German History Part I: 3 Primary Source Documents



Packet 4: Germany 1920’s-1930’s

Effects of WWI and Anti-Semitism

Essential Question:

How did the Nazis go from being an unpopular political group in 1920 to being the most powerful political party in Germany by 1932?

This section of the unit focuses on how the social, political and economic crises of the 1920s threatened democracy in Germany. It examines the human tendency to search for scapegoats in times of crisis, and how such a response relates to issues of identity and group membership. Finally, this section examines how the Nazis used anti-Semitism and racism in their rise to power.

I. Effects of WWI

The Treaty of Versailles, Weimar constitution, Nazi party platform: How did one lead to the other?

1. The Treaty of Versailles--- the peace treaty that ended World War I, signed in 1919

Excerpts from the Treaty of Versailles:

80. Germany will respect the independence of Austria.

81. Germany recognizes the complete independence of Czechoslovakia.

87. Germany recognizes the complete independence of Poland.

119. Germany surrenders all her rights and titles over her overseas countries.

159. The German military forces shall be demobilized and reduced not to exceed 100,000 men.

181. The German navy must not exceed 6 battleships, 6 light cruisers, 12 destroyers, and 12 torpedo boats. No submarines are to be included.

198. The Armed Forces of Germany must not include any military or naval air forces.

231. Germany and her Allies accept the responsibility for causing all the loss and damage to the Allied Powers.

233. Germany will pay for all damages done to the civilian population and property of the Allied Governments. [The figure was later set at $33 billion].

428. To guarantee the execution of the Treaty, the German territory situated to the west of the Rhine River will be occupied by Allied troops for fifteen years.

431. The occupation forces will be withdrawn as soon as Germany complies with the Treaty.

Reaction to the Treaty of Versailles published in a German newspaper:

“[T]oday German honor is being carried to its grave. Do not forget it! The German people will, with unceasing labor, press forward to reconquer the place among the nations to which it is entitled. Then will come vengeance for the shame of 1919.”

Why would this be the German response to this treaty? What seem to be the goals for this treaty? It has been called “vindictive”--- what about this treaty might be vindictive?

Vindictive: vengeful, spiteful, meant to punish

2. The Weimar Constitution (approved in 1919)

After Germany lost World War I, the king left the country and a new government was formed. It was called the Weimar Republic because it was formed in Weimar, a city in Germany. One of the first acts of this new government was to write a constitution.

Excerpts from the Weimar Constitution:

22. Members of parliament are elected in a general, equal, immediate and secret election; voters are men and women older than 20 years . . .

109. All Germans are equal in front of the law . . .

118. Every German is entitled, within the bounds set by general law, to express his opinion freely in word, writing, print, image or otherwise . . .

123. All Germans have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed . . .

135. All Reich inhabitants enjoy full freedom of liberty and conscience. Undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed by the constitution and is placed under the protection of the state

What does this constitution envision for its citizens? What are its goals?

3. Nazi Party Platform (1920)

When the war began, Hitler was a drifter struggling to find his place in the world. When the war was over, that struggle continued but now it had a focus. In his autobiography, he recalls, “In the days that followed [the surrender] my own fate became known to me… I resolved to go into politics.” He was not alone. In the 1920s, many angry veterans joined political parties and clubs that plotted the takeover of the government. In fact, the army hired Hitler to spy on one of those groups, the German Workers’ party. Instead, he became a member.

What attracted him to that particular party? His autobiography explains, “This ridiculous little makeshift [band] with its handful of members, seemed to offer one distinct advantage: it had not yet frozen into organization. Thus there were unlimited opportunities for individual activity.” He set out to transform the group into something more than a political party in the ordinary sense. He wanted to create a “movement.” He had no intention of being “one of the nameless millions who live and die by the whim of chance.” He vowed to control his own destiny and the destiny of Germany.

By February 1920, the tiny party had a new name and a 25-point program. The new

name was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei – NSDAP or Nazi, for short).

Excerpts from The Nazi Party Platform:

1. A union of all Germans to form a great Germany on the basis of the right to self determination of peoples.

2. Abolition of the Treaty of Versailles.

3. Land and territory (colonies) for our surplus population.

4. German blood as a requirement for German citizenship. No Jew can be a member

of the nation.

