Long Answer Questions

Q.1. What was the impact of World War–I on Germany’s politics and
society?
Ans. Effect on political life
(i) Unfortunately, the infant Weimer Republic was made to pay for the sins of
the old empire.
(ii) The republic was financially crippled and was forced to pay war
compensation.
Effect on society
(i) Soldiers came to be placed above civilians.
(ii) The media glorified trench warfare, where soldiers lived miserable lives.
(iii) Aggressive war propaganda and national honour held an important place
in the lives of people.
Q.2. How was a ‘Racial State’ established by Hitler in Germany?
Ans. Nazis wanted an exclusive racial community of pure Germans. Nazis
wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy’ Nordic Aryans. This meant that
even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to
live. Jews were considered undesirable. Many Gypsies and Blacks were also
considered as inferior Germans. Even Russians and Polish were considered
subhuman and were forced to work as slave labourers. Many of them died
through hard work and starvation.
Q.3. How did Hitler treat the Polish?
Ans. (i) Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties for ethnic
Germans brought in from occupied Europe.
(ii) Poles were then herded like cattle in other parts of Poland, called the
destination for all undesirables of the empire.
(iii) Members of Polish intelligentsia were murdered in large numbers.
(iv) Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their
mothers and examined by race experts and if they passed the race tests,
they were raised in German families, and if not they were deposited in
orphanages.
(v) With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers, this part of Poland
also served as the killing fields for the Jews.
Q.4. What kind of education was given in Nazi schools?
OR
What was Nazi’s school syllabus?
Ans. (i) Jew teachers were dismissed from the schools.
(ii) Children were segregated. Germans and Jews neither could sit together
nor play together.
(iii) Subsequently, undesirable children—Jews, the physically handicapped
and Gypsies were thrown out of schools.
(iv) School textbooks were rewritten.
(v) ‘Racial Science’ was introduced to justify Nazi’s ideas of race.
(vi) Children were taught to be loyal and submissive to hate the Jews and
worship Hitler.
(vii) Boxing was introduced as Hitler believed that it could make children
iron hearted, strong and masculine.
Q.5. How was the Holocaust practised in Germany?
Ans. (i) Information of the Nazi’s atrocities on the Jews had opened up to the
world after the defeat of Germany in World War II.
(ii) The Jews wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferings
they had endured during the Nazi killing operations called the Holocaust.
(iii) A ghetto inhabitant had wanted to tell the world about what had
happened in Nazi Germany.
(iv) Many Jews had written diaries, kept notebooks and created archives that
bore witness.
(v) On the other hand, when the war was lost, the Nazi leaders tried to burn
all the evidences available in the offices.
(vi) Yet, the history and the memory of the Holocaust lived on the memoirs,
fiction, documentaries, poetry and museums in many parts of the world
today.
Q.6. Trace the ‘destruction of democracy’ in Germany.
Ans. This came about in January 1933, when President Hindenburg offered
the Chancellorship to Hitler. He suspended civic rights like freedom of
speech, press and assembly that were guaranteed by the Weimar
Constitution in 1933. Then he turned to his arch-enemies, the Communists,
who were hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps.
On
3 March, 1933 dictatorship was established in Germany. It gave all powers for
Hitler to sideline parliament and rule by decree. 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.
Q.7. What was the impact of World War–I on European society?
Ans. The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and polity.
(i) Soldiers came to be placed above civilians.
(ii) Politicians and publicists laid great success on the need for men to be
aggressive, strong and masculine.
(iii) The media glorified trench life but actually soldiers lived miserable lives
in these trenches, trapped with rats feeding on corpses.
(iv) They faced poisonous gas and enemy shelling, and witnessed their ranks
reduce rapidly.
(v) Aggressive war propaganda and national honour occupied centre stage in
the public sphere, while popular support grew for conservative dictatorships
that had recently come into being.
Q.8. Which special surveillance and security forces were created by
Nazis?
Ans. Apart from the already existing regular police in green uniform and the
Storm Troopers (SA), these included the Gestapo (Secret State Police) the SS
(the protection squads) criminal police and security service. It was the extra
constitutional powers of these newly organised forces that gave the Nazi
state its reputation as the most dreaded criminal state. People could now be
detained in Gestapo torture chambers, rounded up and sent to concentration
camps, deported at will or arrested without any legal procedures. The police
forces acquired powers to rule with impunity. So, in this way special
surveillance and security forces were created to control or order society in
ways that Nazis wanted.
Q.9. When and how did Hitler invade Soviet Union?
