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Connecting Hitler's possible reason for the Jewish Question.

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Connecting Hitler's possible reason for the Jewish Question.

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Hitler moved to Vienna as a young man in 1905 and lived a bohemian life, making small amounts of money by selling pictures he copied from postcards.

At one point he ended up in a hostel for the homeless and later he claimed it was in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited.

Michael Liversidge, Emeritus Dean of Arts at Bristol University, where he has taught art history since 1970 and was head of department for 21 years, has studied the pictures.

He said: "Of course, remembering the Hitler diaries which turned out to be turkeys, one has to be careful though these do look authentic and presumably have been checked out as to their provenance.

"They look quite typical of an aspiring student hoping to get into art school - tentative and not very certain about his perspective when he's using pencil and pen, making basic errors by getting the top and the bottom of a candlestick wrong in relation to each other and so on.

"And he doesn't yet have much in the way of technical skill, but it's not so bad that one can't imagine him learning - especially when he's bolder with the charcoal or black chalk.

"But there's no latent genius here, and not much beyond a moderate GCSE. Probably if the artist was at school today you wouldn't encourage him to keep the subject up at A Level.

"So if they are part of a portfolio submitted with an application to study at a major European art academy, the selectors were right to reject him - they just don't suggest he was more than pretty marginal and mediocre for a potential art school entrant then or now.

"If they are what he sent in he definitely wouldn't have been worth interviewing for a place.

"Now, of course, they have an altogether different historical interest for us, but sadly that isn't one that has anything to do with art."

Richard Westwood-Brookes, who is selling the archive, said: "We know Hitler was twice turned down by the Vienna Academy of Art.

"The second time in 1908 he wasn't even invited to take the exam. These works make up a collection that he would have submitted.

"They are the type of pictures that a student would produce to show a range of techniques.

"Of course it is possible that Hitler's rejection from the Vienna Academy of Art was something that helped shape his character and turn him into the monster he became.

"It's the first time the pictures have come to light and can be seen by the general public.

"The vendor is an artist based on the continent and has had them for many, many years."

The 12 pictures are expected to sell for up to £6,000 each.

The sale at Mullock's auction house in Ludlow, Shropshire, takes place on April 16.

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Hitler sketches that failed to secure his place at art academy to be auctioned

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Hitler moved to Vienna as a young man in 1905 and lived a bohemian life, making small amounts of money by selling pictures he copied from postcards. At one point he ended up in a hostel for the homeless and later he claimed it was in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited.

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On September 15, 1935, the Nazi regime announced two new laws related to race:

The Reich Citizenship Law

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

These laws informally became known as the Nuremberg Laws or Nuremberg Race Laws. This is because they were first announced at a Nazi Party rally held in the German city of Nuremberg.

Why did the Nazis enact the Nuremberg Race Laws?

The Nuremberg Race Laws The Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, because they wanted to put their ideas about race into law. They believed in the false theory that the world is divided into distinct races that are not equally strong and valuable. The Nazis considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They saw the so-called Aryan German race as the strongest, and most valuable race of all.

According to the Nazis, Jews were not Aryans. They thought Jews belonged to a separate race that was inferior to all other races. The Nazis believed that the presence of Jews in Germany threatened the German people. They believed they had to separate Jews from other Germans to protect and strengthen Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were an important step towards achieving this goal.

What was the Reich Citizenship Law?

The Nazi Party had always promised that, if they came to power, only racially pure Germans would be allowed to hold German citizenship. The Reich Citizenship Law made this a reality. This law defined a citizen as a person who is "of German or related blood." This meant that Jews, defined as a separate race, could not be full citizens of Germany. They had no political rights.

What was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor?

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was a law against what the Nazis viewed as race-mixing or "race defilement" (" Rassenschande "). It banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people "of German or related blood." The Nazis believed that such relationships were dangerous because they led to "mixed race" children. According to the Nazis, these children and their descendants undermined the purity of the German race.

Who was Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws?

According to the Nuremberg Laws, a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. A grandparent was considered Jewish if they belonged to the Jewish religious community. Thus, the Nazis defined Jews by their religion (Judaism), and not by the supposed racial traits that Nazism attributed to Jews.

The laws also categorized some people in Germany as " Mischlinge " ( "mixed-race persons"). According to law, Mischlinge were neither German nor Jewish. These were people who had one or two Jewish grandparents.