5. Non-citizens can live in Germany only as foreigners, subject to the law of aliens.

6. Only citizens can vote or hold public office.

7. The state ensures that every citizen live decently and earn his livelihood. If it is

impossible to provide food for the whole population, then aliens must be

expelled.

8. No further immigration of non-Germans. Any non-German who entered

Germany after August 2, 1914, shall leave immediately.

9. A thorough reconstruction of our national system of education. The science of

citizenship shall be taught from the beginning.

10. All newspapers must be published in the German language by German citizens

and owners.

Self-determination: the belief that every nation (organized group of people with a shared history and culture) should have its own independent state and not be ruled by others.

Treaty of Versailles: the peace treaty that ended World War I. The Treaty of Versailles made Germany responsible for the war. As a result of being blamed for starting the war, the treaty required them to pay back the winners of the

war with money and land. Many Germans felt that this treaty was unfair and humiliating.

Surplus: additional

Aliens: immigrants who are not citizens

A cornerstone of Nazi ideology was a belief in the superiority of the Aryan race (or “German blood”). Nazis used this belief to determine who should be a citizen in Nazi Germany and who should be excluded from citizenship.

How might those with “German blood”—those who are granted legal membership into German society—be affected by laws based on Nazi beliefs? How would those without “German blood” be affected? What seems to be the goals for this political platform?

| |Pre WWI Germany |Post WWI Germany |

| | | |

|World reputation |Great _____________ ___ |Germany ___________ the war |

| | |New power on the scene has the reputation of|

| |power (Jews were soldiers too) |Great Industrial Power: _________ |

| |World famous ____________ | |

| | |Humiliating peace treaty |

| | |_______________________ |

|Economy |No inflation |Depression leads to: |

| |Rising wages | |

| |Relative free speech and press | |

|Population |65% Protestant, 34% Catholic, Jews made up |2 million soldiers killed, ½ million widows,|

| |________% |1 million fatherless children |

|Jewish life |Jews were successful, middle class |Jews were in the fields of art, medicine, |

| |Assimilated, proud to be German citizens |law, business. Still felt part of Germany |

| |Felt safe | |

|Anti-Semitism |Anti-Semitism was present but Jews were |Anti-Semitism rises, Rumor that Jews caused |

| |protected by German laws |Germany to lose the war. |

| | |Scapegoating |

| | |Issues of race |

| | |Rise of the Nazi Party |

Video clip: “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” from Cabaret

How did different people in the clip react to the young man singing? What different reactions or emotions did you notice on the faces of the people? What did you think/feel when watching it?

WHAT DO WE DO WITH A VARIATION?

What Do We Do with a Variation?

James Berry

What do we do with a difference?

Do we stand and discuss its oddity

or do we ignore it?

Do we shut our eyes to it

or poke it with a stick?

Do we clobber it to death?

Do we move around it in rage

and enlist the rage of others?

Do we will it to go away?

Do we look at it in awe

or purely in wonderment?

Do we work for it to disappear?

Do we pass it stealthily

Or change route away from it?

Do we will it to become like ourselves?

What do we do with a difference?

Do we communicate to it,

let application acknowledge it

for barriers to fall down?

Stealthily: trying to avoid being noticed

Journal response:

1. What is the message of Berry’s poem? Imagine a poem that described how we are alike. What might the message of such a poem be?

2. Noy Chou, a high school student who was born in Cambodia and reared in the United States wrote the following stanza as part of a poem entitled “You Have to Live in Somebody Else’s Country to Understand.” It explains how she feels about being perceived as different.

What is it like to be an outsider?

What is it like to sit in the class where everyone has blond hair

and you have black hair?

What is it like when the teacher says, “Whoever wasn’t born

here raise your hand.”

And you are the only one.

Then, when you raise your hand, everybody looks at you and

makes fun of you.

You have to live in somebody else’s country to understand.

What does the student add to your understanding of James Berry’s question?

3. How would you answer Berry’s question? What do you do when you notice difference? What do you notice others do? Tell a story or reflect on what you observe in yourself and others.

