Anti -Semitism

Coursework 2

Anti –Semitism

Question 1

Source A is a difficult one to analyse since it deals with many issues of varying complexity and importance. However this does not mean that I will not attempt to do so. Firstly it is worth commenting on the provenance of the source putting it into context for example it was produced at the time making it a primary source with all the respective advantages and disadvantages that this may have I will com to this later. Also the fact that was in a children’s school text book shows two things which would be an advantage to any historian.

That the Nazi indoctrination started at a young age this is supported by the existence of the Hitler youth movement which I have covered in my own studies.
That Nazi ideals where woven into the educational system this is supported by my own knowledge that in 1935 all teachers where forced to make an oath of allegiance to Hitler and Nazi teachers League

From the above alone, we can safely say that the purpose of the source was to indoctrinate young children with Nazi ideals about race studies.

When I looked at the source itself I saw what is, in my opinion, some very racist and biased viewpoints portrayed through this cartoon and the caption accompanying it. Also I believe that source A is attempting to make the Jew scapegoats for disorder in schools. This is shown by the caption that reads “Jewish … expelled so that order and discipline can now be taught” also when looking bat source A you will notice that all the Jewish children are portrayed as being ugly troublesome and having big noses. This is shown by the ugly faces and shabby clothes of the Jewish children in the picture. This was a common theme at the time since this was a picture the Nazis where trying to paint of the Jews later on they even Nazi scientist even supplied “scientific proof” that the Jews where an inferior race to the Aryans to the extent that they where regarded of sub-human. This portrayal of the Jews is further enhanced by the fact that all the German / Aryan children on the picture all have blond hair blue eyes and are smiling apart even the one on the far right of the picture who appears to be punching a Jewish boy in the head this could be to send out a further message along the lines of “its ok to bully Jewish children”

This source even has other smaller advantages like it shows the humour and style of certain cartoonists of the time but these are fairly unimportant

Looking at all the above Source A would appear to be a very useful source to a historian investigating the Nazi’s anti-Semitic regime however along with all its uses this source does have some limitations i.e. it contains lots of omissions and is incomplete since this cartoon was published the surrounding text and images on the following pages would have more than likely had some relevance to it possible altering the supposed purpose for the cartoon for all I know there could have been another cartoon right next to it showing Aryan children as being ugly and disruptive. This however in my opinion is highly unlikely and should not be dwelled on too much.

To conclude I believe that this Source A is a very useful source for researching Nazi attitudes towards Jews since it gives an idea of how the Nazi planned to turn all Aryan people against the Jews by portraying them as the epitome of being sub human. It is very biased and subjective to the extreme but this would be an advantage to the historian because they would be looking for opinionated viewpoints like this.

Question 2:

Firstly this question states that source B “suggests that many Germans did not support Nazi policies towards the Jews” however I would feel it pointless to go ahead and analyse the rest of the sources if I first don’t agree with this statement. It is for this reason that I will first analyse source B to see if I believe source B really does suggest the above

Source B:

Source B contains many statements that would suggest that the above is true i.e. within the text it describes how Germans anti-Semitic policies where “not taken seriously” and how the author believes that they were only to divert attention from “other things”. The author also comments on how the vast majority ignored the bullying of the Jews and took an unfriendly attitude towards any SA members who tried to photograph them entering Jewish shops.

However there are also some statements which suggest that there was sufficient Nazi hatred around. This is shown within the text where the author comments that “there are enough people influenced... And regard the Jews as originators of bad things” and states that “they have become fanatical opponents of the Jews” however again the author goes on to mention that this is only true with the some people

To gain a little more prospective on how useful this source really is it is worth analysing the provenance of this source placing it into context i.e. It is a primary source written by a ...

