The years from 1933 to 1945 are one of the darkest parts in the history history of humanity. When the war ended in 1945, the nazis had tortured and killed 11 millions Jews, handicapped, homosexuals, gypsies, and other people from inferion groups.
Throughout history, the Christians have persecuted the Jews. Jews have been accused of killing Christian children to use their blood in the Easter bread. Christian children were even placed in Jewish homes to make a proof for the accusations.
The crusades in the twelfth to the fourteenth century continued the persecution. During a crusade in Jerusalem, the Jewish population was locked into a burning Synagogue.
The persecution was explained by the supposed Jewish crucifixion of Jesus. This was also the official explanation of the Roman Catholic Church until 1964.
Around 1850 anti-Semitism came to Germany together with the National-Romanticism. The German anti-Semitism was pointed at the Jews social, economic and cultural life. Based on experience, the Germans said, the Jews was a threat to the nation.
In 1932 the NSDAP is the largest party in Germany, and one year later Adolf Hitler is appointed "Reichskansler". When President Hindenburg dies, Hitler appoints himself "Führer". But even before Hitler is appointed "Führer", the NSDAP starts reformations against the Jews. On April 22, Jews are excluded from work at Hospitals, and in September Jews are excluded from the right of owning land. Jews are also excluded from participating in cultural activities and sport.
The restrictions formed in the Nuremberg laws in 1935 regulate who is allowed to marry. The "Christalnacht" followed the restrictions, on the night between November 8 and 9, 1938.
Hundreds of Synagogues were burned down and at least 30 000 Jews were sent to concentration camps and forced labour. Many Jewish homes were destroyed and "Aryans" stole Jewish property.
the ideology
The Nazis thought that the "Aryans" were superior to other races - like the Jews. These thoughts were the start of the Holocaust. In "Mein Kampf", Hitler writes about how he believes that "physical measurements" shows the difference between the races.
Hitler was not the first to launch these ideas. In 1800, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, that "There are fundamental differences between white and coloured races". "But it is not possible", he wrote, "to judge a people out of from their race". Johann Kaspar Lavater, Pieter Camper, Franz Joseph Gall, Christoph Meiners and Carl Gustav Carus worked to find ways to measure persons and races up against each other.
Franz Joseph Gall thought that a person’s intelligence, moral and physics was connected to the measurements of the cranium.
Christopher Meiners judged persons from their looks. He said that blond, beautiful races were superior to other races.
Charles Darwin’s book "On the origin of species" was followed by "The descent of man". In "The descent of man" he discusses how the theories of natural selection can be used on humans in the modern society.
"the final solution"
July 31 1941, SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, receives orders from Herman Göring. He is told to start the "Final solution". He organizes a conference on January 20 the next year, in Wannsee near Berlin. The Wannsee Conference is regarded as the start of the Holocaust. On the Wannsee Conference it was decided that the Jews of all German influenced countries were to be transported to concentration camps and, later, to extermination camps in Poland and Germany. The prisoners were to be killed as soon as they were unable to work. All of the extermination camps were placed in Poland: Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Auschwitz II - Birkenau. The most feared of these camps was the latter, Birkenau - near Krakow, the nazi capital of Poland. In Auschwitz, about 2 millions Jews died. Some of the concentration camps were also located in the heart of Germany: Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and many others.
These camps were made to break the prisoners down psychically and physically. The food and the sanitation was useless and the forced labour inhuman.
The methods of extermination in the death camps varied: Mass extermination with machine guns, gassing whit diesel exhaust and, from 1942 and until the end of the war, gassing in gas chambers.
In the gas chambers thousands of inmates could be killed every day, and at the end of the war the number of exterminations per day was set up - to complete "the final solution" before the allied armies would reach the camps.
the end of the war, 44 - 45
At the end of the war, the war turned against the Germans and the Nazis decided to kill as many prisoners as possible. The concentration camps and labour camps were turned into extermination camps and as the Soviet, English and American armies came closer, camps were abandoned and destroyed, especially in Poland.
When Germany surrendered in 1945, 11 millions "enemies" of the Nazi Government had been killed.
