Hitler & Goebbels
Heinrich Himmler
Ernst Rohm
Adolf Eichmann Eva Braun
Herman Goerring

Murdered during the Holocaust, novelist Irène Némirovsky
finally achieved the recognition she deserved long after
her death. Némirovsky’s family fled the Russian Revolution
and settled in France in 1919. She studied at the
Sorbonne and began writing at eighteen. She published
her first novel, L’Enfant Genial, in 1927. Her next two
novels, David Golder (1929) and Le Bal (1930), were great
successes and were adapted for the screen.
Despite her literary achievements and popular acclaim,
she struggled with antisemitism and converted to
Catholicism in 1939. In 1942 she was sent to Auschwitz,
where she died of typhus. In 1990 her daughter Elisabeth
Gille published Némirovsky’s Suite Française, a novel
about the invasion of Paris. The novel won the Prix
Renaudot in 2004, a first for a posthumous author.
Selected works:
Chaleur du sang (Fire in the Blood, 2007
Suite Française (French Suite, 2004.
Destinées et autres nouvelles
Dimanche (nouvelles) (Sunday, novellas,
2000).
Les feux de l’automne
Les biens de ce monde (
La vie de Tchekhov (Life of Chekhov,
1946).
Les chiens et le loup (The Dogs and the
Wolf, 1940).

•From mid-1929 to January 1933, the number of Germans who had full-time
jobs fell from 20 million to 11.5 million; by the start of 1933, at least 6
million Germans were unemployed. Could Hitler make good on his promise?
What was the economic impact of the Great Depression in Germany?
•Germany, whose economy relied heavily on investment from the United States, suffered more than any other
country in Europe. Before the crash, 1.25 million people were unemployed in Germany. By the end of 1930 the figure had
reached nearly 4 million, 15.3 per cent of the population. Even those in work suffered as many were only working part-time.

Allies
1. Great Britain
2. France (until 1940)
3. Soviet Union
4. United States
Axis
1. Germany
2. Italy
3. Japan

October 7, 1933

Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state
(also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which citizens had no guaranteed
basic rights. The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, the German parliamentary
democracy established after World War I.
In 1933, the regime established the first concentration camps, imprisoning its political opponents,
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others classified as “dangerous.” Extensive propaganda was
used to spread the Nazi Party’s racist goals and ideals. During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship,
German Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of
their public and private lives.

The day after the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned
down due to arson, President Hindenburg issues the Decree for
the Protection of People and the Reich.
Though the origins of the fire are still unclear, in a propaganda
maneuver, the coalition government (made up of Nazis and the
Nationalists) blamed the Communists. They exploited the
Reichstag fire to secure President Hindenburg’s approval for an
emergency decree, popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree,
that suspended individual rights and due process of law.
The Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the regime to arrest and
incarcerate political opponents without specific charge, dissolve
political organizations, and to suppress publications. It also gave
the central government the authority to overrule state and local
laws and overthrow state and local governments.
The decree was a key step in the establishment of the Nazi
dictatorship. Germany became a police state in which citizens
enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights and the SS, the elite guard of
the Nazi state, wielded increasing authority through its control over

Outside the town of Dachau, Germany, the SS
(Schutzstaffel, Protection Squads) establishes its first
concentration camp to incarcerate political opponents.
Between 1933 and 1945, concentration camps
(Konzentrationslager; KL or KZ) were an integral
feature of the Nazi regime.
The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau
during these years exceeded 188,000. The number of
prisoners who died in the camp and its subcamps
between January 1940 and May 1945 was at least
28,000, to which must be added more who died there
between 1933 and the end of 1939, as well as an
undetermined number of unregistered prisoners.
Dachau was the only concentration camp to remain in
operation during the entire period of Nazi power. It is
unlikely that the total number of victims who died in

Less than 3 months after coming to power in Germany, the
Nazi leadership stagef an economic boycott targeting
Jewish-owned businesses and the offices of Jewish
professionals.
The boycott was presented to the German people as both
a reprisal and an act of revenge for the bad international
press against Germany since the appointment of Hitler’s
government in January, 1933.
- The Nazis claimed that German and foreign Jews were
spreading “atrocity stories” to damage Germany's
reputation. Nazi Storm Troopers stood menacingly in front
of Jewish-owned department stores and retail
establishments, and outside the offices of Jewish
professionals, holding signs and shouting slogans such as
"Don't Buy from Jews" and "The Jews Are Our Misfortune."
Although the national boycott campaign lasted only one
day and was ignored by many individual Germans who
continued to shop in Jewish-owned stores and seek the
services of Jewish professionals, the boycott marked the
beginning of a nationwide campaign by the Nazi Party

