Judenrate (Jewish Councils) Special bodies representing Jews vis-a-vis the Nazi government. These councils were set up not only in Germany but throughout German-occupied Europe. Inside Germany the Judenrat was called the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Reich Representative Council of German Jews). Jewish councils were organized in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands (Joodse Raad), Hungary, Poland (Jedenrat), and Romania. A special Judenrat functioned during the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Jugendherbergen (Youth Hostels) Rest camps set up in 1933 for the Hitler Jugend, the Hitler Youth. The purpose was to provide a place where members of the Hitler Youth who were hiking might sleep in return for a modest payment. Rest camps had long existed in Germany, but they were now taken over by the Nazis. By 1934 some 5 million youngsters had taken advantage of the rest camps.
July Plot- An attempt on Hitler's life at a war conference held at at the Gastebarake (guest barracks) in the Fuhrer's headquarters at Rastendurg, East Prussia, on July 20, 1944. There was dissatisfaction in military circles with Hitler and nazism in the days before he became Chancellor in 1933. The upper brackets of the High Command of the armed forces in the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin remained Fuehrertreu (loyal to the Fuhrer). Such high officers as Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Col.Gen. Alfred Jodl, and Maj.Gen. Walther Warlimont adhered to their oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer, but the lower brackets were riddled with dissent. On October 19, 1938, Col. Gen Ludwig Beck resigned as chief of the General Staff in protest against Hitler's plan to annex Czechoslovakia. For some time, Beck had concentrated on winning the support of high-ranking army officers in a plan to arrest or eliminate Hitler, and he founded a loosely knit organization to achieve this end. Over the next five years discontent proceeded in three stages, from opposition to resistance to conspiracy.
At the center of the plot were such senior officers as Maj. Gen. henning von Tresckow, chief of staff in Army Group Center on the Russian front; Col. Gen. Erich Hoepner, the commander of an armored force who had been dismissed by Hitler in December 1941; Col. Gen. Friedrich Olbricht, head of the Supply Section of the Reserve Army; Col. Gen. Karl heinrich von Stuelpnagel, military governor in France; Maj. Gen. Hans Oster, chief of staff of the Abwehr; and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, who had been retiredd from active service in 1942. Added to these senior members were a number of younger officers who believed that the Third Reich was a catastrophe for Germany oand were willing to gamble their lives on the outcome of the plot. Among them were Col. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, chief of staff to Gen. Freidrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army (who was both in and out of the conspiracy); 1st Lieut. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, staff officer under General von Tresckow on the eastern front; and Lieut. Werner von Haeften, Von Stauffenberg's adjutant.
Others knew the plot bur did not take an active role in it. Among them were Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, popular war hero; Lieut. Gen. Adolf Heusinger, operations chief of the Army High Command; and Field Marshal Gunther Hans von Kluge, army group commander in France.
By the summer of 1938, definite plans began to crystalize for a coup d'etat. Beck's resignation in October 1938 stimulated the move from opposition to resisstance. Evidence was gathered to certify Hitler as insane in order to remove him from the office before setting up a provisional government. Approaches made to Paris, London, and Washington had little success. The Berlin Putsch of September 1938 failed at the critical moment because of weak planning. The conspirators were dealt a heavy blow by the Munich Agreement, which heightened Hitler's poppularity with the German people. Equally disappointing were the November 1939 Zossen Putsch and the January 1943 Stalingrad Putsch.
In March 1943 General von Tresckow and his junior officer, 1st Leiutenant von Schlabrendorff, both active in the Beck group, decided that the time had come for action. A British-made time bomb, disguised as a bottle of brandy, was placed on the Fuhrer's plane by Von Schlabrendorff as it took off from Smolensk on a flight back to headquarters in East Prussia. The bomb failed to explode, but by good luck for the plotters, it was never discovered. On March 21, 1943, another attempt on Hitler's life, a suicide mission in which two bombs were to be placed in the Fuhrer's overcoat pocket, failed when Hitler changed his schedule at the last moment. Other similar attempts were also frustrated.
In early 1944 Graf von Stauffenberg became the active leader of the anti-Hitler conspirators. In February 1944 the conspiracy received an unexpected reinforcement when it was learned that Field Marshal Rommel, disgusted by Hitler's mismanagement of the war, decided to join the Beck group. General von Tresckow agreed with Von Stauffenberg that the assasination attempt must be made now at all costs: "We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the German Resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and wager their lives on it."
Early on the morning of July 20, 1944, Hitler called a conference of his close military advisers at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) headquarters in Rastenburg for 12:30 pm. The compound was protected by numerous electric fences and barbed wire, with blockhouses and checkpoints. The meeting was held in the Gastebaracke, a large wooden hut built on concrete and stone pillars and having a roof of tarred felt. There were three windows and at each end a small table. In the center of the room was a large table covered by situation maps.
