Video: How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

﻿Hi, and welcome to today's history lessons to the Weimar and Nazi Germany. I'm Miss Shanks, And today we're going to be looking at how did the Nazi Party view and portray minorities in society? A lot of the resources from today's lesson come from an educational website called The Holocaust Educational Trust. And I highly recommend that if after this lesson you do want to find out more information, that you go to this website. For today's lesson you'll need a pen, a piece of paper, ruler, and pencil, and ideally a quiet place to work with no distractions. I highly recommend that you also keep all your notes together from this unit on Weimar and Nazi Germany somewhere in a safe place. What I'd like you to do first is to please pause the video now and copy down today's lesson title, which is the question you'll see on your screen. So we're going to start our lesson today by looking at what were Nazi beliefs and attitudes about race? Then we'll look at how were minority groups treated in Nazi Germany, following this with an extended writing task, and finally the exit quiz. So what were Nazi beliefs and attitudes about race? Hitler believed that Germany's future was dependent on the creation of the pure Aryan race within Germany. When we talk about the Aryan race, we're referring to people of European descent who are often portrayed as having blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, and athletic. The Nazis viewed Aryans as the superior race, or master race, and believed that Germans were a pure race of Aryan descent that had lost its purity. Hitler and the Nazis used methods to try and achieve the creation of this Aryan race such as eugenics and selective breeding, and introducing policies and laws to stop relationships between Aryans and other groups within Germany. I've just used the term "eugenics." Where have you seen this term used before? This was actually taught as a lesson within schools as a way to prepare children, and girls in particular, in combination with race studies, for how they could find the perfect Aryan husband in order to create this master race that Hitler was seeking. We'll think about the role of women within Nazi Germany. In the Lebensborn programme, single women with the these Aryan qualities were encouraged to have children with SS officers as part of a breeding programme in order to create and produce more Aryan children. Now, within Nazi Germany, the Nazis referred to another group of people or people who they deemed as inferior as being the Untermenschen. Now, Untermenschen is a term used by the Nazis to refer to races who were inferior or which the Nazis considered to be subhuman. The Nazis believed that the Aryan race had been contaminated by the Untermenschen, which is why they had lost their purity. I want to emphasise here the importance of our understanding of Untermenschen. Untermenschen is who the Nazis viewed as subhuman or inferior. They were ultimately German. And a lot of the people who were considered by the Nazis to be Untermenschen had actually been in Germany their entire lives, their previous generations, their family had been German, and they're identified as German. However, other aspects of their identity were being used by the Nazis to diminish their German identity, and in that sense, the belonging that they had to Germany and to the country that they grew up in and that they felt that they belonged to. What I'd like you to do now is pause the screen for a moment and to copy down both these two key terms. We're going to use them throughout the lesson today. When you're ready to continue, please resume the video. I'd just like to take a moment to look at the image on your screen. What do you think these are? These are badges used in the concentrations camps as a way to identify the reasons why the person had been placed in that concentration camp. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn onto the jacket and trousers of the prisoners. The colours and use of them varied between camps. But an example I'm going to talk to you about now would be an example of the Dachau concentration camp. If you look at the image that just appeared on your screen, this is an example of a political prisoner, such as a communist or trade unionist. And they would be identified by the red triangle. The green triangle used to identify common criminals. Pink triangles were mainly used to identify homosexual men. And black triangles were used to identify people who were deemed work-shy or lazy according to the Nazis. That included Roma and Sinti people, people who were mentally ill or mentally disabled, alcoholics, drug addicts, and people who refused conscription to the German army. Prisoners who were Jewish would also have a yellow triangle, which would then be overlapped with a different triangle based on their crimes. So the SS officer could identify them as also being Jewish. For instance, a Jewish political prisoner would have a yellow triangle with a red triangle overlapping it. This would also create the six-pointed triangle that would reflect the Star of David, which is the symbol of Judaism. Now within today's lesson, we won't be looking at the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, as that's what we're going to focus on next lesson. But in today's lesson, we're going to look at other minority groups within Germany and how they were treated by the Nazis. This table you can see on your screen, you're going to copy it down in a moment. And as we go through today's lesson, you're going to be completing this table, looking at what were the Nazi attitudes towards this group and how were they treated by the Nazis, including specific laws and policies where possible. The groups we're going to look at today include people with disabilities, homosexuals, black people, and Roma or Sinti people, which the Nazis referred to as gipsies. What I'd like to do now is to pause the video here. I'd like you to copy out that table on an A4 piece of paper. It will come up again in a moment for you to copy it. Now what I'd like to do first of all is I'm going to talk you through how to complete your table in terms of the first group that we're going to look at in today's lesson, which is people with disabilities. What I'd like you to do first is to read the information about the Nazi treatment of people with disabilities that you can find in your worksheets for this lesson. Have a read through, including the personal example and personal study that we've got in there as well. Please read the information just about people with disabilities to begin with, and then resume this video when you're ready to go through and discuss how we would complete our table based on the information that we've just read. Okay, so let's start by focusing on one group in particular in Nazi Germany. Let's focus on people with disabilities. So first of all, what were Nazi attitudes towards this group? The Nazis viewed people with disabilities as a burden on society, that they weaken that racial purity of the Aryan master race. So how were they treated by the Nazis? And in this section, where possible, try and include any specific laws or policies that were introduced against this particular group of people. So the first thing I'm going to talk about is the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in 1933. This law meant that it became legal to sterilise anyone. And I won't talk about sterilisation. It is surgery to physically, makes one unable to have children. So to sterilise