1. The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.
Who was the blame for the Holocaust? B aim – to use evidence to test the validity of different historian’s arguments A/A* aim – to use evidence to assess the most convincing historian
The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1998
What does this quote mean?
What evidence is there to support there was hate and indifference?
What evidence to challenge this quote’s claims of hate an indifference?
How accurate is this interpretation?

2. Summarise each interpretation with a fact to support it.
Intentionalist – Hitler committed himself to extermination from an early stage and it gradually got worse delibaretly and with planning. The Holocaust was Hitler’s fault.
Goldhagen – Holocaust occurred because the Germans willingly complied as anti-Semitism was in German culture (e.g. Wagner operas).
Criticism – selected evidence, fails to recognise anti-semitism across Europe, not just Germany, so why didn’t originate there, ignored role of non-Germans in the Holocaust
Structuralist – there was no long-term plan, it was a twisted path which emerged and wasn’t the solution, from the chaotic nature of the government, improvised to deal with military and human situatoin in Eastern Europe – it is not Hitler’s fault but the structure of the regime. Mommsen was one of these. The camp supervisors weren’t motivated by anti-Semitism but by alcohol, peer pressure, cowardice, careerism and alcohol. Milgram experiment.
Summarise each interpretation with a fact to support it.
Which one do you believe is most valid?

3. Who was to blame for the final solution?
Feedback for table and discussion
Who was to blame
Evidence to support this (think about how the Final Solution came about, why it came about, whether it was planned or improvised)
Evidence to challenge this
How credible is this blame?
Hitler – intentionalist
Speeches in 1939 annihilation of Jews
Nazis
Propaganda
Complicity of the German population
Germans
Hamburg newspaper headline 1942
Allies
Appeasement, knew about the camps
Didn’t know full extent of the camps, can’t go in and free them
Senior Nazis
At Wansee conference there was dissent, Schacht
No-one – product of long-held anti-Semitism and WWII

4. The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.
Sources activity. ‘The German people were responsible for the Holocaust’. How far do the sources agree with the statement?
The German perpetrators of the Holocaust treated Jews in all the brutal and lethal ways that they did because, by and large, they believed that what they were doing was right and necessary. Second, that there was long existing, virulent antisemitism in German society that led to the desire on the part of the vast majority of Germans to eliminate Jews somehow from German society. Third, that any explanation of the Holocaust must address and specify the causal relationship between antisemitism in Germany and the persecution and extermination of the Jews which so many ordinary Germans contributed to and supported. Goldhagen – Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 1996
The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1998
Goldhagen does not understand much about the antisemitic movements in the nineteenth century. He only addresses the impact antisemitism had on the masses in Germany, especially in the Weimar period, which is quite problematic.... He [Goldhagen] did not say that explicitly, but he construes a unilinear continuity of German antisemitism from the medieval period onwards, and he argues that Hitler was the result of German antisemitism. This, however, and similar suggestions are quite wrong, because Hitler's seizure of power was not due to any significant impact of his antisemitic propaganda at that time. Obviously, antisemitism did not play a significant role in the election campaigns between September 1930 and November Goldhagen just ignores this crucial phenomenon. Besides that, Goldhagen, while talking all the time about German antisemitism, omits the specific impact of the völkisch antisemitism as proclaimed by Houston Stuart Chamberlain and the Richard Wagner movement which directly influenced Hitler as well as the Nazi party. He does not have any understanding of the diversities within German antisemitism, and he does not know very much about the internal structure of the Third Reich either. For instance, he claims that the Jews lost their German citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws, while actually this was due to Hans Globke's collaboration with Martin Bormann in changing the citizenship legislation late in Mommsen, Interview 1997

5. Write next to each source how far it supports that the German people were responsible for the Holocaust
Annotate each source with knowledge to support and challenge it
What three themes could you use if this were a b question – remember you are testing the question in each theme?
Which source do you believe is most credible?

6. Revision tick list
Past papers
All will be on the website
Discussion points will be on the website too – comment on them to help you revise

7. Fact-file on Romana gypsies in Germany
How were gypsies treated during WWII? B aim – to assess how similar the treatment of gypsies and Jews was during WWII A/A* aim – to assess how coherent the Nazis treatment of asocials was during WWII
Fact-file on Romana gypsies in Germany
Non-Christian
Romany customs and dialect
non-white (had immigrated in late medieval period)
Travelling lifestyle meant they didn’t usually have regular employment
1929 – Central office for the fight against the gypsies
1935 – Nuremberg Laws also classified them as alien blood
Himmler – registered gypsies under ‘struggles against the gypsy plague
Why would the Nazis have classed gypsies as asocial and not contributing to the Volksgemeinshaft?
What differences and similarities were there to their attitudes towards Jews?

8. Add these to your diagrams on the treatment of Jews during WWII. 1
Add these to your diagrams on the treatment of Jews during WWII. 1. What similarities and differences were there to the treatment of Jews during WWII?
From 1934 sent to camps
Right at the beginning of WWII gypsies were deported from Germany to Polish work camps. Their movements were strictly controlled and they were forced to labour. They were put in camps as Frank (the Nazi in charge of Poland) refused to accept the gypsies into the general population.
More gypsies under Nazi control as Eastern Europe was taken over. Also victims of the killing squads. Also experienced ghettoisation and sent to the same ghettos as the Jews where many also died.
1940 – first case of mass murder through gassing when gypsy children were murdered at Buchenwald
End of 1942 gypsies systematically executed as an extension of the final solution – Himmler sent them all to Auschwitz.
1943 gypsies sent to Auschwitz and by 1944 large proportion of European gypsies had been exterminated as the Nazis ruled them.

9. Whilst you are reading the article 1
Whilst you are reading the article 1. Highlight similarities and differences in the treatment of Romani gypsies to Jews 2. Annotate how this is a similarity or difference

10. How similar was the Nazi’s treatment of Roma gypsies and Jews?
Similarities
Differences
Gassed
Imprisoned and forced labour
Singled out for racial grounds
Deportation
Killing squads
WWII meant that their treatment got worse – deported from Germany to Poland, ghettoisation, conc camps – more gypsies /more Jews
Sent to concentration camps before Jews
Deported before Jews to Poland – more harmful to society – conc. Camps earlier

11. How were gypsies treated during WWII
How were gypsies treated during WWII? B aim – to assess how similar the treatment of gypsies and Jews was during WWII A/A* aim – to assess how coherent the Nazis treatment of asocials was during WWII
B - How similar was the treatment of gypsies and Jews during WWII? How can we account for these general similarities and differences?
A/A* - Considering the similarities and differences in the treatment of Jews and Roma gypsies, how coherent was Nazi policy towards asocials during WWII?

12. Homework – Due Thursday
Research how these groups were treated during WWII, why they were treated like this, how similar this is to the treatment of Jews and how coherent Nazi policy was towards asocials
Homosexuals – Fares
Political opponents – Reginald
Vagrants and the unemployed – Deborah
Religious sects – Whelan
Why do historians believe the Holocaust happened and who do they think is responsible? Who do you believe is correct in their analysis and why?
Read and highlight key points in Roma gypsy article