HITLER’S RISE
TEACHING LESSON 2

Handout 2:      The News from Germany

Vocabulary:    totalitarian

Read Overview 2 and summarize for students. Then write the following quotation from the British statesman Edmund Burke on the board:

“All that is necessary for the forces of evil

to win is for good men to do nothing.”

Ask students what they think this quote means. (Bad things happen because good people do nothing to stop them.) Ask students to suggest reasons why otherwise “good people” might not act when confronted with behavior that they know to be wrong. (fear of physical harm, fear of losing status in the community or of public disapproval, apathy, indifference, ignorance of how the problem can be solved)

Middle schoolers might be introduced to this lesson through the poem “The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden, reprinted in the back of the book. This poem is also used in a powerful film The Hangman listed in the Bibliography.

In this lesson students read about some German men and women who did try to protest against Nazi policy. This handout can be used to help students contrast the way dissent or opposition to government policy is treated in a democratic society like the United States with the way dissenters are treated in a totalitarian state.  

Distribute Handout 2. Make sure students realize that each of these newspaper reports comes from newspaper articles of the 1930s. As students read each article, have them note the date and the place where each occurred. Explain that Martin Niemoeller was a German Protestant minister who served with distinction in the German navy as a submarine commander in World War I. In the years after World War I, he was at first a supporter of the Nazi party. However, after Hitler came to power in 1933, he preached against the Nazis and became the leader of the Confessing Church. The purpose of this group was to systematically oppose the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church. He was imprisoned briefly in 1937 and then spent nearly eight years in prison from 1938 to 1945 when the Allies liberated the camps.  

When students have completed the reading, make a chart like the one on the next page on the board. Have students complete the chart and use it to compare the articles.

Ask students what effect they think the punishments for these acts had on German citizens who did not agree with Nazi policies. (The increasing severity of punishments in the decade before the war had a chilling effect on dissent.) Point out that without the cooperation and support of major institutions of German society such as the Church or the universities, individual resistance, even if it had existed on a larger scale, would not have been very effective.  

Next ask students whether any of the actions described in these newspaper articles would be considered a crime in the United States. (No) What rights do Americans have that protect them from arrest for such activities? (constitutional rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly)  

Have students think of periods in American history when opposition to government policies has been strong. A good example is the Vietnam era. Some of the ways opponents of the Vietnam War expressed their views were through marches, protests, refusing to salute the flag, refusing to sing the national anthem. None of these actions were illegal. What would have been the response to such actions in Nazi Germany? (Clearly, such actions would have been considered criminal acts in Nazi Germany.   Point out that in the United States opposition to the war expressed through such activities as refusing to register for the draft and takeovers of buildings were illegal, and students might consider reasons for this.)

As a follow-up activity for this lesson, groups of students can write the memo suggested at the end of Handout 2. (Groups can consider such responses as diplomatic protests, secret negotiations, the League of Nations, economic sanctions and boycotts, breaking off relations with Germany.) Students can also write short newspaper articles indicating how the same information might appear in a German newspaper of the period. Students should be made aware that these newspapers were used as propaganda tools of the Nazi government.  

Connect to Civics: Examine with the class the difficult choices a democracy faces in determining the limits of dissent. Should a civil rights group be allowed to hold a protest march or a rally? Should the same rights be given to the Ku Klux Klan or to neo-Nazis and skinheads? Should members of an American Nazi party be given a parade permit? Students can research an actual incident that took place in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977. Skokie is a suburb of Chicago. Twenty years ago, many of its residents were Jewish and some were concentration camp survivors. The incident which occurred there began when Nazi party members requested a permit to hold a rally. Many members of the community objected strongly to the request. Skokie town leaders responded by obtaining a court order banning the rally and passing local laws that prohibited the rally.

The Nazi party asked the American Civil Liberties Union to defend its right to hold the rally. The lawyer for the Nazi party argued that to deny the Nazis the right to march violated their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court refused to stop the planned rally. However, the Skokie rally was not held. After the U.S. District Court overruled the Chicago Park District’s opposition to their appearance there, the Nazis decided to rally in Chicago instead.  

In general the art of all great popular leaders at all times consists . . . in not scattering the attention of a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single opponent.

Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/