Michael Roemer (born January 1, 1928) is a film director, producer and writer. He has won several awards for his films. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship . A professor at Yale University , he is the author of Telling Stories .
148-576: Roemer was born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 and began restricting the rights of Jews to work, his father and his grandfather found themselves unable to work and provide for the family, and eventually lost everything. At the age of 11, Roemer was sent out of Germany on one of the Kindertransports . In England, he attended Bunce Court School ,
296-621: A yokel . In this sense, the word Nazi was a hypocorism of the German male name Igna(t)z (itself a variation of the name Ignatius )—Igna(t)z being a common name at the time in Bavaria , the area from which the NSDAP emerged. In the 1920s, political opponents of the NSDAP in the German labour movement seized on this. Using the earlier abbreviated term Sozi for Sozialist ( German for 'Socialist') as an example, they shortened
444-538: A "state within a state" that threatened German national unity. Fichte promoted two options in order to address this, his first one being the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine so the Jews could be impelled to leave Europe. His second option was violence against Jews and he said that the goal of the violence would be "to cut off all their heads in one night, and set new ones on their shoulders, which should not contain
592-423: A "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and German "blood". It denounced foreigners and foreign ideas and declared that Jews, Freemasons and others were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion. Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism and it viewed societies as organic, extolling the virtues of rural life, condemning the neglect of tradition and
740-456: A "watershed moment" the government accepted "the political recommendation of a coalition of voluntary agencies" but without accepting that the government had any administrative or financial responsibility. The groups, though considering all refugees, were allied under a non-denominational organisation called the "Movement for the Care of Children from Germany". This organisation was considering only
888-599: A German Jewish school for refugees, both pupils and staff. There, he met Wilhelm Marckwald , an actor and former director of the Deutsches Theater Berlin and also a refugee. The playwright Frank Marcus and the painter Frank Auerbach were two of his friends at Bunce Court. Roemer emigrated to the United States in 1945. Roemer received his A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1949. While at Harvard, Roemer directed his first film, A Touch of
1036-467: A Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971. Roemer made the 1976 documentary Dying , which was shown on PBS . He then made two films for that network's American Playhouse series: Pilgrim, Farewell (1980) and Haunted (1984). He was interviewed for the 1996 documentary about the Kindertransports, My Knees Were Jumping . In 2022, Haunted was re-released theatrically under the title Vengeance
1184-447: A Jewish youth movement inclined to socialism and Zionism , were instrumental in running the country hostels of South West England. These members of Habonim were held back from going to live on kibbutz by the war. Records for many of the children who arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are maintained by World Jewish Relief through its Jewish Refugees Committee. At the end of
1332-599: A Roemer film as good as Nothing But a Man and The Plot Against Harry "is a cause for celebration, and something of a miracle." Kindertransport The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi -controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War . The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish , from Germany , Austria , Czechoslovakia , Poland , and
1480-502: A blood-and-soil ideology, the notion of a master race, [and] the idea of territorial acquisition and settlement in the East. These ideas were embedded in a popular nationalism which was vigorously anti-modernist, anti-humanist and pseudo-religious. Brought together, the result was an anti-intellectual and politically semi-illiterate ideology lacking cohesion, a product of mass culture which allowed its followers emotional attachment and offered
1628-460: A classmate of Roemer's at Harvard, had his law office around the corner from where Roemer was editing the film. Over lunch one day, Roemer told him about the movie and Schiffer suggested he listen to some music he had from a new client, a small record label just starting out in Detroit , Michigan. Roemer loved the music and acquired the rights from Motown owner Berry Gordy for $ 5,000. After the film
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#17327942748901776-530: A complex web of interfaith refugee assistance." Wilfrid Israel (1899–1943) was a key figure in the rescue of Jews from Germany and occupied Europe. He warned the British government, through Lord Samuel, of the impending Kristallnacht in November 1938. Through a British agent, Frank Foley , passport officer at the Berlin consulate, he kept British intelligence informed of Nazi activities. Speaking on behalf of
1924-768: A form of far-right politics . Far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents denied that Nazism was either left-wing or right-wing: instead, they officially portrayed Nazism as a syncretic movement. In Mein Kampf , Hitler directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, saying: Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from
2072-717: A friend involved in Jewish refugee work. Under the loose direction of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, headed by Doreen Warriner , Winton spent three weeks in Prague compiling a list of children in Czechoslovakia, mostly Jewish, who were refugees from Nazi Germany. He then went back to Britain with the objective of fulfilling the legal requirements to bring the children to Britain and to find homes for them. Trevor Chadwick remained behind to head
2220-682: A gift to his children. Discovering that the technician who was making the transfer was laughing hard at the film, Roemer decided to make two 35 mm prints and submitted them to film festivals in New York and Toronto . Both festivals accepted the film and commercial distribution and acclaim followed. The film was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards , and won the Rosa Camuna prize at the Bergamo Film Meeting in 1990. Roemer began teaching at Yale University in 1966 and received
2368-457: A hierarchy of evolution from apes while Darwinian theory did not grade races in a hierarchy of higher or lower evolution from apes, but simply stated that all humans as a whole had progressed in their evolution from apes. Many Lamarckians viewed "lower" races as having been exposed to debilitating conditions for too long for any significant "improvement" of their condition to take place in the near future. Haeckel used Lamarckian theory to describe
2516-470: A home for refugees. She could have joined the children, but chose to remain behind. This was a rescue action, as occupation of the Netherlands was imminent, with the country capitulating the next day. This ship was the last to leave the country freely. As the Netherlands was under attack by German forces from 10 May and bombing had been going on, there was no opportunity to confer with the parents of
2664-400: A long or indefinite period of time; younger children, in contrast, who had no developed sense of time, would not be able to comprehend that they may see their parents again, thus making the trauma of separation total from the beginning. The actual leaving, via railway station, was also not a peaceful process, and there are many records of tears and screaming at the various railway stations where
