The Nazi Party

The efforts the Nazi party expended on carrying out their ‘final solution to the Jewish question in Europe’ involved changing the structure of a whole country’s economic, social, and military sectors; a mobilisation completed by many various competing and collating departments and agencies, all of which were expected by their superiors to show initiative in their operations. This mode of command lends plausibility to the theory that the ‘final solution’ of the holocaust was not necessarily a result of a direct command by the Führer (No records of any such order exist) but rather the culmination of the departments of the Nazi state vying for approval from their superiors by following the ideology to its ‘logical conclusion’ with Hitler’s approval. This could be seen to support Berghahn, as it was the confusion and rush to meet growing needs that drove the party to extermination over deportation. It also supports Kershaw, who

At this meeting, known as the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi officials agreed to SS plans for the transport and destruction of all 11 million Jews which lived in Europe. The Nazis would use the latest in twentieth century technology, cost efficient engineering and mass production techniques for the sole purpose of killing off the following racial groups: Jews, Russian prisoners of war, and Gypsies. Top of the line technology? Yes, the Nazis were dedicated. So starting early in 1942, the Jewish genocide was in full swing. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór were the first to start operating as death camps. There was no selection process; Jews were killed on sight. Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others from the Nazi death sentence did so at great risk to their own safety. Anyone found harboring a Jew, for example, was shot or publicly hanged as a warning to others. Despite the risks, thousands followed the dictates of conscience. In Denmark, 7,220 of its 8,000 Jews were saved by a citizenry who hid them, then ferried them to the safety of neutral

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, acknowledged that “There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free.” When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they believed that the Germans were “racially superior”and that Jews(their biggest enemy) were to be called “inferior.” As the “Final Solution” came, no Jew was safe. The Germans figured every way to get rid of them. One single gunshot wasn't enough. During this

Case Study 2: A Review of Comments of the German Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference on the Conditions of Peace (October 1919)

have never doubted his intentions." (H.B.Q) The fact that this quote states how it seemed Adolf

Within Germany, a country torn between the rise of a totalitarian party that determined a superior race, Nazism, and the survival of the oppressed, young Germans face a test between a sense of self and society. Individuality would be suppressed within this new type of society, and being different would be the deadliest obstruction to life. The violations of the rights to life, religion, and speech are relived through the stories of the German youth that lived through this haunting time, whose name would be tarnished in their struggle to survive. In their fight, their morals would be challenged and influenced until the Nazi regime ended, and the violation of human dignity would leave them wondering if life was worth living after all. The Nazi Party grew under its leader, Adolf Hitler, which struggled not to use violence against those that disagreed with their views, starting with armed groups known as the Strum Abteilung, who pledged to be ready to sacrifice their life in the aims of the Nazi Party and absolute loyalty to their leader. Their cruel intolerance began by their strong nationalism and their hatred of democracy and communism, and they gained power through the economic depressions around the world, controlling the media by instilling fear and propaganda that influenced a strong belief in their leaders. This belief in the leaders would soon seem to override Church influence when the official body of the Church failed to do anything significant

At the “Wannsee Conference”, which took place in Berlin, on January 20, 1942 the German regime with its main protagonists Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler planned the ‘final solution of the Jewish question. Even if massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution, with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population, extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. The scene where a train of Schindler’s workers was wrongly sent to Auschwitz shows such an extermination camp were the Nazis systematically gassed thousands of Jews. Another example for the organized genocide is the mass cremation after the mass execution during the eviction of the ghetto in Krakow.

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

Throughout 1944 many Jewish leaders, domestically and internationally, requested President Roosevelt to bomb Auschwitz’s gas chambers or the rail lines leading to the concentration camp. By November 1944 the report on Auschwitz from the two escapees, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, had reached Washington, DC informing the War Department on the exact setup of the concentration camp and the details of the procedures that took place there. This brought about the last round of appeals for a bombing of Auschwitz (Wyman, 287). The War Department, however, continued to refuse these suggestions time after

“Yet bombing a concentration camp filled with innocent, unjustly imprisoned civilians also posed a moral dilemma for the Allies. To be willing to sacrifice innocent civilians, one would have had to perceive accurately conditions in the camp and to presume that interrupting the killing process would be worth the loss of life in Allied bombings. In short, one would have had to know that those in the camps were about to die. Such information was not available until the spring of 1944.” (Berenbaum).

In Elie Wiesel's speech he touches on the topics of the causes, effects, and lessons from the holocaust, our duties as a human being, and finally how we can achieve peace for ourselves and everyone around the globe. In paragraph eight he states that, “…the world did know and remain silent.” Wiesel is referring to the general public of Germany as a whole. Wiesel also says that, “And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.” Which simply says by not doing anything this was allowed to happen. You can link that to how German citizens not spreading the word or opposed Hitler. How was Hitler so effective in getting all the Jew and other “undesirables”? German citizens would point the authorities to the Jews, homosexuals,

In truth however, Hitler’s Final Solution was something peculiar in the fact that few people believed that in the 20th Century, when society had reached its intellectual and ethical peak, such genocide was conceivable. Public consensus, along with the media, reassured us that we could no longer return to the Middle Ages. However, the philosophers and prophets of Berlin, with their fine manners and high society, turned into the world’s greatest murderers. The world was silent. One may add, not only silent but in whole passive, sometimes comfortable with what

conducting his research. After leaving the United States Army in 1947, Wiesenthal and other volunteers opened the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre, which assisted with the evidence for war crime trials. Yet, as the Cold War began, the association collapsed. All of the documents and research evidence were given away, except for one important document about Adolf Eichmann, who was the one that supervised the “Final Solution” technique during the war. Eichmann was never heard of after the war and he remained incognito. At last, in 1959, Germany informed that Eichmann was in Buenos Aires, and was found guilty for mass destruction of the Jews. This brought more and more successes to Wiesenthal. He later organized another Jewish Documentation Centre and hunted war criminals such as Karl Silberbauer, who arrested an innocent Jewish girl.

This paper will compare and contrast how Gotz Aly, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw interpret the process that led to the Holocaust and ultimately the “Final Solution”. A brief background on the Final Solution may be helpful when considering the views of these authors. The Final Solution took place during World War Two in 1942. It is often referred to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question/Race”. The main goal was to remove the Jewish race from Europe and ultimately the world through a terrible and horrific genocide. In January of 1942 at the “Wannsee Conference”, this program and policy was constructed and implemented. As a result, about sixty-six percent of all Jews in Europe were killed.

Conspiracy is a historical reenactment of the Wannsee Conference that convened outside Berlin in January of 1942. Fifteen of Hitler’s top officials from the SS and Nazi party held a clandestine meeting to lay the groundwork for what was referred to as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Among those present were: Reinhard Heydrich - Heinrich Himmler’s right hand man in the SS, Heinrich Muller – Chief of the Gestapo, Martin Luther – Foreign Ministry’s liaison to the SS, Gerhard Klopfer – lawyer from the Nazi Party Chancellery, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinge - Deputy head of the Reich Chancellery, Wilhem Stuckart – lawyer representing the Interior Ministry and the co-author of the Anti-Semitic Nuremburg laws.