anyone suffering with a particular illness or disease. That would include people with mental or physical disabilities, people with learning disabilities, blindness, deafness, epilepsy, depression, and alcoholism. Between 1934 and 1939, roughly 400,000 people were sterilised to stop them from having children, as the Nazis believed that these disabilities and these illnesses and diseases could be passed on genetically. Another thing we'll talk about next can be quite hard to talk about and be quite hard to listen to. The T4 programme in 1939 was introduced by the Nazis, and it involved killing children with severe mental or physical disabilities, either through deliberate starvation or a lethal combination of drugs. By 1945, it is estimated that around 5,000 children with disabilities had been killed as part of this T4 programme. What I would like to do now is to pause the video here, and on your table to copy down my model example of how I've completed it for people with disabilities. Please resume the video when you're ready to continue. What I'd like to do for the next part of the lesson is to read the information in the worksheets about how the Nazis treated homosexuals, black people, and Roma people. I want to use this information to complete your table in the same way we did for people with disabilities. You will find all the information you need in the worksheets for this lesson, and included are the personal stories of people who were affected by these policies and these attitudes that the Nazis had. Please also use, where possible, laws, policies, and people's testaments, people's stories, when you're filling in your table. When you've completed your table, please resume the video. I think we've come to a really good point in today's lesson now to consolidate the learning. You've been given a lot of new information today. So on the screen, you can see a task or a question to describe how Hitler and the Nazi Party treated minority groups within Germany. So within this, I could talk about black people and their treatment by the Nazi Party, homosexuals, people with disabilities, and Roma people, and how each of these groups were individually targeted, the reasons for them being targeted by the Nazis, and how the Nazis treated them within Germany. So we're then talking about black people. We could talk about the racist attitudes that made it difficult for them to get employment within Germany or then to keep their jobs within Nazi Germany. Talk about that idea of Jazz being bundled radios in 1935, the idea of conscription being introduced with the rearmament programmes in 1935. But actually black people were commonly rejected from being conscripted, simply based on the colour of their skin. And as a result, they were made to work as slave labourers instead, working 72 hours a week. Often working in ammunition factories or building weaponry or building ammunition. And still for the war effort, but they were rejected from conscription based on the colour of their skin, and therefore worked in harsher conditions. We could also include talking about homosexuals and the idea that homosexuality was illegal. And it was illegal in the Weimar Republic, but the Nazis strengthened those existing laws in June of 1935. We talk about the use of concentration camps. You could talk about living in secrecy. In fact, previously to the Nazis getting into power in Germany, homosexuality was illegal. But Berlin was seen as this hope, this place for homosexual men to gather and to be able to be themselves and not live in fear or secrecy, that they were able to express themselves in a way that was accepted in society. Whereas now they were expected to live in secrecy, through fear of the Gestapo and the SS and the consequences of what that could lead to. We got to talk about people with disabilities. For example, you could talk about the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which is in reference to to the law introduced about sterilisation and sterilising people with illnesses or diseases, which the Nazis believed could be passed on genetically. You could also talk about the T4 programme in 1939, which was the murdering of children with severe mental or physical disabilities. We can also talk about minority groups, Roma people. They were accused of being work-shy. They had to register with authorities, who were vulnerable to arrests, and they were also a group that was sent to concentration camps. In particular, here you could talk about the role of Roma people in particular camps, about Auschwitz-Birkenau. So if I was to write a paragraph to describe the treatment of a minority group within Nazi Germany, let's say on your screen now you can see a paragraph I've written about homosexuals and the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. I've also included some questions I want you to think about in relation to my paragraph. So what I'd like you to do is to pause the video now, to read the three questions, to read my paragraph, and to see where within my paragraph you can find the answers to the questions. Resume the video when you're ready to discuss the answers. So the first question was, why did the Nazis target homosexuals? Within my paragraph I've made it explicitly clear from the beginning why this minority group were targeted by the Nazis. what were the Nazi attitudes towards this group? So here I've said about homosexual men being unable to contribute to the increase in Aryan population and that they were seen as being not strong enough to fight in the German army, and that was a particular view of Himmler. The second question was what policies were introduced against homosexuals. So I spoke about clubs and bars where gay men would meet being closed down. That in June 1935, the laws had been changed to now make it explicit and make them tighter against homosexual men. And then finally, what evidence can you find in the paragraph to suggest that the Nazis were successful in achieving their aims with this minority group? And here we've mentioned that 22,000 gay men were being sent to prison between 1936 and '38, compared to 4,000 between '33 and '34. Homosexual prison. That's a concentration camp where a person can experimented on. Because Himmler believed they could be cured of their sexuality. So within the paragraph that I have written to describe the treatment of a minority group within Nazi Germany, I've structured it in a way where I've spoken about what were Nazi attitudes to begin with, what policies were introduced against this particular group, and then I've finally spoken about the consequences of these policies. So what were Nazi attitudes? What policies were introduced, or how were they treated? And what were the consequences of these policies and treatment? What I'd like you to do now is to complete another paragraph which could be used to answer the question, describe how Hitler and the Nazi Party treated minority groups within Germany. I've included some sentence stems on the screen to help you. And on the next slide, you will see the plan that I created before I completed my paragraph. This can give you some guidance on the type of information to include in your paragraph. Well done in completing today's history lessons for the Weimar and Nazi Germany. Please don't forget to take the exit quiz at the end of the lesson to check your learning and understanding of the content today. In next lesson we'll looking at how persecution of Jews in Germany escalated after 1933. Thanks for joining me again today, and well done on completing this lesson.

