During World War II, one of the greatest horrors of war was happening. The mass genocide of not only the Jewish people but also Russian prisoners of war, Gypsies, Polish and Ukrainian people (Wistrich, 2003, Pg. 3-4, a). The horror also included the German people themselves. Ones that were handicapped, mentally ill, homosexuals, some religious people, members of labor unions, and political rivals where all part of the Holocaust (Berenbaum, 2011, a). On March twentieth nineteen hundred and thirty-three Hitler opened up the first concentration camp near Dachau Germany (Landau, 1998, Pg. 136, a). From there the German government began sending people to concentration camps to work and to die. Whom they sent, why they sent them, and what happened there is what will be looked at so we know what the Holocaust was about. The answer we are looking for is what the people of Germany knew about what was going on during the Holocaust and more was not done to stop it.
First, we will look at the German government that was behind the Holocaust. On the thirtieth of January nineteen hundred and thirty-three Adolf Hitler was named the German Chancellor (Henig, 1985, Pg. 3, a). Hitler controlled the government and the people in the government did as he wished. Hitler believed in the purity of the Aryan race and though of other as inferior especially the Jewish people (Henig, 1985, Pg. 12, b). Hitler wanted to protect his people from all that he considers impure, he forbid marriage and sexual relationships with Jewish people, he also said the only those of Aryan blood could be a German citizens with full rights (Henig, 1985, Pg. 14, c). Even before Hitler became the leader of Germany, he was spouting his hatred for the Jewish people ...
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After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death.
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.
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Some questions people wondered were if the Holocaust was intentional by Adolph Hitler. Intentionalism is when you do something purposely, or when wanting to harm something or someone; it is intentional. “Moreover, some functionalist theories tend to normalize Nazism by suggesting that its leaders stumbled into the most extreme criminal behavior” (Wistich 223). Some believe that the holocaust was not simply the result of directives from Berlin but of an interaction between the center and an increasingly radicalized periphery. “The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933” (Concentration Camps). A chancellor is a prime minister of state in certain governments, as in Germany. Some concentration camps were in the process of being built and some were already built before WWII started. During the war, the number of camps rapidly increased in Germany. “Conrad Gröber, archbishop of Fribourg, informed the people on the 14th of June, 1932 about the massacres of Jews being perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppenin, Russia” (Wistich 130).
To begin with, Racism had a big effect in the genocide and murders in Germany. According A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust, it states that “ It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions.” (“ Victims” ). It is so devastating that someone could kill or torture anyone who was not like them or who fought against them. The Jews were required to carry their identification cards. They were also excluded from businesses, parks, resorts, and forests. German children were taught that the Jews and Gypsies were not as good as the Germans. One of the methods used to teach German children was to make the Jewish children stand up and point out their distinguishing features. Later on the Jewish children were banned from schools and had curfews. John Boyne Quotes from his book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” In his speeches and writings Hitler spread his believes in racial “purity” and in the superiority of their Germanic race. What he called an “Aryan master race”. These believes became the governments ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters on the radios,m...
The holocaust is the saddest thing I have ever heard about. With the Nazi's and other Germans blaming everything on the Jews to mass murders of the Jews and others. The Germans killed more than one million people altogether. The German leader was Adolf Hitler. So once everyone started to realize what was going on, they said, "hey jail time."
"History1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/tp/holocaust.htm - Similar Sites and Reviews | Xmarks." Xmarks | Bookmark Sync and Search. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. .
Over the span of the Holocaust over 6 million Jewish people were senselessly tortured and killed. The man in charge of this horrible act is no stranger to history, Adolf Hitler. There is only one logical explanation in my opinion for the way Hitler acted. Paranoia. You can clearly see that as soon as he felt that he was being threatened by someone or some group, he just took them out, like the Jews, the Gypsies, the swing kids, and many more. Hitler was scared or paranoid of having his power taken from him so he did what he thought was the best decision that he could do to protect what little power he did have at the time, which was genocide.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. Germany was defeated in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles forced giant reparations upon the country. As a result of these reparations, Germany suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party who blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. His incredible public speaking skills, widespread propaganda, and the need to blame someone for Germany’s loss led to Hitler’s great popularity among the German people and the spread of anti-Semitism like wildfire. Hitler initially had a plan to force the Jews out of Germany, but this attempt quickly turned into the biggest genocide in history. The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933.“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” –Adolf Hitler
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