Was the Holocaust an nevitable Result of National Socialist Anti-Semitism - Term Paper Example

Degree the Holocaust was inevitable result of National Socialist anti-Semitism The horrific actions of the Third Reich are well documented. The end result of the Nazi’s evil ideologies included the occupation of most European nations and the ‘final solution,’ the annihilation of over six million Jews. Throughout history, many nations have conquered others for various reasons while oppressing its people but why was a particular race of people systematically killed? How could such a fervent hatred of Jews infect an entire national conscience causing such unconscionable acts to be perpetrated? In spite of popular opinion, it didn’t happen because the people of Germany fell into a hypnotic trance and all of a sudden felt compelled to murder innocents simply from hearing Hitler’s speeches (Dawidowicz, 1986: 3). Hitler and the Third Reich rose to power based largely on their successful campaign to evoke feelings of nationality within the German population. The ideas intended to unify a nation advanced by Volkist philosophies evolved for over a century into a national impression of superiority. The Third Reich did not expose the German people to beliefs to which they were not originally pre-disposed. The regime had to be supported by the German people for it to have experienced the heights of popularity that it achieved during the 1930’s and this support came from a nationalistic narcissism. Nazi ideology was not an overnight event; it had evolved for over a century with a beginning in nationalistic beliefs. The people of any country, even when from different ethnic backgrounds, often feel a strong bond to each other. These nationalistic feelings are in regard to the country and its symbols. The cultures and traditions are regarded as belonging to all of the people. During the 1800’s, Germany’s concept of nationalism (the Volk) was bigger than just the people or the nation. What Volkish, nationalistic thinking and the Nazi movement both shared was a sense of cultural superiority along with intolerance for people or cultures within their borders that did not fit their cultural ideal. This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. In speeches, they appealed to the betterment and welfare of the nation seeking to bring back Volkish culture. During the early 1800’s Germans began thinking of themselves as more than just a disassembled collection of Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons and the like living within the same borders. The idea of Volk became not simply the people of a country, but a unifying spiritual force of a people’s traditions and customs. Literature, music, art, folklore, and religion are all manifestations of the spirit of the people, or the volkgeist. This draw to unify inspired a considerable interest in the German people’s common culture, myths, legends and folksongs. “This idea found many adherents, reacting to both the Napoleonic conquest of Germany from 1806 to 1811 and the rationalism and scientific advances of the English and the French later in the century” (Iggers 1988). Though still not politically united, Germans were learning to take pride in their cultural accomplishments. There was, unfortunately, a dark aspect to unification. The tendency for cultural nationalism produced cultural superiority and intolerance, which, when combined with racism, was a powerful political force of nineteenth-century Europe. Volkish writers, in-step with the people of the mid to late 1800’s Germany, were becoming increasingly intolerant of cultures other than their own. In the mid-1800’s, the term ‘semitic’ became widely adopted by as a result of German philologist Wilhelm Marr’s foundation of the Anti-Semitic League. In 1879, he determined the Hebrew language was ‘semitic’ and not Indo-European (Wegner, 2002: 2) “The mysticalized, Volkish linguistic foundation for the Aryan myth was a popular concept in the mid-1800s that both Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, among others, had argued vociferously for, to overflowing university classrooms and in their voluminous writings” (Wegner, 2002: 8-9). This linguistic difference provided a means for those of Volkish thought to further identify themselves as different from and superior to anyone of Jewish descent well before the Nazis came to power. As the industrial age swept across Europe in the late-1800’s it brought society new opportunities but also inadvertently served to increase the individual’s feeling of remoteness and a loss of personal belonging (Mosse, 1964: 13). Throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s, Germans, as most all other cultures and countries did, held a romantic notion of the medieval period. This general and fervent interest in German history further boosted the volkish idea of national unity. “There was a certain nostalgia for medieval times, seen by Germans as an age of innocence and wisdom. This medieval and rural utopia symbolized the intrinsic unity of people and landscapes” (Mosse, 1964: 20). The growth of mystic (occult) societies in Germany also played an important role in the spread of romantic nationalism during this period. The world-view shared by these societies was composed of numerous superficial notions such as “human beings can attain truth not with their reason but through their feelings and intuitions; every country possesses a national spirit; the German national spirit is a pagan spirit. These societies prepared the ground for the rise of Hitler and Nazism” (Howard, 1989: 106). Though the Nazis capitalized on growing nationalistic emotions that were originally derived from Volkism, the emotional aftermath of WWI combined with an already unstable social environment served as