their use of terror to force their views on the masses came from the American [[Democratic party]]-run terror organization, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] during the post-Civil War period. Hitler used the SA unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

The SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and Hitler had created a small separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal bodyguard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

===Reichstag fire===
To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxiliary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for Nazi branch organizations, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

===Enabling Act===
On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

===Night of the Long Knives===
Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't the military commander/official in Nazi Germany, nor would the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]].

After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he didn't get the SA under control, they would put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning to overthrow the government. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm was planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort. This after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they had since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and Heydrich. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst. Rohm himself would ultimately end up gunned down while in Dachau after the latter refused to commit suicide via revolver due to arrogantly demanding that Hitler deliver the final blow, with the camp commander, Eicke, angrily telling the former SA leader it was too late when he attempted to insist in what were allegedly his final words that Hitler was the fuhrer.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140111073914/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and [[Antifa]] during widespread [[Leftwing violence in the Trump era]].<ref>https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Sturmabteilung

2019-07-26T22:31:00Z

JohnJustice: /* Socialist revolution */

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops," (''Ordnertruppen'') and were also given several name changes, including ''Sportabteilung''/''Turn -und sportabteilung'' (German: "Sports Division"/"Gymnastics and Sports Division"). Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merged with another group in 1919 to form the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">Toland, John (1976). Adolf Hitler. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-03724-4. p. 220</ref>

===Socialist revolution===
The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, ''Freikorps'' (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause, i.e. [[socialist]] [[revolution]] and [[class warfare]] against the [[bourgeois]] [[capitalist]] commercial interests perceived to be dominated by [[Jew]]s; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents and Jewish shops, and intimidate voters during elections. While soldiers and workers endured many hardships during the war, in the immediate aftermath commercial interests and tradesmen were perceived to have [[profit]]ed from the collapse of the [[Imperial German regime]] and had not made the same sacrifices during the war that workers and soldiers had.

One particular political party that the SA frequently assaulted was the [[Moscow]]-controlled German Communist Party, which contrary to contemporary telling of history had nothing to do with the latter party adhering to Socialism, but instead dealt with the latter party affiliation with [[Communist International]] instead of Germany. One inspiration for the SA brownshirts, in their use of terror to force their views on the masses came from the American [[Democratic party]]-run terror organization, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] during the post-Civil War period. Hitler used the SA unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

The SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and Hitler had created a small separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal bodyguard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

===Reichstag fire===
To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxiliary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for Nazi branch organizations, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

===Enabling Act===
On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

===Night of the Long Knives===
Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't the military commander/official in Nazi Germany, nor would the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]].

After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he didn't get the SA under control, they would put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning to overthrow the government. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm was planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort. This after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they had since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and Heydrich. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst. Rohm himself would ultimately end up gunned down while in Dachau after the latter refused to commit suicide via revolver due to arrogantly demanding that Hitler deliver the final blow, with the camp commander, Eicke, angrily telling the former SA leader it was too late when he attempted to insist in what were allegedly his final words that Hitler was the fuhrer.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140111073914/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and [[Antifa]] during widespread [[Leftwing violence in the Trump era]].<ref>https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Third Reich

2019-07-26T22:26:24Z

JohnJustice: /* Beginnings of Genocide */

{{Country
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943) ''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)
|map =Nazi Germany 1944 Administration.png
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png
|arms =
|capital =Berlin
|capital-raw =
|government =
|government-raw =[[National Socialism|National Socialist]] [[dictatorship]]
|language =German
|king =
|queen =
|monarch-raw =
|president =
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1933–1934)</nowiki> [[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934–1945; Führer)</nowiki> [[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki>
|chancellor =
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933–1945)</nowiki> [[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki> [[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki>
|pm =
|pm-raw =
|area =244,706 sq mi
|pop =69,320,000 (est)
|pop-basis =1939
|gdp =
|gdp-year =
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|currency =Reichsmark
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}}
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader ("[[Führer]]"), [[Adolf Hitler]]. The state that lasted from 1933–1945, is commonly known as Nazi Germany. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment as chancellor by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the worldwide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead.

In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800–1806) – what he called the [[First Reich]] – and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871–1918.

==Beginnings==
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small left-wing party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Defendants during the Munich beer hall putsch trial, April 1924 (''l-r:'' Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kiebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Röhm, Wagner.).]]
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP denounced the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.

After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.

A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.

Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.

In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other left-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.

Three elections – in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 – were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of parties on both the left- and right-wing.

Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German Army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.

By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.

General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other politicians and leaders thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government; transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.

===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that "The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on their far-Left rivals, the Communists. "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution," declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that "The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

A day later a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state" was passed:

<blockquote>
"Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."<ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>
</blockquote>

Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered "legal," as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into "protective custody" several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler's government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the Communist menace. The same day as the "defensive measure" was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):

"The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."

[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, "my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!" <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

==The Consolidation of Power==
[[File:Nazi German leaders.jpg|thumb|200px|From left to right: [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Hermann Goering]] [[Joseph Goebbels]], and [[Rudolf Hess]]. Photo taken around 1933–34.]]
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.

Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''[[Gleichschaltung]]'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, all other left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists who did not hold Nazi Party membership. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.

====Beginnings of Genocide====
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and rival Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a small minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.

Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as [[Aktion T4|euthanasia]] and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims—Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers—generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.

Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi Party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.

The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.

When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. "I was given a bucket of boiling water," wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, "and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands." Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that "Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion." <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref>

In November 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''[[Kristalnacht]]'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterward. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. Critics have argued that had [[liberal]]s written a [[2nd Amendment]] into the [[Weimar Consititution]], there would have been no Kristalnacht.<ref>http://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=4905</ref> More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.

==Foreign Policy==
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly underway since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.

In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against leftist rivals the Soviet Union and international Communism.

It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.

[[File:ThirdReichMap.png|200px|thumb|left|Nazi Germany in August 1939, just before the start of World War II]]
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.

Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.

Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]] with the Soviet Union, creating a [[far-left]] alliance between the two powers and thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.

==World War II==
[[File:Nazi Germany 1942.png|thumb|200px|Nazi German expansion at its height in 1942. '''Dark Green:''' Nazi Germany proper '''Medium Green:''' Civilian-administered occupied territories '''Light Green:''' Military-administered occupied territories]]
[[File:World War II Europe 1942.png|thumb|200px|The European situation at the height of Nazi power around 1941-42.]]
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.

For Hitler, the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them—Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.

Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.

Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.

The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.

===Total Mobilization and Resistance===
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger that endured during World War I.

Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck—the placement of the device behind the support leg of a heavy conference room table prior to detonation. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.

==The Holocaust==
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]
{{See also|Holocaust}}
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been "emancipated," i.e., granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German civic life.<ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref>

As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-Semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them.

Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.

The violence of Hitler's anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'':
<blockquote>
"If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref>
</blockquote>

Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.

Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''[[Der Stürmer|Der Sturmer]]'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher's rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. "His blood," Streicher wrote, "carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws." [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."

As Streicher whipped up Hitler's base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler's propaganda minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher's wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was, in fact, an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace:

"One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question," Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler's takeover, "….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?" <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref>

Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref>

Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word "Jude" and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights.

On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly "retired." On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a "non-Aryan" "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry "Aryans." They could not display the German flag.<ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref>
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.

Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually "deported" to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi-occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref>

It is currently estimated that roughly six million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.

==Defeat==
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About eight million of these dead were German.

== See also ==
* [[Nazi Party]]
* [[World War II]]

== External links ==
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.

== References ==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]

User talk:JohnJustice

2019-01-29T22:33:22Z

JohnJustice: /* Note as to Browser problems */ note

==Note as to Browser problems==
Over the recent months I have had a hard time getting to this website; even when trying different browsers/search engines. I don't know if others have had the same problem. If it continues then I will be delayed replying to any messages on my talkpage. --[[User:JohnJustice|JohnJustice]] 08:38, 16 October 2013 (EDT)
:Note - no longer having connection/browser issues. --[[User:JohnJustice|JohnJustice]] ([[User talk:JohnJustice|talk]]) 17:33, 29 January 2019 (EST)

==Eichmann==
I'm going to have to apologize to you for the Eichmann revert. My intention was not to remove your edit; it was to remove false info placed by someone else, which was:
:''...and one of only two to have been sentenced to death (the other being the supposed former SS camp guard 'Ivan the Terrible', [[John Demjanjuk]], in 1988.''
I thought I had did exactly that, but I see that was not the case. Your version should be restored, minus the "Ivan" line. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 20:28, 23 October 2012 (EDT)
:I believe the impression above was that Israel executed this man in 1988; he actually died in Germany a few years ago. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 20:30, 23 October 2012 (EDT)
::Thanks and no problem. Cheers, --[[User:JohnJustice|JohnJustice]] 20:35, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

== Congratulations ==

Congratulations, your account has been promoted! You won't be asked the captcha questions anymore.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] ([[User talk:Aschlafly|talk]]) 14:40, 19 September 2015 (EDT)
:Thank you, --[[User:JohnJustice|JohnJustice]] ([[User talk:JohnJustice|talk]]) 21:48, 19 September 2015 (EDT)

Kristallnacht

2019-01-29T22:26:52Z

JohnJustice: copy edit

On [[November]] 9, 1938, the [[Nazis]] organized a series of mobs and riots against [[Jews]] in [[Germany]]. Thousands of [[synagogue]]s, Jewish [[business]]es, and homes were destroyed and burned. Tens of thousands of Jews were sent to [[concentration camp]]s. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night"), or the "Night of Broken Glass."

World reaction was strongly negative, especially in the [[United States]], where systematic [[boycott]]s were organized against German products.
==Further reading==
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' 2005. 800 pp.
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)

[[Category:Holocaust]]

Third Reich

2019-01-29T22:22:28Z

JohnJustice: /* Total Mobilization and Resistance */ copy edit

{{Country
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943) ''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)
|map =Nazi Germany 1944 Administration.png
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png
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|government =
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|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925–1934)</nowiki> [[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934–1945; Führer)</nowiki> [[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki>
|chancellor =
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933–1945)</nowiki> [[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki> [[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki>
|pm =
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|area =244,706 sq mi
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The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader ("[[Führer]]"), [[Adolf Hitler]]. The state that lasted from 1933–1945, is commonly known as Nazi Germany. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment as chancellor by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the worldwide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead.

In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800–1806) – what he called the [[First Reich]] – and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871–1918.

==Beginnings==
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small left-wing party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Defendants during the Munich beer hall putsch trial, April 1924 (''l-r:'' Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kiebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Röhm, Wagner.).]]
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP denounced the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.

After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.

A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.

Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.

In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other left-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.

Three elections – in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 – were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of parties on both the left- and right-wing.

Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German Army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.

By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.

General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other politicians and leaders thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government; transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.

===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that "The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on their far-Left rivals, the Communists. "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution," declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that "The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

A day later a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state" was passed:

<blockquote>
"Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."<ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>
</blockquote>

Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered "legal," as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into "protective custody" several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the Communist menace. The same day as the "defensive measure" was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):

"The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."

[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, "my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!" <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

==The Consolidation of Power==
[[File:Nazi German leaders.jpg|thumb|200px|From left to right: [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Hermann Goering]] [[Joseph Goebbels]], and [[Rudolf Hess]]. Photo taken around 1933–34.]]
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.

Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''[[Gleichschaltung]]'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, all other left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists who did not hold Nazi Party membership. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.

====Beginnings of Genocide====
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and rival Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.

Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as [[Aktion T4|euthanasia]] and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims—Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers—generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.

Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.

The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.

When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. "I was given a bucket of boiling water," wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, "and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands." Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that "Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion." <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref>

In November 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterward. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.

==Foreign Policy==
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly underway since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.

In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against leftist rivals the Soviet Union and international Communism.

It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.

[[File:ThirdReichMap.png|200px|thumb|left|Nazi Germany in August 1939, just before the start of World War II]]
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.

Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.

Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]] with the Soviet Union, creating a [[far-left]] alliance between the two powers and thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.

==World War II==
[[File:Nazi Germany 1942.png|thumb|200px|Nazi German expansion at its height in 1942. '''Dark Green:''' Nazi Germany proper '''Medium Green:''' Civilian-administered occupied territories '''Light Green:''' Military-administered occupied territories]]
[[File:World War II Europe 1942.png|thumb|200px|The European situation at the height of Nazi power around 1941-42.]]
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.

For Hitler, the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them—Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.

Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.

Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.

The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.

===Total Mobilization and Resistance===
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger that endured during World War I.

Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck—the placement of the device behind the support leg of a heavy conference room table prior to detonation. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.

==The Holocaust==
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]
{{See also|Holocaust}}
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been "emancipated," i.e., granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German civic life.<ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref>

As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-Semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them.

Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.

The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'':
<blockquote>
"If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref>
</blockquote>

Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.

Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''[[Der Stürmer|Der Sturmer]]'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. "His blood," Streicher wrote, "carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws." [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."

As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was, in fact, an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace:

"One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question," Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, "….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?" <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref>

Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref>

Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word "Jude" and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights.

On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly "retired." On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a "non-Aryan" "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry "Aryans." They could not display the German flag.<ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref>
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.

Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually "deported" to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi-occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref>

It is currently estimated that roughly six million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.

==Defeat==
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About eight million of these dead were German.

== See also ==
* [[Nazi Party]]
* [[World War II]]

== External links ==
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.

== References ==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]

Third Reich

2018-10-19T13:56:26Z

JohnJustice: copy edits

{{Country
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943) ''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)
|map =Nazi Germany 1944 Administration.png
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png
|arms =
|capital =Berlin
|capital-raw =
|government =
|government-raw =[[Dictatorship]]; single-party
|language =German
|king =
|queen =
|monarch-raw =
|president =
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925–1934)</nowiki> [[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934–1945; Führer)</nowiki> [[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki>
|chancellor =
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933–1945)</nowiki> [[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki> [[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki>
|pm =
|pm-raw =
|area =244,706 sq mi
|pop =69,320,000 (est)
|pop-basis =1939
|gdp =
|gdp-year =
|gdp-pc =
|currency =Reichsmark
|idd =
|tld =
}}
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader ("[[Führer]]"), [[Adolf Hitler]]. The state that lasted from 1933–1945, is commonly known as Nazi Germany. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment as chancellor by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the worldwide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead.

In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800–1806) – what he called the [[First Reich]] – and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871–1918.

==Beginnings==
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small left-wing party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Defendants during the Munich beer hall putsch trial, April 1924 (''l-r:'' Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kiebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Röhm, Wagner.).]]
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP denounced the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.

After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.

A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.

Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.

In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other left-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.

Three elections – in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 – were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of parties on both the left- and right-wing.

Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German Army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.

By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.

General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other politicians and leaders thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government; transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.

===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that "The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on their far-Left rivals, the Communists. "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution," declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that "The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner." <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

A day later a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state" was passed:

<blockquote>
"Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."<ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>
</blockquote>

Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered "legal," as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into "protective custody" several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the Communist menace. The same day as the "defensive measure" was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):

"The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war."

[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, "my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!" <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, "Triumph and Consolidation." William Shirer</ref>

==The Consolidation of Power==
[[File:Nazi German leaders.jpg|thumb|200px|From left to right: [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Hermann Goering]] [[Joseph Goebbels]], and [[Rudolf Hess]]. Photo taken around 1933–34.]]
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.

Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''[[Gleichschaltung]]'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, all other left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists who did not hold Nazi Party membership. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.

====Beginnings of Genocide====
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and rival Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.

Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims—Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers—generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.

Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.

The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.

When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. "I was given a bucket of boiling water," wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, "and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands." Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that "Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion." <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref>

In November 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterward. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.

==Foreign Policy==
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly underway since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.

In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against leftist rivals the Soviet Union and international Communism.

It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.

[[File:ThirdReichMap.png|200px|thumb|left|Nazi Germany in August 1939, just before the start of World War II]]
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.

Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.

Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]] with the Soviet Union, creating a far-Left alliance between the two powers and thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.

==World War II==
[[File:Nazi Germany 1942.png|thumb|200px|Nazi German expansion at its height in 1942. '''Dark Green:''' Nazi Germany proper '''Medium Green:''' Civilian-administered occupied territories '''Light Green:''' Military-administered occupied territories]]
[[File:World War II Europe 1942.png|thumb|200px|The European situation at the height of Nazi power around 1941-42.]]
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.

For Hitler, the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them—Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.

Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.

Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.

The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.

===Total Mobilization and Resistance===
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger that endured during World War I.

Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck—the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.

==The Holocaust==
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]
{{See also|Holocaust}}
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been "emancipated," i.e., granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German civic life.<ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref>

As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-Semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them.

Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.

The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'':
<blockquote>
"If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref>
</blockquote>

Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.

Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''[[Der Stürmer|Der Sturmer]]'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. "His blood," Streicher wrote, "carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws." [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."

As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was, in fact, an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace:

"One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question," Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, "….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?" <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref>

Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref>

Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word "Jude" and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights.

On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly "retired." On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a "non-Aryan" "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry "Aryans." They could not display the German flag.<ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref>
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.

Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually "deported" to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi-occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps.<ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref>

It is currently estimated that roughly six million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.

==Defeat==
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About eight million of these dead were German.

== See also ==
* [[Nazi Party]]
* [[World War II]]

== External links ==
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.

== References ==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]

SS

2018-10-19T13:46:58Z

JohnJustice: /* Soldiers in Waffen-SS */

[[Image:SSsymbol.png|right|100px]]

The '''SS''' (short for '''Schutzstaffel''', German for "Protective Squadron") was a major [[paramilitary]] branch of the [[National Socialism|Nazi Party]], controlled for the majority of its existence by [[Heinrich Himmler]] who became its leader in January 1929. It was noted for its devotion to [[Adolf Hitler]], for its hostility to [[Jews]], for its fanaticism in [[combat]]; and especially for its control of the [[concentration camp]]s and death camps during the [[Holocaust]].

==History==
The SS was created in 1925 after Hitler ordered a new formation of a small personal bodyguard unit of the Nazi Party. The SS was originally only a sub-branch of the [[Brownshirts|SA]]. It was a small exclusive group who only had loyalty to Adolf Hitler, not the Nazi Party or the SA. When the Nazi Party came to national power in January 1933, the SS became a part of the German Government.<ref>[http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks4/the-nazification-of-germany/the-nazis-consolidate-power/the-role-of-the-ss-and-gestapo/#.WGUZKXpOlhE The role of the SS and Gestapo]</ref><ref>Williams (2001)</ref> In July 1934, the SS officially became as independent organization from the SA after the purge of its leadership in the [[Night of the Long Knives]].
[[Image:THE_SS.jpg|right|250px]]

Heinrich Himmler was the fourth leader of the SS, having obtained command in January 1929. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. By the time he took over, it was made up of only 280 men. By 1933 Himmler had expanded its ranks to 52,000.

The SS was made up of several different branches. The main branch was the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and under it was the SS security, intelligence and police services. These included the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) or SD, [[Gestapo]] (Secret State Police), Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) or Kripo and the leadership of the uniformed police known as the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) or Orpo. The second main SS branch was the Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) or (SS-TV) which made up the concentration camp and [[Holocaust#The death camps|death camp]] staffs and guards.<ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

The SD worked hand-in-hand with the Gestapo, although they had some overlapping authority and operations. The SD would perform intelligence gathering, surveillance and spy on members of the other Nazi Party organizations, military officers and the public at large. After the SD gathered information, the Gestapo would then arrest the person or people in question; both real and perceived political enemies of the Nazi state. Pursuant to German law passed in 1936, the Gestapo was given the power to arrest, interrogate and imprison people without any judicial review by the courts. Many people ended up in concentration camps, under the brutal authority and control of the SS-TV. The third main SS branch was what became known as the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). This was the military branch of the SS.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

==Waffen-SS==
The Waffen-SS (Armed SS) began as Hitler's private army. It started as the SS-Stabswache Berlin, a small bodyguard unit under Josef "Sepp" Dietrich. It was renamed the Sonderkommando Berlin until Himmler renamed it again as the "Leibstandarte (Bodyguard Regiment) Adolf Hitler" (LAH) in November 1933. The unit provided protection for Hitler's residences and offices. Later in April 1934, Himmler had the SS initials added to the name to make it clear this was a Nazi Party-based formation; thereafter, officially known as the "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" (LSSAH).<ref>Cook and Bender (1994)</ref> In September 1934, Adolf Hitler authorized the formation of a [[military]] wing of the Nazi Party in the SS; it was called the SS-Verfügungstruppe (Special Use Troops) or SS-VT. There were strict recruitment standards; both physically and racially. By September 1939, there were three SS-VT regiments, along with the Leibstandarte. During the 1939 fighting in [[Poland]], it was reported that the SS-VT units fought bravely but recklessly. The SS-VT units also fought in combat during the invasions of the [[Netherlands|Low Countries]] (les Pays Bas) and [[France]] in 1940. The performance of the units was of marked improvement on the battlefield, however, off the battlefield several atrocities occurred.<ref>Cook and Bender (1994); McNab (2009)</ref>

In 1940, the military branch was renamed the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Leibstandarte Division (LSSAH) and SS-VT units already in service were folded into, and became part of, the Waffen-SS. That same year, Hitler allowed Himmler to greatly expand the forces and open the ranks to Germanic foreign recruits. Within 6 months this new SS branch had over 150,000 soldiers. After the invasion of the [[Soviet Union]] in June 1941, the Germans were fighting a two-front war. The Waffen-SS became the elite infantry force of the fronts and given separate control over their communications and reports to Hitler's headquarters. By June 1944, the SS had over 800,000 men in its ranks. However, the majority of those members were serving in the Waffen-SS, which numbered approximately 600,000, with the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) numbering only 24,000. However, at the [[Nuremberg Trials]], the entire Schutzstaffel organization was declared a criminal organization. The SS was also found to be the organization most responsible for the killing of millions of Jews and non-Jews in the Holocaust. Many high ranking SS officers were executed after being adjudicated guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

===Soldiers in Waffen-SS===
By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref> In December 1944 on the Western Front during the "Battle of the Bulge" elements of the Leibstandarte Division shot between 86 and 100 Americans prisoners near Malmedy.<ref>After the war, Colonel Joachim Peiper and 65 other Waffen-SS soldiers were tried, convicted and imprisoned for war crimes; two were hung. James J. Weingartner, ''Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmédy Massacre and Trial'' (1979)</ref>

Huffman (2005) examines Waffen-SS soldiers and their experiences, actions, and importance during World War II. He explores the Waffen-SS in terms of ideology and indoctrination, everyday life and combat experiences, comradeship, battle front and home front influences, and connections between the " Frontgemeinschaft " (front community) and the " Volksgemeinschaft " (people's community). Huffman focuses on the Waffen-SS junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. Waffen-SS soldiers experienced a "totality" of war as a concrete, lived, total experience, and thus the front experiences became normalized to a large extent. They were much better trained than regular army units, with dangerous simulated combat exercise; it was rigorous, realistic and often brutal.<ref>Koethe (1994)</ref> Strong comradeship among the troops was important, and helped account for their strong cohesiveness and fighting strength. The Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft and the strong attendant home front and battle front influences were not just words; there was a reality of overall solidarity, and the Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft served for millions of Germans as structures around which to cast their belief systems and actions. The German civilian populace was militarized during the war, and the German military formations, especially the Waffen-SS, were militarized even more so.<ref>Huffman (2005)</ref>

Ideology, indoctrination, and combat had significant influences on the mentalities and experiences, as well as the increased fanaticization and radicalization of the soldiers and their subsequent actions, which included a greater propensity to follow orders without question and commit war crimes. Ideology included using violence, brutality and terror as a weapon and solution to military/political problems. Ideology was absorbed and accepted by Waffen-SS soldiers far more readily because of the nature of [[World War II]], especially on the Eastern Front, with all of its [[racism]] and savageness. Waffen-SS troops were the most radicalized and politicized troops in the German armed forces; the fanaticized military elite and political soldiers of Nazi Germany.<ref>Huffman (2005); Koethe (1994); Stein (1984)</ref>

===International units===
The Waffen-SS recruited soldiers, whether of German background or not, from many different ethnic groups across Europe. The first units were made up of men who were ethic Germans from Western Europe. About 6,000 [[Norwegian]]s volunteered; most of them were assigned to divisions that included both Germans and volunteers from other countries; there were also men who were [[Danish]] (6,000), [[Flemish]] (20,000), [[Dutch]] (50,000), from Norway (6,000), and Finland (3,000); later recruits came from Hungary (20,000), Italy (15,000), Albania (7,000), Estonia (20,000), Latvia (80,000), Romania (50,000), and a number of Spanish and Soviet Union countrymen, as well.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

One example of foreign soldiers were the 10,000 to 11,000 [[French]]men who served in units the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF, French Volunteer Legion) and Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. Most volunteered in 1944 and had been members of the Milice Française and other collaborationist groups; they left [[France]] with the Germans to avoid reprisals by the Resistance. Knowledge of their fate if they were captured and sent home made them more fanatic as they fought on the Eastern Front.<ref>Smith et al (1999); Stein (1984)</ref>

Bowen (2001) describes volunteers in Waffen-SS units late in the war. Under Allied pressure, [[Francisco Franco]] withdrew his earlier support of Nazi Germany to a position of neutrality. He ordered the repatriation of the Blue Division to [[Spain]], a unit that lost 22,000 of 47,000 men in the [[Stalingrad]] campaign. However, thousands of Spaniards committed to the Nazis' [[New World Order]] remained illegally in Germany, joining Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and others who chose to fight alongside the Germans to the bitter end. Franco proved unable to persuade these Spaniards to quit a lost cause.<ref>Wayne H. Bowen, "The Ghost Battalion: Spaniards in the Waffen-SS, 1944-1945." ''Historian'' 2001 63(2): 373-385. Issn: 0018-2370 Fulltext: in Ebsco</ref>

==See also==
* [[Reinhard Heydrich]], chief lieutenant of Heinrich Himmler
* [[Holocaust]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References and further reading==
* Allen, Michael Thad. ''The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps'' 2002 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106468255 online edition]
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution.'' 1991.
* Browder, George C. ''Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=52769823 online edition]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich'' (2000)
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'' (1994)
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Estes, Kenneth. "A European Anabasis: Western European Volunteers in the Germany Army and SS, 1940-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland), 1984
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939.'', 2005. 800 pp.
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history
* Gingerich, Mark. "Waffen-SS Recruitment in the 'Germanic Lands;'" ''Historian'' 59 (1997): 815-30;
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS" ''History Today,'' (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Huffman, Christopher William. "The Waffen-SS Soldier in World War II: Fanaticism, Everyday Life, and the New Military History." PhD dissertation Georgia State U. 2005. 430 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2352-A. DA3180700 Fulltext in [[Proquest]]
* Koehl, Robert. ''The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS'' (1983)
* Koethe, Richard D., III. "The Waffen SS." ''Military Review'' 1994 74(2): 64-67. Issn: 0026-4148 Fulltext: in Academic Search Premier/Ebsco
* Kren, George M. and Leon H. Rappoport. "The Waffen SS: a Social Psychological Perspective." ''Armed Forces & Society'' 1976 3(1): 87-102. Issn: 0095-327x
* Lumans, Valdiso. ''Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945'' (1993)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS''. (1990)
* Rempel, Gerhard. ''Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS'' (1989) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94862712 online edition]
* Smith, Peter Scharff; Poulsen, Niels Bo; and Christensen, Claus Bundgård. "The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and German Warfare at the Eastern Front." ''Contemporary European History'' 1999 8(1): 73-96. Issn: 0960-7773 Fulltext: Cambridge Journals
* Sofsky, Wolfgang. ''The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp'' 1997. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99838057 online edition]
* Stein, George H. ''The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945'' (1984)
* Syndor Jr., Charles W. ''Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division 1933-1945'' (1977)
* U.S. War Department. ''Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451: Handbook on German Military Forces'' (1945) [http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/tme30/ch3sec1sub6.html online edition]
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps." ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)
* Williams, Max. ''Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography (Vol. 1)'' (2001)

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Germany]]

SS

2018-10-19T13:46:29Z

JohnJustice: /* Soldiers in Waffen-SS */ copy edit

[[Image:SSsymbol.png|right|100px]]

The '''SS''' (short for '''Schutzstaffel''', German for "Protective Squadron") was a major [[paramilitary]] branch of the [[National Socialism|Nazi Party]], controlled for the majority of its existence by [[Heinrich Himmler]] who became its leader in January 1929. It was noted for its devotion to [[Adolf Hitler]], for its hostility to [[Jews]], for its fanaticism in [[combat]]; and especially for its control of the [[concentration camp]]s and death camps during the [[Holocaust]].

==History==
The SS was created in 1925 after Hitler ordered a new formation of a small personal bodyguard unit of the Nazi Party. The SS was originally only a sub-branch of the [[Brownshirts|SA]]. It was a small exclusive group who only had loyalty to Adolf Hitler, not the Nazi Party or the SA. When the Nazi Party came to national power in January 1933, the SS became a part of the German Government.<ref>[http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks4/the-nazification-of-germany/the-nazis-consolidate-power/the-role-of-the-ss-and-gestapo/#.WGUZKXpOlhE The role of the SS and Gestapo]</ref><ref>Williams (2001)</ref> In July 1934, the SS officially became as independent organization from the SA after the purge of its leadership in the [[Night of the Long Knives]].
[[Image:THE_SS.jpg|right|250px]]

Heinrich Himmler was the fourth leader of the SS, having obtained command in January 1929. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. By the time he took over, it was made up of only 280 men. By 1933 Himmler had expanded its ranks to 52,000.

The SS was made up of several different branches. The main branch was the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and under it was the SS security, intelligence and police services. These included the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) or SD, [[Gestapo]] (Secret State Police), Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) or Kripo and the leadership of the uniformed police known as the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) or Orpo. The second main SS branch was the Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) or (SS-TV) which made up the concentration camp and [[Holocaust#The death camps|death camp]] staffs and guards.<ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

The SD worked hand-in-hand with the Gestapo, although they had some overlapping authority and operations. The SD would perform intelligence gathering, surveillance and spy on members of the other Nazi Party organizations, military officers and the public at large. After the SD gathered information, the Gestapo would then arrest the person or people in question; both real and perceived political enemies of the Nazi state. Pursuant to German law passed in 1936, the Gestapo was given the power to arrest, interrogate and imprison people without any judicial review by the courts. Many people ended up in concentration camps, under the brutal authority and control of the SS-TV. The third main SS branch was what became known as the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). This was the military branch of the SS.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

==Waffen-SS==
The Waffen-SS (Armed SS) began as Hitler's private army. It started as the SS-Stabswache Berlin, a small bodyguard unit under Josef "Sepp" Dietrich. It was renamed the Sonderkommando Berlin until Himmler renamed it again as the "Leibstandarte (Bodyguard Regiment) Adolf Hitler" (LAH) in November 1933. The unit provided protection for Hitler's residences and offices. Later in April 1934, Himmler had the SS initials added to the name to make it clear this was a Nazi Party-based formation; thereafter, officially known as the "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" (LSSAH).<ref>Cook and Bender (1994)</ref> In September 1934, Adolf Hitler authorized the formation of a [[military]] wing of the Nazi Party in the SS; it was called the SS-Verfügungstruppe (Special Use Troops) or SS-VT. There were strict recruitment standards; both physically and racially. By September 1939, there were three SS-VT regiments, along with the Leibstandarte. During the 1939 fighting in [[Poland]], it was reported that the SS-VT units fought bravely but recklessly. The SS-VT units also fought in combat during the invasions of the [[Netherlands|Low Countries]] (les Pays Bas) and [[France]] in 1940. The performance of the units was of marked improvement on the battlefield, however, off the battlefield several atrocities occurred.<ref>Cook and Bender (1994); McNab (2009)</ref>

In 1940, the military branch was renamed the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Leibstandarte Division (LSSAH) and SS-VT units already in service were folded into, and became part of, the Waffen-SS. That same year, Hitler allowed Himmler to greatly expand the forces and open the ranks to Germanic foreign recruits. Within 6 months this new SS branch had over 150,000 soldiers. After the invasion of the [[Soviet Union]] in June 1941, the Germans were fighting a two-front war. The Waffen-SS became the elite infantry force of the fronts and given separate control over their communications and reports to Hitler's headquarters. By June 1944, the SS had over 800,000 men in its ranks. However, the majority of those members were serving in the Waffen-SS, which numbered approximately 600,000, with the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) numbering only 24,000. However, at the [[Nuremberg Trials]], the entire Schutzstaffel organization was declared a criminal organization. The SS was also found to be the organization most responsible for the killing of millions of Jews and non-Jews in the Holocaust. Many high ranking SS officers were executed after being adjudicated guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

===Soldiers in Waffen-SS===
By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command.

