Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
13 statements
01Evidence and context
On 13 May 1939 the St. Louis left Hamburg for Cuba with 900 Jews; the visas were voided, and Cuba, the United States, and Canada refused landing.
Belgium, Holland, Britain, and France took the passengers for a time; those left on the continent were later deported and murdered.
The Madagascar and Nisko schemes, the latter near Radom, were dropped as impractical, though some 70,000 Jews had already been sent to the reservation by January 1940.
On 30 January 1939 Hitler prophesied in the Reichstag that if Jewish financiers plunged nations into another world war, the result would be annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
World War II began on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol on spheres of influence.
After the Soviet invasion on 17 September, Poland fell in three weeks: 1.2 million Jews in the east came under Soviet control and more than two million in the center and west under the Nazis.
As early as 1928, Goebbels asked in Der Angriff why Nazis were enemies of the Jews and blamed them for defeat.
Children's books such as The Poisonous Toadstool carried images meant to frighten and instruct.
In November 1937 Munich's German Museum opened The Eternal Jew, and Alfred Rosenberg told viewers the film was meant to horrify them.
At the moment Hitler took office, Germany still had roughly 100,000 firms in Jewish hands.
Herbert Göring, Hermann's brother, described joining Jewish firms' boards so as to create difficulties for the owner.
In 1935 Hitler declared Germany would be ready for war in four years and that Jews had to be removed beforehand.
Context
Belgium, Holland, Britain, and France took the passengers for a time; those left on the continent were later deported and murdered.
The Madagascar and Nisko schemes, the latter near Radom, were dropped as impractical, though some 70,000 Jews had already been sent to the reservation by January 1940.
World War II began on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 02Museum
Objects and images
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).
The war against the Jews · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 457
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 434inspect
- 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 435inspect
- 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 428inspect
- 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 428inspect
- 10Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 428inspect
- 11Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 428inspect
- 12Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 429inspect
- 13Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 429inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
- Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
- Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
- Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.