Gestapo

The Holocaust left forgotten victims and survivors who wished they could forget. The crimes that took place during the Holocaust showed humanity’s darkest side. People were tortured and killed. Those who survived are forever scarred by their memories. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, writes about his ordeal in his memoir, Night. For some prisoners, the brutality that the Nazis treat them with leads to their deaths. For others, it morphs them into the animals they are believed to be. The Nazis’…

Founded in 1925, the Schutzstaffel German for Protective Echelon initially served as Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguards, and later became one of the most powerful and feared organizations in all of Nazi Germany. Heinrich Himmler, a fervent anti-Semite like Hitler, became head of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, in 1929 and expanded the group’s role and size. Recruits, who had to prove none of their ancestors were Jewish, received military training and were also taught they were the…

How do you react when you believe authority is wrong? Do you believe it is inherently safe to differ from authority’s opinion? Do you hide what you think is right in fear of the consequences? Or do you except the drawbacks and do what is right regardless? According to the 17th century philosopher Voltaire, “it is dangerous to be right when established authorities are wrong”. Although this claim could be refuted by instances of respect for others honesty and courage, I believe people around the…

World War II was a catastrophic tragedy. What we can cultivate from the war, however, is that the war was fought for peace, for the future, for the people. The casualties and pains of the soldiers were not without a cause. That is the case with Joe Beyrle, an ordinary soldier who found himself on many sides of the war in Thomas Taylor’s Behind Hitler’s Lines. Beyrle’s life can be seen as a microcosm of the entire war, where families, friends, and comrades in the battlefield were all split apart.…

Maurice Bavaud was another individual who despised Hitler and the Nazi Party. Bavaud was a Catholic theology student who believed that the Chancellor, Hitler, was an incarnation of the devil and posed a threat to the Catholic church as well as the nation of Germany. This is a particular reason why he may be know as God’s Assassin. Being a very religious character, he decided to take matters into his own hand and assassinate Hitler himself. Bavaud planned to follow Hitler around Germany with a…

Britain and its people needed to join forces with France in order to destroy the growing Gestapo force. After World War One the world had seen the devastating effects of militarised conflict. Many lost loved ones were still in people’s direct conscious and others feared another war. Winston Churchill had to make his country overlook the many…

“I still remember the day they took him. I watched as the Gestapo dragged him away. Nobody did anything. They all stood there, paralyzed by fear, hoping they were not next.” For my project, I decided to interview my grandmother, Marion Heidi Buechner Fratzscher. Marion was born on June 21st, 1938, the second daughter of Hedwig “Heidi” and Paul Buechner, in Berlin, Germany. Her father worked at the Dresdner Bank building in downtown Zehlendorf. The four-story tall building reflected the Nazi’s…

The SS, SA, and the Gestapo set up camps all over Germany. In the camps they held political opponents and those believed to be a threat to the Aryan race. Before capturing and imprisoning Jews, Hitler targeted his own citizens. He put Germans into concentration camps. Anyone…

In the third quarter of the book, death focuses on the life of Rudy Steiner as he describes all the mischief he is up to such as stirring up trouble at the Nazi Youth meetings. It begins with Rudy standing up for Tommy Müller and his inability to hear the commands from the Hitler Youth leaders, causing disruptions of the marches. This only angers the Hitler Youth leaders further and makes Rudy run laps around the muddy field every meeting. In addition to Rudy’s constant punishment at his Nazi…

Another interesting parallel between workers ' opposition in each regime is the role of individuals and the use of collective action. Many of the forms of resistance taken relied on a sense of solidarity among the workers. For example the use of strikes and absenteeism from work, both of these actions only held any weight because they were collectively acted upon by many workers. Although much larger on the Soviet side, strikes played a role in opposition in each of these empires; these strikes…