Rise of the Nazis
Defeated in World War I, Germany fell into a deep economic depression. Promising a return to strength and prosperity, the radical National Socialis t Party (Nazis) gained popularity. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis implemented a policy of racism, hatred, intimidation, and violence.
In the early 1900s, antisemitism became a central theme in a number of political parties whose leaders blamed Jews for the social and economic problems following the loss of World War I. Antisemitism is the hostile belief or behavior toward Jews just because they are Jewish. Antisemitism had existed for centuries in Europe.
The Nazis defined Jews as a race. Germans were seen as “superior,” and Jews, at the bottom of the scale, were the most dangerous. The Nazis also targeted gay men, people with mental and physical disabilities, Roma/Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Germans, and Poles.
Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi party in Germany in 1919. As the depression following World War I deepened, Hitler’s popularity increased. In 1930, the Nazi party won 107 seats in the Reichstag, the German legislative body. In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. His first 100 days in power were marked by mass arrests, suppression of free speech, the opening of the first concentration camps, and the purging of all political opponents.
The Nuremberg Laws, passed in 1935, stripped Jews of German citizenship, removed them from public office, outlawed marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and defined a Jew as “a person with two Jewish parents, or three or four Jewish grandparents.”
On the night of November 9, 1938, throughout Germany and Austria, the Nazis destroyed 267 synagogues, smashed windows of Jewish-owned stores, and arrested 30,000 Jewish men. This event, known as Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), marked a transition to an era of destruction and genocide.
