The War against Jews - Coursework Example

1 Introduction The Second World War is also called" The War against the Jews”. This ment is supported by many scholars studying the holocaust. A review of world history reveals that Adolf Hitler was responsible for starting World War II and for the killing of more than 11 million people during the Holocaust. On January 30, 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. On the death of Hindenburg he was able to take over the position of President and chancellor and merged them into one position of supreme leader, the Fuehrer. He solidified his position by sending his dissenters to concentration camps. A series of emergency decrees were declared in Germany. Hitler suspended many civil rights such as freedom of press, speech, and assembly He created half truths that strengthened German pride by blaming all their troubles on Communists and Jews. From the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to Kristallnacht in 1938, Hitler slowly detached Jews from German society. Under the cover of World War II, the Nazis created a detailed and exhaustive system to work Jews as slaves and exterminate them. 2 The Nazi doctrine The core concept of Nazism is that the German Volk is under attack, and must become united, disciplined and self sacrificing, in other words they must submit to Nazi leadership, in order to win against this nefarious "Jewish plot" to subjugate the German nation. Ultimately, the Nazis sought to create a largely homogeneous and autarchic ethnic state, absorbing the ideas of Pan-Germanism. According to Hitlers ideology Germans, descended from "Aryans" and were pure blooded and superior to all other races thus had the right to rule over them. The Nazis claimed that other races, such as the Slavs and the Poles, were lesser beings fit only to serve the Aryans. The Jews were, even lower than the Slavs. Hitler held that "Aryans" were the builders of society while Jews were parasites fit only for annihilation. This bigotry had a political scheme as well. Hitler blamed the Jews for the defeat of World War I, which he termed as "the stab in the back" and made the focal point of his propagandas. 3 The Volk “The Jew remained our implacable enemy and attempted everything to dissolve our Volk, so that he could rule. Thats why we must fight until he is annihilated, and we will annihilate him! We want to be free, not only from within, but also from without!” (Dr. Robert Ley)1 The Volk only identified with people of similar German origin. Those not of that origin were not Volk. The Jews in particular were seen as coming from nowhere. They were outsiders with no relation to the land they occupied. As aliens, they were disadvantageous to the concept of the Volk. Their alien ideas should thus be expelled to protect the purity of the Volk. Through Hitler and Nietzsche as well as several other theorists of the time, the Germans were convinced that foreigners were subhuman, and could be justly exterminated. No more just an ideal, the Volk became a goal and the basis for the Holocaust.( Poliakov, Léon)2 4 The Cleansing Doris Bergen indicates the ways in which war and genocide were intertwined with Nazi domestic policies, all of which stemmed from the Nazi quest for race and space or Lebensraum or living space. The Nazis believed that there should be areas attributed to only one race and that the Aryans needed more living space. This became one of the Nazis chief objectives and shaped their foreign policy; the Nazis believed they could gain more space by conquering and colonizing the East. That mission had two sides; attack on people deemed undesirable and advancement of those considered Aryan.(Bergen.Doris,)3 Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, wrote Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens which was published in 1920. This work refers to the mentally and physically handicapped as Lebensunwertes Lebens meaning ‘Life unworthy of life’ and regarded the killing of these segments of society as a "healing treatment." This term and this work became a foundation for the right of the state to slaughter unwanted sections of the population. In the film Riefenstahls Triumph of the will it is shown clearly that the pure Aryan youth is vibrant full of life and free of all defects. It depicts the Brown Shirts as hardworking deserving youngsters and sublimely reinforces the German Volk. The hounding of Gypsies began in the very beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were detained and interned in concentration camps and sterilized under the July 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. Yet, in the beginning, Gypsies were not particularly named as a group that threatened the Aryan, German people. Homosexuals, Gypsies, prisoners of war, Russians, Poles, Catholic