World War II in Europe. Lecture Notes #2

WWII in Europe | Lecture Notes #2 Cumulative Radicalization in Communist and Fascist Europe National Self-Determination in Europe & USSR Communism ● Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) (1917-1920) ● Storming the Winter Palace (1917) ○ Does not result in a uniform Soviet state ● Leon Trotsky -- Head of the Red Army ○ Pre Lenin and Stalin ● “War Communism” ○ (GMU): The abolition of private property, elimination of currency and money prices, forced collectivization of land and labor to centrally manage production ○ Nationalized all industries and centralized management ○ State control of all foreign trade ○ Strict discipline for workers (strikes are forbidden) ○ Obligatory labor duty by non-working class ○ Prodazyorsika - requesting of agricultural surplus from peasants for centralized distribution and framing ○ Banned private enterprise of all kind -- regardless of size ● New Economic Policy (NEP) (1921) ○ (GMU): ■ After the failed attempt to construct a socialist order along Marxist lines during the period of “War Communism” (1918-1921) never thereafter did the Soviet Union attempt to implement socialism in its purest form ■ In order to maintain power, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks were forced to retreat from their experiment with pure socialism ■ This retreat was characterized by a series of economic policies that partially reintroduced market exchange and production, beginning in the spring of 1921, known as the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) ○ Dr. Blackler’s ■ Lenin allowed for some small-scale private enterprise to exist ■ Nationalization of only large-scale industry and banking institutions ■ Moscow invited foreign investors to return ■ Lenin: “a strategic retreat” ● Crisis in Leadership (1922) ● The Rise of Stalin ○ Lenin himself wrote against the danger of Stalin ○ Lenin dies January (1924) ● “Socialism in One Country”: ○ Attempts for power: Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Zinoview, Stalin ■ This shows a left vs. right ideology with the Bolsheviks ● “Great Turn” -- Five-Year Plan ○ Individual peasant farming ○ “National” economic intentions ○ Encourage the USSR to industrialize ○ Create urban and industrial centers ○ Nationalize farms that will “produce for the state” ○ Stalin creates the “Kulaks” ● Forced Industrialization ● Stalin’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” ○ NKVD - precursor to the KGB The Racial State in Germany ● Not yet the same overt violence in the USSR ● “Aryanization” ● Three Ks of the Bund for women: children, kitchen church ● BDN Spaces of Recognition ● Political terrain continually shifts ● Politics of recognition emerge in the space between public and private spheres ● Political movements often take place in marginal spaces ○ Not only in metaphorical spaces but also in material spaces ● Politics of recognition are not always progressive or expansive ● President Léon Blum - Jewish, socialist (only 25 years post Dreyfus) ● “Mystique of unity” -- bringing together political parties and movements who had previous to 1936 not had ties or common ground for one another ● Second Spanish Republic (1931) ○ 17 July 1936 -- Fascist attempt to overthrow the second Spanish republic ○ Start of the Spanish Civil War ● Francisco Franco -- becomes the de facto leader of Spanish fascists ● September 1936 ● The Bombing of Guernica (26 April 1937) ○ German bomb the civilian target ○ Represents the first time an air force would unleash only against civilians Germany - Rearment and Foreign Policy ● Hitler publicly announced plans for German rearment (Spring 1935) ○ Germany already had been armed for the past year and a half ● Mandatory male conscription in the armed forces ● Former Entente Powers and war wariness ● Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern pact (fall 1936) ○ Italy will sign on in the next year (spring 1937) ● Remilitarization of the Rhineland (spring 1936) Franco, Molotov, and Ribbentrop: The March Toward War Jewish Oppression and Anti-Semitism ● “Juden sind hier unerwünscht” ● Racial Weltanschauung - racial worldview ● Volksgemeinschaft- a people ● “Halt!” -- Racial Laws or the Nuremberg Laws (September 1935) ○ Reich Flag Law (SS Bremen) makes the swastika the official flag of Germany ○ Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor - forbids marriage between “Germans” and Jews with prosecution for the offense ○ Reich Citizenship Law ● Given what we have discussed … ○ How did other countries avoid the same populist consequences of Weimar Germany? ● “Popular Front” movements ○ Antifascist movements ○ Working and middle class movements ○ Broad coalition of (wildly) different political groupings ○ Political response to the rise of fascism in Europe ○ Supported by the Comintern -- people who wanted to form Soviet satellites ■ The communist international ■ More in Eastern Europe, etc. ○ General societal belief in the respective political system ○ France -- often composed of Leftists and Centrists ○ Spain -- Bourgeois forces joined together with socialist and communists France and their ‘Popular Front’ ● “Cartel des gaunches” ○ French Communist Party (PCF); French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO); Radical-Socialist Party ● Palace de la Concorde (radical-right leagues) (6 February 1934) ○ Faacist coup d’etat ● Comintern abandons its position of “social-facism” ● Maurice Thorez (PCF) calls for a popular front in L’Humanité ● French general election (3 May 1936) A Defining Year (1938) ● Annexation of Austria (March of 1938) orAnschluss ○ Overwehmlingly supported by Austrians ○ “First victims”? ● Demonstrations against Jews in Vienna ● “October Crisis” (Fall 1938) ○ “Minority protection” status ( Sudenteland) ○ Shroud of War (Summer 1938) ○ Munich Conference (third of three summits between UK/Germany) ● UK cedes the Sudentland to Germany ● “Peace in our time” unofficial letter which Germany signed, saying he wouldn’t invade anywhere else, Chamberlain genuinely thought Hitler was a rational actor ○ Context of the time, hindsight is twenty-twenty ● Nazi Germany (Fall 1938) ○ Policies against Jews became more public and more extreme ○ Herschel Grunszpan -- assassinates a German Ambassador to France, Ernst von Roth in Paris, France ○ Hitler and Goebbels orchestrate reaction in Munich ● SA takes the lead in the violence in Munich and then throughout Germany ● Night of Broken Glass -- Recichskristallnacht ● Évian Conference (July 1939) ○ Initially to settle Jewish refugees and help those wanting to leave ○ Raise immigration quotas, in every example, this doesn’t happen ● America First - Charles Lindbergh ● German American Bund ○ Night at the Garden ○ Fritz Julius Kuhn -- “George Washington was America’s first fascist” Other “Others” in Pre-World War II Europe ● Reichskristallnacht ● Hitler’s Foreign Policy (Spring 1939): ○ March 1939 - conquer what remains of Czechoslovakia ● Slovakia will become the largest ally of Nazi Germany with independence ○ The first country to deport Jewish populations to Auschwitz ● May 1939 - “Pact of Steel” with Italy (Japan will later join) ● 23 Aug. 1939 - Nazi and USSR “Molotov-Ribeentrop Pact” ○ Nonaggression pact, not an alliance ● Facade of normalcy ● 1936 Nazi Olympics as a show of their regime and the racial elements ○ The torch is used for the first time ● Roma & Sinti (Gypsies) ○ Berlin-Marzahnm -- forced to stay in during and after the Olympics ○ Difference of positive and negative eugenics ● “Asocials” in Nazi Germany (1935-1938) ○ Nuremberg Laws (September 1935) ○ Hitler and the importance of public perception: ■ Collective wariness of racial persecution and violence ■ Public and legal legitimacy ○ Propaganda and the normalization of persecution: ■ Adolf Dorner’s high school textbook (1935/1936) ● Eugen Fischer --- in German Southwest Africa ● Otmar Freiherr Von Verschuer ○ Grad student: Josef Mengele ● I accuse! (1941) ● Charles Fremont Dight ● Buck v. Bell (1927) ● Black Germans and the “Black Shame” ● German Invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939) ○ Two weeks later the USSR occupies Eastern Poland ● Einsatzgruppen in Poland ○ Follow the Wehrmacht into Poland ○ SS-SD Reinhard Heydrich ■ Military police, SS, order police ■ Eliminating the “Polish inteligencia” ○ Mass executions in Poland, including Catholic Priest ● The “General Government” with ghettos ● Judenrats ● Łódż Ghetto -- Chaim Mordechaj Rumkoski (eventually dies in Aushwitz) ● * in spite of ghetooziation in Nazi-iccupied Poland, there was still no universal “final solution” to the so-called “Jewish Poland” A Tale of Two Occupations: Poland and France ● Note: Despite ghettoization in Nazi-occupied Poland, there was still no universal “final solution” to the so-called “Jewish problem” ● The Origins of Nazi Genocide: ○ Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar -- first victim of the Kinderaktion (child operation) ■ Parents ask for permission to execute their disabled son from the Nazi Regime ■ Dr. Karl Brandt ○ Establishment of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Diseases ■ The committee leads to the death of several thousand children before WWII ○ Order of August 1939 -- previously only children just born, now any children that were deemed to be of serious hereditary and congenital diseases ● AKITON T4 - October 1939, but backdated to September 1939 ○ First effort where the Nazis will conduct a systemic genocide targeted at physically and mental handicaps ○ “...after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death” (signed