Shortly after 10 am, Von Stauffenberg arrived at Rastenburg and was admitted after giving the proper password. He had been summoned to give a report on the state of the Home Army. In his briefcase along with papers and reports, was a British time bomb. He set the time on the bomb and brought it into the conference room. After greeting the Fuhrer, he placed the briefcase on the floor beside Hitler and then excused himself: "I must make a telephone call." Col. Heinz Brandt, deputy to General Heusinger, feeling the briefcase to be in his way, pushed it away from his chair and under the heavy upright support on the side farthest away from Hitler. That move saved the Fuhrer's life.
Several minutes passed as General heusinger gave his gloomy report on the Russian front. he was in the final stages. "The Russians are pressing with strong forces westward. Their forward troops are already southwest of Dunaburg (Daugavpils). If now we do not at last withdraw the Army Group from Peipusse (Lake Peipus), there will be a disaster. . . ." At this moment, precisely at 12:50 pm, a tremendous explosion blasted the room, wrecking the ceiling and shattering the central table. Several bodies flew out of the smashed windows, and
Junkers-87 German single-engine dive bomber that bore the brunt of air attacks in the early days of WWII. Hitler wanted a plane that would be the perfect complementary weapon in the air to his ground Blitzkrieg. The Stuka was brought into production in 1936. Its specifications included an 1100 horsepower liquid-cooled engine, a wingspan of 45.2 feet, a top speed of 232 m.p.h., an armament of three 7.9 mm machine guns, and the capaicity to carry 1100 pounds of bombs. The famous gull-winged plane was tested in Spain during the civil war. When WWII began, Hermann Goering sent his Stuka dive bombers to destroy Polish planes and tanks on the ground and accompany the German forces in their surge forward. The Stuka had a strong psychological effect on the enemy: with its crooked wings, squrare-cut tail, and canopy hump, it had the appearance of a flying vluture and when diving gave a loud and terrifying whine. In his propoganda Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels boasted that the Stuka was invincible.
However, the easy victories of early campaigns were won in the absence of adequate fighter opposition. Royal Air Force pilots in the Battle of Britain found the Stuka an easy prey. Severe losses in operations throughout August 1940 destroyed the reputation of the Stuka as the all-conquering weapon of the Luftwaffe, and it was withdrawn from the spearhead of the attack. Goering continued to use the Stuka on other fronts and on convoy routes.
Justice in the Third Reich- The legal system of the Third Reich was geared to the Fuhrer's attitude toward justice. Hitler had only contempt for the traditional legal system. As Chancellor he wanted no checks or limits on his power. His idea of justice was based on "what is useful to the nation." The human conscience, he said, was a Jewish invention designed to enslave other races. He rejected such conceptions as the Kantian categorical imperative ("Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."). However, Hitler was too shrewd to reveal these beliefs publicly and preferred to appear as a firm advocate of law and order. He was careful to cloak all his actions behind a mass of legal verbiage, but in his ssecret conversations he intimated that law was primarily a means of exercising control over the German people. He would not hesitate, he said, to commit perjury "in cold blood" many times a day if it served his purpose.
As soon as Hitler achieved political power in 1933, he began to revise the German legal system. He had no interest in civil law, such as litigation over wills, torts, and commercial contracts, and allowed it to remain virtually intact. On the other hand, he regarded criminal law as critical for the maintenance of his dictatorship. It was vital to "rid oneself of all enemies." He therefore rejected the legal principle of "no punishment without crime" in favor of "no crime without punishment." In his view punishment was "simply the separating out of alient types and deviant natures." Any opposition to National Socialism was criminal. Hitler decreed a series of draconian laws against all who opposed, resisted, or conspired against his state. The process continued throughout the life of the Third Reich. By 1945 the number of capital crimes had risen to 43, and death sentences were almost invariably carried out.
Hitler's first concern was to rid the German legal system of all Jewish elements. Jewish judges were prompltly retired, and Jewish lawyers were driven from their profession. In the process of nazification all practicing lawyers were required to join the NS-Rechtswahrerbund, the National Socialist Lawyers' Association. This organization maitained a close watch over its memebers. It had its own "honor" courts with disciplinary power over those who committed such infractions as failing to use the German greeting, "Heil Hitler!" Those who did not vote in Reichstag elections or national plebiscites could be disbarred.
In the new Third Reich the Rechtstaat (constitutional state) was replaced by a state grounded on Hitler's views of a legal system. All judges were appointed by the Nazi minister of Justice. They were cautioned to preserve the existing voelkisch community to punish all anti-Nazi behavior, and to exterminate obstructionists. It was their duty to rationalize any decision from the viewpoint of Nazi Weltanschauung, or world view. The role of prosecutors in the courts was enhanced, and that of judges and defense reduced. Defense counsel in criminal cases were to serve only with the approval of the court. Judicial procedures in local districts could be influenced by the local Gauleiter, the district leader, by the Reichsstathalter, the provincial governor, or by Das Schwarz Korps, the newspaper of the SS.
Many older jurists were retired because they "did not act in the interest of the National Socialist state." Often young, inexperienced Nazis, who were regarded as more reliable, were appointed to key judicial posts. University students who studied law were subjected to careful supervision and indoctrination in Nazi ideology.