They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref> In December 1944 on the Western Front during the "Battle of the Bulge" elements of the Leibstandarte Division shot between 86 and 100 Americans prisoners near Malmedy.<ref>After the war, Colonel Joachim Peiper and 65 other Waffen-SS soldiers were tried, convicted and imprisoned for war crimes; two were hung. James J. Weingartner, ''Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmédy Massacre and Trial'' (1979)</ref>

Huffman (2005) examines Waffen-SS soldiers and their experiences, actions, and importance during World War II. He explores the Waffen-SS in terms of ideology and indoctrination, everyday life and combat experiences, comradeship, battle front and home front influences, and connections between the " Frontgemeinschaft " (front community) and the " Volksgemeinschaft " (people's community). Huffman focuses on the Waffen-SS junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. Waffen-SS soldiers experienced a "totality" of war as a concrete, lived, total experience, and thus the front experiences became normalized to a large extent. They were much better trained than regular army units, with dangerous simulated combat exercise; it was rigorous, realistic and often brutal.<ref>Koethe (1994)</ref> Strong comradeship among the troops was important, and helped account for their strong cohesiveness and fighting strength. The Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft and the strong attendant home front and battle front influences were not just words; there was a reality of overall solidarity, and the Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft served for millions of Germans as structures around which to cast their belief systems and actions. The German civilian populace was militarized during the war, and the German military formations, especially the Waffen-SS, were militarized even more so.<ref>Huffman (2005)</ref>

Ideology, indoctrination, and combat had significant influences on the mentalities and experiences, as well as the increased fanaticization and radicalization of the soldiers and their subsequent actions, which included a greater propensity to follow orders without question and commit war crimes. Ideology included using violence, brutality and terror as a weapon and solution to military/political problems. Ideology was absorbed and accepted by Waffen-SS soldiers far more readily because of the nature of [[World War II]], especially on the Eastern Front, with all of its [[racism]] and savageness. Waffen-SS troops were the most radicalized and politicized troops in the German armed forces; the fanaticized military elite and political soldiers of Nazi Germany.<ref>Huffman (2005); Koethe (1994); Stein (1984)</ref>

===International units===
The Waffen-SS recruited soldiers, whether of German background or not, from many different ethnic groups across Europe. The first units were made up of men who were ethic Germans from Western Europe. About 6,000 [[Norwegian]]s volunteered; most of them were assigned to divisions that included both Germans and volunteers from other countries; there were also men who were [[Danish]] (6,000), [[Flemish]] (20,000), [[Dutch]] (50,000), from Norway (6,000), and Finland (3,000); later recruits came from Hungary (20,000), Italy (15,000), Albania (7,000), Estonia (20,000), Latvia (80,000), Romania (50,000), and a number of Spanish and Soviet Union countrymen, as well.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

One example of foreign soldiers were the 10,000 to 11,000 [[French]]men who served in units the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF, French Volunteer Legion) and Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. Most volunteered in 1944 and had been members of the Milice Française and other collaborationist groups; they left [[France]] with the Germans to avoid reprisals by the Resistance. Knowledge of their fate if they were captured and sent home made them more fanatic as they fought on the Eastern Front.<ref>Smith et al (1999); Stein (1984)</ref>

Bowen (2001) describes volunteers in Waffen-SS units late in the war. Under Allied pressure, [[Francisco Franco]] withdrew his earlier support of Nazi Germany to a position of neutrality. He ordered the repatriation of the Blue Division to [[Spain]], a unit that lost 22,000 of 47,000 men in the [[Stalingrad]] campaign. However, thousands of Spaniards committed to the Nazis' [[New World Order]] remained illegally in Germany, joining Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and others who chose to fight alongside the Germans to the bitter end. Franco proved unable to persuade these Spaniards to quit a lost cause.<ref>Wayne H. Bowen, "The Ghost Battalion: Spaniards in the Waffen-SS, 1944-1945." ''Historian'' 2001 63(2): 373-385. Issn: 0018-2370 Fulltext: in Ebsco</ref>

==See also==
* [[Reinhard Heydrich]], chief lieutenant of Heinrich Himmler
* [[Holocaust]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References and further reading==
* Allen, Michael Thad. ''The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps'' 2002 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106468255 online edition]
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution.'' 1991.
* Browder, George C. ''Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=52769823 online edition]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich'' (2000)
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'' (1994)
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Estes, Kenneth. "A European Anabasis: Western European Volunteers in the Germany Army and SS, 1940-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland), 1984
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939.'', 2005. 800 pp.
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history
* Gingerich, Mark. "Waffen-SS Recruitment in the 'Germanic Lands;'" ''Historian'' 59 (1997): 815-30;
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS" ''History Today,'' (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Huffman, Christopher William. "The Waffen-SS Soldier in World War II: Fanaticism, Everyday Life, and the New Military History." PhD dissertation Georgia State U. 2005. 430 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2352-A. DA3180700 Fulltext in [[Proquest]]
* Koehl, Robert. ''The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS'' (1983)
* Koethe, Richard D., III. "The Waffen SS." ''Military Review'' 1994 74(2): 64-67. Issn: 0026-4148 Fulltext: in Academic Search Premier/Ebsco
* Kren, George M. and Leon H. Rappoport. "The Waffen SS: a Social Psychological Perspective." ''Armed Forces & Society'' 1976 3(1): 87-102. Issn: 0095-327x
* Lumans, Valdiso. ''Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945'' (1993)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS''. (1990)
* Rempel, Gerhard. ''Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS'' (1989) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94862712 online edition]
* Smith, Peter Scharff; Poulsen, Niels Bo; and Christensen, Claus Bundgård. "The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and German Warfare at the Eastern Front." ''Contemporary European History'' 1999 8(1): 73-96. Issn: 0960-7773 Fulltext: Cambridge Journals
* Sofsky, Wolfgang. ''The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp'' 1997. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99838057 online edition]
* Stein, George H. ''The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945'' (1984)
* Syndor Jr., Charles W. ''Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division 1933-1945'' (1977)
* U.S. War Department. ''Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451: Handbook on German Military Forces'' (1945) [http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/tme30/ch3sec1sub6.html online edition]
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps." ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)
* Williams, Max. ''Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography (Vol. 1)'' (2001)

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Germany]]

Heinrich Himmler

2018-10-19T13:45:28Z

JohnJustice: /* Waffen-SS in combat */

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933-34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941-42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size in the armed forces (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. After this move failed, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions.

He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

SS

2018-10-19T13:44:13Z

JohnJustice: /* Soldiers in Waffen-SS */

[[Image:SSsymbol.png|right|100px]]

The '''SS''' (short for '''Schutzstaffel''', German for "Protective Squadron") was a major [[paramilitary]] branch of the [[National Socialism|Nazi Party]], controlled for the majority of its existence by [[Heinrich Himmler]] who became its leader in January 1929. It was noted for its devotion to [[Adolf Hitler]], for its hostility to [[Jews]], for its fanaticism in [[combat]]; and especially for its control of the [[concentration camp]]s and death camps during the [[Holocaust]].

==History==
The SS was created in 1925 after Hitler ordered a new formation of a small personal bodyguard unit of the Nazi Party. The SS was originally only a sub-branch of the [[Brownshirts|SA]]. It was a small exclusive group who only had loyalty to Adolf Hitler, not the Nazi Party or the SA. When the Nazi Party came to national power in January 1933, the SS became a part of the German Government.<ref>[http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks4/the-nazification-of-germany/the-nazis-consolidate-power/the-role-of-the-ss-and-gestapo/#.WGUZKXpOlhE The role of the SS and Gestapo]</ref><ref>Williams (2001)</ref> In July 1934, the SS officially became as independent organization from the SA after the purge of its leadership in the [[Night of the Long Knives]].
[[Image:THE_SS.jpg|right|250px]]

Heinrich Himmler was the fourth leader of the SS, having obtained command in January 1929. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. By the time he took over, it was made up of only 280 men. By 1933 Himmler had expanded its ranks to 52,000.

The SS was made up of several different branches. The main branch was the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and under it was the SS security, intelligence and police services. These included the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) or SD, [[Gestapo]] (Secret State Police), Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) or Kripo and the leadership of the uniformed police known as the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) or Orpo. The second main SS branch was the Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) or (SS-TV) which made up the concentration camp and [[Holocaust#The death camps|death camp]] staffs and guards.<ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

The SD worked hand-in-hand with the Gestapo, although they had some overlapping authority and operations. The SD would perform intelligence gathering, surveillance and spy on members of the other Nazi Party organizations, military officers and the public at large. After the SD gathered information, the Gestapo would then arrest the person or people in question; both real and perceived political enemies of the Nazi state. Pursuant to German law passed in 1936, the Gestapo was given the power to arrest, interrogate and imprison people without any judicial review by the courts. Many people ended up in concentration camps, under the brutal authority and control of the SS-TV. The third main SS branch was what became known as the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). This was the military branch of the SS.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

==Waffen-SS==
The Waffen-SS (Armed SS) began as Hitler's private army. It started as the SS-Stabswache Berlin, a small bodyguard unit under Josef "Sepp" Dietrich. It was renamed the Sonderkommando Berlin until Himmler renamed it again as the "Leibstandarte (Bodyguard Regiment) Adolf Hitler" (LAH) in November 1933. The unit provided protection for Hitler's residences and offices. Later in April 1934, Himmler had the SS initials added to the name to make it clear this was a Nazi Party-based formation; thereafter, officially known as the "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" (LSSAH).<ref>Cook and Bender (1994)</ref> In September 1934, Adolf Hitler authorized the formation of a [[military]] wing of the Nazi Party in the SS; it was called the SS-Verfügungstruppe (Special Use Troops) or SS-VT. There were strict recruitment standards; both physically and racially. By September 1939, there were three SS-VT regiments, along with the Leibstandarte. During the 1939 fighting in [[Poland]], it was reported that the SS-VT units fought bravely but recklessly. The SS-VT units also fought in combat during the invasions of the [[Netherlands|Low Countries]] (les Pays Bas) and [[France]] in 1940. The performance of the units was of marked improvement on the battlefield, however, off the battlefield several atrocities occurred.<ref>Cook and Bender (1994); McNab (2009)</ref>

In 1940, the military branch was renamed the Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Leibstandarte Division (LSSAH) and SS-VT units already in service were folded into, and became part of, the Waffen-SS. That same year, Hitler allowed Himmler to greatly expand the forces and open the ranks to Germanic foreign recruits. Within 6 months this new SS branch had over 150,000 soldiers. After the invasion of the [[Soviet Union]] in June 1941, the Germans were fighting a two-front war. The Waffen-SS became the elite infantry force of the fronts and given separate control over their communications and reports to Hitler's headquarters. By June 1944, the SS had over 800,000 men in its ranks. However, the majority of those members were serving in the Waffen-SS, which numbered approximately 600,000, with the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head units) numbering only 24,000. However, at the [[Nuremberg Trials]], the entire Schutzstaffel organization was declared a criminal organization. The SS was also found to be the organization most responsible for the killing of millions of Jews and non-Jews in the Holocaust. Many high ranking SS officers were executed after being adjudicated guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

===Soldiers in Waffen-SS===
By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref> In December 1944 on the Western Front during the "Battle of the Bulge" elements of the Leibstandarte Division shot between 86 and 100 Americans prisoners near Malmedy.<ref>After the war, Colonel Joachim Peiper and 65 other Waffen-SS soldiers were tried, convicted and imprisoned for war crimes; two were hung. James J. Weingartner, ''Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmédy Massacre and Trial'' (1979)</ref>

Huffman (2005) examines Waffen-SS soldiers and their experiences, actions, and importance during World War II. He explores the Waffen-SS in terms of ideology and indoctrination, everyday life and combat experiences, comradeship, battle front and home front influences, and connections between the " Frontgemeinschaft " (front community) and the " Volksgemeinschaft " (people's community). Huffman focuses on the Waffen-SS junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. Waffen-SS soldiers experienced a "totality" of war as a concrete, lived, total experience, and thus the front experiences became normalized to a large extent. They were much better trained than regular army units, with dangerous simulated combat exercise; it was rigorous, realistic and often brutal.<ref>Koethe (1994)</ref> Strong comradeship among the troops was important, and helped account for their strong cohesiveness and fighting strength. The Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft and the strong attendant home front and battle front influences were not just words; there was a reality of overall solidarity, and the Volksgemeinschaft and Frontgemeinschaft served for millions of Germans as structures around which to cast their belief systems and actions. The German civilian populace was militarized during the war, and the German military formations, especially the Waffen-SS, were militarized even more so.<ref>Huffman (2005)</ref>

Ideology, indoctrination, and combat had significant influences on the mentalities and experiences, as well as the increased fanaticization and radicalization of the soldiers and their subsequent actions, which included a greater propensity to follow orders without question and commit war crimes. Ideology included using violence, brutality and terror as a weapon and solution to military/political problems. Ideology was absorbed and accepted by Waffen-SS soldiers far more readily because of the nature of [[World War II]], especially on the Eastern Front, with all of its [[racism]] and savageness. Waffen-SS troops were the most radicalized and politicized troops in the German armed forces; the fanaticized military elite and political soldiers of Nazi Germany.<ref>Huffman (2005); Koethe (1994); Stein (1984)</ref>

===International units===
The Waffen-SS recruited soldiers, whether of German background or not, from many different ethnic groups across Europe. The first units were made up of men who were ethic Germans from Western Europe. About 6,000 [[Norwegian]]s volunteered; most of them were assigned to divisions that included both Germans and volunteers from other countries; there were also men who were [[Danish]] (6,000), [[Flemish]] (20,000), [[Dutch]] (50,000), from Norway (6,000), and Finland (3,000); later recruits came from Hungary (20,000), Italy (15,000), Albania (7,000), Estonia (20,000), Latvia (80,000), Romania (50,000), and a number of Spanish and Soviet Union countrymen, as well.<ref>Stein (1984); McNab (2009)</ref>

One example of foreign soldiers were the 10,000 to 11,000 [[French]]men who served in units the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF, French Volunteer Legion) and Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. Most volunteered in 1944 and had been members of the Milice Française and other collaborationist groups; they left [[France]] with the Germans to avoid reprisals by the Resistance. Knowledge of their fate if they were captured and sent home made them more fanatic as they fought on the Eastern Front.<ref>Smith et al (1999); Stein (1984)</ref>

Bowen (2001) describes volunteers in Waffen-SS units late in the war. Under Allied pressure, [[Francisco Franco]] withdrew his earlier support of Nazi Germany to a position of neutrality. He ordered the repatriation of the Blue Division to [[Spain]], a unit that lost 22,000 of 47,000 men in the [[Stalingrad]] campaign. However, thousands of Spaniards committed to the Nazis' [[New World Order]] remained illegally in Germany, joining Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and others who chose to fight alongside the Germans to the bitter end. Franco proved unable to persuade these Spaniards to quit a lost cause.<ref>Wayne H. Bowen, "The Ghost Battalion: Spaniards in the Waffen-SS, 1944-1945." ''Historian'' 2001 63(2): 373-385. Issn: 0018-2370 Fulltext: in Ebsco</ref>

==See also==
* [[Reinhard Heydrich]], chief lieutenant of Heinrich Himmler
* [[Holocaust]]

==Notes==
<references/>

==References and further reading==
* Allen, Michael Thad. ''The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps'' 2002 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106468255 online edition]
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution.'' 1991.
* Browder, George C. ''Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=52769823 online edition]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich'' (2000)
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'' (1994)
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Estes, Kenneth. "A European Anabasis: Western European Volunteers in the Germany Army and SS, 1940-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland), 1984
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939.'', 2005. 800 pp.
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history
* Gingerich, Mark. "Waffen-SS Recruitment in the 'Germanic Lands;'" ''Historian'' 59 (1997): 815-30;
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS" ''History Today,'' (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Huffman, Christopher William. "The Waffen-SS Soldier in World War II: Fanaticism, Everyday Life, and the New Military History." PhD dissertation Georgia State U. 2005. 430 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2352-A. DA3180700 Fulltext in [[Proquest]]
* Koehl, Robert. ''The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS'' (1983)
* Koethe, Richard D., III. "The Waffen SS." ''Military Review'' 1994 74(2): 64-67. Issn: 0026-4148 Fulltext: in Academic Search Premier/Ebsco
* Kren, George M. and Leon H. Rappoport. "The Waffen SS: a Social Psychological Perspective." ''Armed Forces & Society'' 1976 3(1): 87-102. Issn: 0095-327x
* Lumans, Valdiso. ''Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945'' (1993)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS''. (1990)
* Rempel, Gerhard. ''Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS'' (1989) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94862712 online edition]
* Smith, Peter Scharff; Poulsen, Niels Bo; and Christensen, Claus Bundgård. "The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and German Warfare at the Eastern Front." ''Contemporary European History'' 1999 8(1): 73-96. Issn: 0960-7773 Fulltext: Cambridge Journals
* Sofsky, Wolfgang. ''The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp'' 1997. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99838057 online edition]
* Stein, George H. ''The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945'' (1984)
* Syndor Jr., Charles W. ''Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division 1933-1945'' (1977)
* U.S. War Department. ''Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451: Handbook on German Military Forces'' (1945) [http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/tme30/ch3sec1sub6.html online edition]
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps." ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)
* Williams, Max. ''Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography (Vol. 1)'' (2001)

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Germany]]

Heinrich Himmler

2018-10-19T13:40:35Z

JohnJustice: /* Waffen-SS in combat */

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933-34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941-42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given their much smaller percentage of size (under 10%) and the fact they never had independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. After this move failed, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions.

He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Heinrich Himmler

2018-10-19T13:38:29Z

JohnJustice: copy edits

[[Image:Himmler.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Heinrich Himmler]]
'''Heinrich Himmler''' (1900-1945), was a [[German]] [[Nazi Party]] leader, head of the Schutzstaffel (Protective squadron; [[SS]]) and of the dreaded [[Gestapo]] (Secret state police). Starting from a junior position in the SS, by 1942 he was the second most powerful Nazi leader and designed many of the [[National Socialist]] programs. His loyalty to [[Adolf Hitler]] (until near the end in 1945), combined with his organizational skills, ambition, and his sadistic nature, made him one of the most notorious [[war criminal]]s of [[World War II]]. As chief of police for all of [[Germany]], Himmler was responsible for establishing [[concentration camp]]s and death camps. Himmler oversaw the [[Holocaust]], the mass murder of 6 million [[Jew]]s, and his anti-Semitism was such that it arguably exceeded even that of Hitler's own anti-Semitic views. Aside from this, he was also infamous for Lebensborn, a plan to abduct well over 12,000 children throughout Europe meeting the description of the "Master Race", and then place them by adoption with prospective families in order to help "breed" the superior race.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html</ref> During the war he built up the military arm of his SS, which became a "de facto" fourth branch of the German [[military]]. After Hitler dismissed him from all his offices in April 1945, Himmler was captured by the [[British]] Army. However, he committed suicide before the Allies could put him on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]].

==Background==
Himmler was born near [[Munich]] on October 7, 1900. His father Gebhard Himmler was a teacher and his mother a [[Roman Catholic]]. Himmler was the middle child of the family. He had an older brother, Gebhard (born 1898) and a younger brother, Ernst (born 1905).

A leading psycho[[historian]], UCLA Professor Peter Loewenberg, has attempted a retrospective psychoanalysis of Himmler's childhood and youth, using his diaries, shows him to have been systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. He used his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Himmler, as an adolescent, was a conventional rather than pathological anti-Semite. He acquired virulent [[anti-Semitism]] after 1919 because of his identification with nationalistic [[xenophobic]] paramilitary groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. Himmler became a professional bureaucrat par excellence. Later as Reichsführer-SS, he carried out the most sadistic orders without any show of feeling. Thus the flat, cold, emotionally colorless, adolescent Himmler became a writing desk murderer as an adult - a consistency that relates the child to the man.<ref>Peter J. Loewenberg, "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler." ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D Fulltext: in Jstor] and Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Fulltext: in Jstor ]</ref><ref name="Weale, 2010">Weale, (2010)</ref>

He attended the Technical College in Munich and enlisted with the reserve battalion of the Eleventh Bavarian Infantry Regiment in late 1917. He served during [[World War I]] as a clerk and was disappointed he did not see any combat service before the war ended in November 1918. He joined the ranks of a nationalistic paramilitary group known as the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) in 1919. Its leader was future chief of the Nazi SA storm troopers, [[Ernst Röhm]]. This paramilitary group was closely affiliated with the [[Nazi Party]]. Himmler also joined the Nazi Party in August 1923. He took part in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923. After the failure of the Putsch to seize power, Himmler returned home after losing his job over taking part in the event. Soon after, he became a propaganda assistant in the Nazi Party, serving under Gregor Strasser in Bavaria. He then was promoted to being charge of the party office in the area. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS and by January 1929 he was appointed the fourth leader of the SS. He went on to become its longest and most influential leader. When he took over, it was made up of only 280 men and considered an elite bodyguard unit.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011">Weale, (2010); Gerwarth (2011)</ref> He also served as a Poultry Farmer after World War I, but before World War II that evidently led to his Lebensborn idea due to thinking he can breed the superior race of humans in a similar manner to the pure white chickens at his farm.<ref name="Stolen Nazis: The Tragic Tale" />

==Nazi Germany==
Himmler proved the most successful empire-builder in the Nazi movement, enlarging his powers and range of activity every year.

===Chief of German police===
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Himmler controlled the "Schutzstaffel" (Protection Squadron; SS) which at the time was a 50,000-man sub-branch of the Nazi Party. In March Himmler became the Polizeipräsident in Munich. In April 1933 the political and intelligence sections of the Prussian police were combined into one unit and named the "Geheime Staatspolizei" (the [[Gestapo]]). It was under the control of then Prussian Ministry of Interior, [[Hermann Goering]]. During 1933-34, Himmler and his second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] took over the political police departments in each German state until only Prussia was left. On April 20, 1934, Goering handed over the Gestapo to Himmler for use in the purge of the [[SA]]. Himmler appointed SD (Security Service) chief Heydrich, the director of the Gestapo.

At first Ernst Röhm's SA ("brownshirts"), with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's SS. That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, Goering, the army and big business who wanted the SA eliminated from power. The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks or become a people's army. Himmler and Heydrich prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Hitler had Röhm killed, as well. As a result, Himmler and his SS gained enormously; the SS was now its own separate branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref name="Weale, 2010; Gerwarth 2011"/><ref>The SA lost most of its members and all of its power. Evans (2005), pp. 31-41; Kershaw (1998) 1: pp. 499-522</ref>

On June 17, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of German police in the Ministry of Interior. With this appointment, Himmler consolidated his power over all police and security forces throughout Germany. That same year, he formed the (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) (Security police). The SiPo was made up of two sub-branches, the Kriminalpolizei (national criminal police) and the Gestapo, under Heydrich's overall command. The first official concentration camp was set up by Himmler in March 1933. By 1936 Himmler's SS opened 17 concentration camps for political prisoners (these were different from the death camps opened after 1941).<ref>Evans (2005), pp. 50-55, 84; Burleigh (2000), pp. 178-97</ref><ref>McNab (2009)</ref>

===SS finances===
Himmler created a powerful "state within a state" as the SS acquired more than forty businesses with some 150 plants and factories. Together with money and valuables seized from Jews they paid for the Holocaust and financed the training and equipping of 38 SS divisions.

At first Himmler's SS was underfunded because his enemies in the party controlled the money. As late as 1938, only 3,500 of 14,000 SS officers received monthly pay; the rest were volunteers. Himmler turned to the concentration camps—not yet killing camps—to raise money. Prisoners could be ransomed for a large sum; others had to pay for their keep. Factories were set up in the camps as the prisoners became slave laborers for commercial enterprises owned by the SS. For example, the Gesellschaft fur Textil- und Lederverwertung GmbH (Society for Textile and Leather Work, Ltd.), in Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, produced uniforms.<ref>Goldin (1998)</ref> The possessions were salvaged and resold from the Jews who were killed in the gas chambers. SS officials took bribes from Jews and employers of Jews.

==War years==
In 1943 Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior and strengthened his grip on the civil service and the courts. The SS grew rapidly as Himmler sought a new human type, men keeping their various professional competences but each becoming a part of the intricate fabric of the SS. To its police activities the SS added protection of the German Volk in Poland and elsewhere, their "blood" and their unity, and also the protection of the Nazi leadership. For Himmler the paradoxical mystical motif of his understanding was the SS's great struggle against what Himmler called the two pillars of evil, the Jews and the Slavs.

===Holocaust===
On January 20, 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], Himmler's second-in-command, chaired the [[Wannsee Conference]] to plan the systematic roundup and execution of all Jews the Nazis could reach. The Conference ensured inter-agency co-operation and set strategy and financing. Among Heydrich's directives, [[Adolf Eichmann]], chief of Gestapo sub-section IVB4, the SS's Jewish office, was charged with arranging deportation financing. Eichmann forced Jews into paying for their own deportation. In February 1942 Himmler and another aide Oswald Pohl reorganized SS administrative and economic offices to form the SS Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and Administrative Head Office, or WVHA). The office of Inspectorate of Concentration Camp became part of the WVHA, and Himmler promoted Pohl to Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS, making him the third highest-ranking officer in the SS. Eighteen weeks after Wannsee, a Czechoslovak commando team with British support assassinated Heydrich, advancing Pohl to the second slot under Himmler. Meanwhile, Himmler had special powers in Poland, where he feuded with the official supposedly in charge Hans Frank.<ref>Burleigh (2000), pp. 454, 646-51</ref>

===Waffen-SS in combat===
Himmler had dreams of his own army, which were strenuously opposed by the regular army. He managed to field three division of the '''Waffen-SS''' on the eastern front in 1941-42; their ferocity impressed Hitler and the SS was allowed to recruit volunteers from neutral and occupied countries. The Wehrmacht, however, intensely disliked the SS troops, so Himmler had to use his negotiating skills directly with Hitler to remove his SS formations from army control. The compromise was that SS generals took operational orders from the army, and in turn commanded their own SS troops.<ref>Burleigh 438ff</ref> By the end of the war, Himmler's SS supplied 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprising volunteers from the [[Hitler Youth]] and from other countries across Europe; including conscripts from 1943, forward. By the end of the war, the Waffen-SS had organized 38 divisions comprising about 800,000 soldiers; 25% were killed in battle. They were never integrated into the Wehrmacht, and grew to become a "de facto" fourth branch of the German military. However, they were never any real threat to replace the army, given there much smaller percentage of size and the fact they never has independence of operational command. They had a reputation for fanatical loyalty, bravery, brutality, mistreatment and killing of prisoners and civilians, and war crimes.<ref>Wegner (1990); McNab (2009)</ref>

In July 1944, after the failed army plot against Hitler's life, Himmler reached the apex of his power. With the added position of Commander in Chief of the German Home Forces, he became on paper at least, the most powerful man in Germany, rivaling in many aspects the power of Hitler.<ref>Padfield (1990)</ref>

==Finale==
As the Allied forces penetrated into Germany from east and west, Himmler opened negotiations for a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain. After this move failed, Himmler fled in disguise as Hitler disowned him. On May 21, 1945, Himmler, disguised as a common German soldier, was captured by the British. Two days later, during a routine interrogation, Himmler removed his eyepatch, put on his spectacles and told the British officer who he was. He then committed suicide by biting down onto a concealed [[cyanide]] capsule;<ref name="Weale, 2010"/> a sensible course of action, as he would certainly have been executed after the [[Nuremburg trials]] for his actions.

He was buried in an unmarked grave. There are no monuments, and indeed everything he built was systematically eradicated.

==Commentary==
Himmler was one of the most sinister of all the Nazi leaders. Millions were killed by men under his command.

*[He was] meticulous, calculating and efficient, [with an] astonishing capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler.html]

Hitler depended upon Himmler's loyalty up to nearly the end when it was discovered Himmler was negotiating with the Western Powers.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article04.html Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington] Sweden, John H. Waller, Studies in Intelligence, CSI Publications, Unclassified Studies Volume 46, Number 1, 2002.</ref> [[Friedrich Hayek]], an [[Austrian]] [[economist]], in a chapter entitled "Why the worst get on top" of his contemporaneous ''Road to Serfdom'' observed "Advancement within a [[totalitarian]] group or party depends largely on a willingness to do [[immoral]] things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all [[moral]]s, in [[collectivist]] [[ethics]] becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done." <ref>Friedrich A. Hayek, ''Road to Serfdom'', [http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf Why the worst get on top], pg. 43 - 49, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.</ref> Himmler displayed the brutal nature of this collectivist mentality taken to its logical extreme wherein he explained,

{{Cquote|Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch or not interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himmler_remarks.html Reichsführer-SS Himmler speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4, 1943], Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression- Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559. Retrieved from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org 06/16/07.</ref>}}

== Quotes from Heinrich Himmler ==
* "It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives." -- (1937), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 270.

* "In the course of history periods of [[capitalism]] and [[socialism]] alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural [[economic system]]...The [[National Socialists]] and the [[Communists|Red Front]] have the same aspirations. The [[Jew]]s falsified the Revolution in the form of [[Marxism]] and that failed to bring fulfillment."—Speech in [[Potsdam]] (4 October 1943), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92–93.

* "The best political weapon is the [[terrorism|weapon of terror]]. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."—Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007, p. 162.

* "In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."—To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "Hitler and the Final Solution" - by Gerald Fleming - History - 1987, p. 137.

* "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and will never speak. That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that fact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered and everyone was clear that the next time he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation"; the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people are being exterminated," every party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, Ha! A small matter." And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew." -- The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

== See also ==
* [[Dictatorship]]
** [[Dictator]]
** [[List of dictators]]
** [[Friendly dictator]]
** [[Dictatorship of the proletariat]]
** [[List of Communist States]]
** [[List of Socialist States]]
** [[Death toll of communism]]
** [[Coup d'état]]
* [[Cult of personality]]
* [[Single-party state]]
* [[Mobocracy]], [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]], [[Anti-Semitism]], [[Communist Racism]], [[Genocide]], [[Holocaust]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]: [[Globalist]]-[[Statist]]-[[Socialist]]-[[Communist]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Bibliography==
* Breitman, Richard. ''The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution'' (1992) [http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Genocide-Solution-Institute-European/dp/0874515963/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982257&sr=1-8 excerpt and text search]
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History'' (2000), stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dederichs, Mario. ''Heydrich: The Face of Evil'' (2006)
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939'' (2005)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'' (2011)
* Goldin, Milton. "Financing the SS", ''History Today'', (Jun 1998), Vol. 48, Issue 6 full text in Academic Search Premier
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler'' (2 vol, 1998, 2000), the standard biography.
* Loewenberg, Peter J. "The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler", ''American Historical Review'' 1971 76(3): 612-641. Issn: 0002-8762 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762(197106)76%3A3%3C612%3ATUAOHH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in Jstor]
* Longerich, Peter. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Life'', (2012)
* Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. ''Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career'' (2007)
* McNab, Chris. ''The SS: 1923–1945'' (2009)
* Padfield, Peter. ''Himmler: Reichsführer-SS'' (1990)
* Smith, Bradley F. ''Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926'' (1971)
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps" ''European History Quarterly'' 2006; v 36; pp247+ [http://ehq.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/247 online]
* Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010)
* Wegner, Bernd. ''The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function'' (1990)

===Primary sources===
* Angress, Werner T., and Bradley F. Smith, "Diaries of Heinrich Himmler's Early Years." ''Journal of Modern History'' 1959 31(3): 206-224. Issn: 0022-2801 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801(195909)31%3A3%3C206%3ADOHHEY%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 Jstor]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmler, Heinrich}}
[[Category:World War II Commanders]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Germany]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

User:JohnJustice

2018-09-17T15:25:00Z

JohnJustice: /* Some suggested reading */ update

I believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of the Founding Fathers of 1776. I am a history buff and have written an article (and edited) on uboat.net; and also written articles and edited on other sites, over time. American history and World War II history are my forte.

