Primary Sources of German History - Assignment Example

History Questions + Essay School Primary sources are absolutely important to the study of German history, because they are helpful for precise reconstruction of historical events. Thus such primary sources as official documents should be first checked for their authenticity in order not to include into historical analyses some false documents and therefore not to create false facts. In general, primary sources are crucial for any historical study, because they reconstruct the whole picture of a particular era; moreover, it is primary sources which makes people trust these or that facts proclaimed in historic resources and monographs. 2. The environmental concerns were multiple. First of all, because of enormous coal mining in Germany, the coal resources were slowly reducing; moreover, because of the coal mining there were huge mounds of rock and waste of the industry, which occupied huge territories. Also, development of industries was gradually destroying atmosphere and polluting air. Furthermore, the issue of air pollution was extremely important in those times, because they were new and people hadn’t yet created any solutions for the issues like that. The population boom rose up a question concerning overpopulation in Germany and hence the demand for production of goods and resources also increased, which led to partial depletion of natural resources. 3. Weimar Constitution was very vicious as it was extremely delusional in its democratic focus. First of all, it made people think that they lived in democratic republic and had their right to take control over political power. In fact, it helped Hitler to rise to power, as he used the opportunity of free speech and liberal values in order to establish his authoritarian power. The problem was that Hitler’s party was the biggest in those times and therefore it acquired more votes than any other party in the elections of 1933. Moreover, people were dissatisfied with Socialist Democrats ruling, so Hitler’s party was the only appropriate choice for them. 4. The very first reason why women voted for Hitler back in 1933 was that Nazi Party was proclaimed to be a Christian party and they stated that they were standing for Christianity, so women, who are considered to be greater fighters for their religious values than men, were glad that such a religious party was going to rule. Talking about urban women, they were more open-minded and well-informed of what was going on in the country, so voting for Nazi Party was the only choice for them, as well as for the men who agreed that Socialist Democrats hadn’t managed to rule appropriately during their term. 5. Eugenics played important role in social politics of Nazi Germany because the party wanted to improve Aryan race, so they thought that prevention from ability to give birth of people who had some physical or mental disabilities and health problems would make the race cleaner. That’s why they sterilized many people who had some health problems and mental diseases in order for these people not to be able to produce humans with the same problems. This program was supposed to improve the entire German nation. 6. The Wannsee Protocol was the outcome of the Wannsee Conference conducted for the senior officials of the Nazi Germany on 20 January 1942. The main point of the meeting was searching for the solution of the Jewish people who needed to be relocated from Western Europe, according to Nazi Party. Hence the Wannsee Protocol stated that Jewish had to be sent to Eastern Europe in order to be wiped out. The protocol was very important because in fact it commanded the entire destinies of many Jewish families, who were later killed in concentration camps in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. 7. Cumulative radicalization is the term that means that some extremist processes that are going on somewhere become more severe and radical for some reasons. In terms of Nazi Germany, cumulative radicalization was considered as justification of Nazi’s extremist actions against Jewish people, Slavs, and those who had different sexual orientations, like homosexual people. The period when terror against those people became worse and even more terrible, especially during the Second World War, is called the period when cumulative radicalization stepped into Nazi Gemany’s political and social arena. However, in fact this term just disguises calling those events severe, enormous terror and discrimination. 8. Marshall Plan was an American initiative, a plan of economic aid for post-war reconstruction of Europe. The plan presupposed that the United States would give some money in order to maintain European economy and in the meantime America wanted to stop expansion of USSR and their communist ideas in European countries. Thus the United States gave $13 billion in order to help European countries to rebuild their industries which were damaged after the end of the Second World War. One of the main purposes of the aid was to destroy the existed trade barriers between European countries and help to establish their prosperity in order to be able to stand against Soviet communism. 