Following the roughly three hundred year long witch craze spanning from the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the concept of witch-hunting transformed from the literal extermination of witches (devil worshippers) into having a new meaning that arose from events experienced throughout the twentieth century. This meaning encompasses acts of accusation, mass hysteria and even extermination of a particular group of people who are presumed to pose a threat against the accuser(s) or a particular group of people. Additionally, many instances of modern witch-hunts escalated from accusations into complete genocide often due to political reformation, utopian ideals and ethnic cleansing, such as in the widely known case of the Holocaust in the early nineteen forties. The Nazi regime pursued the extermination of the Jewish people, gypsies, ‘inferior’ races and those deemed as ‘defective’. The causes of Nazi Germany’s witch hunt arguably stemmed from a deep seeded desire for racial superiority and cleansing, political gain, as well as scapegoating.
To begin, prior to the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was not new to modern Germany. This anti-Semitism drew part of its strength from Christian anti-Semitism combined with German nationalism, which resulted from German defeat during the Napoleonic wars (Dawidowicz 1975, 23-24). Essentially, following this defeat, Germany had lost its economic vitality, military power, land, political definition and sense of self, which fuelled a desire in the German people to seek identity, pride, culture in old ideas. In being of a conservative and Christian nature, Germany was opposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment period and the type of political and social ideas that spread across Europe following France’s succ...
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...ions for a witch-hunt.
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Anti- Semitism exist not only because of the Jewish people but because of the other people and religions that seen the Jewish people as threat to society. Hitler and the Nazi party would not have been successful in the final solution and other persecution of the Jews if the German people did not already have a history of Anti-Semitism and embraced it’s prejudice.
The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre happenings of the witch hunts and the causes that contributed to them. To understand the trials and how they came to be, we must first examine the ideals and views of the people surrounding the events. Although religious beliefs were the most influential factor, socioeconomic tensions, and ergot poisoning are also strongly supported theories. A combination of motives seems the most rational explanation of the frenzy that followed the illness of the two girls. This paper looks closely at the some of the possible causes of one of the most notable occurrences in history.
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...he human depravity one can imagine. Even though Genocide did not begin with the Holocaust, Germany and Adolf Hitlers’ heartless desire for “Aryanization” came at the high cost of human violence, suffering and humiliation towards the Jewish race. These warning signs during the Holocaust, such as Anti-Semitism, Hitler Youth, Racial profiling, the Ghettos, Lodz, Crystal Night, Pogroms, and Deportation unraveled too late for the world to figure out what was going on and help prevent the horrors that came to pass. The lessons learned from all of this provide a better understanding of all the scars genocide leaves behind past and present. In spite the ongoing research in all of these areas today, we continue to learn new details and accounts. By exploring the various warning signs that pointed toward genocide, valuable knowledge was gained on how not to let it happen again.
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Hester‘s ideas in “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting” takes the feminist attitude and relies on the theory of Misogyny to explain what the possible reasons behind the witch-hunts were. Hester argues quite simply that one aspect is that witch-hunts were a way of social control of women and a way of reaffirming the authority of a patriarchal society; a way of restoring and keeping the male status quo in the changing social order (Hester). Hester’s theory at least in part is true; generally speaking the accusation of ‘witch’ was brought against women far more often than those against men. In the Holy Roman Empire they accused around 24,000 people of being witches, 76 percent of those were women. Germany and Hungary also had a large amount of accused with the majority being women, above 80 percent.
First we need to clarify what is Anti-Semitism, a term that references the prejudice or hostility against the Jews. Known as the persecution of Jews, Anti-Semitism did not only happen in Germany, it had long been part of the history and tradition of other countries including the United States. However, the level of persecution in Germany changed dramatically after Hitler came to power in 1933.
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