Juan Perón
Imre Nagy
Goebels
Golda Meir
Al Capone
Himmler
Albert Speer
Faisal Al Saud
Saturday, February 8, 2020
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Juan Perón (1895 – 1974)
Juan Perón was an Argentine lieutenant general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labor and Vice President, he was elected President of Argentina 3 times. He served 2 terms from 1946 to 1955. He was overthrown in a coup d'état, and served a 3rd term from 1973 until his death.
The earliest recorded human presence in the area of Argentina dates back to the stone age 3.3 million years ago. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century. The declaration and fight for independence(1810–1818) was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with massive waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century. After 1930, Argentina descended into political instability and periodic economic crises that pushed it back into underdevelopment.
In 1976 a U.S.-backed coup occurred which installed a right-wing military dictatorship under Videla. which lasted until the transition to democracy in 1983.
The earliest recorded human presence in the area of Argentina dates back to the stone age 3.3 million years ago. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century. The declaration and fight for independence(1810–1818) was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with massive waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century. After 1930, Argentina descended into political instability and periodic economic crises that pushed it back into underdevelopment.
In 1976 a U.S.-backed coup occurred which installed a right-wing military dictatorship under Videla. which lasted until the transition to democracy in 1983.
During his first presidential term, Perón was supported by his second wife Evita. The 2 were immensely popular. Evita died in 1952, and Perón was elected to a second term. After he was ousted from power, Argentina was ruled by 2 military dictatorships, interrupted by 2 civilian governments. The Peronist party was outlawed and Perón was exiled. When the left-wing Peronist Hector Cámpora was elected President in 1973, Perón returned to Argentina and was elected President for a third time. His third wife, María Estela Martínez, known as Isabel Perón, was elected as Vice President on his ticket and succeeded him as President upon his death in 1974.
Although they are still controversial figures, Juan and Evita Perón are nonetheless considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labor, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, a political phenomenon that draws support from both the political left and political right. It is considered one of the most important iterations of populism in the world. Peronism is not considered a traditional party, but a political movement, because of the wide variety of people who call themselves Peronists.
Perón's great-grandfather became a successful shoe merchant in Buenos Aires, and his grandfather was a prosperous physician. His father moved to the Patagonia region where he later purchased a sheep ranch. Juan himself was sent away in 1904 to a boarding school in Buenos Aires directed by his paternal grandmother, where he received a strict Catholic upbringing and began his military career.
In 1943 when he was 48, there was a military coup d'état against the conservative President who had been fraudulently elected to office. As a colonel, Perón took a significant part in the military coup and he later became the head of the Department of Labor. Perón's work in the Labor Department witnessed the passage of a broad range of progressive social reforms designed to improve working conditions, and led to an alliance with the socialist and syndicalist movements in the Argentine labor unions. This caused his power and influence to increase in the military government. After the coup, socialists made contact with Perón and established an alliance to promote labor laws that had long been demanded by the workers' movement, to strengthen the unions.
Following the devastating 1944 San Juan earthquake, which claimed over 10,000 lives and leveled the city, Perón became nationally prominent in relief efforts. His success in providing relief for earthquake victims earned Perón widespread public approval. At this time, he met a minor radio matinee star, Evita. Following the 1944 suspension of diplomatic relations with the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan, the junta declared war in 1945 against Germany and Perón was appointed Vice President and Secretary of War, while retaining his Labor portfolio.
As Minister of Labor, Perón established:
- the first national social insurance system in Argentina, settled industrial disputes in favor of labor unions as long as their leaders pledged political allegiance to him, and introduced a wide range of social welfare benefits for unionized workers. Employers were forced to improve working conditions and to provide severance pay and accident compensation,
- the conditions under which workers could be dismissed were restricted,
- a system of labor courts to handle the grievances of workers was established,
- the working day was reduced in various industries, and
- paid holidays/vacations were generalized to the entire workforce.
- a law was passed providing minimum wages, maximum hours and vacations for rural workers,
- rural rents were frozen,
- lumber, wine, sugar and migrant workers were organized.
From 1943 to 1946, real wages grew by only 4%, but in 1945 Peron established 2 new institutions that would later increase wages: the “aguinaldo”, a bonus that provided each worker with a lump sum at the end of the year amounting to one-twelfth of the annual wage and the National Institute of Compensation, which implemented a minimum wage and collected data on living standards, prices, and wages. Leveraging his authority on behalf of striking slaughterhouse workers and the right to unionize, Peron became increasingly thought of as a potential president of the country.
This move fed growing rivalries against Perón and he was forced to resign by opponents within the armed forces. Arrested 4 days later, he was released due to mass demonstrations organized by supporters. His paramour, Eva, became hugely popular after helping organize the demonstration. Known as "Evita", she helped Perón gain support with labor and women's groups. She and Perón were soon married.
Perón's candidacy on the Labor Party ticket became a lightning rod that rallied an unusually diverse opposition against it. The majority of the centrist, socialists, communists and most of the conservative parties had already been forged into a fractious alliance by interests in the financial sector and the chamber of commerce, united solely by the goal of keeping Perón from the Casa Rosada, the president's official residence. In a bid to support their campaign, US ambassador accused Perón and others of Fascist ties. Perón in response summarized the election as a choice between Perón or Yankee imperialism. He persuaded the president to sign the nationalization of the Central Bank and the extension of mandatory Christmas bonuses, actions that contributed to his decisive victory.
When Perón became president in 1946, his 2 stated goals were social justice and economic independence. These 2 goals avoided having to chose between capitalism and socialism, but he had no concrete means to achieve those goals. Perón instructed his economic advisers to develop a 5-year plan with the goals of:
- increasing workers' pay,
- achieving full employment,
- stimulating industrial growth of over 40% while diversifying the sector then dominated by food processing, and
- improving transportation, communication, energy and social infrastructure in the private, as well as public, sectors.
Perón's planning prominently included political considerations. Numerous military allies were fielded as candidates for government posts and he filled his cabinet with labor union appointees. He also made room for wealthy industrialists and socialists. Strikes were encouraged when employers became reluctant to grant benefits or honor new labor legislation. Strike activity with 500,000 working days lost in 1945 leapt to 2 million in 1946 and to over 3 million in 1947, helped attain needed labor reforms, though permanently aligning large employers against the Peronists. Labor unions grew in ranks from around 500,000 to over 2 million by 1950. As the country's labor force numbered around 5 million people at the time, Argentina's labor force became the most unionized in South America.
During the first half of the 20th century, a widening gap had existed between the classes; Perón hoped to close it through the increase of wages and employment, making the nation more pluralistic and less reliant on foreign trade. Before taking office in 1946, President Perón took dramatic steps which he believed would result in a more economically independent Argentina, better insulated from events such as WWII. He thought there would be another international war. The reduced availability of imports and the war's beneficial effects on both the quantity and price of Argentine exports had combined to create a US$1.7 billion cumulative surplus during those years.
In his first 2 years in office, Perón nationalized the Central Bank and paid off its billion dollar debt to the Bank of England and nationalized the railways which were mostly owned by British and French companies. He nationalized the merchant marine, the universities, the public utilities, and public transport. He created a single purchaser, IAPI, for the nation's mostly export-oriented grains and oil seeds. The IAPI wrested control of Argentina's famed grain export sector from entrenched conglomerates. When commodity prices fell after 1948, it began shortchanging growers. IAPI profits were used to fund welfare projects, while internal demand was encouraged by large wage increases given to workers. Average real wages rose and access to health care was made a universal right. Social security was extended to virtually all members of the Argentine working class.
From 1946 to 1951, the number of Argentinians covered by social security more than tripled with 70% of the economically active population covered. Health insurance also spread to new industries, including banking and metalworking. The boost in the real incomes of workers was encouraged by government policies such as the enforcement of minimum wage laws, controls on the prices of food and other basic consumption items, and extending housing credits to workers. He restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, severed since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918, and opened grain sales to the shortage-stricken Soviets. U.S. policy restricted Argentine growth during the Perón years by placing embargoes on Argentina. The Marshall Plan drove a final nail into the coffin that bore Perón's ambitions to transform Argentina into an industrial power depriving Argentina of potential agricultural markets in Western Europe to the benefit of Canadian exporters.
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion or $120 billion in 2016 dollars in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of WWII. The plan was in operation for 4 years beginning in 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism.
As relations with the U.S. deteriorated, Perón made efforts to mitigate the misunderstandings. He negotiated the release of Argentine assets in the U.S. in exchange for preferential treatment for U.S. goods. Perón was opposed to borrowing from foreign credit markets, preferring to float bonds domestically. He refused to enter the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), precursor to the World Trade Organization (WTO), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Economic success was short-lived. Following a recovery during 1933 to 1945, from 1946 to 1948 Argentina gained benefits from Perón's 5-year plan. The GDP expanded by over a fourth during that brief boom, about as much as it had during the previous decade. Using roughly half the US$1.7 billion in reserves inherited from wartime surpluses for nationalizations, the economic development agencies devoted most of the other half to finance both public and private investments. The roughly 70% jump in domestic fixed investment was accounted for mostly by industrial growth in the private sector. All this much-needed activity exposed an intrinsic weakness in the plan. It subsidized growth which, in the short term, led to a wave of imports of the capital goods that local industry could not supply such as fertilizers, chemicals, machinery, tools, buildings, computers, oil rigs, or other kind of equipment that was involved in production of the other things Argentina exported. Whereas the end of WWII had allowed Argentine exports to rise from US$700 million to US$1.6 billion, Perón's changes led to skyrocketing imports from US$300 million to US$1.6 billion, and erased the surplus by 1948.
Perón's bid for economic independence was further complicated by a number of inherited external factors. Great Britain owed Argentina US$650 million from agricultural exports to that nation during the war. This debt to Argentinia was mostly in the form of reserves in Pound Sterling which were deposited in the Bank of England. The money was useless to the Argentine government, because the contract allowed Bank of England to hold the funds in trust, something British planners could not compromise on as a result of that country's debts accrued from WWII.
The nation's need for U.S. made capital goods increased, though ongoing limits on the Central Bank's availability of hard currency hampered access to them. Argentina's pound Sterling surpluses earned after 1946. worth over US$200 million, were made convertible to dollars by a treaty negotiated by Argentine's Central Bank but after a year, British Prime Minister suspended the provision. Perón accepted the transfer of over 24,000km of British-owned railways over half the total in Argentina in exchange for the debt in 1948. Due to political disputes between Perón and the U.S. government as well as to pressure by the U.S. agricultural lobby, Argentine foreign exchange earnings via its exports to the United States fell, turning a US$100 million surplus with the United States into a US$300 million deficit. The combined pressure practically devoured Argentina's liquid reserves and Argentina issued a temporary restriction on the outflow of dollars to U.S. banks. The nationalization of the Port of Buenos Aires and domestic and foreign-owned private cargo ships, as well as the purchase of others, nearly tripled the national merchant marine, reducing the need for over US$100 million in shipping fees.
Exports fell sharply and the Central Bank was forced to devalue the peso to about 70% of its value by just printing more of it, to make export of agricultural products cheaper and more competitive. This move made imports that fuel industrial growth more expensive leading to a recession and a reduction of economic activity. Short of central bank reserves, Perón was forced to borrow US$125 million from the U.S.to cover a number of private banks' debts to U.S. institutions, without which their insolvency would have become a central bank liability. Austerity and better harvests in 1950 helped finance a recovery in 1951; but inflation, having risen from 13% in 1948 to 31% in 1949, reached 50% in late 1951 before stabilizing, and a second, sharper recession soon followed. Workers' purchasing power, by 1952, had declined 20% from its 1948 high and GDP, having leapt during Perón's first 2 years, saw zero growth from 1948 to 1952.
The increasing frequency of strikes, increasingly directed against Perón as the economy slid into stagflation in late 1948. Stagflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high, the economic growth rate slows and stagnates, and unemployment remains steadily high. It raises a dilemma for economic policy, since actions designed to lower inflation may exacerbate unemployment, and vice versa. To consolidate his political grasp before the economy worsened, Perón called for a broad constitutional reform guaranteeing social reforms and allowing the mass nationalization of natural resources and public services.
Perón made record investments in Argentina's infrastructure, investing over US$100 million to modernize the railways originally built on a myriad of incompatible gauges. He also nationalized a number of small, regional air carriers, forging them into a national airline, “Aerolíneas Argentinas” in 1950. He had mixed success in expanding the country's inadequate electric grid, which grew by only one fourth during his tenure. Argentina's installed hydroelectric capacity, however, leapt from 45 to 350 MW during his first term. He promoted the fossil fuel industry by ordering these resources nationalized, inaugurating Argentina's only active coal mine, capturing natural gas flared by the state oil firm, and establishing Gas del Estado. In 1949, he completed a 1,700km gas pipeline, the longest in the world, and made the country energy self-sufficient.
