User:Wellus/Miscellaneous/School/History
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[edit] Finnish Civil War (1918)
The Finnish Civil War shall be the topic of my final history project in 2007 where a conflict has to be chosen by the student. Then a paper has to be written about it.
Collection of Material and Sources: User:Wellus/Miscellaneous/School/History/Finnish_Civil_War
[edit] Hitler's way to power and to Europe
How Hitler has gotten to power and made Germany to the ultimate power in Europe
After the First World War conditions were chaotic. Not just that the devastating nature of new destructive weaponry or the masses of losses were enough difficulties to cope with; there was also a difficult situation in economy throughout the whole world advancing from the United States stock crash. In Europe some other major problems added up with that. The war had just ended and there was not enough man power to do all the work. Also, there was just enough food to feed everybody, either. Germany didn’t get directly affected by war damage but the mentioned problems were enough to turn every-day life into a misery.
Here, along comes Hitler. As an iron veteran of the last war he can regain Germany’s power after all the punishment and humiliation. Also, people were just happy to be able to eat. The following struggles in the republic between the utmost left people – communists influenced by the Russian revolutionary ideas – and the new right-winged Nazi party progressed in street fights, brawls, semi-military groups fighting against each other, beating up each other, recruiting new people and early propaganda. The situations were confusing and turbulent and full of failed revolutions…
Hitler’s SA (Sturmabteilung) came out to be the most appealing for people because of its strong image. A lot of war veterans joined them, too.
After having faked some scenery, after a lot of propaganda and campaigns, after having millions of voters convinced, and finally after having a lot of seats in the Reichstag Hitler could take further steps. He got the chancellorship finally on June 30 in 1933.
Then he could just rise to ultimate power. He built camps to lock away his political opponents in the first place. But then he advanced also to bring through his ideological plans to go against Jews, Gypsies, etc. and actually take action. Deprivations of basic laws followed slowly, step by step. The Holocaust started slightly. The hate against the Jews that helped him rise to power should soon take real and devastating forms.
But first, after he had gained power over Germany he could get on his plans for uniting all German-speaking people. Since nobody wanted a new war he could proceed. Also, slowly step by step so that no single action might have seemed too crass after all, that could have caused dismay among the international community or even in Germany itself.
So he “führte Österreich heim in's Reich” (lead Austria home in the Reich) and it became attached to the Germany in march 1938. Thereafter, he also annexed the German-speaking Sudetenland at the fringe of Czech to Germany in September of 1938.
He was feted by all of those and the people in German as the great Führer to make “das deutsche Reich” and the “pure Aryan race” big in the world as the ultimate superior humans of all times. It was called “das tausendjährige Reich” and it was supposed to really last that long.
In his way Hitler fooled not just the political opponents in his own country in the first place, but afterwards he extended it to fool the whole world community. Nobody wanted to have a war but obviously Hitler just said to himself that if nobody stops him he will just take what he wants. Empty promises of peace and malicious propaganda as well as ambivalent foreign policies gave Hitler the opportunities to act as it pleased him – in a small pace but steady, though.
As he then took whole Czech in March 15 of 1939 it gave the world a little shake. Supposedly under a threat he took Poland in September 1 of 1939 and now the world awoke that something is going on. Everybody was badly prepared for a war but still they now had to declare war with Germany – because now he was obviously going a little too far. The English prime minster was badly fooled in the conference in Munich at the 30th of September in 1938. He truly believed he had secured the world peace.
With the newly developed military tactic of Blitzkrieg he could easily overrun other unprepared countries like Denmark and Norway in April of 1940 or Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in May of 1940. Yugoslavia and Greece were occupied in April of 1941.
Meanwhile, the plans for the Endlösung began to show pattern more clearly. More Jews, etc. were transferred into camps etc. German Jews are used for forced labor first in March of 1941. Massacres began, the first one in Ukrainian in September of 1941. It was advanced to those newly occupied territories. Mass killing tactics and methods were being discussed in 1942 in January at the Wannsee Conference.
