Mrs. Wagaman (Your Name)

Mrs. Wagaman (Teacher’s Name)

Outline

2/21/12

I. Introduction

A. Intro sentence

1. When studying World War II it is important to understand how certain countries were involved.

B. Mention what country you are studying and why –

1. One country in particular that was important in World War II was Germany. This country is at the heart of what most people know about World War II.

C. Thesis – Germany was influential in starting World War II and the repercussions of their actions have been felt through generations of Germans and by millions around the world.

II. Basic information about this country

A. Where is it located?

1. Germany, officially known as Bundesrespublik Deutschland, or Federal Republic of Germany, is located in the heart of Europe, between France and Poland (“Germany”).

2. Germany is slightly smaller than Montana (“Germany”).

3. “In the central German uplands, deep river valleys alternate with forested hils. Many of the forests and hills, painted houses, and turreted castles of the region were used as settings for the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales (Spada and Braunthal 153).

B. What kind of government does Germany have?

1. Federal multiparty republic with two legislative houses (“Germany”).

2. The capital is located in Berlin (“Germany”).

C. What was/is the population?

1. Estimated to be 82, 490,000 in 2005 (“Germany”).

D. What’s one interesting fact about this country?

1. While German is the official language of Germany, there are several other dialects spoken, including High German, Low German, Sorbian, and Romani (“Germany”).

E. Has the name changed?

III. What did this country do in WWII?

A. Axis or Ally?

1. The Germans, as they were aligned with Italy and Japan, were part of the Axis.

B. How did it start?

1. Nazis “National Socialists” “promised to make Germany rich and great again. They demanded revision of the Treaty of Versailles and return of the lost territories” (Spada and Braunthal 162).

2. “The German nation was overwhelmingly grateful to Hitler for having solved the unemployment problem, for having imposed an apparent social order, and for making their country strong, great and for a decade extremely successful in international affairs” (Fitzgibbon 150).

3. “Hitler’s rapid rise to absolute power, first in Germany and, briefly, in almost all Europe, was based on two very sound tactical principles: divide and rule; and, destroy your enemies one by one” (Fitzgibbon 141).

4. “By then [1933] the pattern of Nazi Germany had been firmly set: for his enemies, the terror of concentration camps or death or both: from the rest of the German populace, total obedience” (Fitzgibbon 143).

5. “Hitler’s bodyguard, the SS, was perforce involved in all aspects of German life, for Germany became a police state which deliberately used terror to prevent any form of opposition” (Fitzgibbon 141).

6. Gleichshaltung “the imposition of parity” (Fitzgibbon 146).

“an obscure word for the total Nazification of all Germany, at every level”(Fitzgibbon 147).
Example - Boy Scouts merged with Hitler Youth (Fitzgibbon 147).

7. War broke out Sept. 1, 1939 (“German Jews”).

C. How did it impact the Jewish people?

1. Hitler passed wartime ordinances on Jews (“German Jews”).

Jews must wear Jewish Star on clothes (“German Jews”).
Hitler set up ghettos and forced labor camps (“German Jews”).

2. Mass arrests in aftermath of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) Nov. 1938 (“German Jews”).

3. Jan. 1933 – 522,000 Jews in Germany. “304, 000 emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, leaving only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II” (“German Jews”).

4. “In the years between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime had brought radical and daunting social, economic, and communal change to the German Jewish community” (“German Jews”).

5. Hitler’s Final Solution – declared Germany “free of Jews – judenrein” in May 1943 (“German Jews”).

Fewer than 20,000 Jews left in Germany (“German Jews”).
160,000-180,000 German Jews killed in Holocaust (“German Jews”).

D. What happened during the war?

1. “The first years of the conflict saw remarkable successes by Hitler, whose armies quickly conquered most of the European continent, from the English Channel to the border of the Soviet Union” (Spada and Braunthal 163).

Successful on land, air, and sea (u-boats) (Fitzgibbon 159).
Air Force did fail to conquer Britain (Fitzgibbon 159).

2. Began to overstretch himself (Hitler). June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Dec. 1941 the United States entered the war (Spada and Braunthal 163).

Germany switched from offense to defense in 1943 (Fitzgibbon 161).

E. Did they have soldiers who fought? How many died?

F. Did they have concentration camps?

G. What happened after the war?

1. 22 Nazi leaders charged with crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in

1945-1946 (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

a. 12 were sentenced to death (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

b. 3 were found not guilty (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

c. The rest received prison terms (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

2. Germany was split into two states from 1945-1990 (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

a. Federal Republic of Germany (also known as West Germany, which was

democratic and run by the Americans, British, and French.) (Spada and

Braunthal 163-164).

b. German Democratic Republic (also known as East Germany, which was

communist and run by the Soviet Union.) (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

3. Germany had to do a lot of rebuilding

a. Hamburg, Germany – 80% of housing was destroyed and had 800,000

homeless (1/2 of the city’s population) (Gregor 33).

b. Cologne, Germany had to remove 24 million cubic metres of rubble. Between 1948-1950’s Germany began to rebuild their cities (Gregor 33).

c. Many citizens found themselves living in makeshift or temporary housing,

and many places were overrun with immigrants or victims of the Holocaust

(Gregor 33).

d. They also had to rebuild their economy, which was destroyed after WWII

(Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

e. Within 20 years after the war West Germany was thriving, thanks to help

from the Allies (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

f. East Germany struggled, was better in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin wall,

but still struggles (Spada and Braunthal 163-164).

H. How did the German people feel about the War?

1. “How much did the Germans know about the atrocities being committed by their government?” The answer is that they knew enough. For example, everyone was aware

that the concentration camps existed and the people incarcerated in them were treated

with brutality, but the details were generally unknown” (Fitzgibbon 148).

2. “The Jewish victims of the Holocaust, not to mention the victim groups such as force

foreign workers, were swiftly marginalized by a memorial culture in which ordinary

Germans were deemed to have been the ordinary victims of an ordinary war, and in

which the peculiar suffering engendered by Nazi racial imperialism was ‘suppressed’”

(Gregor 34).

3. Minority of soldier participated in acts of genocide, most were bystanders. Many

soldiers had a “palpable sense of shame” and “even those who had not murdered Jews

or Soviet citizens had still experienced extreme, brutal violence” (Gregor 37).

4. No single defining moment for ‘acknowledging more openly their shame and guilt”

but the Auschwitz trial from 1963-1965 seems like the turning point for the German

people. Much of this was due to the media attention paid to the trial. (Gregor 38).

5. “In Germany, it is a crime to deny the Holocaust” (Gregor 39).

IV. Conclusion

A. Restate Thesis

1. As you can see, Germany played a crucial role in World War II and has taken a long

time to recover.

B. Add what was learned about WWII

1. For the German people, their ancestor’s involvement in WWII is something that will

always bee with them and they will have to learn to understand.

2. I’ve learned a lot more about how Germany could have gotten to the point of war and

why the people ‘let’ it happen.

3. It is a complex period in time that should be remembered by the world as a reminder

of what can happen when we let hate and prejudice rule.