Perón's government is remembered for its record social investments. He set up over 4,200 health care facilities, 1,000 kindergartens, 8,000 schools, and several hundred technological, nursing and teachers' schools, 650,000 new, public sector homes, as well as of the international airport, one of the largest in the world at the time.
Perón modernized the Argentine Armed Forces, particularly its Air Force. Eva Perón was instrumental as a symbol of hope to the common laborer during the first 5-year plan. When she died in 1952, the year of the presidential elections, the people felt they had lost an ally. Coming from humble origins, she was loathed by the elite but adored by the poor for her work with the sick, elderly, and orphans. It was due to her behind-the-scenes work that women's suffrage was granted in 1947 and a feminist wing of the 3rd party in Argentina was formed. Simultaneous to Perón's 5-year plans, Evita supported a women's movement that concentrated on the rights of women, the poor and the disabled. Eva introduced social justice and equality into the national discourse.
She stated, "It is not philanthropy, nor is it charity... It is not even social welfare; to me, it is strict justice... I do nothing but return to the poor what the rest of us owe them, because we had taken it away from them unjustly."
She established the Eva Perón Foundation in 1948, which was perhaps the greatest contribution to her husband's social policy. Enjoying an annual budget of around US$50 million, nearly 1% of GDP at the time, the Foundation had 14,000 employees and founded hundreds of new schools, clinics, old-age homes and holiday facilities; it also distributed hundreds of thousands of household necessities, physicians' visits and scholarships, among other benefits. Among the best-known of the Foundation's many large construction projects are the Evita City development south of Buenos Aires consisting of 25,000 homes and the "Republic of the Children", a theme park based on tales from the Brothers Grimm.
The portion of the 5-year plans which argued for full employment, public healthcare and housing, labor benefits, and raises are a result of Eva's influence on the policy-making of Perón in his first term. He simply wanted to keep imperialists out of Argentina and create effective businesses. The humanitarian relief efforts embedded in the 5-year plan are Eva's creation, which endeared the Peronist movement to the working-class people from which Eva had come. Her strong ties to the poor and her position as Perón's wife brought credibility to his promises during his first presidential term and ushered in a new wave of supporters.
Elements in the Argentine Army attempted a coup against Perón. Although unsuccessful, the mutiny marked the end of the first lady's political hopes and she soon died. Among upper-class Argentines, improvement of the workers' situation was a source of resentment; industrial workers from rural areas had formerly been treated as servants. It was common for better-off Argentines to refer to these workers using classist slurs. At a time when credentialed teaching personnel were in short supply, Perón had fired more than 1,500 university faculty who opposed him. Many faculty left the country and migrated to Mexico or the United States. Perón opposed the universities, which questioned his methods and his goals. The labor movement that had brought Perón to power was not exempt from his iron fist. Many of Perón's opponents were held at Buenos Aires' Ramos Mejía General Hospital, where the basement was converted into a police detention center where torture became routine. The populist leader was intolerant of both left-wing and conservative opposition. Though he used violence, Perón preferred to deprive the opposition of their access to media. Perón appeared more threatened by dissident artists than by opposition political figures.
After WWII, Argentina became a haven for Nazi war criminals, with explicit protection from Perón. While Juan Perón's Argentina allowed many Nazi criminals to take refuge in the country following WWII, the society also accepted more Jewish immigrants than any other country in Latin America. Today Argentina has a population of more than 200,000 Jewish citizens, the largest in Latin America, the third-largest in the Americas, and the sixth-largest in the world.
Perón was re-elected in 1951 by a margin of over 30%. This election was the first to have extended suffrage to Argentine women and the first in Argentina to be televised. He began his second term in 1952 with serious economic problems, however, compounded by a severe drought that helped lead to a US$500 million trade deficit which depleted all reserves from the Central Bank. Opposition to Perón grew bolder following Evita`s death. In 1953, a terrorist group detonated 2 bombs in a public rally killing 7 and injuring 95. Amid the chaos, Perón exhorted the crowd to take reprisals. They made their way to their adversaries' gathering places, the Socialist Party headquarters and the aristocratic Jockey Club and burned them to the ground.
A stalemate of sorts ensued between Perón and his opposition and, despite austerity measures taken late in 1952 to remedy the country's unsustainable trade deficit, the president remained generally popular. Perón ventured into a new policy: the creation of incentives designed to attract foreign investment. Drawn to an economy with the highest standard of living in Latin America and a new steel mill, automakers FIAT and Kaiser Motors responded to the initiative by breaking ground on new facilities in the city of Córdoba, as did the freight truck division of Daimler-Benz, the first such investments since General Motors' Argentine assembly line opened in 1926.
Perón also signed an important exploration contract with Standard Oil of California, in 1955, consolidating his new policy of substituting the 2 largest sources of that era's chronic trade deficits - imported petroleum and motor vehicles - with local production brought in through foreign investment. As 1954 drew to a close, Perón unveiled reforms far more controversial to the normally conservative Argentine public, the legalization of divorce and of prostitution. The Roman Catholic Church's Argentine leaders, whose support of Perón's government had been steadily waning since the advent of the Eva Perón Foundation, were now open antagonists of the man they called "the tyrant."
Though much of Argentina's media had, since 1950, been either controlled or monitored by the administration, lurid pieces on his ongoing relationship with an underage girl, something Perón never denied, filled the gossip pages. Pressed by reporters on whether his supposed new paramour was, as the magazines claimed, 13 years of age, the 59 year old Perón responded that he was "not superstitious." Before long, however, the president's humor on the subject ran out and, following the expulsion of 2 Catholic priests he believed to be behind his recent image problems, he was excommunicated. The following day, Péron called for a rally of support on the Plaza de Mayo, a time-honored custom among Argentine presidents during a challenge. However, as he spoke before a crowd of thousands, Navy fighter jets flew overhead and dropped bombs into the crowded square below forcing him to seek refuge in Uruguay.
The incident, part of a coup attempt against Perón, killed 364 people and was, from a historical perspective, the only air assault ever on Argentine soil, as well as a portent of the mayhem that Argentine society would suffer in the 1970s. It moreover touched off a wave of reprisals on the part of Peronists. Reminiscent of the incidents in 1953, Peronist crowds ransacked 11 Buenos Aires churches, including the Metropolitan Cathedral. A nationalist Catholic group from both the Army and Navy led a revolt. Taking power in a coup 3 days later, Perón barely escaped with his life.
At that point Argentina was more politically polarized than it had been since 1880. The landowning elites and other conservatives pointed to an exchange rate that had rocketed from 4 to 30 pesos per dollar and consumer prices that had risen nearly 5-fold. Employers and moderates generally agreed, qualifying that with the fact the economy had grown by over 40%, the best showing since the 1920s. The underprivileged and humanitarians looked back upon the era as one in which real wages grew by over a third and better working conditions arrived alongside benefits like pensions, health care, paid vacations and the construction of record numbers of needed schools, hospitals, works of infrastructure and housing.
The new military regime went to great lengths to destroy both the President's and Eva Perón's reputation, putting up public exhibits of what they maintained was the Peróns' scandalously sumptuous taste for antiques, jewelry, roadsters, yachts and other luxuries. Following Perón's 1955 ousting, 20 such construction projects were abandoned incomplete and the foundation's US$290 million endowment was liquidated. They also accused other Peronist leaders of corruption; but, ultimately, though many were prosecuted, none were convicted. The mere mention of Juan or Eva Perón's names were outlawed. Throughout Argentina, Peronism and the very display of Peronist mementos was banned. Partly in response to these and other excesses, Peronists and moderates in the army organized a counter-coup but 26 people involved in this counter-coup were caught and executed.
Perón's stay in Venezuela had been cut short by the 1958 coup that the president of Venezuala suffered there. He eventually moved to Madrid, Spain with his new wife, a night club singer Isabel. He was protected in Spain by Francisco Franco. Following a failed 1964 attempt to return to Buenos Aires, he sent his wife to Argentina in 1965, to meet political dissidents and advance Perón's policy of confrontation and electoral boycotts.
Perón began courting the far left and enunciated the main principles of his purported new Tri continental political vision: Mao is at the head of Asia, Nasser of Africa, de Gaulle of the old Europe and Castro of Latin America.
Che Guevara and Perón were sympathetic to each other. Che Guevara as Cuban minister attempted to arrange for the return of Perón to Argentina in the 1960s and sent financial support for that end. Perón however disapproved of Guevara's advocacy of guerrilla warfare as antiquated. In Madrid, Perón and Guevara met twice. These meetings, as the meetings Perón held with other leftists in Madrid such as Salvador Allende, were arranged with great secrecy to avoid complaints or expulsion from Francoist Spain. Perón commented a friend in a letter about the visit of Guevara:
“...an immature Utopian –but one of us– I am happy for it to be so because he is giving the Yankees a real headache.”
General elections were held in 1973. Perón was banned from running, but a stand-in, Dr. Héctor Cámpora, a left-wing Peronist and his personal representative, won the election. Perón returned from Spain to end his 18-year exile. On the day of Perón's return, 3.5 million left-wing Peronists gathered in Buenos Aires to welcome him. Perón was accompanied by Cámpora, whose first measures were to grant amnesty to all political prisoners and re-establish relations with Cuba, helping Fidel Castro break the United States embargo against Cuba. This, along with his social policies, had earned him the opposition of right-wing Peronists, including the trade-unionist bureaucracy. Camouflaged snipers opened fire on the crowd at the airport. At least 13 people were killed and 365 injured.
Cámpora resigned paving the way for new elections, this time with Perón's participation. Argentina faced mounting political instability, and Perón was viewed by many as the country's only hope for prosperity and safety. Perón received 62% of the vote, returning him to the presidency. He began his third term with Isabel, his wife, as Vice President. Inheriting an economy that had doubled in output since 1955 with little indebtedness and only modest new foreign investment, inflation had become a fixture in daily life and was worsening. Making this a policy priority, a "social pact" was crafted in hopes of finding a happy median between the needs of management and labor. The measure was largely successful. The improving economic situation encouraged Perón to pursue interventionist social and economic policies similar to those he carried out in the 1940s, nationalizing banks and various industries, subsidizing native businesses and consumers, regulating and taxing the agricultural sector, reviving the IAPI, placing restrictions on foreign investment, and funding a number of social welfare programs. In addition, new rights for workers were introduced.
The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proclaimed an oil embargo and banned any further oil production for about 6 months. By the end of the embargo the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally putting the Argentinian economy under great strain.
Perón's third term was also marked by an escalating conflict between the Peronist left and right-wing factions. The Triple A, a death squad was formed and began targeting not only the violent left; but moderate opposition, as well. The rift between Perón and the far left became irreconcilable. Perón's failing health complicated matters. His wife Isabel frequently had to take over as Acting President over the course of the next year.
He suffered a series of heart attacks and in 1974 he died at the age of 78 years old.
The Triple A was the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance a far-right death squad active under Isabel Perón's rule from 1974 to 1976. Initially associated with the Peronist right, the organization opposed the Peronist left and other leftist organizations. The AAA acted against a wide range of government opponents, not just communists.
Isabel Perón's term ended abruptly in 1976, during a military coup d'état. A military junta, headed by General Jorge Videla, took control of the country, establishing the self-styled National Reorganization Process. The junta ramped up the "dirty war", combining widespread persecution of political dissidents with state terrorism. The death toll rose up to 30,000. Many of these were "the disappeared", people kidnapped and executed without trial or record. It was enough just to be a witness to an assassination, to be assassinated.
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic on 2 occasions. Nagy's second term ended when his non-Soviet-backed government was brought down by Soviet invasion in the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, resulting in Nagy's execution on charges of treason 2 years later.
Following centuries of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád in the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary came under Hapsburg rule, and later formed the great power Austro–Hungarian Empire together with Austria.
Hungary's borders were established in 1920 after WWI, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, and 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Hungary joined the Axis Powers in WWII, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a socialist republic spanning 4 decades (1947-1989). The country gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. In 1989, Hungary again became a democratic parliamentary republic. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004.
Nagy was born to a peasant family and was apprenticed to a locksmith. He enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI and served on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner in 1915. He became a member of the Russian Communist Party and joined the Red Army.
In 1921 Nagy returned to Hungary. In 1930 he traveled to the Soviet Union and rejoined the Communist Party, also becoming a Soviet citizen. He was engaged in agricultural research, but also worked in the Hungarian section of the Comintern. He was expelled from the party in 1936 and later worked for the Soviet Statistical Service. After WWII Nagy returned to Hungary. He was the Minister of Agriculture and later Minister of Interior in the communist government. He distributed land among the peasant population and played an active role in the expulsion of the Hungarian Germans. After 2 years as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary (1953-1955), during which he promoted his "New Course" in Socialism, Nagy fell out of favor with the Soviet Politburo. He was deprived of his Hungarian Central Committee, Politburo and all other Party functions, and, in 1955, he was sacked as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
In 1956 Nagy became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary again, this time by popular demand, during the anti-Soviet revolution. Soon he moved toward a multiparty political system. He announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and appealed through the UN for the great powers, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to recognize Hungary's status as a neutral state. Throughout this period, Nagy remained steadfastly committed to Marxism; but his conception of Marxism was as "a science that cannot remain static", and he railed against the "rigid dogmatism" of "the Stalinist monopoly."
