On December 19, , commander of the Continental Army George Washington, the future first president of the United States, leads his beleaguered troops into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Things could hardly have looked bleaker for Washington and the Continental The book, filled with proverbs preaching industry and prudence, was published continuously for 25 years and became one of the most popular publications in colonial America, selling an Titanic catapulted its young stars Leonardo Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, from their internal exile in Gorky, a major city on the Volga River that was then closed to foreigners.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Art, Literature, and Film History. US Politics. Space Exploration. In addition to other provisions, the treaty artificially limited German military power. It restricted the German army to a ,man volunteer force, with a maximum of 4, officers, who were each required to serve for 25 years. This was intended to prevent the German army from using rapid turnover to train more officers. The treaty forbade production of tanks, poisonous gas, armored cars, airplanes, and submarines and the import of weapons.
It dissolved the elite planning section of the German army, known as the General Staff, and closed the military academies and other training institutions. The treaty demanded the demilitarization of the Rhineland, forbidding German military forces from being stationed along the border with France. These changes greatly limited the career prospects of German military officers.
The new German republic, known as the Weimar Republic , faced many difficult tasks. One of the most challenging was the reorganization of the military, called the Reichswehr. The government reinstituted the Reichswehr on January 1, under the leadership of General Hans von Seeckt.
Throughout the s, the military repeatedly violated the treaty. It even signed an agreement with the Soviet Union, which allowed it to conduct prohibited tank exercises in Soviet territory. This international agreement built on the earlier Hague Conventions of and to increase protections for prisoners of war.
The convention was one of several important international agreements regulating war in the s. The Geneva Protocol updated restrictions relating to the use of poison gas. In , the Kellogg-Briand Pact renounced war as a national policy. These postwar agreements were an attempt to update international law in a way that would prevent another conflict as destructive as World War I.
However, the dominant attitude within the German army was that military necessity always outweighed international la w. L ike many other nations, Germany bent or broke the rules when it found it advantageous to do so. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, Just four days later, he met privately with top military leaders to attempt to win their support.
This was especially important because the military had historically played a very important role in German society and therefore had the ability to overthrow the new regime.
The military leadership did not fully trust or support Hitler because of his populism and radicalism. However, the Nazi Party and the German military had similar foreign policy goals. Both wanted to renounce t he Treaty of Versailles, to expand the German armed forces, and to destroy the communist threat. In this first meeting, Hitler tried to reassure the German officer corps.
He talked openly about his plans to establish a dictatorship, reclaim lost land, and wage war. Almost two months later, Hitler showed his respect for the German military tradition by publicly bowing to President Hindenburg , a celebrated World War I general. The paragraph called for all Germans of non-Aryan descent i.
Jews to be forcibly retired from the civil service. The Aryan Paragraph did not initially apply to the armed forces.
On February 28, , however, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg voluntarily put it in effect for the military as well. Because the Reichswehr discriminated against Jews and blocked their promotion, the policy affected fewer than soldiers.
They also added Nazi symbols to military uniforms and insignia and introduced political education based on Nazi ideals into military training. Hitler decided that a professionally trained and organized military better suited his expansionist aims. The murders confirmed an agreement between the Nazi regime and the military that would remain intact, with rare exceptions, until the end of World War II.
The military leaders immediately wrote a new oath that swore their service to Hitler personally as the personification of the German Nation. In early , Germany took its first public steps to rearm, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. On March 16, , a new law reintroduced the draft and officially expanded the German army to , men.
The name change was largely cosmetic, but the intent was to create a force capable of a war of aggression, rather than the defensive force created by the treaty. In addition, the conscription law excluded Jews, much to the disappointment of those Jewish men who wanted to prove their continuing loyalty to Germany. Military leaders worked with the Nazi regime to expand arms production.
In March , the new Wehrmacht remilitarized the Rhineland. On November 5, , Hitler held a small meeting with the foreign minister, the war minister, and the heads of the army, navy and air force. In the days and weeks that followed, several other military leaders who learned of the meeting also expressed their disapproval.
This was completely unacceptable for any army officer. The two resignations became known as the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair. They gave Hitler the opportunity to restructure the Wehrmacht under his control.