2812-481: A nation's need to maintain its racial purity in order to prevent its degeneration and argued that racial intermingling with Jews should never be permitted. In 1923, Chamberlain met Hitler, whom he admired as a leader of the rebirth of the free spirit. Madison Grant 's work The Passing of the Great Race (1916) advocated Nordicism and proposed that a eugenics program should be implemented in order to preserve
2960-471: A nationalist redefinition of socialism , as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism . Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality , opposed cosmopolitan internationalism , and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the " common good ", accepting political interests as
3108-573: A number of children. Eventually around 500 Jewish children from Germany aged between 1 and 15 were granted temporary residence permits on the condition that their parents would not try to enter the country. The children were selected by Jewish organisations in Germany and placed in foster homes and orphanages in Sweden. Initially the children came mainly from Germany and Austria (part of the Greater Reich after Anschluss ). From 15 March 1939, with
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#17327942748903256-416: A parent in a concentration camp. Once the children were identified or grouped by list, their guardians or parents were issued a travel date and departure details. They could only take a small sealed suitcase with no valuables and only ten marks or less in money. Some children had nothing but a manila tag with a number on the front and their name on the back, others were issued with a numbered identity card with
3404-488: A photo: The first party of 196 children arrived at Harwich on the TSS Prague on 2 December, three weeks after Kristallnacht , disembarking at Parkeston Quay . A plaque unveiled in 2011 at Harwich harbour marks this event. In the following nine months almost 10,000 unaccompanied children, mainly Jewish, travelled to England. There were also Kindertransports to other countries, such as France, Belgium,
3552-421: A renaming that Hitler initially objected to. The National Socialist Program , or "25 Points", was adopted in 1920 and called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published in 1925–1926, Hitler outlined the antisemitism and anti-communism at
3700-715: A result, 805 people died out of the original complement of 1673. This led to evacuations of British children on passenger liners under the Children's Overseas Reception Board and the United States Committee for the Care of European Children to be protected by convoys. As the camp internees reached the age of 18, they were offered the chance to do war work or to enter the Army Auxiliary Pioneer Corps . About 1,000 German and Austrian prior-kinder who reached adulthood went on to serve in
3848-434: A ship's gangplank. Each child is portrayed with a different emotion representing the storm of emotions they must have felt at the end of their journey by train and then ship. The figures are also engraved with quotes of four of the refugees describing their first experience of the UK. The memorial is within sight of the landing place at Parkeston Quay of thousands of Kindertransport children. A number of members of Habonim ,
3996-695: A simplified and easily-digestible world-view based on a political mythology for the masses. Adolf Hitler himself along with other members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei , NSDAP) in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on ecological anthropology , scientific racism , holistic science , and organicism regarding
4144-752: A single Jewish idea". The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1912) is an antisemitic forgery created by the secret service of the Russian Empire , the Okhrana . Many antisemites believed it was real and thus it became widely popular after World War I. The Protocols claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Hitler had been introduced to The Protocols by Alfred Rosenberg and from 1920 onwards he focused his attacks by claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected, that Jews and Bolsheviks were one and
4292-986: A temporary strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to form a common anti-liberal front so they could defeat liberal democracies, particularly France . Hitler admired the British Empire and its colonial system as living proof of Germanic superiority over "inferior" races and saw the United Kingdom as Germany's natural ally. He wrote in Mein Kampf : "For a long time to come there will be only two Powers in Europe with which it may be possible for Germany to conclude an alliance. These Powers are Great Britain and Italy." The historical roots of Nazism are to be found in various elements of European political culture which were in circulation in
4440-480: A train. Depicted in different colours, the group of the rescued is outnumbered, as the majority of Jewish children (more than one million) perished in the Nazi death camps. In September 2022 a bronze memorial entitled Safe Haven was unveiled on Harwich Quay by Dame Steve Shirley , a former Kindertransport child. The work by artist Ian Wolter is a life-size, bronze sculpture of five Kindertransport refugees descending
4588-482: A transit camp for girls. While most transports went via train, some also went by boat, and others aeroplane. The first Kindertransport was organised and masterminded by Florence Nankivell. She spent a week in Berlin, hassled by the Nazi police, organising the children. The train left Berlin on 1 December 1938, and arrived in Harwich on 2 December with 196 children. Most were from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by
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4736-573: Is Mine , and received a similar reappraisal to the one received years earlier by The Plot Against Harry. Writing in the New York Times , critic Wesley Morris called it "an American movie executed with a French film’s interpersonal insouciance. It still feels original, in other words — one of those movies that somebody wrote and directed (Roemer, in this case) but that feels controlled entirely, engrossingly by human impulse, lawless in its way." In Screen Slate , A.S. Hamrah wrote that discovering
4884-465: Is determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power—that is the beginning of resistance of which I spoke a few minutes ago. Hitler at times redefined socialism. When George Sylvester Viereck interviewed Hitler in October 1923 and asked him why he referred to his party as 'socialists' he replied: Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism
5032-531: Is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists. Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it
5180-463: Is often presented in personal terms, with trauma varying based on the child's experiences, including their age at separation from their parents, their experience during the wartime, and their experience after the war. The primary trauma experienced by children in the Kindertransport was the separation from their parents. Depending on the child's age, the explanation for why they were leaving
5328-512: Is outlawed in many European countries, including Germany and Austria. The full name of the Nazi Party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( German for 'National Socialist German Workers' Party') and they officially used the acronym NSDAP. The term "nazi" had been in use, before the rise of the NSDAP, as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backwards farmer or peasant . It characterised an awkward and clumsy person,
5476-404: Is patriotic. In 1929, Hitler gave a speech to a group of Nazi leaders and simplified 'socialism' to mean, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." When asked in an interview on 27 January 1934 whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Hitler claimed that Nazism