When the revolution was crushed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Nagy, with a few others, was given sanctuary in the Yugoslav Embassy. In spite of a written safe conduct of free passage, Nagy was arrested by the Soviet forces as he was leaving the Yugoslav Embassy and taken to Romania. Subsequently, the Soviets returned Nagy to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing the overthrow of the Hungarian people's democratic state and with treason. Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging. His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence had been carried out. Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries".
Goebbels was a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's close associates and most devoted followers, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deep, virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924. He began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted controlling supervision over the news media, arts, and information in Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, and attacks on the Christian churches.
In 1943, Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce total war, including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations.
Goebbels`s father was a factory clerk. During childhood, Goebbels suffered from ill health, which included a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot that turned inwards, due to a congenital deformity. He was rejected for military service in WWI due to his deformity. His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, and Goebbels seriously considered it before he distanced himself from the church. Goebbels found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing antisemitism and dislike for modern culture. He continued for several years to try to become a published author.
Goebbels first took an interest in Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1924. In 1924, Hitler's trial for treason began in the wake of his failed attempt to seize power in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. The trial attracted widespread press coverage and gave Hitler a platform for propaganda. Hitler was sentenced to 5 years prison, but was released in 1924, after serving just over a year. Goebbels was drawn to the Nazis mostly because of Hitler's charisma and commitment to his beliefs.
After reading Hitler's book Mein Kampf, Goebbels found himself agreeing with Hitler's assertion of a "Jewish doctrine of Marxism". In 1926 Goebbels gave a speech titled "Lenin or Hitler?" in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people, but he believed it would cause a "socialist nationalist state" to arise in Russia. In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled "Nazi-Sozi" which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxism.
Goebbels adapted recent developments in commercial advertising to the political sphere, including the use of catchy slogans and subliminal cues. His new ideas for poster design included using large type, red ink, and cryptic headers that encouraged the reader to examine the fine print to determine the meaning.
Like Hitler, Goebbels practiced his public speaking skills in front of a mirror. Meetings were preceded by ceremonial marches and singing, and the venues were decorated with party banners. His entrance almost always late was timed for maximum emotional impact. Goebbels usually meticulously planned his speeches ahead of time, using pre-planned and choreographed inflection and gestures, but he was also able to improvise and adapt his presentation to make a good connection with his audience. He used loudspeakers, fire decorations, uniforms, and marches to attract attention to speeches.
Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi party along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the party from the city in 1927. Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets. Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban. During this period, he founded the newspaper as a propaganda vehicle for the Berlin area, where few supported the party. It was a modern-style newspaper with an aggressive tone. 126 libel suits were pending against Goebbels at one point. To his disappointment, circulation was initially only 2,000. Material in the paper was highly anti-communist and antisemitic. Among the paper's favorite targets was the Jewish Deputy Chief of the Berlin Police. Goebbels subjected him to a relentless campaign of Jew-baiting in the hope of provoking a crackdown he could then exploit. Goebbels began to formulate ideas about how propaganda could be used in schools and the media.
The Great Depression greatly impacted Germany and by 1930 there was a dramatic increase in unemployment. In 1930, Hitler appointed Goebbels s the Nazi propaganda minister. Hitler's speeches focused on blaming the country's economic woes on the Weimar Republic, particularly its adherence to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which required war reparations that had proven devastating to the German economy. He proposed a new German society based on race and national unity. The resulting success took even Hitler and Goebbels by surprise: the party received 6.5 million votes nationwide and took 107 seats in the Reichstag, making it the second largest party in the country.
For 2 further elections held in 1932, Goebbels organized massive campaigns that included rallies, parades, speeches, and Hitler traveling around the country by aeroplane with the slogan "the Führer over Germany". Goebbels wrote in his diary that the Nazis must gain power and exterminate Marxism. He undertook numerous speaking tours during these election campaigns and had some of their speeches published on gramophone records and as pamphlets. Goebbels was also involved in the production of a small collection of silent films that could be shown at party meetings, though they did not yet have enough equipment to widely use this medium. Many of Goebbels' campaign posters used violent imagery such as a giant half-clad male destroying political opponents or other perceived enemies such as "International High Finance". Support for the party continued to grow, but neither of these elections led to a majority government. In an effort to stabilize the country and improve economic conditions, Hitler was appointed as chancellor in 1933.
The spectacle was covered by a live state radio broadcast, with commentary by longtime party member and future Minister of Aviation Göring. Goebbels was disappointed to not be given a post in Hitler's new cabinet. Like other Nazi officials, Goebbels had to deal with Hitler's leadership style of giving contradictory orders to his subordinates, while placing them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped. In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power.
The Nazis took advantage of the Reichstag fire of 1933, with the passing of a the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day at Hitler's urging. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. The decree was one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany. This was the first of several pieces of legislation that dismantled democracy in Germany and put a totalitarian dictatorship headed by Hitler in its place. Goebbels finally received Hitler's appointment to the cabinet, officially becoming head of the newly created Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
The role of the new ministry was to centralize Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural and intellectual life. Goebbels hoped to increase popular support of the party from the 37 per cent achieved at the last free election held in Germany in 1933 to 100% support. An unstated goal was to present to other nations the impression that the Nazi party had the full and enthusiastic backing of the entire population. He composed the text of Hitler's decree authorizing the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.
Goebbels converted the 1 May holiday from a celebration of workers' rights observed as such especially by the communists into a day celebrating the Nazi party. The following day, all trade union offices in the country were forcibly disbanded and the Nazi-run German Labor Front was created to take their place.
Meanwhile, the Nazis began passing laws to marginalize Jews and remove them from German society. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service. Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practice. The first Nazi concentration camps initially created to house political dissenters were founded shortly after Hitler seized power. The Nazis proceeded to rapidly bring all aspects of life under control of the party.
All civilian organizations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organizations, and sports clubs, had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathizers or party members. Virtually the only organizations not in the control of the NSDAP were the army and the churches. In a move to manipulate Germany's middle class and shape popular opinion, the regime passed a law which became the cornerstone of the Nazi Party's control of the popular press. Modeled to some extent on the system in Benito Mussolini's Italy, the law defined a Schriftleiter as anyone who wrote, edited, or selected texts and/or illustrated material for serial publication. Individuals selected for this position were chosen based on experiential, educational, and racial criteria. The law required journalists to "regulate their work in accordance with National Socialism as a philosophy of life and as a conception of government."
In 1934, President von Hindenburg died. In a radio broadcast, Goebbels announced that the offices of president and chancellor had been combined, and Hitler had been formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).
The propaganda ministry was organized into 7 departments:
- administration and legal;
- mass rallies, public health, youth, and race;
- radio;
- national and foreign press;
- films and film censorship;
- art, music, and theater; and
- protection against counter-propaganda, both foreign and domestic.
Goebbels style of leadership was tempestuous and unpredictable. He would suddenly change direction and shift his support between senior associates. He was a difficult boss and liked to berate his staff in public. Goebbels was successful at his job, however.
Goebbels promoted the development of films with a Nazi slant, and ones that contained subliminal or overt propaganda messages. Under the auspices of the Reich Chamber of Culture, Goebbels added additional sub-chambers for the fields of broadcasting, fine arts, literature, music, the press, and the theater. As in the film industry, anyone wishing to pursue a career in these fields had to be a member of the corresponding chamber. In this way anyone whose views were contrary to the regime could be excluded from working in their chosen field and thus silenced. In addition, journalists now considered employees of the state were required to prove Aryan descent back to the year 1800, and if married, the same requirement applied to the spouse. Members of any chamber were not allowed to leave the country for their work without prior permission of their chamber. A committee was established to censor books, and works could not be re-published unless they were on the list of approved works. Similar regulations applied to other fine arts and entertainment; even cabaret performances were censored. Many German artists and intellectuals left Germany in the pre-war years rather than work under these restrictions.
Goebbels was particularly interested in controlling radio, which was then still a fairly new mass medium. Goebbels gained control of radio stations nationwide, and placed them under the German National Broadcasting Corporation in 1934. Manufacturers were urged by Goebbels to produce inexpensive home receivers and by 1938 nearly ten million sets had been sold. Loudspeakers were placed in public areas, factories, and schools, so that important party broadcasts would be heard live by nearly all Germans. In 1939 the day after the start of the war, Goebbels and the Council of Ministers proclaimed it illegal to listen to foreign radio stations. Disseminating news from foreign broadcasts could result in the death penalty. Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought."
A major focus of Nazi propaganda was Hitler himself, who was glorified as a heroic and infallible leader and became the focus of a cult of personality. Much of this was spontaneous, but some was stage-managed as part of Goebbels' propaganda work. Adulation of Hitler was the focus of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, where his moves were carefully choreographed. At the 1935 Nazi party congress rally at Nuremberg, Goebbels declared that "Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself."
In 1933, Hitler signed a treaty with the Vatican that required the regime to honor the independence of Catholic institutions and prohibited clergy from involvement in politics. However, the regime continued to target the Christian churches and to try to weaken their influence. Throughout 1935 and 1936, hundreds of clergy and nuns were arrested, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or sexual offenses. Goebbels widely publicized the trials in his propaganda campaigns, showing the cases in the worst possible light. Restrictions were placed on public meetings, and Catholic publications faced censorship. Catholic schools were required to reduce religious instruction and crucifixes were removed from state buildings. In 1937 he stated he wanted to eliminate the Protestant church.
In response to the persecution, Pope Pius XI had the “With Burning Concern” Encyclical smuggled into Germany for Passion Sunday 1937 and read from every pulpit. It denounced the systematic hostility of the regime toward the church. In response, Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. His speech in Berlin in front of 20,000 party members, which was also broadcast on the radio, attacked the Catholic church as morally corrupt. As a result of the propaganda campaign, enrollment in denominational schools dropped sharply, and by 1939 all such schools were disbanded or converted to public facilities. Harassment and threats of imprisonment led the clergy to be much more cautious in their criticism of the regime. Partly out of foreign policy concerns, Hitler ordered a scaling back of the church struggle by the end of 1937.
After the western powers acceded to Hitler's demands concerning Czechoslovakia in 1938, Goebbels soon redirected his propaganda machine against Poland. He orchestrated a campaign against Poland, fabricating stories about atrocities against ethnic Germans in Danzig and other cities. Even so, he was unable to persuade the majority of Germans to welcome the prospect of war. He privately held doubts about the wisdom of risking a protracted war against Britain and France by attacking Poland. After the Invasion of Poland in 1939, Goebbels used his propaganda ministry and the Reich chambers to control access to information domestically.
The Propaganda Ministry took over the broadcasting facilities of conquered countries immediately after surrender, and began broadcasting prepared material using the existing announcers as a way to gain the trust of the citizens. Most aspects of the media, both domestically and in the conquered countries, were controlled by Goebbels and his department. The German Home Service, the Armed Forces Programme, and the German European Service were all rigorously controlled in everything from the information they were permitted to disseminate to the music they were allowed to play. Party rallies, speeches, and demonstrations continued; speeches were broadcast on the radio and short propaganda films were exhibited using 1,500 mobile film vans. Hitler made fewer public appearances and broadcasts as the war progressed, so Goebbels increasingly became the voice of the Nazi regime for the German people.
Goebbels became preoccupied with morale and the efforts of the people on the home front. He believed that the more the people at home were involved in the war effort, the better their morale would be. For example, he initiated a programme for the collection of winter clothing and ski equipment for troops on the eastern front. At the same time, Goebbels implemented changes to have more "entertaining material" in radio and film produced for the public, decreeing in late 1942 that 20 per cent of the films should be propaganda and 80 per cent light entertainment. Goebbels dealt with increasingly serious shortages of necessities such as food and clothing, as well as the need to ration beer and tobacco, which were important for morale. Hitler suggested watering the beer and degrading the quality of the cigarettes so that more could be produced, but Goebbels refused, saying the cigarettes were already of such low quality that it was impossible to make them any worse. Through his propaganda campaigns, he worked hard to maintain an appropriate level of morale among the public about the military situation, neither too optimistic nor too grim.
Goebbels pressured Hitler to introduce measures that would produce "total war", including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labor force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations. In 1943, Goebbels began to recognize that the war could no longer be won. Following the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall of Mussolini, he raised with Hitler the possibility of a separate peace, either with the Soviets or with Britain. Hitler rejected both of these proposals. In the last months of the war, Goebbels' speeches and articles took on an increasingly apocalyptic tone. By the beginning of 1945, with the Soviets on the Oder River and the Western Allies preparing to cross the Rhine, he could no longer disguise the fact that defeat was inevitable. Berlin had little in the way of fortifications or artillery as almost everything had been sent to the front. Millions of Germans were fleeing westward. He tentatively discussed with Hitler the issue of making peace overtures to the western allies, but Hitler again refused. Privately, Goebbels was conflicted at pushing the case with Hitler since he did not want to lose the confidence of his Führer.