Why the Jews? Roots of Antisemitism

Scholars are still debating why the Jews were singled out for destruction. Historians have traced negative feelings about Jews back over two thousand years to the time of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of Christianity. Jesus lived as a Jew in Palestine at a time of crisis. After the Romans conquered the country, they insisted that the Jews not only obey Roman laws but also worship Roman gods just as other conquered people did. When Jews refused to do so, they were labeled “stubborn,” “clannish,” and “hostile.” As pressure to accept Roman culture mounted, Jews searched desperately for a way to maintain their religious identity. Some urged open rebellion against Rome. Others, including Jesus, argued for peace.

As each side marshaled arguments in defense of its position, the debate increased in intensity. Still, all of the attacks and counterattacks took place within the context of Judaism. Only when Jesus’s disciples separated themselves from Judaism, did their words take on new meaning. They became, in the words of Krister Stendahl, a professor of Christian Studies, “missiles hurled from a mainly gentile Church toward the Synagogue across the street, from which now those Jews who followed Jesus had been excommunicated. And by that shift Christian anti-Judaism was born.”* He goes on to say that much has been written about why and how the parting of ways happened,

but no one factor was decisive. But once the division was established, both the Church and the Synagogue “felt the necessity to define themselves by sharpening their differences” even though the two faiths are more alike than they are different. As a result, each came to regard the other as not only different but also suspicious, even dangerous.

As a small minority in Europe, Jews were particularly vulnerable to attacks by the Christian majority. By the sixteenth century, many were totally isolated from their Christian neighbors. In a number of countries, people of the Jewish faith were confined to ghettos, sections of a city or town enclosed by high walls and guarded by Christian gatekeepers. With more rigid separation came new myths and misinformation. Jews and other minorities were increasingly portrayed as agents of the devil responsible for every catastrophe, from random crime to plague and drought. People had moved from fearing those they did not know to regarding them as the enemy.

Race and Antisemitism

By the 1700s and 1800s, even as the walls of the ghettos were coming down, a new idea was reviving the old myths and misinformation. That idea was race. Until the 1800s, the word referred mainly to people who shared a nationality or were related to one another in some way. Now many scientists used the term race to refer to those who shared a genetic heritage. Some were so certain that “race” explained all of the cultural differences they observed in the world that they distorted facts or made claims they could not substantiate. Many even ranked the “races.” At the top were the “Aryans,” a mythical people that left India in the distant past and carried its language and culture westward.

A number of people took pride in tracing their ancestry to the “Aryans.” Increasingly, these Europeans and Americans believed that, as the descendants of the “Aryans,” they were superior to other “races,” including the Jewish or “Semitic race.” In the past, Jews were targeted for discrimination because of their religious beliefs. Now they were excluded because of their “race.” Antisemitism, which literally means “against Semites,” was coined specifically to describe this new hatred of Jews.

Scientists who showed the flaws in racist thinking were ignored. In the late 1800s, the German Anthropological Society tried to determine whether there really were racial differences between Jewish and “Aryan” children. After studying nearly seven million students, the society concluded that the two groups were more alike than different. Historian George Mosse notes that the survey had surprisingly little impact: “The idea of race had been infused with myths, stereotypes, and subjectivities long ago, and a scientific survey could change little. The idea of pure, superior

races and the concept of a racial enemy solved too many pressing problems to be easily

discarded.”**

By the early 1900s, “race” had become the distorted lens through which too many people viewed the world. And as racist thinking became “respectable,” attacks against Jews and other minorities intensified. These attacks were particularly virulent in times of stress and uncertainty, like the worldwide depression that began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. At such times, having a “racial enemy” who can be blamed for society’s problems offers an easy answer to complex problems.

In 1933, for example, a Protestant minister in Germany wrote, “In the last fifteen years in Germany, the influence of Judaism has strengthened extraordinarily. The number of Jewish judges, Jewish politicians, Jewish civil servants in influential positions has grown noticeably. The voice of the people is turning against this.”*** Yet government statistics paint a very different picture. In 1933, Jews made up less than 1 percent of the population. And of the 250 Germans who held prominent government posts between 1919 and 1933, only four were Jews. The myth of a Germany dominated by Jews was fostered by groups like Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist, or

Nazi, party. In speech after speech, they maintained that the Jews were everywhere, controlled everything, and acted so secretly that few could detect their influence. The charge was absurd; but after hearing it again and again, many came to believe it.

The Rise of Hitler

In January 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor, or prime minister, of Germany. Within weeks, he had set into motion a series of laws and orders that replaced a democratic government with a dictatorship based on “race” and terror. From the start, he targeted Jews as “the enemy.” Little by little, step by step, they were separated from their neighbors. Then in 1935, Hitler announced three new laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and made it a crime for Christians to have contacts with them.

Once he was firmly in control of Germany, Hitler turned his attention to neighboring countries. By 1940, he ruled much of Eastern and Western Europe. In one conquered nation after another, Jews were identified, isolated, and ultimately singled out for murder. By 1943, most European Jews were either dead or on the way to death camps.

*Krister Stendahl, “Can Christianity Shed Its Anti-Judaism?” Brandeis Review (Spring 1992), 26.

**George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Fertig, 1978).

*** Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People (Oxford University Press, 1992), 24.

German History: Rise of the Nazi Party

Propaganda, Anti-Semitism, and Obedience

Essential Questions:

• How did the Nazis dismantle democracy in the 1930's?

• How did the Nazis use fear and propaganda to consolidate their power? Why did so many Germans obey?

This section of the unit focuses on the small steps that led to the dismantling of democracy and the creation of a totalitarian state. It also helps to build an understanding of the consequences of the choices that people made in the 1930s. In addition students will examine how the Nazi regime used propaganda and education to build a racial state by dehumanizing the "other".

Key terms:

Totalitarianism

Propaganda

Obedience

Indifference

I. Propaganda

Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl

[pic]

Leni Riefenstahl

Opening statement of the film:

“On 5 September 1934, 20 years after the outbreak of the war (WWI)

16 years after the beginning of German suffering (the treaty of Versailles)

19 months after the beginning of Germany’s rebirth (Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor 1/1933)

Adolph Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers.”

You will see:

• Hitler arriving by airplane into Nuremberg in 1934

• Hitler’s motorcade through the streets of Nuremberg to his hotel room

• Evening rally outside hotel

• Nuremberg at dawn

• Encampment of “the Faithful”

• Folk parade

Images (what did you SEE?) Symbols (What did they MEAN?)

II. Anti-Semitism

From about 1940-1944, the most important differentiation between the inhabitants of Europe was that between Aryan and Semites: the former were permitted to live, the latter were condemned to die… The reasoning behind this has been the subject of many books. It did not begin with Hitler, but he fanned the spark into a devastating flame:

[pic]

..The Jew completely lacks the most essential prerequisite of a cultural people, namely the idealistic spirit… He is and remains a parasite, a sponger who, like a pernicious bacillus, spreads over wider and wider areas according as some favorable area attracts him… Wherever he establishes himself the people who grant him hospitality are bound to be bled to death sooner or later… He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated… To mask his tactics and fool his victims, he talk of the equality of all men, no matter what their race or color may be… To all external appearances, he strive to ameliorate the conditions under which the workers live; but in reality his aim is to enslave and thereby annihilate the non-Jewish races. The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl who he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her form the bosom of their own people. The Jews uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundation of a subjugate people.. The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.

… the Aryan is the Prometheus of mankind, form whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling a new that fire which, in the form o knowledge, illuminated the dark night… As a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races…. By imposing on them a useful, though hard, manner of employing their powers he not only spared the lives of those whom he had conquered but probably made their lives easier than these had been in the former state of so called freedom. While he ruthlessly maintained his position as their master, he not only remained master but he also maintained and advanced civilization… If we divide mankind into three categories--- founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture—the Aryan alone can be considered as representing the first category.. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth, within a few thousand years human culture will vanish and the world will become a desert.