==Some suggested reading==
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'', (1994).
* Ambrose, Stephen. ''CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945'', (1997).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943'', (1998).
* Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'', (2002).
* Beevor, Anthony. ''D-Day, The Battle for Normandy'', (2009).
* Browder, George C. ''Foundations of the Nazi Police State – The Formation of SiPo and SD'', (1990).
* Chamberlain, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two'', (1999).
* Childers, Thomas. ''The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'', (2017).
* Cook, Stan and Roger James Bender. ''Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Uniforms, Organization, & History'', (1994).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945'', (1995).
* Dollinger, Hans. ''The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan'', (1995) [1965].
* Donovan, Robert J. ''[[PT-109]]: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', (2001) [1961].
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich at War'', (2009) [2008].
* Felton, Mark. ''Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer'', (2014).
* Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte'' (2008).
* Fleischer, Wolfgang. ''Russian Tanks and Armored Vehicles: 1917-1945'', (1999).
* Forty, George. ''US Army Handbook 1939-1945'', (1995).
* Gerwarth, Robert. ''Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich'', (2011).
* Glantz, David M. ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', (2015) [1995].
* Glantz, David M., et al. ''Slaughterhouse: The Encyclopedia of the Eastern Front'', (2004) [2002].
* Hamilton, A. Stephan. ''Bloody Streets: The Soviet Assault on Berlin, April 1945'', (2008).
* Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1'', (1984).
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* Stille, Mark. ''The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War'', (2014).
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==Articles created==
*[[Jagdtiger]]
*[[Jagdpanther]]
*[[Tiger I tank]]
*[[Martin Bormann]]
*[[B-24 Liberator]] heavy bomber

Nazi Party

2018-09-17T15:23:19Z

JohnJustice:

{{PoliticalParty
| party_name = National Socialist German Workers' Party
| party_logo =[[Image:Flag of Nazi Germany.png|center|thumb|upright]]
| website =
| leader = [[Adolf Hitler]]
| Parleader = Anton Drexler
| foundation = 1920
| ideology = [[Fascism]] [[National Socialism]] [[Anti-Semitism]]
| position = ''Fiscal'': [[Socialism]] ''Social'': [[Leftism]], [[Racism]]
| international =
| colors = red, black, white and brown
| footnotes =
}}
The '''Nazi Party''' ('''NSDAP''', formally the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or in English ''National Socialist German Workers' Party''<ref>"Nazi" comes from the first word in the party's name, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische.
</ref>) was a [[totalitarian]] movement and [[political party]] in [[Germany]] from 1920–1945. After 1921, it was controlled by [[Adolf Hitler]]. In January 1933 the Nazis came to national power in Germany and took control of the government and most sectors of Germany's society and economy. The Nazi regime in Germany 1933–45 called itself the '''[[Third Reich]]'''.<ref>The German ''Drittes Reich'' means "Third Empire", after the [[Holy Roman Empire]] of 900–1806 and the [[German Empire]] of 1871–1918.</ref>

The Nazis rearmed Germany, started [[World War II]] in Europe, conquered its neighboring countries, murdered between 5.5 and 6 million Jews and an additional five million non-Jewish victims in the [[Holocaust]] and was finally destroyed by the [[Allies]] (the [[United States]], [[Britain]] and the [[Soviet Union]], along with smaller countries) in 1945. Like Hitler, the Nazis have since become synonymous with evil in the modern world.

Despite being called National Socialist, Hitler condemned the Soviet Union and Communism, and after rising to power, outlawed Germany's Communist Party and imprisoned and executed Communists, as he saw the Communists as a rival to the Nazis for control of the far-Left.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20080410211317/http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler was a Leftist]</ref> Hitler advocated a form of fascism, and in fact, the National Fascist Party, an Italian political party, led by Hitler's future ally, Benito Mussolini, at the same time, had similar policies.

==Foundations==
[[File:Nazi German leaders.jpg|thumb|225px|From left to right: [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Hermann Goering]] [[Joseph Goebbels]], and [[Rudolf Hess]]. Photo taken around 1933–34.]]
[[File:Nuremberg Rally, 1938.jpg|thumb|225px|Nazi rally in [[Nuremberg]], 1938.]]
[[Adolf Hitler]] exploited the myth of the "Stab in the Back," the belief that the [[World War I]] had been lost because "disloyal" elements within Germany – [[Jews]] and [[Marxism|Marxists]] – had undermined the war effort. As [[William Shirer]] put it in ''The Rise and Fall of the [[Third Reich]]'',

<blockquote>
"To him, as to almost all Germans, it was 'monstrous' and undeserved. The German army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.

Thus emerged for [[Hitler]], as or so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the 'stab in the back' which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph."
<ref name=rise>''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', Book One, "The Rise of Adolf Hitler".</ref>
</blockquote>

The origin of the Nazi Party was a small group originally called the "Committee of Independent Workmen", founded by a toolmaker and locksmith named [[Anton Drexler]] in 1918. It had been set up in reaction to the [[Marxism]] of the free trade unions.<ref name=rise /> A year later in January 1919, Drexler's group merged with another group, the "Political Workers' Circle" to form a new party known as the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref>

Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in September 1919 and was put in charge of propaganda in early 1920. Hitler transformed this small group into what we now know as the Nazi Party through his great skill in politics and public speaking. In February 1920, the words "National Socialist" were added to the party name and it became the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref> This is proof that the Nazis were [[liberal]], despite liberals' claims otherwise. The Storm Troopers (''Sturmabteilung'', [[Brownshirts|SA]]) in their distinctive brown uniforms, were organized first to keep order and kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties and to protect Nazi Party meetings. The ''hakenkreuz'' (literally: "hooked cross"), or [[swastika]], was adopted as the party’s symbol which was used in their blood red flag. In July 1921, Hitler became party chairman, and declared himself leader (''Führer'') of the party.<ref>McNab, (2009). ''The Third Reich''</ref>

*Here we have the core of Nazism: (i) a very strong dose of German anti-semitism (with a paranoid belief in a conspiracy between Jewish financiers who control the capitalist economy and steal from the Germans, Jewish liberal intellectuals who preach humanism and enfeeble the Germans, and Jewish communists who seek to enslave the Germans; (ii) a belief in the German nation and the "aryan" German race as an entity with a special, heroic destiny; (iii) war as the ultimate test of national strength and worth; and (iv) conquest—with extermination or removal of the resident population—to create more "living space" for the German people and larger fields for the German farmers. Add to this (a) the "leadership principle" (''Führerprinzip'') --a hatred of parliamentary institutions, and a belief that a good political order sees an inspired leader giving people vision and commands (rather than see parliamentarians haggle and compromise on behalf of interest groups)--(b) the use of terror to obtain obedience, and (c) the desire to make sure that all of society's organizations serve the national cause, and you have Nazism.<ref>http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html</ref>

==Anti-Semitism==

The Nazis were highly [[Anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] and blamed the Jews for many of the problems in Germany, such as the defeat in [[World War I]].
The Nazis passed the [[Nuremberg Laws]] in 1935 which stated that:
* Young German women could not work for Jews in the domestic services.
* Jews were no longer citizens of Germany (this meant that they had no protection from the police and so were susceptible to attack)
* Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Germans/Aryans
* Jews could not marry Germans/Aryans
They made laws against Jews ("Rassengesetze", ''race laws'') which places successively tighter restrictions on the rights of Jews to own property, use public services, live in some areas, enter public spaces and eventually required Jews to wear a [[Star of David]] on their clothing.
The Jews were mistreated, persecuted, and killed by the Nazis.
The Nazi state also persecuted other political opponents, such as [[Jehovah's Witnesses]]. State-run hospitals secretly euthanized the very old, the sick, mentally ill and the disabled. Some [[homosexuality|homosexuals]]<ref>Hans Peter Bleuel, ''Sex and Society in Nazi Germany'', (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1973).</ref> came under increasing scrutiny and persecution in the later years of the regime, although other homosexuals were ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler and played an important role in his regime.<ref>[http://www.whale.to/b/reisman.html The Pink Swastika as Holocaust Revisionist History by Judith A. Reisman]</ref>
The Nazis exterminated at least 11 million civilians by rounding them up, transporting them to concentration camps and then murdering them there. About 6 million of these were Jews (see [[Holocaust]]).

==Religion==
Hitler rejected Christianity as spoiled by Judaism, but did support a new pro-Nazi Protestant church that had some followers. The German Army had traditionally used the phrase "Gott mit uns" or "God with us", which was commonly used on their armor and helmets. By World War II it was still used on the army uniform belt-buckles. Hitler in the future, however, planned to minimize the influence of the Christian Protestant churches and Catholic churches, while promoting nationalism and pre-Christian German paganism. Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic as a youth, but he began to despise the church and all of Christianity as too pacifist or a "religion for weaklings".

=== Alfred Rosenberg ===
Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the party's official philosopher, announced the philosophic basis of the Nazi campaign. In his ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' he scorns the Old Testament, and while he takes Jesus more seriously, he concludes,<ref>Time (Sept 03, 1934)</ref>
:The religion of Jesus was undoubtedly the preaching of love . . . but the German religious movement, which wishes to develop into a people's church, must declare that it unconditionally subordinates the ideal of neighborly love to the ideal of national honor . . . The churches, handed over to it again, will, little by little, put the fiery spirit of the hero . . . in place of the crucifixion."

The outspoken [[pagan]] Rosenberg drew up a thirty-point program for the ''National Reich Church'', created in 1936, which contains the following statements,

*"The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.
*"The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably...the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800...
*"The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.
*"The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany...'"
*"On the altars there must be nothing but 'Mein Kampf' (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
*"On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels...and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."<ref>Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 240</ref>

When a Manchester Guardian correspondent attended a Berlin meeting of the German People's Church, he found it a noisy, enthusiastic, a theological free-for-all. One Dr. Krause exclaimed, "The lives and utterances of great Germans must be considered equal to the Bible as revelations..."

=== Pagan cults ===
Throughout Germany strange little [[pagan]] cults were seen to arise, such as the pantheistic Nordic Religious Community.

Youth Leader Hartmann-Lautenbacher stated, "Besides the rock of Jesus Christ there is another: Adolf Hitler. It remains to be seen which of the two is stronger. On the one sit the old women. On the other stands the young generation."

Youth Press Agent August Hoppe exhorted war against Christianity, and a return to [[pagan]] roots.

Similar to what some see today in the West, Youth Leader Joachim Benedicte stated, "...The religious faith of the German people must be decided by political elements, the Storm Troops and the Hitler Youth."<ref>Religion: Nazis v. Jesus Christ, Time. 9-03-1934</ref>

As in Communism, the State, or ''Fatherland'' came to be deified, in the name of which Hitler justified his autocratic decision to kill - for political purposes - a large number of S.A. leaders while they were at a resort, during the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" (June 30 to July 2, 1934).

Rather than initially attacking Christian faith outright, the Nazi Party deceitfully promoted itself as "positive Christianity," and vigorously opposed what they call "negative Christianity", both terms being Nazi inventions which could mean whatever the local Nazi leader chooses them to mean. In their Manifesto of their "anxieties and fears", the German Evangelical Church quoted Rosenberg as saying, "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our soul." The Manifesto concludes: "When, within the compass of the Nazi view of life, an anti-Semitism is forced on the Christian that binds him to hatred of the Jew, the Christian injunction to love one's neighbor still stands...The Evangelical conscience is most heavily burdened by the fact that there are still concentration camps in Germany that describes itself as a country in which Justice is administered..."<ref>Time magazine, Aug. 10, 1936, Foreign News: Churchmen to Hitler</ref>

=== Religious persecution ===
Overall however, the spiritual condition of Germany may be seen to have been weak by and during the time of Hitler's rise to power. Protestant churches in Germany had become largely institutionalized, and its power to effect political change decreased. The Catholic Institution had been pressured into a concordant with Hitler, which the latter continually broke. Loyalties were torn as [[National Socialism]] became the cause, and churches were pressured to submit to its ethos.<ref>''A history of national socialism, Cross against Swastika'', by Konrad Heiden</ref><ref>''Pius XII and the Nazis'', by Darlene Shelton</ref> Jews were overall seen negatively, stubborn and ungrateful.<ref>''Martin Luther and "The Jews" A Reappraisal'', by Dr. Christopher Probst</ref> After their rise to power the Nazis sought to purge the national German Evangelical Church of converted Jews, as well to make the church ideologically submissive to the state. By entertaining the Nazi doctrine of Aryan racial superiority and persecution of Jews, they militated against the authoritative position of the Scriptures. Largely in reaction to such the [[Confessing Church]] emerged. This Protestant church was not recognized by the Nazis, and was persecuted and finally forced underground, as many members and leaders, such as [[Martin Niemöller]], were particularly active in protesting against euthanasia and the persecution of the Jews.<ref>The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008; Confessing Church</ref><ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009, Confessing Church</ref>

Measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of National Socialism. An [[OSS]] report to the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]] Stated,
:"The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property."<ref>Claire Hulme & Dr. Michael Salter, [http://www-camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf ''The Nazi's Persecution as a War Crime: The OSS Response Within the Nuremeberg Trial's Process''], Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, n.d.</ref>

Though Christians sometime hold Hitler to be an atheist, and atheists often assert he was a Christian, the best evidence shows him to be neither, in particular failing to be the latter, especially in the Biblical sense of the word (being both the source and most authoritative definition of it). In contrast, evidence reveals that while Hitler shared with many atheists a dramatically skewed idea of what Christianity is, and/or made political use of the term, he was quite the contrary to being a Christian.<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Holocaust-Bible-Scriptural-Anti-Semitism/dp/0982277601 Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis..., by Joe Keysor]</ref>

The resource site Adherents.com states,

There is no question that Hitler was a Nazi. Nazism was clearly his most important religious affiliation, not in the positive way the word "religion" is often defined, but in the general sense that any philosophy or belief system which is most important in a person’s life is that person’s "religion," regardless of whether or not it is universally labelled as a "religion." Hitler was also born into a Catholic family, but he rejected Catholicism and in most ways he rejected Christianity in general. On occasion we have read people claim that "Hitler was a Catholic" or "Hitler was a Christian" in a meaningful way, implying that Christianity or Catholicism was the primary impetus for his Nazi reign. Such claims are simply vitriolic attacks occasionally voiced by ideologically-inclined anti-Christian, anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi people. Historians agree that Hitler was pointedly anti-Christian. We are not aware of any published sources from acknowledged academic historians or writers that identify Adolf Hitler as significantly Catholic or Christian in his motivations as an adult.”<ref>http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Adolf_Hitler.html</ref>

=== Hossbach Memorandum ===
In the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome (rather than such being a judgment due to its degradation, and persecution of Christians and its message), stating: "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." <ref>[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp]</ref>

Additionally, Albert Speer records that Hitler lamented, "You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion." and that Islam would have more compatible for them than Christianity.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=XLSa_RIDHMUC&dq=Albert+Speer,+Inside+the+Third+Reich,&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=551HSrzDDcm0twf6x7TbBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5 Inside the Third Reich, p. 96]</ref>

In another statement attributed to Hitler, he predicts, "I’m going to become a religious figure. Soon I’ll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers."<ref>Adolf Hitler, cited in Waite, Robert, Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God (NY: Basic Books, 1977) p. 261) (Lutzer, pp. 62-63.)</ref>[http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2132855/posts?page=101#101]

=== Hitler's Table Talk ===
Clear but disputable evidence reveals Hitler as promoting a form of paganism, which the Nazi Party clearly sought to promote. ''Hitler's Table Talk'' is a series of informal, private conversations among Hitler and his closest associates, as recorded by [[Martin Bormann]] (himself one who was vehemently against Christianity). The ''ex tempore'' remarks excerpted below are attributed to Hitler:<ref>Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953</ref>

Night of 11–12 July 1941

*"[[National Socialism]] and religion cannot exist together....

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....

*"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

10 October 1941, midday

*"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

14 October 1941, midday

*"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....
"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....

*"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....
"Christianity <is> the liar...

*"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)

19 October 1941, night

*"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

21 October 1941, midday

*"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....

*"The decisive falsification of Jesus' [who he asserts many times was never a Jew] doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....

*"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunized against the disease." (p 118-119)

14 December 1941, midday

*"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....

*"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)

9 April 1942, dinner

*"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)

27 February 1942, midday

*"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)

Miscellaneous other quotes include,

*"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it."

*"Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline."

*"We'll see to it that the churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth."

*"Indeed, it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this."

*"We do not want to educate anyone in atheism."

*"The observatory I'll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind ... In future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They'll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: 'The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.' It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility — but without the priests."

*"The final state must be: in St. Peter's Chair, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and as poor in spirit as anyone could wish."

*"For my part, in his place [the Duce] I'd have taken the path of revolution. I'd have entered the Vatican and thrown everybody out — reserving the right to apologize later: 'Excuse me, it was a mistake!' But the result would have been, they'd have been outside!"
[[Image:Nazi.jpg|thumb|right|250px|"With our flags is our victory"]]
*"But a pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring."

*"I have six Divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn't prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls."

*"The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the 'why' of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable."<ref>Hitler on Religion: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/religion.htm</ref>

Hitler, much like atheists, is seen to not only have scorned corruptions of Christian faith, but the whole faith as well. Having loosed himself from the moral authority of the Bible (though misappropriating it's "badge" at times for his own purposes) he was much free to be guided by his own "golden compass", which is ultimately the atheistic basis for determining morality. Tragically however, while an innate sense of right can be right, Hitler's compass pointed south rather than north.

==Economic planning==
[[James Burnham]], a former [[Trotskyite]] who served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) during the World War II and later contributed to the ''[[National Review]]'', described the Nazi regime's [[economic planning]]. Burnham pointed out how the original "workers revolution" of [[Marxism]] had in fact become a managerial revolution in all societies where Socialism had been embraced. Writing in 1940, Burnham noted,

{{Cquote|Outright state ownership and operation, advancing in all fields, are particularly ascendant in the extensive areas of new enterprise opened up during the Nazi rule....virtually all economic enterprise is subject to rigid state control; and it is control which we have seen to be decisive in relation to the instruments of production. Legal forms, even income privileges, are in the end subordinate to ''de facto'' control.

Even where private owners still exist in Germany, the decisions about "their" property are not in their hands. They do not decide what to make or not to make. They do not establish prices or bargain about wages. They are not at liberty to buy the raw materials they might choose nor to seek the most profitable markets. They cannot, as a rule, decide how to invest or not invest their surplus funds. In short, they are no longer owners, no longer effective [[capitalist]]s...

The regulation of production in Germany is no longer left to the market. What is to be produced, and how much, is decided, deliberately, by groups of men, by the state boards and bureaus and commissions. It is they that decide whether a new plant shall be built or an old plant retired, how raw materials shall be allotted and orders distributed, what quotas must be fulfilled by various branches of industry, what goods shall be put aside for export, how prices shall be fixed and credit and exchange extended. There is no requirement that these decisions of the bureaus must be based on any profit aim in the capitalist sense. If it is thought expedient, for whatever reason, to produce, for example, an ersatz rubber or wool or food, this will be done even if the production entails, from a capitalist point of view, a heavy loss. Similarly, in order to accumulate foreign exchange or to stimulate some political effect in a foreign nation, goods will be exported regardless of loss. A factory may be compelled to shut down, even though it could operate at a high profit. Banks and individuals are forced to invest their funds with no reference to the private and voluntary opinions about "risks" from a profit standpoint. It is literally true to say that the Nazi economy, already, is not a "profit economy."

The workers, on their side, are no longer the "free proletarians" of capitalism. Under Nazism the workers are indeed, free from unemployment. At the same time they cannot, as individuals or through their own independent organizations, bargain for wages or change jobs at will. They are assigned to their tasks, and their labor conditions are fixed, by the decisions of the state bureaus and commissions. Millions of them are allotted to the vast state enterprises. ...With the reduction in the area of private enterprise and the increase of state enterprise, goes also a corresponding reduction in the social position of the private capitalists. So far as control over the instruments of production goes, the capitalists are already near the bottom. As to income privilege: a recent estimate by a New York statistician gives as a mere 5% the share of the German national income going to profits and interest. This is a substantial reduction from the 1933 figures, in spite of a huge increase in the total national income, which, under capitalism, would normally be accompanied by a percentage increase in profits. ...f the German capitalists' 5%, the greater part is appropriated by the state as taxes and "contributions." ...

...how seldom we find a manager among the voluntary or forced exiles from Nazi Germany! There are artists and writers among the exiles, ideologists and politicians, unassailable foes of the new regime, storekeepers and professionals and teachers, and not a few capitalists, both Jews and Christians. But almost never a manager....Germany is to-day a managerial state in an early stage. Structurally, it is less advanced along managerial lines than Russia; ...though structurally less advanced...Its industrial and technological foundation is far stronger; the rising managerial class is much larger, better trained, more able...

...The first part of the second world war, up to the fall of France in June, 1940, was in reality the continuation of the strategic extension begun in 1935. This phase, the consolidation of the European base, was completed with France's surrender. It is completed irreversibly and can no longer be undone whatever the outcome of the succeeding phases of the war, which are really other wars. This consolidation fundamental to the world politics of managerial society, is not going to be dissolved, not even if the present German regime is utterly defeated. The day of a Europe carved into a score of sovereign states is over; if the states remain, they will be little more than administrative units in a larger collectivity.<ref>Burnham, James (1966). ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham, pp. 222-226, 232.</ref>}}

==See also==
*[[Anti-Semitism]]
*[[National Socialism]]
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
*[[Communism]]
*[[Health care in Nazi Germany]]
*[[Hugo Boss]] - supplier of party uniforms

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
*[http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html Marxism, Fascism, Nazism] - Brad DeLong, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley
*Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany, by Joe Keysor
{{Liberalism}}
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Political Parties in Germany]]
[[Category:Fascist States]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Christianity]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Racist Organizations]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Police State]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-09-17T15:18:47Z

JohnJustice: /* History */

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops," (''Ordnertruppen'') and were also given several name changes, including ''Sportabteilung''/''Turn -und sportabteilung'' (German: "Sports Division"/"Gymnastics and Sports Division"). Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merged with another group in 1919 to form the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref>

The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, ''Freikorps'' (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. One particular political party that the SA frequently assaulted was the German Communist Party, which contrary to contemporary telling of history had nothing to do with the latter party adhering to Socialism, but instead dealt with the latter party taking orders from Moscow instead of Germany, being internationalists. One inspiration for the SA brownshirts, in their use of terror to force their views on the masses came from the Democrat party-run terror organization, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] during the post-Civil War period. Hitler used the SA unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

The SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and Hitler created a small separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal bodyguard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxiliary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for Nazi branch organizations, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't the military commander/official in Nazi Germany, nor would the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]].

After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he didn't get the SA under control, they would put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning to overthrow the government. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm was planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort. This after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they had since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and Heydrich. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst. Rohm himself would ultimately end up gunned down while in Dachau after the latter refused to commit suicide via revolver due to arrogantly demanding that Hitler deliver the final blow, with the camp commander, Eicke, angrily telling the former SA leader it was too late when he attempted to insist in what were allegedly his final words that Hitler was the fuhrer.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140111073914/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-09-17T15:17:26Z

JohnJustice: /* History */ copy edit

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops," (''Ordnertruppen'') and were also given several name changes, including ''Sportabteilung''/''Turn -und sportabteilung'' (German: "Sports Division"/"Gymnastics and Sports Division"). Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 to form the "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref>

The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, ''Freikorps'' (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. One particular political party that the SA frequently assaulted was the German Communist Party, which contrary to contemporary telling of history had nothing to do with the latter party adhering to Socialism, but instead dealt with the latter party taking orders from Moscow instead of Germany, being internationalists. One inspiration for the SA brownshirts, in their use of terror to force their views on the masses came from the Democrat party-run terror organization, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] during the post-Civil War period. Hitler used the SA unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

The SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and Hitler created a small separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal bodyguard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxiliary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for Nazi branch organizations, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't the military commander/official in Nazi Germany, nor would the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]].

After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he didn't get the SA under control, they would put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning to overthrow the government. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm was planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort. This after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they had since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and Heydrich. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst. Rohm himself would ultimately end up gunned down while in Dachau after the latter refused to commit suicide via revolver due to arrogantly demanding that Hitler deliver the final blow, with the camp commander, Eicke, angrily telling the former SA leader it was too late when he attempted to insist in what were allegedly his final words that Hitler was the fuhrer.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140111073914/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Anton Drexler

2018-06-28T16:29:08Z

JohnJustice:

'''Anton Drexler''' (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a [[Germany|German]] [[fascist]] politician and one of the co-founders of the [[national socialist]] German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP), the predecessor of the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP).

Before his political career he was a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. During [[World War I]] he formed a branch of the "Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace" (''Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden'') league.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> In 1918, Drexler met with journalist [[Karl Harrer]] (a member of the socialist racist [[Thule Society]]) and they formed the "Political Workers' Circle" (''Politischer Arbeiterzirkel'').<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> This group in January 1919 became the basis of the German Workers' Party; it was one of many parties that formed in Germany after the war. These parties were small groups of like-minded men engaging in hate speech, anti-semitism and communist-Jewish conspiracies.

In September 1919 [[Adolf Hitler]] joined the German Workers' Party, which in 1920 was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). Hitler officially took over the leadership of the Party from Drexler on July 29, 1921.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anton-drexler Anton Drexler] at the ''Jewish Virtual Library''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drexler, Anton}}
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-06-21T23:26:39Z

JohnJustice: /* History */ copy edits

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops," (''Ordnertruppen'') and were also given several name changes, including ''Sportabteilung''/''Turn -und sportabteilung'' (German: "Sports Division"/"Gymnastics and Sports Division"). Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] the party was a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 under the name "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref> The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, Freikorps (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. Hitler used them unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

Still believing in Hitler's cause, the SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and he created a separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal guard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxiliary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for Nazi branch organizations, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't the military commander/official in Nazi Germany, nor would the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]].

After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he didn't get the SA under control, they would put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning to overthrow the government. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm was planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort. This after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they had since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and Heydrich. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20140111073914/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Anton Drexler

2018-06-21T23:09:40Z

JohnJustice:

'''Anton Drexler''' (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a [[Germany|German]] [[fascist]] politician and one of the co-founders of the [[national socialist]] German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP), the predecessor of the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP).

Before his political career he was a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. During [[World War I]] he formed a branch of the "Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace" (''Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden'') league.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> In 1918, Drexler met with journalist [[Karl Harrer]] (a member of the socialist racist [[Thule Society]]) and they formed the "Political Workers' Circle" (''Politischer Arbeiterzirkel'').<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> This group in January 1919 became the basis of the German Workers' Party; it was one of many parties that formed in Germany after the war. These parties were small groups of like-minded men engaging in hate speech, anti-semitism and communist-Jewish conspiracies.

In September 1919 [[Adolf Hitler]] joined the German Workers' Party, which in 1920 was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party) and officially took over the leadership of the Party from Drexler on July 29, 1921.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anton-drexler Anton Drexler] at the ''Jewish Virtual Library''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drexler, Anton}}
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Anton Drexler

2018-06-21T23:07:28Z

JohnJustice:

'''Anton Drexler''' (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a [[Germany|German]] [[fascist]] politician and one of the co-founders of the [[national socialist]] German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP), the predecessor of the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP).

Before his political career he was a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. During [[World War I]] he formed a branch of the "Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace" (''Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden'') league.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> In 1918, Drexler met with journalist [[Karl Harrer]] (a member of the socialist racist [[Thule Society]]) and they formed the "Political Workers' Circle" (''Politischer Arbeiterzirkel'').<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> This group in January 1919 became the basis of the German Workers' Party; it was one of many parties that formed in Germany after the war. These parties were small groups of like-minded men engaging in hate speech, anti-semitism and communist-Jewish conspiracies.

In September 1919 [[Adolf Hitler]] joined the German Workers' Party, which in 1920 was renamed to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party) and officially took over the leadership of the Party from Drexler on July 29, 1921.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anton-drexler Anton Drexler] at the ''Jewish Virtual Library''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drexler, Anton}}
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Anton Drexler

2018-06-21T23:04:23Z

JohnJustice:

'''Anton Drexler''' (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a [[Germany|German]] [[fascist]] politician and one of the co-founders of the [[national socialist]] German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; DAP), the predecessor of the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP).

Before his political career he was a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. During [[World War I]] he formed a branch of the ''Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden'' (Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace) league.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> In 1918, Drexler met with journalist [[Karl Harrer]] (a member of the socialist racist [[Thule Society]]) and they formed the ''Politischer Arbeiterzirkel'' (Political Workers' Circle.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> This group in January 1919 became the basis of the German Workers' Party; it was one of many parties that formed in Germany after the war. These parties were small groups of like-minded men engaging in hate speech, anti-semitism and communist-Jewish conspiracies.

In September 1919 [[Adolf Hitler]] joined the German Workers' Party, which in 1920 was renamed to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party) and officially took over the leadership of the Party from Drexler on July 29, 1921.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anton-drexler Anton Drexler] at the ''Jewish Virtual Library''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drexler, Anton}}
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Anton Drexler

2018-06-21T23:02:56Z

JohnJustice: added detail, copy edit and added cites

'''Anton Drexler''' (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a [[Germany|German]] [[fascist]] politician and one of the co-founders of the [[national socialist]] German Workers' Party (German:''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; DAP), the predecessor of the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP).

Before his political career he was a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. During [[World War I]] he formed a branch of the ''Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden'' (Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace) league.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> In 1918, Drexler met with journalist [[Karl Harrer]] (a member of the socialist racist [[Thule Society]]) and they formed the ''Politischer Arbeiterzirkel'' (Political Workers' Circle.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> This group in January 1919 became the basis of the German Workers' Party; it was one of many parties that formed in Germany after the war. These parties were small groups of like-minded men engaging in hate speech, anti-semitism and communist-Jewish conspiracies.

In September 1919 [[Adolf Hitler]] joined the German Workers' Party, which in 1920 was renamed to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party) and officially took over the leadership of the Party from Drexler on July 29, 1921.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anton-drexler Anton Drexler] at the ''Jewish Virtual Library''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drexler, Anton}}
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Adolf Hitler

2018-06-21T22:36:27Z

JohnJustice: /* Night of the Long Knives */ correction

{{Dictator bio
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]
| name =Adolf Hitler
| birth =April 20, 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) Klara Pölzl
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected), [[Pantheism]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=lxphjwEACAAJ&dq=hitler%27s+religion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6kcCK0M7QAhVMJiYKHa5EDWQQ6AEIJDAA Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs That Drove the Third Reich]</ref> [[Atheism]],<ref name="Today's atheists">[http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/03/20/todays-atheists-are-bullies-and-are-doing-their-best-to-intimidate-rest-us-into-silence.html Today's atheists are bullies -- and they are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence] at Fox News</ref> [[Evolutionism]]
| spouse =Eva Braun
| children =none
| death =April 30, 1945 Berlin, Germany
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot
| education =Realschule Linz, Austria
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment Imperial German Army (1914-1918)
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)
|burial = none, burned.
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]] [[National socialism]] (Nazism)
| party =German Workers' Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920) [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]] (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933
| war =[[World War II]] in Europe
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether

Rummel: 21,000,000
}}

'''Adolf Hitler''' (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Third Reich|Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; NSDAP or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in his book, [[Mein Kampf]] and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt in 1944, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries.

Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as the English term "[[Hippy]]") who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. Hitler used the teachings of [[Martin Luther]] to promote his anti-Semitic views, similar to the other ways used by the Nazi Party in their effort to reshape and present to the public a much modified version of [[Christianity]]. One which promoted racial purity and Nazi ideology under the false banner known as "positive Christianity". The anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther, prior to his seeing the Jew's refusal of his outreach to accept the Gospel, was highly sympathetic towards the Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided Protestants and others who accepted the culture when it did not conform to biblical teachings.

Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.

After World War I, Hitler acted as an army political agent to investigate a small pan-German nationalist party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party. In February 1920 the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with the belief that weak civilian leaders and Jews were responsible for Germany's loss in the First World War, and his psychotic, megalomaniac view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many leaders of the Nazi Party were mentally-unbalanced people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.

Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.

Adolf Hitler was an [[evolution]]ary [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref name="icr.org">http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref name="hourofthetime.com">http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker.

==Early life==
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.