When other Nazi leaders urged Hitler to leave Berlin and establish a new center of resistance in Bavaria, Goebbels opposed this, arguing for a heroic last stand in Berlin. His family moved into their house in Berlin to await the end. He knew how the outside world would view the criminal acts committed by the regime, and had no desire to subject himself to the "debacle" of a trial. Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. Goebbels made the following proclamation to the people of Berlin:
“I call on you to fight for your city. Fight with everything you have got, for the sake of your wives and your children, your mothers and your parents. Your arms are defending everything we have ever held dear, and all the generations that will come after us. Be proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning! We now use every means to galvanize the defense of the capital. The battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle.”
With the Soviets advancing ever closer to the bunker complex, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony within the Führerbunker. In his last will and testament, Hitler named no successor as Führer or leader of the Nazi Party. Instead, he appointed Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. Goebbels wrote a postscript to the will stating that he would disobey Hitler's order to leave Berlin: "For reasons of humanity and personal loyalty", he had to stay. After Hitler's suicide, Goebbels was depressed. Voss later recounted Goebbels as saying:
"It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way out left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example."
When Hitler committed suicide, in accordance with Hitler's will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany. He served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after poisoning their 6 children with cyanide.
Like many Germans of that time, Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age. After joining the Nazis, and meeting Hitler, his antisemitism grew and became more radical. He began to see the Jews as a destructive force with a negative impact on German society. After the Nazis seized power, he repeatedly urged Hitler to take action against the Jews. The Nazi party's goal was to remove Jews from German cultural and economic life, and eventually to remove them from the country altogether. In addition to his propaganda efforts, Goebbels actively promoted the persecution of the Jews through pogroms, legislation, and other actions. Discriminatory measures he instituted in Berlin in the early years of the regime included bans against their using public transport and requiring that Jewish shops be marked as such.
In 1938, the German diplomat was killed in Paris by a young Jewish man. In response, Goebbels arranged for inflammatory antisemitic material to be released by the press, and the result was the start of a pogrom. Jews were attacked and synagogues destroyed all over Germany. The situation was further inflamed by a speech Goebbels gave at a party meeting, where he obliquely called for party members to incite further violence against Jews while making it appear to be a spontaneous series of acts by the German people. At least a hundred Jews were killed, several hundred synagogues were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of Jewish shops were vandalized in an event called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The destruction stopped after a conference where Göring pointed out that the destruction of Jewish property was in effect the destruction of German property, since the intention was that it would all eventually be confiscated.
“If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
While Goebbels had been pressing for expulsion of the Berlin Jews since 1935, there were still 62,000 living in the city in 1940. Part of the delay in their deportation was that they were needed as workers in the armaments industry. Deportations of German Jews began in 1941. Some Jews were shot immediately on arrival in destinations. In preparation for the deportations, Goebbels ordered that all German Jews were required by law to wear an identifying yellow badge in 1941.
In 1942, Goebbels received a document that made the Nazi policy clear: the Jewish population of Europe was to be sent to extermination camps in occupied areas of Poland and killed. His diary entries of the period show that he was well aware of the fate of the Jews.
"In general, it can probably be established that 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 percent can be put to work. A judgment is being carried out on the Jews which is barbaric but thoroughly deserved."
Goebbels had frequent discussions with Hitler about the fate of the Jews, a subject they discussed almost every time they met. He was aware throughout that the Jews were being exterminated, and completely supported this decision. He was one of the few top Nazi officials to do so publicly.
In the last months of the war, Goebbels' speeches and articles took on an increasingly apocalyptic tone. By the beginning of 1945, he could no longer disguise the fact that defeat was inevitable. Goebbels noted in his diary that millions of Germans were fleeing westward. But he decided to stay saying “The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it, especially with a leg like mine". Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths. Goebbels and his wife left the bunker and walked up to the garden where they committed suicide by biting on a cyanide ampule near where Hitler had been buried.
Golda Meir was a Ukrainian-born Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman, politician and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she has been described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics, though her tenure ended before that term was applied to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir "the best man in the government"; she was often portrayed as the strong-willed, straight-talking grandmother of the Jewish people. Meir resigned as prime minister in 1974, the year following the Yom Kippur War.
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age (1,000BC). The Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720BC. Judah was later conquered by the Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces. The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Jewish kingdom in 110BC, which came to an end in 63BC when Judea became a client state of the Roman Republic. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction and expulsion of Jewish population.
Jewish presence in the Land of Israel has persisted over the centuries. In the 7th century Palestine was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman and later British Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem.
Golda was born in Kiev, Ukraine. Her father was a carpenter. Meir`s earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumors of an imminent pogrom. He left to find work in New York City in 1903. Within 3 years, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States. Her mother ran a grocery store in Milwaukee and by age 8 Golda had been put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to the market for supplies. A leader early on, she organized a fund raiser to pay for her classmates' textbooks. After forming the American Young Sisters Society, she rented a hall and scheduled a public meeting for the event. She went on to graduate as valedictorian of her class.
She became a committed Labor Zionist and a dedicated socialist. When she married in 1917, she insisted in settling in Palestine. In 1921, when she was 23, the couple left their jobs to join a kibbutz in the British Mandate of Palestine. Her duties included picking almonds, planting trees, working in the chicken coops, and running the kitchen. Recognizing her leadership abilities, the kibbutz chose her as its representative. In 1924, the couple left the kibbutz and had 2 children. She strongly identified with Judaism culturally, but when it came to her religious beliefs she was an atheist.
“It is not only a matter of religious observance and practice. Being Jewish means being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it.”
In 1938, Golda was the Jewish observer from Palestine at a conference called by the US President Franklin Roosevelt to discuss the question of Jewish refugees' fleeing Nazi persecution. Delegates from the 32 invited countries repeatedly expressed their sorrow for the plight of the European Jews, but outlined why their countries could not help by admitting the refugees. The only exception was by the Dominican Republic, which pledged to accept 100,000 refugees on generous terms. In 1946, the British Government cracked down on the Zionist movement in Palestine, arresting many leaders. Golda became the principal negotiator between the Jews in Palestine and the British Mandatory authorities.
In 1948, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency was convinced that Israel would not be able to raise sufficient funds from the American Jewish community and she traveled to the United States to raise funds to purchase arms in Europe for the young country. 4 days before the official establishment of Israel, she traveled to Amman, Jordan, disguised as an Arab woman, for a secret meeting with King Abdullah I and urged him not to join the other Arab countries in attacking the Jews. Abdullah asked her not to hurry to proclaim a state. Golda replied: "We've been waiting for 2,000 years. Is that hurrying?" Golda called the mass exodus of Arabs before the War of Independence in 1948 "dreadful", and she likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Golda was one of 24 signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. Israel was attacked the next day by the joint armies of neighboring countries in what became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the war, Israel stopped the combined Arab assault, and then it launched a series of military offensives to defeat the invading Arab armies and to end the war.
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, or the Israeli War of Independence, was fought between the newly declared State of Israel and a military coalition of Arab states over the control of former British Palestine. There had been tension and conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, and between each of them and the British forces, ever since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine. British policies dissatisfied both Arabs and Jews. The Arabs' opposition developed into the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, while the Jewish resistance developed into the Jewish insurgency in Palestine (1944–1947). In 1947 these ongoing tensions erupted into civil war, following the 29 November 1947 adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned to divide Palestine into three areas: an Arab state, a Jewish state and the Special International Regime for the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
The ongoing civil war transformed into an inter-state conflict between Israel and the Arab states, following the Israeli Declaration of Independence the previous day. A combined invasion by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, together with expeditionary forces from Iraq, entered Palestine – Jordan having declared privately that it would abide by a decision not to attack the Jewish state. The invading forces took control of the Arab areas and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The 10 months of fighting, interrupted by several truce periods, took place mostly on the former territory of the British Mandate and for a short time also in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon.
As a result of the war, the State of Israel controlled both the area that the UN General Assembly Resolution had recommended for the proposed Jewish state as well as almost 60% of the area of Arab state proposed by the 1948 Partition Plan, including West Jerusalem and some territories in the West Bank. Jordan took control of the remainder of the former British mandate, which it annexed, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip, the strip of coastline hugging the Mediterranean.
The conflict triggered significant demographic change throughout the Middle East. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, and they became Palestinian refugees. In the 3 years following the war, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, with many of them having been expelled from their previous countries of residence in the Middle East. Golda believed that Israel had experience in nation-building that could be a model for the Africans.
"Like the Africans, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves."
Golda's first months as Foreign Minister coincided with the Suez Crisis, which is also known as the Second Arab-Israeli War. It involved a surprise invasion of Egypt in 1956 by Israel, followed by Britain and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal, remove Egyptian president Nasser, and provide a more secure western border and freedom of navigation for Israel. After the fighting had started, the US, the USSR, and the UN forced the 3 invaders to withdraw.
In 1958, during the wave of Jewish migration from Poland to Israel, Meir sought to prevent disabled and sick Polish Jews from immigrating to Israel.
Golda maintained the national unity government formed in 1967 after the Six-Day War fought between Israel and the United Arab Republic, made up from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The Egyptians were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israelis launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Egyptian leader Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai. Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, and conquered the Sinai.
Relations between Israel and its neighbours were not fully normalised after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1956 Israel invaded the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, with one of its objectives being the reopening of the Straits of Tiran that Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950. Israel was eventually forced to withdraw, but was guaranteed that the Straits of Tiran would remain open. While the United Nations Emergency Force was deployed along the border, there was no demilitarization agreement.
In the months prior to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a cause for war. In May Egyptian President Nasser announced that the straits would be closed to Israeli vessels and then mobilized its Egyptian forces along its border with Israel. Israel launched what it claimed were a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields.
The Egyptians were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israelis launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai. Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, and conquered the Sinai.
Nasser induced Syria and Jordan to begin attacks on Israel by using the initially confused situation to claim that Egypt had repelled the Israeli air strike. Israeli counterattacks resulted in the capture and occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from the Jordanians and the Golan Heights from Syria.
In the aftermath of the war, Israel had crippled the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian attacks having killed over 20,000 troops while only losing fewer than 1,000 of its own. Nasser resigned in shame, but was later reinstated after protests in Egypt against his resignation. The speed and ease of Israel's victory would later lead to a dangerous overconfidence within the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), contributing to initial Arab successes in the subsequent 1973 Yom Kippur War.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War was a war fought by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The fighting mostly took place in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, territories that had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. The Arab coalition launched a joint surprise attack on Israeli positions in the Israeli-occupied territories on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism with the central themes of suffering and repentance. Jewish people follow a 24 hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. This coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a month of fasting. Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed ceasefire lines to enter the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights respectively. Both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated massive resupply efforts to their respective allies during the war, and this led to a near-confrontation between the 2 nuclear superpowers.
Ultimately Israeli forces were successful and defeated the Arab troops. The displacement of civilian populations resulting from the war had long-term consequences, as 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and about 100,000 Syrians left the Golan Heights. Across the Arab world, Jewish minority communities fled or were expelled, with refugees going mainly to Israel or Europe.
Following the Yom Kippur War, Golda Meir's government was plagued by infighting and questions over Israel's lack of preparation for the war. A year later, Golda resigned and Yitzhak Rabin succeeded her.
Golda died of lymphatic cancer in Jerusalem at the age of 80.
Al Capone was an American mobster, crime boss, and businessman who attained fame during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His 7-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33 years old. He was considered a Five Points Gang member. This was a criminal organization, primarily of Irish-American origins.
He became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with the mayor and the city's police meant that he seemed safe from law enforcement.
Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many to be a modern-day Robin Hood. Al Capone started one of America's first soup kitchens during the great depression serving over 120,000 meals every single day. Many Chicagoans credit Capone with doing more for the poor than the federal government did.
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of gang rivals resulted in killing 7 men in broad daylight and damaged Chicago's image as well as Capone's. Leading influential citizens began to demand governmental action and newspapers dubbed him "Public Enemy No. 1".
Al Capone was born in New York City. His parents were Italian immigrants, his father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress. In 1893,the Capone family immigrated to the United States. Capone showed promise as a student, but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school. His schooling ended at the age of 14, after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face. He worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. During this time, Capone was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio, whom he came to regard as a mentor.
Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. During this time, he was employed and mentored by a fellow racketeer. Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door at a Brooklyn night club and was slashed by her brother. The wounds led to the nickname "Scarface" which Capone loathed. Capone later hired him as his bodyguard. When he was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds. When he was 19, he married an Irish Catholic and the couple had a son. A year later he moved to Chicago at the invitation of Torrio and was hired as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis. Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups.
