Unit V: The Rise and Fall of the Nazi - PowerPoint Presentation

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Unit V:

The Rise and Fall of the Nazi

Empire

The Road to

WWII: Remilitarization and Lebensraum

Daily Question

How do the Nazis show their belief that many racially pure Germans live outside

the borders of Germany? Why is it that Jews could never be a part of a future “racial order” in Nazi occupied Europe?

The Road to WWII

Remilitarization

did not begin with the Nazis,

but Weimar

Secret Intelligence Service (

Abwehr

) and dummy tanks began in WeimarNazis immediately pursued rearmament in 1933, but kept a secret.MEFO, Hjamar Schacht, and Wilhelm FrickSchacht was the president of the Central German Bank under the Nazis until 1939100 million borrowing limit for military research from Central Bank under the treaty of VersaillesDevised a plan to re-arm Germany without a paper trail and to go around the 100m borrow limitMEFO (Metal Research Corporation) set up to “research” production of metal technologyBecomes a dummy corporationBasically allows for legal fraud and money laundering to re-arm the Third Reich

R and D Contractors given military contract by

Govt

Performed services for rearmament in the name of “research”

Paid by MEFO (shell company) in the form of “

Mefo

bills”

Contractors took Mefo bills to any local bank after at least 6 months in exchange for ReichmarksLocal bank took Mefo bills to Central Bank in exchange for currency at slightly higher return rateRESULT: System of rearmament that bypasses the 100m borrow limit and bypasses Treaty of Versailles because it was “R and D”

The Road to WWII

Secret military training prior to 1935

Nazis secretly expand the air force with

Deutsche

Verkehrsfliegerschule

(DVS)Outwardly operated as a flying school for commercial trafficIn reality, the DVS trained pilots for the Luftwaffe SA is an obvious form of secret(?) militarizationBy 1934, the SA had over 4.5 million men

The Road to WWII

Hitler publicly announces rearmament

March 16, 1935, Hitler announces it will break the Treaty of Versailles by est. the

Luftwaffe

Begins conscription shortly afterwards

By 1938, Germany had 600,000 men ready for combat; by 1939, 1.5 million

By 1937, Nazi Germany has the most advanced and efficient army in the entire worldBy the outbreak of the war, Germany had 9 panzer divisions325 tanks each (US had 359 tanks total in 1940)

The Road to WWII

Context for Nazi expansion

Germany lacked success in overseas colonization

Hitler did not want to expand colonially first. Wanted to dominate Europe

Hitler borrows heavily from German plans from WWI:

Mitteleuropa

.Rough plans for Nazi expansion can be traced back to Mein Kampf. Hitler’s long term plans for expansion never significantly changeHitler was inspired by other Lebensraum plans dating back to the 19th century

The Road to WWII

Nazi ideology and expansion

Hitler and

Lebensraum

Hitler wrote about “living space” in

Mein

KampfGerman population needed to grow substantially, needed more spaceObvious part of Nazi ideology and a racial struggleLebensraum plans would concentrate on eastern Europe at firstThese plans were fed to the German public through propagandaMillions of Germans accepted expansionist ideals by the beginning of the war.

The Road to WWII

According to Hitler’s most ambitious plans, Germany would occupy all of Europe (at first)

Germans would settle in western Europe, Germany, and portions of eastern Europe

“Subhuman slaves” (Slavic groups) would cultivate eastern European farmland in Poland in Ukraine

All of the USSR would be taken over for farmland and extermination

Jews would not (and could not) be a part of any “slave group”

The Road to WWII

In occupied territories,

volksdeutscher

would be returned to the Reich

Volksdeutscher

were dubbed “Germans in terms of race” regardless of citizenshipEthnic Germans from throughout Europe needed to be unitedHimmler becomes the Reich Commissioner of the Consolidation of German Nationhood in Oct 1939By early 1940of the war, Himmler is almost certainly the 2nd most powerful person in the Third Reich

Daily Question

How do the Nazis show their belief that many racially pure Germans live outside

the borders of Germany? Why is it that Jews could never be a part of a future “racial order” in Nazi occupied Europe?