The position of Minister of War was taken over by Hitler himself, and General Wilhelm Keitel was appointed as the military head of the armed forces. Fritsch was replaced with the much more pliable Colonel-General Walther von Brauchitsch. These changes were just the most public. Hitler also announced a series of forced resignations and transfers at a cabinet meeting in early February. From March to March , Germany made a series of territorial moves that risked a European war.
First, in March , Germany annexed Austria. Hitler then threatened war unless the Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia containing an ethnic German majority, was surrendered to Germany. They agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace from Hitler. The party was banned throughout Germany and it seemed to have been dismantled; it appeared to have failed to gain more than a regional following in Bavaria.
At the end of the February trial, Hitler was sentenced to four years in prison; however, he used the hearing as a nation-wide grandstand, in order to impose his standing among the important members of the radical right Kershaw, The disturbances caused by the revolutionary left and the ethno-nationalist right waned as Paul von Hindenburg took office as President of the Republic, and various centrist or left-wing, social-democratic governments were formed.
At this point, the NSDAP gave up its strategy of taking power by force, in order to play the democratic game against democracy itself, and win power through the ballot boxes…. The worldwide credit deflation crisis had a particularly momentous impact in Germany. Hence, in , deflation spread immediately from the United States to Germany, leading to a series of bankruptcies, the collapse of the banking system, and spiralling unemployment Peukert, September In the context of the economic crisis and the dissemination of Nazi rhetoric, the German legislative elections led to a severe defeat of the democratic parties and the emergence of the NSDAP as the second political force in the country; the latter won seats in parliament.
It began to produce a discourse of normalization, which eschewed the use of anti-Semitism as a main theme in political campaigns. The Weimar republic entered a period of endemic instability, as no parliamentary majority emerged to form a government. Thus began the period of the Presidential Cabinets, during which German Chancellors could only govern with the approval of President Hindenburg, who approved governmental decisions using his prerogative to issue emergency decrees and dissolve the German parliament, the Reichstag Bracher, ; Mommsen, A discreet campaign began to recruit young literature, humanities and social science graduates; it picked up speed in the following years, peaking between and The Nazi party was by far the leading German political group.
Nonetheless, Hindenburg refused to name Hitler Chancellor. In January , as the conservatives found it impossible to form a stable parliamentary majority without the NSDAP, they proposed a cabinet in which the Nazis would be represented, but strictly under control of the rest of the government.
January 30, Hitler was nominated Chancellor. It was not a foregone conclusion in German history that Adolf Hitler, a back-room orator of the s Munich beer halls, would take power some ten years later. His nomination to the position of Chancellor on January 30, , was the result of particular circumstances, but also of a miscalculation of the part of the conservatives, who thought they could use and control him.
Indeed, the leaders of these conservative elites were deeply mistaken about the personality and ambition of this extraordinary, unpredictable and violent man, who quicky escaped their control. In fact, the NSDAP proved adept at making the most of the crisis situation the country had become mired in.
Voters who supported the party were mostly recruited amongst craftsmen, farmers, shopkeepers, civil servants and white-collar workers. They voted for the Nazis first and foremost because they believed the party would allow a return to order and stability.
Though Hitler did play on anti-Semitism outrageously, it is not clear, however, that this theme played a decisive role in his electoral successes. His nationalism, anti-Bolshevism and militarism are more likely to have been the factors that seduced the German people. A talented orator, Hitler also had a remarkable ability to react and to improvise.
Changes then took place at a startling pace, from mass arrests of Communists and the creation of the first concentration camps to intern them, to the dissolution of trade unions and of all political organizations except the Nazi party. Thus, in barely eighteen months, Hitler managed to establish an absolute regime of personal dictatorship, and a general system to police the population. February 1, Hitler dissolved the Reichstag after the failure of negotiations with the centrist parties.
February 2, Through the decree for the protection of the German people, freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press were restricted. This edict constituted the legal framework justifying repression of all opponents to Nazism, from Communists to the conspirators of the July 20, plot to assassinate Hitler. The electoral campaign had been very brief, and marred by countless violent incidents against the left-wing parties. March 21 31? In the same period, the Dachau concentration camp was built on the site of a chemical factory in Munich, and that of Oranienburg in the Berlin suburbs; this signalled the emergence of extra-legal repression practices against opponents to Nazism.
