Taking Responsibility for the Holocaust

Taking Responsibility for the Holocaust

The hatred of Jews dates back hundreds of years. Jews were slaughtered

in there thousands during the 16th Centaury, and were seen as a

general menace. So, there has always been some kind of anti-semitic

view in Europe, especially the central part. There was also a very

large hatred of Jews within the German Christian Church. The Christian

church saw Jews as the murderer of their saviour and as such, was not

fond of any Jewish people. The hatred between the two religions

contributed greatly to the hatred of Jews in general in Germany.

The main blame for the holocaust has come to fall, fairly obviously on

Adolph Hitler and his Generals including, Goring, Himmler and

Heydrich. Hitler is portrayed as having envisaged and planned the

Final Solution from when he came to power until he died in 1945.

Hitler's fervent anti-semistism played a huge part in the persecution

of Jews during World War II. The Jews were frequently referred to in

Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" and Hitler had made plain his

hated for them. References to the "filthy Jew" litter the book. In one

section, Hitler wrote about how the Jews planned to "contaminate" the

blood of pure Germans:

"The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end...spying on the

unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce...He wants to contaminate

her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew

hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the

Jews might dominate."

Hitler blamed the Jews for all the misfortunes that had befallen

Germany when he came to power. He believed that the loss of World War

I (w...

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...and as such was propelled by them. They however,

were not the only culprits. The deceitfulness and complete inhumanity

of the German people could rival the psychopathic-ness of the German

government. The willingness to turn a blind eye to something happening

at the end of your roads, or telling an SS officer about a Jew in your

road was just not acceptable. So from this, I can conclude, that

although the Government and leaders in German were mainly responsible

for the Holocaust, the German people themselves played a huge part in

helping them and turning a blind eye. As I said in my introduction,

the historical anti-semitism of the world, and Europe in particular

would have contributed to the Holocaust, but really it just added to

the German governments role, and would not have been a huge party in

the Holocaust itself.