The Nazi regime required individuals to prove their grandparents' racial identities. To do so, people used religious records. These included baptism records, Jewish community records, and gravestones.

Did the Nuremberg Laws apply to other groups?

Yes. While initially focused on Jews, the Nazi government clarified that the Nuremberg Laws also applied to Roma (also called Gypsies), Black people, and their descendants. They could not be full citizens of Germany. Nor could they marry or have sexual relations with "people of German or related blood."

What were the consequences of the Nuremberg Laws?

The Nuremberg Laws changed the everyday lives of Jews in Germany by making Jews legally different from their non-Jewish neighbors. In the years that followed, the Nazi regime enacted more and more anti-Jewish laws and decrees. These later laws relied on the definition of "Jew" as defined in the Nuremberg Laws. Examples of these other laws or decrees include:

The Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names (August 1938)

The Decree on Passports of Jews (October 1938)

The Police Regulation on the Marking of Jews (September 1941)

The Nuremberg Laws were an important step in the Nazi regime's process of isolating and excluding Jews from the rest of German society.

Key Dates
August 17, 1938
Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names October 5, 1938
Decree on Passports of Jews September 1, 1941
Police Regulation on the Marking of Jews
On August 17, 1938, the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names sets new name requirements for Jews in Germany. This law states that Jews can only be given specific Jewish first names. New Jewish parents must choose a name from a government-approved list. Also, any Jew who does not already have a name from this list, must add an additional first name: "Israel" (for men) and "Sara" (for women). Individuals have to report their new names to government offices. They also have to use both their given and added first names for business transactions.

The Nazi regime invalidates the German passports of all German Jews. For their passports to become valid again, German Jews must submit them to a passport office so that they can be stamped with the letter "J." The decree specifies that this applies to the passports of German Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws.

Beginning in September 1941, all Jews in Nazi Germany are required to wear a special yellow badge in public. The badge must be a palm-sized, yellow six-pointed star with black lines outlining the Star of David. The star must have the word " " (German for "Jew") written in the middle. It must be visible anytime a Jew appears in public. Specifically, Jews are required to sew this yellow star onto the left breast of their clothes. This order applies to all German Jews (as defined by the Nuremberg Laws) who are six years old and older. Germans categorized as Mischlinge do not have to wear the star.

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The Nazi regime's Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935 made Jews legally different from their non-Jewish neighbors. The laws were the foundation for future antisemitic measures .

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An authoritarian system is one that favors concentration of power in a leader or leaders who are not responsible to the people and which calls for blind submission to authority.

Example: People turn to authoritarian leaders in hopes of restoring political and economic order.

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Jewish Bolshevism, also known as Judeo-Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist canard[citation needed] which alleges that the Jews were at the origin of the Russian Revolution and held the primary power among Bolsheviks. Similarly, the Jewish Communism theory implies that Jews have been dominating the Communist movements in the world. It is similar to the ZOG conspiracy theory, which asserts that Jews control world politics.[1] The expressions have been used as a catchword for the assertion that Communism is a Jewish conspiracy.

In Poland, "Judeo-Bolshevism" was known as "Żydokomuna" and was used as an antisemitic stereotype.[2]

The expression was the title of a pamphlet, The Jewish Bolshevism, and became current after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, featuring prominently in the propaganda of the anti-communist "White" forces during the Russian Civil War.

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The Nuremberg Race Laws At the annual party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and deprived them of most political rights.

The Nuremberg Laws, as they became known, did not define a "Jew" as someone with particular religious beliefs. Instead, anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents was defined as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Many Germans who had not practiced Judaism for years found themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity were defined as Jews.

For a brief period after Nuremberg, in the weeks before and during the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, the Nazi regime actually moderated its anti-Jewish attacks and even removed some of the signs saying "Jews Unwelcome" from public places. Hitler did not want international criticism of his government to result in the transfer of the Games to another country. Such a loss would have been a serious blow to German prestige.

After the Olympic Games (in which the Nazis did not allow German Jewish athletes to participate), the Nazis again stepped up the persecution of German Jews. In 1937 and 1938, the government set out to impoverish Jews by requiring them to register their property and then by "Aryanizing" Jewish businesses. This meant that Jewish workers and managers were dismissed, and the ownership of most Jewish businesses was taken over by non-Jewish Germans who bought them at bargain prices fixed by Nazis. Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and Jewish lawyers were not permitted to practice law.

