Hitler's rise to power in Germany in the 1930s is in several ways reflected in Gilead: • Hitler promised his followers a new Germany with a stress on family values. However, this rapidly turned into oppression of any who did not share his vision and the slaughter of those who were not of the ‘pure' Aryan race he demanded • He encouraged the fanatical adulation of the young through the Hitler Youth movement - a situation echoed in Atwood's Gilead when she writes in chapter 4 of the Guardians of the Faith that: ‘The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical' • Books that were considered to have any seditious or undesirable content were burned by the Nazis. Gilead too has severe restrictions on literature and indeed on literacy • In Hitler's ‘Third Reich' people were encouraged to betray any perceived lapses in others, even close family members, just as in chapter 41 of The Handmaid's Tale Offred realises that Nick might betray her and it is therefore ‘foolhardy' to trust him • In order to brainwash his countrymen into accepting the genocide of Jews and gypsies, Hitler described these groups as ‘Untermenschen' - less than human. In chapter 30 Offred realises that ‘This is what you have to do before you kill... You have to create an it' • Even before Hitler set up the death-camps in which millions were slaughtered, Jews were required to wear the distinguishing badge of a yellow star. The same badge would be affixed to the body of a hanged Jew in Gilead, according to Offred in chapter 31 • Perhaps most poignantly, children of ‘undesirables' in Hitler's Germany were forcibly removed from their parents, to be adopted by loyal Nazis, reminding us of Offred's lost daughter.
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