During the World War II, Germany was in the middle of the conflict as the state that unleashed it. Many countries were involved in this war, from North Sea to the Black Sea and Nazi Germany conquered and enslaved different countries. Ideology of NSDAP was prevailing and the fascism was spreading throughout the Europe, bringing chaos, destruction and fear among Europeans. However, when some people feared German power and conquer of their state as a result, others were seriously worried about their life. People of second category were mainly Jews, whom Hitler chose as main target for his victimizations. Annihilation of the Jews was so crucial, because Germany was both in economic and social depression after the First World War and Semites played the main role of scapegoats, as every ideology needs an enemy and eagerly fights with it. For Communism it was Capitalism, while Nazi regime chose Jewish people. To refute the popular belief, that is was, substantially, government, who persecuted and annihilated Jewish population, it must be mentioned that the issue of killing Jews was not only about Hitler, but about the majority of German population at that time. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen claims, that murderers were not only SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men (and women) who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. And they did so, moreover, not because they were coerced, not because of any tremendous social, psychological, or peer pressure to conform to the behavior of their comrades. They acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent anti-Semitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only neces... ... middle of paper ... ...est is that biggest part of Jews was concentrated in Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary and Romania, preserving their national character and identity. Those Jews who inhabited Western Europe, on the other hand, made up much less from the overall population and usually tended to adopt the culture and traditions of their non-Jewish neighbors. Throughout the whole Europe, Jews could be found everywhere, no matter whether in business or everyday life. No matter of their difference, the period since 1930 was very harsh and changed the lives of whole Jewish population in Europe, without exception or West, even though repressions there were a little bit milder. Holocaust is a tragedy for the whole world. It was such after the WWII, it is such now and it will be exactly such in the future, as it is one of the most horrible and terrifying event throughout the history of mankind.
It is often said that nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and the Nazi’s knew this. The Jew and the communist would become this collective punching bag. The Nazi’s were convinced of an international conspiracy to “exterminate— that is, to kill— all the German people.” The Jews were
During the Holocaust, around six million Jews were murdered due to Hitler’s plan to rid Germany of “heterogeneous people” in Germany, as stated in the novel, Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche. Shortly following a period of suffering, Hitler began leading Germany in 1930 to start the period of his rule, the Third Reich. Over time, his power and support from the country increased until he had full control over his people. Starting from saying “Heil Hitler!” the people of the German empire were cleverly forced into following Hitler through terror and threat. He had a group of leaders, the SS, who were Nazis that willingly took any task given, including the mass murder of millions of Jews due to his belief that they were enemies to Germany. German citizens were talked into participating or believing in the most extreme of things, like violent pogroms, deportations, attacks, and executions. Through the novel’s perspicacity of the Third Reich, readers can see how Hitler’s reign was a controversial time period summed up by courage, extremity, and most important of all, loyalty.
capable of killing tens of thousands of Jews in a few days and the gas
After The Great depression and World War I, Germany was left in a fragile state. The economy was ruined, many people were unemployed and all hope was lost. The Nazis believed it wasn’t their own fault for the mess, but those who were inferior to the German people. These Nazi beliefs lead to and resulted in cruelty and suffering for the Jewish people. The Nazis wanted to purify Germany and put an end to all the inferior races, including Jews because they considered them a race. They set up concentration camps, where Jews and other inferior races were put into hard labor and murdered. They did this because Nazis believed that they were the only ones that belonged in Germany because they were pure Germans. This is the beginning of World War 2. The Nazi beliefs that led to and resulted in the cruelty and suffering of the Jewish people
a room with 7 other people; so 21 people might live in a three bed
Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent anti-Semitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only necessary but also just.”1 The author proposes to show that the phenomenon of German anti-Semitism was already deep-rooted and pervasive in German society before Hitler came to power, and that there was a widely shared view that the Jews ought to be eliminated in some way from German society. When Hitler chose mass extermination as the only final solution, he was easily able to enlist vast numbers of Germans to carry it out.
Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis. Both the German economy and the Nuremberg Laws stimulated the Holocaust; nevertheless, a majority of the Nazis’ and Hitler’s actions towards Jews were because of the victims’ ethnicity.
Did the Jews of Germany do enough to prevent their wholesale massacre by the Nazis? Should they have resisted earlier and to a greater degree? Should the Jews in Western countries acted even when Jews within Germany did not? In 1933, there were several different responses to Germany's increasingly anti-Jewish tendencies. Then, on the eve of destruction, before the Nazis had fully planned for their extermination, the German Jews had a chance to affect Germany and their own lives. I have chosen a few of the German Jewish responses to examine in this essay.
I discovered that I had no immediate answer to this facetious dismissal of one of history's most profound tragedies. It was a sweeping and indiscriminate assertion, to be sure, but not one entirely without merit. If general stupidity were not to blame, then why had six million Jews endured such torture? Were none of them in a position to unite in any sort of cohesive resistance? What of the Catholics who were murdered in the concentration camps as well? The blacks? Political dissidents? Members of the press? In fact it seems that the Nazis, over the course of their reign, discriminated against so many professions, creeds, philosophies, and classes that for a person not to belong to at least one must have been a remarkable feat of chance. I could not begin to understand how the National Socialist Party had, with such a miserable and offensive political platform, managed to gain power in Germany, nor how, with such cruel and oppressive practices, they managed to keep it.
