Term | Definition |
Holocaust | burnt offering
1935-47
first mass killing of Jews took place in 1940 in Poland |
Shoah | Hebrew for catastrophe
cannot be understood by rationale |
Victor Frankl | Austrian psychiatrist placed in the worst concentration camp
"victims don't necessarily mean they were decent" |
Fischer Controversy | British historian accused Germans for starting WWI
Germany's defeat and humiliation set conditions for Hitler to take over |
Sonderweg | special path that allowed the Holocaust to occur in Germany |
Historian's Quarrel | Nazi catastrophe should be understood as one big European Civil War
Fascism vs Communism |
Functionalism | No written intent
mostly improvisation with leaders attempting to please the Fuhrer |
Intentionalism | Hitler played a role, had the intent of killing Jews from the very beginning |
Redemptive Anti-Semitism | All the wrong in the world was the fault of the Jews |
Protocols of the Elders of Zion | conspiracy forged in Russia saying that Jews planned to take over the world |
pogrom | mob riot against Jews |
blood libel | Jews accused of kidnapping Christian children and using their blood for rituals |
deicide | Christians accused the Jews of killing Jesus |
Dreyfus affair | French officer of Jewish descent accused of spying on the French military for Germany and imprisoned
accusations all based on antisemitism |
Adolf Stoecker | Used Anti-semitism as a platform
believed that the German culture was corrupted by Jews |
Karl Lueger | Mayor in Vienna who determined who was a Jew
Hitler felt that Lueger was not radical enough
Believed that Jews could be baptized and saved |
Theodor Fritsch | Antisemites Catechism
prohibited social intercourse with Jew
Keep blood pure |
Herero | Germany established protectorate in Africa
Herero rebelled but was quashed and put into concentration camps |
Futurist Manifesto | proclaimed Jews as unmanly
glorified war, militarism, destruction |
Sarajevo 1914 | Balkan Wars
Franz Ferdinand assassinated in 1914 |
Schlieffen Plan | plan for attack on France and Russia
Russia expected to take longer to mobilize |
Operation Alberich | 1917/1918
As Germans retreated from France, they razed the land and destroyed everything |
Total War | all resources devoted to war efforts
German violated rules of war by attacking neutral ships, executing civilians, bombing cities |
Jew Count 1916 | census of Jews showing that one percent of Germans were Jews |
Erich Ludendorff | realized that Germany couldn't win and demanded government to appease the Allies
German revolution broke out because they didn't want to engage in a naval battle with the British |
Stab-in-the-back | blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in WWI and the signing of the Versailles Treaty |
True Believer | someone who truly believed that Germany needed to clear out the Jews |
Lebensraum | Living space
wanted to expand to the East |
Pan-Germanism | movement for all Germanic-speaking people to unite |
Drang nach osten | Drive to the East
Germany wanted to expand into the Slavic lands |
NSDAP | Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party |
Beerhall Putsch | 1923
attempt at national revolution held by Hitler
Hitler realized that to seize power, he had to do through constitutional and legal channels |
Working towards the Fuhrer | many people tried to interpret Hitler's words and competed with each other to gain Hitler's favor |
Versailles Treaty | ended WWI in 1919
Germany lost 10% of its territory
pay war reparations, disarmament |
Article 48 | Part of Weimer Republic
allowed President to rule by decree in emergencies without the consent of Reichstag |
Reichswehr | Weimar Republic's military |
SA | paramilitary of Hitler's movement
seen as a liability and was quashed by the SS during the Night of Long Knives |
KPD | Communist Part of Germany |
Volk-Volkisch | Nazis used it as a racial term for themselves
means people/nation |
Hermann Rauschning | at first joined the Nazis hoping to reunite his city with Germany but resisted policies that hurt Jews |
Paul von Hindenberg | ran for and won the presidency over Hitler and was convinced to appoint Hitler as chancellor to buy popular support |
Triumph of the Will | Nazi propaganda film with excerpts of Nazi leader speeches |
Enabling Act | March 1933