March 23, The Reichstag , convened in Potsdam, voted to give full powers to Hitler. Those from the SPD the Social Democratic party voted against the decree, but it was still adopted, thanks to the votes of those from all other parties present. The latter was given the responsibility of taking the initiative to form the state government and determine the composition of the state parliament. Bessel, July 14 19?
It also served to organize the legal vacuum necessary to send criminals regarded as dangerous, repeat offenders or persons whose sentence was deemed insufficiently long by administrative officials, to concentration camps. It remained the sole party in power and found itself faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the left-wing opposition and the democratic forces had been stifled; on the other, the conservative forces and the traditional mainstays of power aspired to a return to peace and order.
Against the backdrop of a public opinion crisis and an increase of right-wing criticism of Nazi policy, Hitler was faced with a double front of criticism. The internal front, inside the party, was embodied by the exceedingly powerful SA with its one million members, which regarded itself as nationalist, socialist and revolutionary; it was not hostile to Hitler, but rather to the right wing of the party and to the conservative elites.
The external front was close to the government Von Papen, the vice-Chancellor, was its leader , and defined itself as conservative.
During the same period, the SS took control of all the concentration camps in Germany, and Himmler appointed the Dachau camp commander, Theodor Eicke, as Inspector of the concentration camps Orth et alii , The SS then controlled the police and the concentration camps, and established itself as the main protagonist of Nazi repression policies Frei, ; Herbert, ; Bessel, These laws served to define the Jews as a targeted category.
The definition thus chosen, which was characteristic of the Sicherheitsdienst , left the issue of persons of mixed origin open. Any person with three Jewish grandparents out of the four was considered Jewish. These dynamics can be analyzed in terms of polycracy and the escalation of competition between different pressure groups, and are similar to those of the November events ibid.
The Berlin Olympic games, and the necessary preparation for them, required that unrest be kept to a minimum in Germany, and the Nazis did not undertake anything of note that year in terms of anti-Jewish policy or political repression.
The Sipo-HA Sicherheitspolizei-Hauptamt , or Security Police headquarters and the SDHA headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst , or "security department," the Nazi Party security service, also in charge of intelligence-gathering and counter-espionage were both managed by Heydrich, seconded by Werner Best. July 12, The construction of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began Orth et alii , March 9, A massive lockup operation was directed against people who had been found guilty and sentenced for criminal offences.
Several thousands were arrested throughout the Reich. They were sent to the concentration camps, where they formed the first Kapo concentration camp guards squads Wagner, July 15, The Buchenwald construction concentration camp was built in Weimar Orth et alii , Austria was annexed; the police forces then created their first Einsatzgruppen. These were mobile groups of policemen in charge of taking control of public buildings, seizing archives and the files of the main security and State organizations, as well as carrying out arrests of political opponents or persons identified as dangerous.
Barely two weeks after the invasion, the arrests carried out in Austria ranged into the thousands. Following the annexation of Austria, new Jewish communities found themselves under Nazi domination. Their treatment was initially modeled on the repression that had gradually been implemented inside the Reich ; then, Austria was used as a sort of laboratory to experiment different measures taken by the Nazis Aly and Heim, This was a catch-all category comprising persons who had remained unemployed for a long time, misfits, individuals allegedly suffering from mental illnesses, alcoholics and drug addicts Wagner Gypsies were also targeted in this wave of arrests Zimmermann, During this conference, which had been called by the president of the United States, Roosevelt, most states expressed sympathy toward the Jews being persecuted, but nonetheless claimed that the social and economic situation in their countries prevented them from increasing immigration quotas.
This conference had no concrete results, and gave the Nazi leaders new evidence that in spite of their indignant objections, these states would do nothing for the German and Austrian Jewish refugees.
August The Mauthausen camp was built in occupied Austria Orth et alii , August 17, A decree set up a special legal system for wartime. This was the legal basis the Nazis used to legitimize most crimes committed during the war inside the Reich , against all opponents.