After Germany lost in Africa in November 1942 an then after the German offensive got stuck in Stalingrad in the Winter of 1942, Hitler's madness began to increase in his extermination planes. But still, those loses already indicated the turn of the war against Germany.
[edit] History Essay - Living through two World Wars
Faintly I can recall the times of the old glorious empire of German nation. I was just a little kid at that time, barely able to even read. We lived in a little rural village in the north of Bavaria. My father was working at the factory of a fairly affluent landholder. I can't remember exactly what he did there but every evening he was pretty worn out, dirty of soot and just happy to sit down at the dinner table and cram down the food my mother prepared over the day besides catering for the children and caring for the house. I was just going to be attending first grade when my father suddenly had to leave. I didn't understand why or where but he said he would write to me a lot and that he had to go for the honor of the fatherland. He told me that I shall take care of mom. Months passed and occasionally we received a letter from dad. He was at the western side of our empire and received training. I was so happy because by know I already could identify some of the letters and even words that my father had written. But still, my mother read it to all of us, my first grade skills being not yet sufficient enough. They said there would be war, he reported, and that he had to go too. Onetime he included a picture of his in his uniform and with his unit. This was just before we didn't here a while from him at all. I was more than quarter way through my first grade of school and by then I could read even if slowly and not fully understanding. He said that they were cut off a while because they had to hide in the ground from the French firing at them. So he excused himself that he didn't answer so long. At last there was another picture in the envelope showing him sitting in something what they called trench. It looked all dirty and smutty around him but my father tried to smile still. One month later on my Birthday we got another letter from him. He included a “present” for me. It was a French coin he had found in one of the other trenches. The coin just looked like the Reichsmark money we had and there was an image of a person as well as some text on it. I tried to read that what was engraved into the coin but it was in a different language so my mother told me. As I asked her if this was the reason why we fight them she said she didn't know. Daddy went because the feted and glorious Kaiser demanded so. By now I was almost at the end of my second year of school. I believe it was about March of 1916. Mom now had gotten a job too in the close-by factory. The factory holder my father used to work at had changes his business to producing ammunition. It also brought some changes for me because I now had to care for the little ones to or to help fixing food. After we didn't here from him a really long time finally a letter came. It already looked strange in the first place because it wasn't the usual kind of envelope father would use. My reading skills now really improved I was the one who happened to read the letter this time to mom. I took my time to read what it said and after I had finished mom bursted out with tears that she could barely suppress when I read. She took me and hugged me a long time. We both cried. Father fell. Times now got harder because we didn't have income anymore and all the men were gone to do the work. So the women got to the a lot of those jobs. Then abruptly at school they told me that the war was over. I was at the end of forth grade now and I was about 10 years old. The times that followed were pretty tough for my family without father. My mom didn't have work and the prices were really high. My mom had money saved but it was no worthless she told me. We sent my little sister to grandma out to the rural areas were my grandfather was a farmer. They would have certainly something to eat. Me and my mom moved to the city to find out look. There was a lot of tumult in the city we moved to at this time. Veterans were prowling the streets and getting in to a brawl with everyone. Daily violence was everywhere once I saw a bunch of people in brown uniforms beating up some guys in a corner that wore a red rag bound around there upper left arm as a kind of bracelet. Now we lived here a while. Still, there was barely food to be found out there and I was permanently hungry. Once she took me to a meeting, she said, it was in an pretty mediocre inn. Apparently my mom made some new friends there. I was even more astonished when I saw a lot of those people in brown uniforms you saw in the streets every day somewhere. Men were there with their wives and obviously my mother knew some of those people because a woman waved to us and yelled that we should move to her over the crowd in this smoky place. I was introduced to a pretty brawny guy in that same brown uniform and he talked to me pretty casually. He asked me about my knowledge about the Reich and I told him that my father fell in the war. Afterwards he