Pre-World War II Germany and What Led to Holocaust

IB Extended Essay

The Special Conditions and Situations in pre-World War II Germany that led to the Creation and Acceptance of the Idea of the Holocaust

The actual word holocaust simply refers to any widespread human disaster. However, The Holocaust has a much more powerful definition. It was the almost complete destruction of the Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany (Encarta). The beginning of the Holocaust can be traced back to 1935, when the Nazi regime came into power and produced the definition of the term "Jew." Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, regardless of current religious beliefs. Also, if an individual was descended from two fully Jewish grandparents and belonged to the Jewish religious community, was married to a Jew, or was a legitimate or illegitimate child of a Jew, he or she was considered fully Jewish (Reich Legal Gazette). From 1933 to 1939, Jews were eliminated from economic life. Businesses were taken away, Jewish lawyers and doctors lost their Aryan clients, and Jews lost their jobs at Aryanized firms. Jewish shops and synagogues were burned during the Night of the Broken Glass in response to the assassination of a German diplomat by a young Jew in Paris. After the Poland invasion in 1939, Jews were forced into filthy and overcrowded ghettos. Finally, in 1941, Jews were taken to concentration camps where many were killed in gas chambers or by slave labor. In total, over 6 million Jews as well as millions of Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's witnesses, communists and other targeted groups were killed in the Holocaust through such instruments as concentration camps, ghettos, and orders to kill Jews on the spot (Encarta).

When looking back on the Holocaust, the question arises on how something like this could happen. Why was nothing done to stop the murder of millions of people? How could individuals simply sit back and watch this happen? The answer lies in the special conditions in pre-war Germany that allowed for the creation, acceptance, and practice of the idea of genocide. As a result of the creation of a group of outsiders, internal strife, powerful leadership, propaganda, extreme organization, and the failure of social controls, the scene was set for the Holocaust to occur (Mazian ix-x).

By creating a group of outsiders, the victim group is separated from the regular citizens and dehumanized. Only when the outsiders are not viewed as human can their murders be accepted. Internal strife resulting from economic distress builds up hostility that, when released, can lead to the hatred of the outside group, allowing for their destruction. Powerful leadership allows for the acceptance of an influential leader's ideas because of the enormous power and influence he or she holds over the population. Propaganda can lead to genocide because people are led to believe that they are actually doing the right thing by accepting the murder of others. Strict organization allows a plan for genocide to be carried out without a chance for question or rejection, thus leading to acceptance. Lastly, the failure of social control allows for genocide because if there is no one to speak against an idea, it cannot be rejected. These six conditions all existed in Germany at the time prior to the Holocaust and they allowed the idea of the Holocaust to be created and accepted (Mazian ix-x).

In order for German citizens to accept the idea of the Holocaust, they had to view Jews as a non-human group. A necessary ingredient of genocide is the "dehumanization" of the victim group (Weinberg 115). The Jews in pre-World War II Germany were dehumanized by being viewed as outsiders. The Jews were blamed for all of Germany's social problems. This accusation served to sever the Jewish community from the social body and thus led to the perception of Jews as outsiders. If the Jews were seen as outsiders, then they were not considered of the same value as German citizens; therefore, it was not seen as wrong to treat Jews as if they were not human. This idea allowed for the acceptance of the mass killing of Jews (Mazian 129).

The severing of Jews from the social body began as early as 1781 with the completion of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm's Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (On the Civic Betterment of the Jews) which concentrated on the need to change the contemporary Jew and his religion. In the 1840s, Frederick William IV concluded that Jews constituted an unassimmilable minority group in a Christian state. In 1871, the Imperial Constitution confirmed limited equal rights for Jews. The concept of Jews being different was laid down much earlier than the first thoughts of the final solution, but it provided a strong foundation for the acceptance of the genocide of Jews. In 1873, Germany suffered