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| 1936: The Nazis |
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pg. 101 |
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Judges and clerks of the National Socialist regime conclude an evening's celebration with the singing of ÀDeutschland Über AllesÀ as well as the Horst Wessel song. The vast majority of German jurists quickly accommodated themselves to the dictates of Nazism. The legal system was entirely subverted, as legislation predicated on race replaced the fundamental structures of civil society. Emphasis on the national community resonated throughout the Nazi law code. Individuals who were defined as outsiders, such as Jews and Gypsies, lost all access to legal recourse.
Photo: SYddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst
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A man's nose is measured to determine if he is of Jewish ancestry. The Nazis utilized a wide range of tactics and implements to determine the ancestry of potential victims. Race-based ÀscienceÀ was nothing new, however. It had been developed by scholars and medical professionals in the 19th century.
Photo: Archive Photos/Popperfoto
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The SD
Crucial to the Nazi apparatus of terror was the work of the regime's highly efficient surveillance system. The Nazi Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) maintained a network of thousands of informers and confidence men that pried into the private lives of all Germans. During the war, the SD expanded its role to encompass all of Occupied Europe. And after eliminating the regime's "domestic enemies," the SD began its assault on "racial enemies." Founded by Heinrich Himmler (pictured, left) in 1931 as a special section of the SS, the SD ferreted out disloyalty and treachery within the Nazi Party and guarded against infiltration by spies. After the seizure of power, the SD played a crucial role in monitoring the moods and attitudes of the German public. Chief of the SD was Reinhard Heydrich (pictured, right), a tall, blue-eyed "blond beast" who embodied Himmler's Aryan ideal, and who became the Nazis' master spy. Heydrich recruited intelligent, young university graduates for the SD, using their skills to perfect his surveillance network. Their more murderous assignments during the war included the "Night and Fog" decrees, whereby victims vanished without a trace. As members of the Einsatzgruppen killing squads, they liquidated partisans and Jews in Occupied Eastern Europe
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1936: The America-based German-American Bund funnels currency to the Reich.
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1936: Following the same anti-Jewish path as German Lutherans during the Nazi regime, America's foremost Protestant journal, Christian Century, argues that America is a Christian nation with a Christian culture and has to remain that way. Christians are indifferent to Jewish suffering because the Jews deserve God's punishment due to their denial of Jesus. Judaism is a racial, religious, and nationalist prototype of Nazism. These attitudes are reflected in much of the American Protestant press during the Holocaust.
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February 4, 1936: David Frankfurter, a Jewish student in Switzerland, assassinates Wilhelm Gustloff, the head of the NSDAP in Switzerland.
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February 29, 1936: August Cardinal Hlond, the head of the Polish Catholic Church, considered less antisemitic than many Polish clergy and a careful follower of Vatican policy, issues a pastoral letter advocating discrimination against Polish Jews "so long as they remain Jews." He writes that Polish Catholics "ought to fence themselves off against the Jews' harmful moral influence of Jewry" and "ought to separate themselves from its anti-Christian culture." He states that Polish Catholics "ought to boycott the Jewish press" and other "demoralizing Jewish publications," although "Catholics should not assault Jews."
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| 1936: The Nazis |
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pg. 101 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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