the catalysts that led to Hitler’s ascension. The perception of nationalism alone was energizing and evoked emotion but the sweeping public outcry following the 1918 German surrender provoked a ground-swell of patriotism that took the concept to its furthermost extreme. Widespread confusion and discontent ruled Germany immediately after the WWI surrender. Nationalist groups of that time frequently held Jews responsible for the loss of World War I (Florida Holocaust Museum, 2003). They maintained that Jews joined forces with socialists and communists to defeat Germany. The anti-semitic ideas of the right wing nationalist faction opposed the democratic principles of the leftwing liberal parties. The nationalist groups showed contempt for the Weimar Republic, condemning its willingness to sign the Treaty of Versailles (Florida Holocaust Museum, 2003). From the perspective of extreme rightwing groups, the Weimar Republic was equated with the ‘Jew’ Republic. One of the many nationalist groups that existed in 1919 was the German Workers’ Party, precursor to The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (The organization that launched Hitler’s accent to power) (Florida Holocaust Museum, 2003). What Volkish, nationalistic thinking and the Nazi movement both shared was a sense of cultural superiority along with intolerance for people or cultures within their borders that did not fit their cultural ideal. This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. For the Nazis, the Volk could only be described as the Aryan race, thus the concept of excluding the Jews. The concept of the Volk for the ‘German Race’ to remain pure was loudly voiced by the Third Reich. The two identities were in conflict, the German nationalistic influence of the Volk and the Jewish 2000 year persona as the Chosen People. Conflicts of the two strong national identities in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s developed over time (Wegner, 2002: 1). “The centrality of the Volkish, mystical base is emphasized, as is the position that the ideological framework for education was based on ideas found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and reflected in a 1919 letter by Hitler asserting that a ‘rational anti-semitism’ must be devised that would include facts establishing Jews as a ‘racial tuberculosis of the people, a race, rather than a religion, which must be removed.’” (Wegner, 2002: 1). The need for bloodline purity and the treacherous influence of the Jews was formed from the Volkish ideology regarding racial soul transmittal through bloodlines. “Julius Langbehn espoused the notion that the Aryans possessed the ‘life-force’ in a ‘life-fluid’ which flowed from the cosmos to the Volk. Jews did not possess this ‘life fluid’ because they had ‘long ago forfeited their souls” (Mosse, 1985: 97-99). Anti-Semitism propaganda under the Third Reich fulfilled its objective to represent the combination of older, culturally stereotyped perceptions of the Jewish people with the racialism in the Nazi curriculum (Iggers, 2000). Germans were constantly encouraged by the Reich to view the Aryan people of Germany as part of the Volk and to envision themselves as a superior and eternal collection of people. Hitler saw this as an emotional sentiment that was still a fresh wound in Germany and could be used as a rallying point and catalyst to gain public support. This, along with deep feelings of nationalism, the indoctrinations techniques of the Third Reich and military successes, which added to Germany’s economic gains, would yield the backing needed for what would be a formidable plan. Hitler believed that because all of Europe and the U.S. were racially impure, they therefore could not defeat Germany. It is anyone’s guess if Hitler changed his mind regarding ‘inferior’ races when the black American Jesse Owns won most of the track events in front of Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games (Weinberg, 1995). Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. The rise to power of his National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis) brought an end to the democratic establishment and personal freedoms enjoyed by German citizens during the reign of the Weimar Republic. Guided by racist and authoritarian political theories, the Nazis quickly abolished basic freedoms in an attempt to create a ‘Volk’ community. According to Nazi ideals, a ‘volkish’ community united all social classes and regions of Germany behind a supreme leader or Führer, Adolf Hitler. His writings of 1928 (Mein Kampf) demonstrated that he had long considered this eventuality necessary for the advancement of the Third Reich. As a matter of domestic policy, the National Socialists derived their entire claim to power over German society from this mission; and as a matter of foreign policy, the asserted concept of the ‘Aryan race’, with its accompanying drive for ‘living space’, was supposed to lay the foundation for a new order for the European continent along racist lines. However, because of the inconsistency of the racist concept, these aims could only be achieved by destructive measures. The ‘racial elite’ propagated by the Nazis implied permanent exclusion and eradication of so-called ‘inferiors’. In addition to ‘racial hygiene’, the persecution of the Jews took on a central role because of their allegedly ‘foreign blood’; the relatively new racist theme was combined with the centuries-old stereotypes of conventional hostility towards the Jews Jews were victims of open bigotry in Germany prior to 1933 and this expression of intolerance only escalated following Hitler’s rise to power. In 1938, a German diplomat was murdered in Paris by a Jewish young man who committed the act to protest the treatment of Jews in Germany. Two days