just said to me mother that they would take me. Then things changed rapidly. I got a uniform too even though it was a slightly different one. Now, I was in a group with other kids and every day after school we went and did a lot of fun stuff. They called our group Hitlerjugend after the leader of a political party. Once we had a huge gathering with a lot of Hitlerjungen (Hitler boys, how they called us) together with the adults of Sturmabteilung and many others to meet Hitler, our Führer himself. He was taking to us that we were the pride of the new Germany and that we were to help him forming it. We felt all so honored. Now times got better because they helped my mother with a lot of things and finally we had nice spot to live. My mom now worked for the party to which all our groups were affiliated to. More and more people now joined our youth group and we did a lot of things like games, boxing, running, swimming and all those things. We also practiced marching with the flags of our party and our group. Sometimes we also practiced in the fields and woods by doing fun games like capture the flag. Also, we trained to shoot at training targets sometimes with real ammunition, that was so awesome! Once we were beating up a group of other kids. They told us they were communists. Life for my mother was now really good and she took back the children from the land to live here in the city too. One time she met this guy and she went out a lot. He was a member of the SA too and he had the pretty high rank of a Truppführer and I admired his strong appeal too. Later he should become my mom's new husband. When I was 16 I joined the SA in 1924. Things became more serious but we were still beating up communists and fighting against those who deserved it. The military training now a very strong part of our being in the SA. We grew steadily and got a lot of new recruits. Because our Sturmbannführer was so proud of me and my greats at school were so great he decided to take me into a special program where I and others would learn special sergeant skills. So time went on and after I got my Abitur and graduated finally from school in 1926 I already got a secured position in the political section of the SA where I would fully spent my whole occupancy. I was paid pretty well and also received political education. We were taught about the races and about the superiority of the Germanic peoples over anybody else. We were the utmost chosen ones to lead our German Aryan race to success. Also, they told us that the Jews were to blame. They also instructed us how the carry our ideology to the outside when we staff members were to lead the Sturmtrups of the SA through the streets and how to convince people, get recruits and beat up others. By that time we were the mightiest organization in the whole empire and the streets were ours. The party gained more and more votes and devotees. In 1929 I was asked if I wanted to join and volunteer for a new elite group that had just been established three years ago. It was called the Schutzstaffel (SS) and had only a couple hundred of members at the time. I was being ordained the rank of a Rottenfuhrer of the SS. In the SS I got even more political training and the focus on military strategy. I was so proud in my now black uniform with the Hakenkreuzbinde on my left arm. And when I cam home to my mother she was so happy, too. The SS grew steadily and you could feel it as well. More and more sections were added. Then in 1933 I had climbed already pretty far in the hierarchy. Our Fuhrer had finally gotten the chancellorship in Germany and everybody was so happy celebrating now the beginning of the new area of superiority. One of my first real missions was to lead a Rott (group) to pick up and arrest a bunch of communist from a known meeting area of theirs. I received special instructions for this mission. They said now all hindering elements had to be arrested to protect them from themselves and from the state. We brought them all to one of those new established Konzentrationslagern. This one was called Buchenwald. I already saw that those were to be filled pretty well. My mission was very successful and our Truppfueherer was satisfied with it. Later on and the next years I happened to lead also some arrests against Jews and other impure persons. Sometimes I had to use violence and order to use it because they wouldn’t obey. In the beginning I was still pretty lenient because they just seemed like regular people and pretty surprised about their sudden arrest. But then we were now more and more reminded that those are just nasty cockroaches impurifying the Germans people and scam them with their business. So by the end of 1938 after a lot of missions I was about 29. As the war broke out we weren’t really surprised since all those Slavic people in the East threatened our people. As we went on a mission to Poland in 1939 our SS-Squadron was to get some first combat practice in the field in one of the first assault missions. I died from the first Polish shot because I was so eager to storm fearless to the front without any thought even wasted that I could possibly die as the superior human that the propaganda made me to.
