From the mid-1930s until the end of the Second World War, the Nazi regime carried out a campaign
of sustained antisemitic persecution that developed into a coordinated programme of mass
murder. This genocide is now known as the Holocaust. Millions of Jewish people were killed,
many different communities were shattered – and not just people were destroyed but entire ways of
life. The scale of the Holocaust is such that it has become a foundational part of Western culture
and is a fundamental part of the history of the Second World War.
But how did this atrocity happen? What was happening
in Germany in the 1930s that saw the rise of the Nazi Party?
James Bulgin is the lead curator for the Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museums.
The new galleries at IWM London explore the history of how these events happened.
This video is part one of an introduction to this complex history.
The first world war left germany in complete chaos there was a lot of displaced anger
because germany didn't expect to lose the first world war the people of germany be
encouraged to believe that that this was a war that they were set to win and when they didn't
it left people feeling angry and frustrated and needing someone to blame and a lot of these young
men who'd been part of the military found that they had all this displaced anger and nowhere
to direct it so politics became very volatile and very incendiary and this was a landscape in which
extreme politics and extremist politicians found some real ground to maneuver
Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
Nazi persecution of Jewish people started from the very beginning of their regime.
In the months and years that followed, laws were introduced that restricted opportunities
for Jewish people. In 1935, a significant moment came with the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws
that formally recognised who was and wasn’t a German citizen and what rights they had.
The Nazis enacted persecution of Jews in a few different ways. First of all they used kind of
the formal structures of laws and rules and restrictions and they also looked for ways
in which the population could be coerced into supporting anti-Jewish thinking and anti-Jewish
policy. They wanted to create what they call a volksgemeinschaft, a national community
of people who thought in the same way and of course it became increasingly clear within this
volksgemeinschaft for the people who didn't fit into it there was really no place at all.
And alongside the creation of laws and rules and restrictions and creating a
consensus of support for what they were doing, which they encouraged by motivating people with
money and jobs and opportunities, they also started to create an increasingly
sophisticated apparatus of terror. The main vector of this as the regime developed was the SS,
Himmler's SS, and this force was created in order to enforce
Nazi ideology. Now it's a complete myth to suggest that the SS had eyes on every single
person and what they were doing all the time but nevertheless an apparatus of terror was
definitely evolving and developing in order to control people's behavior and people were
encouraged to live in such a way that they were aware that these eyes were on them all the time.
"What had been an undercurrent before then became very much public. The streets were
full of marching storm troopers who were triumphant because of the electoral victory
and a boycott was started against the Jewish shops. Stormtroopers stood outside
the shops and wrote slogans on the windows of the shops with star of David. So it was a very
difficult and unpleasant atmosphere and the reaction of my family and
Jews in general was to withdraw and to keep out of the streets and the town as much as possible.
What happened to your father?
Well in - later in 1933 they came and took my father away and I understood subsequently
that what happened was that they took him and many other Jewish men onto a football field,
and made them cut the grass with their teeth while the SS men in their brown uniform stood
around laughing. My father came back very ashen faced and shaken, and of course he wouldn't
talk about it at all. I found out afterwards from relatives what actually had happened.
As well as their use of violence, new laws and the destruction of democracy, Propaganda was
essential to the Nazis’ consolidation of power and the spread of their dangerous ideologies.
Hitler's head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels created a whole ream of propaganda to support the
ideology of their regime and this was manifest in all different types of media in radio broadcasts
and cinema broadcasts people were encouraged to believe that Hitler was leading a massive German
revival which would lead to a massively improved way of life for everybody within the Reich and for
everybody who was allowed to be part of it. This propaganda is really really important here and to
Goebbels of course in shaping the way that people consider what the Nazis can do for them.
The late 1930s saw an escalation of antisemitic violence. On 9-10 November 1938,
unprecedented riots took place across Germany and Austria targeting Jewish people. Hordes
of SA and SS forces together with civilians land members of the Hitler Youth rampaged through the
steets smashing Jewish property, setting fire to synagogues and terrorising Jews.
This violence was described by the Nazis and the media as Kristallnacht,
or night of broken glass. At least 90 Jewish people were murdered.
So on the night of the 9th November 1938 there's this explosion of violence which was led by
SS and SA mobs roaming the street dressed as civilians, actually rarely in uniform in order to
suggest to people that somehow this was something that all of the population were on board with.
And significantly they don't just target Jewish-owned businesses
they also target Jewish-owned homes so for the first time really Jewish people
living in Germany and Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia feel that their most precious
havens are under threat. In the days after the pogrom or Kristallnacht about 30,000 Jewish men
were marched off to concentration camps, for the first time in the history of the concentration
camps the majority of the populations were Jews. This didn't last for too long at this stage but
nevertheless it was a really significant moment in terms of anti-Semitic persecution within the
Reich and a lot of Jewish people suddenly felt for the first time that it wasn't just their property
or their assets that were under threat they were personally under threat as well.
Jewish people living in Germany, Austria and occupied-Czechoslovakia increasingly
felt they had no choice but to leave – but even this option proved to be impossible for many.
Those leaving were forced to pay a high price, and there were few options as to where they could go.
Thousands of Jewish children were given temporary refuge in the UK via the kindertransport,
and many more Jewish women as domestic servants,
but all countries restricted immigration, and many shut their borders to Jewish adults.
The last Kindertransport train left Germany on 1 September 1939.
And my lovely sister and mother took me to the station.
This would be July '39 would it Otto? Very near the war?
Yes there was only August intervening.
But even at the station there was still one act of cruelty that they had in store for us.
It was said there have to be no signs of emotion, no emotional scenes, which meant no crying.
Now how can you stop a ten-year-old - or worse how can you stop a
mother not to cry. My mother turned her back on me, she could pretend no longer. And it was really
impressed upon us no emotion, why should these Aryan Austrians have to witness Jewish tragedy.
Many Jewish people had managed to escape, but thousands were unable to do so.
The Nazis’ poisonous ideology had gripped the Reich,
and the threat to those who were left was now acute. The events that followed would
lead to the Nazis’ ultimate plan for the extermination of Europe’s Jews.