5624-493: Is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitler Fascism (German: Hitlerfaschismus ) and Hitlerism (German: Hitlerismus ). The later related term " neo-Nazism " is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after
5772-694: The Reichsvertretung (the German Jewish communal organisation) and the Hilfsverein (the self-help body), he urged a plan of rescue on the Foreign Office and helped British Quakers to visit Jewish communities across Germany to prove to the British government that Jewish parents were indeed prepared to part with their children. Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld brought in 300 children who practised Orthodox Judaism , under auspices of
5920-700: The Schutzstaffel (SS) functioned as the paramilitary organisations of the Nazi Party. Using the SS for the task, Hitler purged the party's more socially and economically radical factions in the mid-1934 Night of the Long Knives , including the leadership of the SA. After the death of President Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, political power was concentrated in Hitler's hands and he became Germany's head of state as well as
6068-627: The Free City of Danzig . The children were placed in British foster homes , hostels , schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust . The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on
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6216-533: The German occupation of Czechoslovakia , transports from Prague were hastily organised. In February and August 1939, trains from Poland were arranged. Transports out of Nazi-occupied Europe continued until the declaration of war on 1 September 1939. A smaller number of children flew to Croydon Airport , mainly from Prague. Other ports in England receiving the children included Dover. The last transport from
6364-574: The Hook of Holland near Rotterdam . From the port, a train took some of the children to Liverpool Street station in London, where they were met by their volunteer foster parents. Children without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centres at summer holiday camps such as Dovercourt and Pakefield , with the Broadreeds holiday camp, at Selsey , West Sussex , being used as
6512-456: The Isle of Man . Around 400 were transported overseas to Canada and Australia (see HMT Dunera ). The fast, unescorted liner, SS Arandora Star was sunk by German submarine U-47 on 2 July 1940. Many of her 1213 German, Italian, and Austrian refugees, and internees (she was also carrying 86 German POWs) were ex-Kindertransport children. There was difficulty launching the lifeboats, and as
6660-540: The Second World War when the Third Reich collapsed. Nazism is a form of fascism , with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system . It incorporates a dictatorship , fervent antisemitism , anti-communism , anti-Slavism , anti-Romani sentiment , scientific racism , white supremacy , Nordicism , social Darwinism , homophobia , ableism , and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and
6808-645: The Soviet Union 's leader Joseph Stalin and Stalinism on numerous occasions. Hitler commended Stalin for seeking to purify the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Jewish influences, noting Stalin's purging of Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky , Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev and Karl Radek . While Hitler had always intended to bring Germany into conflict with the Soviet Union so he could gain Lebensraum ("living space"), he supported
6956-486: The Soviet Union . The Nazi Party won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, making them the largest party in the legislature by far, albeit still short of an outright majority ( 37.3% on 31 July 1932 and 33.1% on 6 November 1932 ). Because none of the parties were willing or able to put together a coalition government, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg through
7104-595: The Wagner–Rogers Bill was introduced in Congress , which would have increased the quota of immigrants by bringing to the U.S. a total of 20,000 refugee children, but it did not pass. On 15 November 1938, five days after the devastation of Kristallnacht , the "Night of Broken Glass", in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British, Jewish, and Quaker leaders appealed, in person, to the Prime Minister of
7252-554: The ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement which had been a prominent aspect of German ultranationalism since the late 19th century. Nazism was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I , from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence". It subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy , identifying ethnic Germans as part of what
7400-415: The far-right political canard which was popular when the ethnic völkisch movement and its politics of Romantic nationalism for establishing a Großdeutschland was strong. Nazism's racial policy positions may have developed from the views of important biologists of the 19th century, including French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , through Ernst Haeckel 's idealist version of Lamarckism and
7548-505: The 1870s, German völkisch nationalism began to adopt antisemitic and racist themes and it was also adopted by a number of radical right political movements. Radical antisemitism was promoted by prominent advocates of völkisch nationalism, including Eugen Diederichs , Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn . De Lagarde called the Jews a " bacillus , the carriers of decay ... who pollute every national culture ... and destroy all faiths with their materialistic liberalism" and he called for
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#17327942748907696-546: The Bavarian Soviet Republic and he stated that he became an antisemite in 1913 during his years in Vienna. This statement has been disputed by the contention that he was not an antisemite at that time, even though it is well established that he read many antisemitic tracts and journals during that time and admired Karl Lueger , the antisemitic mayor of Vienna. Hitler altered his political views in response to
7844-570: The British Prime Minister, ordered the internment of all male 16-to 70-year-old refugees from enemy countries – so-called 'friendly enemy aliens '. A complete history of this internment episode is given in the book Collar the Lot! . Many of the children who had arrived in earlier years were now young men, and so they were also interned. Approximately 1,000 of these prior-kinder were interned in these internment camps , many on
7992-687: The British armed forces, including in combat units. Several dozen joined elite formations such as the Special Forces , where their language skills were put to good use during the Normandy landings , and afterwards as the Allies progressed into Germany . One of these was Peter Masters, who wrote a book which he titled Striking Back . Most of the interned 'friendly enemy aliens' were refugees who had fled Hitler and Nazism, and nearly all were Jewish. When Churchill's internment policy became known, there
8140-714: The Chief Rabbi's Religious Emergency Council. He housed many of them in his London home for a while. During the Blitz he found for them in the countryside often non-Jewish foster homes. In order to ensure that the children followed Jewish dietary laws ( Kashrut ), he instructed them to say to the foster parents that they were fish-eating vegetarians. He also saved large numbers of Jews with South American protection papers. He brought over to England several thousand young people, rabbis, teachers, ritual slaughterers, and other religious functionaries. In June 1940, Winston Churchill ,
