Laila Alhussani Inquiry Question

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Laila Alhussani
18 March 2016
Modern World History P Period 6
Hawkins
What events during the first days of Hitlers rise to power might have foreshadowed what
eventually happened to the Jews during World War II?
Adolf Hitler was a notorious ruler. During the first days of Hitlers rise to power,
A carefully orchestrated smear campaign under the direction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
portrayed Jews as enemies of the German people. At this time, Jews were a minority with a
population of About one percent of Germany's population of 55 million persons.
Joseph Goebbels was speaking for the majority of the people, also known as the non-Jews. it all
began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Adolf Hitler
and his Nazi followers attempted to terminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
A few days later Hitler rose to power, The Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) occurred on
November 9 /10 after 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a German
embassy official in Paris, in retaliation for the harsh treatment his Jewish parents had received from
Nazis. The reason behind this? Joseph Goebbels. Spurred on by Joseph Goebbels, Nazis used the
death of vom Rath as an excuse to conduct the first state-run program against Jews. Ninety Jews were
killed, 500 synagogues were burned and most Jewish shops had their windows smashed
Secondly, what waited for the minorities, mosty Jews, up ahead was not a pretty picture; the etymology
of Holocaust is from the Greek words holos (whole) and kaustos (burned), was historically used to
describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible
meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other
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persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime Before the
concentration camps, the German army occupied the western half of Poland. German police soon forced
tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their confiscated properties to
ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as German) This is wrong because if the Nazi
Party wanted the Polish Jews to die, they wouldnt care about them at all. Now, the people who are loyal to
Germany are being kicked out of their favorable country. But who exactly was considered a Jew? It is not if you
are a Jew, or if your parents are Jewish, but rather Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or
four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were
designated Mischlinge (half-breeds). This is not the brightest idea because if a sixty-something-year-old was to
be approached by the Nazis, they have no way of proving their heritage because their grandparents are probably
dead because their death date was most likely forty fifty years back, which would be during the late 1800s.
Lastly, a background on Hitler, Hitler was a brilliant speaker and politician (however he was
disorganized). He was a driven, unstable man, who believed that he had been called by God to become the
dictator of Germany and rule the world. Similar to Grigori Rasputin, both men believed they were holy men.
He was also disorganized, which proves that cleaning my room is useless. Despite all his downfalls, there was an
admirable trait there within Hitler; determination. He was driven mainly by God to dictate Germany and
eventually the world. Also, albeit the fact that he tortured the homosexuals he same way he tortured the Jews, he
cheated on his wife for a man. If we all had opened our eyes sooner, we would have seen that this has been
happening not for years, but for decades, almost a millennium. Since homosexuals were looked down upon in this
era, Hitler may have become more irate. Finally, Hitler came to power To Hitler, [The Great Depression] was
like a gift because for every problem the Nazi Party had come up with an explanation or promise. These
included; promise to get rid of the hated Weimar government and replace it with a strong leader-Hitler, a
promise to get people back to work on road building and public works, and a promise to deal with a
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communist take-over. In a time of chaos (the depression) people chose to support Hitler because of his
discipline and his promises he inflicted on the German general public. The organization of the Weimar
government also helped Hitler's rise to power because of its many weaknesses; it had many enemies, it had
proportional representation. It is understandable that Germany would want a strong leader because Germany
had just lost some major cash during World War I, and the citizens wanted someone to lift Germany from the
rubble of economic issues. Hitlers idea to rebuild the German economy is closely similar to FDRs New Deal for
the US during the aftermath of the Great Depression. These are only a few of the ways that the first events leading
up to Hitlers reign ended with the Holocaust.

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