Like everyone in Germany, Jews were required to carry identity cards, but the government added special identifying marks to theirs: a red "J" stamped on them and new middle names for all those Jews who did not possess recognizably "Jewish" first names-"Israel" for males, "Sara" for females. Such cards allowed the police to identify Jews easily.

Key Dates

September 15, 1935
Nuremberg Laws are instituted
At their annual party rally, the Nazis announce new laws that revoke Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibit Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." "Racial infamy," as this becomes known, is made a criminal offense. The Nuremberg Laws define a "Jew" as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classify as Jews thousands of people who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.

October 18, 1935
New marriage requirements instituted
The "Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People" requires all prospective marriage partners to obtain from the public health authorities a certificate of fitness to marry. Such certificates are refused to those suffering from "hereditary illnesses" and contagious diseases and those attempting to marry in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.

November 14, 1935
Nuremberg Law extended to other groups
The first supplemental decree of the Nuremberg Laws extends the prohibition on marriage or sexual relations between people who could produce "racially suspect" offspring. A week later, the minister of the interior interprets this to mean relations between "those of German or related blood" and Roma (Gypsies), blacks, or their offspring.

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The Nuremberg Race Laws At the annual party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood."

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how do you say entartete kunst in german

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Do you know How to pronounce entartete kunst?

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How do you say entartete kunst in German? Pronunciation of entartete kunst found 3 audio voices and 1 Meaning for entartete kunst.

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Read and learn for free about the following article: Art in Nazi Germany

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Holocaust Survivor Reflections and Testimonies

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Listen to or read Holocaust survivors' experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.

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Night,

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Gau·lei·ter

ˈɡouˌlīdər/

noun

plural noun: Gauleiters

1. 1.

2. historical

3. a political official governing a district under Nazi rule.

4. 2.

5. an overbearing official.

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con·cor·dat

kənˈkôrˌdat/

noun

1. an agreement or treaty, especially one between the Vatican and a secular government relating to matters of mutual interest.

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How Hitler Consolidated His Power - GCSE History (Nazi Germany)

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A song to help you remember Key Topic Three of the Edexcel GCSE History A specification - Germany 1918-1939 This song details Hitler's Consolidation Of Power - 1933-1939 These are original lyrics written to the backing track of Blank Space by Taylor Swift - No copyright intended Lyrics: Hitler issued

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Jews of the Weimar Replublic (1918 - 1933). A new era in the history of German Jewry began when Imperial Germany collapsed and was replaced by the democratic regime of the Weimar Republic. The outstanding feature of this period was the polarization between the unprecedented integration of the Jews in every sphere of life, and the growth of political anti-Semitism among various organizations and political parties.

Important achievements by Jews were recorded in the theater (Max Reinhardt), in music (Arnold Schönberg), in the visual arts (Max Liebermann), in philosophy (Herman Cohen) and in science (Albert Einstein). Among the Nobel prize winners in Germany up to 1938, 24 percent were Jews (nine Jews out of a total of thirty eight).

It was in political and public life, however, that the Jewish role was most prominent. Jews played an important role in the first cabinet formed after the 1918 revolution ( Hugo Hasse and Otto Landesberg), the Weimar Constitution was drafted by a Jew ( Hugo Pruess), and Jews were conspicuously present in the abortive attempts to create radical revolutionary regimes, especially in Bavaria.

The revolutionary government in Munich was headed by a Jewish intellectual, Kurt Eisner, and after his assassination, two other Jewish leaders, Gustav Landauer and Eugen Levine, assumed positions of major influence in the "Raterepublik" ("Soviet" Republic"). Rosa Luxemburg, who was also assassinated, was a leader of the revolutionary Spartakus- bund, which was one of the predecessors of the German Communist party.

In the following years as well, Jews held major political posts, primarily in the leadership of the democratic and socialist parties. The most prominent Jewish Political figure was Walther Rathenau, who served first as minister for economic affairs and then as foreign minister.

Jews constituted less than one percent of the population of Germany during the Weimar Republic, the period from the end of World War I to the rise of National Socialism. By 1900 the majority -- though by no means all -- of German Jews lived in big cities. Attempts to promote a sense of Jewish identity in Germany differed in important respects from Jewish associational life in eastern Europe. German Jews developed no trade unions and very few professional associations. Although many individual Jews enjoyed acclaim in the arts, cultural activities such as music and theater were only rarely organized under Jewish auspices.