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To gain a little more prospective on how useful this source really is it is worth analysing the provenance of this source placing it into context i.e. It is a primary source written by a social democrat (a Nazi opponent) at the time. This would suggest that the source may be biased and have a social democratic slant to it however I can see no evidence of this since the author makes an objective account explaining what was happening in Germany at the time. Also the source also states that the author wrote this when he was in exile this could have quite a large affect on the usefulness of the source depending on how long the author had been in exile before he wrote the source in December 1935. Since I know from my own knowledge that Hitler passed the enabling law in March 1933 and banned the social democrats in July 1933 the author could have been in exile for as long as 18 months if so it would have been very likely that the author would have been out of touch with what was actually happening in Germany at the time.

Taking all the above into consideration it is my opinion that the Source B does indeed agree with the statement that “many Germans did not support Nazi policies towards the Jews.” Since this source is the one with which I will compare the rest I believe that this is an extremely important source. I will now go on to analyse the rest of the sources.

Source C:

This source explains strongly how the majority of German people where opposed to or at least disagreed with what the Germans did to the Jews on Kristallnacht. This is shown by the comments within the text which say that “the majority seemed gravely disturbed by what went on” and it tells how in some cases crowds where seen forming passages so that Jewish shop keepers could leave unmolested.

However the source does hint at how some people supported the Nazi hatred of the Jews by describing how one person from the crowd shouted “why not hang the owner in the window” however I think the fact that this degree of hatred was displayed by just one person in the whole crowed would for me go as further evidence to show that only the minority of people agreed with the Nazi policies against the Jews

Analysing the provenance of this source, it is a newspaper article written just days after the actual event by a reporter who was actually there, making this a primary source. The fact that it was written just days after, means that the event would have been fresh in the reporters mind, This seems to be true due to the level of detail of the report i.e. actual words said by people. However the fact that the reporter was so close to the event may mean that they become emotionally affected by it and as such may have come to exaggerate their story or included some biased viewpoints, again however I can see no evidence of this. Also the reporter was working for an American newspaper and since I know form my own knowledge that the Americans where adopting an isolationist position at the time they believed that the increasing power of the Nazis had nothing to do with them. As it was probably this American feeling of isolationism that prompted the reporter to write what is in my opinion a very fair and objective account of what happened during Kristallnacht.

Also the events mentioned in source C are supported by historical fact i.e. I in my own studies I have encountered many accounts which describe normal German citizens helping Jews to escape from persecution by the SA.

Taking all the above factors into consideration I would say that source C is reliable. However since this is the account of what one reporter had seen at one place this source is very limited in scope and as such its usefulness is also limited

To finalise I would say that source C does support source B but its historical importance as well as its usefulness are very little.

Source D:

Source D contains one or two statements that would seem to support source B in its claims i.e. it refers to the treatment of the Jews as “minor harassment”, it tells also how the Alfons Heck believes that nobody wanted the Jews dead. But thirdly and in my opinion most importantly the author refers to Kristallnacht as the day “we lost our innocence” this shows great regret for what he says happen at that time giving us an example of how people felt about the Nazi policies.

Having said this, contained in the source is also one statement that would appear to go against source B this statement is “certainly we wanted the Jews out of Germany...” this shows almost without doubt that there were people in Germany at that time who agreed fully with the Nazi anti Semitic policies.

To gain a better idea of how useful this source is and how seriously its contents should be taken I must place it into context and analyse the provenance. It was created in 1989 in an interview with Alfons Heck who was a member of the Hitler youth in 1938 at time of heightened hatred for the Jews. The source clearly dictates that he was a member of the Hitler youth in 1938 meaning that he will have almost certainly have been one of the Hitler youth who helped to trash synagogues on November the 9th and 10th of the year 1938 (I know that the Hitler youth were involved due to my own studies). As a result it begs the question - when did he start to feel guilty for his supposed actions at the time in November 1938 (in which cases there may have been more like him) or later on after the war had finished? In my opinion the latter would be the more fitting answer to the question since by the time the source was written in 1989 he had had over 50 years to think about what he had done.