In 1925, Capone was ambushed, leaving him shaken but unhurt. 12 days later, Torrio was returning from a shopping trip when he was shot several times. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control to Capone, age 26, who became the new boss of an organization that took in illegal breweries and a transportation network that reached to Canada, with political and law-enforcement protection. In turn, he was able to use more violence to increase revenue. An establishment that refused to purchase liquor from him often got blown up, and as many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during the 1920s. Rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city.
Capone indulged in custom suits, cigars, gourmet food and drink and female companionship. He was particularly known for his flamboyant and costly jewelry. His favorite responses to questions about his activities were:
"I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want. All I do is satisfy a public demand."
He based himself in Illinois after using bribery and widespread intimidation to take over town council elections.
Capone became increasingly security-minded. As a precaution, he and his entourage would often show up suddenly at one of Chicago's train depots and buy up an entire Pullman sleeper car on a night train to a destination where they would spend a week in luxury hotel suites under assumed names. He never registered any property under his name. He did not even have a bank account, but always used Western Union for cash delivery.
In 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance. Capone was sentenced to a short prison term. A year later, Capone was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements, but was acquitted after a 3-day trial. In 1931, Capone was charged with income tax evasion and convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for 8 hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent.
The main effect of Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as considerably undermining the city's organized crime syndicate. Far from being smashed, the Chicago Outfit continued without being troubled by the Chicago police, but at a lower-level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule. Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in the city without incurring serious investigation. In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist performed examinations and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. Capone spent the last years of his life at his mansion in Palm Island, Florida.
Capone had a stroke and died of a cardiac arrest.
Himmler was head of the Protection Squadron - SS and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the people most directly responsible for the Holocaust. On Hitler's behalf, Himmler built extermination camps. As facilitator and overseer of the concentration camps, Himmler directed the killing of some 6 million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and other victims; the total number of civilians killed by the regime is estimated at 13 million people, most Polish and Soviet citizens. Himmler was one of the most brutal mass murderers in history.
Himmler was born in Munich into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father was a teacher, and his mother was a devout Roman Catholic. He had 2 brothers. He attended a grammar school where his father was deputy principal. While he did well in his schoolwork, he had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger. He was studious and awkward in social situations. As a youth, Himmler took a keen interest in current events, dueling, and discussions of religion and sex. In 1915, when he was 15 years old, he began training with the Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he enlisted with the reserve battalion 2 years later.
While Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat. After his discharge, he returned to complete his grammar-school education and from 1919-22, he studied agronomy following a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness. Although many regulations that discriminated against non-Christians, including Jews and other minority groups, had been eliminated during the unification of Germany in 1871, antisemitism continued to exist and thrive in Germany and other parts of Europe. Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so. During his second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military career. Although he was not successful, he was able to extend his involvement in the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time that he first met an early member of the Nazi Party. Himmler admired Röhm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group.
In 1922, Himmler became more interested in the "Jewish question", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of antisemitic remarks and recording a number of discussions about Jews with his classmates. The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society pertaining to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews in society. The debate was similar to other so-called "national questions" and dealt with the civil, legal, national and political status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The debate started within societies, politicians and writers in western and central Europe influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and the ideals of the French Revolution. The issues included the legal and economic Jewish disabilities like quotas and segregation, assimilation, emancipation and enlightenment. The expression has been used by antisemitic movements from the 1880s onward, culminating in the Nazi phrase "the Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Similarly, the expression was used by proponents for and opponents of the establishment of an autonomous Jewish homeland or a sovereign Jewish state.
His reading was dominated by antisemitic pamphlets, German myths, and occult tracts. Himmler's political views veered towards the radical right, and he took part in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles. Hyperinflation was raging, and his parents could no longer afford to educate all 3 sons. Disappointed by his failure to make a career in the military and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he was forced to take a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He remained in this position until 1923 when he joined the Nazi Party.
As a member of a reserve battalion during WWI, Himmler did not see active service. He studied agronomy in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925.
Himmler met his future wife, Margaret, in 1927. Seven years his senior, she was a nurse who shared his interest in herbal medicine and homeopathy, and was part owner of a small private clinic. They were married in 1928 and had only one child. The couple were also foster parents to a son of an SS officer who had died before the war. Margaret sold her share of the clinic and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in Waldtrudering, near Munich, where they erected a prefabricated house. Himmler was constantly away on party business, so his wife took charge of their efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to raise livestock for sale. The couple saw little of each other as Himmler became totally absorbed by work.
In 1929, he was appointed Reichsführer-SS by Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a mere 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group and following Hitler's orders, set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known to have good organizational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates. From 1943 onward, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). Himmler had a lifelong interest in occultism, interpreting Germanic neopagan beliefs to promote the racial policy of Nazi Germany, and incorporating esoteric symbolism and rituals into the SS.
Himmler was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler to seize power in Munich. This event would set Himmler on a life of politics. He was questioned by the police about his role in the putsch, but was not charged because of insufficient evidence. However, he lost his job, was unable to find employment as an agronomist, and had to move in with his parents in Munich. Frustrated by these failures, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.
In 1924, Himmler, while searching for a world view, came to abandon Catholicism and focused on the occult and in antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a religion for him. Himmler found the Nazi party appealing because its political positions agreed with his own views. Initially, he was not swept up by Hitler's charisma or the cult of Führer worship. However, as he learned more about Hitler through his reading, he began to regard him as a useful face of the party, and he later admired and even worshiped him.
To consolidate and advance his own position in the party, Himmler took advantage of the disarray in the party following Hitler's arrest in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. He started work as a party secretary and propaganda assistant. Traveling all over Bavaria agitating for the party, he gave speeches and distributed literature. Placed in charge of the party office in Lower Bavaria, he was responsible for integrating the area's membership with the Nazis under Hitler when the party was re-founded in 1925.
That same year, he joined the SS. The SS was formed in 1923 for Hitler's personal protection, and was re-formed in 1925 as an elite unit. He was appointed deputy propaganda chief in 1927 at the age of 27. As was typical in the Nazi party, he had considerable freedom of action in his post, which increased over time. He began to collect statistics on the number of Jews, Freemasons, and enemies of the party, and following his strong need for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy. Himmler told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially pure elite unit. Convinced that Himmler was the man for the job, Hitler appointed him Deputy Reichsführer-SS, with the rank of SS-Oberführer.
Himmler joined a youth group where he met Höss, who was later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Darré, whose book, The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race, caught Hitler's attention, leading to his later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Darré was a firm believer in the superiority of the Nordic race, and his philosophy was a major influence on Himmler. In 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's approval. Over the next year, Himmler grew the SS from a force of about 290 men to about 3,000. By 1930 Himmler had persuaded Hitler to run the SS as a separate organization.
To gain political power, the Nazi party took advantage of the economic downturn during the Great Depression. The coalition government of the Weimar Republic was unable to improve the economy, so many voters turned to the political extreme, which included the Nazis. Hitler used populist rhetoric, including blaming scapegoats, particularly the Jews, for the economic hardships. In the 1932 election, the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the vote and 230 seats in the Reichstag and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
Less than a month later, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Hitler took advantage of this event and suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag in 1933, gave the Cabinet, in practice, Hitler, full legislative powers, and the country became a de facto dictatorship. In 1934, Hitler's cabinet passed a law which stipulated that the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor and Hitler became both head of state and head of government under the title Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).
The Nazi Party's rise to power provided Himmler and the SS an unfettered opportunity to thrive. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. Strict membership requirements ensured that all members were of Hitler's “Aryan master race". Applicants were vetted for Nordic qualities. In Himmler's words:
"like a nursery gardener trying to reproduce a good old strain which has been adulterated and debased; we started from the principles of plant selection and then proceeded quite unashamedly to weed out the men whom we did not think we could use for the build-up of the SS."
Himmler further established a department that implemented racial policies and monitored the "racial integrity" of the SS membership. SS men were carefully vetted for their racial background. Himmler introduced the "marriage order", which required SS men wishing to marry to produce family trees proving that both families were of Aryan descent to 1800. If any non-Aryan forebears were found in either family tree during the racial investigation, the person concerned was excluded from the SS. Himmler expected that each SS marriage should produce at least 4 children, thus creating a pool of genetically superior prospective SS members. The programme had disappointing results; less than 40 per cent of SS men married and each produced only about one child.
In 1933, less than 3 months after the Nazis seized power, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau. Hitler had stated that he did not want it to be just another prison or detention camp. Himmler appointed a convicted felon and ardent Nazi to run the camp. The felon devised a system that was used as a model for future camps throughout Germany. Its features included isolation of victims from the outside world, elaborate roll calls and work details, the use of force and executions to exact obedience, and a strict disciplinary code for the guards. Uniforms were issued for prisoners and guards alike with the guards' uniforms having a special Scull and Bones insignia on their collars. By the end of 1934, Himmler took control of the camps under the aegis of the SS, creating a separate division, called the “Scull and Bones” division.
Initially the camps housed political opponents; over time, undesirable members of German society, criminals, vagrants, deviants, were placed in the camps as well. A Hitler decree issued in 1937 allowed for the incarceration of anyone deemed by the regime to be an undesirable member of society. This included Jews, Gypsies, communists, and those persons of any other cultural, racial, political, or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be Untermensch (sub-human). Thus, the camps became a mechanism for social and racial engineering. By the outbreak of WWII in 1939, there were six camps housing some 27,000 inmates. Death tolls were high.
In 1934, Hitler and other Nazi leaders became concerned that Röhm was planning a coup d'état and Hitler decided that Röhm and the leadership had to be eliminated. Hitler took charge in Munich, where Röhm was arrested. He gave Röhm the choice to commit suicide or be shot. When Röhm refused to kill himself, he was shot dead by two SS officers. Between 85 and 200 members of the leadership and other political adversaries were killed in 1934 in these actions. The SS became an independent organization answerable only to Hitler. Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became the highest formal SS rank in the army.
In 1935, Hitler presented 2 laws, known as the Nuremberg Laws, to the Reichstag. The laws banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. The laws also deprived so-called "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. These laws were among the first race-based measures instituted by the Third Reich. Himmler wanted to extend the power of the SS; thus, they urged Hitler to form a national police force overseen by the SS, to guard Nazi Germany against its many enemies at the time, real and imagined.
Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich, and named Himmler Chief of German Police. The police was now effectively a division of the SS, and hence independent of control. This move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. He also gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into a branch of the SS.
Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kripo: criminal police as the umbrella organization for all criminal investigation agencies in Germany. The Kripo was merged with the Gestapo into the SiPo: security police. In 1939, following the outbreak of WWII, Himmler formed the SS-RSHA: Reich Main Security Office to bring the SiPo which included the Gestapo and Kripo together under one umbrella. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS developed its own military branch which later evolved into the Waffen-SS. Nominally under the authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a fully militarized structure of command and operations. It grew from 3 regiments to over 38 divisions during WWII.
In addition to his military ambitions, Himmler established the beginnings of a parallel economy under the umbrella of the SS. An administrator set up an Enterprise in 1940 and under the auspices of the SS Economy and Administration Head Office, this holding company owned housing corporations, factories, and publishing houses. The administrator and many others were unscrupulous and quickly exploited the companies for personal gain. In contrast, Himmler was honest in matters of money and business.
In 1938, as part of his preparations for war, Hitler ended the German alliance with China, and entered into an agreement with the more modern Japan. That same year, Austria was unified with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss, and the Munich Agreement gave Nazi Germany control over the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia. Hitler's primary motivations for war included obtaining additional "living space" for the Germanic peoples, who were considered racially superior according to Nazi ideology. A second goal was the elimination of those considered racially inferior, particularly the Jews and Slavs, from territories controlled by the Reich. From 1933 to 1938, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to the United States, Palestine, Great Britain, and other countries. Some converted to Christianity.
Himmler believed that a major task of the SS should be "acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" as part of preparations for the coming conflict between "humans and subhumans". Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as dangerous obstacles to his planned battle with "subhumans".In 1937, Himmler declared:
“We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives.”
When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler. German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms undertook border skirmishes which deceptively suggested Polish aggression against Germany. The incidents were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening event of WWII. At the beginning of the war against Poland, Hitler authorized the killing of Polish civilians, including Jews and ethnic Poles. Authorized by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler units, now re-purposed as death squads, followed the army into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65,000 intellectuals and other civilians. Under Himmler's orders, these squads were tasked with rounding up Jews and others for placement in ghettos and concentration camps.
Germany subsequently invaded Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands, and France, and began bombing Great Britain in preparation for an invasion. In 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the preparation of the “General Plan for the East”, a plan which was was finalized in 1942. It called for the Baltic States, Poland, Western Ukraine, and Belorussia to be conquered and resettled by 10 million German citizens. The current residents, some 31 million people, would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labor. The plan would have extended the border of Germany 1,000km to the east. Himmler expected that it would take 20-30 years to complete the plan, at a cost of 67 billion Reichsmarks.
