Notes for World History
THE HOLOCAUST
WHAT WAS HOLOCAUST?
Millions of Jews were murdered in various camps in Germany under the reign of Hitler.
This mass murder was called by Germans as ‘The Final Solution’ of the ‘Jewish problem’ also known as the Holocaust.
WHY COULD THE HOLOCAUST HAVE HAPPENED?
Intentionalists’ argument
- ARGUMENT: Right from his early days, Hitler as anti-Semitic. Even in his book Mein Kamp, he blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and for all her problems since.
- CRITICISM: Why it took until the end of 1941- almost 9 years after Hitler came to power- before the Nazis began to murder Jews?
Functionalists’ argument:
- ARGUMENT: It was the Second World War which aggravated the ‘Jewish Problem’. About 3 million Jews lived in Poland when the Germans took over Poland. The invasion of USSR brought further dimension to the Jewish problem, since there were several million Jews living in the occupied republics of the western Russia- Belorussia and Ukraine. It was sheer pressure of numbers that led Nazis to press for mass murder of Jews.
- CRITICISM: It absolves Hitler from personal responsibility for the atrocities committed.
The Combined argument:
- The best way to explain how the Holocaust came about is to combine elements from both intentionalists and functionalists.
- From the early 19203, Hitler had committed himself and the Nazi party to destroy the power of the Jews and drive them out of Germany, but exactly how this was to be done was left vague.
- When public opinion in Germany was against the violence on Jews, Hitler concentrated on encouraging Jews to emigrate.
- However, it was the outbreak of the war, and in particular the invasion of Russia that radically changed the situation. The occupation of Poland and large areas of USSR brought many more Jews under German control. The conditions of war meant that it was almost impossible for them to emigrate.
- Thus, it was now possible for Hitler to carry out the Final Solution in Poland and USSR outside Germany without worrying about German public opinion by censoring all news reporting in the occupied areas.
