Introduction
Millions have dispersed in wars and disasters, but none really measures up to the famous killing of German Jews by the Nazi party that was in power than under the leadership of Adolph Hitler. This took place between 1935 to the commencement of the 2nd World War though it can be traced to have begun earlier than this though the intensity was much lower. Discrimination was purely based on race which later changed from discrimination to the final solution which involved killing of all the Jews in Germany and even campaigning for Jews living in the rest of Europe who had escaped from Germany to be killed. The Nazi government believed that the German race or Aryan race was superior and thus it had to be preserved at whatever cost. The minority Jews were seen as the major threat to the superior race. In fact the number of Jews was approximately 1% of Germany’s population by then.
The discrimination as said at workplaces and other areas was later to escalate to actual killing with the taking of power by the Nazi party establishing legal backing of their activities with the enactment of the Nuremburg laws. The origin of discrimination and the transformation of it to extermination was characterised by very interesting events and happened gradually. This paper thus examines the factors surrounding the discrimination, how it begun and was later to develop into extermination that was also later developed “the Holocaust”.
Discrimination process
Prior to the passing of the Nuremburg laws in 1935, there had been random discrimination and hostility against the German Jews in the country. With consolidation of power by the Nazi party, after Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Paul Von Hindenburg, discrimination of the Jews became legal. The police force acted in all ways to support the laws that forced as many as 75 000 Jews to run away from their home country and seek refugee status in neighbouring countries. As early as 1935, the Nazi party was staging protests against the Jews by boycotting their businesses. They aimed at discriminating the Jews from all spheres of life.
The Nazi Party used to organise protests and boycotts which more often than not turned into violence. Jewish businesses and any Jewish oriented products were boycotted. For example in May 1933, several book burning sort of ceremonies were held. They involved the Aryan people burning all scholarly works and books written by the Jews. The same year also saw Jews being denied their rights to own farmland or even to inherit it from their ancestors. The Nazi did all this as they blamed the Jews for various failures of the German society such as poverty, unemployment, and losing of the First World War more given that many Jews had taken part in the war in the belief that they were bonafide citizens of the third Reich. However, much of these problems had been brought about by the treaty of Versailles which had been imposed to counter the rise of Germany after having triggered the First World War.
Though the discriminations then were held by Nazi party members, they activities were supported by non-party public who had grown jealous of the industriousness and entrepreneurial skills displayed by the Jews then. As such, the government pretended to be against the activities of the Nazi party but deep down did nothing to stop their activities. In fact reports show that the Nazi party regulated its activities in fear of driving away moderate political figures as it was still hoping to rise to power after which we see the development of the holocaust in full swing3. In addition to this, Germany the Nazis would space their protests in anticipation of the world’s opinion. When none was forthcoming, another protest would be organised.
Nuremberg laws
According to the Free Online dictionary, a holocaust is the killing of people en masse by others or by fire5. Unfortunately, the world knows of one holocaust. Other major genocide such as the cases in Rwanda, Bosnia and even during the slave trade when more people were involved, the German case was more pronounced as it was mainly based on race. Other victims of the holocaust were German Aryans viewed to have some traces of hereditary diseases such as epilepsy, autism, criminals, homosexuals and enemies of the state persecuted on alleged political and military grounds which was not the case.
The Nuremburg laws passed in 10 September 1935 during a Nazi party convention set the groundwork for the holocaust.6 The author goes further and says that earlier form of discrimination against the Jews could have been tolerated as some of the Jews themselves were hopeful that the discrimination would end. Austin says of the holocaust as something that stands out in human history and surpasses other forms of genocides due to the methodology used and its ferocious intensity that saw the period between 1938 and 1945 around 12-13 million people slaughtered.
There were three major laws that were formed on this particular day though they were later to be followed by several thousand derivations. These laws were;
- Law of protection of the German race through hereditary health- Persons with such diseases were forced to be surgically sterilised though in writing the law stated that such people had the right to make a decision on whether to undergo sterilization.
