ADOLPH HITLER
While in jail, Hitler began to write a book, "Mein Kampf." He portrayed the Jewish people as being responsible for democracy, evil and all the problems of the world. He felt that the Jews caused Germany to lose the war. They were Germany's enemies in his eyes.
In 1930, a depression hit Germany. Hitler promised to rid the country of Communists and Jews. The Nazis got forty percent of the vote in July 1932. President von Hidenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. When von Hidenburg died in 1934, Hitler stepped into the role of dictator. When he came to power, sales of his book, "Mein Kampf" escalated. Hitler was soon a rich man.
In 1933, Jews were banned from government jobs and universities. Their shops were boycotted. The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. This law classed Jews as German "subjects." The Jewish people had lost all of their rights. They were no longer classed as citizens.
In October 1938, Polish Jews were dumped at the Polish border. The Poles kept them in no-man's land, not allowing them to enter Poland. Violence erupted. Synagogues and stores were destroyed. Twenty-thousand Jews were arrested.
Hitler's idea of a perfect world was a world without Jews. He wanted a "pure" empire with him as leader. On January 21, 1939, Hitler spoke to Foreign Minister Chvalkovsky of Czechoslovakia. He told him, "We are going to destroy the Jews...The day of reckoning has come."
Hitler never wrote an official order for the extermination of the Jewish people. He spoke secretly of his plan, but never mentioned it in public speeches. He did however, give the orders to have them gassed in 1939 and 1940. In 1941, he gave the order to exterminate every "potential enemy in the occupied Eastern territories." In September 1941, he ordered mass deportations of Jews from Germany to the ghettos of Eastern Europe. During the fall and winter of 1941/42, he prepared for his "Final Solution." He then began to speak openly of his plan to exterminate the Jewish race. Rudolph Hess, the S.S. commander of Auschwitz death camp was given the order to begin exterminating Jews on December 12, 1941. More than six million people were killed in the death camps of Germany and Poland. Millions of others died of malnutrition, disease and beatings.
In January 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, agreed they would continue to
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