World War 2 (1919- 1945)

The Rise of Nazi Germany

• After WW1, kaiser of Germany overthrown, Germany
became a Republic, a new democratic Government
formed in Weimar, new Government signed a treaty to
stop fighting.
• You will remember from Grade 8 that World War 1
officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of
Versailles (peace treaty which officially ended World
War 1) on 28 June 1919. Eventually all Germany’s allies
had signed an armistice (when countries involved in a
war temporarily stop fighting (a truce/cease fire) so
that a peace agreement can be discussed).
• World War 1 had left Europe devastated. The countries who
had fought in it had suffered casualties never experienced
before.
• (Don't summarise)Britain (Allied Powers) had lost 750 000
soldiers, with 1.5 million injured.
• France (Allied Powers) had lost 1.4 million soldiers, with 2.5
million injured.
• Belgium (Allied Powers) had lost 50 000 soldiers.
• Italy (Allied Powers) had lost 600 000 soldiers.
• Russia (Allied Powers) had lost 1.7 million soldiers.
• America (Allied Powers) had lost 116 000 soldiers.
• Germany (Central Powers) had lost 2 million soldiers.
• Austria-Hungary (Central Powers) had lost 1.2 million soldiers
• Turkey (Central Powers) had lost 325 000 soldiers
• Germany had to pay for the cost of the war
(reparations)/ Germany lost land. They lost 1/10th of
their population and 1/7th of their land/ They had to
admit guilt/ not allowed to rebuild their army.
Germany had to pay a total of $32 billion.
• Part of the reparations were to be repaid through
industrial products, including coal, steel, and
agricultural yields.
• Germany’s military was reduced from 870 000 to
100 000 men and conscription was not allowed/ not
allowed tanks etc
This is a photograph of the ‘Big Four’ standing outside of the
Palace of Versailles, France. From left: David Lloyd George
(Britain), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Georges Clemenceau
(France), and Woodrow Wilson (America).
1. Identify the date of the cartoon, and which event it represents.
2. Identify the symbols used by the cartoonist, as well as what message
they represent.
This is a cartoon from a German newspaper called
Kladderadatsch (July 1919). It is entitled ‘Clemenceau the Vampire’:
This is German cartoon representing the Treaty of Versailles (1919):
 Hitler and the Nazis in 1920’s
• Hitler joined the Nazi Party at the end of World War
1, became leader in 1921.
• He set up armed groups of supporters (brown
shirts) they became known as the storm troopers.
Use violence to eliminate opposition.
• They organised huge parades and carried flags with
Swastika on it.
• 1923 Hitler tried to overthrow the Weimar Gov. But
failed and sent to jail= wrote the book, Mein Kampf
“My Struggle”.
 The Great Depression and effects on
Germany
• The USA lent money to the Weimar Gov. To help the
economy of Germany recover.
• If Germany became bankrupt, they could not pay
reparations to France and Belgium. If this happened, France
could not repay its loans to Britain, and Britain could not
repay its loans to America.
• But the USA faced economic decline with the Great
Depression and the collapse of the New York Stock
Exchange in 1929.
• People lost money as their stocks lost value. Cost of good
got expensive/ banks closed/ factories closed/
unemployment rose.
• USA wanted the money back that they lent to
Germany= more German business collapsed/
increase unemployment/ increased hunger.
 Essay question
On 28 June 1919 Germany and the Allied Powers
signed the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of
Mirrors, at the Palace of Versailles, France. Even
though this treaty would officially end World War
1, it was created to completely destroy Germany.
 Failure of democracy in Weimar
Republic
• Germany did not have a history of democracy. It had
been ruled by a Kaiser and Germany was used to
authoritarian leadership.
• Many judges/ big business/ powerful military did
not support the Weimar Republic.
• 15 Chancellors between 1919- 1932. proves that
Weimar did not have a strong government to deal
with all the problems.
• Great depression was the final straw. Blames
Weimar for economic problems. Hitler took control
in 1933.
 Reasons for public support for
Nazi party
• More people voted for the Nazi party due to the
Great Depression. People were promised law and
order and jobs.
• Many people wanted to return to the days when
they were a world power. They blamed the Weimar
Republic for the severe punishment and humiliation
of the TOV.
• Hitler promised to receive financial help from some
in the military and from wealthy business men.
• Hitler was a brilliant public speaker.
• Hitler used propaganda (biased information), many
people believed that the Nazi party could save
them.
• Along with Joseph Goebbels Hitler was able to
create a huge campaign using propaganda. He
criticised the government’s lack of ability to deal
with the crisis.
 Enabling Act 1933 and Dictatorship
• On 27 February 1933 the Reichstag (Parliament
building) ‘mysteriously’ caught fire.
• When police arrived they found Marinus van der
Lubbe on the premises. He was a supporter of the
German Communist Party.
• The German Communist Party candidates in the
election were arrested and Hermann Goering
announced that the Nazi Party planned "to
exterminate" German communists.
• On 23 March 1933, the German Reichstag passed the
Enabling Act which banned the
German Communist Party and the
Social Democratic Party from taking part in future
election campaigns. It also gave Hitler ‘special powers’
to deal with the ‘Communist threat’ – Hitler could now
pass laws without them going through parliament.
• This was followed by Nazi officials being put in charge of
all local government in the provinces, trades unions
being abolished, their funds taken and their leaders put
in prison, and a law passed making the Nazi Party the
only legal political party in Germany.
• Hitler became a legal dictator (Führer) of Germany.
• Marinus van der Lubbe was found guilty of the
This photograph was taken on 28 February 1933. In it you can see
how onlookers stopped to take a look at the Reichstag building after it
was destroyed by a fire:
 Nuremberg Laws and loss of basic
right of Jewish people
• The Nazi Party believed that German people came
from an Aryan race who were more superior (better
than) to any other racial group in the world.
• This idea of a superior Aryan race was built upon
theories of racism and racial superiority.
• Race: the grouping of people according to their
physical features.
• Racial Superiority: the idea that one race is better
than another because of their physical features and
abilities, as well as their mental state of mind.
• Jewish people
• Jewish people were regarded as a separate, inferior
race by the Nazis. Forced to wear yellow Star of David
• Jews were seen as a dangerous threat because they
could be mistaken for Aryans (some had blond hair
and blue eyes).
• To ensure that they did not contaminate the ‘racially
pure’ Aryans, they were first persecuted, then placed
into ghettos to separate them from the German
nation, and lastly, exterminated in death camps (see
‘the Holocaust’).
• Jehovah witness/ homosexuals/ Gypsies/ blacks/
Slavs and Mentally ill were systematically killed.
This is a Nazi propaganda poster from the 1930’s. The
text on the poster reads: “This genetically ill person
will cost our people’s community 60 000 marks
(Germany currency) over his lifetime. Citizens that is
your money…”
• This is an extract from “Victims of the Nazi’s
(1933-1945): Sinti and Roma”. It explains why
Hitler targeted gypsies in Nazi controlled
territories.

