FACTS THAT MATTER | Extra Documents & Tests for Class 9 PDF Download

• After the defeat of the Imperial Germany at the end of the First World War, King Kaiser William II fled to Holland. This gave an opportunity to the parliamentary parties to recast German polity. They met at Weimar and established a Republic in November 1918 known as the Weimar Republic.
• The Weimar Republic had to face many problems since its beginning. Some of them were:

    –    The terms and conditions of the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh and humiliating.

    –    Germany had to agree to pay huge war compensation amounting to 6 billion pounds to the Allied countries; etc.

• Many Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat in the war but the disgrace at Versailles. Thus, the Republic carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation. It was financially crippled by being forced to pay compensation.
• The years of depression (1929-32) hit the Germany economy badly. By 1932, the industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent of the 1929 level. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people.
• The government could not control the crisis. As a result, people lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary system. This crisis in the economy, polity and society formed the background to Hitler’s rise to power. The Germany’s defeat in the First World War horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious. In 1919, he joined a small group called the German Workers’ Party which was subsequently renamed the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This party came to be known as the Nazi Party.
• The Nazi party considered Germany superior to all other nations and wanted to have her influence all over the world. It aimed at expanding the German Empire and acquiring all those colonies that were snatched away from her.
• However, the Nazis could not effectively mobilise popular support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future among the worried Germans. By 1932, the Nazi Party had become the largest party in the German Parliament.
• Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people. He promised to build a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the German people.
• On 30 January 1933, Hitler got the Chancellorship of Germany. Having acquired power, he set out to dismantle the structure of democratic rule.
• On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany. All political parties and trade unions were banned except the Nazi party and its affiliates. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.
• Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirables’ in the extended empire. Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’. They alone were considered ‘desirables’.
• Jews, Gypsies and Blacks living in Nazi Germany were classified as ‘undesirables’. They were considered as racial ‘inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity of the ‘superior Aryan’ race. They were widely persecuted.
• Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. From 1933 to 1938, the Nazis terrorised, pauperised and segregated the Jews, compelling them to leave the country. The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.
• Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching children Nazi ideology. Hence, all schools were cleaned and purified which meant that teachers who were Jews or seen as ‘politically unreliable’ were dismissed. Germans and Jews were not allowed to sit together or play together. Later on Jew children, the physically handicapped and Gypsies were thrown out of schools.
• Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk which was in Nazi Youth Organisation for children below 14 years of age. At 14 all boys had to join the Nazi Youth Organisation–Hitler Youth–where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews. At the age of 18, they had to join the Labour Service to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi organisations.
• Nazi thinking about the motherhood was unique. Girls were told that they had to become good mothers and rear pure-blooded Aryan children. They had to maintain the purity of race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the home and teach their children Nazi values.
• In Nazi Germany, all mothers were not treated equally. Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced racially desirable children were awarded.
• Information about the Nazi practices came out of Germany during the last years of the regime. It was only after the war ended and Germany was defeated that the world came to realise the horrors of what had happened.

Words that Matter

• Allies: The allied powers were initially led by the UK and France. In 1941, they were joined by the USSR and USA. They fought against the Axis Powers, namely Germany, Italy and Japan.
• Genocidal: Killing on large scale leading to destruction of large sections of people.
• Deplete: Reduce, empty out.
• Reparation: Make for a wrong done.
• Hyperinflation: A situation when prices rise phenomenally high.
• Wall Street Exchange: The name of the world’s biggest stock exchange located in the USA.
• Depression: A period when there is little economic activity and many people are poor or without jobs.
• Proletarianisation: To become impoverished to the level of working classes.
• Propaganda: Specific type of message directly aimed at influencing the opinion of people through the use of posters, films, speeches, etc. 
• Concentration camp: A camp where people were isolated and detained without due process of law. Typically, it was surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences.
• Gestapo: Secret state police in Nazi Germany.
• Nordic German Aryans: One branch of those classified as Aryans. They lived in north European countries and had German or related origin.
• Gypsy: The groups that were classified as ‘Gypsy’ had their own community identity. Sinti and Roma were two such communities. Many of them traced their origin to India.
• Pauperised: Reduced to absolute poverty.
• Persecution: Systematic, organised punishment of those belonging to a group or religion.
• Usurers: Moneylenders charging excessive interest; often used as a term of abuse.
• Synagogue: Place of worship for people of Jewish faith.
• Jungvolk: Nazi youth groups for children below 14 years of age.
• Ghettoisation: Area occupied by segregated group in Nazi Germany.
• Euthanasia: Practice of killing a person without pain.

Dateline

• August 1, 1914    –    First World War begins.
• November 9, 1918    –    Germany capitulates, ending the war. Proclamation of the Weimar Republic.
• June 28, 1919    –    Treaty of Versailles.
• January 30, 1933    –    Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
• September 1, 1939    –    Germany invades Poland. 
• Beginning of the Second World War.
• June 22, 1941    –    Germany invades the USSR.
• June 23, 1941    –    Mass murder of the Jews begins.
• December 8, 1941    –    The USA joins Second World War.
• January 27, 1945    –    Soviet troops liberate Auschiwitz.
• May 8, 1945    –    Allied victory in Europe.