German Racial Views And Policies Towards The Jewish People Essay

“Was German ‘Eliminationist Anti-Semitism” Responsible for the Holocaust?” is a fascinating and somewhat discouraging debate that explores the question of whether German anti-Semitism, instilled within citizens outside of the Nazi Party, played a vast role in the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust . Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of “The Paradigm Challenged,” believes that it did; and argues quite convincingly that ordinary German citizens were duplicitous either by their actions or inactions due to the deep-seeded nature of anti-Semitic sentiment in the country. On the other hand, Christopher R. Browning, who has extensively researched the Holocaust, argues that the arguments of Goldhagen leaves out significant dynamics which were prevalent throughout most of Western and Eastern Europe during this period of history.

Horror struck on January 30, 1933, when Germany assigned Adolf Hitler as their chancellor. Once Hitler had finally reached power he set out to complete one goal, create a Greater Germany free from the Jews (“The reasons for the Holocaust,” 2009). This tragedy is known today as, “The Holocaust,” that explains the terrors of our histories past. The face of the Holocaust, master of death, and leader of Germany; Adolf Hitler the most deceitful, powerful, well spoken, and intelligent person that acted as the key to this mass murder. According to a research study at the University of South Florida, nearly eleven million people were targeted and killed. This disaster is a genocide that was meant to ethnically cleanse Germany of the Jews. Although Jewish people were the main target they were not the only ones targeted; gypsies, African Americans, homosexuals, socialists, political enemies, communists, and the mentally disabled were killed (Simpson, 2012, p. 113). The word to describe this hatred for Jewish people is known as antisemitism. It was brought about when German philosophers denounced that “Jewish spirit is alien to Germandom” (“Antisemitism”) which states that a Jew is non-German. Many people notice the horrible things the Germans did, but most don’t truly understand why the Holocaust occurred. To truly understand the Holocaust, you must first know the Nazis motivations. Their motivations fell into two categories including cultural explanations that focused on ideology and

Summary: This article was an introduction to the Holocaust. The German Nazi’s thought that the Jews were a community. Not only the Jews were targeted, anyone with a racial inferiority was targeted. For example, although the Jews were the main threat the gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals and the disabled were also targeted. The Holocaust was a way to decrease the Jewish population; the final solution was to murder the Jews of Europe or anyone that was a threat to their German culture. Many died of incarceration and maltreatment. During the war they created ghettos, forced-labor camps between 1941 and 1944 the Nazi German Authorities would deport the Jews to extermination camps where they were murdered in gassing facilities. May 7, 1945 the German armed forces surrendered to the allies.

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

The Final Solution is the most controversial topic of German History as its origination is not clean cut, whilst it would be simple to place emphasis on Hitler and his World View for the destruction of all Jewry there are other factors such as WW2 which must be taken into consideration in analysis of the Final Solution. Other factors include the polarised view of a lack of formal mechanisms and coherent policy, both of which were fuelled by an honest desire to pursue the will of the Fuhrer to commit, as described by Layton ‘The darkest deed of the Third Reich.’ Throughout this essay it will be

Most of us have heard of the Nazi party’s horrific, genocidal regime on destroying the Jewish race, but what events led up to their dire judgement? In this study I aim to uncover the events, reasons and changes which led to the Holocaust and the further changes in the treatment of the Jewish race by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

In The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Ian Kershaw provides an illustration of the interpretations of the Holocaust that place Hitler as the driving force behind the elimination of the Hebrew population in Germany. Kershaw describes how the term ‘the Holocaust’ was initially adopted by Jewish writers in preference of the generic descriptive term ‘genocide’. By ostensibly stating that, “without Hitler's fanatical will to destroy Jewry, which crystallized only by 1941 in tools realizable aims to exterminate physically the Jews of Europe, the Holocaust would almost certainly not have come about,” Kershaw embodies the interpretations that place Hitler as the ultimate cause for the planned annihilation of the Hebrew population in Europe.

Naimark releases information that supports the perspectives of both Professor Hans Mommsen and Daniel J. Goldhagen. He describes how anti-Semitism existed in eastern Europe long before the creation of the Third Reich. Naimark reveals the reasons why the Jews were labeled as a threat to the German society. According to Nazi ideology, the Jewish race was responsible for four major problems in Germany, which included the loss of World War I, the burden of the Versailles Treaty, creation of the alien Weimar Republic, and the disloyalty of German interests. On top of the issues, the German economy was diminishing and the Germans needed someone to be responsible. Consequently, the Jews were accused for Germany’s lack of success and became an escape

German Attitudes Toward the Jews and the Final Solution There are those that claim that Hitler’s conscious personal hatred of the Jews, his unique and central role in the rise of Nazi Germany were fundamental in the development of the anti-Jewish policies that emerged leading to the final solution. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the anti- Jewish feeling in Germany reflected a much stronger, widespread support amongst its people and this essay will examine the role and attitudes of the German people towards the Final Solution. On the 1st of April, 1933, the boycott of Jewish businesses reflected evidence of widespread anti Jewish feelings amongst the lower bureaucracy of the

The Holocaust was an organized event to persecute and murder millions Jews by the Nazi regime and its associates. The term Holocaust derives from a Greek word meaning sacrifice by fire. The immediate cause for the event was that the Nazis, who came to power in Germany in 1933, announced that they were racially superior above all races and that the Jews were inferior, and were a threat to the German society.

The study of the time from September 1939 through June 1941 is crucial for understanding the creation of the “Final Solution”. Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, there was already some sort of anti-Semitism. Germans were convinced through propaganda that Jews were their enemy and the cause of all their turmoil. He had a clear hatred of Jews; they made him “Sick to [his] stomach” (pg 47). The oppression and segregation of Jews was applied in stages. . In just two years Nazi Jewish policy escalated rapidly from the prewar policy of forced emigration to the “Final Solution”. The term “Final Solution” refers to the Nazi program of annihilating the Jews of Europe during the Third Reich. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority". The genocide, of the Jews was the height of a decade of increasingly severe discriminatory measures that were put in place by the Germans.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered during World War II when The Final Solution made its appearance. When Hitler and his party, the Nazis, were elected in 1932, (The History Place) Hitler’s ambitions seemed far-fetched. In 1941, two years after World War II had begun; Adolf Hitler’s plan to erase the Jewish population was already underway and fully operating right under everyone’s nose. In Germany, Austria, Poland, and Belgium, thousands of people were being killed monthly, but despite this success, Hitler was still not satisfied. For him to be completely satisfied with the results, the Jews needed to be gone permanently. For six years Hitler rampaged across Europe, forcing his plans on other countries, causing destruction wherever he went. His hatred for “impure” races, especially Jews, is what led to the designing of a master plan to annihilate them entirely. The Final Solution was Hitler’s chance to create the world he desired. The Final solution was created solely for one purpose—the mass murder of millions.

Adolf Hitler came to power over Germany in January of 1933. He hated Jews and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened to Germany. Hitler’s goal in life was to eliminate the Jewish population. With his rise to power in Germany, he would put into action his plan of elimination. This is not only why German Jews were the main target of the Holocaust, but why they were a large part of the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hitler’s “final solution” almost eliminated the Jewish population in Europe during World War II. At the end of the war and along with his suicide, the Jewish population would survive the horror known as the Holocaust and the Jews would eventually find their way back to their homeland of Israel

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.

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.