When his father retired, the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings.''<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20111015014300/http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.]</ref>

==Who and what he was==
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote>

<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote>

{{Clear}}

== Beliefs ==
{{See also|Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism}}
According to [[Albert Speer]], Hitler never left the Catholic Church, but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. He and Nazi Party also presented to the public what was known as "positive Christianity", which in reality was only an attempt to mold Christian theology to match Hitler's world view. The "Protestant Reich Church" promoted racial purity, excluded many parts of the Bible, stated that Jesus was not Jewish but Nordic, while proclaiming Hitler as the "new messiah". In the end, any voiced tolerance of true Christianity during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref>

Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref>

In Hitler's diaries, which were published in 1953, it was revealed that Hitler, at some point, embraced [[atheism]] while rejecting Christianity as an invention of Judaism, which he held similar animosity toward:

{{cquote|And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist: "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity," Hitler stated, "was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew… Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."<ref name="Today's atheists"/>}}

{{See also|Atheists, Adolf Hitler and the no true Scottsman fallacy}}

=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]

[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (Nazi) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref name="hourofthetime.com"/><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref> ]]
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref name="mises.org">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}

=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]

[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]
The staunch [[evolution]]ist Stephen Gould admitted the following:
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78.<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}

Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf'').<ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}

Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref name="icr.org">http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref>
[[File:Richard Dawkins in Australia.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|The [[New Atheism|new atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[evolution]]ist. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref name="byfaithonline.com">http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society.<ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}

Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" />

[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.

There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}

Evolutionist and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref name="byfaithonline.com"/> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref name="byfaithonline.com"/>

=== Adolf Hitler and abortion ===
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]

In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.<ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}

(The [[atheism|atheist]] [[Marquis de Sade]] is credited with providing the first notable impetus to introduce abortion into western society. See: [[Abortion and atheism]])

===Other beliefs===
Hitler supported [[Animal rights|animal "rights"]]<ref>[ https://books.google.com/books?id=e7FME0btkH0C&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=hitler+animal+rights&source=bl&ots=PIxjDRDBj1&sig=tbJisPm39hMcxj1g6xL0Kh0sn7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3qZP7xOPTAhVr4oMKHeTMA_c4FBDoAQhKMAc#v=onepage&q=hitler%20animal%20rights&f=false Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions], pg. 62.</ref><ref>Harrison, David; Paterson, Tony (September 22, 2002). [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1407954/Thanks-to-Hitler-hunting-with-hounds-is-still-verboten.html Thanks to Hitler, hunting with hounds is still verboten]. ''The Telegraph''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref name="EllisWash."/> and [[environmentalism]],<ref name="EllisWash.">Washington, Ellis (March 26, 2011). [http://www.wnd.com/2011/03/279449/ The Nazi Cult of the Organic']. ''WND''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>[http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/nazi_ecology.htm Nazi "Ecology"], Frank Furedi, ''columbia.edu''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>Musser, Mark (February 6, 2016). [http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/yale_professor_on_nazi_environmentalism_so_close_yet_so_far.html Yale Professor on Nazi Environmentalism: So Close, yet So Far]. ''American Thinker''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref> and that support was reflected in the laws created during the Third Reich. Hitler also enacted [[gun control]] laws.<ref>Wolverton, II, J.D., Joe (January 30, 2017). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/14367-nazi-gun-control-laws-a-familiar-road-to-citizen-disarmament Nazi Gun Control Laws: a Familiar Road to Citizen Disarmament?] ''The New American''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref><ref>Stupp, Herbert W. (July 13, 2015). [https://spectator.org/63424_hitler-and-gun-control/ Hitler and Gun Control]. ''The American Spectator''. Retrieved May 9, 2017.</ref>

== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto
![[Nazi]] Party Platform
!Analysis
|-
|1
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.
|-
|2
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."
|The points raised in the Nazi platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.
|-
|3
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished."
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.
|-
|4
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."
|The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.
|-
|5
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."
|Central control of the financial system.
|-
|6
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.
|-
|7
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.
|-
|}

==War==
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German Army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.

==Path to power==
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.

After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; DAP); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, the party had changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''; NSDAP) or Nazi Party. Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.

Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' ("Popular Observer"), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the "Brown Shirts", the violent squads used by the Nazis to attack rival socialists, battle Communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.

==The Beer Hall Putsch==
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'état (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail.

The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would serve eight months).<ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".

===''Mein Kampf''===
{{main|Mein Kampf}}
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.

Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”

From ''Mein Kampf'':
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref>[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}

{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref>[http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read.</ref>
}}

===''Zweites Buch''===
{{main|Zweites Buch}}
Hitler's second book, completed in 1928 but not published until 1961, expands on Hitler's Darwinian views and also puts on display overtones of [[Malthusianism]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=I0TDSnJFGGoC&pg=PA152 The Rise of the Nazis: Second Edition]</ref> In ''Zweites Buch'', particularly chapter 1, he writes about issues in "living space", the "struggle for life", issues in food supply, and other common topics in overpopulation commentary.

==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg‎|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When released in December 1924, he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.

A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.

The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.

==In power==
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.

===Night of the Long Knives===
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|200px|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.

On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''

Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondi.]]

===Beginnings of expansion===
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.

Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.
[[Image:Mufti And Hitler.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Adolf Hitler talking with Grand Mufti [[Mohammed Amin Al-Husseini|Haj Amin al-Husseini]]]]
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.
[[File:Hitler and Mussolini.jpg|thumb|200px|Hitler and [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1936]]
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebiscite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.

==Anschluss and the Munich Agreement==
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.

While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waiving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia.

==Poland==
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.

On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.

Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.

Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.

==Barbarossa==
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micromanaging military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.

In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref>

==Beginning of the end==
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg‎|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.

But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.

===Assassination attempt===
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel [[Claus von Stauffenberg]] went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by then grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.

On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.

[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler:
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}

All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.

==Death==
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-182</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref name="Joachimsthaler. 1999 pp. 160-182, 240-260">Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-182, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report a number of alleged sightings of Hitler along with theories that he and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref>

More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researchers.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most all historians are very skeptical and dismiss these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref name="Joachimsthaler. 1999 pp. 160-182, 240-260"/><ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler 1936-1945 - Nemesis''. (2000) p. 1038</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Disturbed character]]
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]
* [[Police state]]

== External links ==
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]

==Further reading==
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953. Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==Sources==
*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hitler, Adolf}}

[[Category:Dictators]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Evolutionists]]
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Bigotry]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]
[[Category:War Criminals]]
[[Category:Socialists]]
[[Category:Liberal Authors]]

National Socialism

2018-06-21T22:30:34Z

JohnJustice: copy edit - grammar

[[Image:Wille.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Political poster from Germany during the 1930s; translated, it reads ''National Socialism -- the organized will of the nation'']]
'''National [[Socialism]]''' ('''[[Nazism]]''') is a [[totalitarian]] system originally created in [[Germany]] immediately following [[World War I]], and characterized by intense [[nationalism]] (although, ironically, Joseph Goebbels indicated that Nazism hated the concept of nationalism due to it being a bourgeois concept when explaining the NSDAP's political position), dictatorial or draconian [[police state]] rule, mass appeal, brutal use of violence, disregard for the law, and a racial policy emphasizing the subjugation or extermination of people considered inferior, based heavily on a belief in social [[Darwinism]], as advocated by people such as Heinrich von Treitschke and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.<ref>[http://yesterday.uktv.co.uk/warzone/world-war-two/nazi-germany/article/what-national-socialism/ What is National Socialism? (yesterday.uktv.co.uk/warzone/world-war-two/nazi-germany/article/what-national-socialism)]</ref> This philosophy extrapolated Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory and said that persons, groups, and races are subject to the same laws of [[natural selection]] that Darwin proposed for animals.<ref>[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551058/social-Darwinism Britannica's entry on social Darwinism]</ref>

The name [[Nazi]] is a contraction of the full party name, [[National Socialist]] German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP). Nazism, in short, is simply one of several varieties of [[socialism]]. As a political party it controlled Germany from 1933-1945 under [[Adolf Hitler]], resulting in [[World War II]] and a campaign of mostly anti-[[Jewish]] and [[racist]] [[politics]], resulting in [[genocide]] (see the [[Holocaust]]).

Supporters of [[Communism]], or of [[socialism]] in general, like to pretend that Nazism was not socialist but "[[right wing]]", for similar reasons to why [[fascism]] is often associated with the right wing despite being left wing. Despite this, however, it featured enough similarities with Communism that they were in fact closer to the far left, even including anti-Semitism, which Karl Marx had advocated.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020116231910/http://russp.org/nazis.html</ref>

* It was common in those days, as it is in ours, to identify the [[Communist]]s as [[leftist]] and the Nazis as [[rightist]]s, as if they stood on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But [[Ludwig von Mises]] knew differently. They both sported the same ideological pedigree of socialism. "The German and [[Russian]] systems of socialism have in common the fact that the [[big government]] has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer's goods for his consumption."

* The difference between the systems, wrote Mises, is that the German pattern "maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets." But in fact the government directs production decisions, curbs [[entrepreneurship]] and the labor market, and determines wages and [[interest rates]] by central authority. "Market exchange," says Mises, "is only a sham." [http://mises.org/daily/47]

In addition, the Nazis never made an attempt at restoring the monarchy of Germany upon gaining national power. Further, during the late stages of World War II they had backed anti-monarchist forces in Hungary, one of their Axis allies, which acted as additional proof that they were not a right-wing ideology under the European definition (the origins of the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" came from the French Revolution regarding the National Assembly, with monarchists sitting on the right side seating).<ref name="The Lies of Socialism">http://www.truthbasedlogic.com/lies.htm</ref>

On a similar note, thanks largely to the [[Frankfurt School]] (in particular [[Theodor Adorno]] and [[Herbert Marcuse]]) redefining fascism and Nazism as being right wing and manipulating the American Jewish Committee into assuming that the Nazis were such, the Nazis were also falsely assumed to be sexually rigid and puritanical relating to sexual relationships, when in reality, they were bohemians and sexual deviants/perverts (see [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]).<ref name="frontpagemag.com">http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267543/big-liar-dinesh-dsouza</ref><ref>http://www.wnd.com/2017/08/the-sex-pervert-as-anti-fascist/</ref>

==Origins==
{{main|Nazi platform of 1925}}

National Socialism is related to socialism in which the basic core is a control of people, property, and income by a centralized government. The core concepts of socialism were kept, transferred, and implemented in the 25 points of the Nazi Party Platform of 1925, which included:
*The abolition of unearned income;
*Nationalization of trusts;
*Inclusion into profit-sharing;
*Increase in old-age pensions;
*Creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class;
*Aguarian reform, which included the seizing of land without compensation;
*State control of education;
*Creation of a "folk" army to supplant or replace the regular army;
*State control of the press [http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm]
Several concepts, however, make National Socialism unique as a political philosophy:
*A regimented, militaristic style of governance which had its origins in the Prussian traditions exemplified by Frederick William I (1688–1740), Frederick the Great (1712–68), and Otto von Bismarck (1815–98);
*A belief of the Nordic “Aryan” man as superior in blood, intellect, and culture over all other races of man, given emphasis by the works of Frederich Nietzsche (''Mensch und Übermensch'') and other 19th century intellectuals.
Added to these beliefs was the science of the time, specifically the theories related to “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” as postulated by British naturalist Charles Darwin; these theories would be used later as justification for Nazi removal and extermination of non-German people throughout much of Europe prior to and during World War II.

After Hitler joined and later took control of the German Workers' Party in 1921, he added what could be the most damaging elements:
*A rabid hatred for anything and anyone not German;
*and a passionate German nationalism which demanded an expansion of German territory by force or other means.
Prior to World War I, Hitler had been a homeless tramp eking out a meager living as an artist in Vienna, Austria, a multi-ethnic city which included Slavs and Jews among its population; his experience there, as well as the racial propaganda Hitler read voraciously - among them the classic forgery ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' - fed into his pro-Germanic racist beliefs.

National Socialism did not come into its own until after Germany’s defeat in World War I. What gave it impetus was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, in which Germany was forced to assume guilt and responsibility for causing the war and the death and destruction which resulted. The Allies’ insistence on the drafting of the Treaty without German participation, the heavy reparations, the despair and disillusionment felt by many Germans after the war, and those diplomats Hitler felt had agreed to cease the war (the “November criminals”) were all used in Hitler’s propaganda to persuade as many Germans as possible to support the Nazi cause. The hyper-inflation of 1923 which wiped out middle-class savings and made the German mark worthless added to the National Socialist cause.

Hitler went into detail as to what National Socialism would be when he wrote his political testament while in prison in 1924. In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' he outlined his racial policies and theories, his theories regarding German expansion, and his understandings of mass psychology and propaganda; in the latter he understood that a weak-minded people would be led by someone who can speak at their level, regarding "truth" less important than "success":

:''"It is part of a great leader's genius to make even widely separated adversaries appear as if they belonged to but one category, because among weakly and undecided characters the recognition of various enemies all too easily marks the beginning of doubt of one's own rightness."''

Before he was ousted from the Party, Hermann Rauschning, National Socialist President of the Danzig Senate in 1933-1934, recalled being told by Hitler that:
:''"Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper . . . ."''
:''"[T]he people about us are unaware of what is really happening to them. They gaze fascinated at one or two familiar superficialities, such as possessions and income and rank and other outworn conceptions. As long as these are kept intact, they are quite satisfied. But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings."'' (Peikoff, p. 231)

“To be a socialist,” said Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.” (Peikoff, p. 19).

Furthermore, when asked about the position of National Socialism, Goebbels responded, "the NSDAP is the German Left. We despise bourgeois nationalism." (Der Angriff, Dec 6th, 1931).

==Doctrines==
National Socialism is revolutionary in nature and without end. National identity and nationalist ideology have been blended with a social radicalism in which liberalism, democracy, human rights, rationalism, and the rule of law were subordinated to the will of the state, the "state" being autocratic and concentrated in the person of the Fuhrer, i.e. Hitler. Loyalty to Germany, to the German State, and to Hitler in particular, was equated with the worship of God (meaning the Nordic god Woden/Votan/Oden). National Socialism in [[Germany]] 1925-1945 combined [[Norse mythology]], [[Darwinism]] and the [[Mysticism|mystical]], [[occult]]ic [[New age movement|New Age]] doctrines of [[Theosophical Society|Theosophy]] in a [[Racism|racist]], militant extremist opposition to Judaism and to Christianity "''with its [[Defeatism|defeatist]], effeminate Christ-figure''".<ref name=occult>''The Occult History of the Third Reich'' 4 program DVD documentary from [http://www.eagle-rock.com Eagle Media], copyright 1987/2004 Eagle Rock Entertainment. Disc 1: 100 minutes Disc 2: 109 minutes Total running time 209 minutes approx. Plus additional interactive content. Executive Producers for Eagle Rock Entertainment - Terry Shand & Geoff Kempin. An Eagle Media Release - Eagle Media is a division of Eagle Rock Entertainment Ltd. ISBN 0-9743194-6-5</ref> Once in power, the Nazis held on to it by threat, intimidation, violence, and the manipulation of the masses. It assumed that the strong had the right to rule the weak and the so-called "Master Race" had to expand its territory through the policy of [[Lebensraum]] (living space) and prepared Germans to accept an ethic of "ferocity" and "hardness".
::''I want to see once more in ''[our youth's]'' eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey.''"
::--Adolph Hitler, 1934 <ref name=occult/>

==After World War II==
National Socialism as a political force in Germany ended with that country’s defeat in 1945. Despite a “de-nazification” program by the victorious Allies, adherents to Nazism attempted to create new political groups as early as 1948 in West Germany, but were ineffective at reviving the movement; many were later banned, as with the symbolism that was part of it, such as the swastika.

Today, the only political party considered to have many elements of Nazism is the Baath Party of Syria and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The [[National Democratic Party of Germany]] (NPD) has also many times been accused of neo-Nazism and has survived repeated attempts at banning; party president Udo Voigt has made repeated anti-semitic/anti-immigrant statements, including attacks against America. Small neo-Nazi hate groups operate in several European countries and the United States.

In the media, including the Internet, neo-Nazism has also appeared. Radio programs hosted by such as David Duke and repeated appearances of noted Holocaust deniers such as David Irving are examples. Major hate sites like Stormfront and Metapedia contribute for Nazi/White Supremacist views.

==See also==
* [[Gun Control in Nazi Germany]]
* [[Second Book (Hitler)]]

==Further reading==
* Abel, Theodore. ''Why Hitler Came into Power.'' Harvard U. Press, 1986. 315 pp.
* Bracher, Karl D. ''The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Consequences of National Socialism'' (1973). Influential analysis by political scientist
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' (2000). 864 pp. Stress on antisemitism; [http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-New-History/dp/080909326X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198874312&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bullock, Alan. ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, '' (1962) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=55427796 online edition]
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Coming of the Third Reich: A History.'' 2004. 622 pp., a major scholarly survey [http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/B0007XWNGO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982055&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Evans, Richard J. ''The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939.'' (2005). 800 pp. The major scholarly study [http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-1933-1939/dp/1594200742/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195982055&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998); vol. 2: ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Geary, Dick. ''Hitler and Nazism,'' (2000) 97 pages
* Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris.'' vol. 1. 1999. 700 pp. [http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1889-1936-Hubris-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393320359/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198874144&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search vol 1]; vol 2: ''Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis.'' 2000. 832 pp.; the leading scholarly biography, [http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1936-1945-Nemesis-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393322521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198874179&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Koonz, Claudia. ''Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, Family Life, and Nazi Ideology, 1919-1945.'' (1986). 640 pp. The major study
* Overy, Richard. ''The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia'' (2004) [http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Hitlers-Germany-Stalins-Russia/dp/B000FTCH5W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198874351&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Owings, Alison. ''Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich.'' Rutgers U. Press, 1993. 484 pp. oral histories
* Peikoff, Leonard. ''The Omninous Parallels: A Brilliant Study of America Today - and the 'ominous parallels' with the chaos of pre-Hitler Germany''; Plume, New York City (1983)
* Rempel, Gerhard. ''Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS,'' (1989) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94862712 online edition]
* Stibbe, Matthew. ''Women in the Third Reich,'' 2003, 208 pp.
* Tooze, Adam. ''The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy'' (2007), highly influential new study
* Welch, David. ''Hitler'' (1998.) 123pp [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=109000510 online edition]

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:Holocaust]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:Liberals]]
[[Category:Socialism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Anti-American]]

Joseph Goebbels

2018-06-21T22:24:35Z

JohnJustice: /* Early career */ minor copy edit

[[File:Joseph Goebbels spricht Bundesarchiv Bild 102-17049.jpg|thumb|250px|Joseph Goebbels]]
'''Paul Joseph Goebbels''' (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945), was a member of the German [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NSDAP) and propaganda minister during the era of the [[Third Reich]].

==Early career==
He was a slightly built man with a deformed right leg (clubfoot). Goebbels had earned a PhD in 1921 and was a frustrated writer when he joined the Nazi Party in late 1924. He became an ardent admirer of [[Adolf Hitler]] and took national office when the [[Nazis]] seized power in January 1933. Known for his oratory skills, Goebbels spread Nazi propaganda to the masses. He molded German newspapers, radio, movies, art and culture into areas which followed and reflected Nazi doctrine. He was a noted anti-Semite and one of the most aggressive anti-Christian proponents in the Nazi leadership. Goebbels spoke out against the church and had members of the clergy persecuted. He had a particular hatred for the Catholic Church. And like [[Martin Bormann]], Goebbels wanted to wipe out [[Christianity]] in the German Reich.<ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref><ref>Longerich, Peter. ''Goebbels: A Biography'' (2015).</ref> Despite acting as the propaganda minister for the National Socialists, Goebbels himself, alongside the rest of the Nazis, held absolutely no love for the concept of nations, citing that "the NSDAP [Nazi Party] is the German Left. We despise bourgeois nationalism." (Der Angriff, Dec 6th, 1931) He later elaborated on what he meant by that statement in his 1932 pro-Nazi pamphlet "Those Damned Nazis", citing that in his view, Nationalism is meant to be the organic union of a people, where the symbol does not come above the content, and not "bougeoise patriotism", which he claimed is the same as "battling windmills" and denouncing it as class privilege regarding the left and right squabbling against each other.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20020213233649/http://www.calvin.edu:80/academic/cas/gpa/haken32.htm</ref>

==Minister of Propaganda==
In the late 1930s, Goebbels was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's aggressive foreign policy of expansion. He orchestrated propaganda campaigns against Czechoslovakia and Poland from 1938, onward. Once the war in Europe started in September 1939, Goebbels controlled the news and information reported to the public in Germany and the occupied regions through his Propaganda Ministry. Thereafter as the war progressed, Hitler made fewer and fewer public appearances and speeches. Goebbels in turn increasingly became both the face and the voice of the Nazi regime. By 1943, Goebbels used his position as propaganda minister to exhort the German people to greater effort and efficiency through the concept of total war which he endorsed. During the latter stages of the war he was able to use the intrigues of the Nazi Party to bring himself closer to Hitler.<ref>Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (1994) [1976].</ref>

==Chancellor and Death==
In April 1945 as the war in Europe drew to an end, Goebbels spent his last days with Hitler in Berlin. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Pursuant to Hitler's "Last will and testament", Goebbels was appointed the Chancellor of Germany. In his one act as Chancellor, Goebbels instructed General Hans Krebs to go and discuss cease-fire terms with Soviet Red Army General Vasily Chuikov in Berlin. He wrote a letter of authority allowing Krebs to act on his behalf. The Soviets rejected the conditional terms that were presented by Krebs. By then, Goebbels had decided that there would be no redemption for himself or his family after Hitler's death. On May 1, 1945 he and his wife, Magda had their six children poisoned. Late that afternoon in the Reich Chancellery garden, Goebbels shot himself and his wife took poison. The bodies were then burned, but not buried. On the afternoon of the following day, Soviet Red Army soldiers found the heavily charred remains of the couple.<ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945'' (2002).</ref><ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbels.html Joseph Goebbels - Jewish Virtual Library]
*[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_goebbels.htm Joseph Goebbels - History Learning Site]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20020213233649/http://www.calvin.edu:80/academic/cas/gpa/haken32.htm Those Damned Nazis] (English translation)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goebbels, Joseph}}

[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]
[[Category:German History]]
[[Category:German People]]
[[Category:Leftists]]
[[Category:Communists]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-03-22T15:48:18Z

JohnJustice: /* History */

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops." Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] the party was a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 under the name "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4th. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref> The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, Freikorps (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. Hitler used them unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

Still believing in Hitler's cause, the SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and he created a separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal guard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker who wanted control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxillary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed a number of political enemies in hastily constructed "wild" concentration camps, which were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by the SA. On May, there were flooded applications for them, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On April 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed in front of them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't be a military official in Nazi Germany, nor will the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg eventually, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he doesn't get the SA under control, they will put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and Heydrich were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning an overthrow. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm is planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they have since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-03-22T13:29:31Z

JohnJustice: /* History */ copy edit

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops." Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] the party was a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 under the name "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4th. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref> The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, Freikorps (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. Hitler used them unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

Still believing in Hitler's cause, the SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of "brownshirts", and he created a separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal guard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, the Nazi Party ended up winning many seats in the parliamentary elections, and Hitler made a strong showing in the German presidential election against Hindenburg, thereby establishing himself as a strong political force. Thereafter on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker and wanting control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxillary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed several political enemies in "wild" concentration camps, hastily constructed that were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by SA leaders. On May, there were flooded applications for them, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On August 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed in front of them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't be a military official in Nazi Germany, nor will the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg eventually, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he doesn't get the SA under control, they will put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and Heydrich were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning an overthrow. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm is planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they have since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-03-22T13:22:33Z

JohnJustice: /* History */

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops." Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] the party was a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 under the name "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4th. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref> The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, Freikorps (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. Hitler used them unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

Still believing in Hitler's cause, the SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of brownshirts, a choice decided upon by Hitler due to realizing that the German man were fond of uniforms; and he created a separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal guard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, Hitler's party ended up winning the parliamentary elections, and on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker and wanting control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxillary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed several political enemies in "wild" concentration camps, hastily constructed that were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by SA leaders. On May, there were flooded applications for them, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On August 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed in front of them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't be a military official in Nazi Germany, nor will the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg eventually, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he doesn't get the SA under control, they will put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and Heydrich were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning an overthrow. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm is planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they have since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Holocaust

2018-03-22T13:12:16Z

JohnJustice:

[[Image:Warsaw ghetto.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Jewish families are forced from the Warsaw Ghetto in the aftermath of its destruction by the SS in 1943. Their final destination was the killing center at Treblinka.]]
The '''Holocaust''' was systematic destruction by the [[Nazis]] of [[Jews|Jewish culture]], society, and, in ''die Endlösung'' (the '''Final Solution'''), the lives of Jews, 1933–1945. Before [[Hitler]] and the [[Nazis]] came to national power in 1933, they [[demonize]]d the Jews as subhuman and the cause of all [[Germany]]'s troubles. Once in power, the Nazis first removed the Jews from positions of power and prestige, initially by [[gun control]];<ref>See many articles from [[Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership]]</ref> from 1938–41 they imposed severe restrictions on Jews in Germany (many of whom fled). The systematic killings started in 1941, as the [[SS]] under [[Heinrich Himmler]] rounded up all the Jews they could find in the areas under Nazi control, and ultimately killed about 6 million through mobile SS death squads and in the extermination camps. Millions of non-Jews were also killed in separate Nazi operations.

The Holocaust was known but downplayed between 1945–1960, but since 1960 has become one of the central memories and horrors of [[World War II]], shaping policies by and towards [[Israel]] and profoundly shaping the modern conceptions of guilt and evil.

==Origins==
Hatred of the Jews has a long history all over Europe, but the modern forms of antisemitism emerged in the 19th century as a new spirit of nationalism allowed some Germans to sharply differentiate themselves from the Jews, a cultural subgroup that was well integrated into German society. By the end of the century, ant-semitic politicians and organized movements had emerged. Antisemitism was muted during [[World War I]], but exploded in 1919 as the defeated war veterans looked about for someone to blame for the national disgrace.

===Stage 1: to 1933===
The Nazi Party emerged among veterans in the early 1920s, with a violent attack on Jews as [[Adolf Hitler]]'s central theme. After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through propaganda and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in January 1933, with Hitler as Chancellor, with his ideology firmly entrenched within the party. In his book ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.

The Nazis violently hated all the Jews and everything for which they stood. They worked relentlessly toward the goal of removing all possible Jewish influences. Starting in the 1920s (when they were a small party) with a violently anti-Semitic rhetoric that blamed Jews for all the problems of Germany and the modern world, the Nazis defined Jews as a permanent “race” that would never change and could never be improved. The Nazis also strongly disliked Christianity as being too Jewish. Their goal was to return to a pre-Christian, all-Aryan (imaginary) world.

The Nazi goal was first to remove all Jewish influence, then deport all Jews from Europe.

===Stage 2: 1933–38===
The second stage of Nazi policy concerning Jews, from 1933 to 1938, when Hitler was dictator in a peacetime Germany, involved the removal of Jews from all public office. The Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave and half of the Jewish population in Germany did so (including famous scientist [[Albert Einstein]] and the teenaged [[Henry Kissinger]]). The Nazis opened Dachau and other “concentration camps” to punish thousands of their political enemies—including many Jews. About 1,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps inside Germany before 1939; these were distinct from the death camps that were opened in 1942 in Poland.

Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott that began on April 1, 1933, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The [[Nuremberg Laws]] were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a [[German]] illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.

===Stage 3: 1938–41===
Stage three, from 1938 to 1941, involved increasingly severe and humiliating restrictions for Jews. “Kristallnacht” in November 1938 was a systematic violent attack on all synagogues. World public opinion grew hostile to the Nazi actions; they responded by supporting pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic political movements in France and other countries, including the “German-American Bund.” After invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced two million Jews into a few ghettos with below-starvation food allotments. Before the war plans were made to start deporting Jews from Germany. The war meant Nazi control of millions of Jews in the east and occupied west as well, and deportation became impossible. That left extermination as the Nazi plan.

====Crystal Night====
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the deputy chief of the SS, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], later that evening, who specified that SS and SA units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week, local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. The Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.

The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany and neighboring [[Austria]], which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.

====World War II: 1939–41====
When World War II in Europe began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, use parks, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation was forbidden to them in 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing became mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland.

====Poland====
By September 21, 1939, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer [[Hans Frank]], and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of ''Judenrates'' (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane tasks like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were required to supply thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], [[Belzec]], and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called [[Auschwitz]].

Thousands, nearly 30% of the total population of Warsaw, were crammed into just over 2% of the city’s total land, a density of 200,000 people per square mile. Disease and malnutrition would take its toll, but for the German overlords this was a minor inconvenience. The ghetto was a temporary place to hold all of Europe’s Jews until a final solution was determined, and when the Nazis attacked its ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the killing began in earnest.

====Black soldiers====
The Germans did not generally commit atrocities against Allied soldiers in the West in 1940, with one major exception. About 40,000 black African combat troops in the French Army became targets of the Nazis. German units, acting on the own in accord with longstanding racial hatred of Africans, shot about 1500 to 3000 black soldiers in French uniforms after they had surrendered.<ref>Raffael Scheck, ''Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940'' (2006) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173 online review].</ref>

===Stage 4: 1941–42===
Stage 4 began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. All Russian Jews were assumed to be Communist agents and large scale killing of political enemies began in Poland. Special units of the SS, the Security Police, and the Security Service (Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos) not only massacred large numbers of Jews, but routinely included handicapped persons in open-air mass shootings. Seven of the “Einsatzgruppen” rounded up and shot many Polish Catholic priests, intellectuals, and political leaders. Another five units (with 3,000 men) followed the Red Army and executed Communist commissars and partisans, and about 600,000 Russian Jews.

====The Einsatzgruppen====
[[Image:Babi Yar.jpg|right|150px|left|thumb|1943 German photo of Soviet POWs forced to dig up the thousands of Jews killed at Babi Yar two years before; the Nazis destroyed the evidence by burning the bodies.]]
Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army. These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of [[Soviet]] occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities. Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, [[Lithuania]]; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near [[Kiev]], [[Ukraine]], between [[September]] 28–29, 1941<ref>[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm]</ref>; 9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children. On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.

By mid-1941, the Ukrainian SSR had the largest population of Jews in Europe. The addition of the eastern provinces of Poland in late 1939, as well as the seizure of sections of Romanian territory in June 1940, led to some 2.7 million Jews living within the borders of the newly enlarged republic. About 85% lived in cities. By 1944, 1.6 million of these Jews had died at the hands of the Germans and their allies and auxiliaries. Unlike the majority of the Holocaust's later victims who died in the industrialized mass murder of the death camps, the overwhelming bulk of Ukraine's Jews died in mass shootings during the initial stages of the war.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves. When the Soviet Red Army threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes. The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a minimum of one million.

===Stage 5: 1942–1944===
Stage 5 began at The [[Wannsee Conference]] in January 1942 began stage five of Nazi power; it was then that top Nazis decided on a “Final Solution” —to round up and secretly execute all the Jews of Europe. Killing centers were opened in Poland, and thousands of trainloads of Jews were transported there. Jews were gassed immediately upon arrival. Over three million Jews (and numbers of gypsies and other hated groups) were murdered, mostly in 1942–1943.

====Wannsee Conference====
On January 20, 1942 at a villa near Berlin named Wannsee a conference was convened by Heydrich to implement methods and ideas for a "final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). At the conference were fifteen men, among them Heydrich’s head of Jewish affairs, [[Adolf Eichmann]], who would be instrumental in providing the logistical plans for removing the Jews to the camps. The men represented government agencies, such as the Gestapo, the Race and Resettlement Office, the SS, as well as a representative from the General Government in Poland. As Heydrich explained near the beginning of the conference, ideas were in play on relocating Jews:
:''“Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration—i.e., evacuation of the Jews to the east…Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.”''

The minutes of the meeting were kept, but were edited by Heydrich. The language used contains euphemisms in place of what was really said. ''Evacuation of Jews to the east'' and ''resettlement'' meant relocation to the concentration and extermination camps in Poland; ''special handling'' regarded the killing of Jews, either through slave labor in which the Jew was worked to death, or being killed immediately on arrival. The ''final solution'' was put into practice within a few months of the conference, as the bullets of guns and the exhaust of carbon monoxide were replaced by the more efficient killing methods installed in the first gas chambers.

===Stage 6: 1944–45===
Stage 6 arrived when the Soviet armies overran the Polish camps in 1944–45 and, liberated the survivors.

