Genocide- The beginnings and why the Holocaust happened

2. 1. The military
2. The economy
3. Genocide
1. Responsibility for the holocaust
4. The Civilian struggle
5. Resistance and repression
6. Defeat

3.  Pre war Germany saw an increase in Anti-
Semitic rhetoric. However this was not a clear
indicator of the Holocaust.
 During the war it was often dismissed as
rumour, propaganda and exaggeration.
 The Holocaust was not purely the work of the
Nazis
 It required an ‘active minority’
 And a ‘passive majority’

4.  German expansion led to the inheritance of 3
million Jews in Poland alone
 The original plan of deportation was costly
 Short term solution was resettlement in
Ghetto’s
 Small scale killings were perpetrated by German
Army units, Russian Army units and local ethnic
groups.
 Little or no persuasion was needed and often the
German Army took a back seat in these events.

5.  June 1941 saw a change in policy and tactics
 SS Einsatzgroupen were used in the USSR with the
explicit task of exterminating Jews
 They were non combat units operating behind the
main line of advance.
 Killings took the form of mass shootings after
rounding up all the Jews in the area.
 Exposed the limitations of this tactic
 Raising the issue to Nazi leadership of a much
needed ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish question.
 Prior to 1942 there was no operational genocide

6.  The Wannsee Conference officialised the genocide
 A brief meeting not attended by Hitler
 Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich (SS)
 Organised by Adolf Eichmann
 Outlined plans to industrialise the killings using gas
 Objective was total elimination of all European Jews
 Throughout 1942 work camps became death camps
 Jews were cleared from the Ghettos
 Of Poland's original three million 4000 survived
 1943 to 1944 saw an increase in the genocide
efforts, estimates put total numbers at six million.

7.  Many similarities with the Jews in terms of being
subject to broad and ranging prejudice
 Subject to official persecution under Weimar
 Classified by the Nazi’s in the same terms as
Jews and suffered similar gradualist
discrimination

8.  Intentionalists – Flemming and Dawidowicz
 Hitler was key, committed to extermination at early stage of his
political career. Led to gradualist state persecution and eventually
genocide.
 Goldhagen’s ‘collective executioners’
 Structuralists – Schleunes
 Reject long term plan theory
 No clear objectives and rival policies existed
 Result of chaotic nature rather than grand design
 Improvisation by the military, individuals and organisations to
deal with the human problem of Eastern Europe in 1941.
 Hitler not sole responsibility but still guilty

9.  Structuralists distance themselves from
Goldhagen in that they do not accept the anti-
German generalisations his theory rests on.
 Sources reveal it is often the more mundane factors
that drove these acts pre and post 1942.
▪ Peer Pressure
▪ Boredom
▪ Alcohol
▪ Cowardice
▪ Careerism
▪ Context of war and a foreign country

10.  Controversy hinders rational analysis, however...
 No clear programme till 1941
 No written orders from Hitler, though Himler stated in 1944 that
he had received a Fuhrer’s order to “give priority to the total
solution of the Jewish question”.
 Plausible given the non interventionist approach taken by Hitler,
encouraging initiatives from below so long as they were inline
with his ideological vision.
 Autumn 1941 a lose leadership policy on extermination was
formed
 Wannsee 1942, a clear, industrialised state orchestrated genocide
agreed by all Nazi party representatives.
 Therefore the Final Solution could be considered a
pragmatic response rather than deliberate ideological
intent.