The career profile of German Jews differed markedly from the general population. Historically prohibited from many professional endeavors, Jews were disproportionately represented in some areas of the economy, such as journalism, law, medicine, and retailing. Concentrated in a small number of professions (more often than not in urban areas), Jews were especially visible to the Weimar Republic's often violent critics.

Weimar Culture

Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic (between Germany's defeat at the end of World War I in 1918, and Hitler's rise to power in 1933).

This period is frequently cited as one of those with the highest level of intellectual production in human history; Germany was the country with the most advanced science, technology, literature, philosophy and art. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture.

Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German-speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture.

A significant new development in Germany's intellectual environment happened in 1918, when the faculties of German universities became fully opened to prominent Jewish scholars for the first time. Leading Jewish intellectuals on university faculties included physicist Albert Einstein; sociologists Karl Mannheim, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse; philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl; political theorists Arthur Rosenberg and Gustav Meyer; and many others. Nine German citizens were awarded Nobel prizes during the Weimar Republic, five of whom were Jewish scientists, including two in medicine. Jewish intellectuals and creative professionals were among the leading figures in many areas of Weimar culture.

With the rise of Nazism and the ascent to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, many German intellectuals and cultural figures, both Jewish and non-Jewish, fled Germany for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. Those who remained behind were often arrested, or detained in concentration camps.

Weimar, Thuringia Germany

Weimar is a city in the federal state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, (50 miles) southwest of Leipzig, (106 miles) north of Nuremberg and (106 miles) west of Dresden. Together with the neighbour-cities Erfurt and Jena it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia.

Weimar is well known because of its large cultural heritage and its importance in German history. The city was a focal point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading characters of the literary genre of Weimar Classicism,

Weimar was the place where Germany's first democratic constitution was signed after the First World War, giving its name to the Weimar Republic period in German politics (1918-1933), as well as one of the cities that got mystified by the National Socialist propaganda. Next to the city was one of the largest Nazi concentration camps in Germany: Buchenwald.

German Jews & Weimar Culture

The 'contributions' of German Jews to Weimar culture have been the topic of numerous studies. During the era of the Weimar Republic, Germany became a center of intellectual thought at its universities. The fourteen years of the Weimar era were also marked by explosive intellectual productivity. German artists made significant cultural contributions in the fields of literature, art, architecture, music, dance, drama, and the new medium of the motion picture.

The nineteenth-century definition of Judaism as a religious denomination no longer reflected the way many Jews of Weimar Germany came to define their Jewishness. While many German Jews were eager to rediscover their lost Jewish heritage, very few were ready to retreat from German or European culture. The result was the invention of a new tradition of German Jewish culture, in the realms of Jewish scholarship, education, literature, music, and fine art.

A novel by Lion Feuchtwanger or Joseph Roth, a short story by Kafka, and a play by Arnold Zweig could well have contained a specific message to its Jewish audience, an expression here or there that was not comprehensible to a reader unfamiliar with Jewish traditions. But any German could read those works of literature, and in fact all of those authors were widely read by a non-Jewish audience.

The process of acculturation had begun in Germany much earlier. What we witness in the Weimar period was a return of those fallen Jews, who came from rather assimilated houses, where the removal from Jewish traditions had started three or four generations earlier.

Their fathers and grandfathers had already integrated - or acculturated - as individuals, as adherents of the German Social Democratic Party or as Liberals, as part of the urban middle class, as members of sports and cultural associations. Their children and grandchildren now founded specific Jewish sports and literary associations and a Jewish youth movement. In other words, the Jewish culture of Weimar Germany was to a large degree a culture of 'post-assimilated' Jews, those Jews whose families had undergone a process of assimilation and whose descendants felt now the need of a reversal of this process.