9. Like any other deviant art movement Krautrock is important to historical exploration because its occurrence demonstrates the tendencies of the generation that came after the generation of war. Hence, the youth who appeared to live in post-war Germany had to create their new kinds of arts. Appearance of Krautrock is an important determinant of appearance of a brand new liberal movement in Germany. Moreover, it is crucial because the generation of people who lived during the war was absolutely devastated and crushed by the outcomes of the war; although the fact that Krautrock appeared meant that the new generation was on their way to reconstruction of their country in a new way. 10. One of the reasons why the national police force was created in West Germany was that there must be some non-military structure that would hold control over the order in the state. However, the civil service-type structure shouldn’t have had a very wide jurisdiction in order not to cover all the responsibilities for the order in the state. Hence, Germans wanted to divide jurisdiction and responsibilities for looking after the state order between several organizations so that they wouldn’t have their interests crossed and also wouldn’t hold too wide responsibilities. 1. Essay question 1: Discuss anti-semitism in Germany from the end of the 19th century to the Final Solution. Anti-Semitism had been a great problem for the entire German nation long before Nazi Party found the solution for the Jewish problem in 1942. However, German anti-Semitism wasn’t like any other anti-Semitism in the world, because German people had their own reasons to dislike Jewish. At the end of nineteenth century Jewish people started immigrating from Eastern Europe in order to settle down later in some Western European countries and the United States, so Germany was that staging post between Eastern Europe and the Western world. Jewish people were considered to be untidy, dirty people, who separated themselves gathering in their own communities, unwilling to get assimilated with the rest of ethnic inhabitants of Germany. At first, Jewish started integrating into the lowest social classes, looking for jobs at factories and becoming servants in rich German families. However, in some time they raised and climbed career ladder, stepping on the next social levels. Jewish collected their own capitals and owed their private property because of their own businesses in Germany. Therefore the very first thing that put German people into a rage regarding Jewish was that they thought Jewish were getting their success and occupied their places. Moreover, as far as Jewish wanted their children to get the best education, they started sending them to the best universities and almost a third part of German students was Jewish youth. Furthermore, Jewish started filling German big cities like Munich and Berlin. Hence, German people felt like Jewish were pressing them out of their own cities, getting their job places and consuming their business structure. One of the most important aspects of the problem concerned Jewish alienation from the rest of the people who lived in Germany. Their communities were closed for strangers and they considered Germans as strangers in their own country. It freaked Germans out, as they couldn’t find a right approach to make Jewish integrate into German culture and society. Also, the religious conflict was very tense and affected Jewish-German relationships. As far as Jewish were quite orthodox concerning their religion (Judaism), they didn’t accept any other religions and were very hostile towards Germans, who were mostly Christian in those times. The problem was elaborated by the fact that Jewish people, who created their own communities, expanded their liberal ideas, which didn’t leave any room for Germans’ anti-Semitist ideas. Hence, as more Jewish gathered on the same location, the more liberal anti-governmental ideas they spread in the territory; and that was just inconvenient for German ruling class. When Nazi party acquired their power with Hitler as their senior leader, the race and ethnic problem stood up on the top of the list of Jewish-German conflicts. Nazis were promoting the Arian race and Jewish people didn’t fit the pattern of the “appropriate” race. Therefore it was obvious that Jewish people weren’t the right kind of people to inhabit not only Germany but the entire world in general. A far as in those times anti-Semitism was a quite widespread thing worldwide, the Jewish issue was problematic in most countries. For some reasons, Jewish were the kind of people who managed to establish financial success at any places they went and settled down in. Thus their racial inappropriateness was a great justification for Nazi Party to include Jewish into the list of unwanted nationalities and make their existence on German lands problematic. Suppression of Jewish started long time ago though, at the end of nineteenth century, but during the ruling of Nazis it transformed into so-called “cumulative radicalization” and Jewish became officially persecuted. In order to resolve the Jewish issue, the senior leaders of Nazi Party gathered in Wannsee for the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. Even though the ideas and propositions they presented within the scopes of this extremely short conference weren’t new (by that time many Jewish had already been murdered in concentration camps), the Wannsee Protocol permitted and made it official to destroy the people who were characterized as Jewish according to certain established physical and ideological criteria. After the protocol, thousands of Jewish people were murdered or became objects of terrible medical experiments conducted by Nazis during the Second World War. Thus, the “final resolution” of Jewish issue appeared to turn into one of the greatest genocides in the history of mankind. Read More