APRIL 7, 1933
The German government issues the Law for the Restoration
of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur
Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excludes
Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil
service positions.
The law initially exempts those who had worked in the civil
service since August 1, 1914, those who were veterans of
World War I, or those with a father or son killed in action in
World War I.
The German government also issues a new law concerning
membership in the bar, which mandates the disbarment of
non-“Aryan” lawyers by September 30, 1933. Exempted from
this provision are Jewish lawyers practicing law since August
1, 1914, or Jewish lawyers who are German veterans of
World War I.

After Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933,
government at every level—national, state, and municipal—began
to adopt laws and policies that increasingly restricted the rights of
Jews in Germany. This new law limited the number of Jewish
students in any one public school to no more than 5 percent of the
total student population.
According to the census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of
Germany was about 500,000 people out of a total population of 67
million or less than 0.8 percent of the total. In 1933, 75 percent of
all Jewish students attended general public schools in Germany.
However, public schools also played an important role in spreading
Nazi ideas to German youth.
Educators taught students love for Hitler, obedience to state
authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism. In the face of
increasing persecution at public schools, Jews in Germany turned
increasingly to private schools for their children.

On May 10, 1933, university students burn upwards of
25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square. Some
40,000 people gather to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a
fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!”
As part of an effort to align German arts and culture with
Nazi ideas (Gleichschaltung), university students in college
towns across Germany burned thousands of books they
considered to be “un-German,” heralding an era of state
censorship and cultural control. Students threw books
pillaged mostly from public and university libraries onto
bonfires with great ceremony, band-playing, and so-called
“fire oaths.” The students sought to purify German literature
of “foreign,” especially Jewish, and other immoral
influences. Among the authors whose works were burned
was Helen Keller, an American whose belief in social justice
encouraged her to champion disabled persons, pacifism,
improved conditions for industrial workers, and women's
voting rights.

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are
confident they are acting on their own free will.
A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes
the truth
There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway
always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and
forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics
and psychology.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1933
German Jewish organizations establish the Central Organization
of German Jews (Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden) in an
effort to better represent the interests of German Jews through a
unified response to escalating Nazi persecution.
Between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of Europeans with disabilities were brutally exterminated by the
Nazis.
T4 Program, also called T4 Euthanasia Program
After the Nazi party consolidated its power in the March, 1933 elections, Hitler’s resolve to eliminate Germany’s
"hereditarily unfit" intensified. This was reported in an October, 1933 New York Times article headlined, NAZIS
PLAN TO KILL INCURABLES TO END PAIN; GERMAN RELIGIOUS GROUPS OPPOSE MOVE.

JUNE 30, 1934
Hitler orders a violent purge of the top leadership of the Nazi
Party paramilitary formation, the SA (Sturmabteilungen; Assault
Detachments).
Pressured by German army commanders, whose support he
would need to become President, Hitler directs the SS to
murder SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and his top commanders.
The SS also murders several conservative critics of the Nazi
regime including Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, General
Kurt von Schleicher. At Hitler’s request, the German parliament
(Reichstag) declares the killings legal after the fact, based on a
false accusation that Röhm and his commanders had planned
to overthrow the government. The assasinations of June 30–
July 2, 1934, later became known as “the Röhm Affair” or the
“the Night of the Long Knives.”

AUGUST 19, 1934
Hitler abolishes the office of President and declares himself Führer of the
German Reich and People, in addition to his position as Chancellor. In this
capacity, Hitler’s decisions are not bound by the laws of the state. Hitler now
becomes the absolute dictator of Germany; there are no legal or constitutional
limits to his authority.
Hitler’s origins: Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. He was the son of a
local customs official and his much younger third wife. Hitler’s father was an illegitimate
child and it is uncertain who his father was, but there is no evidence for the legend that
this unidentified grandfather was Jewish. Hitler’s father was harsh and distant. He had a
closer relationship with his mother, and her death from cancer when he was 17 was
traumatic for him.
Hitler had a normal education. As a young man, he showed no special talents. He
wanted to study art, and moved to Vienna after his mother’s death in hope of being
accepted to art school, but was turned down for lack of talent.
Sources of Hitler’s antisemitism: Because we have very little reliable information about
Hitler’s early life, it is hard to determine exactly when he became a confirmed
antisemite. His own account, in his book Mein Kampf, is not entirely accurate: by the
time he wrote it, he wanted to make it appear that he had adopted antisemitic ideas quite
early in his life. Prejudice against Jews was widespread in the early 20th century, but