8288-581: The DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag . The Nazis denounced them as "an insignificant heap of reactionaries". The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their "socialism", their street violence and the "economic experiments" that would take place if the Nazis ever rose to power. However, amidst an inconclusive political situation in which conservative politicians Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher were unable to form stable governments without
8436-660: The German Army and several prominent industrialists, formed an alliance in opposition to the Weimar Republic on 11 October 1931 in Bad Harzburg , officially known as the "National Front", but commonly referred to as the Harzburg Front . The Nazis stated that the alliance was purely tactical and they continued to have differences with the DNVP. After the elections of July 1932, the alliance broke down when
8584-726: The German Nation (1808), written amid the First French Empire 's occupation of Berlin during the Napoleonic Wars , Fichte called for a German national revolution against the French Imperial Army occupiers, making passionate public speeches, arming his students for battle against the French and stressing the need for action by the German nation so it could free itself. Fichte's German nationalism
8732-427: The German politician Friedrich Naumann formed the National-Social Association which aimed to combine German nationalism and a non-Marxist form of socialism together; the attempt turned out to be futile and the idea of linking nationalism with socialism quickly became equated with antisemites, extreme German nationalists and the völkisch movement in general. During the era of the German Empire , völkisch nationalism
8880-445: The Home Office "shall put no obstacle in the way of children coming here," the agencies involved had to find homes for the children and also fund the operation to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child had to have a guarantee of £50 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily. Hoare made it clear that
9028-428: The Jewish agencies then increased their planned target number to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Great Britain in this way. During the morning of 21 November 1938, before a major House of Commons debate on refugees, the Home Secretary , Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing Jewish and Quaker groups, as well as other groups, working on behalf of refugees. In what was described by Rose Holmes as
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#17327942748909176-463: The Jewish population of Europe – were eventually exterminated in a genocide which became known as the Holocaust . Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust, Nazi ideology became universally disgraced. It is widely regarded as evil , with only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, describing themselves as followers of National Socialism. The use of Nazi symbols
9324-455: The NSDAP's name, Nationalsozialistische , to the dismissive "Nazi", in order to associate them with the derogatory use of the aforementioned term. The first use of the term "Nazi" by the National Socialists occurred in 1926 in a publication by Joseph Goebbels called Der Nazi-Sozi ["The Nazi-Sozi"]. In Goebbels' pamphlet, the word "Nazi" only appears when linked with the word "Sozi" as an abbreviation of "National Socialism". After
9472-413: The NSDAP's rise to power in the 1930s, the use of the term "Nazi" by itself or in terms such as " Nazi Germany ", " Nazi regime ", and so on was popularised by German exiles outside the country, but not in Germany. From them, the term spread into other languages and it was eventually brought back into Germany after World War II. The NSDAP briefly adopted the designation "Nazi" in an attempt to reappropriate
9620-486: The Nazi Party emerged from obscurity to become a major political force after 1929, the conservative faction rapidly gained more influence, as wealthy donors took an interest in the Nazis as a potential bulwark against communism. The Nazi Party had previously been financed almost entirely from membership dues, but after 1929 its leadership began actively seeking donations from German industrialists, and Hitler began holding dozens of fundraising meetings with business leaders. In
9768-409: The Nazi Party. His four sons, including Prince Eitel Friedrich and Prince Oskar , became members of the Nazi Party in hopes that in exchange for their support, the Nazis would permit the restoration of the monarchy. Hitler dismissed the possibility of a restored monarchy, calling it "idiotic." Wilhelm grew to distrust Hitler and was appalled at the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938, stating, "For
9916-423: The Nazi movement the Heil greeting, the Führer title and the model of absolute party leadership. Hitler was also impressed by the populist antisemitism and the anti-liberal bourgeois agitation of Karl Lueger , who as the mayor of Vienna during Hitler's time in the city used a rabble-rousing style of oratory that appealed to the wider masses. Unlike von Schönerer, Lueger was not a German nationalist and instead
10064-454: The Nazi seizure of power, there were even Social Democrats and Communists who switched sides and became known as " Beefsteak Nazis ": brown on the outside and red inside. The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm , pushed for a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would enact socialist policies. Furthermore, Röhm desired that the SA absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership. Once
10212-400: The Nazis achieved power, Röhm's SA was directed by Hitler to violently suppress the parties of the left, but they also began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction. Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardising the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and
10360-487: The Nazis as a useful ally to promote their interests. Business groups made significant financial contributions to the Nazi Party both before and after the Nazi seizure of power, in the hope that a Nazi dictatorship would eliminate the organised labour movement and the left-wing parties. Hitler actively sought to gain the support of business leaders by arguing that private enterprise is incompatible with democracy. Although he opposed communist ideology, Hitler publicly praised
10508-534: The Nazis during the night of 9 November, and the others were from Hamburg. The first train from Vienna left on 10 December 1938 with 600 children. This was the result of the work of Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer , a Dutch organiser of Kindertransports, who had been active in this field since 1933. She went to Vienna with the purpose of negotiating with Adolf Eichmann directly, but was initially turned away. She persevered however, until finally, as she wrote in her biography, Eichmann suddenly "gave" her 600 children with
10656-576: The Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race . Nazism sought to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous German society based on racial purity which represented a people's community ( Volksgemeinschaft ). The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum and exclude those whom they deemed either Community Aliens or "inferior" races ( Untermenschen ). The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create
10804-478: The Nazis, Papen proposed to President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor at the head of a government formed primarily of conservatives, with only three Nazi ministers. Hindenburg did so, and contrary to the expectations of Papen and the DNVP, Hitler was soon able to establish a Nazi one-party dictatorship. Kaiser Wilhelm II , who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, initially supported
10952-470: The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Chateau de La Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organised programme of the United Kingdom. The Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief ) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews in Germany and Austria. In the United States,