But the killing continued unabated, even to the last week of the war. As territory was regained by Soviet forces, the death camps were evacuated of survivors and destroyed as much as possible in a futile attempt to hide the evidence. The survivors were moved west into Germany, usually in hellish death marches, and interned in concentration camps where death still awaited them; such killing by the S.S. took priority over military matters at times.
[[Image:Ike at Ordruf.jpg|left|150px|thumb|General Dwight D. Eisenhower saw for himself the carnage wrought by the Nazis when he toured the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. These prisoners were executed prior to the camp's liberation.]]

In all, six million Jews were murdered; most of the 300,000 survivors emigrated to the United States or Israel.

==The people involved==
Analytically, the people involved in the Holocaust can be divided into the following groups:

===Victims===
Millions were victimized by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The Jews were always the principal targets; [[Anne Frank]] in the Netherlands was the most famous victim. However, the Nazis also systematically hunted down and murdered the Roma people (“Gypsies”). They also targeted special enemies, including Communist activists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. The last group was the target of euthanasia programs carried out in German hospitals in 1939–1941. Some of these programs were stopped when German Christian leaders mobilized public opinion against them.

===Perpetrators===
Under the guidance of an all-powerful Führer (Hitler), the Nazis believed fervently in force, violence, and terror as their best weapons. Many of the most fanatical Nazis joined the SS, which carried out most of the executions. The Final Solution was directed by [[Heinrich Himmler]], chief of the SS and Minister of the Interior. His top aide was [[Reinhard Heydrich]], head of the SD and Gestapo, then after 1939, of all the secret police and security agencies grouped into the RSHA; he was assassinated by Czech commandos with British help in 1942. [[Adolf Eichmann]] was the senior SS bureaucrat in charge of handling deportation and transportation. However, regular German army police units also systematically killed large numbers of civilians and POWs on the Eastern Front.<ref>After the war, West Germany recognized its guilt and made large financial payments to Israel; Communist East Germany refused to do the same.</ref>

====Endlösung====
[[Image:Heydrich.jpg|right|150px|thumb|''Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich, the man who convened the Wannsee Conference with the intention of determining a "final solution to the Jewish question".]]
:''To Gruppenführer Heydrich:''
:''Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.''
:''Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.''
:''I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question.'' (Order from Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941)

====The death camps====
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Selektion'' of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
In the early years of Nazi Germany concentration camps were built with the expressed purpose of housing political prisoners; this was quickly expanded to Jews and other people the Nazis considered undesirable. By 1942 new camps were built in eastern Poland as death camps; the victims, once targeted by the Einsatzgruppen coming to them, had been rounded up by units of the Army and Waffen-SS, and forced to travel to their own destruction. The victims were packed tightly into cattle cars - so tight in fact that many would die standing up – and transported by rail to the new extermination camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, [[Majdanek]], and Belzec. The camps were essentially factories which specialized in death, making the process from arrival to counting to shower to disposal coldly efficient.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers. Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from vehicles and captured Soviet tanks. At these camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland – Auschwitz – was perhaps the most notorious. Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau). The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths. Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

===Bystanders===
In recent years much controversy has arisen over when President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] learned about the Nazis programs, and what he did or did not do. Switzerland was neutral and accepted in some refugees, but it also made large profits by trading and banking with Germany. The Swiss were forced in the 1990s to make reparation payments.

===Collaborators===
In rounding up Jews the Nazis sometimes had the enthusiastic cooperation of pro-Nazi governments (as in France and Slovakia). A few countries, including Italy and Hungary, tried to stall the Nazis, but the Germans took power directly and seized the Jews. Only Bulgaria and Denmark were largely successful in protecting their Jews.

===Resisters===
Resistance took many forms, from individual acts to hundreds of examples of organized, armed resistance. The most famous episode was the month-long uprising of 60,000 remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. At the Sobibor death camp, an uprising in October 1943 allowed 600 prisoners to escape.

Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi death machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves. Further, the Nazis took great care to prevent their victims from knowing their true plans right up to the moment of their deaths; at Babi Yar many had believed they were being transported to a “family work camp” right up to the point of standing before their own mass grave. There was also the fear of reprisals against large numbers of Jews within the ghettos, which also prevented resistance. But word of the unbelievable atrocities of the death camps filtered into places like Warsaw, and as the trains were leaving packed with Jews many saw that resistance was preferable to the death that awaited them.

Nine months after the Warsaw deportations had commenced, and after confirmation that their destination was the Treblinka extermination camp, 24-year-old [[Mordecai Anielewicz]] and his Jewish Resistance began the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] on April 19, 1943, which lasted just over a month.

[[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] was a Christian pastor and theologian who was opposed to the goings on in Germany. He was involved in the German Resistance and took part in a plan to assassinate Hitler. This led to his capture and eventual execution, under Hitler's order, at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.

Jews fought alongside partisans elsewhere in France, the Balkans, and Soviet Russia during the last three years of the war. Uprisings also occurred in two of the death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor; the latter was closed as a result and the site razed to hide the evidence.

In a unique case of resistance, the Jews of [[Denmark]] were almost entirely saved by the good will of their neighbors. The Danish government had arranged a system by which they maintained control of the government except for foreign affairs. This allowed the Jews of Denmark to live unmolested for several years. When the Nazis did move to deport the Jews in 1943 the Danish Government resigned in protest. The Danish people began a process of evacuating all of the Jews, en masse, to Sweden. The universities closed so students could assist the evacuation, congregations were urged to help, and the fishing fleets helped to evacuate the Jews by sea. In the end, only 500 Danish Jews were captured and placed in Theresienstadt where they remained until the end of the war thanks in part to the continued attentions of the Danish people.<ref>http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/languages/en/04/01/denmark2.php</ref>

===Rescuers===
Rescuers hid potential victims as best they could; the tragic story of [[Anne Frank]] is the most famous. The Pope helped protect some Italian Jews; it is still being debated whether he could have done much more. The most famous rescuer was Oskar Schindler; —“Schindler’s List” the movie is a tells the true story about of how he saved 1,100 Jews from the Nazis by setting up factories that produced defective munitions.<ref>[http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/schindlers-list.html For further information, see]</ref>

In territory occupied by the Germans, the situation was bleak for Jews. Their allies were few and resources were meager. Despite this, many put their lives on the line to provide aid and comfort, as well as putting them in hiding or through a network of underground units to get them to safety. In Poland, it was punishable by death to aid Jews, yet a “council for the aid of Jews” known as the Zegota rescued about 5,000 men, women, and children, providing hiding places and forged identity papers. A similar number was hidden by French Huguenots in the little town of Le Chamblon-sur-Lignon.

====Vatican====
Although criticized by many for his silence about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Pope [[Pius XII]] hid several hundred inside the Vatican, away from Mussolini and German occupiers and quietly worked behind the scenes to do what they could. The Vatican estimates they were able to save upwards of 150,000 Jews during this horrible time. For those who say the Vatican should have done more to save Jews, it should be noted that they weren't even able to stop the killing of Polish Catholics, of whom more than a million lost their lives, so how could they stop the killing of Jews?

====Wallenburg====
Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenburg]], in an attempt to save the last remaining Jews in Hungary, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and working with neutral diplomats and the Vatican, secured the release of several thousand; his efforts at the rescue of Jews would total well over 100,000 by war’s end, including [[Tom Lantos]], a survivor who became a powerful member of the U.S. Congress.

====Schindler====
A Nazi businessman who took advantage of the slave labor conditions to make a personal profit, [[Oskar Schindler]], would use that profit to bribe camp guards and Nazi officials at the Plazow camp to ensure that the workers he had grown to love and admire would survive the end of the war; among the individuals he played cat and mouse with for their lives was the camp's commandant, Amon Goeth, a sadistic SS officer who shot Jews for target practice from his villa and tortured a captured escapee by shooting the prisoners around him. These men and women, who hid Jews out of a sense of common humanity, would not be forgotten: the state of Israel would recognize them with honorary citizenship several years later.

===Liberators===
The Allies liberated the concentration camps in 1945 — but the question remains as to whether they could have bombed the camps or otherwise stopped the Final Solution.

===Survivors===
The survivors of the Final Solution were very quiet about their experiences until about 1961, when Adolf Eichmann was captured in South America by Israel, tried in Jerusalem, and executed. Since then the Holocaust has become recognized as the most horrible episode of the 20th century, and it has been analyzed in numerous with many books, courses, museums, and movies. The most important museums are Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

===Non-Jewish victims===
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution.<ref>It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews. [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/heinrich-himmler.shtml]</ref>
Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. [[Homosexual]]s were arrested; they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments; and sent to the camps. [[Gypsies]] as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.

The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the "T-4" Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.

Following the outbreak of World War II in [[Poland]], the Nazis killed Polish intelligentsia in territories under their control, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.

As Hitler was pro-[[animal rights]] and [[environmentalism]], [[hunter]]s, fishermen, lumberjacks, [[farmer]]s, and builders were also killed by Nazis.

[[Image:Goeth.jpg|right|150px|right|thumb|Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plazow concentration camp near Kraków, Poland. A sadistic man, his recreation was to target and kill individual Jews in the camp with a hunting rifle from the balcony of his villa.]]

==Deaths==
The number of Jews put to death were staggering. Beginning in the summer of 1942 a bare minimum of 960,000 were believed killed at Auschwitz during its three years in operation. At Treblinka, between 750,000-900,000 Jews were killed within 17 months, considering the staff and guards there numbered 120. 600,000 Jews died at Belzac within 10 months by a staff numbering 104. In the eighteen months of its operation, Sobibor killed 250,000.

{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="450" style="margin-left:5px"
|-
!colspan="5" align="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: yellow no-repeat scroll top left;"|Jewish Death Statistics during the Holocaust
|-
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Country
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Prior Jewish Population
!align ="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: red no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number Killed
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Percentage of Total
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number of Survivors
|-
|'''Poland'''
|3,300,000
|'''3,000,000'''
|91%
|300,000
|-
|'''Germany'''
|566,000
|'''200,000'''
|36%
|366,000
|-
|'''USSR'''
|3,020,000
|'''1,100,000'''
|36%
|1,920,000
|-
|'''Hungary'''
|800,000
|'''596,000'''
|74%
|204,000
|-
|'''Lithuania'''
|168,000
|'''143,000'''
|85%
|25,000
|-
|'''Estonia'''
|4,500
|'''2,000'''
|44%
|2,500
|-
|'''Latvia'''
|95,000
|'''80,000'''
|84%
|15,000
|-
|'''France'''
|350,000
|'''77,320'''
|22%
|272,680
|-
|'''Austria'''
|185,000
|'''65,000'''
|35%
|120,000
|-
|'''Netherlands'''
|140,000
|'''100,000'''
|71%
|40,000
|-
|'''Belgium'''
|65,700
|'''28,900'''
|45%
|36,800
|-
|'''Romania'''
|342,000
|'''287,000'''
|84%
|55,000
|-
|'''Bohemia Moravia'''
|118,310
|'''71,150'''
|60%
|47,160
|-
|'''Greece'''
|77,380
|'''67,000'''
|87%
|10,380
|-
|'''Czechoslovakia'''
|88,950
|'''71,000'''
|80%
|17,950
|-
|'''Yugoslavia'''
|78,000
|'''63,300'''
|81%
|14,700
|-
|'''Italy'''
|44,500
|'''7,680'''
|17%
|36,820
|-
|'''Bulgaria'''
|50,000
|'''0'''
|0%
|50,000
|-
|'''Denmark'''
|7,800
|'''60'''
|.8%
|7,740
|-
|'''Finland'''
|2,000
|'''7'''
|.03%
|1,993
|-
|'''Norway'''
|1,700
|'''762'''
|45%
|938
|-
|'''TOTAL'''
|'''9,508,340'''
|'''5,962,129'''
|'''63%'''
|'''3,546,211'''
|
|}

==Survivors==
More than nine million people were discovered by the [[Allies]] to have been displaced throughout the European Theater of the war; of these, six million were returned to their native lands. One million refused, citing either a fear of communist persecution or a fear of being discovered to have collaborated with the enemy. The remainder, more than three and a half million Jews, had nothing. For these survivors, life after the war meant searching for loved ones, as well as recovering from the severe effects of malnutrition and disease at the hands of the Nazis.

As to the future of finding homes for the surviving Jews, that was solved in part by both covert and well-publicized efforts to pressure [[Great Britain]] into relinquishing control of [[Palestine]] for the purpose of a Jewish homeland, as well as the relaxing of American immigration laws in 1948 which allowed a large influx of Jewish refugees. So shocking was the Holocaust to the Jewish mindset that it caused a determination of survivors to speed the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in May, 1948, vowing that a repeat of the Holocaust, as well as previous pogroms against the Jews in the past, would not happen again. Since 1948, Israel has fought in four major wars against their neighbors bent on eradicating it, and each time Israel has emerged victorious.

The Allies were just as shocked over the conditions which prevailed at the Nazi death camps, and set up military tribunals as a result. The most famous was the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal|Nürnberg Trials]], taking place 1945-1946 near the site of the Nazi mass rallies. For the first time in history, an international tribunal would try the 22 major living Nazis for crimes against humanity; all but one would be found guilty, and more than half would suffer death by hanging.

==Punishment==
Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide as the Russians were capturing Berlin. Himmler was captured in late May 1945 and committed suicide before he could be brought to trial for his war crimes. The main war criminals were tried at the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg in 1945–1947, and at smaller trials throughout Europe. The Holocaust was mentioned at the trials, but the major allegation against defendants was the systematic planning of an unjust war.<ref>The Far East War Crimes Trials were held from 1946 to 1948, and resulted in the conviction of 25 Japanese generals and high officials accused of crimes against peace. Over 2,000 local and regional trials convicted 4,000 Japanese officers accused of mistreating prisoners and civilians.</ref> Many Nazis fled justice, reaching Argentina or other distant locations. Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured while hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, brought to Israel, and put on trial in 1961. He was found guilty, and suffered the first and only death penalty carried out in Israel’s history. Other Nazis would eventually be brought to trial: [[Klaus Barbie]], the “Butcher of Lyon”, was tried in France in 1987, as well as [[Maurice Papon]] a decade later for collaborating with the Nazis. These trials brought to new generations an awareness of the Holocaust.

==Etymology==
The word '''Holocaust''' comes from the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god); the [[Hebrew]] words ''Sho'ah'' (Catastrophe) and ''Hurban'' (destruction)<ref>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/269548/Holocaust</ref> were also used, and survivors have used both to refer to what seemed to be the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, specifically in the crematoria of the [[concentration camps|extermination camps]] built for that purpose. Many victims have taken offense to the term '''Holocaust''' because of the meaning of the word. The term ''Sho'ah'' has become the preferred term in some parts of the world<ref>http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp</ref>

==Books and film==
* ''[[Schindler's List]]''

==See also==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Römische Campagna.jpg|thumb|Römische Campagna by Lovis Corinth; returned to the heirs of a Jew in 2007.]]
* [[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holocaust Memorial Day]]
*[[Kindertransport]]
* [[Bergen-Belsen]], one of the main killing camps
* [[SS]], in charge of the killing
* [[Sára Salkaházi]]
* [[Concentration camp]]s and [[Death camp]]s
* [[Tibet]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[socialist]] [[Nanny state]], leads to [[communist]] [[Police state]] - Don't think [[Communism]] is incompatible with [[Islam]].
* [[Gun control]] - key element to create a police state
* [[Terrorism]]

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy02267X8A&feature=related Original U.S. Army record of the discovery of camps, recorded on orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower]
*[http://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/ H-HOLOCAUST], daily discussion group, edited by scholars; numerous book reviews and reports on current scholarship
*[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ Holocaust Encyclopedia]
*[http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad VaShem, the World Center for Holocaust Research], [[Jerusalem]], [[Israel]]
*[http://www.ushmm.org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] in Washington, D.C.
*[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm ''Babi Yar'', poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko]
*[http://www.hmh.org/ Houston Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/ Florida Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.va-holocaust.com/ Virginia Holocaust Museum]
*[http://holocausteducationcenter.org/ Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Nuremberg/Nuremberg.html#search Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg]
*[http://www.holocaustcentre.net/ Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England]
*[http://www.mhmc.ca/ Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum]
*[http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust]
*[http://www.amcha.org/ AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/first_writing/ Hitler's first writing about Jewry.] On 16 September 1919.
{{Clear}}

====Notes====
<references/>

==Bibliography==
===Surveys and victims===
* Bloxham, Donald and Kushner, Tony. ''The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches.'' (2005). 238 pp.
* Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower, eds. ''The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.'' (2008). 378 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24078 online review]
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
** '' Hitler's War Against the Jews: A Young Reader's Version of the War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz'' (1978) [http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-War-Against-Jews-Dawidowicz/dp/0874412226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979155&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Edelheit, Abraham et al. ''History Of The Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary'' (1995) 544pp, a standard reference work [http://www.questia.com/read/9134049?title=History%20of%20the%20Holocaust%3a%20A%20Handbook%20and%20Dictionary online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: 1933-1945'' (2009) abridged version of standard 2 volume history:
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Persecution:1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedman, Saul S. ''A History of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 494 pp.
* Gilbert, Martin. ''Never Again: The History of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Holocaust-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0789304090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War'' (1987) [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-History-Europe-During-Second/dp/0805003487/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)[http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Atlas-Holocaust-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415281466/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
* Gutman, Israel. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (4 vol 1990), a standard reference work
* Lacqueur, Walter, ed. ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' (2001).
* Landau, Ronnie. ''The Nazi Holocaust'' (2002)
* Marrus, Michael A. ''The Holocaust in History'' (1989)
* Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99854126&oplinknum=4 online edition]; [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289191002135231 online review]
* Rosen, Philip. ''Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology.'' (1997)
* Rothkirchen, Livia. ''The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust.'' (2006). 447 pp.
* Spector, Shmuel ed., ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust'' (2001).
* Yahil, Leni. ''The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry'', (1990).

===Perpetrators===
* Browning, Christopher. ''Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers'' (2000)
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' 2000. 864 pp., stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
* Friedlander, Henry. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.'' (1995) 445 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=2249957902770 online review];[http://www.questia.com/read/9253469?title=The%20Origins%20of%20Nazi%20Genocide%3a%20From%20Euthanasia%20to%20the%20Final%20Solution online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)), the standard scholarly history
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gaunt, David; Levine, Paul A.; and Palosuo, Laura, eds. ''Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.'' (2004). 519 pp.
* Goldhagen, Daniel Joseph. ''Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' (1997).
* Graml, Hermann. ''Antisemitism in the Third Reich'' (1992).
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Johnson, Eric A. ''Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Terror-Gestapo-Ordinary-Germans/dp/0465049087/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-13 excerpt and text search]
* Lewy, Guenter. ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Gypsies-Guenter-Lewy/dp/0195142403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979549&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Levy, Richard, ed. ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'' (2005)
* Lower, Wendy. ''Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.'' (2005). 307 pp.
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps," ''European History Quarterly,'' 4 2006; vol. 36: pp. 247 - 278. fulltext in Sage; historiography
* Wistrich, Robert S. ''Hitler and the Holocaust.'' (2001). 295 pp.

===Memory===
* Bartov, Omer. ''Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity.'' (2000). 310 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-507723-0. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23289980364228 online review]; [http://www.amazon.com/Mirrors-Destruction-Genocide-Modern-Identity/dp/0195151844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979627&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bloxham, Donald. ''Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory.'' (2001) 292pp ISBN 978-0-19-820872-3. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122091071198412 online review]
* Carrier, Peter. ''Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Véd'Hiv' in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.'' (2005) 267 pp.
* Douglas, Lawrence. ''The Memory of Judgment: The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://books.google.com/books?id=hiU2C0maeAMC&pg=PP1&dq=intitle:The+intitle:Memory+intitle:of+intitle:Judgment+inauthor:douglas&num=30&as_brr=0&sig=MiETAxY1KKnru9emnC0x3IXWJIE excerpt and text search]
* Greenspan, Henry. ''On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History.'' (1998) 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-275-95718-6. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3035937424750 online review]
* Haggith, Tony and Newman, Joanna, ed. ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television.'' 2005. 317 pp.
* Mikhman, Dan. ''Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches, and Fundamental Issues'' (2003)
* Roseman, Mark. ''A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Past-Hiding-Memory-Survival-Germany/dp/031242065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979685&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Rosen, Philip. and Nina Apfelbaum. ''Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Witness-Literature-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0313310769/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195980447&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Stone, Dan, ed. ''The Historiography of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 573 pp
* Waxman, Zoe Vania. ''Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Holocaust-Representation-Historical-Monographs/dp/0199206384/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981167&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Wiesel, Elie, and Robert Franciosi. ''Elie Wiesel: Conversations'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Conversations-Literary/dp/1578065038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979990&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Weisel, Elie. ''Night'' (1999).

===Reactions and memory in U.S.===
* Abzug, Robert H. ed. ''America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/America-Views-Holocaust-1933-1945-Documentary/dp/0312218192/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981035&sr=1-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945'' (1993). [http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-American-Coming-Holocaust/dp/0029191610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979711&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Newton, Verne W., ed. ''FDR and the Holocaust'' (1996). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Franklin-Roosevelt-Institute-Diplomatic/dp/0312122268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979739&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Novick, Peter. ''The Holocaust in American Life'' (1999). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-American-Life-Peter-Novick/dp/0618082328/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979766&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Wyman, David. ''The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945.'' (1984). [http://www.amazon.com/Abandonment-Jews-America-Holocaust-1941-1945/dp/159558174X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979795&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]

===Primary sources===
* Aroneanu, Eugene and Thomas Whissen, eds. ''Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps'' (1996) 176 pp, [http://www.questia.com/read/26185130?title=Inside%20the%20Concentration%20Camps%3a%20Eyewitness%20Accounts%20of%20Life%20in%20Hitler's%20Death%20Camps online edition]
* Greene, Joshua M, and Shiva Kumar, eds. ''Witness: Voices from the Holocaust'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/WITNESS-Holocaust-Joshua-M-Greene/dp/0684865262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979830&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Klemperer, Victor. ''I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1942-1945-Diary/dp/0375756973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979856&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Kremer, S. Lillian, ed. ''Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work'' (2002).
* Siedlecki, Janusz Nel, et als. ''We Were in Auschwitz'' (2000).
* Szpilman, Wladyslaw. ''The Pianist'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Pianist-Read-Great-Movie/dp/0752864297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979914&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]

==International Justice==
* Pritchard, R. John, “War Crimes, International Criminal Law, and the Postwar Trials in Europe and Asia.,” in Loyd E. Lee ed., ''World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes,'' edited by Loyd E. Lee (1987).

===Video===
* “Schindler’s List” (DVD and VHS) (1993).
* [http://college.usc.edu/vhi/ USC Shoah Foundation], largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses,

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Holocaust

2018-03-22T13:11:15Z

JohnJustice: copy edit

[[Image:Warsaw ghetto.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Jewish families are forced from the Warsaw Ghetto in the aftermath of its destruction by the SS in 1943. Their final destination was the killing center at Treblinka.]]
The '''Holocaust''' was systematic destruction by the [[Nazis]] of [[Jews|Jewish culture]], society, and, in ''die Endlösung'' (the '''Final Solution'''), the lives of Jews, 1933–1945. Before [[Hitler]] and the [[Nazis]] came to national power in 1933, they [[demonize]]d the Jews as subhuman and the cause of all [[Germany]]'s troubles. Once in power, the Nazis first removed the Jews from positions of power and prestige, initially by [[gun control]];<ref>See many articles from [[Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership]]</ref> from 1938–41 they imposed severe restrictions on Jews in Germany (many of whom fled). The systematic killing started in 1941, as the [[SS]] under [[Heinrich Himmler]] rounded up all the Jews they could find in the areas under Nazi control, and ultimately killed about 6 million through mobile SS killing squads and in the extermination camps. Millions of non-Jews were also killed in separate Nazi operations.

The Holocaust was known but downplayed between 1945–1960, but since 1960 has become one of the central memories and horrors of [[World War II]], shaping policies by and towards [[Israel]] and profoundly shaping the modern conceptions of guilt and evil.

==Origins==
Hatred of the Jews has a long history all over Europe, but the modern forms of antisemitism emerged in the 19th century as a new spirit of nationalism allowed some Germans to sharply differentiate themselves from the Jews, a cultural subgroup that was well integrated into German society. By the end of the century, ant-semitic politicians and organized movements had emerged. Antisemitism was muted during [[World War I]], but exploded in 1919 as the defeated war veterans looked about for someone to blame for the national disgrace.

===Stage 1: to 1933===
The Nazi Party emerged among veterans in the early 1920s, with a violent attack on Jews as [[Adolf Hitler]]'s central theme. After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through propaganda and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in January 1933, with Hitler as Chancellor, with his ideology firmly entrenched within the party. In his book ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.

The Nazis violently hated all the Jews and everything for which they stood. They worked relentlessly toward the goal of removing all possible Jewish influences. Starting in the 1920s (when they were a small party) with a violently anti-Semitic rhetoric that blamed Jews for all the problems of Germany and the modern world, the Nazis defined Jews as a permanent “race” that would never change and could never be improved. The Nazis also strongly disliked Christianity as being too Jewish. Their goal was to return to a pre-Christian, all-Aryan (imaginary) world.

The Nazi goal was first to remove all Jewish influence, then deport all Jews from Europe.

===Stage 2: 1933–38===
The second stage of Nazi policy concerning Jews, from 1933 to 1938, when Hitler was dictator in a peacetime Germany, involved the removal of Jews from all public office. The Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave and half of the Jewish population in Germany did so (including famous scientist [[Albert Einstein]] and the teenaged [[Henry Kissinger]]). The Nazis opened Dachau and other “concentration camps” to punish thousands of their political enemies—including many Jews. About 1,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps inside Germany before 1939; these were distinct from the death camps that were opened in 1942 in Poland.

Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott that began on April 1, 1933, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The [[Nuremberg Laws]] were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a [[German]] illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.

===Stage 3: 1938–41===
Stage three, from 1938 to 1941, involved increasingly severe and humiliating restrictions for Jews. “Kristallnacht” in November 1938 was a systematic violent attack on all synagogues. World public opinion grew hostile to the Nazi actions; they responded by supporting pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic political movements in France and other countries, including the “German-American Bund.” After invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced two million Jews into a few ghettos with below-starvation food allotments. Before the war plans were made to start deporting Jews from Germany. The war meant Nazi control of millions of Jews in the east and occupied west as well, and deportation became impossible. That left extermination as the Nazi plan.

====Crystal Night====
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the deputy chief of the SS, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], later that evening, who specified that SS and SA units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week, local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. The Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.

The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany and neighboring [[Austria]], which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.

====World War II: 1939–41====
When World War II in Europe began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, use parks, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation was forbidden to them in 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing became mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland.

====Poland====
By September 21, 1939, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer [[Hans Frank]], and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of ''Judenrates'' (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane tasks like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were required to supply thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], [[Belzec]], and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called [[Auschwitz]].

Thousands, nearly 30% of the total population of Warsaw, were crammed into just over 2% of the city’s total land, a density of 200,000 people per square mile. Disease and malnutrition would take its toll, but for the German overlords this was a minor inconvenience. The ghetto was a temporary place to hold all of Europe’s Jews until a final solution was determined, and when the Nazis attacked its ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the killing began in earnest.

====Black soldiers====
The Germans did not generally commit atrocities against Allied soldiers in the West in 1940, with one major exception. About 40,000 black African combat troops in the French Army became targets of the Nazis. German units, acting on the own in accord with longstanding racial hatred of Africans, shot about 1500 to 3000 black soldiers in French uniforms after they had surrendered.<ref>Raffael Scheck, ''Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940'' (2006) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173 online review].</ref>

===Stage 4: 1941–42===
Stage 4 began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. All Russian Jews were assumed to be Communist agents and large scale killing of political enemies began in Poland. Special units of the SS, the Security Police, and the Security Service (Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos) not only massacred large numbers of Jews, but routinely included handicapped persons in open-air mass shootings. Seven of the “Einsatzgruppen” rounded up and shot many Polish Catholic priests, intellectuals, and political leaders. Another five units (with 3,000 men) followed the Red Army and executed Communist commissars and partisans, and about 600,000 Russian Jews.

====The Einsatzgruppen====
[[Image:Babi Yar.jpg|right|150px|left|thumb|1943 German photo of Soviet POWs forced to dig up the thousands of Jews killed at Babi Yar two years before; the Nazis destroyed the evidence by burning the bodies.]]
Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army. These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of [[Soviet]] occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities. Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, [[Lithuania]]; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near [[Kiev]], [[Ukraine]], between [[September]] 28–29, 1941<ref>[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm]</ref>; 9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children. On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.

By mid-1941, the Ukrainian SSR had the largest population of Jews in Europe. The addition of the eastern provinces of Poland in late 1939, as well as the seizure of sections of Romanian territory in June 1940, led to some 2.7 million Jews living within the borders of the newly enlarged republic. About 85% lived in cities. By 1944, 1.6 million of these Jews had died at the hands of the Germans and their allies and auxiliaries. Unlike the majority of the Holocaust's later victims who died in the industrialized mass murder of the death camps, the overwhelming bulk of Ukraine's Jews died in mass shootings during the initial stages of the war.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves. When the Soviet Red Army threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes. The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a minimum of one million.

===Stage 5: 1942–1944===
Stage 5 began at The [[Wannsee Conference]] in January 1942 began stage five of Nazi power; it was then that top Nazis decided on a “Final Solution” —to round up and secretly execute all the Jews of Europe. Killing centers were opened in Poland, and thousands of trainloads of Jews were transported there. Jews were gassed immediately upon arrival. Over three million Jews (and numbers of gypsies and other hated groups) were murdered, mostly in 1942–1943.

====Wannsee Conference====
On January 20, 1942 at a villa near Berlin named Wannsee a conference was convened by Heydrich to implement methods and ideas for a "final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). At the conference were fifteen men, among them Heydrich’s head of Jewish affairs, [[Adolf Eichmann]], who would be instrumental in providing the logistical plans for removing the Jews to the camps. The men represented government agencies, such as the Gestapo, the Race and Resettlement Office, the SS, as well as a representative from the General Government in Poland. As Heydrich explained near the beginning of the conference, ideas were in play on relocating Jews:
:''“Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration—i.e., evacuation of the Jews to the east…Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.”''

The minutes of the meeting were kept, but were edited by Heydrich. The language used contains euphemisms in place of what was really said. ''Evacuation of Jews to the east'' and ''resettlement'' meant relocation to the concentration and extermination camps in Poland; ''special handling'' regarded the killing of Jews, either through slave labor in which the Jew was worked to death, or being killed immediately on arrival. The ''final solution'' was put into practice within a few months of the conference, as the bullets of guns and the exhaust of carbon monoxide were replaced by the more efficient killing methods installed in the first gas chambers.

===Stage 6: 1944–45===
Stage 6 arrived when the Soviet armies overran the Polish camps in 1944–45 and, liberated the survivors.

But the killing continued unabated, even to the last week of the war. As territory was regained by Soviet forces, the death camps were evacuated of survivors and destroyed as much as possible in a futile attempt to hide the evidence. The survivors were moved west into Germany, usually in hellish death marches, and interned in concentration camps where death still awaited them; such killing by the S.S. took priority over military matters at times.
[[Image:Ike at Ordruf.jpg|left|150px|thumb|General Dwight D. Eisenhower saw for himself the carnage wrought by the Nazis when he toured the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. These prisoners were executed prior to the camp's liberation.]]

In all, six million Jews were murdered; most of the 300,000 survivors emigrated to the United States or Israel.

==The people involved==
Analytically, the people involved in the Holocaust can be divided into the following groups:

===Victims===
Millions were victimized by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The Jews were always the principal targets; [[Anne Frank]] in the Netherlands was the most famous victim. However, the Nazis also systematically hunted down and murdered the Roma people (“Gypsies”). They also targeted special enemies, including Communist activists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. The last group was the target of euthanasia programs carried out in German hospitals in 1939–1941. Some of these programs were stopped when German Christian leaders mobilized public opinion against them.