JUNE 28, 1935
The German Ministry of Justice revises Paragraphs 175 and
175a of the German criminal code with the intent of 1)
expanding the range of criminal offenses to encompass any
contact between men, either physical or in form of word or
gesture, that could be construed as sexual; and 2)
strengthening penalties for all violations of the revised law. The
revision facilitates the systematic persecution of homosexual
men and provides police with broader means for
prosecuting them.
After taking power in 1933, the Nazis persecuted homosexuals
as part of their so-called moral crusade to racially and culturally
purify Germany. This persecution ranged from forced
dissolution of homosexual organizations to internment of
thousands of individuals in concentration camps. Gay men, in
particular, were subject to harassment, arrest, incarceration,
and even castration. In Nazi eyes, gay men were weak and

SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
The German parliament (Reichstag) passes the Nuremberg Race
Laws.
The Nuremberg Race Laws consisted of two pieces of legislation:
1) the Reich Citizenship Law
2) the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. A
special session of the Nazi-controlled Reichstag passed both laws
at the
. These laws institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning
Nazi ideology and provided the legal framework for the systematic
persecution of Jews in Germany. The Nuremberg Race Laws did not
identify a “Jew” as someone with particular religious convictions but
instead as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Many
Germans who had not practiced Judaism or who had not done so for
many years found themselves still subject to legal persecution under
these laws. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had

Hitler saw Leni Riefenstahl as a director who could use aesthetics to
produce an image of a strong Germany imbued with Wagnerian motifs
of power and beauty. In 1933, he asked Riefenstahl to direct a short
film, Der Sieg des Glaubens (The Victory of Faith), shot at that year's
Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally. The film was a template for her more
famous work, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), shot at the
Nuremberg Rally the following year, in 1934.
Riefenstahl initially rebuffed Hitler's commission for the film but
relented when she received unlimited resources and full artistic license
for the picture. Triumph of the Will, with its evocative images and
innovative film technique, ranked as an epic work of documentary film-
making, and is widely regarded as one of the most masterful
propaganda films ever produced. It won several awards, but forever
linked the film's subject, National Socialism, with its artist, Riefenstahl.

From 1933, Nazi rallies were held annually at purpose-
built grounds in Nuremberg.
These military gatherings would involve hundreds of
thousands of Nazis, including members of the Party,
armed forces and youth groups.
The Nuremberg Rallies had a number of features:
•Nazis in immaculate military dress
•Marches by soldiers with flags, accompanied by
drums
•Torchlight processions
•Speeches by Hitler and other leading Nazis
The rallies can be seen as propaganda aimed to show
German people that their country was powerful, ordered
and under the complete control of the Nazis.

AUGUST 1, 1936
The Summer Olympic Games open in Berlin, attended by
athletes and spectators from countries around the world.
The Olympic Games were a propaganda success for the Nazi
government, as German officials made every effort to portray
Germany as a respectable member of the international
community.
They removed anti-Jewish signs from public display and
restrained anti-Jewish activities. In response to pressure from
foreign Olympic delegations, Germany also included one part-
Jew, the fencer Helene Mayer, on its Olympic team. Germany
also lifted anti-homosexuality laws for foreign visitors for the
duration of the games.

Josef Goebbels, Reich propaganda minister, and Julius
Streicher, editor of the antisemitic newspaper, Der
Stürmer (The Attacker) open the antisemitic exhibition Der
Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) at the library of the German
Museum in Munich, Germany,
The exhibition depicted stereotypical images of Jews to
illustrate charges of a Jewish world conspiracy against
Germany and links between Judaism and communism. A
traveling exhibition, it was shown in Berlin, Vienna, and
various other German cities.
More than 400,000 people attended the
exhibition.

