United States History Student Edition

In this photo, Nazi leaders Adolf Hitler (left), Hermann Goering (second from left), Joseph Goebbels (center), and Rudolf Hess (right) stand in front of Nazi banners featuring the swastika.

The Holocaust GUIDING QUESTION What ideas and events made the Holocaust possible? In the aftermath of World War I, a former German Army soldier found a new career as a political agitator, a path that would lead to disaster for Europe and beyond. Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, and brought it to prominence by the early 1930s. After his appointment to the post of Chancellor in 1933, Hitler led the Nazis to quickly gain complete control of Germany’s government, press, courts, and military. Opposition of any type to the Nazi party was ruthlessly crushed. Within two months, Hitler pushed through the Enabling Act by inciting fear of communists and Jews. The act allowed Hitler to pass laws without parliamentary approval and suspended civil liberties. Within a year, Hitler used his extended authority to send thousands of political opponents to concentration camps. On June 30, 1934, a date known as the Night of the Long Knives, he ordered the murders of political leaders who opposed him or his policies. One symbol became a powerful tool of the Nazi government: the swastika (SWAS•tik•uh). The symbol had been in use for thousands of years, having been found in the artwork of

ancient Egypt and Greece and in the relics of at least three major South Asian religions. But Hitler came up with the idea to redefine the symbol as that of the Nazi party, and later of Nazi Germany as a whole. Soon Germany was flooded with swastika flags, armbands, postage stamps, and countless other items. The symbol helped unify Nazi supporters as well as intimidate their opponents. In his push for power, Hitler had a larger goal: the development of an “Aryan” racial state to dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations. Aryan was originally a term used to identify people speaking Indo-European languages. The Nazis intentionally misused the term by treating it as a racial designation that supposedly signified German (and in some cases northern European) ancestry. The Nazis thought the Germans were the true “Aryans” who should create an empire by subjugating and eliminating those they deemed racially inferior. The Nazis believed that the world might accept their plan to eradicate groups of people standing in the way of an “Aryan” racial state. Hitler noted the lack of international response to the then-recent genocide of the Armenians and expected the same inaction to his planned actions against Jews, Eastern Europeans, and other “non-Aryan” peoples.

genocide the deliberate attempt to eliminate a racial, ethnic, religious, or national group, often through mass murder

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