===Perpetrators===
Under the guidance of an all-powerful Führer (Hitler), the Nazis believed fervently in force, violence, and terror as their best weapons. Many of the most fanatical Nazis joined the SS, which carried out most of the executions. The Final Solution was directed by [[Heinrich Himmler]], chief of the SS and Minister of the Interior. His top aide was [[Reinhard Heydrich]], head of the SD and Gestapo, then after 1939, of all the secret police and security agencies grouped into the RSHA; he was assassinated by Czech commandos with British help in 1942. [[Adolf Eichmann]] was the senior SS bureaucrat in charge of handling deportation and transportation. However, regular German army police units also systematically killed large numbers of civilians and POWs on the Eastern Front.<ref>After the war, West Germany recognized its guilt and made large financial payments to Israel; Communist East Germany refused to do the same.</ref>

====Endlösung====
[[Image:Heydrich.jpg|right|150px|thumb|''Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich, the man who convened the Wannsee Conference with the intention of determining a "final solution to the Jewish question".]]
:''To Gruppenführer Heydrich:''
:''Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.''
:''Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.''
:''I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question.'' (Order from Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941)

====The death camps====
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Selektion'' of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
In the early years of Nazi Germany concentration camps were built with the expressed purpose of housing political prisoners; this was quickly expanded to Jews and other people the Nazis considered undesirable. By 1942 new camps were built in eastern Poland as death camps; the victims, once targeted by the Einsatzgruppen coming to them, had been rounded up by units of the Army and Waffen-SS, and forced to travel to their own destruction. The victims were packed tightly into cattle cars - so tight in fact that many would die standing up – and transported by rail to the new extermination camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, [[Majdanek]], and Belzec. The camps were essentially factories which specialized in death, making the process from arrival to counting to shower to disposal coldly efficient.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers. Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from vehicles and captured Soviet tanks. At these camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland – Auschwitz – was perhaps the most notorious. Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau). The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths. Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

===Bystanders===
In recent years much controversy has arisen over when President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] learned about the Nazis programs, and what he did or did not do. Switzerland was neutral and accepted in some refugees, but it also made large profits by trading and banking with Germany. The Swiss were forced in the 1990s to make reparation payments.

===Collaborators===
In rounding up Jews the Nazis sometimes had the enthusiastic cooperation of pro-Nazi governments (as in France and Slovakia). A few countries, including Italy and Hungary, tried to stall the Nazis, but the Germans took power directly and seized the Jews. Only Bulgaria and Denmark were largely successful in protecting their Jews.

===Resisters===
Resistance took many forms, from individual acts to hundreds of examples of organized, armed resistance. The most famous episode was the month-long uprising of 60,000 remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. At the Sobibor death camp, an uprising in October 1943 allowed 600 prisoners to escape.

Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi death machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves. Further, the Nazis took great care to prevent their victims from knowing their true plans right up to the moment of their deaths; at Babi Yar many had believed they were being transported to a “family work camp” right up to the point of standing before their own mass grave. There was also the fear of reprisals against large numbers of Jews within the ghettos, which also prevented resistance. But word of the unbelievable atrocities of the death camps filtered into places like Warsaw, and as the trains were leaving packed with Jews many saw that resistance was preferable to the death that awaited them.

Nine months after the Warsaw deportations had commenced, and after confirmation that their destination was the Treblinka extermination camp, 24-year-old [[Mordecai Anielewicz]] and his Jewish Resistance began the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] on April 19, 1943, which lasted just over a month.

[[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] was a Christian pastor and theologian who was opposed to the goings on in Germany. He was involved in the German Resistance and took part in a plan to assassinate Hitler. This led to his capture and eventual execution, under Hitler's order, at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.

Jews fought alongside partisans elsewhere in France, the Balkans, and Soviet Russia during the last three years of the war. Uprisings also occurred in two of the death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor; the latter was closed as a result and the site razed to hide the evidence.

In a unique case of resistance, the Jews of [[Denmark]] were almost entirely saved by the good will of their neighbors. The Danish government had arranged a system by which they maintained control of the government except for foreign affairs. This allowed the Jews of Denmark to live unmolested for several years. When the Nazis did move to deport the Jews in 1943 the Danish Government resigned in protest. The Danish people began a process of evacuating all of the Jews, en masse, to Sweden. The universities closed so students could assist the evacuation, congregations were urged to help, and the fishing fleets helped to evacuate the Jews by sea. In the end, only 500 Danish Jews were captured and placed in Theresienstadt where they remained until the end of the war thanks in part to the continued attentions of the Danish people.<ref>http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/languages/en/04/01/denmark2.php</ref>

===Rescuers===
Rescuers hid potential victims as best they could; the tragic story of [[Anne Frank]] is the most famous. The Pope helped protect some Italian Jews; it is still being debated whether he could have done much more. The most famous rescuer was Oskar Schindler; —“Schindler’s List” the movie is a tells the true story about of how he saved 1,100 Jews from the Nazis by setting up factories that produced defective munitions.<ref>[http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/schindlers-list.html For further information, see]</ref>

In territory occupied by the Germans, the situation was bleak for Jews. Their allies were few and resources were meager. Despite this, many put their lives on the line to provide aid and comfort, as well as putting them in hiding or through a network of underground units to get them to safety. In Poland, it was punishable by death to aid Jews, yet a “council for the aid of Jews” known as the Zegota rescued about 5,000 men, women, and children, providing hiding places and forged identity papers. A similar number was hidden by French Huguenots in the little town of Le Chamblon-sur-Lignon.

====Vatican====
Although criticized by many for his silence about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Pope [[Pius XII]] hid several hundred inside the Vatican, away from Mussolini and German occupiers and quietly worked behind the scenes to do what they could. The Vatican estimates they were able to save upwards of 150,000 Jews during this horrible time. For those who say the Vatican should have done more to save Jews, it should be noted that they weren't even able to stop the killing of Polish Catholics, of whom more than a million lost their lives, so how could they stop the killing of Jews?

====Wallenburg====
Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenburg]], in an attempt to save the last remaining Jews in Hungary, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and working with neutral diplomats and the Vatican, secured the release of several thousand; his efforts at the rescue of Jews would total well over 100,000 by war’s end, including [[Tom Lantos]], a survivor who became a powerful member of the U.S. Congress.

====Schindler====
A Nazi businessman who took advantage of the slave labor conditions to make a personal profit, [[Oskar Schindler]], would use that profit to bribe camp guards and Nazi officials at the Plazow camp to ensure that the workers he had grown to love and admire would survive the end of the war; among the individuals he played cat and mouse with for their lives was the camp's commandant, Amon Goeth, a sadistic SS officer who shot Jews for target practice from his villa and tortured a captured escapee by shooting the prisoners around him. These men and women, who hid Jews out of a sense of common humanity, would not be forgotten: the state of Israel would recognize them with honorary citizenship several years later.

===Liberators===
The Allies liberated the concentration camps in 1945 — but the question remains as to whether they could have bombed the camps or otherwise stopped the Final Solution.

===Survivors===
The survivors of the Final Solution were very quiet about their experiences until about 1961, when Adolf Eichmann was captured in South America by Israel, tried in Jerusalem, and executed. Since then the Holocaust has become recognized as the most horrible episode of the 20th century, and it has been analyzed in numerous with many books, courses, museums, and movies. The most important museums are Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

===Non-Jewish victims===
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution.<ref>It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews. [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/heinrich-himmler.shtml]</ref>
Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. [[Homosexual]]s were arrested; they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments; and sent to the camps. [[Gypsies]] as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.

The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the "T-4" Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.

Following the outbreak of World War II in [[Poland]], the Nazis killed Polish intelligentsia in territories under their control, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.

As Hitler was pro-[[animal rights]] and [[environmentalism]], [[hunter]]s, fishermen, lumberjacks, [[farmer]]s, and builders were also killed by Nazis.

[[Image:Goeth.jpg|right|150px|right|thumb|Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plazow concentration camp near Kraków, Poland. A sadistic man, his recreation was to target and kill individual Jews in the camp with a hunting rifle from the balcony of his villa.]]

==Deaths==
The number of Jews put to death were staggering. Beginning in the summer of 1942 a bare minimum of 960,000 were believed killed at Auschwitz during its three years in operation. At Treblinka, between 750,000-900,000 Jews were killed within 17 months, considering the staff and guards there numbered 120. 600,000 Jews died at Belzac within 10 months by a staff numbering 104. In the eighteen months of its operation, Sobibor killed 250,000.

{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="450" style="margin-left:5px"
|-
!colspan="5" align="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: yellow no-repeat scroll top left;"|Jewish Death Statistics during the Holocaust
|-
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Country
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Prior Jewish Population
!align ="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: red no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number Killed
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Percentage of Total
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number of Survivors
|-
|'''Poland'''
|3,300,000
|'''3,000,000'''
|91%
|300,000
|-
|'''Germany'''
|566,000
|'''200,000'''
|36%
|366,000
|-
|'''USSR'''
|3,020,000
|'''1,100,000'''
|36%
|1,920,000
|-
|'''Hungary'''
|800,000
|'''596,000'''
|74%
|204,000
|-
|'''Lithuania'''
|168,000
|'''143,000'''
|85%
|25,000
|-
|'''Estonia'''
|4,500
|'''2,000'''
|44%
|2,500
|-
|'''Latvia'''
|95,000
|'''80,000'''
|84%
|15,000
|-
|'''France'''
|350,000
|'''77,320'''
|22%
|272,680
|-
|'''Austria'''
|185,000
|'''65,000'''
|35%
|120,000
|-
|'''Netherlands'''
|140,000
|'''100,000'''
|71%
|40,000
|-
|'''Belgium'''
|65,700
|'''28,900'''
|45%
|36,800
|-
|'''Romania'''
|342,000
|'''287,000'''
|84%
|55,000
|-
|'''Bohemia Moravia'''
|118,310
|'''71,150'''
|60%
|47,160
|-
|'''Greece'''
|77,380
|'''67,000'''
|87%
|10,380
|-
|'''Czechoslovakia'''
|88,950
|'''71,000'''
|80%
|17,950
|-
|'''Yugoslavia'''
|78,000
|'''63,300'''
|81%
|14,700
|-
|'''Italy'''
|44,500
|'''7,680'''
|17%
|36,820
|-
|'''Bulgaria'''
|50,000
|'''0'''
|0%
|50,000
|-
|'''Denmark'''
|7,800
|'''60'''
|.8%
|7,740
|-
|'''Finland'''
|2,000
|'''7'''
|.03%
|1,993
|-
|'''Norway'''
|1,700
|'''762'''
|45%
|938
|-
|'''TOTAL'''
|'''9,508,340'''
|'''5,962,129'''
|'''63%'''
|'''3,546,211'''
|
|}

==Survivors==
More than nine million people were discovered by the [[Allies]] to have been displaced throughout the European Theater of the war; of these, six million were returned to their native lands. One million refused, citing either a fear of communist persecution or a fear of being discovered to have collaborated with the enemy. The remainder, more than three and a half million Jews, had nothing. For these survivors, life after the war meant searching for loved ones, as well as recovering from the severe effects of malnutrition and disease at the hands of the Nazis.

As to the future of finding homes for the surviving Jews, that was solved in part by both covert and well-publicized efforts to pressure [[Great Britain]] into relinquishing control of [[Palestine]] for the purpose of a Jewish homeland, as well as the relaxing of American immigration laws in 1948 which allowed a large influx of Jewish refugees. So shocking was the Holocaust to the Jewish mindset that it caused a determination of survivors to speed the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in May, 1948, vowing that a repeat of the Holocaust, as well as previous pogroms against the Jews in the past, would not happen again. Since 1948, Israel has fought in four major wars against their neighbors bent on eradicating it, and each time Israel has emerged victorious.

The Allies were just as shocked over the conditions which prevailed at the Nazi death camps, and set up military tribunals as a result. The most famous was the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal|Nürnberg Trials]], taking place 1945-1946 near the site of the Nazi mass rallies. For the first time in history, an international tribunal would try the 22 major living Nazis for crimes against humanity; all but one would be found guilty, and more than half would suffer death by hanging.

==Punishment==
Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide as the Russians were capturing Berlin. Himmler was captured in late May 1945 and committed suicide before he could be brought to trial for his war crimes. The main war criminals were tried at the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg in 1945–1947, and at smaller trials throughout Europe. The Holocaust was mentioned at the trials, but the major allegation against defendants was the systematic planning of an unjust war.<ref>The Far East War Crimes Trials were held from 1946 to 1948, and resulted in the conviction of 25 Japanese generals and high officials accused of crimes against peace. Over 2,000 local and regional trials convicted 4,000 Japanese officers accused of mistreating prisoners and civilians.</ref> Many Nazis fled justice, reaching Argentina or other distant locations. Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured while hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, brought to Israel, and put on trial in 1961. He was found guilty, and suffered the first and only death penalty carried out in Israel’s history. Other Nazis would eventually be brought to trial: [[Klaus Barbie]], the “Butcher of Lyon”, was tried in France in 1987, as well as [[Maurice Papon]] a decade later for collaborating with the Nazis. These trials brought to new generations an awareness of the Holocaust.

==Etymology==
The word '''Holocaust''' comes from the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god); the [[Hebrew]] words ''Sho'ah'' (Catastrophe) and ''Hurban'' (destruction)<ref>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/269548/Holocaust</ref> were also used, and survivors have used both to refer to what seemed to be the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, specifically in the crematoria of the [[concentration camps|extermination camps]] built for that purpose. Many victims have taken offense to the term '''Holocaust''' because of the meaning of the word. The term ''Sho'ah'' has become the preferred term in some parts of the world<ref>http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp</ref>

==Books and film==
* ''[[Schindler's List]]''

==See also==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Römische Campagna.jpg|thumb|Römische Campagna by Lovis Corinth; returned to the heirs of a Jew in 2007.]]
* [[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holocaust Memorial Day]]
*[[Kindertransport]]
* [[Bergen-Belsen]], one of the main killing camps
* [[SS]], in charge of the killing
* [[Sára Salkaházi]]
* [[Concentration camp]]s and [[Death camp]]s
* [[Tibet]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[socialist]] [[Nanny state]], leads to [[communist]] [[Police state]] - Don't think [[Communism]] is incompatible with [[Islam]].
* [[Gun control]] - key element to create a police state
* [[Terrorism]]

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy02267X8A&feature=related Original U.S. Army record of the discovery of camps, recorded on orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower]
*[http://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/ H-HOLOCAUST], daily discussion group, edited by scholars; numerous book reviews and reports on current scholarship
*[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ Holocaust Encyclopedia]
*[http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad VaShem, the World Center for Holocaust Research], [[Jerusalem]], [[Israel]]
*[http://www.ushmm.org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] in Washington, D.C.
*[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm ''Babi Yar'', poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko]
*[http://www.hmh.org/ Houston Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/ Florida Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.va-holocaust.com/ Virginia Holocaust Museum]
*[http://holocausteducationcenter.org/ Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Nuremberg/Nuremberg.html#search Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg]
*[http://www.holocaustcentre.net/ Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England]
*[http://www.mhmc.ca/ Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum]
*[http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust]
*[http://www.amcha.org/ AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/first_writing/ Hitler's first writing about Jewry.] On 16 September 1919.
{{Clear}}

====Notes====
<references/>

==Bibliography==
===Surveys and victims===
* Bloxham, Donald and Kushner, Tony. ''The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches.'' (2005). 238 pp.
* Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower, eds. ''The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.'' (2008). 378 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24078 online review]
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
** '' Hitler's War Against the Jews: A Young Reader's Version of the War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz'' (1978) [http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-War-Against-Jews-Dawidowicz/dp/0874412226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979155&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Edelheit, Abraham et al. ''History Of The Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary'' (1995) 544pp, a standard reference work [http://www.questia.com/read/9134049?title=History%20of%20the%20Holocaust%3a%20A%20Handbook%20and%20Dictionary online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: 1933-1945'' (2009) abridged version of standard 2 volume history:
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Persecution:1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedman, Saul S. ''A History of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 494 pp.
* Gilbert, Martin. ''Never Again: The History of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Holocaust-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0789304090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War'' (1987) [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-History-Europe-During-Second/dp/0805003487/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)[http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Atlas-Holocaust-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415281466/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
* Gutman, Israel. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (4 vol 1990), a standard reference work
* Lacqueur, Walter, ed. ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' (2001).
* Landau, Ronnie. ''The Nazi Holocaust'' (2002)
* Marrus, Michael A. ''The Holocaust in History'' (1989)
* Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99854126&oplinknum=4 online edition]; [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289191002135231 online review]
* Rosen, Philip. ''Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology.'' (1997)
* Rothkirchen, Livia. ''The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust.'' (2006). 447 pp.
* Spector, Shmuel ed., ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust'' (2001).
* Yahil, Leni. ''The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry'', (1990).

===Perpetrators===
* Browning, Christopher. ''Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers'' (2000)
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' 2000. 864 pp., stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
* Friedlander, Henry. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.'' (1995) 445 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=2249957902770 online review];[http://www.questia.com/read/9253469?title=The%20Origins%20of%20Nazi%20Genocide%3a%20From%20Euthanasia%20to%20the%20Final%20Solution online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)), the standard scholarly history
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gaunt, David; Levine, Paul A.; and Palosuo, Laura, eds. ''Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.'' (2004). 519 pp.
* Goldhagen, Daniel Joseph. ''Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' (1997).
* Graml, Hermann. ''Antisemitism in the Third Reich'' (1992).
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Johnson, Eric A. ''Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Terror-Gestapo-Ordinary-Germans/dp/0465049087/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-13 excerpt and text search]
* Lewy, Guenter. ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Gypsies-Guenter-Lewy/dp/0195142403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979549&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Levy, Richard, ed. ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'' (2005)
* Lower, Wendy. ''Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.'' (2005). 307 pp.
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps," ''European History Quarterly,'' 4 2006; vol. 36: pp. 247 - 278. fulltext in Sage; historiography
* Wistrich, Robert S. ''Hitler and the Holocaust.'' (2001). 295 pp.

===Memory===
* Bartov, Omer. ''Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity.'' (2000). 310 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-507723-0. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23289980364228 online review]; [http://www.amazon.com/Mirrors-Destruction-Genocide-Modern-Identity/dp/0195151844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979627&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bloxham, Donald. ''Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory.'' (2001) 292pp ISBN 978-0-19-820872-3. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122091071198412 online review]
* Carrier, Peter. ''Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Véd'Hiv' in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.'' (2005) 267 pp.
* Douglas, Lawrence. ''The Memory of Judgment: The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://books.google.com/books?id=hiU2C0maeAMC&pg=PP1&dq=intitle:The+intitle:Memory+intitle:of+intitle:Judgment+inauthor:douglas&num=30&as_brr=0&sig=MiETAxY1KKnru9emnC0x3IXWJIE excerpt and text search]
* Greenspan, Henry. ''On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History.'' (1998) 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-275-95718-6. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3035937424750 online review]
* Haggith, Tony and Newman, Joanna, ed. ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television.'' 2005. 317 pp.
* Mikhman, Dan. ''Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches, and Fundamental Issues'' (2003)
* Roseman, Mark. ''A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Past-Hiding-Memory-Survival-Germany/dp/031242065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979685&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Rosen, Philip. and Nina Apfelbaum. ''Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Witness-Literature-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0313310769/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195980447&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Stone, Dan, ed. ''The Historiography of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 573 pp
* Waxman, Zoe Vania. ''Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Holocaust-Representation-Historical-Monographs/dp/0199206384/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981167&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Wiesel, Elie, and Robert Franciosi. ''Elie Wiesel: Conversations'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Conversations-Literary/dp/1578065038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979990&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Weisel, Elie. ''Night'' (1999).

===Reactions and memory in U.S.===
* Abzug, Robert H. ed. ''America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/America-Views-Holocaust-1933-1945-Documentary/dp/0312218192/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981035&sr=1-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945'' (1993). [http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-American-Coming-Holocaust/dp/0029191610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979711&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Newton, Verne W., ed. ''FDR and the Holocaust'' (1996). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Franklin-Roosevelt-Institute-Diplomatic/dp/0312122268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979739&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Novick, Peter. ''The Holocaust in American Life'' (1999). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-American-Life-Peter-Novick/dp/0618082328/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979766&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Wyman, David. ''The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945.'' (1984). [http://www.amazon.com/Abandonment-Jews-America-Holocaust-1941-1945/dp/159558174X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979795&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]

===Primary sources===
* Aroneanu, Eugene and Thomas Whissen, eds. ''Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps'' (1996) 176 pp, [http://www.questia.com/read/26185130?title=Inside%20the%20Concentration%20Camps%3a%20Eyewitness%20Accounts%20of%20Life%20in%20Hitler's%20Death%20Camps online edition]
* Greene, Joshua M, and Shiva Kumar, eds. ''Witness: Voices from the Holocaust'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/WITNESS-Holocaust-Joshua-M-Greene/dp/0684865262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979830&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Klemperer, Victor. ''I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1942-1945-Diary/dp/0375756973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979856&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Kremer, S. Lillian, ed. ''Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work'' (2002).
* Siedlecki, Janusz Nel, et als. ''We Were in Auschwitz'' (2000).
* Szpilman, Wladyslaw. ''The Pianist'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Pianist-Read-Great-Movie/dp/0752864297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979914&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]

==International Justice==
* Pritchard, R. John, “War Crimes, International Criminal Law, and the Postwar Trials in Europe and Asia.,” in Loyd E. Lee ed., ''World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes,'' edited by Loyd E. Lee (1987).

===Video===
* “Schindler’s List” (DVD and VHS) (1993).
* [http://college.usc.edu/vhi/ USC Shoah Foundation], largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses,

[[Category:European History]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Genocide]]
[[Category:Holocaust| ]]
[[Category:Nazis]]
[[Category:Man-Made Disasters]]
[[Category:Threats]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Gun Control]]
[[Category:Socialism]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
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[[Category:Atheism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]

Sturmabteilung

2018-03-22T13:00:44Z

JohnJustice: /* History */ ce and correction and one book cited is not reliable source

[[Image:Sturmabteilungen.jpg|right|thumb|250px|An SA propaganda poster]]
The '''Sturmabteilung''' (German: "Assault Division"; abbreviated as '''SA'''), were a paramilitary organization within the [[Nazi Party]] in interwar [[Germany]], originally founded to protect Nazi meetings from disruption, they were the tool used to intimidate, threaten, and commit acts of violence against political opponents as well as [[Jew]]s and other individuals opposed by party doctrines. When first founded, they were initially called "Monitor Troops." Commonly referred to as the "Brownshirts" or "Storm troopers" (the latter of which was personally given by Adolf Hitler in reference to their founding on November 4, 1921 regarding a street fight against Marxists at the Fall Festival house of Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany<ref>http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2168-ps.asp</ref>), the SA at its height numbered greater than twenty times that of the German Army.

==History==
The origins of the SA naturally followed the beginnings of the Nazi Party. At the end of the [[First World War]] the party was a small group founded by a locksmith named Anton Drexler in 1918, merging with another group in 1919 under the name "German Workers' Party" (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or DAP).<ref>Shoah Resource Center, http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205946.pdf</ref><ref>Germanculture.com, http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa012400b.htm</ref> An obscure former corporal in the regular army, [[Adolf Hitler]], joined the DAP in September 1919, and through his fiery oratory would transform the small party into the "National Socialist German Workers Party" (''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' or NSDAP).<ref>McNab, Chris (2009). ''The Third Reich''.</ref> When the party expanded, a force was needed to protect meetings, in particular from their rivals the [[Marxist]]s, and the SA was created in Munich in 1921, organized first to kick out hecklers at Nazi meetings, then to break up the meetings of other parties. Their first action during this time was to boot out over a thousand Marxists at the Hofbrauhaus's festival hall in Munich on November 4th. They also proceeded to fight the Marxists on the streets, owing to Hitler's view on it being necessary to master the streets.<ref>http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-01/nca-01-07-means-09.html</ref> The fascists of Italy under [[Benito Mussolini]] would inspire a uniform choice: brown shirts worn by all members, emblazoned with a red band bearing a [[swastika]] on the left arm. The uniforms themselves were derived from the Imperial Germany Schultztruppe members stationed in what was originally Germany's colonies in Africa, which they got cheaply largely because of the events of World War I.<ref name="Toland">''Toland'' p. 220</ref> The SA was a group consisting largely of ex-soldiers, Freikorps (Free Corps) members, and common thugs who believed in the Nazi cause; they would march in Nazi rallies, assault political opponents, and intimidate voters during elections. Hitler used them unsuccessfully during the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in Munich, 1923, which resulted in a temporary disarray.

Still believing in Hitler's cause, the SA reorganized by 1925. In particular, they gained the uniforms that led to their moniker of brownshirts, a choice decided upon by Hitler due to realizing that the German man were fond of uniforms; and he created a separate unit called the [[SS]] within the party that would act as his personal guard.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/new.htm</ref> Ironically, however, the reorganized SA ended up nearly causing the Nazi Party to be disbanded again for between 1926 and 1927, after they beat up an old pastor for heckling them.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/quiet.htm</ref> After their victory on September 14, 1930, and then formally taking 107 seats in the Reichstag, the SA, while wearing civilian clothing, proceeded to celebrate by smashing the windows of various Jewish owned shops, department stores, and restaurants, an action that would eventually be repeated on a larger scale in "Krystallnacht", several years later. However, the SA desire to become a revolutionary army, and frequently conducting attacks despite Hitler's insistence that they lay low, often embarrassed him, which ultimately resulted to a minor coup at the Berlin Nazi Party offices led by SA Captain Walter Stennes being put down by the SS on Hitler's orders.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm</ref> In 1931, they were led by a radical who had grandiose dreams of his own: [[Ernst Röhm]], who had been nominated to replace Stennes for command of the SA. An anti-capitalist who believed in a permanent, continuing revolution<ref>Shirer, William L. ''Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. "The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34; 'No Second Revolution'" ''"A tremendous victory has been won. But not an absolute victory! The SA and the SS will not tolerate the German revolution going to sleep and being betrayed at the half-way stage by non-combatants. Not for the sake of the SA and SS but for Germany's sake. For the SA is the last armed force of the nation, the last defense against communism. If the German revolution is wrecked by the reactionary opposition, incompetence, or laziness, the German people will fall into despair and will be an easy prey for the bloodstained frenzy coming from the depths of Asia. If these bourgeois simpletons think that the national revolution has already lasted too long, for once we agree with them. It is in fact high time the national revolution stopped and became the National Socialist one. Whether they like it or not, we will continue our struggle - if they understand at last what it is about - with them; if they are unwilling - without them; and if necessary - against them."''[http://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.htm]</ref> (in a manner similar to what [[Leon Trotsky]] advocated), Röhm would use the SA to propel Hitler to the chancellery as well as increase the size of the organization to such an extent that it would threaten to replace the much smaller 100,000 man army as Germany's main fighting force, with himself at its head. To that extent the charismatic Röhm swelled the SA from approximately 200,000 in 1931 to close to 2 million men by 1933. His homosexual nature and stature within the SA also was the subject of scandal for Hitler and the Nazis during the 1932 election when the Social Democrats leaked letters between Röhm and a male doctor regarding their tastes in men to the general public.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm</ref> Eventually, the SA, alongside the SS, were banned by [[Heinrich Bruening]] via Article 48 on April 1932, with the SA being outraged over this, although Hitler allowed it to be done, knowing full well that it was only a temporary setback, which was ultimately proven when Schleicher after secretly meeting with Hitler on May 8, 1932 proceeded to lift the ban and also have the Reichstag dissolved and have new elections in exchange for Hitler's support for a conservative, nationalistic government. The ban was fully lifted by June 15. They later proceeded to arrive at Berlin emmasse in August in anticipation of Hitler's ascension into power. However, Hindenburg ultimately refused to allow Hitler into power, largely because of the SA's behavior, with Papen and Schleicher offering vice chancellor as compensation on August 13. This resulted in Hitler threatening to have the SA engage in violent mayhem for three days across Germany, which resulted in him being brought before Hindenburg and told off by the president in person. Hitler was ultimately forced to put the SA into furlough for two weeks. In addition, the Nazis were losing seats by November 6 of that year, with the SA's behavior being one of the main reasons for it (alongside Hitler and Hindenberg refusing to compromise, people growing tired of various new elections for the Reichstag seats occurring continuously, and the Communists' destructive behavior also turning the populace against them).<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/collapse.htm</ref>

Ultimately, Hitler ended up winning the chancery elections, and on January 30, 1933, the SA, alongside the SS, turned out in full uniform to celebrate his election victory, and also awaited for him to make an appearance alongside crowds of men, women and children with Nazi banners.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm</ref>

To consolidate power, Hitler needed the backing of two groups considered fundamental to Germany's well-being: the big-business industrialists - such as I.G. Farben and Krupp - and the army. Both eyed the SA as an uncontrolled mob, and Röhm as a power-seeker and wanting control over the army; indeed, evidence that he was an avid homosexual only added fuel to the fire,<ref name="Hitler: A Biography" /> although Hitler assured them that he had no plans to replace the army with the SA.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref> In addition, in order to ensure Nazi control was consolidated within the government, [[Hermann Göring]], by that time the Minister of the Interior of Prussia, had hundreds of police officers who had been loyal to the Weimar Republic replaced with Nazi officials loyal only to Hitler, and also gave strict orders that the police not interfere with the SA, or the SS, under any circumstance, thus ensuring the SA could get away with beating up, harassing, and even murdering anyone with impunity.<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /> On February 22, the SA, through Göring, managed to gain the power of the police force by setting up an auxillary arm of the police force that allowed for 50,000 men strong. On February 24, the SA raided the Communist headquarters in Berlin, and then, via the list of members of the Communist party, proceeded to list all 4,000 members of the German communists, with Göring falsely claiming that they uncovered a Communist plot to have the excuse to do so. On February 27, members of the SA led by Karl Ernst proceeded to commit arson on the Reichstag, with Marinus van der Lubbe, a Communist arsonist who sought to instigate a revolution via arson, to also aid in the fire. After the resulting Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, the SA alongside the SS proceeded to raid known Communist hideouts and even private homes via trucks and then abduct them with the excuse of putting them under "protective custody, where many of them ended up beaten and tortured at the various SA barracks. Eventually, on March 5, after the elections, armed SA and SS members proceeded to raid the Reichstag to throw out legitimate office holders to replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners, using the aforementioned Reichstag Fire Decree as their justification. They then placed several political enemies in "wild" concentration camps, hastily constructed that were stockades with little more than barbed wire, and run by SA leaders. On May, there were flooded applications for them, with some going for the SA and SS after Hitler put a hiring freeze. 50,000 of the SS men were later thrown out by [[Heinrich Himmler]], with the older members cynically calling them "March Violets."<ref name="The Reichstag Burns" /><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-dachau.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/dictator.htm</ref>

On August 1, 1933, a week after the Enabling Act had been passed by the Nazis, the SA during the resulting boycott stood in front of any Jewish shops, department stores, professional offices, and various business places and picketed in front of them with signs saying "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" However, this ended up a failure on the part of the SA due to the German populace largely ignoring the signs in order to get discounts, as well as getting shopping chores out of the way (as it occurred on a Saturday), in addition to the smaller stores owned by Observant Jews being closed for the Sabbath in either case.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-boycott.htm</ref>

Eventually, the powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy - Himmler, Göring, and [[Joseph Goebbels]] - saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to their recently-won acquisition of power and decided on a plan to eliminate him, with Hitler ultimately agreeing. At first, Hitler during a party meeting on February 1934 told Rohm that he won't be a military official in Nazi Germany, nor will the SA act as the official military, although he did intend to reserve them for certain political actions. Rohm publicly agreed with Hitler and signed the agreement, although after Hitler left, he made clear to the other members of the SA that he had no intention of honoring the agreement, viewing Hitler as a traitor. Two months later, Rohm dug himself and the SA into a deeper hole by boldly proclaiming to various foreign people in a press release that "[the Sturmabteilung] is the National Socialist Revolution", which ultimately made him a target by his rival, Himmler, alongside the latter's second in command, [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. After a long talk on June 1934, Rohm had the SA, by that time reaching well over four million members, go on leave for the month of July, with Hitler vowing to meet with the SA in a resort village near Munich to sort things out. However, on June 17 Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen ended up exposing the SA's rowdy behavior in a stump speech, as well as strongly insinuating that, far from being anti-Marxists, the SA were in fact actual Marxists, with President Hindenburg eventually, alongside General Blomberg, admonishing Hitler and warning him that if he doesn't get the SA under control, they will put Germany under martial law by the German military. In addition, Himmler and Heydrich were busy spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were planning an overthrow. By June 28, Hitler, after being notified by telephone by Goring that various German conservatives were advocating for Hindenburg to declare martial law and that Rohm is planning an imminent overthrow during Josef Terboven's wedding, decided to put the plan in action, and eventually left his hotel at 2 a.m. to personally confront the SA leadership at the Bad Wiessee resort after Goring and Himmler made repeated late night phone calls indicating that the SA had somehow found out about the plans and are planning a counterattack. After arriving in Munich, he learned from Adolf Wagner that SA street demonstrations had occurred at Munich though they have since dissipated. Hitler then arrived at the Ministry of the Interior to confront the three SA members responsible, and ripped the Nazi insignia off their uniforms.<ref name="NotLK">http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-roehm.htm</ref>

Beginning on June 30, 1934, the [[Night of the Long Knives]] (''die Nacht der langen Messer'') took place near Munich at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where it was known that SA leadership were on holiday; the plan for execution was conceived by Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. Röhm - caught in bed with a male SA lover by Hitler himself - was then arrested and eventually executed, as well as many SA leaders over the next two days.<ref name="Hitler: A Biography">Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> The only exception was Edmund Heines, who was summarily executed on Hitler's orders after seeing him in bed with a male lover. The Night of the Long Knives eventually spanned Berlin and 20 other cities, which had included the SA leader of Berlin, Karl Ernst.<ref name="NotLK" /> Himmler gained enormously from the killings; his ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) became its own separate branch and would later grow from Hitler's personal bodyguard to become a terrifying force in World War II.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> Its leadership decimated, the SA became a shadow of its former self. Thereafter, its only military use was that of training units for the German armed forces and later acting as the Home Guard during World War II.