Between 1933 and 1945 Sinti and Roma

(gypsies) suffered greatly as victims of Nazi
persecution and Genocide. Building on long-
held prejudices, the Nazi regime viewed
Gypsies both as asocial (outside normal
society) and as racial inferiors – believed to
threaten the biological purity and strength of
the superior Aryan race.
This is a plague which commemorates the liberation of
Jehovah’s Witnesses from Mauthausen concentration
camp in Austria. Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses
were killed there:
 This is a prisoner identification photograph of
August Pfeiffer, a homosexual prisoner who died
in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941:
 Fascist state compared with democracy
(propaganda)
• Fascist state is opposite to democracy=
authoritarian government that serves its own
needs.
• Nazis had total control over newspapers, schools,
police, army etc
• To control every part of every Germans life, the
Nazis used propaganda, fear and terror.
• No freedom of speech or press/ use violence/
secret police spies on people/ racism/ pride in the
military/ hatred towards democracy
This is an extract from a report from an American visitor to a girls’ school in Nazi Germany:
According to the teachers, there was no such thing as a problem of moral in
Hitler’s Germany. The Fuhrer wanted every woman, every girl to bear children
– soldiers. She herself was willing to have a child, even though she was not
married. The State would rear and educate it.

The schools for boys teach military science, military geography, military
ideology, Hitler worship; those for girls prepare the proper mental set in the
future mates of Hitler’s soldiers… [A German official] admitted there were
women who could think as well as men – in their field. But the German
schools had one aim: every course, every class had to contribute in the same
way to Hitler’s ideology. He pointed out that the boys who learned about
chemistry of war…should not be bothered with the presence of girls in their
classes. Girls had a definite purpose. In moments of recreation boys needed
girls…

Every girl, he said, must learn the duties of a mother before she is sixteen, so
she can have children. Why should girls bother with higher mathematics, or
art, or drama, or literature? They should have babies without that sort of
This photograph shows German children reading
a book by Julius Steicher called Der Giftpilz
(Toadstool/Poisonous Mushroom), 1938
At school, German children were indoctrinated (brainwashed) in all their lessons.
Here are two examples of typical maths questions:

Question 95: The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6

millionRM (Reichsmarks). How many houses at 15 000 RM each
could have been built for that amount?