11100-629: The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Dutch humanitarian Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer arranged for 1,500 children to be admitted to the Netherlands; the children were supported by the Dutch Committee for Jewish Refugees , which was paid by the Dutch Jewish Community. In Sweden, the Jewish Community of Stockholm negotiated with the government for an exception to the country's restrictive policy on Jewish refugees for
11248-527: The Nineteenth Century (1899), praised Germanic peoples for their creativity and idealism while asserting that the Germanic spirit was threatened by a "Jewish" spirit of selfishness and materialism . Chamberlain used his thesis to promote monarchical conservatism while denouncing democracy , liberalism and socialism . The book became popular, especially in Germany. Chamberlain stressed
11396-765: The Pan-German Großdeutschland ("Greater Germany") which the Nazis advocated, Hitler stated that Bismarck's attainment of Kleindeutschland was the "highest achievement" Bismarck could have achieved "within the limits possible at that time". In Mein Kampf , Hitler presented himself as a "second Bismarck". During his youth in Austria, Hitler was politically influenced by Austrian Pan-Germanist proponent Georg Ritter von Schönerer , who advocated radical German nationalism , antisemitism, anti-Catholicism , anti-Slavic sentiment and anti-Habsburg views. From von Schönerer and his followers, Hitler adopted for
11544-522: The Second World War. Winton has been lionised by both the British and Czech governments "in part to reframe their national Holocaust histories more positively." Latter-day historians have acknowledged the contribution of Winton, but characterised the kindertransport from Czechoslovakia as "a grassroots transnational network of escape...This network connected Boston-based Unitarians, London-based socialists, and Prague-based Jewish social workers in
11692-587: The Semitic race, which they associated with "cultural sterility". Arthur de Gobineau , a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing , which he argued had destroyed the purity of the Aryan race, a term which he only reserved for Germanic people. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasised
11840-661: The Times , possibly the first feature film produced at an American college. After graduating, he worked for Louis de Rochemont for eight years as a production manager, film editor, and as an assistant director. He later wrote, produced and directed a series of educational films for the Ford Foundation . His feature-length film, Nothing But a Man won two awards at the Venice Film Festival , as well as critical acclaim in France. It did not, however, do well in
11988-409: The United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain . Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents. The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to Parliament . The bill stated that the government would waive certain immigration requirements so as to allow
12136-548: The United States accepted about 200,000 refugees fleeing Nazism, more than any other country. Most of the refugees were Jewish. In 1939 Senator Robert F. Wagner and Rep. Edith Rogers proposed the Wagner-Rogers Bill in the United States Congress . This bill was to admit 20,000 unaccompanied refugees under the age of 14 into the United States from Germany and areas under German control. Most of
12284-472: The United States until it was re-released in 1993. Writing the screenplay, Roemer drew on his own background as a Jew in Nazi Germany, where his family had everything taken away from them and his father and grandfather were unable to provide for the family because of the Nazis' increasingly restrictive laws concerning the rights of Jews. The movie's Motown soundtrack came about by chance. George Schiffer,
12432-490: The Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 which later led it to sign the Treaty of Versailles. A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps , paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. Initially, the post–World War I German far-right was dominated by monarchists , but the younger generation, which was associated with völkisch nationalism,
12580-466: The actual parting took place. Having to learn a new language, in a country where the child's native German or Czech was not understood, was another cause of stress. To have to learn to live with strangers, who only spoke English, and accept them as "pseudo-parents", was a trauma. At school, the English children would often view the refugee children as "enemy Germans" instead of "Jewish refugees". Before
12728-626: The afternoon, even after he became Chancellor and then Führer. After the war, his battalion was absorbed by the Bavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919, where he was elected Deputy Battalion Representative. According to historian Thomas Weber , Hitler attended the funeral of communist Kurt Eisner (a German Jew), wearing a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on the other, which he took as evidence that Hitler's political beliefs had not yet solidified. In Mein Kampf , Hitler never mentioned any service with
12876-659: The child refugees would have been Jewish. However, due to opposition from Senator Robert Rice Reynolds , it never left the committee stage and failed to get Congressional approval. A number of children saved by the Kindertransport s went on to become prominent figures in public life, with two (Walter Kohn, Arno Penzias) becoming Nobel Prize winners. These include: Nazi Final solution Parties Nazism ( / ˈ n ɑː t s ɪ z əm , ˈ n æ t -/ NA(H)T -siz-əm ), formally National Socialism ( NS ; German : Nationalsozialismus , German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] ),
13024-545: The children in Britain without their parents was perceived at the time as a temporary measure but the war began. The work of the BCRC in Czechoslovakia was little noted until 1988 when the refugee children held a reunion. By that time most of the people who had worked in the kindertransport in Czechoslovakia had died and Winton became the living symbol of British help to refugees fleeing the Nazis, especially Jewish refugees, before
13172-410: The children's programme in Czechoslovakia. Winton's mother also worked with him to place the children in homes, and later hostels, with a team of sponsors from groups like Maidenhead Rotary Club and Rugby Refugee Committee. Throughout the summer, he placed advertisements seeking British families to take them in. A total of 669 children were evacuated from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939 through
13320-500: The children. At the time of this evacuation, these parents knew nothing of the evacuation of their children: according to unnamed sources, some of the parents were initially very upset about this action and told Wijsmuller-Meijer that she should not have done this. After 15 May, there was no more opportunity to leave the Netherlands as the country's borders were closed by the Nazis. Many children went through trauma during their extensive Kindertransport experience. Reports of this trauma
13468-457: The clear intent of overloading her and making a transport on such short notice impossible. Nevertheless, Wijsmuller-Meijer managed to send 500 of the children to Harwich, where they were accommodated in a nearby holiday camp at Dovercourt, while the remaining 100 found refuge in the Netherlands. Many representatives went with the parties from Germany to the Netherlands, or met the parties at Liverpool Street station in London and ensured that there
13616-438: The concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed to be "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that certain groups of white people were members of an Aryan "master race" that is superior to other races and particularly superior to