Himmler stated openly:
"It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply."
Himmler declared that the war in the east was a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik hordes". Constantly struggling with recruits, Himmler solved this problem through the creation of Waffen-SS units composed of Germanic folk groups taken from the Balkans and eastern Europe. Equally vital were recruits from among the Germanic considered peoples of northern and western Europe, in the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. Spain and Italy also provided men for Waffen-SS units. Among western countries, the number of volunteers varied from a high of 25,000 from the Netherlands to 300 each from Sweden and Switzerland. From the east, the highest number of men came from Lithuania (50,000) and the lowest from Bulgaria (600). After 1943 most men from the east were conscripts.
Hitler thus intended to prevent internal friction like that occurring earlier in Poland in 1939, when several German Army generals had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders to trial for the murders they had committed. Following the army into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up and killed Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state. Hitler was sent frequent reports. In addition, 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, mistreatment or executions in just 8 months of 1942. As many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners of war died or were executed in Nazi concentration camps over the course of the war. Most were shot or gassed.
By early 1941, following Himmler's orders, 10 concentration camps had been constructed in which inmates were subjected to forced labor. Jews from all over Germany and the occupied territories were deported to the camps or confined to ghettos. As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in 1941, signaling that the expected quick defeat of the Soviet Union had failed to materialize, Hitler and other Nazi officials realized that mass deportations to the east would no longer be possible. As a result, instead of deportation, many Jews in Europe were destined for death. Nazi racial policies, including the notion that people who were racially inferior had no right to live, date back to the earliest days of the party. Hitler discusses this in Mein Kampf. Somewhere around the time of the German declaration of war on the United States in 1941, Hitler finally resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be "exterminated."
A meeting was held in 1942 attended by top Nazi officials, it was used to outline the plans for the "final solution to the Jewish question". It was detailed how those Jews able to work would be worked to death and those unable to work would be killed outright. It was calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million, and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan. A top Nazi official was assassinated by an operation led by people who lived in a village near Prague. Hitler ordered brutal reprisals. Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village was razed to the ground. Its male inhabitants and all adults in the village were murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads. Himmler took over leadership and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews. He ordered 3 new extermination camps to be constructed.
Initially the victims were killed with gas vans or by firing squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews. Nauseated and shaken by the experience, he was concerned about the impact such actions would have on the mental health of his SS men. He decided that alternate methods of killing should be found. On his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded, including the addition of gas chambers, where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B. By the end of the war, 6,000,000 Jews had been killed by the Nazi regime.
The Nazis also targeted Gypsies as "asocial" and "criminals". By 1935, they were confined into special camps away from ethnic Germans. In 1938, Himmler issued an order in which he said that the 'Gypsy question' would be determined by "race". Himmler believed that the Romani were originally Aryan but had become a mixed race. Only the "racially pure" were to be allowed to live. In 1939, Himmler ordered thousands of Gypsies to be sent to the Dachau concentration camp and by 1942, ordered all Romani sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. In a revolt, prisoners killed most of the guards and SS personnel, and 300 prisoners escaped. 200 managed to get away. Some joined partisan units operating in the area.
The Nazis wanted to breed a master race of racially pure Nordic Aryans in Germany. As an agronomist and farmer Himmler was acquainted with the principles of selective breeding, which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through eugenics, to be Nordic in appearance within several decades. Himmler referred explicitly to the "extermination" of the Jewish people:
“I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate in 1934, to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary."
"I am talking about the Jewish evacuation: the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated," every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter." And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person - with exceptions due to human weaknesses - has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of."
"Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1917.”
Hitler's motivation for authorizing Himmler's speeches was to ensure that all party leaders were made aware of these plans and actions. Thus, it would be impossible for them to later deny knowledge of the killings. Because the Allies had indicated that they were going to pursue criminal charges for German war crimes, Hitler tried to gain the loyalty and silence of his subordinates by making them all parties to the planned genocide. Himmler was deeply involved in the Germanization program for the East, particularly Poland. As laid out in the “General Plan for the East”, the aim was to enslave, expel or exterminate the native population and to make “living space" for ethnic Germans. He continued his plans to colonize the east, even when many Germans were reluctant to relocate there, and despite negative effects on the war effort.
Himmler's racial groupings began with the classification of people deemed of German blood. These included Germans who had collaborated with Germany before the war, but also those who considered themselves German but had been neutral. Those who were partially "Polonized" but "Germanizable"; and Germans who were of Polish nationality. Himmler ordered that those who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labor. He declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an "alien race". The plan included the kidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany. Himmler urged:
“Obviously in such a mixture of peoples, there will always be some racially good types. Therefore, I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary by robbing, or stealing them. Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people,... or we destroy that blood.”
The "racially valuable" children were to be removed from all contact with Poles, and raised as Germans, with German names. Himmler declared:
"We have faith above all in this our own blood, which has flowed into a foreign nationality through the vicissitudes of German history. We are convinced that our own philosophy and ideals will reverberate in the spirit of these children who racially belong to us."
The children were to be adopted by German families. Children who passed muster at first but were later rejected were taken to a ghetto where most of them eventually died. By 1943 Himmler reported that 629,000 ethnic Germans had been resettled. However, most resettled Germans did not live in the envisioned small farms, but in temporary camps or quarters in towns. Half a million residents of the annexed Polish territories, as well as from Slovenia, Alsace, Lorraine, and Luxembourg were deported or sent to Germany as slave labor. Himmler instructed that the German nation should view all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their German blood. In accordance with German racial laws, sexual relations between Germans and foreigners were forbidden.
In 1944, a group of German army officers including some of the highest-ranked members of the German armed forces attempted to assassinate Hitler, but failed to do so. The next day, Himmler formed a special commission that arrested over 5,000 suspected and known opponents of the regime. Hitler ordered brutal reprisals that resulted in the execution of more than 4,900 people. Though Himmler was embarrassed by his failure to uncover the plot, it led to an increase in his powers and authority.
General of the Reserve Army and his immediate superior were implicated in the conspiracy and Hitler promoted Himmler as a successor to lead the Reserve Army consisting of 2 million men. Himmler hoped to draw on these reserves to fill posts within the Waffen-SS. He began to fill top Reserve Army posts with SS men. By 1944 Himmler had merged the army officer recruitment department with that of the Waffen-SS and had successfully lobbied for an increase in the quotas for recruits to the SS. By this time, Hitler had appointed Himmler as Minister of the Interior and Plenipotentiary General for Administration. In 1944 Hitler authorized him to restructure the organization and administration of the Waffen-SS, the army, and the police services. As head of the Reserve Army, Himmler was now responsible for prisoners of war. He was also in charge of the penal system, and controlled the development of armaments. In 1944 the Western Allied armies landed in northern France. Hitler appointed Himmler commander-in-chief of Army Group Upper Rhine.
In 1944 Hitler ordered Himmler to create special army units, called "People's Army". All males aged 16-60 were eligible for conscription into this militia, over the protests of Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who noted that irreplaceable skilled workers were being removed from armaments production. Hitler confidently believed 6 million men could be raised, and the new units would "initiate a people's war against the invader". These hopes were wildly optimistic. In 1944, children as young as 14 were being enlisted. Because of severe shortages in weapons and equipment and lack of training, members of the “People`s Army” were poorly prepared for combat, and about 175,000 of them lost their lives in the final months of the war. In 1945, in spite of Himmler's lack of military experience, Hitler appointed him as commander of the hastily formed Army Group to halt the Soviet Red Army.
Himmler established his command center using his special train, as his headquarters. The train had only one telephone line, inadequate maps, and no signal detachment or radios with which to establish communication and relay military orders. Himmler seldom left the train, only worked about 4 hours per day, and insisted on a daily massage before commencing work and a lengthy nap after lunch. Within 5 days, tanks of the Red Army had reached the Baltic, trapping the German forces, who sought to escape by sea. Himmler was unable to devise any viable plans for completion of his military objectives. Under pressure from Hitler over the worsening military situation, Himmler became anxious and unable to give him coherent reports.
When the counter-attack failed to stop the Soviet advance, Hitler held Himmler personally liable and accused him of not following orders. Himmler's tenure as a military commander ended. By this time Himmler, who had been under the care of his doctor had fled to a sanatorium. By that time, the inner circle of people which Hitler trusted was rapidly shrinking.
In early 1945, the German war effort was on the verge of collapse and Himmler's relationship with Hitler had deteriorated. Himmler considered independently negotiating a peace settlement. His masseur, who had moved to Sweden, acted as an intermediary in negotiations with the head of the Swedish Red Cross. Letters were exchanged between the two men and direct meetings were arranged.
Himmler and Hitler met for the last time in 1945, Hitler's birthday, and he swore unswerving loyalty to Hitler. At a military briefing on that day, Hitler stated that he would not leave Berlin, in spite of Soviet advances. Along with Göring, Himmler quickly left the city after the briefing. When Himmler realized that the war was lost, he attempted to open peace talks with the western Allies without Hitler's knowledge. Himmler met with a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress, to discuss the release of Jewish concentration camp inmates. As a result of these negotiations, about 20,000 people were released. Himmler falsely claimed in the meeting that the crematoria at camps had been built to deal with the bodies of prisoners who had died in a typhus epidemic. He also claimed very high survival rates for the camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, even as these sites were liberated and it became obvious that his figures were false.
Himmler representing himself as the provisional leader of Germany, claimed that Hitler would be dead within the next few days. Hoping that the British and Americans would fight the Soviets alongside what remained of the Wehrmacht, Himmler offered a surrender to General Dwight Eisenhower. Meanwhile, Göring had sent a telegram, a few hours earlier, asking Hitler for permission to assume leadership of the Reich, an act that Hitler under the prodding of Martin Bormann interpreted as a demand to step down or face a coup.
Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin, was caught in civilian clothes preparing to desert and was court-martialed and shot. Hitler heard the BBC broadcast the news report about Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western Allies. Hitler, who had long considered Himmler to be second only to Goebbels in loyalty flew into a rage at this apparent betrayal. Hitler told those who were still with him in the bunker complex that Himmler's act was the worst treachery he had ever known and ordered his arrest. By this time, the Soviets had advanced to 300m from the Reich Chancellery, and were preparing to storm the Chancellery. This report, combined with Himmler's treachery, prompted Hitler to write his last will and testament. In the testament, completed one day prior to his suicide, Hitler declared both Himmler and Göring to be traitors. He stripped Himmler of all of his party and state offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party.
Rejected by his former comrades and hunted by the Allies, Himmler attempted to go into hiding. He had not made extensive preparations for this, but he had equipped himself with a forged pay-book under an alias. With a small band of companions, he headed south without a final destination in mind. The group split up and Himmler and 2 aides were stopped and detained at a checkpoint set up by former Soviet POWs. Over the following 2 days, he was moved around to several camps and was brought to the British Interrogation Camp. The duty officer began a routine interrogation. Himmler was given a medical exam and when the doctor attempted to examine the inside of Himmler's mouth, Himmler bit into a hidden potassium cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes.
Himmler was interested in mysticism and the occult from an early age. He tied this interest into his racist philosophy, looking for proof of Aryan and Nordic racial superiority from ancient times. He promoted a cult of ancestor worship, particularly among members of the SS, as a way to keep the race pure and provide immortality to the nation. Viewing the SS as an "order" along the lines of the Teutonic Knights, he had them take over the Church of the Teutonic Order in Vienna in 1939. He began the process of replacing Christianity with a new moral code that rejected humanitarianism and challenged the Christian concept of marriage. A research society founded by Himmler in 1935 conducted research all over the globe to look for proof of the superiority and ancient origins of the Germanic race. All regalia and uniforms of Nazi Germany, particularly those of the SS, used symbolism in their designs.
As second in command of the SS and then Reichsführer-SS, Himmler was in regular contact with Hitler to arrange for SS men as bodyguards. From the late 1930s, the SS was independent of the control of other state agencies or government departments, and he reported only to Hitler.
Himmler considered Speer to be an especially dangerous rival, both in the Reich administration and as a potential successor to Hitler. Speer refused to accept Himmler's offer of the high rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer, as he felt to do so would put him in Himmler's debt and obligate him to allow Himmler a say in armaments production. Hitler typically did not issue written orders, but gave them orally at meetings or in phone conversations. He also had Bormann convey orders. Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler, earning him enemies, including Himmler.
Hitler required absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors. Thus Hitler viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself, the infallible leader, at the apex. Accordingly, Himmler placed himself in a position of subservience to Hitler, and was unconditionally obedient to him. However, he like other top Nazi officials had aspirations to one day succeed Hitler as leader of the Reich.
Albert Speer was a German architect who was, for most of WWII, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted moral responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs for complicity in crimes of the Nazi regime, while insisting he had been ignorant of the Holocaust.
