Belgian Congo vs. Holocaust

in this paper i argue the opposing views of Daniel Goldhagen 's book Hitler 's Willing Executioners and Christopher Browning 's book ordinary Men. These books deal with the question of whether or not the average German soldiers and civilians were responsible for the holocaust. My research paper argues in favor of Goldhagen 's book, the average German was responsible for the participation of he holocaust. At the end of world war ll the Jewish community and the the rest of the world were crying for justice because of the devastation of there homes. The crimes committed by the Germans were cruel and someone had to pay. Several Nazi leaders were held accountable for the actions of the Germans. Were the Nazi leaders the ones responsible for

The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many

In the last few years, some publications have appeared that treats one group or another, yet the state of our knowledge about the perpetrators remains incomplete. We know little about many of the institutions of killing, little about many aspects of the perpetration of the genocide, and still less about the perpetrators themselves. As a consequence, popular and scholarly myths and misconceptions about the perpetrators abound, including the following. It is commonly believed that the Germans slaughtered Jews by and large in the gas chambers, and that without gas chambers, modern means of transportation, and efficient bureaucracies, the Germans would have been unable to kill millions of Jews. The belief persists that somehow only technology made horror on this scale possible. It is generally believed that gas chambers, because of their efficiency, were a necessary instrument for the genocidal slaughter, and that the Germans chose to construct the gas chambers in the first place because they needed more efficient means of killing the Jews. It has been generally believed that the perpetrators were primarily, overwhelmingly SS men, the most devoted and brutal Nazis. It has been held that had a German refused to kill Jews, then he himself would have been killed, sent to a concentration camp, or severely punished. All of these views, views that fundamentally shape people's understanding of the Holocaust, have been believed as though they were

A key difference between the Holocaust and western imperialism is the means in which they attempted to advance. During western imperialism, the European explorers saw the Native population and wanted to improve Europe through converting them to Christianity, acquiring

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think” (Hitler, Mein Kampf). As time passed, there has been many times in history where a genocide has occurred. A genocide is a one-sided massacre from one party toward an ethnic or different group of people. As genocides occurred, questions such as “Why do people kill?” and “How can people allow these atrocities to occur?” are asked. There have been many theories made up as people researched the reason behind genocides. Throughout different centuries in history, genocides such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Asian genocide, have occurred because of the negative psychological effects on the people caused by propaganda, corrupted leaders, and differences in ethnic groups.

The Holocaust can be seen as one of the most devastating genocide that occurred in history and that is well known in many places worldwide. One may assume that those who played a part in the acts done by the Nazis in Germany may have been mentally disturbed and/or sick, evil people. However, the novel Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning provides another alternative to this statement. Browning provides the reader with the idea that anyone is capable of becoming a murderer, especially when the opportunity presents itself. In his book he attempts to prove this statement through multiple ideas and theories and also provides events which took place to analyze some of those ideas.

Throughout the course of humanity, we have experienced terrible transgressions in our society. Although they took place sixty-one years apart, similar horrific events from the Holocaust (1933-1945) and the Rwandan Genocide (1994) occurred. In Night, the Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis believed they were “racially superior” so they killed the Jews because they were deemed “inferior” and needed to be eliminated.

WW2 took the lives of more than 72.4 million people, ("11 Facts About the Holocaust.") and killed more than two-thirds of all the people living in Europe at the time, ("World War 2 Statistics."). As part of their service to their country, the Nazis were commanded to perform horrific actions any reasonable person would question. These tortures included, “putting people’s hands in boiling water until the skin and fingernails came off...pulling teeth and cutting and twisting off the ears; running electric current through the victims…” ("Nazi Torture and Medical Experimentation.") “Prisoners were submerged in ice water to see the effects of hypothermia, injected with chemicals and poisons to test their effectiveness, sterilized, vivisected, and operated on without anesthetic,” (Smallwood). When many of these prominent Nazi soldiers were put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, they argued they were serving their country, following orders from their superior. Here, we confront the thought-provoking question of whether it is just to obey your superior or serve your nation while breaking the moral code of humanity. These Nazis committed acts and imposed punishments upon their prisoners, that many have labeled as sinister, inhumane, unjust, and gruesome. But can we blame them for following the demands of their superiors and their country? Is it

In the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tackles the question of why German citizens engaged in nefarious behavior that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish and other minorities throughout Europe. The question of what drove Germans to commit acts of genocide has been investigated by numerous historians, but unfortunately, no overarching answer for the crimes has yet been decided upon. However, certain theories are more popular than others. Daniel Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, has expounded that the nature of the German culture before the Second World War was deeply embedded in anti-Semitic fervor, which in turn, acted as the catalyst for the events that would unfold into the Holocaust. It is at this

Throughout the history of mankind, many genocides have occurred around the world because there is much hatred among specific kinds of people. A genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. An example of a genocide in Germany is the Holocaust where Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, showed the Jews’ experience from the horrors, tortures, and killings in the death camps. At the same time, a mass execution was happening in Nanjing, China, where the Japanese soldiers were slaughtering and torturing thousands of the Chinese. Both the Jews from Night and the Chinese in the “Nanking Massacre” had suffered the elements of cruelty from execution methods and their torture such

When one looks through the history of the last century, many great atrocities can come to mind. However, the one that is the most common is that of the Holocaust during World War II. People often wonder how something like this could have been allowed to happen. These same people wonder this without realizing that something similar has happened, right within their own shores. Not only this, but they do not realize how previously close we could become to having this happen again.

Throughout human history, mass killings have occurred on groups of people purely based on false stereotypes or rumors, built up aggression, power dominance, or physical attributions such as race. In the past 150 years, there has been a spike in the number of genocides, despite the culture that the killing takes place in. Therefore, it is impossible whether to deem these monstrous acts are of natural human, cultural, or sociological nature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causes, processes, and effects of the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide in terms of reification when comparing and contrasting the two horrific events. Additionally, elements of the logic of illogic and a doctrine of false concreteness will be discussed in an in-depth effort to uncover the mindset of these horrific atrocities.

The main sources for this book consist of archival documents and court records of the Holocaust. The specific testimony, court records, investigation records, and prosecution documents of members of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 members are used as sources. In this book, Christopher Browning shows in minute detail the sequence of events and individual reactions that turn ordinary men into killers. His arguments make sense. He makes no unwarranted assumptions. The cause and effect statements made and arguments presented are logical and well developed. Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning accounts for the actions of the German Order Police (more specifically the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland) and the role they played in the Second World War during the Jewish Holocaust. Police Battalion 101 was composed of veterans from World War One and men too old to be

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who

The perpetrators of the Holocaust are often generalized as direct products of ideological indoctrination into a stream of omnipresent German culture that is assumed to be supremely sadistic and motivated only by “evil” factors. However, it is impossible to label all of the perpetrators with one trait or name, when the Holocaust was the multi-causal. This means that there were several types of perpetrators, and therefor the Holocaust was the result of combined efforts by a diverse group, each with their own reasons for participating and fulfilling various roles throughout different stages of the time period. Mary Fulbrook illustrates the example of landrat Udo Klausa in her book A Small Town Near Auschwitz, which shows that many individuals were simply fulfilling responsibilities for their careers, and were “blind” to the severity and impact of their own role as perpetrators. In remembering these people, it is easy to forget that they were civilians first and foremost. Looking to Katharina von Kellenbach’s Mark of Cain, there is further evidence that a lack of transparency was a severe issue in the Hitler administration, trickling