Western Imperialism And The Holocaust

January 30, 1933 was the day when many lives were changed in Europe. It marked the beginning of a horrible massacre known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was and still is a very traumatic event for many people. Jews were evacuated from their homes, tortured, lost many loved ones, and were also scarred for life. Countries either tried to stop this massacre or in some way helped Germany. Jews had to wait and suffer about 12 years of torture and abuse until they were finally set free. Even though we only know of Germany being part of the Holocaust during World War II, many other countries were involved, either supporting Germany or fighting against the inhuman acts of violence.

Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.

People are never evil just for the sake of being evil. They always justify to themselves in some way that all of their actions are for the greater good and that the actions they have committed are not atrocities. This has to be done since normal individuals cannot justify to themselves that they are immoral. Both western imperialism and the Holocaust had their atrocities justified by the illusion of progress. Even though numerous millions of people were slaughtered in these campaigns, many of the people doing the killing, believed that it was for the greater good. Western imperialism used the notion of bettering the native population and expansion in order to justify their mass killings. On the other hand, the Holocaust rationalized its

The history of the State of Israel and the Holocaust strongly correlate with each other. For one to understand the State of Israel, one must look at in it relation to the Holocaust because Israel uses defence techniques that it would not feel necessary if not for the Holocaust, the Holocaust has changed the Jewish faith, and the Holocaust has caused issues with the overall view of the Jews.

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

After WW2, there was a thing called the holocaust. There were many concentration camps all over Germany where many Jews were killed in different ways. It happened between WW1 and WW2, 1933-1945. My position on why this happened is that Germany was going through a rough time, so Hitler wanted their country to resemble power. Read on to learn more about the causes and ways the Holocaust could have been avoided.

The Nazis justified their killing through survival. To the Nazis, as a superior race they had the right to dominate the world, and their survival and lives as individuals were far more important than the people they persecuted. They believed they had the right to expand to cover the globe and to kill everyone who interfered with this mass expansion. They also believed that the natural order of nature required them to assert their dominance, that as the dominant race it was their job to do this, and that it was also nature’s intention (“Victims”). On the other hand, the European settlers justified the killing of the Native Americans as noncompliance. They believed that they had right to the land of North America, since it was only occupied and not colonized. On top of this, the natives were primarily nomadic tribes and did not live in the same area year-round (”Settlement”). In their quest for land, the settlers told the natives they were to move west; when the natives did not obey, they were made to do so by force. These Native Americans were sometimes coerced into leaving their lands through murder and biological warfare by the settlers (“Lewy”). The settlers, however, did not believe the murder of the native people was ultimately necessary. They even set aside tracts of land in which the lives of the American Indians would not be interfered if they complied. They also traded with natives regularly and were greatly assisted

Antisemitism, the hatred for the Jewish people, has been called the longest hatred in history. This history is deep rooted and has existed for thousands of years, taking different forms throughout its existence, and intensifying up until and through the Holocaust, to then diminish to an extent but still be prevalent in most societies. Antisemitism exists in different forms, religious, ethnic, and political. The presence of Christianity as the predominant religion in Europe can be noted as a driving factor in religious and ethnic antisemitism, as can the Holocaust. Whereas instances such as the Islamic view on Judaism can be

Genocide is not a feature of warfare or rule that can be unilaterally blamed on European nations. It was a natural outgrowth of a people's desire to devastate another group of people for some purpose such as to steal land or gain an economic advantage. The Europeans who sailed to North America were skilled in this particular form of warfare having practiced it on one another for centuries, but they did not have to introduce it to the aboriginal tribes they found there. When the Dutch established a colony at Manhattan, they discovered a group of people who were both warriors and farmers called the Mohawk. This tribe fought in a particular manner that was meant to bring terror to their foes much as Hitler with his blitzkrieg or the United States with its "shock and awe" both of which would come centuries later (Axelrod 2011, 64). During a series of wars termed "Beaver Wars", these Mohawks, along with their partner tribes, waged a genocidal warfare that destroyed or dispersed those they were warring against. The Iroquois, traditional enemies of the Algonquian Federation who were allied with the French, sought to expand their fur hunting territory as a consequence of English/Dutch pressure to produce more fur, and the promise of aid in their fight against enemy tribes.

The Holocaust was one of the most despicable acts of crime committed in history. It was the slaughtering of six million Jews along with other minority groups. Anti-semitism was on the rise in Germany due to one man, Adolf Hitler. The Nazi leader is known to be one of the most infamous dictators that were able to rise to power. Leading Germany, Hitler improved the economy, started World War II with the idea of Lebensraum, and exterminated Jews due to youth anti-semitic influences.

A main point in this article Jaimes points out is the fact that American colonials attempted to use several stories as excuses such as Manifest Destiny to hide the action of slaughtering over 100 innocent people. 105 were found to be women and children, who had no way to defend themselves. The colonials would even perform disturbing acts such as scalping the victims and wearing it on their clothes. The big comparison of the American colonials actions can be seen in what the German Nazis did to the Jews. Essentially, both groups sought domination and civilization of their own, so they forcefully removed another group of their land. This is what Jaimes is saying when she claims the American colonial’s actions were done in a similar manner to what the German Nazis did. After establishing this point, Jaimes focuses on how this means of colonization is not the proper way of going about expanding. This method emphasizes a forceful and

The American Holocaust was a time that was damaging for the Native American people. It was a time that dealt with the invasion of the Spanish and European people. One aspect that made it a damaging time for the Native Americans, was the lack of weapons that they had compared to the advanced technology of their enemy’s. “Columbus responded with several hundred armed troops, Calvary, and a score or more of trained attack dogs”(Stannard P. 13).This shows the amount of power and money that Columbus had behind him. He was able to get what he needed to win his battles, with either swords or armor, or more attack dogs and more warriors.

With the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of WWII, the issue at hand was what to do with the Jewish peoples with no place to go.

Modernity in all its’ forms has changed the world, for good and bad, since the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment, starting around 1750, is often considered the beginning of the “modern age”- the time when improvements in science, thought, technology, and philosophy began. After the Enlightenment came colonialism, a form of political dominance exercised substantially, but not exclusively, by the British. Colonialism shows a good idea of using modern ideas and thought, but how the way it was carried out did not respect human rights. Similarly, the Holocaust was a modern project that was extremely inhumane and did not end well. Nazism was a different and more direct type of racism carried out against the Jews, leading to negative progress. The way South American mine workers were treated also reflected contradictions to modernity and did not respect human rights. In 1978, the particular book of Let Me Speak, illustrates how a specific family struggled with the realities of the Bolivian mines and how that also created negative progress. The colonialism ideals, the

If prompted with the question what is colonization and or how did Europe and America colonize different countries and peoples the answer might be as simple as: it was the process of taking land from other countries and pushing to change the peoples of those countries towards western ways. This answer is to simple, a lot of people do not know the motives behind colonizing another country. Even though the motives behind colonizing another country depend on the time and location of the colonizing, Europe and America have always set above every other country around the world. They title themselves as being superior to all others. Thus, a lot of countries bought into the western ways and believe Westerners to be “demigod”. In Michael Adas essay, Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing-Mission, even though the focus is on the ups and downs of colonization in Asia and Africa. The essay looks at the motives behind colonizing these peoples, why some bought into the idea and how World War One changed everything for Europe, Asia and Africa in terms of colonization.