Speer was born into an upper-middle-class family. He was the second of 3 sons. He wanted to become a mathematician, but his father said if Speer chose this occupation he would "lead a life without money, without a position and without a future". Instead, Speer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and studied architecture.
In 1922, when he was 17 years old, Speer began courting Margaret, the daughter of a successful craftsman who employed 50 workers. The relationship was frowned upon by Speer's class-conscious mother, who felt that the Margaret's family were socially inferior. Despite this opposition, the 2 married in Berlin in 1928. 7 years elapsed before Margaret Speer was invited to stay at her in-laws' home.
Speer began his architectural studies at the University of Karlsruhe instead of a more highly acclaimed institution because the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 limited his parents' income. In 1924 when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the much more reputable Technical University of Munich. In 1925 he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin and passed his exams in 1927.
Speer was apolitical when he was a young man, and that he only attended a Berlin Nazi rally in 1930 at the urging of some of his students. The following year he applied to join the Nazi Party. Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching himself on a political and governmental career which lasted 14 years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle.
In 1932, the Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party prior to the Reichstag elections. While they were there, his friend, a Nazi Party official recommended the young architect to Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters. Speer agreed to do the work. The organizers of the 1933 Nuremberg Rally asked Speer to submit designs for the rally, bringing him into contact with Hitler for the first time. Neither the organizers nor Rudolf Hess were willing to decide whether to approve the plans, and Hess sent Speer to Hitler's Munich apartment to seek his approval. This work won Speer his first national post, as Nazi Party "Commissioner for the Artistic and Technical Presentation of Party Rallies and Demonstrations".
Shortly after Hitler had come into power, he had started to make plans to rebuild the chancellery. Hitler appointed Speer, whose work for Goebbels had impressed him. Hitler instructed Speer to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system. In 1942, Hitler appointed him as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production.
As Chancellor, Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every day to be briefed by Speer and the building supervisor on the progress of the renovations. After one of these briefings, Hitler invited Speer to lunch, to the architect's great excitement. Hitler evinced considerable interest in Speer during the luncheon, and later told Speer that he had been looking for a young architect capable of carrying out his architectural dreams for the new Germany. Speer quickly became part of Hitler's inner circle. He was expected to call on Hitler in the morning for a walk or chat, to provide consultation on architectural matters, and to discuss Hitler's ideas. Most days he was invited to dinner.
The 2 men found much in common: Hitler spoke of Speer as a "kindred spirit" for whom he had always maintained "the warmest human feelings". The young, ambitious architect was dazzled by his rapid rise and close proximity to Hitler, which guaranteed him a flood of commissions from the government and from the highest ranks of the Party.
"I belonged to a circle which consisted of other artists and his personal staff. If Hitler had had any friends at all, I certainly would have been one of his close friends."
Hitler appointed Speer as head of the Chief Office for Construction, which placed him nominally on Hess's staff. One of Speer's first commissions was a stadium able to hold 340,000 people. Speer insisted that as many events as possible be held at night, both to give greater prominence to his lighting effects and to hide the individual Nazis, many of whom were overweight. Speer surrounded the site with 130 anti-aircraft searchlights. Speer described this as his most beautiful work, and as the only one that stood the test of time.
Nürnberg was to be the site of many more official Nazi buildings, most of which were never built. One stadium would have accommodated 400,000 spectators, while an even larger rally ground would have held half a million people. While planning these structures, Speer conceived the concept of "ruin value": that major buildings should be constructed in such a way they would leave aesthetically pleasing ruins for thousands of years into the future. Such ruins would be a testament to the greatness of Nazi Germany, just as ancient Greek or Roman ruins were symbols of the greatness of those civilizations.
In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital with the rank of undersecretary of state in the Reich government. The position carried with it extraordinary powers over the Berlin city government and made Speer answerable to Hitler alone. It also made Speer a member of the Reichstag, though the body by then had little effective power. Hitler ordered Speer to develop plans to rebuild Berlin.
The plans centered on 5km long grand boulevard running from north to south. At the northern end of the boulevard, Speer planned to build a huge assembly hall with a dome which would have been over 200m high, with floor space for 180,000 people. At the southern end of the avenue a great triumphal arch would rise 120m high, and able to fit the Arc de Triomphe inside its opening. The outbreak of WWII in 1939 led to the postponement, and later the abandonment, of these plans. Part of the land for the boulevard was to be obtained by consolidating Berlin's railway system. When Speer's father saw the model for the new Berlin, he said to his son, "You've all gone completely insane."
All the while plans to build a new Reich chancellery had been underway since 1934. Land had been purchased by the end of 1934 and starting in 1936 the first buildings were demolished to create space. Speer was involved virtually from the beginning. Because of shortages of labor, the construction workers had to work in two ten- to twelve-hour shifts to have the chancellery completed by 1939. During the war the chancellery was destroyed, except for the exterior walls, by air raids and in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. It was eventually dismantled by the Soviets. During the Chancellery project, the pogrom of Kristallnacht took place. Speer made no mention of it in the first draft of "Inside the Third Reich", and it was only on the urgent advice of his publisher that he added a mention of seeing the ruins of the Central Synagogue in Berlin from his car.
Speer was under significant psychological pressure during this period of his life.
“Soon after Hitler had given me the first large architectural commissions, I began to suffer from anxiety in long tunnels, in airplanes, or in small rooms. My heart would begin to race, I would become breathless, the diaphragm would seem to grow heavy, and I would get the impression that my blood pressure was rising tremendously... Anxiety midst all my freedom and power!”
Speer supported the German invasion of Poland and subsequent war, though he recognized that it would lead to the postponement of his architectural dreams.
"Of course I was perfectly aware that Hitler sought world domination. At that time I asked for nothing better. That was the whole point of my buildings. They would have looked grotesque if Hitler had sat still in Germany. All I wanted was for this great man to dominate the globe."
Speer placed his department at the disposal of the army. Among Speer's innovations were quick-reaction squads to construct roads or clear away debris. Before long, these units would be used to clear bomb sites. As the war progressed, initially to great German success, Speer continued preliminary work on the Berlin and Nürnberg plans.
In 1940, Joseph Stalin proposed that Speer pay a visit to Moscow. Stalin had been particularly impressed by Speer's work in Paris, and wished to meet the "Architect of the Reich". Hitler, alternating between amusement and anger, did not allow Speer to go, fearing that Stalin would put Speer in a "rat hole" until a new Moscow arose.
In 1942, the Minister of Armaments died in a plane crash and Hitler appointed Speer as his successor. At the time of Speer's accession to the office, the German economy, unlike the British one, was not fully geared for war production. Consumer goods were still being produced at nearly as high a level as during peacetime. The Ministry of Economic Affairs declared in 1941 that conditions did not permit an increase in armament production. Few women were employed in the factories, which were running only one shift. Speer overcame these difficulties by centralizing power over the war economy.
Factories were given autonomy, or as Speer put it, "self-responsibility", and each factory concentrated on a single product. Backed by Hitler's strong support he divided the armament field according to weapon system, with experts rather than civil servants overseeing each department. No department head could be older than 55, anyone older being susceptible to "routine and arrogance" and no deputy older than 40. Over these departments was a central planning committee headed by Speer, which took increasing responsibility for war production, and as time went by, for the German economy itself.
Speer was so successful in his position that by late 1943, he was widely regarded among the Nazi elite as a possible successor to Hitler. While Speer had tremendous power, he was of course subordinate to Hitler. Nazi officials sometimes went around Speer by seeking direct orders from Hitler. When Speer ordered peacetime building work suspended, the Nazi Party district leaders obtained an exemption for their pet projects. Speer sought the appointment of a labor czar to optimize the use of German and slave labor. Hitler appointed one, but rather than increasing female labor and taking other steps to better organize German labor, as Speer favored, the labor czar advocated importing more slave labor from the occupied nations, and did so, obtaining workers for among other things Speer's armament factories, often using the most brutal methods.
In 1943, Speer visited the underground rocket factory that used concentration camp labor. Speer was shocked by the conditions there with 5.7% of the work force dying that month. The Allies had gained air superiority over Germany, and bombings of German cities and industry had become commonplace. However, the Allies in their strategic bombing campaign did not concentrate on industry, and Speer was able to overcome bombing losses. In spite of these losses, German production of tanks more than doubled in 1943, production of planes increased by 80%, and production time for submarines was reduced from one year to 2 months. In 1944, Speer fell ill with complications from an inflamed knee, necessitating a leave. His political rivals Göring and Himmler attempted to have some of his powers permanently transferred to them during his absence.
Production continued to improve with allied bombing destroying just 9% of German production. Use of slave labor for the benefit of Germany's war industry and its air force, the Luftwaffe greatly increased. The SS provided 64,000 prisoners for 20 separate projects at the peak of construction activities. The cooperation between the Reich Ministry of Aviation, the Ministry of Armaments and the SS proved especially productive. Although intended to function for only 6 months, the possibility of centralizing all of Germany's arms manufacturing under a similar task force was discussed.
Speer's name was included on the list of members of a post-Hitler government drawn up by the conspirators behind the 1944 assassination plot to kill Hitler. The list had a question mark and the annotation "to be won over" by his name, which likely saved him from the extensive purges that followed the scheme's failure. When Speer learned in 1945 that the Red Army had overrun the Silesian industrial region, he drafted a memo to Hitler noting that Silesia's coal mines supplied 60% of the Reich's coal. Without them, Speer wrote, Germany's coal production would only be a quarter of its 1944 total, not nearly enough to continue the war. He told Hitler in no uncertain terms that without Silesia, "the war is lost." Hitler merely filed the memo in his safe.
By 1945, Speer was working to supply areas about to be occupied with food and materials to get them through the hard times ahead. Hitler ordered a scorched earth decree in both Germany and the occupied territories. Hitler's order, by its terms, deprived Speer of any power to interfere with the decree, and Speer went to confront Hitler, reiterating that the war was lost. Hitler gave Speer 24 hours to reconsider his position, and when the 2 met the following day, Speer answered, "I stand unconditionally behind you." However, he demanded the exclusive power to implement the decree Hitler signed an order to that effect. Using this order, Speer worked to persuade generals and others to circumvent the decree and avoid needless sacrifice of personnel and destruction of industry that would be needed after the war.
Speer managed to reach a relatively safe area as the Nazi regime finally collapsed, but decided on a final, risky visit to Berlin to see Hitler one more time. "I felt that it was my duty not to run away like a coward, but to stand up to him." Hitler seemed calm and somewhat distracted, and the 2 had a long, disjointed conversation in which the dictator defended his actions and informed Speer of his intent to commit suicide and have his body burned. Speer confessed to Hitler that he would openly disobey that command, bringing tears to the dictator's eyes. The day before committing suicide, Hitler dictated a final political testament which dropped Speer from the successor government.
When Speer was captured, he was taken to several internment centers for Nazi officials and interrogated and tried for war crimes. Speer was indicted on all 4 possible counts:
- conspiracy, planning, initiating and
- waging crimes against peace, and
- war crimes and
- crimes against humanity.
The chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, alleged, "Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation." Speer's attorney, presented Speer as an artist thrust into political life, who had always remained a non-ideologue and who had been promised by Hitler that he could return to architecture after the war.
Speer accepted responsibility for the Nazi regime's actions. During the long trial, he spoke honestly and with no attempt to shirk his responsibility and his guilt. He claimed that he planned to kill Hitler in 1945 by introducing poison gas into the ventilation shaft. His efforts were frustrated by the unexpected construction of a tall chimney that put the air intake out of reach. Speer stated his motive was despair at realizing that Hitler intended to take the German people down with him.
After the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Nazi regime, principally for the use of forced labor. Despite repeated attempts to gain early release, he served his full sentence. Speer was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. His claim that he was unaware of Nazi extermination plans, saved him from hanging. Speer and his 6 fellow prisoners, all former high officials of the Nazi regime, were initially kept in solitary confinement for all but half an hour a day and were not permitted to address each other or their guards. As time passed, the strict regimen was relaxed.
Speer considered himself an outcast among his fellow prisoners for his acceptance of responsibility at Nuremberg. He made a deliberate effort to use his time as productively as possible. He wrote:
"I am obsessed with the idea of using this time of confinement for writing a book of major importance ... That could mean transforming prison cell into scholar's den."
The prisoners were forbidden to write memoirs, and mail was severely limited and censored. However, Speer was able to have his writings smuggled out as a result of an offer from a sympathetic orderly, and they eventually amounted to 20,000 sheets. He had completed his memoirs by 1954, which became the basis of Inside the Third Reich. He was also able to send letters and financial instructions and to obtain writing paper and letters from the outside. His many letters to his children were secretly transmitted and eventually formed the basis for his "Spandau: The Secret Diaries".
