Looking Ahead (1/2)

1. Looking Ahead (1/2) • Feb 5, 8, 11, 13: Learn about life in the ghettos • Feb 14: Research & learn about the film The Pianist • Feb 18, 19, 21: The Pianist • Feb 22: Discuss film & Quiz

2. Looking Ahead (3/4) • Feb 7, 11, 12, 14: Learn about life in the ghettos • Feb 15: Research & learn about the film The Pianist • Feb 19, 20, 22: The Pianist • Feb 25: Discuss film & Quiz

3. Looking Ahead (5/6) • Feb 5, 7, 8, 12: Learn about life in the ghettos • Feb 13: Research & learn about the film The Pianist • Feb 15, 18, 20: The Pianist • Feb 21: Discuss film & Quiz

4. Video Clips • Kristallnacht • Survivor Testimony

5. Homework • Read Leni Hoffman’s testimony & attached Kristallnacht reading • Answer the writing prompt on the back of the Kristallnachtdefinition.

6. Hermann Goering • WWI Pilot & Hero • Head of the SA • Wounded in Beer Hall Putsch • Addicted to Morphine

7. Hermann Goering • Created the Gestapo • Created first concentration camp • Ran the Night of the Long Knives • Successor to AH • Ordered the “Final Solution”

8. Gestapo • GeheimeStaatspolizei • Secret State Police • Oppressed Germans who opposed Nazis • Central role in Final Solution • Above the Law

9. Rhineland • “Buffer Zone” between France & Germany • TOV = Rhineland must not have any military • France: too politically unstable • Great Britain: Germany almost deserved to take it back

10. Himmler and Terror Key questions: How did Heinrich Himmler rise to power? What was the role of the SS-Gestapo? How ‘omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent’ was the Gestapo? How important was ‘terror’ to the Nazi regime?

11. Rise to power within Nazi Party ‘the most colourless personality in the Nazi inner circle’ ‘a shrewd practitioner of power with an eye to the main chance’ ‘more sinister than Hitler himself’ ‘half crank, half schoolmaster’ 1918: Joined German army but failed to see any fighting. After the war, he became an agricultural student and briefly a poultry farmer in Bavaria before joining the NSDAP in 1923. He dreamt of a master race - an Aryan Herrenvolk personified by the early recruits of the SS. 1923 – took part in the failed Munich Putsch. 1925: Joined SS Schutzstaffel. 120 men of absolute loyalty and obedience to Hitler. In 1929, Himmler becomes commander of SS or Reichsführer-SS , but still a relatively small organisation with only 300 members.

12. Growth of SS In 1930, Himmler appointed a young naval lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich as head of a new intelligence unit of the SS, known as the SD. Heydrich was to become an important architect of he Holocaust – he has been described as the ‘blond beast’, a ‘young evil god of death’ and ‘der Hanker’ (the hangman). Heydrich was intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious and in many respects the brains behind the later development of the SS. By 1931, the SS had grown into an organisation of 10,000 men and by 1933 52,000 men.

13. The SS-Gestapo March 1933: Himmler became President of Police in Munich and established a model camp in Dachau. He appointed Theodore Eicke to be the first commandant of the model camp. Later Eicke was to supervise the multiplying network of terror camps across Germany and Eastern Europe. April 1933: Himmler became police commander for the whole of Bavaria, the second largest German state. April 1934: Himmler successfully exploited a turf war between Goering, the effective head of Prussia, and William Frick, Minister of the Interior for the whole of Germany, to become head of the Prussian Gestapo (Secret State Police).

14. Heinrich Himmler1900-1945 A man often seen as the very personification of evil. Heinrich Himmler was not only head of Hitler's SS police, but was also in charge of the death camps in the East. Although Adolf Hitler held the ultimate responsibility for what became the Holocaust, it was Heinrich Himmler who essentially laid the plans and devised the schemes that led to the killings of six million Jews.

15. SS and SA The SS remained officially under control of the SA. Its absolute loyalty to the Fuhrer made it the natural choice to carry out the Night of the Long Knives. Himmler himself was a key figure in the Night of the Long Knives. He said later: ‘On 30th June 1934 we did not hesitate to do the duty laid down for us and put guilty friends up against the wall and shoot them…we didn’t talk about it among ourselves…Each of us found it appalling yet we are all sure that if such orders were necessary again, we would carry them out as we did then.’ In reward for its loyalty and brutal efficiency, the SS became an independent organisation within the party Himmer was in charge Reichfuhrer-SS

16. The SS State In 1936 all police powers were unified under Himmler’s control as Chief of German Police. Himmler was therefore in charge of a huge police-terror network.

17. Reinhard Heydrich • Reinhard Heydrich was one of Hitler's most ruthless Nazis and second in importance only to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization and the principle planner of the Final Solution. There was even talk of his one day succeeding Adolf Hitler.