Ans. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power and now he
moved towards Eastern Europe, after defeating France in the west, he
attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. In this historic blunder, Hitler
exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing and the eastern
front to the powerful Soviet armies. The Soviet Red Army inflicted a crushing
and humiliating defeat on Germany at Stalingrad. After this, the Soviet Red
Army hounded out the retreating German soldiers until they reached the
heart of Berlin, establishing Soviet power over the entire Europe for half a
century thereafter.
Q.10. How did USA enter into World War–II?
Ans. (i) USA had resisted involvement in the war, it was unwilling to face
another economic crisis after the war. But it could not stay out of the war for
long. Japan was expanding its power in the east.
(ii) It had occupied French Indo-China and was planning attacks on US naval
bases in the Pacific. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed
the US base at Pearl Harbour, the US entered the Second World War.
(iii) The war ended in May 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and the US dropping the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Q.11. How were Darwin and Herbert Spencer’s ideas adopted by
Hitler or Nazis?
Ans. (i) Hitler borrowed racism from thinkers like Charles Darwin and
Herbert Spencer.
(ii) Darwin was a natural scientist, who tried to explain the creation of plants
and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection. Herbert
Spencer later added the idea of survival of the fittest.
(iii) According to this idea, only those species survived on earth that could
adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions.
(iv) Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a
purely natural process of selection. However, his ideas were used by racist
thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered people.
(v) The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the
weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its
purity, become stronger and dominate the world.
Q.12. How Germany came into the trap of ‘Hyper-Inflation’ situation
after World War II? How were they saved?
OR
Describe the events leading to the economic crisis in Germany.
Ans.
 Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war
reparation in gold.
 This depleted gold reserves at a time when resources were scarce.
 In 1932, Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading
industrial area ‘Ruhr’, to claim their coal.
 Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency
wrecklessly.
 With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German
mark fell.
 As the value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods soared.
 The image of the Germany carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy
a loaf of bread was widely publicised.
 This crisis came to be known as ‘hyper-inflation’, a situation when
prices rise phenomenally high.
 Eventually, the Americans intervened and bailed Germany out of the
crisis by introducing ‘The Dawes Plan’ which reworked the terms of
separation to ease the financial burden on Germany.
Q.13. How worldwide economic crisis can affect the society also?
Analyse this situation in Germany.
OR
What were the effects of the economic crisis on Germany?
Ans. (i) The Germany’s economy was worst hit by economic crisis.
(ii) Industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent.
(iii) Workers lost their jobs and the number of unemployed reached six
million.
(iv) On the streets of Germany, men could be found with placards saying,
“Willing to do any work.
(v) As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities.
(vi) The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people.
(vii) The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw
their savings diminish when the currency lost its value.
(viii) Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their
businesses got ruined.
(ix) These sections of society were filled with the fear of ‘Proletarianisation’,
an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still,
the unemployed.
(x) Only organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water,
but unemployment weakened their bargaining power.
(xi) Big business was in crisis.
(xii) The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural
prices and women, unable to fill their children’s stomachs, were filled with a
sense of deep despair.
Q.14. What kind of racial segregation was practised by Hitler?
Ans. (i) Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream
creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically
eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.
(ii) Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’.
(iii) They alone were considered ‘desirable’.
(iv) Only they were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all
others, who were classed as ‘undesirable’.
(v) This meant that even those Germans, who were seen as impure or
abnormal had no right to exist.
(vi) Under the Euthansia Programme, Helworth’s father along with other Nazi
officials had condemned to death many Germans, who were considered
mentally or physically unfit.
Q.15. Had media played any role in the propaganda of Nazi regime?
Ans. (i) Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and
popularise it worldwide.
(ii) Nazi ideas were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters,
catchy slogans and leaflets.
(iii) In posters, groups identified as the ‘enemies’ of Germans were
stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as evil.
(iv) Socialists and liberals were represented as weak and degenerate.
(v) They were attacked as malicious foreign agents.
(vi) Propoganda films were made to create hatred for jews.
(vii) The most infamous film was ‘The Eternal Jews’. Orthodox Jews were
stereotyped and mocked.
(viii) They were shown with flowing beards wearing kaftans, whereas in
reality it was difficult to distinguish German Jews by their outward
appearance because they were a highly assimilated community.
(ix) They were referred to as vermin, rats and pests. Their movements were
compared to those of rodents.
(x) Nazism worked on the minds of the people, tapped their emotions and
turned their hatred and anger at those marked as ‘undesirable’.