allowed Hitler to dispense Reichstag approval |
Dachau | first concentration camp
mainly filled with Communists and Social Democrats |
Gleichschaltung | "shifting into gear"
organizations have to adhere to Nazi ideology
expelled non-Germans
many did so without being asked to in order to "fit in" |
sterilization | legally sterilizing anyone seen as unfit |
mercy killings | euthanasias |
Well of Life | program where racially fit women were chosen to mate with SS men
Polish children that looked Aryan kidnapped to live with German families |
Heinrich Himmler | head of SS
delegated and ran concentration camps |
Gestapo | Secret police |
SS | consisted of Hitler's bodyguards, Men in Way, Death Guard Formation |
Swing Kids | youth who opposed Nazi ideology and Hitler youth |
Night of the Long Knives | 1934
SA considered a threat by Hitler and crushed by the SS |
Judenrein | "Free of Jews"
Nazi term to designate an area cleansed of Jewish presence |
Nuremberg Laws | 1935
established who was a Jew
protection of German blood |
Aryanization | transfer of Jewish businesses to Germans |
Haavara Agreement | 1933
concluded by Zionists and Nazis
emigrate Jews to Palestine
expensive for German Jews to get a certificate of emigration |
German Christians (DC) | Jesus was an Aryan
despised things that were soft, weak, unmanly (Jewish)
demanded exclusion of racial non-Aryans |
Confessing Church | believed that race was irrelevant in membership to the Church |
Martin Niemoller | Protestant Pastor that at first welcomed Hitler but then became part of Pastor's Emergency League and was sent to a concentration camp |
Hossbach memorandum | Hitler informed his generals of his plans for Austria's annexation |
Anschluss | 1938
Austria's annexation |
Munich Agreement | Chamberlain appeased Hitler by allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia |
Sudetenland | Sudeten Germans living in Czechoslovakia |
Kristallnacht | Fall 1938
Herschel Grynspan shot an officer at the German embassy
Hitler used this to push Germans in attacking Jewish homes and businesses
Jews were told to pay for the destruction |
Four-Year Plan | dramatically diminished unemployment, rearmament went against Treaty of Versailles
increase production and initiate building architectural projects |
Hitler-Stalin Pact | Aug 1939
Germany assured that they could proceed into Poland and divide the land with Soviet Union |
Blitzkrieg | lightening war
destroyed Polish airforce |
Georg Elser | carpenter who planned to assassinate Hitler
anniversay of Beerhall Putsch on Nov 1939
missed Hitler and sent to Dachau |
T-4 | euthanasia program launched in 1940 |
Hadamar | one of the T-4 clinics
death by gas, starvation, injection |
Irmgard Huber | head nurse of Hadamar
falsified death certificates |
Kaiser's Coffee | Polish gassed in mobile gas vans
bottled CO introduced into rear of vehicle |
Cardinal Galen | criticized Hitler's movement |
Einsatzgruppen | task forces
responsible for mass killings of civilians throughout Eastern Europe |
Hans Frank | leader of the General Government in Poland
Polish civilians as forced labor and Jews in ghettos |
Nisko | town in Poland
Jews shipped to reservations at Nisko and left there with nothing |
Madagascar Plan | move Jews to Madagascar by using British ships to transport the Jews |
Litzmannstadt | earliest and longest lived ghetto in Poland
severe overcrowding, disease, no running water |
Judenrat | Jewish council that decided who to transfer to death camps
attempted to negotiate between Nazis and Jews |
Directive 21 | Dec 1940
Germany must be prepared to overthrow Soviet Union |
Wehrmacht | unified armed forces of Germany |
War of annihilation | Wehrmacht used primitive battle tactics
many were executed for mild infractions (fear factor) |
Babi Yar | Sept 1941
Jews in Kiev shot at the ravine
one of the earlier massacres of Jews |
Commissar Order | Hitler ordered the deaths of Soviet Union's political officers |
Yakov Dzugashvili | Stalin's son who volunteered to go the front and was captured and sent to concentration camp |
JDC | Joint Distribution Committee
American Jewish
main organization in U.S. that helped Jews abroad |
Aliyah Beth | code name given to illegal immigration by Jews to Palestine |
LTI | Language of the Third Reich
change in the value of the words due to its frequent occurrences |