With the draft memoir complete and clandestinely transmitted, Speer sought a new project. He found one while taking his daily exercise, walking in circles around the prison yard. Measuring the path's distance carefully, he set out to walk the distance from Berlin to Heidelberg. He then expanded his idea into a worldwide journey, visualizing the places that he was "traveling" through while walking the path around the prison yard. He ordered guidebooks and other materials about the nations through which he imagined that he was passing so as to envision as accurate a picture as possible. He meticulously calculated every meter traveled and mapped distances to the real-world geography. He began in northern Germany, passed through Asia by a southern route before entering Siberia, then crossed the Bering Strait and continued southwards, finally ending his sentence 35km south of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Speer devoted much of his time and energy to reading. The prisoners brought some books with them in their personal property, but his prison had no library. Books were sent from the municipal library. From 1952, the prisoners were also able to order books from the Berlin central library. Speer was a voracious reader and he completed well over 500 books in the first 3 years. He read classic novels, travelogues, books on ancient Egypt. He took to the prison garden for enjoyment and work, at first to do something constructive while afflicted with writer's block. He was allowed to build an ambitious garden, transforming what he initially described as a "wilderness" into what the prison commander described as "Speer's Garden of Eden".
Speer's supporters maintained a continual call for his release. Among those who pledged support for his sentence to be commuted were Charles de Gaulle and Willy Brandt. He was released in 1966 when he was 61 years old.
Speer's release from prison was a worldwide media event, as reporters and photographers crowded both the street outside Spandau and the lobby of the Berlin hotel where Speer spent his first hours of freedom in over 20 years. He again took personal responsibility for crimes of the Nazi regime. He revised his writings into two autobiographical books, and later researched and published a work about Himmler and the SS. His books provide a unique and personal look into the personalities of the Nazi era, most notably Inside the Third Reich. His "Spandau: The Secret Diaries" detailing his close personal relationship with Hitler and providing readers with a unique perspective on the workings of the Nazi regime became much valued by historians. He found himself unable to re-establish his relationship with his children, even with his son who had also become an architect.
Following the publication of his bestselling books, Speer donated a considerable amount of money to Jewish charities. as high as 80% of his royalties. Speer kept the donations anonymous, both for fear of rejection and for fear of being called a hypocrite:
"If I didn't see it, then it was because I didn't want to see it."
Speer returned to London in 1981 to participate in the BBC Newsnight program. While there, he suffered a stroke and died at the age of 76.
Even to the end of his life, Speer continued to question his actions under Hitler. He asks in his final book Infiltration:
"What would have happened if Hitler had asked me to make decisions that required the utmost hardness?... How far would I have gone?... If I had occupied a different position, to what extent would I have ordered atrocities if Hitler had told me to do so?"
Little remains of Speer's personal architectural works, other than the plans and photographs. As General Building Inspector, Speer was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement. From 1939 onward, the Department used the Nuremberg Laws to evict Jewish tenants of non-Jewish landlords in Berlin, to make way for non-Jewish tenants displaced by redevelopment or bombing. Eventually, 75,000 Jews were displaced by these measures. Speer was aware of these activities, and inquired as to their progress. Speer maintained at Nuremberg and in his memoirs that he had no knowledge of the Holocaust. In "Inside the Third Reich", he wrote that he was told that he should never accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp, as "he had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe".
The debate over Speer's knowledge of, or complicity in, the Holocaust made him a symbol for people who were involved with the Nazi regime yet did not have or claimed not to have had an active part in the regime's atrocities. Speer created a market for people who said, "believe me, I didn't know anything about the Holocaust. Just look at the Führer's friend, he didn't know about it either."
Faisal Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia for 11 years from 1964 to 1975. As king, he was credited with rescuing the country's finances and implementing a policy of modernization and reform. His main foreign policy themes were pan-Islamism, anti-Communism, and pro-Palestinian nationalism. He successfully stabilized the kingdom's bureaucracy, and his reign had significant popularity among Saudis. In 1975 he was assassinated by his nephew.
Saudi Arabia has a very long history. Human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000BC. The first modern humans to spread east across Asia left Africa for Arabia crossing the Red Sea about 75,000 BC. A prehistoric civilization was founded in the center of the Arabian Peninsula where the first domestication of animals occurred, particularly the horse, during the Neolithic period, a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 15,200BC and ending between 4,500BC and 2,000BC. It commenced with the beginning of farming and ended when metal tools became widespread, first copper then bronze in 3,000BC and finally iron in 1,000BC.
In ancient times the Arabian Peninsula served as a corridor for trade and exhibited several civilizations. Shortly before the advent of Islam, apart from urban trading settlements such as Mecca and Medina, much of Saudi Arabia was populated by nomadic pastoral tribal societies. Muhammad, born in Mecca in the year 571, united the various tribes of the peninsula and created a single Islamic religious polity. Following his death in 632, his followers rapidly expanded the territory under Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering huge and unprecedented swathes of territory in a matter of decades and the Muslim world as the focus shifted to the vast and newly conquered lands. At its greatest extent, the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) was one of the largest empires in history in both area and proportion of the world's population. It was also larger than any previous empire in history.
From the 10th century to the early 20th century Mecca and Medina were under the control of a local Arab ruler known as the Sharif of Mecca. For much of the 10th century the Shi'ites were the most powerful force in the Persian Gulf. In 930, they pillaged Mecca, outraging the Muslim world, particularly with their theft of the Black Stone.
In the 16th century, the Ottomans added the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coast to the Empire and claimed suzerainty over the interior. One reason was to thwart Portuguese attempts to attack the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Ottoman degree of control over these lands varied over the next 4 centuries with the fluctuating strength or weakness of the Empire's central authority.
The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. This alliance formed in the 18th century provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remained the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule. The first "Saudi state" established in 1744 in the area around Riyadh, rapidly expanded and briefly controlled most of Saudi Arabia, but was destroyed by 1818 by the Ottomans. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the Al Saud contested control of the interior of Saudi Arabia with another Arabian ruling family, the Al Rashid. By 1891, the Al Rashid were victorious and the Al Saud were driven into exile in Kuwait.
Ibn Saudi, Faisal's father reconquered his family's ancestral home city of Riyadh in 1902, starting 3 decades of conquests that made him the ruler of nearly all of central Arabia. He made himself king at the age 57 and reigned for 21 years from 1932- 1953.
As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil production after WWII. He fathered many children, including 45 sons. He was succeeded by his son who reigned for 11 years from 1953 to 1964. After a period of internal tension in Saudi Arabia, he was forced from the throne and replaced by his younger brother Faisal. Petroleum was discovered in 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the world's largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the world's second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves.
The ultra conservative Wahhabi movement within Sunni Islam was largely financed by the oil and gas trade, the state`s only source of income. Saudi Arabia is a monarchical autocracy, has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world was the world's second largest arms importer in 2010-2014. The state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment.
Faisal was born in Riyadh. He was the third son of Saudi Arabia's former king Ibn Saudi. Faisal's mother died in 1912 when he was 6 years old. Prince Faisal was given numerous responsibilities to consolidate control over Arabia. In 1925 Prince Faisal, in command of an army of Saudi loyalists, won a decisive victory in the Hejaz, the north coast of the Red Sea. In 1930 Prince Faisal became his father's minister of foreign affairs. Upon the accession of Prince Faisal's elder brother, King Saud, to the throne in 1953, Prince Faisal was appointed Crown Prince. King Saud embarked on a lavish and ill-considered spending program that included the construction of a massive royal residence on the outskirts of the capital, Riyadh. A fierce struggle between Ibn Saud's most senior sons, Saud and Faisal, erupted immediately after Ibn Saud`s death. The increase in oil revenues did not solve the financial problem associated with the many hundreds of millions of debts Saud had inherited from his father. Saud suspended the few government projects he had initiated, but continued his spending on luxurious palaces.
Saud and Faisal fought an internal battle over the definition of political responsibilities and the division of government functions. Saud is often associated among other things with plundering of oil revenues, luxurious palaces, and conspiracy inside and outside of Saudi Arabia while Faisal is associated with sobriety, piety, puritanism, financial wisdom, and modernization. Moreover, the conflict between the 2 brothers is often described as originating from the desire of Faisal to curb his brother's spending and solve Saudi Arabia's financial crisis. Prince Faisal demanded King Saud make him regent and turn over all royal powers to him. In this, he had the crucial backing of the ulema, the elite Islamic scholars, who initiated a fatwa, ordering King Saud to accede to his brother's demands. King Saud was forced into exile in Geneva, Switzerland.
Early in his rule, he issued an edict that all Saudi princes had to school their children inside the country, rather than sending them abroad. Faisal set about cutting spending dramatically in an effort to rescue the state treasury from bankruptcy. This policy of financial prudence was to become a hallmark of his era and earned him a reputation for thriftiness among the populace. He gained a reputation as a reforming and modernizing figure. He introduced education for women and girls despite the consternation of many conservatives in the religious establishment. Faisal established the country's first television station. As with many of his other policies, the move aroused strong objections from the religious and conservative sections of the country. Faisal assured them, however, that Islamic principles of modesty would be strictly observed, and made sure that the broadcasts contained a large amount of religious programming.
Upon his accession, King Faisal still viewed the restoration of the country's finances as his main priority. He continued to pursue his conservative financial policies during the first few years of his reign, and his aims of balancing the country's budget eventually succeeded, helped by an increase in oil production. He laid the foundations for a modern welfare system. Television broadcasts officially began in 1965. In 1966 an especially zealous nephew of Faisal attacked the newly established headquarters of Saudi television but was killed by security personnel. Despite the opposition from conservative Saudis to his reforms, King Faisal continued to pursue modernization while always making sure to couch his policies in Islamic terms.
The 1950s and 1960s saw numerous coups d'état in the region. Muammar al-Gaddafi's coup that overthrew the monarchy in oil-rich Libya in 1969 was especially ominous for Saudi Arabia due to the similarity between the 2 sparsely-populated desert countries. As a result, King Faisal undertook to build a sophisticated security apparatus and cracked down firmly on dissent. As in all affairs, King Faisal justified these policies in Islamic terms. Early in his reign, when faced with demands for a written constitution for the country, King Faisal responded that "our constitution is the Quran". In the summer of 1969 King Faisal ordered the arrest of hundreds of military officers, including some generals, alleging that a military coup was being planned. The coup was planned primarily by air force officers and aimed at overthrowing the monarchy and founding a Nasserist regime in the country.
Unlike his successor, King Faisal attempted to ensure that the most radical clerics did not hold society's most powerful religious posts. He tried to block extremist clerics from gaining dominion over religious institutions such as the Council of Senior Ulema, the kingdom's highest religious body, or rising to high religious positions such as Grand Mufti, a politically recognized senior expert charged with maintaining the entire system of Islamic law. Still, at least some of the king's advisers warned early on that, once religious zealots were encouraged, they would come back to haunt the kingdom. King Faisal rejected the Ulema's opposition to aspects of his accelerated modernization attempts.
John F. Kennedy finally persuaded the House of Saud to abolish slavery in 1962. As king, Faisal continued the close alliance with the United States begun by his father, and relied on the US heavily for arming and training his armed forces. King Faisal was also anti-Communist. He refused any political ties with the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries, professing to see a complete incompatibility between Communism and Islam, and associating communism with Zionism which he also sharply criticized. He maintained close relationships with Western democracies including the United Kingdom.
King Faisal also supported monarchist and conservative movements in the Arab world, and sought to counter the influences of socialism and Arab nationalism in the region by promoting pan-Islamism as an alternative. He engaged in a propaganda and media war with Egypt's pan-Arabist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and engaged in a proxy war with Egypt in Yemen that lasted until 1967.
Following the death of Nasser in 1970, King Faisal drew closer to Egypt's new president, Anwar Sadat, who himself was planning a break with the Soviet Union and a move towards the pro-American camp. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, launched by Sadat, King Faisal withdrew Saudi oil from world markets, in protest over Western support for Israel during the conflict. The war was won by Israel due to Sadat's sudden unexpected retreat. This action increased the price of oil and was the primary force behind the 1973 oil crisis. It was to be the defining act of King Faisal's career, and gained him lasting prestige among many Arabs and Muslims worldwide. The financial windfall generated by the crisis fueled the economic boom that occurred in Saudi Arabia after his death.
In 1975 King Faisal was shot point-blank and killed by his half-brother's son, Prince Faisal who had just come back from the United States. The murder occurred at an event where the king opens up his residence to the citizens to enter and petition the king. In the waiting room, Prince Faisal talked to Kuwaiti representatives who were also waiting to meet King Faisal. When the Prince went to embrace him, King Faisal leaned to kiss his nephew in accordance with Saudi custom. At that instant, Prince Faisal took out a pistol and shot him. King Faisal died shortly afterward. He was 68 years old. Prince Faisal was beheaded in the public square in Riyadh. It is a commonly-held belief in Saudi Arabia, and the wider Arab world, that King Faisal's oil boycott was the real cause of his assassination, via a Western conspiracy.
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