Question 97: To keep a mentally ill person costs 4 RM per day, a

cripple 5.5 RM, a criminal 3.50 RM. Many civil servants only
receive 4RM per day, white collar employees barely 3.50 RM,
unskilled workers not even 2 RM per head for their families.
According to low estimates there are 300 mentally ill in care.
(a) Illustrate these figures in a diagram.
(b) How much do these people cost to keep in total, at a cost of
4 RM per head?
(c) How many marriage loans, at 1000 RM each, could be
 The beginning of World War 2
• The Nazis wanted to expand Germany territory into
Europe, termed: Lebensraum(meaning space in
German)
• He had to build a strong army which would break the
TOV.
• They annexed Austria in 1938. Britain did nothing in
response.
• On 1 September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. 3
September Britain and France declare war on Germany.
• Axis Powers: Mussolini's fascist Italy/Japan
• Allied powers: Britain/ France/ USA/ Russia
 Extermination camps/ genocide
and the Holocaust
• Jews made up 1% of German population. Many
fought on the side of the Germans in WW1.
• By the time WW2 broke out Jews had no rights.
• Jews tried to leave Germany but became difficult.
• The SS was led by Heinrich Himmler: they taught to
hate people. Declared absolute obedience to Hitler.
• They round up people and shot them by firing
squads into mass graves.
• This was inefficient and too personal for the killers.
They came up with the final solution.
• This was the genocide of European Jews.
• Victims were crowded into cattle trucks and taken
to extermination camps.
• They were ordered to undress and forced into a gas
chamber that was disguised as a shower. Zyklon B
gas was released.
• Bodies were burnt in giant ovens.
 How discrimination led to genocide

An SA and SS officer in front of a Berlin fashion shop in 1933. The sign reads,
“Don’t buy from Jews!”
A German woman and her Jewish boyfriend are forced to wear
placards in public. Her sign reads “I am the biggest pig in this
place and only sleep with Jews!”
This photograph shows Jewish shops
destroyed on 9 November 1938:
This photograph shows the Einzatsgruppen
executing Soviet Jews who are kneeling by the
sides of a mass grave, Kraigonev, 1941:
 Examples of resistance to Nazism
• Half the voters did not support the Nazis.
• White Rose Movement a small, non- violent
resistance group consisting of students from Munich
University. Spoke out against Hitler.
• Sophie Scholl and her brother took pamphlets to
university and emptied it in hallways= were executed.
• Catholic church never spoke out against Hitler but
Dietrich worked as a spy in a failed assassination
attempt against Hitler. He was executed. (source pg
125)
• Warsaw Ghetto uprising: Nazi built a wall to
enclose part of the city= Warsaw Ghetto.
• Jews forced into ghetto, those who left were shot.
• Not enough food/ poor sanitation.
• Thousands of Jews were taken to extermination
camps. The ones left in the ghetto prepared for an
uprising.
• Germans responded by putting poison gas in the
sewers and sent them to death camps.
 The End of World War 2
• Mussolini was killed and his body hung in a
square in Milan.
• 27 April, Italy surrender.
• Hitler committed suicide as he realised he would
lose the war.
• 2 May the German Army in Berlin surrendered to
the Russians.
• Allies had won the war in Europe.
 World War 2 in the Pacific
• Japan is a small island that lacks many raw
materials.
• Japanese had a fascist government that wanted
to expand Japanese territory.
• 1931 Japan invade China= 1938 USA impose
sanctions on Japan.
• Japan attacked the American Pacific Fleet in
Pearl Harbour. This was meant to show the
military strength of Japan= deterrent.
• The attack on Pearl Harbour was to destroy the USA
navy. This would enable them to continue their
conquest in China.
• Led to USA joining the war.
• In the USA over 100thousand Japanese- Americans
were placed in internment camps (confinement during
wartime)
• Atrocities in China: the rape of Nanjing saw the killing
of 300 thousand Chinese.
• They also killed POWs in China (page 132 sources)
• Prisoner of war camps for allied forces: soldiers kept
in filthy, overcrowded POW camps. POWs were beaten
and used as slave labour.