For example with the exclamation of Rosalie Perles, the widow of the rabbi in then German Koenigsberg and one of the most active women in German Jewish culture on the eve of WWI. While rabbis and Jewish community officials had complained for decades about the decline of Jewish knowledge and culture, Ms. Perles expressed the new tone that was discernible in public statements of German Jewish representatives during the first third of the twentieth century:

Let us imagine that our grandfathers - especially those who had . . . feared a gradual assimilation into the non-Jewish surroundings - would return to life and step in front of us. How amazed they would be by the thorough changes that their descendants underwent! How astonished they would be that the assimilation, which they had feared so much, did not occur, that instead exactly the opposite happened! . . . What would our grandfathers see today? The [Jews of] today proudly display their Judaism, no matter to which class or occupation they belong. . . . Our grandfathers would not have had to worry so much, had they seen this future while they were still alive.

As Michael Meyer has pointed out recently, the first Havurah was actually born in a small Berlin synagogue in the late 1920s. Many of the forms of Havurah life - its small size and intimacy, the active role of all its members in the service, and even the stronger participation of women - can be found in the Liberale Synagoge Norden, founded in 1923 in Berlin' s Schönhauser Allee.

Weimar Germany witnessed a revival of Jewish school education, the beginnings of systematic Jewish adult education programmes, and a modest first step in terms of Jewish Studies courses at German universities.

In Weimar Germany, Franz Rosenzweig was in a way successful when he spoke, half jokingly, half seriously, of 'smuggling' Judaism into the general education so dear to the Jew. While this did not imply that the younger generation of Jews in Weimar Germany had more than a superficial knowledge of Jewish texts and the Hebrew language, it meant that they, in contrast to their parents and grandparents who were often ashamed of their remnants of traditional Judaism, now felt rather ashamed of knowing so little. There were, of course, more pessimistic voices in pre-Nazi Germany, predicting the demise of German Jewry.

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German Jewry in the Weimar Republic (1918 - 1933 ) genealogy project

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Jews of the Weimar Replublic (1918 - 1933). A new era in the history of German Jewry began when Imperial Germany collapsed and was replaced by the democratic regime of the Weimar Republic. The outstanding feature of this period was the polarization between the unprecedented integration of the Jews in every sphere of life, and the growth of political anti-Semitism among various organizations and political parties.

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History of Swatika

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In the Western world the swastika is synonymous with fascism, but it goes back thousands of years and has been used as a symbol of good fortune in almost every culture in the world. As more evidence emerges of its long pre-Nazi history in Europe, can this ancient sign ever shake off its evil associations?

In the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, swastika means "well-being". The symbol has been used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains for millennia and is commonly assumed to be an Indian sign.

Early Western travellers to Asia were inspired by its positive and ancient associations and started using it back home. By the beginning of the 20th Century there was a huge fad for the swastika as a benign good luck symbol.

In his book The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? US graphic design writer Steven Heller shows how it was enthusiastically adopted in the West as an architectural motif, on advertising and product design.

"Coca-Cola used it. Carlsberg used it on their beer bottles. The Boy Scouts adopted it and the Girls' Club of America called their magazine Swastika. They would even send out swastika badges to their young readers as a prize for selling copies of the magazine," he says.

It was used by American military units during World War One and it could be seen on RAF planes as late as 1939. Most of these benign uses came to a halt in the 1930s as the Nazis rose to power in Germany.

The Nazi use of the swastika stems from the work of 19th Century German scholars translating old Indian texts, who noticed similarities between their own language and Sanskrit. They concluded that Indians and Germans must have had a shared ancestry and imagined a race of white god-like warriors they called Aryans.

This idea was seized upon by anti-Semitic nationalist groups who appropriated the swastika as an Aryan symbol to boost a sense of ancient lineage for the Germanic people.

We will always remember what the swastika was like in our life - a symbol of pure evil
Freddie Knoller, Holocaust survivor

The black straight-armed hakenkreuz (hooked cross) on the distinctive white circle and red background of the Nazi flag would become the most hated symbol of the 20th Century, inextricably linked to the atrocities committed under the Third Reich.

"For the Jewish people the swastika is a symbol of fear, of suppression, and of extermination. It's a symbol that we will never ever be able to change," says 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller. "If they put the swastika on gravestones or synagogues, it puts a fear into us. Surely it shouldn't happen again."

The swastika was banned in Germany at the end of the war and Germany tried unsuccessfully to introduce an EU-wide ban in 2007.

The irony is that the swastika is more European in origin than most people realise. Archaeological finds have long demonstrated that the swastika is a very old symbol, but ancient examples are by no means limited to India. It was used by the Ancient Greeks, Celts, and Anglo-Saxons and some of the oldest examples have been found in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Balkans .

