The Holocaust
During the period of 1941 to 1945 mankind was faced with the greatest and most terrible crime in history, the Holocaust. It is believed that about six million Jews died under the Nazi rule and even if this number is just an exaggeration, half of it is still enormous. One could not identify the reasons of the Holocaust and be certain. Historians are on debate up to now as to whether the facts are true or arguable. Some even dispute that it was only that Germany was torn by war and the Jews in the camps died from starvation and disease because the Germans could not even feed themselves. However, only one of those peoples is faced with such a loss. On the issue of the Holocaust the biggest question is not whether it happened or not, but how it could be possible. What could have caused the genocide of so many human beings? Did all these people embrace the same theories or would someone exercise brutality in such an extent just because he was ordered to do so? In the following paragraphs I will identify the reasons for which I believe the Holocaust happened.
The Holocaust happened because Hitler could.
Hitler was a charismatic leader who was able to manipulate his people and persuade them to embrace his insane theories. He shaped the German society into a military monument of his own image. Germans were transformed into a chauvinistic, worshipful, enthusiastic and bound to do his will nation. The common beliefs was one of Hitler's actions for homogeneity of the society.
Hitler's anti-Semitism.
Adolph Hitler's excessive and obsessive hatred of the Jews and also his plans are quite clear in the following paragraph:
"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that some time now they have been laughing on the other side ...
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"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their faces. Today, I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nation's once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevising of the earth, and thus victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."
The Holocaust may have been a revenge, or even a demonstration of power from Hitler to the Jewish race who "dared ridicule him". At the time Hitler came to power, anti-Semitism was very popular in Europe. It was not embraced by everybody but its followers were enough to give Hitler audience to his claims. Up to then, anti-Semitism was based on religious conflicts and hatred for the Jews because the Christians were accusing them for the execution of Jesus. However, even though Hitler was himself very religious the Nazi were opposed to traditional religions. Hitler combined this philosophy with the myth of the Aryans and transformed the existing anti-Semitism in to a tailor-made doctrine for Germany. According to Hitler's philosophies the German people -Aryans- were the superior race and paramount of civilisation, as the Jewish people were the parasites of the earth and the Slavs were the good servants of the Aryans. In order for the Aryans to remain, they had to eliminate the parasites because if they did not, it would cause them to extinct. These theories became an obsession to Hitler and the rest of the National Socialistic leadership and Hitler shared them vigorously with the German people.
Hitler was eliminating minorities of all kinds
He started off by killing handicapped, seriously ill, retarded persons and homosexuals by euthanasia. Germany, with the exception of Jews and Gypsies who were insignificant minorities, was a mainly homogenous population. In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated his principle that if Germany were to be powerful it must be united on the attitude of racial clarity. Hitler wanted to make Germany an homogenous, strong and healthy nation.
Hitler believed that it was the Jews that caused Germany to lose World War One
According to Hitler the country was back-stabbed by their conspiracies. Germany was in a second war fighting for its very own survival. Jews worldwide had opposed and the Germans were being killed. Hitler's expanding ambitions were being sabotaged by the Jews. The Jews, as whole, were not in harmonisation with the German society and Hitler would not show any compassion for those in opposition. It was a "kill or die" situation for the German people, because Jews could conspire again.
The Holocaust has happened for scientific reasons
Even though this may seem brutal and macabre, it is true that most of the Jews have been subjects to experiments of all kinds. Hitler wanted to improve genetically the German people. It is said that big pharmaceutical companies, such as Bayer, have supported and even funded the Auschwitz experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele, "The Angel of Death", but there is no evidence and the companies refuse any relation.
Since Hitler came to power he was planning to remove the Jews from Germany. The Nazi's have made many attempts to persuade them to immigrate but with unsuccessful results. In 1938 and 1939, Nazi Germany was relying on forced immigration. They tried to use The "Madagascar Plan", a creation of a Jewish colony in Madagascar, which would function under the leadership of an SS governor. However, the Nazis had been expecting a fast ending to the war so that they could move European Jews to Madagascar. But as the duration of the Battle of Britain was longer than expected, and with Hitler's decision in the fall of 1940 to enter by force in the Soviet Union, the "Madagascar Plan" became unachievable. SS agencies came up with the "Final Solution" in the "Jewish problem" in early 1942. After many failed efforts to force Jews to emigrate from Germany and the closure of possible destinations by the rest of the world joint with the economical problems of such a massive exile "forced" the "Final Solution" into life. The details of the "Final Solution" were worked out at the Wannsee Conference. All Jews in Germany and the occupied countries were deported to preserved ghettos as a holding area. Many were then shipped in cattle vehicles to labour camps where they lived under viciously inhuman conditions. Hundreds of thousands were sent straight to the gas chambers in death camps.
This is the only time in history that a state tried to destroy an entire people. The motivations were extremely racial and with little economic gain, if any. Jews were shot, gassed and beaten to death regardless their age or gender. The Holocaust is incomprehensible to any sound human being and comes to challenge the meaning of the word "norm". Concluding this essay, there are no words to describe my feelings about the Jewish people and the crime, which was committed towards them. Most of the readings on the issue caused me to feel pain, sadness and compassion. The question, which will remain unanswered in my heart forever, is: "Why all this brutality?" I hope that the Nazi's did not get in touch with a side of themselves that everyone has and I pray to God that history eventually does not repeat itself.
Bibliography
* Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, Germany 1933- 1945, Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1991
* Jonathan Steinberg, The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943, Routledge, 1990.
* James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, Indiana University Press, 1990.
* W.D Rubinstein, The Left, the Right and the Jews, Croom Helm Ltd, 1982.
* Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, Michael Joseph, 1994.
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