Nazism and the Rise of Hitler Class 9 Extra Question: Long Answer Type

Chapter: Nazism and the rise of Hitler

Questions: Long Answer Type

1. Describe in detail Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.
2. From whom did Hitler borrow his racist ideology? Explain.
3. Why is Nazism considered a calamity not only for Germany but for the entire Europe?

Answers

1. (i) Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘‘undesirable’’ in the extended empire like mentally or physically unfit Germans, Gypsies, blacks, Russians, Poles.
   (ii) But Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. They were stereotyped as ‘killers of Christ and usurers’. Until medieval times, Jews were barred from owning land.
   (iii) They survived mainly through trade and moneylending. They lived in separately marked areas called ‘ghettos’.
   (iv) They were often persecuted through periodic organised violence and expulsion from land.
   (v) All this had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews for being the killers of Christ. However, Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was based on pseudo-scientific theories of race, which held that conversion was no solution to ‘the Jewish problem’. It could be solved only through their total elimination.
2. (i) Hitler borrowed his racist ideology from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
   (ii) Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection.
   (iii) Herbert Spencer later on added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to this idea, only those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions.
   (iv) Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of selection. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered people.
3. Nazi ideology specified that there was racial hierarchy and no equality between people.
   (i) The blond, blue-eyed Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while the Jews were located somewhere on the lowest rung of the ladder.
   (ii) The number of people killed by Nazi Germany was 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians, 70,000 Germans.
   (iii) Nazism glorified the use of force and brutality. It ridiculed internationalism, peace and democracy.
   (iv) Nazi Germany became the most dreaded criminal state. Hitler chose war as the way
   out of approaching the economic crisis.
   (v) Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England in September 1940