following the shooting, Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels delivered an impassionate speech demanding revenge against the Jews for causing the diplomat’s death. Goebbels left no doubt in the minds of the Nazi Party members what this revenge entailed. The resulting violence against the Jewish population called Kristallnacht or ‘Night of Broken Glass’ began in the early morning hours of November 10 and escalated the following night. It was initiated by Party members but many German citizens also contributed to the vast damage and looting of Jewish businesses (Farmer, 1998). “The Nazis, who wore gloves to protect their hands from flying glass, systematically destroyed all Jewish businesses and synagogues with crowbars, axes, fire, and dynamite” (“Pogroms”, 1938: 17). In the second night of vigilante violence alone, the mobs destroyed 8,000 Jewish businesses, burned more than 200 synagogues and attacked many hundreds of Jews killing 90. In addition about 30,000 Jewish males were taken to concentration camps but most were released following their written pledge that they would depart Germany. Neither ordinary German citizens nor the religious leaders decried this action, in part because of the danger involved in speaking out against the Nazi’s but mainly it was increasingly dangerous to do so even within the general public. However, “there is plenty of evidence to suggest that large numbers of Germans were not opposed to the maltreatment of Jews. Kristallnacht had indicated that some Germans were delighted to kill Jews” (Farmer, 1998). The events of Kristallnacht eradicated many of the German Jews from the social and economic landscape of Germany (Bauer, 1982: 109). The Nazis achieved their social objective with the removal of the Jews but the economic affects were devastating because of great loss of commerce and more than just Jewish business were destroyed in the mayhem (Weber, 2000: 124). As a result, “the world now knew that the Nazis were serious about their task of dominating Germany and that they wouldn’t refrain from using violence (“Pogroms”, 1938: 17). The ‘final solution’ ; the mass, organised and officially approved extermination of the Jews in German-occupied Europe had its beginnings in January of 1942 at the Wannsee Conference. It wasn’t a new practice for the Third Reich, however. Jews in occupied Russia had already faced mass exterminations and unspeakable inhumane treatment at the hands of the Germans. “The Wannsee Conference was the place where the ‘final solution’ was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated extermination camps in Poland” (Longerich, 2000: 29). This now official policy was widely encouraged by the national socialists (Kirschbaum, 2000). However, many citizens of Germany were unaware of the Concentration Camps, including the residents of the towns where the camps were located. The executions were carried out by the German army with SS troops in charge of the operations. The unknowing German people and the most fervent of Nazis did have a nationalistic idealism in common, however, which was the underlying reason for the extermination of the Jewish race. This common idealism was developed from the culmination of centuries of German cultural bonding through the ideas of Volkism, with roots that had begun the century before. Anti-Semitism propaganda under the Third Reich fulfilled its objective to represent the combination of older, culturally stereotyped perceptions of the Jewish people with the racialism in the Nazi curriculum (Iggers, 2000). Nazi propaganda fanned the flames of deep-rooted existing feelings of nationalism evoking strong emotions amongst the majority of German citizens. Though the average German citizen was not aware of the Holocaust, many shared the opinion that Jews were an inferior race and viewed the invasions of neighboring sovereign nations as patriotic conquests. A number of factors played a part in the feelings of intense German nationalism such as the growing economic control Jews enjoyed, the humiliation suffered from World War I and the universal need for national pride. The National Socialist movement with Hitler at the helm achieved power under these unique conditions. Without this intense sense of nationalism, the Holocaust could not have happened. References Bauer, Yehuda.  (1982). A History of the Holocaust.  New York: F. Watts. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945. New York: Bantam Books. Farmer, Alan. (1998). Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. London: Hodder Murray. Florida Holocaust Museum Foundation of the Nazi Party. (2003). Available 26 April 2007 from Howard, Michael. (1989). The Occult Conspiracy: The Secret History of Mystics, Templars, Masons and Occult Societies. London: Rider & Co. Ltd. Iggers, George G. (2000). “The Uses and Misuses of History.” Apollon. Available 26 April 2007 from Kirschbaum, Erik. (June 30, 2000). “Wannsee Protocol Attracts Belated Attention in Germany.” Third Reich Roundtable. Available 26 April 2007 from Longerich, Peter. (2000). The Wannsee Conference in the Development of the Final Solution. London: The Holocaust Educational Trust. Mosse, George L. (1985). Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. “Pogroms Give Reich a Weapon for Spread of Anti-Semitism.” (21 November 1938). Newsweek. Pp. 17-18. Weber, Louis (Ed.). The Holocaust Chronicle.  Chicago: Publications International, Ltd, 2000. Wegner, Gregory Paul. (2002). Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich. New York: Routledge Palmer Press. Weinberg, Gerhard. (1995). “Hitler’s Plan to Attack America.” History News Network. Excerpted from Gerhard Weinberg’s Germany, Hitler and World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available 26 April 2007 from Read More