History of D-Day and World War 2

Because of the big disapointment with the loss of World War 1 and the poor economic condition in which Germany found itself in, Dietrich Eckart a German anti-Semitic poet, playwright, journalist, publicist and political activist was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the predecessor to the Nazi Party.

Adolf Hitler born on April 20, 1889 in Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary) he was raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919 he became involved with the German Workers Party. The later Nazi Party NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei). Eckart was a key influence on Adolf Hitler in the early years of the Party, the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("People's Observer"). But Hitler set the violent tone of the movement by forming the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) with Ernst Röhm. Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin and Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power. An early attempt at a coup d'état, the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, proved fruitless and Hitler was imprisoned (along with Eckart, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Röhm) for leading the putsch.

He used this time to write Mein Kampf his personal view on the world and society in general. But Hitler has learned from the failed coup attempt, he decided on the tactic of pursuing power through legal means rather than seizing control of the government by force. To get the whole of Germany behind the NSDAP and an all-out war, a common enemy was found in the Jews. The NSDAP or Hitler's party propagated social Darwinist theories. They saw the Germanic "Aryan" race as the most developed race and considered it their task to subdue or exterminate "lesser" races.

In his book Hitler stated that the living space or "Lebensraum" of the Germanic people was too small. The party also called for change in the social and economic structure of Germany. The Nazi's saw the Jews as inferior and unwanted members (Untermenschen) of society. Shortly after he came to power in 1933, Hitler instituted the first measures to exclude Jews in Germany from public life. Jews were getting less and less freedom. From 1933 onwards Jews were no longer allowed to hold government positions and the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of citizenship. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews are also restricted. The D-Day landings can be seen as the turning point for the end of the occupation of Western-Europe.

A few days after German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany, 17 year old Herschel Grynszpan shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German embassy in Paris. This in reaction to his parents being among those that were expelled even though they had been living in Germany since 1911. Vom Rath died two days later as a result of his injuries and the German population is incited in a progrom against the Jewish population. During the night from November 9 to November 10, 1938, the first major action against Jews takes place. Kristallnacht (literally Night of Crystal) was also called "Night of broken glass'. It owes its name to the countless pieces of shattered glass (crystals) that littered the streets in german cities from the broken windows of the synagogues, private homes and Jewish owned businesses who were plundered and destroyed during this night. Thousands of Jews are arrested and deported to concentration camps. At a press conference on November 15, 1938, a week after Kristallnacht, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt condemned the Nazis terror attack on the Jews people, saying, "I could hardly believe that such things could happen in a twentieth-century civilization."