- Law of protection of the German race through citizenship- It denied all Jews their citizenship and viewed them as second class citizens. By then the international law allowed basic rights to be extended to persons of proven citizenship before it was later amended to declare human rights to all whether citizens of a country or not. This law thus set the basis for all forms of discrimination on the Jews as they had no human rights in the first place as non-citizens. The definition of a citizen also changed. According to Nazi, a Jew was a person who had the full lineage of a Jewish family or a mixed race person who had three Jewish grandparents. To clarify this law, charts were introduced in which individuals could use to trace their position as German or Jewish.
- Law of protection of the German race through blood and honour- This law forbade any marriages or sexual contact between Germans and Jews. It recognised the Germans as a superior race and had to be preserved and contamination of the blood by non-Germans avoided. The honour part of the law forbade Jews from carrying the German flag which had then been adorned with the swastika and also forbade from any Jews employing Germans in their households.8
The drafting of these laws is said to have drawn inspiration from British attempts to “order” its empire in hierarchal manner in India through martial races. Also, Adolph Hitler seemed to use slavery rules used in the 19th century in the US.9 Apart from Hitler another person who contributed immensely to the formation of these barbaric laws was one Hans Globke. By then, the world was ill placed as condemning the activities of the German government as the two leading world powers had practiced almost similar laws in history which had come to pass. As such, many expected that the harsh laws enacted in Germany under the Jews were momentary and would come to pass. Another aspect that worked for the leader of the Nazi government was that he had obtained absolute powers as the Chancellor and president of the state after the death of President Paul Von Hindenburg. He also had the army service men swearing personally to him and thus obtained absolute political and military power that allowed him to act at his will.
Hitler also drew inspiration of drafting these laws from the Darwin’s theory on survival for the fittest published in the book, “Origin of Species” in the mid 19th century. He also linked this theory on to have been in use earlier in history through “biological racism in the United States as a rationale for slavery and anti-Semitism in Europe as the underlying principle for cultural nationalism”. Another notable application of this law was in Vienna, Austria. Karl von Lueger, the mayor of city in the late 1890’s was openly anti-Semitic and manipulated the anti-Semitic passions of people for political gains which is what Hitler exactly did years later.
Forced emigration
With the Jews denied citizenship, some opted to seek asylum in foreign countries around the world. The Nazi government encouraged it as they viewed the action provided more opportunities to the master race. Obsession with this idea led to the government to adopt another more viscous policy that would ultimately lead to the Second World War: creation of living space for the master race. Other developments in the government seemed to rescind on the earlier intentions of expelling Jews from Germany. With Hitler busy on strategising on acquiring more space for his people one of his point men in government Hermann Goering, assumed enormous powers over the economy. He reversed the process of forced immigration through the “Aryanization” process in April 1938. This procedure sought to nationalise all Jewish property and deny them means to travel out of the country. The final solution to the Jewish question now obtained another direction in planning to deport all the Jews to Madagascar, an island off the Indian Ocean.12
In protecting the master race, Hitler viewed that forced immigration of the Jews reduced contamination and created more living space and opportunities for his people. He lured Jews to explore other opportunities in foreign lands and thus ordered the designing of passports for Jews that only permitted one to leave but never to return. His obsession with creating more living space for the Aryans was to be seen with the annexation of Austria in 1938 without much resistance as he was considered a saviour. In this, country he also ordered the deportation of Jews using the international Jewish conspiracy theory. Several countries around the world accepted the Jews in their countries though quotas were in place to protect excessive immigration.13 All this, time the international world turned a blind eye on the activities of Hitler. Again, Hitler was also convinced of his international appeal after the country successfully hosted the 1936 Olympic Games. Nevertheless, the US convened a conference to discuss the issue of Jews deportation attended by 39 states but there was no agreement reached. This shows that the world was not happy with the activities of Hitler but none dared to raise a finger. As such some historical questions are posed by historians such as, did the holocaust take place because the world failed to act or due to the mere acts of one Adolph Hitler?14
Another attempt to create more living space for the master race saw Hitler’s army men invade Poland on September 1, 1939, Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, 1941 and the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Prior to these invasions, it is clear that Hitler anticipated a harsh reaction from the international community regarding the “final solution” to the Jewish question and his quest for more living space for the master race. He is quoted to have indicated the reaction with a speech to his top brass party members
If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again success in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe.15
During all this time Hitler had the full backing of his army men and several police forces such as the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Gestapo. The SS was a paramilitary unit fielding around one million men under Heinrich Himmler and is accredited with a majority of the human atrocities in the Holocaust. The SA was more significant in the early 1930s when Hitler was rising to power. It was a paramilitary group whose ranking system was adopted by the Nazi party. The Gestapo on the other hand was the regimes secret police. On the “Night of the Long Knives” (also code named “Hummingbird”) the SS and the Gestapo killed all the SA leaders and other political entities who were viewed not to be convincingly loyal to the Fuehrer.16
Concentration camps
With the introduction of the aryanization process, the final solution changed plan to extermination. The SS, SA and the Gestapo were very crucial in the formation and running of concentration camps. Concentration17 camps had been in existence as early as 1933 which were used by the Nazi party to hold political prisoners. The writer thus draws a distinction between these camps and extermination camps. However, it is these early concentration camps in Germany that were later used for extermination before others were established elsewhere such as in Poland, Belgium and Austria. Major Extermination camps included Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
These camps held different categories of people from Soviet prisoners of wars to Eastern Europe intellectuals. As such they were required to wear identify uniforms or colored badges according to their category e.g. communist soviet prisoners wore red triangle badges and yellow for Jews.
Millions died in these camps due to disease, starvation, overwork or the various means used in execution such as shooting, live burning, hanging or poisonous gas chambers. In what was to be called operation 14f13, prisoners in selected camps were killed. Other minor camps flourished as the prisoners provided free labor and as such were set up near factories and mines. Inability to work efficiently only resulted to death of the prisoners in the gas chambers or through other means. Movement of prisoners from one camp to another was often and was done in inhumane cattle transportation tracks and thus many died on their way.
In 1942, Wannasee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich as directed by Himmler announced the use of prisoners in the camps for medical experiments and extermination. As the war progressed, the prisoners increased in number before the German troops began losing the war slowly. By 1943, allied troops had made entry into Germany and other countries with concentration camps thereby freeing them. In total, around 11 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
The 2nd world war
As earlier stated, Hitler had predicted a reaction from the international community over his expansion activities by invading other counties. Fortunately for him, many of the countries he chose to attack had weak armies and thus stronger sympathising nations had to come to their aid. In the process had gained friends and allies in the name of Italy under Mussolini and Japan to form the Axis. All the three had planned to expand their territories. The 1941 attack on Poland marked the beginning of the 2nd World War which forced the international community headed by the US to form a counter union called the Allies. These forces were however not united as the US preferred to work alone and as such gave more room to the German troops to advance.18
Hitler proved to a very gifted man in planning and executing the war. A simple mistake in the attack of England did cost him the war. Another thing that cost him the war was the harsh winter weather in the Soviet Union that forced many of his troops to either die or retreat. By 1944, the troops were partially subdued and many concentration camps prisoners freed. Unfortunately, a number of them later died due to diseases. Unfortunately, with the occupation of Berlin by Allied troops, Hitler himself could not face the embarrassment of losing and thus committed suicide together with his one day old wife. Most of his accomplices in government had escaped the country or surrendered thus bringing an end to a war that claimed over 70 million civilian and military lives, making it the worst human catastrophe in history.
Endnotes
3 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
5 Definition. Holocaust. Web.
6 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
8 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
9 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
12 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
13 Evans, R. J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, London, Basic books 2002, 336 pgs
14 Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005
16 Evans, R. J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, London, Basic books 2002, 336 pgs
17 Weinberg, G. & American Council of Learned Societies, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, New York: Cambridge University Press
18 Evans, R. J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, London, Basic books 2002, 336 pgs
Works cited
- Browning, C., Matthaus, J. & Yad, Y. Origins of the final solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, London arrow Books, 2005,
- Evans, R. J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, London, Basic books 2002,
- Weinberg, G. & American Council of Learned Societies, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995
- Causes of the Second World War. Web.
- Definition. Holocaust. Web.
- Adolf Hitler’s Rise to Power. Web.