13764-661: The conservative-oriented German Army. This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA in 1934, in what came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives . Before he joined the Bavarian Army to fight in World War I, Hitler had lived a bohemian lifestyle as a petty street watercolour artist in Vienna and Munich and he maintained elements of this lifestyle later on, going to bed very late and rising in
13912-604: The constitution of complex systems and theorization of organic-racial societies. In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century German nationalist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte , whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented Völkisch nationalism . Fichte's works served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, including Dietrich Eckart and Arnold Fanck . In Speeches to
14060-646: The continent with 74 children left on the passenger-freighter SS Bodegraven [ nl ; de ] on 14 May 1940, from IJmuiden , Netherlands. Their departure was organised by Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer , the Dutch organiser of the first transport from Vienna in December 1938. She had collected 66 of the children from the orphanage on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam, part of which had been serving as
14208-474: The country and their parents differed widely: for example, children might be told "you are going on an exciting adventure", or "you are going on a short trip and we will see you soon". Young children, roughly six or younger, would generally not accept such an explanation and would demand to stay with their parents. Older children, who were "more willing to accept the parents' explanation", would nevertheless realise that they would be separated from their parents for
14356-520: The day Germany invaded Poland , and two days later Britain, France, and other countries declared war on Germany. A party left Prague on 3 September 1939, but was sent back. Marking the European route of the children's transport and created from personal experience, Frank Meisler 's sculpture groups show similarities but with different details. The memorials show two groups of children and young people standing with their backs to each other waiting for
14504-550: The decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani. The first party that attempted to combine nationalism and socialism was the (Austria-Hungary) German Workers' Party , which predominantly aimed to solve the conflict between the Austrian Germans and the Czechs in the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire , then part of Austria-Hungary . In 1896
14652-529: The disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors ... But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. In a speech given in Munich on 12 April 1922, Hitler stated: There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that
14800-545: The entry into Great Britain of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17, under a number of conditions. No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially, the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine ,
14948-430: The existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan ( Germanic ) and Jewish cultures . Aryan mysticism claimed that Christianity originated in Aryan religious traditions, and that Jews had usurped the legend from Aryans. Houston Stewart Chamberlain , an English-born German proponent of racial theory, supported notions of Germanic supremacy and antisemitism in Germany. Chamberlain's work, The Foundations of
15096-427: The existence of interracial struggle and put races on a hierarchy of evolution, ranging from wholly human to subhuman . Mendelian inheritance , or Mendelism, was supported by the Nazis, as well as by mainstream eugenicists of the time. The Mendelian theory of inheritance declared that genetic traits and attributes were passed from one generation to another. Eugenicists used Mendelian inheritance theory to demonstrate
15244-492: The extermination of the Jews. Langbehn called for a war of annihilation against the Jews, and his genocidal policies were later published by the Nazis and given to soldiers on the front during World War II . One antisemitic ideologue of the period, Friedrich Lange , even used the term "National Socialism" to describe his own anti-capitalist take on the völkisch nationalist template. Johann Gottlieb Fichte accused Jews in Germany of having been and inevitably of continuing to be
15392-464: The fact that words in European languages and words in Indo-Iranian languages have similar pronunciations and meanings. Johann Gottfried Herder argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections to the ancient Indians and the ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples that possessed a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint and science. Contemporaries of Herder used
15540-576: The father of genetics , German botanist Gregor Mendel . Haeckel's works were later condemned by the Nazis as inappropriate for "National-Socialist formation and education in the Third Reich". This may have been because of his " monist " atheistic , materialist philosophy, which the Nazis disliked, along with his friendliness to Jews, opposition to militarism and support altruism, with one Nazi official calling for them to be banned. Unlike Darwinian theory, Lamarckian theory officially ranked races in
15688-573: The fields of agricultural and industrial labour. German Jewish financiers and bankers played a key role in fostering Germany's economic growth from 1871 to 1913 and they benefited enormously from this boom. In 1908, amongst the twenty-nine wealthiest German families with aggregate fortunes of up to 55 million marks at the time, five were Jewish and the Rothschilds were the second wealthiest German family. The predominance of Jews in Germany's banking, commerce and industry sectors during this time period
15836-469: The first time, I am ashamed to be a German." The former German emperor also denounced the Nazis as a "bunch of shirted gangsters" and "a mob ... led by a thousand liars or fanatics." There were factions within the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical. The conservative Nazi Hermann Göring urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries . Other prominent conservative Nazis included Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich . Meanwhile,
15984-512: The head of the government, with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler , meaning "leader and Chancellor of Germany" (see also here ). From that point, Hitler was effectively the dictator of Nazi Germany—also known as the Third Reich—under which Jews, political opponents and other "undesirable" elements were marginalised, imprisoned or murdered . During World War II , many millions of people – including around two-thirds of
16132-488: The heart of his political philosophy as well as his disdain for representative democracy , over which he proposed the Führerprinzip ( leader principle ), and his belief in Germany's right to territorial expansion through lebensraum . Hitler's objectives involved the eastward expansion of German territories, German colonization of Eastern Europe, and the promotion of an alliance with Britain and Italy against
16280-555: The induction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 by the Nazis, many German nationalists such as Roland Freisler strongly supported laws to ban Rassenschande between Aryans and Jews as racial treason. Even before the laws were officially passed, the Nazis banned sexual relations and marriages between party members and Jews. Party members found guilty of Rassenschande were severely punished; some party members were even sentenced to death. The Nazis claimed that Bismarck