If you want to see just how deeply rooted the swastika pattern is in Europe, a good place to start is Kiev where the National Museum of the History of Ukraine has an impressive range of exhibits.

Among the museum's most highly prized treasures is a small ivory figurine of a female bird. Made from the tusk of a mammoth, it was found in 1908 at the Palaeolithic settlement of Mezin near the Russian border.

Find out more

Mukti Jain Campion is the producer and presenter of Reclaiming the Swastika. You can listen on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 on Friday 24 October - or for another 30 days on the BBC iPlayer.
BBC iWonder: Why did ordinary people commit atrocities during the Holocaust?
On the torso of the bird is engraved an intricate meander pattern of joined up swastikas. It's the oldest identified swastika pattern in the world and has been radio carbon-dated to an astonishing 15,000 years ago. The bird was found with a number of phallic objects which supports the idea that the swastika pattern was used as a fertility symbol.

In 1965 a palaeontologist called Valentina Bibikova discovered that the swastika meander pattern on the bird is very similar to the naturally occurring pattern visible on a cross-section of ivory. Could it be that the Palaeolithic makers of the figurine were simply reflecting what they saw in nature - the huge mammoth they associated with well-being and fertility?

Single swastikas began to appear in the Neolithic Vinca culture across south-eastern Europe around 7,000 years ago. But it's in the Bronze Age that they became more widespread across the whole of Europe. In the Museum's collection there are clay pots with single swastikas encircling their upper half which date back to around 4,000 years ago. When the Nazis occupied Kiev in World War Two they were so convinced that these pots were evidence of their own Aryan ancestors that they took them back to Germany. (They were returned after the war.)

In the Museum's Grecian collection, the swastika is visible as the architectural ornament which has come to be known as the Greek key pattern, widely used on tiles and textiles to this day.

The Ancient Greeks also used single swastika motifs to decorate their pots and vases. One fragment in the collection from around 7th Century BCE shows a swastika with limbs like unfurling tendrils painted under the belly of a goat.

Perhaps the most surprising exhibit in the museum is of fragile textile fragments that have survived from the 12th Century AD. They are believed to belong to the dress collar of a Slav princess, embroidered with gold crosses and swastikas to ward off evil.

The swastika remained a popular embroidery motif in Eastern Europe and Russia right up to World War Two. A Russian author called Pavel Kutenkov has identified nearly 200 variations across the region. But the hakenkreuz remains a highly charged symbol. In 1941 Kiev was the site of one of the worst Nazi mass murders of the Holocaust when nearly 34,000 Jews were rounded up and killed at the ravine of Babi Yar.

In Western Europe the use of indigenous ancient swastikas petered out long before the modern era but examples can be found in many places such as the famous Bronze Age Swastika Stone on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire.

Some people think this long history can help revive the symbol in Europe as something positive. Peter Madsen, owner of an upmarket tattoo parlour in Copenhagen says the swastika is an element of Norse mythology that holds a strong appeal to many Scandinavians. He is one of the founders of last year's Learn to Love the Swastika Day on 13 November, when tattoo artists around the world offered free swastikas, to raise awareness of the symbol's long multicultural past.

"The swastika is a symbol of love and Hitler abused it. We're not trying to reclaim the hakenkreuz. That would be impossible. Nor is it something we want people to forget," he says.

"We just want people to know that the swastika comes in many other forms, none of which have ever been used for anything bad. We are also trying to show the right-wing fascists that it's wrong to use this symbol. If we can educate the public about the true meanings of the swastika, maybe we can take it away from the fascists."

But for those like Freddie Knoller who have experienced the horrors of fascism, the prospect of learning to love the swastika is not so easy.
Pictures of the US Army biplane, of pre-war products from the US, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music are from the collection of Mukti Jain Campion is the producer and presenter of Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. Reclaiming the Swastika on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 on Friday 24 October - and on the BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast. Steven Heller.
"For the people who went through the Holocaust, we will always remember what the swastika was like in our life - a symbol of pure evil," he says.

"We didn't know how the symbol dates back so many thousands of years ago. But I think it's interesting for people to learn that the swastika was not always the symbol of fascism."