The term is sometimes erroneously broadened to include all Nazis and even all [[fascists]], although strictly speaking Italian fascists were [[Blackshirts]], for similar reasons of their uniform.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERsa.htm</ref> The term "Stormtrooper" was used earlier by the Imperial German Army to denote special trench assault units during [[World War I]] (although in that case, they were referred to as "Stoßtruppen", literally "Shock Troops" or "Siege Troopers", and the companies they operated in were known as "Sturmtruppen").

A lot of their tactics in disrupting meetings by rival political organizations were replicated by similar groups, most notably the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]], the [[Weather Underground]] during the 1968 Republican Convention, and [[Antifa]].<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_short_history_of_leftist_violence.html</ref><ref>https://www.thecitizensaudit.com/2017/01/18/self-proclaimed-anti-fascists-mirroring-the-tactics-nazis-used-to-gain-power/</ref><ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/brownshirts_invade_trump_rally.html</ref>

== Sources ==
<references/>

[[Category:Nazis]]

Holocaust

2018-02-24T21:32:49Z

JohnJustice: /* Perpetrators */

[[Image:Warsaw ghetto.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Jewish families are forced from the Warsaw Ghetto in the aftermath of its destruction by the S.S. in 1943. Their final destination was the killing center at Treblinka.]]

The '''Holocaust''' was systematic destruction by the [[Nazis]] of [[Jews|Jewish culture]], society, and, in ''die Endlösung'' (the '''Final Solution'''), the lives of all Jews, 1933-1945. Before [[Hitler]] and the [[Nazis]] came to power in 1933, they [[demonize]]d the Jews as subhuman and the cause of all [[Germany]]'s troubles. Once in power, the Nazis first removed the Jews from power and prestige, initially by [[gun control]];<ref>See many articles from [[Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership]]</ref> from 1938-41 they imposed severe restrictions on Jews in Germany (many of whom fled). The killing started in 1941, as the [[SS]] under [[Heinrich Himmler]] systematically rounded up all the Jews the Nazis could find, and killed about 6 million in extermination camps. Millions of non-Jews were killed in separate Nazi operations.

The Holocaust was known but downplayed between 1945-1960, but since 1960 has become one of the central memories and horrors of [[World War II]], shaping policies by and towards [[Israel]] and profoundly shaping the modern conceptions of guilt and evil.

==Origins==
Hatred of the Jews has a long history all over Europe, but the modern forms of antisemitism emerged in the 19th century as a new spirit of nationalism allowed some Germans to sharply differentiate themselves from the Jews, a cultural subgroup that was well integrated into German society. By the end of the century, ant-semitic politicians and organized movements had emerged. Antisemitism was muted during [[World War I]], but exploded in 1919 as the defeated war veterans looked about for someone to blame for the national disgrace.

===Stage 1: to 1933===
The Nazi Party emerged among veterans in the early 1920s, with a violent attack on Jews as [[Adolf Hitler]]'s central theme. After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through propaganda and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in January 1933, with Hitler as Chancellor, with his ideology firmly entrenched within the party. In his book ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.

The Nazis violently hated all the Jews and everything for which they stood. They worked relentlessly toward the goal of removing all possible Jewish influences. Starting in the 1920s (when they were a small party) with a violently anti-Semitic rhetoric that blamed Jews for all the problems of Germany and the modern world, the Nazis defined Jews as a permanent “race” that would never change and could never be improved. The Nazis also strongly disliked Christianity as being too Jewish. Their goal was to return to a pre-Christian, all-Aryan (imaginary) world.

The Nazi goal was first to remove all Jewish influence, then deport all Jews from Europe.

===Stage 2: 1933–38===
The second stage of Nazi policy concerning Jews, from 1933 to 1938, when Hitler was dictator in a peacetime Germany, involved the removal of Jews from all public office. The Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave and half of the Jewish population in Germany did so (including famous scientist [[Albert Einstein]] and the teenaged [[Henry Kissinger]]). The Nazis opened Dachau and other “concentration camps” to punish thousands of their political enemies—including many Jews. About 1,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps inside Germany before 1939; these were distinct from the death camps that were opened in 1942 in Poland.

Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott that began on April 1, 1933, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The [[Nuremberg Laws]] were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a [[German]] illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.

===Stage 3: 1938–41===
Stage three, from 1938 to 1941, involved increasingly severe and humiliating restrictions for Jews. “Kristallnacht” in November 1938 was a systematic violent attack on all synagogues. World public opinion grew hostile to the Nazi actions; they responded by supporting pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic political movements in France and other countries, including the “German-American Bund.” After invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced two million Jews into a few ghettos with below-starvation food allotments. Before the war plans were made to start deporting Jews from Germany. The war meant Nazi control of millions of Jews in the east and occupied west as well, and deportation became impossible. That left extermination as the Nazi plan.

====Crystal Night====
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the deputy chief of the SS, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], later that evening, who specified that SS and SA units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week, local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. The Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.

The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany and neighboring [[Austria]], which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.

====World War II: 1939–41====
When World War II in Europe began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, use parks, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation was forbidden to them in 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing became mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland.

====Poland====
By September 21, 1939, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer [[Hans Frank]], and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of ''Judenrates'' (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane tasks like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were required to supply thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], [[Belzec]], and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called [[Auschwitz]].

Thousands, nearly 30% of the total population of Warsaw, were crammed into just over 2% of the city’s total land, a density of 200,000 people per square mile. Disease and malnutrition would take its toll, but for the German overlords this was a minor inconvenience. The ghetto was a temporary place to hold all of Europe’s Jews until a final solution was determined, and when the Nazis attacked its ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the killing began in earnest.

====Black soldiers====
The Germans did not generally commit atrocities against Allied soldiers in the West in 1940, with one major exception. About 40,000 black African combat troops in the French Army became targets of the Nazis. German units, acting on the own in accord with longstanding racial hatred of Africans, shot about 1500 to 3000 black soldiers in French uniforms after they had surrendered.<ref>Raffael Scheck, ''Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940'' (2006) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173 online review].</ref>

===Stage 4: 1941–42===
Stage 4 began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. All Russian Jews were assumed to be Communist agents and large scale killing of political enemies began in Poland. Special units of the SS, the Security Police, and the Security Service (Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos) not only massacred large numbers of Jews, but routinely included handicapped persons in open-air mass shootings. Seven of the “Einsatzgruppen” rounded up and shot many Polish Catholic priests, intellectuals, and political leaders. Another five units (with 3,000 men) followed the Red Army and executed Communist commissars and partisans, and about 600,000 Russian Jews.

====The Einsatzgruppen====
[[Image:Babi Yar.jpg|right|150px|left|thumb|1943 German photo of Soviet POWs forced to dig up the thousands of Jews killed at Babi Yar two years before; the Nazis destroyed the evidence by burning the bodies.]]
Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army. These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of [[Soviet]] occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities. Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, [[Lithuania]]; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near [[Kiev]], [[Ukraine]], between [[September]] 28-29, 1941 [http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm]; 9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children. On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.

By mid-1941, the Ukrainian USSR had the largest population of Jews in Europe. The addition of the eastern provinces of Poland in late 1939 as well as the seizure of sections of Romanian territory in June 1940 led to some 2.7 million Jews living within the borders of the newly enlarged republic. About 85% lived in cities. By 1944, 1.6 million of these Jews had died at the hands of the Germans and their allies and auxiliaries. Unlike the majority of the Holocaust's later victims who died in the industrialized mass murder of the death camps, the overwhelming bulk of Ukraine's Jews died in mass shootings during the initial stages of the war.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves. When the Soviet Red Army threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes. The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a minimum of one million.

===Stage 5: 1942–1944===
Stage 5 began at The [[Wannsee Conference]] in January 1942 began stage five of Nazi power; it was then that top Nazis decided on a “Final Solution” —to round up and secretly execute all the Jews of Europe. Killing centers were opened in Poland, and thousands of trainloads of Jews were transported there. Jews were gassed immediately upon arrival. Over three million Jews (and numbers of gypsies and other hated groups) were murdered, mostly in 1942–1943.

====Wannsee Conference====
On January 20, 1942 at a villa near Berlin named Wannsee a conference was convened by Heydrich to implement methods and ideas for a "final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). At the conference were fifteen men, among them Heydrich’s head of Jewish affairs, [[Adolf Eichmann]], who would be instrumental in providing the logistical plans for removing the Jews to the camps. The men represented government agencies, such as the Gestapo, the Race and Resettlement Office, the SS, as well as a representative from the General Government in Poland. As Heydrich explained near the beginning of the conference, ideas were in play on relocating Jews:
:''“Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration—i.e., evacuation of the Jews to the east…Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.”''

The minutes of the meeting were kept, but were edited by Heydrich. The language used contains euphemisms in place of what was really said. ''Evacuation of Jews to the east'' and ''resettlement'' meant relocation to the concentration and extermination camps in Poland; ''special handling'' regarded the killing of Jews, either through slave labor in which the Jew was worked to death, or being killed immediately on arrival. The ''final solution'' was put into practice within a few months of the conference, as the bullets of guns and the exhaust of carbon monoxide were replaced by the more efficient killing methods installed in the first gas chambers.

===Stage 6: 1944–45===
Stage 6 arrived when the Soviet armies overran the Polish camps in 1944–45 and, liberated the survivors.

But the killing continued unabated, even to the last week of the war. As territory was regained by Soviet forces, the death camps were evacuated of survivors and destroyed as much as possible in a futile attempt to hide the evidence. The survivors were moved west into Germany, usually in hellish death marches, and interned in concentration camps where death still awaited them; such killing by the S.S. took priority over military matters at times.
[[Image:Ike at Ordruf.jpg|left|150px|thumb|General Dwight D. Eisenhower saw for himself the carnage wrought by the Nazis when he toured the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. These prisoners were executed prior to the camp's liberation.]]

In all, six million Jews were murdered; most of the 300,000 survivors emigrated to the United States or Israel.

==The people involved==
Analytically, the people involved in the Holocaust can be divided into the following groups:

===Victims===
Millions were victimized by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The Jews were always the principal targets; [[Anne Frank]] in the Netherlands was the most famous victim. However, the Nazis also systematically hunted down and murdered the Roma people (“Gypsies”). They also targeted special enemies, including Communist activists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. The last group was the target of euthanasia programs carried out in German hospitals in 1939–1941. Some of these programs were stopped when German Christian leaders mobilized public opinion against them.

===Perpetrators===
Under the guidance of an all-powerful Führer (Hitler), the Nazis believed fervently in force, violence, and terror as their best weapons. Many of the most fanatical Nazis joined the SS, which carried out most of the executions. The Final Solution was directed by [[Heinrich Himmler]], chief of the SS and Minister of the Interior. His top aide was [[Reinhard Heydrich]], head of the SD and Gestapo, then after 1939, of all the secret police and security agencies grouped into the RSHA; he was assassinated by Czech commandos with British help in 1942. [[Adolf Eichmann]] was the senior SS bureaucrat in charge of handling deportation and transportation. However, regular German army police units also systematically killed large numbers of civilians and POWs on the Eastern Front.<ref>After the war, West Germany recognized its guilt and made large financial payments to Israel; Communist East Germany refused to do the same.</ref>

====Endlösung====
[[Image:Heydrich.jpg|right|150px|thumb|''Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich, the man who convened the Wannsee Conference with the intention of determining a "final solution to the Jewish question".]]
:''To Gruppenführer Heydrich:''
:''Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.''
:''Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.''
:''I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question.'' (Order from Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941)

====The death camps====
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Selektion'' of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
In the early years of Nazi Germany concentration camps were built with the expressed purpose of housing political prisoners; this was quickly expanded to Jews and other people the Nazis considered undesirable. By 1942 new camps were built in eastern Poland as death camps; the victims, once targeted by the Einsatzgruppen coming to them, had been rounded up by units of the Army and Waffen-SS, and forced to travel to their own destruction. The victims were packed tightly into cattle cars - so tight in fact that many would die standing up – and transported by rail to the new extermination camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, [[Majdanek]], and Belzec. The camps were essentially factories which specialized in death, making the process from arrival to counting to shower to disposal coldly efficient.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers. Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from vehicles and captured Soviet tanks. At these camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland – Auschwitz – was perhaps the most notorious. Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau). The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths. Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

===Bystanders===
In recent years much controversy has arisen over when President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] learned about the Nazis programs, and what he did or did not do. Switzerland was neutral and accepted in some refugees, but it also made large profits by trading and banking with Germany. The Swiss were forced in the 1990s to make reparation payments.

===Collaborators===
In rounding up Jews the Nazis sometimes had the enthusiastic cooperation of pro-Nazi governments (as in France and Slovakia). A few countries, including Italy and Hungary, tried to stall the Nazis, but the Germans took power directly and seized the Jews. Only Bulgaria and Denmark were largely successful in protecting their Jews.

===Resisters===
Resistance took many forms, from individual acts to hundreds of examples of organized, armed resistance. The most famous episode was the month-long uprising of 60,000 remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. At the Sobibor death camp, an uprising in October 1943 allowed 600 prisoners to escape.

Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi death machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves. Further, the Nazis took great care to prevent their victims from knowing their true plans right up to the moment of their deaths; at Babi Yar many had believed they were being transported to a “family work camp” right up to the point of standing before their own mass grave. There was also the fear of reprisals against large numbers of Jews within the ghettos, which also prevented resistance. But word of the unbelievable atrocities of the death camps filtered into places like Warsaw, and as the trains were leaving packed with Jews many saw that resistance was preferable to the death that awaited them.

Nine months after the Warsaw deportations had commenced, and after confirmation that their destination was the Treblinka extermination camp, 24-year-old [[Mordecai Anielewicz]] and his Jewish Resistance began the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] on April 19, 1943, which lasted just over a month.

[[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] was a Christian pastor and theologian who was opposed to the goings on in Germany. He was involved in the German Resistance and took part in a plan to assassinate Hitler. This led to his capture and eventual execution, under Hitler's order, at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.

Jews fought alongside partisans elsewhere in France, the Balkans, and Soviet Russia during the last three years of the war. Uprisings also occurred in two of the death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor; the latter was closed as a result and the site razed to hide the evidence.

In a unique case of resistance, the Jews of [[Denmark]] were almost entirely saved by the good will of their neighbors. The Danish government had arranged a system by which they maintained control of the government except for foreign affairs. This allowed the Jews of Denmark to live unmolested for several years. When the Nazis did move to deport the Jews in 1943 the Danish Government resigned in protest. The Danish people began a process of evacuating all of the Jews, en masse, to Sweden. The universities closed so students could assist the evacuation, congregations were urged to help, and the fishing fleets helped to evacuate the Jews by sea. In the end, only 500 Danish Jews were captured and placed in Theresienstadt where they remained until the end of the war thanks in part to the continued attentions of the Danish people.<ref>http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/languages/en/04/01/denmark2.php</ref>

===Rescuers===
Rescuers hid potential victims as best they could; the tragic story of [[Anne Frank]] is the most famous. The Pope helped protect some Italian Jews; it is still being debated whether he could have done much more. The most famous rescuer was Oskar Schindler; —“Schindler’s List” the movie is a tells the true story about of how he saved 1,100 Jews from the Nazis by setting up factories that produced defective munitions.<ref>[http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/schindlers-list.html For further information, see]</ref>

In territory occupied by the Germans, the situation was bleak for Jews. Their allies were few and resources were meager. Despite this, many put their lives on the line to provide aid and comfort, as well as putting them in hiding or through a network of underground units to get them to safety. In Poland, it was punishable by death to aid Jews, yet a “council for the aid of Jews” known as the Zegota rescued about 5,000 men, women, and children, providing hiding places and forged identity papers. A similar number was hidden by French Huguenots in the little town of Le Chamblon-sur-Lignon.

====Vatican====
Although criticized by many for his silence about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Pope [[Pius XII]] hid several hundred inside the Vatican, away from Mussolini and German occupiers and quietly worked behind the scenes to do what they could. The Vatican estimates they were able to save upwards of 150,000 Jews during this horrible time. For those who say the Vatican should have done more to save Jews, it should be noted that they weren't even able to stop the killing of Polish Catholics, of whom more than a million lost their lives, so how could they stop the killing of Jews?

====Wallenburg====
Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenburg]], in an attempt to save the last remaining Jews in Hungary, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and working with neutral diplomats and the Vatican, secured the release of several thousand; his efforts at the rescue of Jews would total well over 100,000 by war’s end, including [[Tom Lantos]], a survivor who became a powerful member of the U.S. Congress.

====Schindler====
A Nazi businessman who took advantage of the slave labor conditions to make a personal profit, [[Oskar Schindler]], would use that profit to bribe camp guards and Nazi officials at the Plazow camp to ensure that the workers he had grown to love and admire would survive the end of the war; among the individuals he played cat and mouse with for their lives was the camp's commandant, Amon Goeth, a sadistic SS officer who shot Jews for target practice from his villa and tortured a captured escapee by shooting the prisoners around him. These men and women, who hid Jews out of a sense of common humanity, would not be forgotten: the state of Israel would recognize them with honorary citizenship several years later.

===Liberators===
The Allies liberated the concentration camps in 1945 — but the question remains as to whether they could have bombed the camps or otherwise stopped the Final Solution.

===Survivors===
The survivors of the Final Solution were very quiet about their experiences until about 1961, when Adolf Eichmann was captured in South America by Israel, tried in Jerusalem, and executed. Since then the Holocaust has become recognized as the most horrible episode of the 20th century, and it has been analyzed in numerous with many books, courses, museums, and movies. The most important museums are Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

===Non-Jewish victims===
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution.<ref>It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews. [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/heinrich-himmler.shtml]</ref>
Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. [[Homosexual]]s were arrested; they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments; and sent to the camps. [[Gypsies]] as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.

The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the "T-4" Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.

Following the outbreak of World War II in [[Poland]], the Nazis killed Polish intelligentsia in territories under their control, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.

As Hitler was pro-[[animal rights]] and [[environmentalism]], [[hunter]]s, fishermen, lumberjacks, [[farmer]]s, and builders were also killed by Nazis.

[[Image:Goeth.jpg|right|150px|right|thumb|Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plazow concentration camp near Kraków, Poland. A sadistic man, his recreation was to target and kill individual Jews in the camp with a hunting rifle from the balcony of his villa.]]

==Deaths==
The number of Jews put to death were staggering. Beginning in the summer of 1942 a bare minimum of 960,000 were believed killed at Auschwitz during its three years in operation. At Treblinka, between 750,000-900,000 Jews were killed within 17 months, considering the staff and guards there numbered 120. 600,000 Jews died at Belzac within 10 months by a staff numbering 104. In the eighteen months of its operation, Sobibor killed 250,000.

{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="450" style="margin-left:5px"
|-
!colspan="5" align="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: yellow no-repeat scroll top left;"|Jewish Death Statistics during the Holocaust
|-
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Country
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Prior Jewish Population
!align ="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: red no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number Killed
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Percentage of Total
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number of Survivors
|-
|'''Poland'''
|3,300,000
|'''3,000,000'''
|91%
|300,000
|-
|'''Germany'''
|566,000
|'''200,000'''
|36%
|366,000
|-
|'''USSR'''
|3,020,000
|'''1,100,000'''
|36%
|1,920,000
|-
|'''Hungary'''
|800,000
|'''596,000'''
|74%
|204,000
|-
|'''Lithuania'''
|168,000
|'''143,000'''
|85%
|25,000
|-
|'''Estonia'''
|4,500
|'''2,000'''
|44%
|2,500
|-
|'''Latvia'''
|95,000
|'''80,000'''
|84%
|15,000
|-
|'''France'''
|350,000
|'''77,320'''
|22%
|272,680
|-
|'''Austria'''
|185,000
|'''65,000'''
|35%
|120,000
|-
|'''Netherlands'''
|140,000
|'''100,000'''
|71%
|40,000
|-
|'''Belgium'''
|65,700
|'''28,900'''
|45%
|36,800
|-
|'''Romania'''
|342,000
|'''287,000'''
|84%
|55,000
|-
|'''Bohemia Moravia'''
|118,310
|'''71,150'''
|60%
|47,160
|-
|'''Greece'''
|77,380
|'''67,000'''
|87%
|10,380
|-
|'''Czechoslovakia'''
|88,950
|'''71,000'''
|80%
|17,950
|-
|'''Yugoslavia'''
|78,000
|'''63,300'''
|81%
|14,700
|-
|'''Italy'''
|44,500
|'''7,680'''
|17%
|36,820
|-
|'''Bulgaria'''
|50,000
|'''0'''
|0%
|50,000
|-
|'''Denmark'''
|7,800
|'''60'''
|.8%
|7,740
|-
|'''Finland'''
|2,000
|'''7'''
|.03%
|1,993
|-
|'''Norway'''
|1,700
|'''762'''
|45%
|938
|-
|'''TOTAL'''
|'''9,508,340'''
|'''5,962,129'''
|'''63%'''
|'''3,546,211'''
|
|}

==Survivors==
More than nine million people were discovered by the [[Allies]] to have been displaced throughout the European Theater of the war; of these, six million were returned to their native lands. One million refused, citing either a fear of communist persecution or a fear of being discovered to have collaborated with the enemy. The remainder, more than three and a half million Jews, had nothing. For these survivors, life after the war meant searching for loved ones, as well as recovering from the severe effects of malnutrition and disease at the hands of the Nazis.

As to the future of finding homes for the surviving Jews, that was solved in part by both covert and well-publicized efforts to pressure [[Great Britain]] into relinquishing control of [[Palestine]] for the purpose of a Jewish homeland, as well as the relaxing of American immigration laws in 1948 which allowed a large influx of Jewish refugees. So shocking was the Holocaust to the Jewish mindset that it caused a determination of survivors to speed the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in May, 1948, vowing that a repeat of the Holocaust, as well as previous pogroms against the Jews in the past, would not happen again. Since 1948, Israel has fought in four major wars against their neighbors bent on eradicating it, and each time Israel has emerged victorious.

The Allies were just as shocked over the conditions which prevailed at the Nazi death camps, and set up military tribunals as a result. The most famous was the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal|Nürnberg Trials]], taking place 1945-1946 near the site of the Nazi mass rallies. For the first time in history, an international tribunal would try the 22 major living Nazis for crimes against humanity; all but one would be found guilty, and more than half would suffer death by hanging.

==Punishment==
Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide as the Russians were capturing Berlin. Himmler was captured in late May 1945 and committed suicide before he could be brought to trial for his war crimes. The main war criminals were tried at the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg in 1945–1947, and at smaller trials throughout Europe. The Holocaust was mentioned at the trials, but the major allegation against defendants was the systematic planning of an unjust war.<ref>The Far East War Crimes Trials were held from 1946 to 1948, and resulted in the conviction of 25 Japanese generals and high officials accused of crimes against peace. Over 2,000 local and regional trials convicted 4,000 Japanese officers accused of mistreating prisoners and civilians.</ref> Many Nazis fled justice, reaching Argentina or other distant locations. Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured while hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, brought to Israel, and put on trial in 1961. He was found guilty, and suffered the first and only death penalty carried out in Israel’s history. Other Nazis would eventually be brought to trial: [[Klaus Barbie]], the “Butcher of Lyon”, was tried in France in 1987, as well as [[Maurice Papon]] a decade later for collaborating with the Nazis. These trials brought to new generations an awareness of the Holocaust.

==Etymology==
The word '''Holocaust''' comes from the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god); the [[Hebrew]] words ''Sho'ah'' (Catastrophe) and ''Hurban'' (destruction)<ref>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/269548/Holocaust</ref> were also used, and survivors have used both to refer to what seemed to be the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, specifically in the crematoria of the [[concentration camps|extermination camps]] built for that purpose. Many victims have taken offense to the term '''Holocaust''' because of the meaning of the word. The term ''Sho'ah'' has become the preferred term in some parts of the world<ref>http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp</ref>

==Books and film==
* ''[[Schindler's List]]''

==See also==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Römische Campagna.jpg|thumb|Römische Campagna by Lovis Corinth; returned to the heirs of a Jew in 2007.]]
* [[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holocaust Memorial Day]]
*[[Kindertransport]]
* [[Bergen-Belsen]], one of the main killing camps
* [[SS]], in charge of the killing
* [[Sára Salkaházi]]
* [[Concentration camp]]s and [[Death camp]]s
* [[Tibet]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[socialist]] [[Nanny state]], leads to [[communist]] [[Police state]] - Don't think [[Communism]] is incompatible with [[Islam]].
* [[Gun control]] - key element to create a police state
* [[Terrorism]]

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy02267X8A&feature=related Original U.S. Army record of the discovery of camps, recorded on orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower]
*[http://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/ H-HOLOCAUST], daily discussion group, edited by scholars; numerous book reviews and reports on current scholarship
*[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ Holocaust Encyclopedia]
*[http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad VaShem, the World Center for Holocaust Research], [[Jerusalem]], [[Israel]]
*[http://www.ushmm.org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] in Washington, D.C.
*[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm ''Babi Yar'', poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko]
*[http://www.hmh.org/ Houston Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/ Florida Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.va-holocaust.com/ Virginia Holocaust Museum]
*[http://holocausteducationcenter.org/ Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Nuremberg/Nuremberg.html#search Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg]
*[http://www.holocaustcentre.net/ Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England]
*[http://www.mhmc.ca/ Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum]
*[http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust]
*[http://www.amcha.org/ AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/first_writing/ Hitler's first writing about Jewry.] On 16 September 1919.
{{Clear}}

====Notes====
<references/>

==Bibliography==
===Surveys and victims===
* Bloxham, Donald and Kushner, Tony. ''The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches.'' (2005). 238 pp.
* Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower, eds. ''The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.'' (2008). 378 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24078 online review]
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
** '' Hitler's War Against the Jews: A Young Reader's Version of the War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz'' (1978) [http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-War-Against-Jews-Dawidowicz/dp/0874412226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979155&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Edelheit, Abraham et al. ''History Of The Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary'' (1995) 544pp, a standard reference work [http://www.questia.com/read/9134049?title=History%20of%20the%20Holocaust%3a%20A%20Handbook%20and%20Dictionary online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: 1933-1945'' (2009) abridged version of standard 2 volume history:
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Persecution:1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedman, Saul S. ''A History of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 494 pp.
* Gilbert, Martin. ''Never Again: The History of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Holocaust-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0789304090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War'' (1987) [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-History-Europe-During-Second/dp/0805003487/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)[http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Atlas-Holocaust-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415281466/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
* Gutman, Israel. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (4 vol 1990), a standard reference work
* Lacqueur, Walter, ed. ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' (2001).
* Landau, Ronnie. ''The Nazi Holocaust'' (2002)
* Marrus, Michael A. ''The Holocaust in History'' (1989)
* Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99854126&oplinknum=4 online edition]; [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289191002135231 online review]
* Rosen, Philip. ''Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology.'' (1997)
* Rothkirchen, Livia. ''The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust.'' (2006). 447 pp.
* Spector, Shmuel ed., ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust'' (2001).
* Yahil, Leni. ''The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry'', (1990).

===Perpetrators===
* Browning, Christopher. ''Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers'' (2000)
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' 2000. 864 pp., stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
* Friedlander, Henry. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.'' (1995) 445 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=2249957902770 online review];[http://www.questia.com/read/9253469?title=The%20Origins%20of%20Nazi%20Genocide%3a%20From%20Euthanasia%20to%20the%20Final%20Solution online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)), the standard scholarly history
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gaunt, David; Levine, Paul A.; and Palosuo, Laura, eds. ''Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.'' (2004). 519 pp.
* Goldhagen, Daniel Joseph. ''Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' (1997).
* Graml, Hermann. ''Antisemitism in the Third Reich'' (1992).
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Johnson, Eric A. ''Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Terror-Gestapo-Ordinary-Germans/dp/0465049087/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-13 excerpt and text search]
* Lewy, Guenter. ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Gypsies-Guenter-Lewy/dp/0195142403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979549&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Levy, Richard, ed. ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'' (2005)
* Lower, Wendy. ''Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.'' (2005). 307 pp.
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps," ''European History Quarterly,'' 4 2006; vol. 36: pp. 247 - 278. fulltext in Sage; historiography
* Wistrich, Robert S. ''Hitler and the Holocaust.'' (2001). 295 pp.

===Memory===
* Bartov, Omer. ''Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity.'' (2000). 310 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-507723-0. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23289980364228 online review]; [http://www.amazon.com/Mirrors-Destruction-Genocide-Modern-Identity/dp/0195151844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979627&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bloxham, Donald. ''Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory.'' (2001) 292pp ISBN 978-0-19-820872-3. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122091071198412 online review]
* Carrier, Peter. ''Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Véd'Hiv' in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.'' (2005) 267 pp.
* Douglas, Lawrence. ''The Memory of Judgment: The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://books.google.com/books?id=hiU2C0maeAMC&pg=PP1&dq=intitle:The+intitle:Memory+intitle:of+intitle:Judgment+inauthor:douglas&num=30&as_brr=0&sig=MiETAxY1KKnru9emnC0x3IXWJIE excerpt and text search]
* Greenspan, Henry. ''On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History.'' (1998) 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-275-95718-6. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3035937424750 online review]
* Haggith, Tony and Newman, Joanna, ed. ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television.'' 2005. 317 pp.
* Mikhman, Dan. ''Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches, and Fundamental Issues'' (2003)
* Roseman, Mark. ''A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Past-Hiding-Memory-Survival-Germany/dp/031242065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979685&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Rosen, Philip. and Nina Apfelbaum. ''Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Witness-Literature-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0313310769/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195980447&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Stone, Dan, ed. ''The Historiography of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 573 pp
* Waxman, Zoe Vania. ''Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Holocaust-Representation-Historical-Monographs/dp/0199206384/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981167&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Wiesel, Elie, and Robert Franciosi. ''Elie Wiesel: Conversations'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Conversations-Literary/dp/1578065038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979990&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Weisel, Elie. ''Night'' (1999).

===Reactions and memory in U.S.===
* Abzug, Robert H. ed. ''America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/America-Views-Holocaust-1933-1945-Documentary/dp/0312218192/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981035&sr=1-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945'' (1993). [http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-American-Coming-Holocaust/dp/0029191610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979711&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Newton, Verne W., ed. ''FDR and the Holocaust'' (1996). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Franklin-Roosevelt-Institute-Diplomatic/dp/0312122268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979739&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Novick, Peter. ''The Holocaust in American Life'' (1999). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-American-Life-Peter-Novick/dp/0618082328/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979766&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Wyman, David. ''The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945.'' (1984). [http://www.amazon.com/Abandonment-Jews-America-Holocaust-1941-1945/dp/159558174X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979795&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]

===Primary sources===
* Aroneanu, Eugene and Thomas Whissen, eds. ''Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps'' (1996) 176 pp, [http://www.questia.com/read/26185130?title=Inside%20the%20Concentration%20Camps%3a%20Eyewitness%20Accounts%20of%20Life%20in%20Hitler's%20Death%20Camps online edition]
* Greene, Joshua M, and Shiva Kumar, eds. ''Witness: Voices from the Holocaust'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/WITNESS-Holocaust-Joshua-M-Greene/dp/0684865262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979830&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Klemperer, Victor. ''I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1942-1945-Diary/dp/0375756973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979856&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Kremer, S. Lillian, ed. ''Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work'' (2002).
* Siedlecki, Janusz Nel, et als. ''We Were in Auschwitz'' (2000).
* Szpilman, Wladyslaw. ''The Pianist'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Pianist-Read-Great-Movie/dp/0752864297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979914&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]

==International Justice==
* Pritchard, R. John, “War Crimes, International Criminal Law, and the Postwar Trials in Europe and Asia.,” in Loyd E. Lee ed., ''World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes,'' edited by Loyd E. Lee (1987).