16428-518: The intellectual capitals of the continent, what Joachim Fest called the "scrapheap of ideas" prevalent at the time. In Hitler and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic , historian Martin Broszat points out that [A]lmost all essential elements of ... Nazi ideology were to be found in the radical positions of ideological protest movements [in pre-1914 Germany]. These were: a virulent anti-Semitism,
16576-436: The latter years of the war, they may have become aware of the Holocaust and the actual direct threat to their Jewish parents and extended family. After the war ended in 1945, nearly all the children learned, sooner or later, that their parents had been murdered. In November 2018, for the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport programme, the German government announced that it would make a payment of €2,500 (about US$ 2,800 at
16724-508: The main priority of economic organisation, which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party in order to appeal to left-wing workers,
16872-528: The midst of the Great Depression, facing the possibility of economic ruin on the one hand and a Communist or Social Democrat government on the other hand, German business increasingly turned to Nazism as offering a way out of the situation, by promising a state-driven economy that would support, rather than attack, existing business interests. By January 1933, the Nazi Party had secured the support of important sectors of German industry, mainly among
17020-556: The monetary and housing and other aid required had been promised by the Jewish community and other communities. Within a short time, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, later known as the Refugee Children's Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organising, and transporting the children. The Central British Fund for German Jewry provided funding for
17168-508: The motives and character of the families: it was sufficient for the houses to look clean and the families to seem respectable. In Germany, a network of organisers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most in peril: teenagers who were in concentration camps or in danger of arrest, Polish children or teenagers threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were too impoverished to keep them, or children with
17316-501: The nation. He believed that communism was invented by the Jews to weaken nations by promoting class struggle. After his rise to power, Hitler took a pragmatic position on economics, accepting private property and allowing capitalist private enterprises to exist so long as they adhered to the goals of the Nazi state, but not tolerating enterprises that he saw as being opposed to the national interest. German business leaders disliked Nazi ideology but came to support Hitler, because they saw
17464-538: The people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction—to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything,
17612-411: The programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the programme by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The term "kindertransport" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to
17760-523: The purity of the Nordic race. After reading the book, Hitler called it "my Bible". In Germany, the belief that Jews were economically exploiting Germans became prominent due to the ascendancy of many wealthy Jews into prominent positions upon the unification of Germany in 1871. From 1871 to the early 20th century, German Jews were overrepresented in Germany's upper and middle classes while they were underrepresented in Germany's lower classes, particularly in
17908-461: The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels opposed capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core and he stressed the need for the party to emphasise both a proletarian and a national character. Those views were shared by Otto Strasser , who later left the Nazi Party and formed the Black Front in the belief that Hitler had allegedly betrayed the party's socialist goals by endorsing capitalism. When
18056-429: The rescue of children, who would need to leave their parents behind in Germany. In that debate of 21 November 1938, Hoare paid particular attention to the plight of children. He reported that enquiries in Germany had determined that nearly every parent asked had said that they would be willing to send their child off unaccompanied to the United Kingdom, leaving their parents behind. Although Hoare declared that he and
18204-476: The rescue operation. On 25 November, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service radio station from former Home Secretary Viscount Samuel . Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting possible foster homes and reporting on conditions. They did not insist that the homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes. Nor did they probe too carefully into
18352-490: The rise of Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, the different ideologies incorporated into Nazism were already well established in certain parts of German society long before World War I . The Nazis were strongly influenced by the post–World War I far-right in Germany, which held common beliefs such as anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism and antisemitism, along with nationalism , contempt for the Treaty of Versailles and condemnation of
18500-485: The same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology-this became known as " Jewish Bolshevism ". Hitler believed that The Protocols were authentic. During his life in Vienna between 1907 and 1913, Hitler became fervently anti-Slavic . Prior to the Nazi ascension to power, Hitler often blamed moral degradation on Rassenschande ("racial defilement"), a way to assure his followers of his continuing antisemitism, which had been toned down for popular consumption. Prior to
18648-503: The signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 and it was then that he became an antisemitic, German nationalist. Hitler expressed opposition to capitalism, regarding it as having Jewish origins and accusing capitalism of holding nations ransom to the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class. He also expressed opposition to communism and egalitarian forms of socialism, arguing that inequality and hierarchy are beneficial to
18796-463: The steel and coal producers, the insurance business, and the chemical industry. Large segments of the Nazi Party, particularly among the members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), were committed to the party's official socialist, revolutionary and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and an economic revolution when the party gained power in 1933. In the period immediately before
18944-687: The support and connivance of traditional conservative nationalists who believed that they could control him and his party. With the use of emergency presidential decrees by Hindenburg and a change in the Weimar Constitution which allowed the Cabinet to rule by direct decree, bypassing both Hindenburg and the Reichstag, the Nazis soon established a one-party state and began the Gleichschaltung . The Sturmabteilung (SA) and
19092-573: The term "Nazi". Hitler Youth leader Melita Maschmann wrote a book about her experience entitled Account Rendered . She did not refer to herself as a "Nazi", even though she was writing well after World War II. In 1933, 581 members of the National Socialist Party answered interview questions put to them by Professor Theodore Abel from Columbia University . They similarly did not refer to themselves as "Nazis". The majority of scholars identify Nazism in both theory and practice as
19240-437: The term, but it soon gave up this effort and generally avoided using the term while it was in power. In each case, the authors typically referred to themselves as "National Socialists" and their movement as "National Socialism", but never as "Nazis". A compendium of Hitler's conversations from 1941 through 1944 entitled Hitler's Table Talk does not contain the word "Nazi" either. In speeches by Hermann Göring , he never uses