Excerpts from Mein Kampf, (My Struggle) by Adolf Hitler (published 1925)

Voices in the Dark

George Mosse writes, “To many all over Europe it seemed as if the First World War had never ended but was being continued during the interwar years. The vocabulary of political battle, the desire to utterly destroy the political enemy, and the way in which adversaries were pictured, all seemed to continue the First World War against a set of different, internal foes.” On a train ride just after the war, Henry Buxbaum, a veteran from Friedburg – a small town in the German state of Hesse – discovered that he had become the “enemy”:

The train was pitch-dark. The lights were out, nothing uncommon after the war when the German railroads were in utter disrepair and very few things functioned orderly… That night, we were seven or eight people in the dark, fourth-class compartment, sitting in utter silence till one of the men started the usual refrain: “Those God-damned Jews, they are at the root of all our troubles.” Quickly, some of the others joined in. I couldn’t see them and had no idea who they were, but from their voices they sounded like younger men. They sang the same litany over and over again, blaming the Jews for everything that had gone wrong with Germany and for anything else wrong in this world. It went on and on, a cacophony of obscenities, becoming more and more vicious and at the same time more unbearable with each new sentence echoing in my ears. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I knew very well that to start up with them would get me into trouble, and that to answer them wasn’t exactly the height of wisdom, but I couldn’t help it… I was burning with rage and told them exactly what I thought of them and their vicious talk. I began naturally with the announcement: “Well, I am a Jew and etc., etc.” That was the signal they needed. Now they really went after me, threatening me physically. I didn’t hold my tongue as the argument went back and forth. They began jostling me till one of them next to me and near the door, probably more encouraged by the darkness than by his own valor, suggested: “Let’s throw the Jew out of the train.” Now, I didn’t dare ignore this signal, and from then on kept quiet. I knew that silence for the moment was better than falling under the wheels of a moving train. One of the men in our compartment, more vicious in his attacks than the others, got off the train with me in Friedburg. When I saw him under the dim light of the platform, I recognized in him a fellow I knew well from our soccer club… I would never have suspected this man of harboring such rabid, antisemitic feelings.

JOURNAL RESPONSE:

• Suppose the lights had not gone out. Would the conversation in the compartment have

been the same?

• If you had been on the train, do you think you would have said or done anything? Have

you or someone you know ever had a similar experience? How did you feel? How did

you respond?

• In times of economic upheaval, political unrest, or social stress, people often feel

powerless and angry. How do some leaders turn those feelings against “outsiders” or

“strangers”?

III. Anti-Jewish propaganda, education, and the false science of race

The Nazis used propaganda to sway the people of Germany.  As Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels was responsible for creating it. His job was to make sure that every form of expression – from music to textbooks and even sermons – trumpeted the same message.

In his diary, Goebbels wrote, “That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result, however intelligent it is, for it is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent; its task is to lead to success. Therefore, no one can say your propaganda is too rough, too mean; these are not criteria by which it may be characterized. It ought not be decent nor ought it be gentle or soft or humble; it ought to lead to success... Never mind whether propaganda is at a wellbred level; what matters is that it achieves its purpose.” To achieve that purpose, Hitler insisted that “it must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away.”

Hitler and Goebbels did not invent propaganda. The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to counter Protestant teachings in the 1600s. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I, for example. Hitler and Goebbels employed it in very similar ways. They, too, wanted to counter the teachings of their opponents, shape public opinion, and build loyalty.  But in doing so, they took the idea to new extremes.

Propaganda homework/Message board post

1. First, go to the Propaganda Overview link. You will find a page with an overview and several summarizes of Nazi propaganda for 4 different subjects: sports, art, film and education. Choose 1 subject to focus on and read the summary for that subject.

2. Next, go to the link on our list called: US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Propaganda. Your goal is to see if you can locate images of the type of propaganda you have chosen to focus on: art, sports, film, or education. After looking at several images, choose 1 or 2 to write about for your message board post.

a. Helpful hints for using this site: When you open the page, look at your choices on the right-hand side. Click the boxes to choose what you want to see--- you can choose more than one option. Slide over the images that interest you for a brief description, click on them to enlarge and read a more detailed description of the image. Use the arrows at the bottom of the page to see more images.

