Hitler was not the only leader-like figure who could be to blame for the Holocaust. His Generals played a very large role in initiating and controlling the slaughter of millions of Jews. Himmler, Heydrich and the SS all played a very large role in the overseeing of the Holocaust. As head of the SS, he had ultimate responsibility of internal security in Nazi Germany and was associated with helping to organise the Final Solution though Heydrich had a major input into the organisation of the Holocaust. He was very keen on the creation of a master race and racial purity. The more power he got after 1933, the more Himmler saw the opportunity to fulfil this belief. It was Himmler who supported the idea of unmarried women partnering SS men at Lebensborns - he saw nothing wrong with single women having children as long as both mother and father were racially pure. In October 1939 he told the SS that women, single or married, should, out of patriotic duty, get themselves pregnant by soldiers who were about to go to war. The idea of racial purity and racial excellence came to dominate Himmler's mind - as did hunting out traitors in Germany. This shows us that it was not only Hitler who was interested in the idea of complete racial purity, but Himmler as well.
As I have said before, Heydrich had a major input into the organisation of the Holocaust. Heydrich was in charge of the Political Police. He was also the mastermind behind the organisation that led to the Holocaust. It was Heydrich who chaired and lead the meeting at Wannsee where the decision was taken to eradicate the Jews from Europe. He was a devoted Nazi who pursued his anti-Semitism with zeal. He was often expected to be Hitler’s replacement after Hitler died.
Heydrich and Himmler played a very important part in developing the ideas for the Holocaust and also, using their leadership of the Political police and the SS respectively, their jobs were always very close to the actual killing of Jews, mainly in Germany itself. The SS was also responsible for the brutality in the death camps and in Russia during Operation Barbarossa. These were two men who were deeply involved in the conceiving and execution of the Holocaust.
It was not only Hitler and his other psychopathic companions who contributed to the Holocaust, but ordinary people as well. In a way, the way the ordinary people of Germany and the occupied countries contributed to the Holocaust was even more disturbing that the contribution of Hitler and his Generals. This type of people in Germany saw the savagery of the concentrations and death camps and did nothing to stop them. The same happened in the Axis occupied countries. When Germany invaded France, they demanded for 10 000 Jews to be taken to the concentration camps in Poland, the French government actually gave them 100 000. This wanting to protect them was taken out on the Jews.
In Germany itself after the war, it was very convenient for ordinary people to blame Hitler, who was by then dead, for everything that had happened to the Jews during the war. Many people simply said that they had known what had been going on. But for many, the reality is that they were just too scared to do anything or help the Jews. Historians are still divided over whether the Germans supported these Nazi actions or whether fear made them turn a blind eye. In the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, an anonymous German wrote to the British Consul in Cologne stating that "The German people have nothing whatsoever to do with these riots and burnings." Christopher Isherwood, a British writer living in Germany, witnessed the arrest of a Jew in a cafe by the SA where everybody simply looked away - but to create a scene would have provoked a violent response from those doing the arresting. The fear of the concentration camps was such that most felt compelled to remain silent despite the fact that they did not approve of what was going on. There is obviously both a for and against side to the case towards the Germans. Many Germans declared that they had not voted Hitler into power in 1933 because of his anti-semitic views but for his economic considerations and other policies. Many Germans may well have believed that in 1941, Jews were just being resettled to another area, and not being gassed to death in Auschwitz and Treblinka. However, for many German people, the death and concentration camps were on their doorstep, literally 50 metres away from their front doors, and they chose to ignore it. There were some Germans who had been anti-semitic before 1933, and this small but important group would have been part of Nazi or other right-wing parties already and supported the ideals proposed by the Nazi’s when they came to power. There would have been ordinary Germans working on the railways and as civil servants who would have had to know about the large movements of Jews, but chose to ignore it. We can see from all of this evidence that German people themselves would have known largely about the slaughter of millions of Jews and as such contributed hugely, in their own way towards the complete annihilation of the Jews and the completion of the ‘Final Solution’.
However, there were many other areas of the world that contributed in smaller but still very meaningful ways towards the Holocaust. Some Historians believe that the Jews themselves collaborated towards their own destruction. Many Jews have been blamed with confiding in Nazi officials to keep save and given out names of other Jews in the area. These “snitches” would have been loathed in the Jewish communities. The Jews passivity also contributed to their slaughter. If they had fought back against the SS and Police, then maybe their number would not have been disintegrated quite so much. However, this would not have contributed many Jews to the ghettos and as such did not play a very major role in the Holocaust.
The final group who have been labelled with the blame for the Holocaust are the British and the Americans. The restrictive immigration policies of these countries made it very hard for the Jews trying to flee from Germany to go anywhere safe. Some Historians believe that both Churchill and Roosevelt could have done a lot more to help the Jews get out of Germany safely and give them support. We are again facing this problem at present with the division over the acceptance of asylum seekers into this country. At that time Britain and America could have accepted a lot more Jews but chose not to. Again, although this contributed to a small percentage of the deaths it is not really a big enough number to think of it as a major effect.
All of these events were very significant in the disastrous massacre that was the Holocaust, but some more than others. Through all of this evidence, I believe that blame for the Holocaust ultimately lies in the German leadership and government system. The Holocaust was initiated by them and as such was propelled by them. They however, were not the only culprits. The deceitfulness and complete inhumanity of the German people could rival the psychopathic-ness of the German government. The willingness to turn a blind eye to something happening at the end of your roads, or telling an SS officer about a Jew in your road was just not acceptable. So from this, I can conclude, that although the Government and leaders in German were mainly responsible for the Holocaust, the German people themselves played a huge part in helping them and turning a blind eye. As I said in my introduction, the historical anti-semitism of the world, and Europe in particular would have contributed to the Holocaust, but really it just added to the German governments role, and would not have been a huge party in the Holocaust itself.
