With whom does responsibility for the Holocaust ultimately lie?

Authors Avatar

With whom does responsibility for the Holocaust ultimately lie?

     The Holocaust was a shameful display of the exploitation of power to cause great pain and suffering to many. An operation of that magnitude could not have been controlled and implemented by one individual. There are many parties which were involved with Germany and need to be considered when determining where ultimate responsibility lies.

     Hitler did as early as 1935 make his feelings about the Jewish race clear by making his anti-Semitism public policy in the Nuremburg Race laws. But aside from in “Mein Kampf”, Hitler made little indication until the last minute that he had given approval for the extermination program, ( even Mein Kampf is not that reliable, because it was written by a young man imprisoned for his beliefs, and he was bound to exaggerate to get his message across and to raise sales profits ). He seems to have kept out of the actual planning and implementation of the killing process, leaving that in the more than capable hands of the Nazi officials, including Himmler, Frank and Heydrich. Many of the ideas such as Ghettos and mass transportation were left under their control, for them to act on their own innitiative. Although he was seen by the public as heavily involved with politics and decision making for Germany, it has since been revealed that Hitler spent a large part of his day relaxing at home, and was often happy to sign papers after only a brief glance. After the virulence shown in “Operation Barbarossa” towards the Russian Jews, Hitler in speeches tried to convince the public that a good solution had been found to ‘the jewish problem’ and should be continued throughout the rest of Europe, hiding the intensity of the mass genocide going on in the country next door to them. He also reffered to the transits as ‘resettlements’ for “appropriate labour duties”, which made the program seem more civilised.

Join now!

     Amongst the Nazi leaders,  talk was rarely directly about the actual business of the “final solution” agenda, reffering as Hitler did to program as of “legalised removal” and “resettlement”. But it was reported at the trial of Eichmann in 1960 that within private meetings the “talk was of killing, elimination and liquidation”. Obviously the top officials like Himmler and Heydrich didn’t want to give the public the impression that they were intently malicious, but it is clear that they did not have reservations about ordering the police, Wehrmacht and S.S. to carry out there instructions. Himmler was able to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay