Introduction to the Holocaust Part I

1. Introduction to the HolocaustPart I Daniel W. Blackmon IB HL History Coral Gables Senior High

2. First they came for the Jews • First they came for the Jews • And I did not speak out • Because I was not a Jew

3. First they came for the Jews • Then they came for the Communists • And I did not speak out • Because I was not a Communist.

4. First they came for the Jews • Then they came for the trade unionists • And I did not speak out • Because I was not a trade unionist.

5. First they came for the Jews • Then they came for me • And there was no one left • To speak out for me. • Pastor Martin Niemöller

6. Purpose • This presentation is intended as a bare-bones account of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by human beings against other human beings.

7. Purpose • It makes no pretense of comprehensiveness. Many issues have been left out altogether.

8. Purpose • The intention is to provide a reasonably short version showing the main stages in the Holocaust, along with some documentary evidence which reveals some of the horror.

9. Intentionalists and Functionalists: the Historians’ Controversy

10. The Intentionalists: • “The interpretational divide on this issue brings us back to the dichotomy of ‘intention* and ‘structure* which we have already encountered.

11. The Intentionalists: • “The conventional and dominant ‘Hitlerism* approach proceeds from the assumption that Hitler himself, from a very early date seriously contemplated, pursued as a main aim, and strived unshakeably to accomplish the physical annihilation of the Jews.

12. The Intentionalists: • “According to such an interpretation, the various stages of the persecution of the Jews are to be directly derived from the inflexible continuity of Hitler*s aims and intentions; and the ‘Final Solution* is to be seen as the central goal of the Dictator from the very beginning of his political career,

13. The Intentionalists: • “and the result of a more or less consistent policy (subject only to ‘tactical* deviation), ‘programmed* by Hitler and ultimately implemented according to the Fuehrer*s orders. (Kershaw 95)

14. Intentionalists • Prominent Intentionalists: Eberhard Jäckel, Gerald Fleming, Lucy Dawidowicz

15. The Structuralists: [“The Twisted Road to Auschwitz”] • “In contrast, the ‘structuralist* type of approach lays emphasis upon the unsystematic and improvised shaping of Nazi ‘policies* towards the Jews,

16. The Structuralists: • “seeing them as a series of ad hoc responses of a splintered and disorderly government machinery.

17. The Structuralists: • “Although, it is argued, this produced an inevitable spiral of radicalization, the actual physical extermination of the Jews was not planned in advance,

18. The Structuralists: • “could at no time before 1941 be in any realistic sense envisaged or predicted, and emerged itself as an ad hoc ‘solution* to massive, and self-induced, administrative problems of the regime.” (Kershaw 96)

19. The Structuralists: • Prominent Structuralists: Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat

20. Points of agreement as well as disagreement: • “It seems important to re-emphasize at the outset that, despite claims sometimes made by those adopting a ‘Hitlerist* interpretation,

21. Points of agreement as well as disagreement: • “Hitler*s continuous personal hatred of the Jews, his unique and central importance to the Nazi system in general and to the unfolding of its anti-Jewish policy in particular, and his moral responsibility for what took place are not at stake in the debate.

22. Agreement and Disagreement • “Historians favouring a ‘structuralist* approach readily accept the overwhelming evidence that Hitler maintained a personal, pathologically violent hatred of Jews (whatever its derivation) throughout his political ‘career

23. Agreement and Disagreement • “and recognize, too, the importance of that paranoid obsession in determining the climate within which the escalating radicalization of anti-Jewish policies took place.

24. Agreement and Disagreement • “To put the counter-factual point at its crudest: without Hitler as head of the German State between 1933 and 1945,and without his fanaticism on the ‘Jewish Question* as impulse and sanction,

25. Agreement and Disagreement • “touchstone and legitimation, of escalating discrimination and persecution, it seems hardly conceivable that the ‘Final Solution* would have occurred.

26. Agreement and Disagreement • “This thought itself is sufficient to posit a fundamental link between Hitler and genocide. Moreover, the moral allegation against ‘structuralist* historians that they are ‘trivializing* the wickedness of Hitler — is also misplaced.

27. Agreement and Disagreement • “The ‘structuralist* approach in no sense denies Hitler*s personal, political, and moral responsibility for ‘the Holocaust*.

28. Agreement and Disagreement • “But it does broaden that culpability to implicate directly and as active and willing agents large sections of the German non-Nazi elites in the army, industry, and bureaucracy alongside the Nazi leadership and Party organizations. (Kershaw 103-4)

29. Current Trends • The trend of the scholarship today is reducing the differences between them. Leading writers representing this trend are Ian Kershaw and Christopher Browning.

30. Hitler’s Speeches • Hitler’s Zweites Buvh, written in 1928 and found after the war: [It is the Jews] "who bring the negro to the Rhine, always with the same crooked design and clear aim of destroying through the bastardization which must result from it the white race hated by them,

31. Hitler’s Speeches • to hurl it from its cultural and political heights and to make themselves its masters . . . .[The French stationed African troops in the Rhineland following World War I] [The Jews'] ultimate goal is the denationalization, the promiscuous bastardization of other peoples, the lowering of the racial level of the highest peoples,

32. Hitler’s Speeches • and the domination of this racial mish-mash through the extirpation of the völkisch intelligentsia . . . . Hence the result of Jewish domination is always the ruin of all culture and finally the madness of the Jew himself. For he is a parasite of nations, and his victory signifies his own end as much as the deaths of his victims. . . . " (Arad 26-30)

33. Hitler’s Speeches • Speech to Gauleiter April 1937: "From whom is he demanding this? [introduction of special insignia for Jews] Who can give the necessary orders? Only I can give them.

34. Hitler’s Speeches • The editor, in the name of his readers, is asking me to act. First, I should tell you that long before this editor had any inkling about the Jewish problem, I had made myself an expert on the subject.

35. Hitler’s Speeches • Secondly, this problem has been under consideration for two or three years, and will, of course, be settled one way or another in due course. My point is then this: the final aim of our policy is crystal clear to all of us.

36. Hitler’s Speeches • All that concerns me to never to take a step that I might later have to retrace and never to take a step that cold damage us in any way. You must understand that I always go as far as I dare and no further.

37. Hitler’s Speeches • It is vital to have a sixth sense that tells you, broadly, what you can do and what you cannot do. Even in a struggle with an adversary it is not my way to issue a direct challenge to a trial of strength.

38. Hitler’s Speeches • I do not say "come out and fight because I want a fight." Instead I shout at him (and I shout louder and louder): "I mean to destroy you."

39. Hitler’s Speeches • And then I use my intelligence to manoeuvre him into a tight corner so that he cannot strike back, and then I deliver the fatal blow." (Gordon 130-1)

40. Hitler’s Speeches • Adolf Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, January 30, 1939, carried on radio "If the Jewish international financiers inside and outside Europe succeed in involving the nations in another war, the result will not be world bolshevism and therefore a victory for Judaism; it will be the end of the Jews in Europe.” (Gordon 130-1)

41. Hitler’s Speeches • .[Alternatively, "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" and "the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe." The German word was "die Vernichtung.“]

42. Hitler’s Speeches • ["die Vernichtung" is quite an intense word, and should be rendered as "annihilation.." "Destruction" would be "die Zerstörung," which is less intense than "die Vernichtung."

43. Hitler’s Speeches • The noun is constructed of the adverb "not" ("nicht") plus the feminine suffix "-ung" for abstract nouns, plus the inseparable prefix "ver-" which pushes the action of a verb to the ultimate limit and intensifies.

44. Hitler’s Speeches • Conceptually, the noun is "the making something not" as opposed to "die Zerstörung" which is constructed of the verb "stören" to disturb," the feminine suffix "-ung" for abstract nouns and the inseparable prefix "zer-" which implies breaking up into pieces.]

45. Hitler’s Speeches • Adolf Hitler, speech to top Nazis and an army general July 16, 1941: ". . . we are taking all the necessary measures--shootings, deportations and so on--and so we should. . . .

46. Hitler’s Speeches • The whole vast area must of course be pacified as quickly as possible--and the best way to do that is to shoot anyone who so much as looks like giving trouble. . . .

47. Hitler’s Speeches • [Russian guerrilla warfare] is not without its advantages as far as we are concerned, since it gives us a chance to wipe out anyone who gets in our way." (Gordon 131)

48. Hitler’s Speeches • Adolf Hitler, speech at the Sportpalast January 30, 1942; audience included 40 high ranking army officers: "On September 1, 1939, I have already gone on record in the German Reichstag--and I am careful not to make any hasty prophecies--that this war will not end as the Jews imagine it,

49. Hitler’s Speeches • namely with the extermination of the European peoples, but that the result of the war will be the destruction of Jewry. They are simply our old enemies, their plans have suffered shipwreck through us, and they rightly hate us, just as we hate them.

50. Hitler’s Speeches • We realize that this war can only end either in the wiping out of the Germanic nations, or by the disappearance of Jewry from Europe. For the first time, it will not be the others who will bleed to death,