19388-492: The time) to each of the "Kinder" who was still alive. This payment, although a token amount, represented an explicit recognition and acceptance of the immense damage that had been done to each child, both psychological and material. The Nazis had decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, so most transport parties went by train to the Netherlands ; then to a British port, generally Harwich , by ferry from
19536-441: The war started on 1 September 1939, and even during the first part of the war, some parents were able to escape from Hitler and reach England and then reunite with their children. However, this became the exception, as most of the parents of the refugee children were murdered by the Nazis. Older refugee children became fully aware of the war in Europe during the period of 1939–1945 and would become concerned for their parents. During
19684-487: The war, there were great difficulties in Britain as children from the Kindertransport tried to reunite with their families. Agencies were flooded with requests from children seeking to find their parents, or any surviving member of their family. Some of the children were able to reunite with their families, often travelling to far-off countries in order to do so. Others discovered that their parents had not survived
19832-447: The war. In her novel about the Kindertransport titled The Children of Willesden Lane , Mona Golabek describes how often the children who had no families left were forced to leave the homes that they had gained during the war in boarding houses in order to make room for younger children flooding the country. Before Christmas 1938, Nicholas Winton , a 29-year-old British stockbroker of German-Jewish origin, travelled to Prague to help
19980-462: The work of Chadwick, Warriner, Beatrice Wellington , Waitstill and Martha Sharp , Quaker volunteers such as Tessa Rowntree , and others who worked in Czechoslovakia while Winton was in Britain. The last group of children, which left Prague on 3 September 1939, was turned back because the Nazis had invaded Poland – the beginning of the Second World War. The children travelled to Britain while their parents remained in Czechoslovakia. The settlement of
20128-573: Was Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl , whose work— Land und Leute ( Land and People , written between 1857 and 1863)—collectively tied the organic German Volk to its native landscape and nature, a pairing which stood in stark opposition to the mechanical and materialistic civilisation which was then developing as a result of industrialisation . Geographers Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer borrowed from Riehl's work as did Nazi ideologues Alfred Rosenberg and Paul Schultze-Naumburg , both of whom employed some of Riehl's philosophy in arguing that "each nation-state
20276-652: Was a debate in Parliament. Many speeches expressed horror at the idea of interning refugees, and a vote overwhelmingly instructed the Government to "undo" the internment. In contrast to the Kindertransport, where the British Government waived immigration visa requirements, these OTC children received no United States government visa immigration assistance. The U.S. government made it difficult for refugees to get entrance visas. However, from 1933 to 1945,
20424-562: Was a pro-Catholic Habsburg supporter and only used German nationalist notions occasionally for his own agenda. Although Hitler praised both Lueger and Schönerer, he criticised the former for not applying a racial doctrine against the Jews and Slavs. The concept of the Aryan race , which the Nazis promoted, stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia . Proponents of this theory based their assertion on
20572-477: Was an organism that required a particular living space in order to survive". Riehl's influence is overtly discernible in the Blut und Boden ( Blood and Soil ) philosophy introduced by Oswald Spengler , which the Nazi agriculturalist Walther Darré and other prominent Nazis adopted. Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism , individualism and secularised urban industrial society, while advocating
20720-512: Was instrumental in founding the German Empire. The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state that Bismarck had begun and desired to achieve. While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck's moderate domestic policies. On the issue of Bismarck's support of a Kleindeutschland ("Lesser Germany", excluding Austria) versus
20868-491: Was more radical and it did not express any emphasis on the restoration of the German monarchy. This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" which was associated with German national unity ( Volksgemeinschaft ). The Nazis, the far-right monarchists, the reactionary German National People's Party (DNVP) and others, such as monarchist officers in
21016-411: Was not exclusively for any class and he indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps" by stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism." Historians regard the equation of Nazism as "Hitlerism" as too simplistic since the term was used prior to
21164-510: Was overshadowed by both Prussian patriotism and the federalist tradition of its various component states. The events of World War I, including the end of the Prussian monarchy in Germany, resulted in a surge of revolutionary völkisch nationalism. The Nazis supported such revolutionary völkisch nationalist policies and they claimed that their ideology was influenced by the leadership and policies of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , who
21312-447: Was populist and opposed to traditional elites, spoke of the need for a "People's War" ( Volkskrieg ) and put forth concepts similar to those which the Nazis adopted. Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to purify itself (including purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon their rise to power). Another important figure in pre-Nazi völkisch thinking
21460-552: Was re-released, The Washington Post called it "one of the most sensitive films about black life ever made in this country", and in 1994 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress . Roemer's film The Plot Against Harry , a comedy, was made in 1969, but found no one to distribute it because no one found it funny. Twenty years later, he decided to put all of his movies on videotape as
21608-701: Was someone there to receive and care for each child. Between 1939 and 1941, 160 children without foster families were sent to the Whittingehame Farm School in East Lothian , Scotland. The Whittingehame estate was the family home of Arthur Balfour , former UK prime minister and, in 1917, author of the Balfour Declaration . The RCM ran out of money at the end of August 1939, and decided it could take no more children. The last group of children left Germany on 1 September 1939,
21756-556: Was unable to complete German national unification because Jews had infiltrated the German parliament and they claimed that their abolition of parliament had ended this obstacle to unification. Using the stab-in-the-back myth , the Nazis accused Jews—and other populations who it considered non-German—of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German antisemitism about the Judenfrage (the Jewish Question),
21904-417: Was very high, even though Jews were estimated to account for only 1% of the population of Germany. The overrepresentation of Jews in these areas fuelled resentment among non-Jewish Germans during periods of economic crisis. The 1873 stock market crash and the ensuing depression resulted in a spate of attacks on alleged Jewish economic dominance in Germany and antisemitism increased. During this time period, in
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