World War 2 Genocide

Introduction:

 Genocide basically was all of World War 2. Genocide is a systematic policy of racial extermination carried out against Jews by the Nazis in Europe during World War II stands out as one of history’s most horrifying events.

 The main target: Hitler targeted many groups of people including Gypsies, Slavs, the disabled and homosexuals, all of whom were labelled as ‘undesirables’ with no future in the Nazi state. However the scale of persecution and murder of Jews – presented in Nazi ideology as an insidious, lethal enemy of the Aryan ‘master race’ – was on a scale without comparison.

The Jews were the main victims of the Holocaust because Jews were hated the most by the Nazis because Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. Their triangle was yellow, and it had a "P" on it. Many people who were Jewish but never considered themselves to be a Jew (they considered themselves Germans) suddenly became a target of the Nazis. German Jews weren’t allowed to go to theaters, swimming pools, and resorts. Jews had to carry identification cards around with them, and they always had to wear a Star of David badge everywhere they went.

 The men behind it: Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the Reich Leader of the dreaded SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. As the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe. Himmler was obsessed with racial purity in Germany. The outbreak of World War Two allowed Himmler to pursue another racial goal - the elimination of Jews. After Germany's invasion of Poland, Himmler was given total control of the annexed parts of the country. Within a year more than one million Poles and 300,000 Jews had been forced out to be replaced with German settlers.

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was second in importance to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization. Nicknamed "The Blond Beast" by the Nazis, and "Hangman Heydrich" by others, Heydrich had insatiable greed for power and was a cold, calculating manipulator without human compassion who was the leading planner of Hitler's Final Solution in which the Nazis attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Adolf Hitler christened him "the man with the iron heart".He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and killings. He helped organize Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.

Jewish attacks: There was a time called Kristallnacht, when the Nazis burned down synagogues, places where the Jews practiced their religion, and they destroyed Jewish businesses and homes. Jewish children were not allowed to go to school anymore. The Jews had curfews for how late they could be out, and then they weren’t allowed in public places. Finally, Germany started kicking them out of the country. The next step for the Nazis was to send the Jews to concentration and death camps. About six million Jews died for one simple reason: they were Jewish. Kristallnacht, literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938, throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.