On March 11–13, 1938, German troops invade Austria and
incorporate Austria into the German Reich in what is known as
the Anschluss.
A wave of street violence against Jewish persons and property
followed in Vienna and other cities throughout the so-called
Greater German Reich during the spring, summer, and autumn of
1938, culminating in the Kristallnacht riots and violence of
November 9-10.
In July 1934 Austrian and German Nazis together attempted a
coup but were unsuccessful. An authoritarian right-wing
government then took power in Austria and kept perhaps half the
population from voicing legitimate dissent; that cleavage
prevented concerted resistance to the developments of 1938. In
February 1938 Hitler invited the Austrian chancellor Kurt von
Schuschnigg to Germany and forced him to agree to give the
Austrian Nazis virtually a free hand. Earlier in the decade Austria
had turned to Italy for support, but by this time Italian
leader Benito Mussolini had abandoned the idea of intervening to

SEPTEMBER 29, 1938
September 29–30, 1938: Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and
France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia
must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called
Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany. German troops occupy these
regions between October 1 and 10, 1938.
Hitler had threatened to unleash a European war unless the
Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia containing an
ethnic German majority, was surrendered to Germany. The
leaders of Britain, France, and Ital y agreed to the German
annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of
peace from Hitler. Czechoslovakia, which was not a party to the
Munich negotiations, agreed under significant pressure from
Britain and France.
Who wasn’t there? Edward Benes of Czechoslovakia

AUGUST 17, 1938
The Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration of
Family and Personal Names requires German Jews
bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin to adopt an
additional name: “Israel” for men and “Sara” for women.
The government required Jews to identify themselves in
ways that would permanently separate them from the rest
of the German population. In the new August 1938 law,
authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men
and women bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin had
to add “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to their given
names. All German Jews were obliged to carry identity
cards that indicated their heritage, and, in the autumn of
1938, all Jewish passports were stamped with an
identifying red letter “J”. As Nazi leaders quickened their
war preparations, antisemitic legislation in Germany and
Austria paved the way for more radical persecution of
Jews.
10/5/1938 – Jewish passports invalid

On November 9–10, 1938, Nazi leaders unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish
population in Germany and recently incorporated territories. This event came to be
called Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) because of the shattered glass that littered the
streets after the vandalism and destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and
homes.
On November 9–10, 1938, Nazi leaders unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish
population in Germany and recently incorporated territories. This event came to be
called Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) because of the shattered glass that littered the
streets after the vandalism and destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and
homes.
During the pogrom, View This Term in the Glossary some 30,000 Jewish males were rounded
up and taken to concentration camps. This was the first time Nazi officials made massive
arrests of Jews specifically because they were Jews, without any further cause for arrest.
During the pogrom, View This Term in the Glossary some 30,000 Jewish males were rounded
up and taken to concentration camps. This was the first time Nazi officials made massive

NOVEMBER 12, 1938
On November 12, 1938, the German government issues the
Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life
(Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen
Wirtschaftsleben). The decree bars Jews from operating retail
stores, sales agencies, and from carrying on a trade. The law
also forbids Jews from selling goods or services at an
establishment of any kind.
During the first six years of Hitler's dictatorship, from 1933
until the outbreak of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more
than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of
their public and private lives. Many of these were national
laws that had been issued by the German administration and
affected all Jews. But state, regional, and municipal officials,
acting on their own initiatives, also promulgated a barrage of
exclusionary decrees in their own communities. Thus,
hundreds of individuals in all levels of government throughout
the country were involved in the persecution of Jews as they
conceived, discussed, drafted, adopted, enforced, and
supported anti-Jewish legislation. No corner of Germany was

DECEMBER 2, 1938
In desperation, thousands of Jewish parents send their
unaccompanied children abroad, hoping they would find refuge
from Nazi persecution.
Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of
a series of rescue efforts (organized by Jewish communal
groups in Germany and Austria) which brought thousands of
refugee Jewish children to Great Britain between 1938 and
1940. Parents or guardians could not accompany the children.
The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain, on
December 2, 1938, bringing some 200 children from a Jewish
orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in
the Kristallnacht pogrom. Eventually between 9,000 and 10,000
children were rescued via Kindertransport. Most of these girls
and boys would never again see their parents, who were
murdered during the Holocaust.

Jews lived in Poland for 800 years before the Nazi occupation. On the eve of
the occupation 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland – more than any other country
in Europe. Their percentage among the general population – about 10% –
was also the highest in Europe.
After the conquest of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September
1939, most of the Jews remaining within the area occupied by Germany –
approximately 1.8 million – were imprisoned in ghettos. In June 1941, after
the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans began to imprison the
rest of Polish Jewry in ghettos and to deport them to concentration and slave
labor camps.