By way of introduction
It is also part of my personal history, as I am married to a German who is the son of a German soldier who fought at the Russian Front in World War II and lost a leg in doing so. (My husband and his brother both became conscientious objectors and have had nothing to do with the German military.) The memory of what Hitler did--the mass killings, the ruin he brought to Germany--is still very much alive in the country. Still today I listen to the emotional stories of my 88-year-old German mother-in-law who, just a few weeks ago, stated, "Hitler hat alles kaput gemacht" (Hitler ruined/broke everything). I'm curious to know both what happened to bring him to power and also what the lasting effects of his reign of terror were.
Today, I want to explore: what is the connection between an awkward, insecure, failed painter and the extermination of twelve million people: six million Jews and millions of others deemed "undesirable"? In addition to the Nazis' murder of six million Jews, historians have documented that the Nazis murdered three million Soviet POWs, two million ethnic Poles, between 100,000 to 200,000 Romani people, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, trade unionists, and other political activists deemed a threat to the Nazi party.
How can we account for the paranoia and mass mania that led to the rise of the National Socialist party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or Nazis) in Germany, Hitler being appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and all of this incomprehensible human destruction?
This is an inquiry into a full-blown evil on a scale never before seen in our human history. How did this happen?
Understanding how this compulsive, reflexive hatred took hold of much of the German population during Hitler's 12-year rule is the major goal of today's presentation.
A second major goal will be to look at Germany's response post-World War II to its own history, both in the immediate post World War II era and up to today.
In all, my approach will center on the constellation of psychological, historical, social, political, and economic causes of the rise of National Socialism in order to understand the far reaches of human oppression and destruction.