3. Go to the Propaganda message board post and complete the post.

IV. Obedience

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man,

you find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience

than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

-- C.P. Snow

Journal entry: What might cause someone to harm another person against their will? What are possible reasons that someone might say they would want to act one way, but in fact, act in a different way?

Video: The Nazis: A Warning from History, Hitler’s obedience speech

Video: Obedience, Dr Stanley Milgram

Yale University, 1950s

How do average, even admirable people become dehumanized by the critical circumstances pressing in on them?

---Hannah Arendt

Experiment/research question: At what point would a person refuse official directions in an obviously cruel process?

Respond to the following questions.

1. Describe the experiment you’ve seen in this film.

2. What were the (unexpected) results of this experiment?

3. List some details you noticed about the people in this film. Consider those in the role of authority, and those who are the true subjects of the experiment, those in the role of “teacher.”

4. In your opinion, what do these experiments tell us? Teach us?

Notes:

Many variations were tried:

Promixity--- how close or far the “scientist” was to the true subject, including using a microphone in another room. Result: the closer the “scientist” was, the more obedient the subject

Number of “scientists”---- Result: the greater the number of “scientists,” the more obedient the subject

All authority is not evil, and all obedience is not bad. Remember, there is an Obedience Spectrum:

Blind disobedience------------ Conscious Disobedience

Blind obedience--------------- Conscious Obedience

Discussion and application:

Journal response:

1. Write about your thinking/feeling response to the Milgram film. What were you thinking as you watched? Feeling?

2. Consider the obedience spectrum. Where is the true dividing line? Is it between obedience and disobedience, or between conscious and blind actions?

3. Hitler and the Nazis set up a killing bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is the procedures, rules and regulations put in place by an organization place to manage activity. It is made up of standardized procedures and requires the following of official rules, policies, and a hierarchy of people in authority.

How did they do this? Was anti-Semitism the sole motivating factor or did the role of authority and obedience also play a role? What role might it have played?

V. INDIFFERENCE

BBC Film: The Nazis: A Warning from History

“The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, 
but paved with indifference.
”

---- Ian Kershaw

You will watch 4 short sections of this video called Chaos and Consent, and will see:

• Destruction of Munich synagogue

• Interview with Munich resident about anti-Jewish sentiment

• German anti-Jewish propaganda

• Gestapo files found in Wurzburg, Germany and Professor Robert Gellately’s study of them

• The story of Elza Totske, Wurzburg resident who died in a concentration camp

• Resi Kraus, Wurzburg resident

• Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, giving a speech

• Kristallnacht—2 perspectives:

o Rudi Bamber, member of a Jewish family

o Erna Kranz, Munich resident

• Nazi rally

Journal response:

1. Choose one part--- one section, one moment, one statement, or one person--- from what you’ve watched. In your journal, state which part of the video you’ve chosen to think about/write about. Then, explain why you’ve chosen this part. Explain what you think and how you feel about this part. Share any moral statements or judgments you have about what you’ve watched today.

2. Consider this video with the Milgram experiments we watched. How does this video seem to explain how the Nazis were able to rise to power and attempt to destroy an entire population?

3. Consider Ian Kershaw’s quote at the top of this page. How does this quote relate to what you’ve just watched? Do you agree with the statement? What moral statements or judgments can you make about what you’ve written here?

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Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and rapidly became one of the best-known examples of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's techniques, such as moving cameras, the use of telephoto lenses to create a distorted perspective, aerial photography, and revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography, have earned Triumph recognition as one of the greatest films in history. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. The film was popular in the Third Reich and elsewhere, and has continued to influence movies, documentaries, and commercials to this day.

NOTE: Germans were not the only ones to join extremist groups in the early twentieth century. In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was revived in the United States. It boasted that its purpose was to “uphold Americanism, advance Protestant Christianity, and eternally maintain white supremacy.” Members were inspired by a movie called The Birth of a Nation. The movie glorified the Klan’s activities during Reconstruction. Unlike the original Klan, however, the new group was not just anti-black but also anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-Catholic. By the early 1920s, the Klan had nearly five million members and controlled a number of state governments.

How were the Klan’s goals similar to those of the Nazis? To those of extremist groups today? What differences seem most

striking?

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