Worksheet: How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

Exit Quiz: How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

Completed: How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

This lesson covers content on the persecution of minorities in Nazi Germany between 1933-1939. The minorities that are examined include, people with disabilities, Roma, Sinti and Gypsy communities, black people, homosexuals and Jews. For some people this will be be a sensitive topic. If that applies to you, you may want to do the rest of this lesson with a trusted adult nearby who can support.

History

Y11 History

Key Stage 4

Year 11

Miss

How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1919-1939

UNIT

The German Reich, 1871-1918

The Russian Revolution, 1917

How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Why did the German people feel stabbed in the back?

Why was there a rise in political extremism in Germany after WW1?

Why was 1923 known as a year of crisis?

How did Germany recover its economy in the years 1924-29?

How did Germany improve their international relations, 1924-29?

Were the 1920s a golden age for all Germans?

How far had the Weimar Republic recovered by 1929?

Why was the year 1929 a significant turning point for Germany?

The early development of the Nazi Party: what did Hitler believe in?

Who were the SA and what was their role?

What was the Munich Putsch?

What were the consequences of the Munich Putsch?

What were the Nazi Party strategies during the lean years?

Why were the Nazi Party so successful after 1929?

How did political developments in 1932 result in Hitler becoming Chancellor in January 1933?

History

How did the Nazi party view and portray minorities in society?

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Worksheet

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete