Summary of Laurence Rees's Auschwitz

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The story of the decision-making process that led to the extermination of more than a million people at Auschwitz is one of the most shocking in history. Without Höss’s leadership, the camp would never have functioned as it did.
#2 The most urgent need for the Nazis was to understand why Germany had lost the war and made such a humiliating peace. They believed they had found the answer in the Jews.
#3 After the first Nazi poster attack on the Jews, which claimed that their hatred was based on scientific fact, many Nazis began to claim that they hated the Jews because they lived in cities and not because they were Jewish.
#4 The first prisoners who entered Dachau in 1933 were mostly political opponents of the Nazis. Jews were taunted, humiliated, and beaten in those early days, but it was the left-wing politicians of the former regime who were seen as the more immediate threat.

Sujets

• Politique
• Seconde Guerre mondiale
• History
• World War II
• Military
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669395652
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Laurence Rees's Auschwitz
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The story of the decision-making process that led to the extermination of more than a million people at Auschwitz is one of the most shocking in history. Without Höss’s leadership, the camp would never have functioned as it did.

#2

The most urgent need for the Nazis was to understand why Germany had lost the war and made such a humiliating peace. They believed they had found the answer in the Jews.

#3

After the first Nazi poster attack on the Jews, which claimed that their hatred was based on scientific fact, many Nazis began to claim that they hated the Jews because they lived in cities and not because they were Jewish.

#4

The first prisoners who entered Dachau in 1933 were mostly political opponents of the Nazis. Jews were taunted, humiliated, and beaten in those early days, but it was the left-wing politicians of the former regime who were seen as the more immediate threat.

#5

The first innovation at Dachau was the uncertainty of the duration of the prisoners’ sentences, which was designed to break the will of the inmate. The Kapos, who were appointed by the authorities, had tremendous power over the other prisoners.

#6

The Nazis’ view of life was that it was a struggle. The stronger, more able, won, while the less able, the weak, lost. Struggle was the father of all things. Any form of sympathy was a demonstration of weakness.

#7

Höss was a model member of the SS, and he rose through the ranks at Dachau until he was promoted to commandant of the new concentration camp at Auschwitz in September 1936. He was ready to take on his biggest challenge: creating a model concentration camp.

#8

Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in the Nazi state, wrote a memorandum about the treatment of the alien population of the east. He knew that it was unwise to commit thoughts to paper, but he felt he had to make an exception in this case.

#9

Until the start of the war, Nazi policy towards Jews living under their control had been one of growing official persecution through countless restrictive regulations, interspersed with moments of unofficial (but sanctioned) violent outrage.

#10

The Nazis had created a system in which they robbed the Jews of most of their money before they allowed them to leave the country. The Nazis were pleased because they thought the solution they had developed for their German Jewish problem was transferable to Poland.

#11

By the spring of 1940, Eichmann’s Nisko plan had been abandoned and Poland had been divided into two separate categories of territory: the districts that had officially become German and were part of the New Reich, and the General Government, which encompassed the cities of Warsaw, Krakow, and Lublin.

#12

The Nazis developed ghettos, which were meant to be a temporary measure, to separate the Jews from the rest of the population. However, as the Nazis began to fear that they would be unable to get rid of the Jews quickly enough, they began to keep them separate from the rest of the population.

#13

The Nazis wanted to turn Poland into a nation of illiterates and slaves, and they wanted the Jews to be removed. They wanted the term Jews to be eliminated through the possibility of a large-scale emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony.

#14

The Nazis’ Final Solution as we know it would not have occurred if not for the Madagascar plan, which was a proposal to ship millions of Jews to Africa. However, this plan would have meant widespread death and suffering for the Jews.

#15

The first prisoners to arrive at Auschwitz in June 1940 were not Poles but Germans. They became the first Kapos, the inmates who would act as agents of control between the SS and the Polish prisoners. The camp quickly developed a culture of theft, not just from the local population, but from within the institution itself.

#16

At this stage, Auschwitz was not a place where large numbers of Jews were sent, but some of the intelligentsia, members of the resistance, and political prisoners were Jews. They were more likely to fall into the hands of the penal commando unit run by one of the most notorious Kapos, Ernst Krankemann.

#17

The first sign that all was to change in the camp came in the autumn of 1940 when Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Administration and Economic Office, inspected the camp and told Höss to increase its capacity. Pohl believed that the sand and gravel pits nearby meant that the camp could be integrated into the SSOWNED German Earth and Stone Works.

#18

The SS was also involved in the production of clothing, vitamin drinks, and even porcelain figurines. The SS managers of these enterprises were incompetent, and the products were comically terrible.

#19

By the end of 1940, Himmler had established the basic structures and principles under which the camp would function for the next four years: the Kapos who effectively controlled the prisoners from moment to moment, the absolute brutality of a regime that could inflict punishment arbitrarily, and a pervasive sense within the camp that if an inmate did not learn how to manipulate himself out of a dangerous work commando, he risked a swift and sudden death.

#20

The Nazis also used their initiative to come up with new tortures, as former prisoner Boleslaw Zbozień observed when an inmate was brought to the camp hospital from Block 11. His face was completely fried, but he could not die.

#21

Block 11 was the location of the Police Summary Court for the German Kattowitz area. It was here that Poles arrested by the Gestapo were brought to be judged by Dr. Mildner, an SS Obersturmbannführer and State Councilor.

#22

The release of Władysław Bartoszewski was a prime example of the Nazis being susceptible to international pressure over prisoners. Several hundred prisoners were released in a similar manner from Auschwitz.

#23

The Auschwitz camp entered a new and crucial phase of its evolution in November 1940, when I. G. Farben, a giant industrial conglomerate, agreed to site a synthetic rubber factory in the area. The factory required access to essential raw materials, and I. Farben insisted on there being a developed transport and housing infrastructure nearby.

#24

The interest from I. G. Farben transformed Auschwitz from a minor camp within the SS system to one of its most important components. Himmler’s first visit to the camp was in March 1941, and he announced that the camp would be expanded to hold 30,000 inmates.

#25

The Nazi leadership tolerated more internal criticism from its supporters than did the Soviet system. This is why the Third Reich was more dynamic than Stalin’s regime.

#26

The plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, were made by the High Command of the German armed forces. Hitler believed that if the Nazis destroyed the Soviet Union, Britain would make peace and the Nazis would be the undisputed masters of Europe.

#27

The Nazis believed that the war was not against the civilized nations of the West, but against the Judeo-Bolshevik subhumans.