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In the Western world the swastika is synonymous with fascism, but it goes back thousands of years and has been used as a symbol of good fortune in almost every culture in the world. As more evidence emerges of its long pre-Nazi history in Europe, can this ancient sign ever shake off its evil associations?

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Utilize Primary and secondary sources to understanda historical period.

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Set of beliefs and ideas that characterise a political movement and provide the principles from which its policies derive.

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Attempt to overthrow the state.

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Why were tensions building among European nations toward the end of the 1800s?

How did nationalism and imperialism affect the world?

How did the assassination of an Austrian archduke plunge the world into war in 1914?

How did World War I lead to the rise of dictatorships?

How did World War II start, and how did it engulf the world?

What were the costs and consequences of World War II?

How did the global balance of power change between 1900 and 1945, and why?

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Marxism + Social Democrats • “Worker, if left to himself, would not make revolution, but come to terms with the capitalist (105)à workers need to be led by socialist party of professional revolutionaries (don’t betray class) • Social intelligentsia would lead (not Marx)

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An attempted recreation of the type of workers' council which Lenin's communists had established Russia.

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The Allocation of seats according to the number of votes cast for each party.

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A country town chosen as the new capital and seat of government in 1919 instead of troubled Berlin

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To yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice or other principles.

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Refers to a governmental system in a given country or region in which the levers of power are exclusively in the hands of a group or individual whose decisionsare not subject to control from below.

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Govt. printed more money to combat economic problem of war debt.

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Imperial Government resigned.
Adopted a new constitution.
A new seemingly "democratic" government elected.
President appointed for 7 year term.
Error: President

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Factors that led to Germany's Post-war instability:

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Factors that led to Germany's Post-war instability:

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·         Shock of corrupt politicians that brought them to war In the first place

·         Economic problems:

·          Crippling war Debts.
owed 6.6 billion in reparations.

·          Burden of having to pay reparations.

·          High unemployment
.·     Wide spread resentment lead to violence between politicians.  As well as violence on the streets.

·         Revolution was imminent.

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Explain the effect of Germany taking the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

What was the message of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech following the takeover of Czechoslovakia? What did Germany believe regarding this message?

Explain why the Germans and Russians agreed to a treaty.

Where was Danzig located and why was it considered important? What role did it play leading up to war?

What were Poland’s options for defense against Germany? What option did they choose? Why?

Describe the Nazi plan for the invasion of Poland.

Describe the military differences between Poland and Germany.

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An archival film summarizes Germany's preparations for war leading up to its invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939. It proved to be the act of aggression that touched off World War II in Europe.

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Weinmar, Germany 1919

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German paramilitary wits of demobbed soldiers.

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Art Spiegelman author of Maus, a Graphic Novel

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Art Spiegelman author of Maus, a Graphic Novel

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

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Eliezer Wiesel was a Romania-born American novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor of Hungarian Jewish descent. He was the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps.

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Mein Kampf The Story of Adolf Hitler History Channel Documentary

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Short history of Hitler

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Synopsis

Born in Austria in 1889, Adolf Hitler rose to power in German politics as leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as a dictator for the bulk of his time in power. His policies precipitated World War II and the genocide perpetrated against Jewish communities known as the Holocaust. With defeat on the horizon, Hitler committed suicide with wife Eva Braun on April 30, 1945, in his Berlin bunker.

Background and Early Years

Dictator Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, and was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his emotionally harsh father, who also didn't approve of his son's later interest in fine art as a career. Following the death of his younger brother, Edmund, in 1900, Hitler became detached and introverted. He also showed an early interest in German nationalism, rejecting the authority of Austria-Hungary. This nationalism would become the motivating force of Hitler's life.

Alois died suddenly in 1903. Two years later, Adolf's mother allowed her son to drop out of school. After her death in December 1907, he moved to Vienna and worked as a casual laborer and watercolor painter. Hitler applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected both times. Lacking money outside of an orphan's pension and funds from selling postcards, he stayed in homeless shelters. Hitler later pointed to these years as the time when he first cultivated his anti-Semitism, though there is some debate about this account.

In 1913, Hitler relocated to Munich. At the outbreak of World War I, he applied to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, though he was still an Austrian citizen. Although Hitler spent much of his time away from the front lines (with some reports that his recollections of his time on the field were generally exaggerated), he was present at a number of significant battles and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross First Class and the Black Wound Badge.