by Hitler) ○ Six euthanasia centers across Germany in hospitals with gas chambers ○ There is public statements against this, including Catholic Bishops ● German Invasion of France (10 May 1940) ● France surrenders (22 June 1940) ● The Madagascar Plan -- the French colony ● Der Ewige Jude (1940) ● Operation Barbarossa (22 June, 1941) ● Vernichtungskreig - War of Annihilation Nazi Empire-Building in Eastern Europe ● Hitler appoints himself as commander-in-chief of the Germany Army ● “The Banality of Evil”: ○ SS-SD Reinhard Heydrich ○ SS Adolf Eichmann ● Wannsee Conference ● If not at Wannsee, when? ○ Spring 1941: Planning for the invasion of the USSR and the organizations Eisatzgruppen ○ July 1941: War against the USSR was going well and the necessary lebensraum to execute the “final solution” was in German control (Hermann Göring’s letter to Reinhard Heydrich - 31 July 1941) ○ October 1941: Flush with victory, Nazi leaders decide that the “final solution” can be begin in the East, now that the war in the East is over (Hitler and Himmler have two secret meetings between 16-17 September) ○ December 1941: Chelmno death camp begins operations (Adolf Eichmann visit Chelmno later that month) ● An important question: Why does it matter when Hitler and the Nazis decided to start the Holocaust? ● “Case Blue” (Summer 1942): “Case Blue (German language: Fall Blau), later renamed Operation Braunschweig,[7] was the German Armed Forces' (Wehrmacht) name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942 to plan to take Stalingrad up into the Caucus Mountains” ● Lidice, Czechoslovakia ● “Akition Rienhard” in Poland ● Belzac (March 1942 - June 1943) ● Sobibor (April 1942 - October 1943) ● Treblinka (July 1942 - April 1943) ● Majdanek (October 1941 - July 1944) ○ Zikon D The Holocaust ● Aktion Reinhard: “The Business of Genocide” ● Birkenau - Auschwitz II ● Monowitz - Auschwitz III ● “Ordinary men” or “willing executioners” October Sky Apollo 13 “Killing Frenzies”: 1944-1945 ● Slovak Republic ○ Deportation of 60,000 Jews from Slovakia in 1942 ● Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) ● Joseph Goebbels “Total War Speech” (February 1943) ● Albert Speer ● Operation Torch in North Africa (1942-1943) ● German Retreat on all Fronts (1944) ● Resistance against the Third Reich ○ Types of Resistance: ■ Military resistance- an act of armed resistance with a military objective ■ Terrorist resistance - sabotage military supply routes, destroy equipment, target German soldiers and civilians ■ Assassination - SS-Reinhard Heydrich (retribution too high) ■ Spreading information, news, media - Arnost Rosin and Czeslaw Mordowicz ■ Maintaining one’s humanity ○ Resistance in occupied territories ○ Resistance in concentration camps and ghettos ■ Warsaw Ghetto (April/May 1943) ● Armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghettto held back the SS for a month ○ Resistance in Nazi Death Camps ■ Treblinka (August 1943) ● Work detail rebelled against the SS and damaged the camp ■ Sobibor (October 1943) ● Alexander Perchersky and the uprising ■ Aushwitz-Birkenau (October 1944) ● Sonderkammando action in Birkenau ○ Raoul Wallenberg ■ Born in Sweden, studied in the US ■ 1994 - US War Refugee Board sends him to Hungary as a Swedish Diplomat ■ Established safe houses and issued Swedish permits to Hungarian Jews in Budapest ■ “International Ghetto” in Budapest (Jews from neutral powers) ■ Prevented evacuation of Hungarian Jews with forged passports ■ More than 100,000 Jews remained in Budapest when the USSR liberated the city ○ Raoul Wallenberg street running parallel to F w/ the museum ● Resistance in Germany ○ Communists, Socialists, and Democrats ■ Georg Elser ○ Catholics and other religious leaders ● The White Rose ○ Sophie Scholl (February 22, 1943) ● Götterdämmerung ● Operation Walküre ● Roland Fresisler ● An Imperative of History ○ We cannot let the perpetrators exclusively determine the narrative ● American liberation of Dachau ● Liberation of Bergen-Belson ○ Full footage of the British liberation ○ Footage of American liberation of Dachau Götterdämmerung ● “It brought destruction and death” (Doris Bergen) ● Yalta Conference (February 1945) ○ Allied powers agreed to divide Germany into four zones of occupation ■ Agreement between all parties involved that this would be temporary ○ Denazification ○ Forced labor and reparations ○ Economic questions -- Henry Morgenthau Jr. ○ Debates on German history and culture ○ Occupying or “civilizing” force ● Potsdam Conference (Summer 1945) ● Social Consequences in Germany ● Crimes against women (particularly the Red Army) Stunde Null ● Soviet War Memorial (Tiergarten) ● Jewish immigration to Israel ● Sudeten Germans Nuremberg and the Search for Justice ● Denial - David Irving ● Look who’s back