priests, Jehovahs Witnesses, and others were more or less methodically exterminated as the Holocaust continued. At the end of the war, as many as 6 million of the above peoples had been killed, along with 5 to 6 million Jews. 5 The Final solution True to Hitler, the Nazis singled out and expressly targeted the Jews, and they did this from the very start the Nazi Party Program of February 1920 to the finish Hitlers Testament of April 29, 1945. In fact, Hitler had written a letter to a Herr Gemlich in 1919 in which he called for the removal of the Jews if he ever took power. In Mein Kampf, there are dozens of passages that vilify and demonize the Jews. Speech after speech highlighted the Jews as Germanys "misfortune" and prophesied a time of reckoning. “We see clearly that this war could only end with the extermination of the Germanic peoples, or that Jewry must disappear from Europe. I already said it on September 1, 1939 [sic] in the German Reichstag...that this war will not end the way the Jews have foreseen it, namely that the European Aryan peoples will be exterminated; rather the result of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry. For once all the others will not bleed to death alone; for once the ancient Jewish law will come into play: an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.” (Adolf Hitler)4 The name used for the ultimate killing action was "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Others were drawn in the nightmare but the key object was always the Jews. The one universal thread throughout this "process of destruction” as Hilberg calls it, was the Jews. The Communists were openly targeted as well, but the Nazis believed that Communism was a creation of the Jews. The expression regularly used was Jews and other undesirables, and the Jews were almost always the primary group targeted in any program. There is no doubt that they were the focal point from beginning to end. There are thousands of captured documents dealing with the extermination. Almost each one of them deals with the Jews and there are no documents that deal with another group that do not also concentrate on the Jews. The Einsatzgruppen reports always differentiate the Jews from the other people shot, going so far as to list the Jews by age and gender (.Einsatzgruppen Reports)5 given by Himmler to Hitler in 1943, breaks down the dead into a number of categories (bandits, partisans, etc.), but lists the Jews as "Jews executed." The ultimate aim and the primary target never varied. Others were executed in the course of the Final Solution, but the first and foremost target was always the Jews. A diary entry of Joseph Goebbels says it all “In respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would experience their annihilation in it. That wasnt just a catch-word. The world war is here, and the annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary consequence.” (Goebbels. Joseph)6 6 Conclusion Did the Holocaust have a predominantly crucial and central Jewish aspect, even though millions of others died? Plainly put, the answer is yes. The Holocaust, from its beginning to its implementation had a conspicuously Jewish angle to it and, perhaps without this Jewish angle, there would have been no Final Solution. The film the Pianist only reinforces the facts recorded by history of the German obsession with its own racial purity and Hitler’s Final Solution. In the wake of which the Nazis, further emboldened by their successful ghettoing and annihilation of Jews, targeted other impure races such as the gypsies etc. Albert Speer put it well: “The hatred of the Jews was Hitlers driving force and central point, perhaps even the only element that moved him. The German people, German greatness, the Reich, all that meant nothing to him in the final analysis. Thus, the closing sentence of his Testament sought to commit us Germans to a merciless hatred of the Jews after the apocalyptic downfall. I was present in the Reichstag session of January 30, 1939 when Hitler guaranteed that, in the event of another war, the Jews, not the Germans, would be exterminated. This sentence was said with such certainty that I would never have doubted his intent of carrying through with it”. (Spear. Albert,.)7Sworn Affidavit, June 1977 References 1 Ley. Dr. Robert., June 22, 1941, public speech 2 Poliakov, Léon. The Aryan Myth. Trans. Edmund Howard. USA: Barnes and Noble Books, 1996. 3 Bergen. Doris,. War and Genocide: A concise History of the Holocaust, p. 107 4 Hitler. Adolf,. Speech of January 30, 1942 (monitored by the Allied monitoring service) 5 available at: http://www.holocaust-history.org/ intro-einsatz 6 Goebbels. Joseph,. Diary entry, December 12, 1941 http://www.holocaust- history.org/webmaster/ 7 Spear. Albert,.Sworn Affidavit, June 1977 Read More