September 29, The Munich conference was held. Germany invaded the Sudetenland western regions of Czechoslovakia whose population was mostly composed of ethnic Germans. October , Hearing of Polish plans to deprive Polish Jews that had emigrated to Germany of their nationality, the German police authorities arrested 17, Polish Jews and brutally expelled them toward the Polish border. Among them was the Grynszpan family, whose son Herschel was studying in. To avenge his family, he killed the German legate in , provoking a reaction from anti-Semitic activists Adam, This was the last and biggest manifestation of what has been called Radauantisemitismus rowdy, disorderly anti-Semitism.
Around one hundred people were killed directly in the pogrom, but several hundred others committed suicide out of sheer terror. Also, 27, Jews were temporarily sent to concentration camps. December 8, Himmler issued orders to organize a census of the Gypsies in the Reich Zimmerman, March 15, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. This was the first time the Third Reich invaded territories which were not inhabited by a majority of Germans.
Thus, it became an occupying power. This invasion was associated with a very large wave of arrests Brandes, March The Einsatzkommandos formed for the conquest of Czechoslovakia and the Memel territory arrested hundreds of people Krausnick, Wilhelm, On September 1, , German troops invaded Poland.
The Polish question was essential in the Nazi mind-set and practices. From a racial point of view, Poles were seen as a mixed race, partially German in origin; this made them dangerous. Therefore, the Nazi memory of German-Polish relations in the past was characterized by a high level of conflictuality, the last significant episode of which was the end of World War I, and the troubled period Germany experienced until To Hitler and his entourage, the objective was both to erase one of the most painful consequences of the November defeat, and to rescue volksdeutsch communities undergoing racial and identity dilution.
Hitler used an attack upon a radio station at Gleiwitz, on the German border a ploy which had been fabricated by the Gestapo , as a pretext in order to attack Poland. The invasion had been carefully planned and was directed from the Reich territory and from Pomerania by two armored forces, which carried out a pincer movement in order to surround the insufficiently armed Polish troops.
The German combat techniques and strategic choices made this first campaign a deadly war. Civilians were a potential target from the beginning, either through the bombing of urban and industrial centers, or though the aggressive practices of the German infantry. For example, it was in this context that the Einsatzgruppen carried out their first killings. In August-September , a third phase of Nazi violence began. Its specificity was due to the following factors:.
Thus, eugenics, racial and geographic reorganization, and planned murder were combined to give Nazi mass violence a dimension hitherto unknown throughout history for this interpretation, see Burrin, ; Aly, ; Browning, ; Brayard, However, after six weeks, the Einsatzgruppen deployed in Poland had killed around 12, people Krausnick, Wilhelm, ; Rossino, The Reichssicherheitshauptamt was a further step in the process of centralization and rationalization of the central organizations involved in the SS repressive apparatus.
The economic and personnel management services of the Kripo, Gestapo and SD were merged, while Heydrich re-defined the allocation of duties between the Gestapo and the SD. Poland became the test case for this scheme. October 7, Hitler entrusted Himmler with planning and coordinating population transfers. Konrad Meyer-Heitling, who was an Agronomy professor at the University of Berlin, and responsible for the geographical planning of Germanization Aly, The operation was cut short for logistical reasons Aly, This improvised procedure turned out to be a disaster leading to terrible suffering for the deportees, many of whom died; they were either killed by the SS or died of exhaustion, exposure or starvation Safrian, October 26, Forced labor was imposed on the Jews of Poland.
The dynamics of occupation and economic exploitation were being established Madajcyk, Adolf Eichmann, who had been recalled from Austria, was put in charge of it. The document proposed to Germanize the conquered Polish territories in 25 years, mostly through the expulsion of populations. Eichmann was its logistics specialist Aly, ; Safrian, This was the institution in charge of the operational dimension of Germanization : it was supposed to coordinate the expulsion of non-Germans, and the settlement of Volksdeutsche ethnic Germans in the occupied territories.
January 30, Heydrich held a conference on the subject of the expulsion of Jews and the evacuation of populations.
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