Having said this it all depends whether or not he did or didn’t take part in the atrocities of Kristallnacht which of course is impossible to say. Also he is recalling 50 year old memories which he appears to have exaggerated due to the amount of emotional language used. It is for these to reasons that I will conclude that Source D disagrees with source B. also due to the additional fact that these are the words of one man they are insufficient to provide a detailed picture of what everyone thought and felt at the time. And as such render the sources contents nearly useless and one of the least important sources given to me.

Source E:

At first glance the 2 lines of source E don’t appear to be much but they do contain what is in my opinion some of the most important evidence so far. The text itself has nothing to support source B and instead refutes it by telling that “many ordinary people took part in the killing of the Jews...”

To gain the full wealth of this source and to understands its true value I had to put it into context. I.e. the source says that a maximum of 500,000 people took part in the killing of the Jews in 1941 to 1945 according to my own knowledge and historical fact during these years Germany had an average population varying between 79,000,000 and 81,500,000 meaning that at the very most only 0.63% of the German population was actively involved in killing the Jews. This in turn means that the historian who wrote this was WRONG to claim that most of the German people were involved with the killing of Jews let alone just hating them. Meaning that the historian probably had an ulterior motive for writing this!

To find out what this motive was I had to analyse the provenance, this was written by a JEWISH historian (Daniel Goldhagen) in 1996 giving him 50 years worth of hindsight with which to make a calculated and objective assessment of what happened at the time. However due to the degree with which his opinion differs from the facts this does not appear to be the case. This could have been down to the fact that he is Jewish and may have had some emotional attachment to the events of that time which led him to exaggerate his arguments for one reason or another. However if he was any good at his job his role as a historian would have over ruled his feelings. Because of this, it is my opinion that the reason why Daniel Goldhagen made these false allegations was a much more innocent one than suggested above. According to the text accompanying source E Daniel Goldhagen spent a whole year looking at war crimes documents on battalion 101. This suggests that public opinion on the anti Jewish policies and the events of Kristallnacht would have been outside his field of expertise. This is also supported by the source itself since in just 29 word worth of text he makes what appear to be 2 very liberal guesses. Firstly on the year that the greatest number of killings took place 1941-45 (a time span of 4 years). And secondly on the number of German people who took part 100,000 to 500,000 (a difference of 400,000 people).

Whether it was one reason or the other or even a mixture of both this does not deter me from concluding that though the source its self disagrees with source B the truth behind it does agree with source B making this a very useful source. Also the fact that only 0.62% of Germans took part in the killing means that this is also very important for the purpose of this question.

Source F:

Strangely enough though source f is the longest source given to me it seems to have the least to write about most of it being about irrelevant matters however there are parts which agree with source B.

Firstly the author talks about how even though Oldenburg had the first Nazi government there was “very little active anti-Semitism in the village. It even mentions how the Jews where “submerged into the local population...” All this shows that normal people as a whole accepted and liked the Jewish people. However source F also contains a statement which disagree with source B

It says that everything changed on Kristallnacht (this echoes source D in its effect) when Jewish shops etc where trashed and “the entire male population sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp” this in my opinion implies that there was a feeling of anti Semitism in the village that had remained suppressed until Kristallnacht. However this theory is potentially thwarted again by the mention of the fact that the men where allowed to leave the concentration camp if they had valid emigration papers. This I believe proves to a certain extent that people weren’t fully behind the Nazi anti Semitic policies.

Now I believe I have found out the message within the source it would do me good if I could find out how reliable the source is, so in time honoured fashion I will again analyse the provenance of the source and place it into context. It is a primary source written by a Jewish immigrant living in England 50 years after he emigrated from Oldenburg. This man saw everything that took place in those days and weeks and lived through it. This would suggest that he may have some sort of emotional attachment and may have exaggerated his story however this, in my opinion, does not appear to be the case since he has used clear clinical language with the only air of emotion appearing when he describes his dead father. The reason I believe he was able to write in such objective manner is that he has had 40 years to suppress his emotions and he only lived there through his child hood and did not suffer any real loss at Oldenburg however if this was completely true I don’t think that he would have even bothered to write this article. Looking at this there appears to be omissions but not by the author since the source given is only part of the complete article. This however I believe does not affect the reliability of the source too much since it is already fairly descript.

