The Nazis quickly took command of the economy, including transportation and technology. New laws banned strikes, dissolved independent labor unions, and gave the government authority over business and labor. Hitler put millions of Germans to work. They constructed factories, built highways, manufactured weapons, and served in the military. As a result, the number of unemployed dropped from about 6 million to 1.5 million in 1936.
Hitler wanted more than just economic and political power—he wanted control over every aspect of German life. To shape public opinion and to win praise for his leadership, Hitler, like Mussolini, turned the press, radio, literature, painting, and film into propaganda tools.
Books that did not conform to Nazi beliefs were burned in huge bonfires. Churches were forbidden to criticize the Nazis or the government. Schoolchildren had to join the Hitler Youth (for boys) or the League of German Girls. Hitler believed that continuous struggle brought victory to the strong. He twisted the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to support his use of brute force.
Although Jews were less than 1 percent of the population, the Nazis used them as scapegoats for all Germany’s troubles since the war. This led to a wave of anti-Semitism across Germany.
Beginning in 1933, the Nazis passed laws depriving Jews of most of their rights. Violence against Jews mounted.
Human rights: The human rights or the lack thereof for the jewish people where they lost almost all of their basic human rights and became almost subhuman to the german people
On the night of November 9, 1938, Nazi mobs attacked Jews in their homes and on the streets and destroyed thousands of Jewish-owned buildings. This rampage, called Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), signaled the real start of the process of eliminating the Jews from German life. Hitler’s “Final Solution” plan was to eliminate and exterminate the Jewish population in Europe, which later became known as the Holocaust (Shoah). Eventually, six million Jews perished during the Holocaust.
What does Kristallnacht demonstrate about the power of the Nazis: that they can turn an entire country against a minority and that they could do whatever they want to anyone
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Hatred of Jews, or anti-Semitism, was a key part of Nazi ideology and had a long, unfortunate tradition in Europe. So-called “scientific” racism, which focused on the belief that Jews were inferior to the Aryan race both mentally and physically, emerged in the nineteenth century in Germany, notably among Social Darwinists.
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