The Third Reich Class Lecture

Introduction The Third Reich refers to Germany in the years of 1933 to 1945, when it was governed by the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party) with Adolf Hitler as head of state. The foreign policy pursued by Nazi Germany, based on the concept of Lebensraum (living space), was among the leading causes of the Second World War.

Land Area In addition to Weimar-era Germany proper, the Reich came to include the following areas: 1. Austria 2. Czechoslovakia 3. Alsace-Lorraine 4. Poland 5. All German speaking regions of Europe (Danzig, Luxembourg, The Sudetenland, Moravia, Bohemia, and Upper Silesia)

The Schutzstaffel (The S.S.) The policies of Hitler and the Third Reich were enforced by the Schutzstaffel (The S.S.). The SS was established in 1925 as a personal guard unit for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler between 1929 and 1945, the SS grew from a small paramilitary formation to become one of the largest and most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. The Nazis regarded the SS as an elite unit, the party's "Praetorian Guard," with all SS personnel selected on the principles of racial purity and unconditional loyalty to the Nazi Party.

Nazi Ideology Ideologically, the Nazis endorsed the concept of a "Greater Germany”. They believed that the incorporation of the Germanic people into one nation was a vital step towards their national success. According to the “Lebensraum Program”, the occupation of Eastern Europe was necessary because Germany needed additional living space.

Nazi Ideology The Slavic population who met the Nazi racial standard would be absorbed into the Reich. Those not fitting the racial standards were to be used as cheap labor force or deported eastward. Racialism was an important aspect of society within the Third Reich. The Nazis combined anti-Semitism with anti- Communist ideology.

Nazi Social Policy The Nazi regime was characterized by political control of every aspect of society in a quest for racial (Aryan, Nordic), social and cultural purity. Modern abstract art and avant-garde art was thrown out of museums and put on special display as "degenerate art", where it was to be ridiculed. Books were burned throughout the Reich.

Nazi Social Policy The Nazi Party pursued its aims through persecution and killing of those considered "impure," especially targeting minority groups such as Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. Under the Nuremberg Laws passed in 1935, Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and denied government employment. The Nazis also undertook programs targeting "weak" or "unfit" people, such as the T-4 Euthanasia Program.

Nazi Social Policy Under the T-4 program, tens of thousands of disabled and sick Germans were killed in an effort to "maintain the purity of the German Master race“. The techniques of mass killing developed in these efforts would later be used in the Holocaust. Under a law passed in 1933, the Nazi regime carried out the compulsory sterilization of over 400,000 individuals labeled as having hereditary defects, ranging from mental illness to alcoholism.

Nazi Social Policy Another component of the Nazi program of creating racial purity was the Lebensborn, or "Fountain of Life" program founded in The program was aimed at encouraging German soldiers (mainly members of the SS) to reproduce. This included offering SS families support services (including the adoption of racially pure children into suitable SS families). The government housed “racially-valuable” women, pregnant with SS men's children, in care homes in Germany and throughout occupied Europe. Lebensborn also expanded to encompass the placing of racially pure children forcibly seized from occupied countries such as Poland with German families.

Nazi Social Policy: The Holocaust The persecution of minorities and "undesirables" continued both in Germany and the occupied countries. From 1941 onward, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge in public and most were transferred to ghettos, where they remained isolated from the rest of the population. In January 1942, at the Wannsee Conference and under the supervision of Reinhard Heydrich, and Heinrich Himmler, a plan for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in Europe was hatched.

Nazi Social Policy: The Holocaust From then until the end of the war some six million Jews and many others, including homosexuals, Slavs, and political prisoners, were systematically killed. In addition, more than ten million people were put into forced labor. This genocide is called the Holocaust in English and the Shoah in Hebrew. Thousands were shipped daily to extermination camps and concentration camps. Some concentration camps were originally detention centers but later converted into death camps for the purpose of killing of their inmates.

Nazi Social Policy: The Holocaust Another distinctive feature was the use of human subjects in medical experiments. German physicians carried out such experiments at Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Natzweiler concentration & death camps. The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele, who worked in Auschwitz. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, and various amputations and other brutal surgeries.

Nazi Social Policy: The Holocaust The full extent of his work will never be known because the two truckloads of records he sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were destroyed by Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected after the experiments. He seemed particularly keen on working with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and would personally take them to the gas chamber.

VictimsKilled Soviet POWs2–3 million Political Enemies1–1.5 million Non-Jewish Poles200,000+ Roma (Gypsies)220,000–500,000 Freemasons80–200,000 Disabled75, ,000 Gay men5,000-15,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses2,500-5,000