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. 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 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 mass mania that led to the rise of the National Socialist party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or Nazis) in Germany and to Hitler being appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933?
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 mass mania took hold of much of the German people and led to Nazi officials and soldiers murdering between 15 and 20 million people is the major goal of today's presentation.
Looking 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 will be our second major goal.
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.