*Many Germans wanted someone to blame for their loss of World War I, and Hitler found scapegoats for them.  Communists and other leftists had been a fifth column within Germany, as were that parasitic race, the Jews.  Although Germans were the best of the Aryans, the master race, they had been betrayed by people living in their own country.

*The Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act took care of competing political parties, particularly the Communists (and so did the SA and later the SS and Gestapo).  To deal with the Jews, the Nazi government instituted the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.  These reduced Jews from ‘citizens’ to ‘subjects,’ officially stripping them of many basic rights (while the police and courts often turned a blind eye to unofficial violence, theft, and discrimination).  Jews had to adopt the middle names ‘Sarah’ or ‘Isaac,’ could not go to public beaches, parks, or libraries, could not marry Aryans, or fly the German flag.  Many Jews fled or were expelled from Germany, but many stayed, certain that Hitler would not last long.

*In October 1938, more than 12,000 Jews were expelled from Germany.  In November a young German Jew angry about his family’s expulsion from Germany shot a German diplomat in Paris, and three days later, on 10 November, SA and SS units (and other Germans) attacked Jewish houses and businesses and burnt synagogues.  So much broken glass was lying on the streets the next day that the preceding evening was called Kristallnacht (crystal night, or the night of broken glass).

*Eventually, Hitler would propose a Final Solution to the Jewish Question.  Although the original plan was to capture the Royal Navy and ship all the Jews the Madagascar, Germany’s failure to conquer Britain forced a change of plans.  At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, different options were discussed, such as deportation to Russia, working Jews to death on road construction projects.  However, the Final Solution was to send Jews to concentration camps (which had existed since the early 1930s for political prisoners and race enemies) to be worked to death as slave labour or simply exterminated outright.  There were some there who had doubts, but Hitler supposedly said ‘who remembers the Armenians?’  Germany’s other allies did not cooperate happily with this, particularly Hungary, nor did most of the areas Germany conquered during WWII, but millions of Jews (usually estimated at about 6 million) throughout the Greater German Reich were eventually rounded up and killed.

*Other people were considered race enemies or socially undesirable and sent to camps as well.  Communists, Catholics, Poles and other Slavs and untermenschen (sub-humans), Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, prostitutes, the unemployed, the homeless, and more were sent to camps.  In many camps, especially the early concentration camps and work camps, they wore colour-coded triangles to show their crimes.  Jewish inmates accused of more than one crime had their triangle crossed with a yellow one to form the Magen David to show their double crime—and Jews in many conquered countries after 1939 had to wear the yellow badge whether they were in camps yet or not.  Perhaps 5 million non-Jews also died during the Holocaust.

*Germans even killed their own people through programmes of euthanasia (the good death) if they were Lebenunwertesleben (life unworthy of living).  These might include the elderly, the crippled, the retarded, the mentally ill, or anyone else whose blood might dilute the German Race.  On the other hand, the lebensborn (fountain of life) programme supported the and children wives of SS officers, single mothers (including those who had children by German soldiers in occupied countries), and, when Nazi Germany later took over other countries, its facilities were used to house children with Germanic features who were kidnapped from their parents, given new names, and adopted by German families.

*The world was aware of Germany’s anti-Semitic laws in the 1930s, but did not expect things to go as far as they did.  Besides, they had other things to worry about, like Hitler’s expanded military and his expansive ambitions.

*Hitler wanted Lebensraum (living space).  Germany should by stages, annex all German-speaking areas to itself, and then expand through and settle Poland and the Baltics, Ukraine, and Western Russia to the Urals and the Caucasus, expelling, enslaving, or exterminating the previous residents.

*In 1933 Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations and would not be held back by any old agreements.  He rebuilt Germany’s military forces and sent the military into the Rhineland, which the Treaty of Versailles had demilitarised.

*The old Allies did nothing about this. To a certain extent they felt guilty for the harshness of Versailles.  More importantly, their own economic and political situations were not strong enough to support a war.  They hoped that if they could appease Hitler, they could avoid a war.

*To show its power, Germany requested and was granted the right to host the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.  Although German Athletes won more medals than those from any other country, the most famous gold medallist was Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals (100 m spring, 200 m sprint, long jump, and relay) despite competing against Aryan Supermen.  Germany had made a special effort to ‘clean up’ removing Gypsies from Berlin to concentration camps, but also removing ‘no Jews’ signs and other outstanding evidence of prejudice.  Germany’s various discriminatory laws were not applied to foreign visitors, and Jesse Owens claimed to have been treated better in Nazi Germany than in the US—Adidas’s founded asked him to wear his company’s spikes and was the first company to have an African-American endorse its products.

*In 1936, Germany, Italy, and Hungary discussed an alliance.  Italy had been opposed to Germany, but now needed friends after the Abyssinian Crisis, and Hungary tried to help them work out their differences.  Ultimately Hungary backed out following the death of its fascist prime minister, Italy and Germany signed a treaty in October, and in November Mussolini said that now the world would revolve around an Axis running from Rome to Berlin.  Japan would join them through the Tripartite Pact in 1940.

*In March 1938, with the support of Austrian Fascists, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss (unification) and made it part of Germany.  Although this violated the Treaty of Versailles, and Britain, France, and even Italy objected, nothing was done.

*In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain (Prime Minister of the UK), Edouard Deladier (Prime Minister of France) Hitler, and Mussolini met in Munich to address the issue of the Sudetenland, where Hitler claimed the local Germans wanted to rejoin Germany and which he was prepared to invade.  Much to Hitler’s disgust (but the relief of everyone else but Czechoslovakia, who felt deeply betrayed), the Munich Agreement gave the Sudetenland to Germany and Chamberlain went home to cheering crowds, declaring he had achieved ‘peace in our time.’  Deladier, to his surprise, also met cheering crowds in Paris, but privately said, ‘ah, the fools.’ 

*Shortly afterwards, Germany and Italy bullied Czechoslovakia into giving up part of Slovakia to Hungary and Poland conquered another area on its own (and ignored the Czech general who, upon surrendering, predicted that the Poles would soon be handing the area over to the Germans).

*In March 1939, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia (easily done because most of the countries defences were based in the mountains of the Sudetenland), completely annexing the western half, and making a puppet Slovak State in the east (which would later be forced to give up land to Romania that it never got back).   Germany also took over the Memelland in Lithuania.

*Chamberlain was outraged; he felt betrayed by Hitler, and began to mobilise the British army.  France had already begun to mobilise theirs.  However, Hitler was unconcerned, because on 23 August, 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact, was signed.  It was a secret agreement whereby the Nazis and the USSR would divide up Poland, the Baltic republics, Finland, and Bessarabia in Romania (now Moldova) between them.

*On 1 September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland.  The Soviet Union invaded on 17 September.  Britain and France declared war on Germany.  The Second World War had begun, but this time, no-one went to war cheering and there was no dancing in the streets.