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Totalitarianism in germany essay
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Essay on the Holocaust 1933 to 1945
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The first author to broadly assess the European pillaging in Africa to totalitarianism and genocide predates Horst Drechsler. Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism becomes an essential starting ground for scholars in connecting the Third Reich to German colonialism. Because Arendt's conclusions are general to European aggression and not strictly German, she is placed in the second rounds of debates, as scholars draw from her ideas and apply it directly to the linkage between Germany’s Herero and Jewish Holocaust. Arendt’s book did not gain much ground until the 2000’s, due in part to the popularity of the Holocaust in literature. The ‘uniqueness’ of the Holocaust dominated the field, and many did not want to acknowledge
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.
When the blame for the Holocaust is brought to mind, many immediately think to blame the Nazis, and only the Nazis. This is not the case, however. The Holocaust was a lesson to humanity, of utmost importance. Only blaming the Nazis for the atrocities is excluding an exceptionally important part of this lesson, which is unacceptable. In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, it is evident that blame be passed to Yahweh, the Jewish people themselves, and the non Jewish Europeans.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
Rubinstein, William D. The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz. The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis. London: Routledge, 1997. 157-81. Print.
According to Hannah Arendt, “The Declaration of the Rights of Man at the end of the eighteenth century was a turning point in history”. (Arendt, 290). She begins her thesis by making this affirmation. However, throughout her essay, she further develops the idea that this “Declaration of the Rights of Man” has been questioned ever since then, because of the fact that these human rights don’t really appear to be implemented over a numerous amount of human beings. This “turning point” which Arendt refers to, indicates that when human rights were first conceived, they stated that only the nation worked as the law, and neither the divine law nor anything else had power over them. This was the moment when control over these rights was lost, since there is a deficiency in the precision of who really has the rule of law over them, if not even the human authorities have been able to manage the “universality” they are supposed to express. Hannah Arendt’s explanation on the human rights article called “The
...he So-Called Mischlinge.” The Holocaust and History. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 155-133.
...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.
Bergen, Doris L. The Holocaust: A Concise History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Print.
During the Holocaust era, a third of all Jewish people alive at the time were murdered by the Germans. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the systematic killing of the Jewish people was happening all around him. Although Wiesel does not use the word “genocide,” his account of his experience shows that it was definitely genocide that he witnessed.
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
At the common read lecture we learned briefly about three different genocides that took place around the world. The first genocide that we learned about, and most popularly known was the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. In the early 30’s, approximately 1934, Adolf Hitler had control of the Nazi party. During his reign he encouraged prejudice against Jews and other people that he considered undesirables such as gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill people, as well as the physically disabled and those who were not of the "Aryan" race. Shortly after the beginning of Hitler’s reign of power, he would not allow Jewish children to go to schools with the other German children. The Nazi army would force Jewish owned businesses to close, and they would burn vandalize and even burn Jewish templ...
MODERN HISTORY – RESEARCH ESSAY “To what extent was Nazi Germany a Totalitarian state in the period from 1934 to 1939?” The extent to which Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state can be classed as a substantial amount. With Hitler as Fuhrer and his ministers in control of most aspects of German social, political, legal, economical, and cultural life during the years 1934 to 1939, they mastered complete control and dictation upon Germany. In modern history, there have been some governments, which have successfully, and others unsuccessfully carried out a totalitarian state. A totalitarian state is one in which a single ideology is existent and addresses all aspects of life and outlines means to attain the final goal, government is run by a single mass party through which the people are mobilized to muster energy and support.