The holocaust was a catastrophic event that killed millions of innocent people and showed the world how inhuman mankind can be. This dark period in world history demonstrated unmatched violence and cruelty towards the Jewish race that led toward genocide. Genocide did not begin with the Holocaust; nor was it a spontaneous event. Many warning signs within world events helped provide Germany and Adolf Hitler the foundation to carry out increasing levels of human depravity (Mission Statement). These warning signs during the Holocaust include; Anti-Semitism, Hitler Youth, Racial profiling, the Ghettos, Lodz, Crystal Night, Pogroms, and Deportation. However, their exposure comes too late for the world to help prevent the horrors of the Holocaust. For example, Anti-Semitism was never put into reality until the holocaust overcame the attitudes of its’ German Citizens. It also provided the driving force behind the education of the Hitler youth. Hitler’s persuasive characteristics consumed the people into believing all of his beliefs. This is how racial profiling came about; Hitler made it so that the Germans had the mindset that Jews were horrible, filthy, people that did not deserve to live like the Germans or have the same luxuries. As a result, they moved all the Jews into one secluded area away from the German citizens; an area called the Ghettos. One of these Ghettos was the town of Lodz, who kept meticulous historical records of everything that went on in the city. However, it was not a safe for Jews; never feeling at ease not knowing the uncertainties or dangers lying ahead. For instance, in Crystal Night, they did not know that it would be the last night for some of them to be with their families. In general, Jews were just living...
The holocaust was the mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II. The hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group is known as antisemitism. Antisemitism was a centuries old phenomenon. Jews in Europe had always been a minority. In some countries , Jews could not own land, attend school, or practice certain professions. The Holocaust, which was between 1933 and 1945, is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. A German journalist that was named Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism in 1879. Which symbolized the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of a variety of advanced, catholic, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that were often joined with Jews. The tendency under attack included equal civil rights, required equality, free trade, ownership, account free enterprise, and self control from violence. Between the most casual definition of antisemitism all through history were pogroms. Pogroms were violent riots that were begun against Jews and many times supported by government authorities. Pogroms were often encouraged by blood libels, which were false rumors that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes. In the modern era, antisemites added a political quality to their ideas of hatred. In the last third of the nineteenth century, antisemitic political groups were formed in France, Germany and Austria. Advertisements such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion developed or provided support for fake theories of a global Jewish plot. A convincing part of political antisemitism was nationalism, whose supporters often falsely accused Jews as disloyal citizens. The Nazi party, which was established in 19...
To begin with the holocaust had a great impact in history even though it was a time of disaster, murder, and discrimination. It was a time in which Adolf Hitler,German politician and Nazi party leader, wanted all Jews suffering or dead. Adolf Hitler turned everyone against the Jews because he believed that they were to wealthy and too powerful so he wanted to eliminate all of them. The Jews went through a lot of suffering and pain. The German soldiers which took commands from their leader, Adolf Hitler, put some Jews to work and killed others. Many Jews didn't get to work they were killed instantly. All women were separated from the man and woman were mostly killed instantly only some got the opportunity to work. The some ways that the jews were killed is that they were put into gas chambers by tons or shot by soldiers. Jews were also dying by starvation dehydration soldiers would not give them enough food or water. They would only want those with blue eyes and blonde hair they discriminated all the others. Soldiers would not only kill the Jews but torture them for anything they did. The Jews would be transported from camp to camp walking even in the worst weather conditions which also many died from it.
In 1933, Europe was going through a major change and not just the countries as a whole, but the minorities such as the Jews as well. In Germany Adolf Hitler, who was the leader of the National Socialist Workers Society (also known as the Nazi Party), was elected chancellor on January 30, 1933. On July 14, 1933, only 7 months after Hitler’s election, the Nazi Party became the only legal political party in Germany. Any known rebels would later be severely punished. Hitler was a very persuasive speaker, which made it easy for him to blame the Jews for many things. He began by blaming Jews for the economy crash that had happened in Europe at the time. Jews were fine on their financial ends and striving in business. Also at the time The Black Death was occurring. Many Europeans were dying for unexplained reasons whereas the Jews seemed to be healthier. These two factors made it very easy for Hitler to convince the German people that Jews were the center of their problems. He later moved on to other minorities as well claiming that the only good race was the Aryan race. Hitler even published a newspaper called the Der Strümer in which he would publish cartoons making funny of Jews and print at the bottom “Jews are our misfortune”. Things were changing in Germany under Hitler’s rule and not in a good way.
The Holocaust was the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis through an officially sanctioned, government-ordered, systematic plan of mass annihilation. As many as six million Jews died, almost two-thirds of the Jews of Europe. Although the Holocaust took place during World War II, the war was not the cause of the Holocaust. The war played a role in covering up the genocide of the Jewish people. How could this have happened? The answers can be found by understanding how violence of this magnitude can evolve out of prejudice based on ignorance, fear, and misunderstanding about minority groups and other
Gunshots fired, glass shattered, blood everywhere, cattle cars, concentration camps, gas chambers, deaths. What happened to the Jews of Hungary at Auschwitz? In the 1940s Hungary put anti-Jewish laws into place. These laws required Jews to be separate from other people. They went as far as not allowing Jews to go to the same school with other people and not letting Jews get married to other people. As of 1941 the Jewish population in Hungary was 825,000. Germany wanted Hungary to deport Hungarian Jews however Hungary refused due to political reasons. By 1944 German forces occupied Hungary. In May 1944 the Nazi’s were rounding up the Hungarian Jews to put them on trains and deport them to concentration camps. The Jewish population in Hungary decreased to 255,000 in 1944. In 1942 Auschwitz became the largest site for the murder of Jews and more than 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives here-most were Jews. Adolf Eichmann was the one who was in charge of the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Between May 14 and July 9, approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.