===Video===
* “Schindler’s List” (DVD and VHS) (1993).
* [http://college.usc.edu/vhi/ USC Shoah Foundation], largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses,

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Holocaust

2018-02-24T21:28:51Z

JohnJustice: copy edit work

[[Image:Warsaw ghetto.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Jewish families are forced from the Warsaw Ghetto in the aftermath of its destruction by the S.S. in 1943. Their final destination was the killing center at Treblinka.]]

The '''Holocaust''' was systematic destruction by the [[Nazis]] of [[Jews|Jewish culture]], society, and, in ''die Endlösung'' (the '''Final Solution'''), the lives of all Jews, 1933-1945. Before [[Hitler]] and the [[Nazis]] came to power in 1933, they [[demonize]]d the Jews as subhuman and the cause of all [[Germany]]'s troubles. Once in power, the Nazis first removed the Jews from power and prestige, initially by [[gun control]];<ref>See many articles from [[Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership]]</ref> from 1938-41 they imposed severe restrictions on Jews in Germany (many of whom fled). The killing started in 1941, as the [[SS]] under [[Heinrich Himmler]] systematically rounded up all the Jews the Nazis could find, and killed about 6 million in extermination camps. Millions of non-Jews were killed in separate Nazi operations.

The Holocaust was known but downplayed between 1945-1960, but since 1960 has become one of the central memories and horrors of [[World War II]], shaping policies by and towards [[Israel]] and profoundly shaping the modern conceptions of guilt and evil.

==Origins==
Hatred of the Jews has a long history all over Europe, but the modern forms of antisemitism emerged in the 19th century as a new spirit of nationalism allowed some Germans to sharply differentiate themselves from the Jews, a cultural subgroup that was well integrated into German society. By the end of the century, ant-semitic politicians and organized movements had emerged. Antisemitism was muted during [[World War I]], but exploded in 1919 as the defeated war veterans looked about for someone to blame for the national disgrace.

===Stage 1: to 1933===
The Nazi Party emerged among veterans in the early 1920s, with a violent attack on Jews as [[Adolf Hitler]]'s central theme. After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through propaganda and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in January 1933, with Hitler as Chancellor, with his ideology firmly entrenched within the party. In his book ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.

The Nazis violently hated all the Jews and everything for which they stood. They worked relentlessly toward the goal of removing all possible Jewish influences. Starting in the 1920s (when they were a small party) with a violently anti-Semitic rhetoric that blamed Jews for all the problems of Germany and the modern world, the Nazis defined Jews as a permanent “race” that would never change and could never be improved. The Nazis also strongly disliked Christianity as being too Jewish. Their goal was to return to a pre-Christian, all-Aryan (imaginary) world.

The Nazi goal was first to remove all Jewish influence, then deport all Jews from Europe.

===Stage 2: 1933–38===
The second stage of Nazi policy concerning Jews, from 1933 to 1938, when Hitler was dictator in a peacetime Germany, involved the removal of Jews from all public office. The Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave and half of the Jewish population in Germany did so (including famous scientist [[Albert Einstein]] and the teenaged [[Henry Kissinger]]). The Nazis opened Dachau and other “concentration camps” to punish thousands of their political enemies—including many Jews. About 1,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps inside Germany before 1939; these were distinct from the death camps that were opened in 1942 in Poland.

Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott that began on April 1, 1933, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The [[Nuremberg Laws]] were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a [[German]] illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.

===Stage 3: 1938–41===
Stage three, from 1938 to 1941, involved increasingly severe and humiliating restrictions for Jews. “Kristallnacht” in November 1938 was a systematic violent attack on all synagogues. World public opinion grew hostile to the Nazi actions; they responded by supporting pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic political movements in France and other countries, including the “German-American Bund.” After invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced two million Jews into a few ghettos with below-starvation food allotments. Before the war plans were made to start deporting Jews from Germany. The war meant Nazi control of millions of Jews in the east and occupied west as well, and deportation became impossible. That left extermination as the Nazi plan.

====Crystal Night====
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the deputy chief of the SS, [[Reinhard Heydrich]], later that evening, who specified that SS and SA units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week, local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. The Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.

The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany and neighboring [[Austria]], which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.

====World War II: 1939–41====
When World War II in Europe began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, use parks, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation was forbidden to them in 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing became mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland.

====Poland====
By September 21, 1939, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer [[Hans Frank]], and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of ''Judenrates'' (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane tasks like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were required to supply thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], [[Belzec]], and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called [[Auschwitz]].

Thousands, nearly 30% of the total population of Warsaw, were crammed into just over 2% of the city’s total land, a density of 200,000 people per square mile. Disease and malnutrition would take its toll, but for the German overlords this was a minor inconvenience. The ghetto was a temporary place to hold all of Europe’s Jews until a final solution was determined, and when the Nazis attacked its ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the killing began in earnest.

====Black soldiers====
The Germans did not generally commit atrocities against Allied soldiers in the West in 1940, with one major exception. About 40,000 black African combat troops in the French Army became targets of the Nazis. German units, acting on the own in accord with longstanding racial hatred of Africans, shot about 1500 to 3000 black soldiers in French uniforms after they had surrendered.<ref>Raffael Scheck, ''Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940'' (2006) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173 online review].</ref>

===Stage 4: 1941–42===
Stage 4 began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. All Russian Jews were assumed to be Communist agents and large scale killing of political enemies began in Poland. Special units of the SS, the Security Police, and the Security Service (Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos) not only massacred large numbers of Jews, but routinely included handicapped persons in open-air mass shootings. Seven of the “Einsatzgruppen” rounded up and shot many Polish Catholic priests, intellectuals, and political leaders. Another five units (with 3,000 men) followed the Red Army and executed Communist commissars and partisans, and about 600,000 Russian Jews.

====The Einsatzgruppen====
[[Image:Babi Yar.jpg|right|150px|left|thumb|1943 German photo of Soviet POWs forced to dig up the thousands of Jews killed at Babi Yar two years before; the Nazis destroyed the evidence by burning the bodies.]]
Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army. These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of [[Soviet]] occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities. Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, [[Lithuania]]; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near [[Kiev]], [[Ukraine]], between [[September]] 28-29, 1941 [http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm]; 9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children. On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.

By mid-1941, the Ukrainian USSR had the largest population of Jews in Europe. The addition of the eastern provinces of Poland in late 1939 as well as the seizure of sections of Romanian territory in June 1940 led to some 2.7 million Jews living within the borders of the newly enlarged republic. About 85% lived in cities. By 1944, 1.6 million of these Jews had died at the hands of the Germans and their allies and auxiliaries. Unlike the majority of the Holocaust's later victims who died in the industrialized mass murder of the death camps, the overwhelming bulk of Ukraine's Jews died in mass shootings during the initial stages of the war.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves. When the Soviet Red Army threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes. The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a minimum of one million.

===Stage 5: 1942–1944===
Stage 5 began at The [[Wannsee Conference]] in January 1942 began stage five of Nazi power; it was then that top Nazis decided on a “Final Solution” —to round up and secretly execute all the Jews of Europe. Killing centers were opened in Poland, and thousands of trainloads of Jews were transported there. Jews were gassed immediately upon arrival. Over three million Jews (and numbers of gypsies and other hated groups) were murdered, mostly in 1942–1943.

====Wannsee Conference====
On January 20, 1942 at a villa near Berlin named Wannsee a conference was convened by Heydrich to implement methods and ideas for a "final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). At the conference were fifteen men, among them Heydrich’s head of Jewish affairs, [[Adolf Eichmann]], who would be instrumental in providing the logistical plans for removing the Jews to the camps. The men represented government agencies, such as the Gestapo, the Race and Resettlement Office, the SS, as well as a representative from the General Government in Poland. As Heydrich explained near the beginning of the conference, ideas were in play on relocating Jews:
:''“Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration—i.e., evacuation of the Jews to the east…Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.”''

The minutes of the meeting were kept, but were edited by Heydrich. The language used contains euphemisms in place of what was really said. ''Evacuation of Jews to the east'' and ''resettlement'' meant relocation to the concentration and extermination camps in Poland; ''special handling'' regarded the killing of Jews, either through slave labor in which the Jew was worked to death, or being killed immediately on arrival. The ''final solution'' was put into practice within a few months of the conference, as the bullets of guns and the exhaust of carbon monoxide were replaced by the more efficient killing methods installed in the first gas chambers.

===Stage 6: 1944–45===
Stage 6 arrived when the Soviet armies overran the Polish camps in 1944–45 and, liberated the survivors.

But the killing continued unabated, even to the last week of the war. As territory was regained by Soviet forces, the death camps were evacuated of survivors and destroyed as much as possible in a futile attempt to hide the evidence. The survivors were moved west into Germany, usually in hellish death marches, and interned in concentration camps where death still awaited them; such killing by the S.S. took priority over military matters at times.
[[Image:Ike at Ordruf.jpg|left|150px|thumb|General Dwight D. Eisenhower saw for himself the carnage wrought by the Nazis when he toured the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. These prisoners were executed prior to the camp's liberation.]]

In all, six million Jews were murdered; most of the 300,000 survivors emigrated to the United States or Israel.

==The people involved==
Analytically, the people involved in the Holocaust can be divided into the following groups:

===Victims===
Millions were victimized by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The Jews were always the principal targets; [[Anne Frank]] in the Netherlands was the most famous victim. However, the Nazis also systematically hunted down and murdered the Roma people (“Gypsies”). They also targeted special enemies, including Communist activists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. The last group was the target of euthanasia programs carried out in German hospitals in 1939–1941. Some of these programs were stopped when German Christian leaders mobilized public opinion against them.

===Perpetrators===
Under the guidance of an all-powerful Führer (Hitler), the Nazis believed fervently in force, violence, and terror as their best weapons. Many of the most fanatical Nazis joined the SS, which carried out most of the executions. The Final Solution was directed by [[Heinrich Himmler]], chief of the SS and Minister of the Interior. His top aide was [[Reinhard Heydrich]], head of the Gestapo and, after 1939, of all the security and secret police agencies grouped into the RSHA; he was assassinated by Czech commandos with British help in 1942. [[Adolf Eichmann]] was the senior SS bureaucrat in charge of handling deportation and transportation. However, regular German army police units also systematically killed large numbers of civilians and POWs on the Eastern Front.<ref>After the war, West Germany recognized its guilt and made large financial payments to Israel; Communist East Germany refused to do the same.</ref>

====Endlösung====
[[Image:Heydrich.jpg|right|150px|thumb|''Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich, the man who convened the Wannsee Conference with the intention of determining a "final solution to the Jewish question".]]
:''To Gruppenführer Heydrich:''
:''Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.''
:''Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.''
:''I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question.'' (Order from Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941)

====The death camps====
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Selektion'' of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
In the early years of Nazi Germany concentration camps were built with the expressed purpose of housing political prisoners; this was quickly expanded to Jews and other people the Nazis considered undesirable. By 1942 new camps were built in eastern Poland as death camps; the victims, once targeted by the Einsatzgruppen coming to them, had been rounded up by units of the Army and Waffen-SS, and forced to travel to their own destruction. The victims were packed tightly into cattle cars - so tight in fact that many would die standing up – and transported by rail to the new extermination camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, [[Majdanek]], and Belzec. The camps were essentially factories which specialized in death, making the process from arrival to counting to shower to disposal coldly efficient.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers. Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from vehicles and captured Soviet tanks. At these camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland – Auschwitz – was perhaps the most notorious. Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau). The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths. Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

===Bystanders===
In recent years much controversy has arisen over when President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] learned about the Nazis programs, and what he did or did not do. Switzerland was neutral and accepted in some refugees, but it also made large profits by trading and banking with Germany. The Swiss were forced in the 1990s to make reparation payments.

===Collaborators===
In rounding up Jews the Nazis sometimes had the enthusiastic cooperation of pro-Nazi governments (as in France and Slovakia). A few countries, including Italy and Hungary, tried to stall the Nazis, but the Germans took power directly and seized the Jews. Only Bulgaria and Denmark were largely successful in protecting their Jews.

===Resisters===
Resistance took many forms, from individual acts to hundreds of examples of organized, armed resistance. The most famous episode was the month-long uprising of 60,000 remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. At the Sobibor death camp, an uprising in October 1943 allowed 600 prisoners to escape.

Jews stood virtually alone against the Nazi death machine and those who collaborated with them, receiving no aid or assistance from outside, as well as having no access to arms with which to defend themselves. Further, the Nazis took great care to prevent their victims from knowing their true plans right up to the moment of their deaths; at Babi Yar many had believed they were being transported to a “family work camp” right up to the point of standing before their own mass grave. There was also the fear of reprisals against large numbers of Jews within the ghettos, which also prevented resistance. But word of the unbelievable atrocities of the death camps filtered into places like Warsaw, and as the trains were leaving packed with Jews many saw that resistance was preferable to the death that awaited them.

Nine months after the Warsaw deportations had commenced, and after confirmation that their destination was the Treblinka extermination camp, 24-year-old [[Mordecai Anielewicz]] and his Jewish Resistance began the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] on April 19, 1943, which lasted just over a month.

[[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] was a Christian pastor and theologian who was opposed to the goings on in Germany. He was involved in the German Resistance and took part in a plan to assassinate Hitler. This led to his capture and eventual execution, under Hitler's order, at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.

Jews fought alongside partisans elsewhere in France, the Balkans, and Soviet Russia during the last three years of the war. Uprisings also occurred in two of the death camps, Treblinka and Sobibor; the latter was closed as a result and the site razed to hide the evidence.

In a unique case of resistance, the Jews of [[Denmark]] were almost entirely saved by the good will of their neighbors. The Danish government had arranged a system by which they maintained control of the government except for foreign affairs. This allowed the Jews of Denmark to live unmolested for several years. When the Nazis did move to deport the Jews in 1943 the Danish Government resigned in protest. The Danish people began a process of evacuating all of the Jews, en masse, to Sweden. The universities closed so students could assist the evacuation, congregations were urged to help, and the fishing fleets helped to evacuate the Jews by sea. In the end, only 500 Danish Jews were captured and placed in Theresienstadt where they remained until the end of the war thanks in part to the continued attentions of the Danish people.<ref>http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/languages/en/04/01/denmark2.php</ref>

===Rescuers===
Rescuers hid potential victims as best they could; the tragic story of [[Anne Frank]] is the most famous. The Pope helped protect some Italian Jews; it is still being debated whether he could have done much more. The most famous rescuer was Oskar Schindler; —“Schindler’s List” the movie is a tells the true story about of how he saved 1,100 Jews from the Nazis by setting up factories that produced defective munitions.<ref>[http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/schindlers-list.html For further information, see]</ref>

In territory occupied by the Germans, the situation was bleak for Jews. Their allies were few and resources were meager. Despite this, many put their lives on the line to provide aid and comfort, as well as putting them in hiding or through a network of underground units to get them to safety. In Poland, it was punishable by death to aid Jews, yet a “council for the aid of Jews” known as the Zegota rescued about 5,000 men, women, and children, providing hiding places and forged identity papers. A similar number was hidden by French Huguenots in the little town of Le Chamblon-sur-Lignon.

====Vatican====
Although criticized by many for his silence about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Pope [[Pius XII]] hid several hundred inside the Vatican, away from Mussolini and German occupiers and quietly worked behind the scenes to do what they could. The Vatican estimates they were able to save upwards of 150,000 Jews during this horrible time. For those who say the Vatican should have done more to save Jews, it should be noted that they weren't even able to stop the killing of Polish Catholics, of whom more than a million lost their lives, so how could they stop the killing of Jews?

====Wallenburg====
Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenburg]], in an attempt to save the last remaining Jews in Hungary, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and working with neutral diplomats and the Vatican, secured the release of several thousand; his efforts at the rescue of Jews would total well over 100,000 by war’s end, including [[Tom Lantos]], a survivor who became a powerful member of the U.S. Congress.

====Schindler====
A Nazi businessman who took advantage of the slave labor conditions to make a personal profit, [[Oskar Schindler]], would use that profit to bribe camp guards and Nazi officials at the Plazow camp to ensure that the workers he had grown to love and admire would survive the end of the war; among the individuals he played cat and mouse with for their lives was the camp's commandant, Amon Goeth, a sadistic SS officer who shot Jews for target practice from his villa and tortured a captured escapee by shooting the prisoners around him. These men and women, who hid Jews out of a sense of common humanity, would not be forgotten: the state of Israel would recognize them with honorary citizenship several years later.

===Liberators===
The Allies liberated the concentration camps in 1945 — but the question remains as to whether they could have bombed the camps or otherwise stopped the Final Solution.

===Survivors===
The survivors of the Final Solution were very quiet about their experiences until about 1961, when Adolf Eichmann was captured in South America by Israel, tried in Jerusalem, and executed. Since then the Holocaust has become recognized as the most horrible episode of the 20th century, and it has been analyzed in numerous with many books, courses, museums, and movies. The most important museums are Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

===Non-Jewish victims===
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution.<ref>It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews. [http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/heinrich-himmler.shtml]</ref>
Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. [[Homosexual]]s were arrested; they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments; and sent to the camps. [[Gypsies]] as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.

The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the "T-4" Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.

Following the outbreak of World War II in [[Poland]], the Nazis killed Polish intelligentsia in territories under their control, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.

As Hitler was pro-[[animal rights]] and [[environmentalism]], [[hunter]]s, fishermen, lumberjacks, [[farmer]]s, and builders were also killed by Nazis.

[[Image:Goeth.jpg|right|150px|right|thumb|Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plazow concentration camp near Kraków, Poland. A sadistic man, his recreation was to target and kill individual Jews in the camp with a hunting rifle from the balcony of his villa.]]

==Deaths==
The number of Jews put to death were staggering. Beginning in the summer of 1942 a bare minimum of 960,000 were believed killed at Auschwitz during its three years in operation. At Treblinka, between 750,000-900,000 Jews were killed within 17 months, considering the staff and guards there numbered 120. 600,000 Jews died at Belzac within 10 months by a staff numbering 104. In the eighteen months of its operation, Sobibor killed 250,000.

{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="450" style="margin-left:5px"
|-
!colspan="5" align="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: yellow no-repeat scroll top left;"|Jewish Death Statistics during the Holocaust
|-
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Country
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Prior Jewish Population
!align ="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: red no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number Killed
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Percentage of Total
!align ="center" style="color: black; height: 30px; background: tan no-repeat scroll top left;"|Estimated Number of Survivors
|-
|'''Poland'''
|3,300,000
|'''3,000,000'''
|91%
|300,000
|-
|'''Germany'''
|566,000
|'''200,000'''
|36%
|366,000
|-
|'''USSR'''
|3,020,000
|'''1,100,000'''
|36%
|1,920,000
|-
|'''Hungary'''
|800,000
|'''596,000'''
|74%
|204,000
|-
|'''Lithuania'''
|168,000
|'''143,000'''
|85%
|25,000
|-
|'''Estonia'''
|4,500
|'''2,000'''
|44%
|2,500
|-
|'''Latvia'''
|95,000
|'''80,000'''
|84%
|15,000
|-
|'''France'''
|350,000
|'''77,320'''
|22%
|272,680
|-
|'''Austria'''
|185,000
|'''65,000'''
|35%
|120,000
|-
|'''Netherlands'''
|140,000
|'''100,000'''
|71%
|40,000
|-
|'''Belgium'''
|65,700
|'''28,900'''
|45%
|36,800
|-
|'''Romania'''
|342,000
|'''287,000'''
|84%
|55,000
|-
|'''Bohemia Moravia'''
|118,310
|'''71,150'''
|60%
|47,160
|-
|'''Greece'''
|77,380
|'''67,000'''
|87%
|10,380
|-
|'''Czechoslovakia'''
|88,950
|'''71,000'''
|80%
|17,950
|-
|'''Yugoslavia'''
|78,000
|'''63,300'''
|81%
|14,700
|-
|'''Italy'''
|44,500
|'''7,680'''
|17%
|36,820
|-
|'''Bulgaria'''
|50,000
|'''0'''
|0%
|50,000
|-
|'''Denmark'''
|7,800
|'''60'''
|.8%
|7,740
|-
|'''Finland'''
|2,000
|'''7'''
|.03%
|1,993
|-
|'''Norway'''
|1,700
|'''762'''
|45%
|938
|-
|'''TOTAL'''
|'''9,508,340'''
|'''5,962,129'''
|'''63%'''
|'''3,546,211'''
|
|}

==Survivors==
More than nine million people were discovered by the [[Allies]] to have been displaced throughout the European Theater of the war; of these, six million were returned to their native lands. One million refused, citing either a fear of communist persecution or a fear of being discovered to have collaborated with the enemy. The remainder, more than three and a half million Jews, had nothing. For these survivors, life after the war meant searching for loved ones, as well as recovering from the severe effects of malnutrition and disease at the hands of the Nazis.

As to the future of finding homes for the surviving Jews, that was solved in part by both covert and well-publicized efforts to pressure [[Great Britain]] into relinquishing control of [[Palestine]] for the purpose of a Jewish homeland, as well as the relaxing of American immigration laws in 1948 which allowed a large influx of Jewish refugees. So shocking was the Holocaust to the Jewish mindset that it caused a determination of survivors to speed the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in May, 1948, vowing that a repeat of the Holocaust, as well as previous pogroms against the Jews in the past, would not happen again. Since 1948, Israel has fought in four major wars against their neighbors bent on eradicating it, and each time Israel has emerged victorious.

The Allies were just as shocked over the conditions which prevailed at the Nazi death camps, and set up military tribunals as a result. The most famous was the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal|Nürnberg Trials]], taking place 1945-1946 near the site of the Nazi mass rallies. For the first time in history, an international tribunal would try the 22 major living Nazis for crimes against humanity; all but one would be found guilty, and more than half would suffer death by hanging.

==Punishment==
Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide as the Russians were capturing Berlin. Himmler was captured in late May 1945 and committed suicide before he could be brought to trial for his war crimes. The main war criminals were tried at the International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg in 1945–1947, and at smaller trials throughout Europe. The Holocaust was mentioned at the trials, but the major allegation against defendants was the systematic planning of an unjust war.<ref>The Far East War Crimes Trials were held from 1946 to 1948, and resulted in the conviction of 25 Japanese generals and high officials accused of crimes against peace. Over 2,000 local and regional trials convicted 4,000 Japanese officers accused of mistreating prisoners and civilians.</ref> Many Nazis fled justice, reaching Argentina or other distant locations. Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured while hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, brought to Israel, and put on trial in 1961. He was found guilty, and suffered the first and only death penalty carried out in Israel’s history. Other Nazis would eventually be brought to trial: [[Klaus Barbie]], the “Butcher of Lyon”, was tried in France in 1987, as well as [[Maurice Papon]] a decade later for collaborating with the Nazis. These trials brought to new generations an awareness of the Holocaust.

==Etymology==
The word '''Holocaust''' comes from the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god); the [[Hebrew]] words ''Sho'ah'' (Catastrophe) and ''Hurban'' (destruction)<ref>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/269548/Holocaust</ref> were also used, and survivors have used both to refer to what seemed to be the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, specifically in the crematoria of the [[concentration camps|extermination camps]] built for that purpose. Many victims have taken offense to the term '''Holocaust''' because of the meaning of the word. The term ''Sho'ah'' has become the preferred term in some parts of the world<ref>http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp</ref>

==Books and film==
* ''[[Schindler's List]]''

==See also==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Römische Campagna.jpg|thumb|Römische Campagna by Lovis Corinth; returned to the heirs of a Jew in 2007.]]
* [[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holocaust Memorial Day]]
*[[Kindertransport]]
* [[Bergen-Belsen]], one of the main killing camps
* [[SS]], in charge of the killing
* [[Sára Salkaházi]]
* [[Concentration camp]]s and [[Death camp]]s
* [[Tibet]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[socialist]] [[Nanny state]], leads to [[communist]] [[Police state]] - Don't think [[Communism]] is incompatible with [[Islam]].
* [[Gun control]] - key element to create a police state
* [[Terrorism]]

==External links==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy02267X8A&feature=related Original U.S. Army record of the discovery of camps, recorded on orders of General Dwight D. Eisenhower]
*[http://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/ H-HOLOCAUST], daily discussion group, edited by scholars; numerous book reviews and reports on current scholarship
*[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ Holocaust Encyclopedia]
*[http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad VaShem, the World Center for Holocaust Research], [[Jerusalem]], [[Israel]]
*[http://www.ushmm.org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] in Washington, D.C.
*[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm ''Babi Yar'', poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko]
*[http://www.hmh.org/ Houston Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/ Florida Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.va-holocaust.com/ Virginia Holocaust Museum]
*[http://holocausteducationcenter.org/ Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum]
*[http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Nuremberg/Nuremberg.html#search Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg]
*[http://www.holocaustcentre.net/ Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England]
*[http://www.mhmc.ca/ Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum]
*[http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust]
*[http://www.amcha.org/ AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors]
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/first_writing/ Hitler's first writing about Jewry.] On 16 September 1919.
{{Clear}}

====Notes====
<references/>

==Bibliography==
===Surveys and victims===
* Bloxham, Donald and Kushner, Tony. ''The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches.'' (2005). 238 pp.
* Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower, eds. ''The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization.'' (2008). 378 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24078 online review]
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
** '' Hitler's War Against the Jews: A Young Reader's Version of the War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz'' (1978) [http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-War-Against-Jews-Dawidowicz/dp/0874412226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979155&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Edelheit, Abraham et al. ''History Of The Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary'' (1995) 544pp, a standard reference work [http://www.questia.com/read/9134049?title=History%20of%20the%20Holocaust%3a%20A%20Handbook%20and%20Dictionary online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: 1933-1945'' (2009) abridged version of standard 2 volume history:
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
** Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Persecution:1933-1939'' (1998)
* Friedman, Saul S. ''A History of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 494 pp.
* Gilbert, Martin. ''Never Again: The History of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Holocaust-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0789304090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War'' (1987) [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-History-Europe-During-Second/dp/0805003487/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)[http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Atlas-Holocaust-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415281466/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979238&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]
* Gutman, Israel. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (4 vol 1990), a standard reference work
* Lacqueur, Walter, ed. ''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'' (2001).
* Landau, Ronnie. ''The Nazi Holocaust'' (2002)
* Marrus, Michael A. ''The Holocaust in History'' (1989)
* Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99854126&oplinknum=4 online edition]; [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=289191002135231 online review]
* Rosen, Philip. ''Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology.'' (1997)
* Rothkirchen, Livia. ''The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust.'' (2006). 447 pp.
* Spector, Shmuel ed., ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust'' (2001).
* Yahil, Leni. ''The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry'', (1990).

===Perpetrators===
* Browning, Christopher. ''Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers'' (2000)
* Burleigh, Michael. ''The Third Reich: A New History.'' 2000. 864 pp., stresses central role of antisemitism.
* Dawidowicz, Lucy. ''The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945'' (1986)
* Friedlander, Henry. ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.'' (1995) 445 pp. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=2249957902770 online review];[http://www.questia.com/read/9253469?title=The%20Origins%20of%20Nazi%20Genocide%3a%20From%20Euthanasia%20to%20the%20Final%20Solution online edition]
* Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998)), the standard scholarly history
* Friedlander, Saul. ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard scholarly history [http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060190434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Gaunt, David; Levine, Paul A.; and Palosuo, Laura, eds. ''Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.'' (2004). 519 pp.
* Goldhagen, Daniel Joseph. ''Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' (1997).
* Graml, Hermann. ''Antisemitism in the Third Reich'' (1992).
* Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' 4 vol (1989)
* Johnson, Eric A. ''Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Terror-Gestapo-Ordinary-Germans/dp/0465049087/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979435&sr=8-13 excerpt and text search]
* Lewy, Guenter. ''The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Persecution-Gypsies-Guenter-Lewy/dp/0195142403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979549&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Levy, Richard, ed. ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'' (2005)
* Lower, Wendy. ''Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.'' (2005). 307 pp.
* Wachsmann, Nikolaus. "Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps," ''European History Quarterly,'' 4 2006; vol. 36: pp. 247 - 278. fulltext in Sage; historiography
* Wistrich, Robert S. ''Hitler and the Holocaust.'' (2001). 295 pp.

===Memory===
* Bartov, Omer. ''Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity.'' (2000). 310 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-507723-0. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=23289980364228 online review]; [http://www.amazon.com/Mirrors-Destruction-Genocide-Modern-Identity/dp/0195151844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979627&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Bloxham, Donald. ''Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory.'' (2001) 292pp ISBN 978-0-19-820872-3. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122091071198412 online review]
* Carrier, Peter. ''Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Véd'Hiv' in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.'' (2005) 267 pp.
* Douglas, Lawrence. ''The Memory of Judgment: The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust'' (2000) [http://books.google.com/books?id=hiU2C0maeAMC&pg=PP1&dq=intitle:The+intitle:Memory+intitle:of+intitle:Judgment+inauthor:douglas&num=30&as_brr=0&sig=MiETAxY1KKnru9emnC0x3IXWJIE excerpt and text search]
* Greenspan, Henry. ''On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History.'' (1998) 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-275-95718-6. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=3035937424750 online review]
* Haggith, Tony and Newman, Joanna, ed. ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television.'' 2005. 317 pp.
* Mikhman, Dan. ''Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches, and Fundamental Issues'' (2003)
* Roseman, Mark. ''A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Past-Hiding-Memory-Survival-Germany/dp/031242065X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979685&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Rosen, Philip. and Nina Apfelbaum. ''Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Witness-Literature-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0313310769/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195980447&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Stone, Dan, ed. ''The Historiography of the Holocaust.'' (2004). 573 pp
* Waxman, Zoe Vania. ''Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Holocaust-Representation-Historical-Monographs/dp/0199206384/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981167&sr=1-3 excerpt and text search]
* Wiesel, Elie, and Robert Franciosi. ''Elie Wiesel: Conversations'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Elie-Wiesel-Conversations-Literary/dp/1578065038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979990&sr=1-2 excerpt and text search]
* Weisel, Elie. ''Night'' (1999).

===Reactions and memory in U.S.===
* Abzug, Robert H. ed. ''America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History'' (1999) [http://www.amazon.com/America-Views-Holocaust-1933-1945-Documentary/dp/0312218192/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195981035&sr=1-6 excerpt and text search]
* Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945'' (1993). [http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-American-Coming-Holocaust/dp/0029191610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979711&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Newton, Verne W., ed. ''FDR and the Holocaust'' (1996). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Franklin-Roosevelt-Institute-Diplomatic/dp/0312122268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979739&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Novick, Peter. ''The Holocaust in American Life'' (1999). [http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-American-Life-Peter-Novick/dp/0618082328/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979766&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Wyman, David. ''The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945.'' (1984). [http://www.amazon.com/Abandonment-Jews-America-Holocaust-1941-1945/dp/159558174X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979795&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]

===Primary sources===
* Aroneanu, Eugene and Thomas Whissen, eds. ''Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps'' (1996) 176 pp, [http://www.questia.com/read/26185130?title=Inside%20the%20Concentration%20Camps%3a%20Eyewitness%20Accounts%20of%20Life%20in%20Hitler's%20Death%20Camps online edition]
* Greene, Joshua M, and Shiva Kumar, eds. ''Witness: Voices from the Holocaust'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/WITNESS-Holocaust-Joshua-M-Greene/dp/0684865262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979830&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Klemperer, Victor. ''I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945'' (2001). [http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1942-1945-Diary/dp/0375756973/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979856&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search vol 2]
* Kremer, S. Lillian, ed. ''Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work'' (2002).
* Siedlecki, Janusz Nel, et als. ''We Were in Auschwitz'' (2000).
* Szpilman, Wladyslaw. ''The Pianist'' (2000). [http://www.amazon.com/Pianist-Read-Great-Movie/dp/0752864297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195979914&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]

==International Justice==
* Pritchard, R. John, “War Crimes, International Criminal Law, and the Postwar Trials in Europe and Asia.,” in Loyd E. Lee ed., ''World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes,'' edited by Loyd E. Lee (1987).

===Video===
* “Schindler’s List” (DVD and VHS) (1993).
* [http://college.usc.edu/vhi/ USC Shoah Foundation], largest video archive of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses,

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