All in all I would say that Source F agrees with source B since it gives many examples of how people didn’t wholly support the anti Semitic policies of their Nazi government. As such I would say that this is a very useful source and is of fairly important historical value

Conclusion:

To conclude, I have now looked at all the above sources and analysed them in quite some detail. All the information I have found either directly or indirectly from them has led me to this conclusion. “THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A WHOLE WHERE NOT FULLY IN FAVOUR OF THE NAZI’S ANTI SEMITIC POLICIES?” Quite possibly the best why I have found to explain this theory is to imagine a standard deviation curve, such as the one below.

As you can see the 2 blue areas represent the 0.63% of people who actively the anti-Semitic policies of their Nazi government, and the 0.63% of people who where totally opposed to the policies and openly protested against them and / or emigrated (we can deduce that these figures are accurate from source E and the government official figures of German emigrations between 1933 and 1938 which I researched myself).

This of course leaves the massive majority (98.74%) of the ordinary German people who in one way or another where opposed to the Nazi anti Semitic policies but chose for one reason or another to do nothing about it.

There could have been several reasons why the majority of German people decided to put aside their true feelings about the persecution of Jews. These reasons range from the widespread indoctrination of German people (demonstrated in source A), oppression or they may just have not of taken the policies seriously (as suggested in source D).

However I believe that it was a combination of many of these factors. When I place my theory into the context of the time in question (1938) you gain a better understanding of what I mean.

For example 1938 was a time when anti Semitism had escalated (this is displayed by the fact that the SS where now moving the Jews into concentration camps). It was also a time when the propaganda produced by the government had escalated to a whole new level with the completion of many race study reports the result of the previous 1-5 years of research by the (now corrupt) scientific community. As a direct result of this that the German people would have been submerged in a pool of Nazi ideals and on a daily basis where being indoctrinated by hitters two plus hour long radio broadcasts and countless poster campaigns. Therefore it is my opinion average German person would have thought that everyone believed in the Nazi ideals and would have avoided revealing there true feelings in public for fear of gaining the distrust of friend and neighbours and / or being arrested by the SA and SS who where at the time beating up most people who opposed Hitler. And so our theoretical German person would have kept themselves to themselves and will have opted to just go with the flow. This reflects in a proverb I once heard, it goes – “for evil to succeed all it takes is for good men to do nothing” this rings very true in the case of my theory. I of course can think of no way of proving this theory but I can explain why I came up with it in relation to the sources.

The reason I ended up with my theory is this. All the sources that suggested that there was little anti Semitism in Germany in the years around 1938 (B,C and F) I analysed and perceived them to be very useful, as such their arguments where regarded as very important. Also all the sources I perceived to be against source B and suggest that there was widespread feeling of anti-Semitism in Germany in the years around 1938 (D and E) where regarded by my self to be very subjective and or biased to such an extent that rendered them useless and as such there arguments went regarded as unimportant.

However though the statements of sources D and E where unimportant the fact that they exist suggest to me one thing, That though there is no evidence to support the wide spread hatred of the Jews the person who wrote these must have either hated or fully supported the Nazi regime of the time. This makes them the minority, also since in the end their statements can only account for themselves and no one else. This again supports my standard deviation curve and my theory that only the minority of people (represented by sources D and E) where either solid lovers (source D) or loathers (source E) of the Nazi anti Semitic policies. And that the vast majority of people (represented by sources B,C and F) where secretly sitting on the fence undecided on the values of a Nazi Germany.

Question 3:

Over the course of the last 57 years, since World War II ended the human rights of the Jews have changed dramatically, in more ways than one, and for more than one reason. In the following investigation I will try to analyse the multiple changes in the human rights positions of the Jews. I will also explain their causation, short and long term effects, the degree of change they caused (their importance) and how the causes may be linked. By doing this I hope to make a number of reasoned judgments. However do not expect this will be easy to achieve since the past is a very complex thing with many unseen factors at work.