Do Now:

Do Now:After World War II, many Nazis and others

who participated in war crimes used the defense that they were “just following orders.” What’s your reaction to that defense?

1. banality: dull, un-original, boring, ordinary

ba na li ty noun

Thesis was that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but merely an ordinary person who accepted the premises of his state and therefore participated with the view that his actions were normal.

“Bystander effect”

Darley & Latane Study (1968)Group of regular people in a room,

with one actor.During the fake directions for the

study, the actor would fake an epileptic seizure.

They conducted the study with various size groups.

The larger the group, the longer it took for any one individual was to help.

Key Words:Genocide: when one group of people tries to

eliminate another group based on race, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs.

I. U.N. Definition of Genocide: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:  (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

II. REVIEW: Nazi Racial IdeologyBelieved Germans were the Aryan “master” raceGave them the right to rule over all other races –

called them untermenschen (sub-humans)Needed to “racially purify” German societyGermans needed more lebensraum – “living space”

that they would through conquest

III. The “Jewish Question”First, Hitler wanted to expel Jews from German

territoryLater, Jews forced to live in segregated areas called

ghettoes that were sealed off with barbed wire and stone walls

Lastly, Hitler adopted what he called the “Final Solution” – the extermination of all Jewish people from Europe.

IV. Tactics Used by Hitler and the SS to carry out the “Final Solution”

Death Squads As Nazi troops swept across Europe, the killings began. Units from the Schutzstaffel ( S.S., Hitler’s elite security force) moved from town to town to hunt down Jews and other people the Nazis had deemed “degenerate.” The SS and their collaborators rounded up men, women, children, and even babies and took them to isolated spots. They usually had their prisoners dig their own graves and then shot them.