Analysis of the Holocaust Historiography - Research Paper Example

The holocaust historiography Name Course Date After the barbarism of genocide that was carried out by Nazis was exposed to the world, historians across the world have been trying to assemble pieces of what exactly happened during that time. The holocaust historiography is trying to find out why the barbaric event took place, how it happens, who was responsible and who executed. The questions have proven difficult to be answered. Holocaust was an extraordinary and complex event with several individuals, group of people, and certain factors contributing to it. The massacre did not occur in a city or a country, it occurs in the entire continent making it complex to understand it. The execution was not outlined in one definitive order but it was done in hundreds of orders. The perpetrators of the crime was so many and all was not Germans; victims was also so many and not all of them was Jews. The Nazi rule that encourage and oversaw the execution was itself a collaboration of people, motivations, interest, and interest. Several historians have been delving into a quagmire of people, ideas, places, interest and many other things in trying to connect a million dots so as to understand what hard questions. The aim of this historiography is to explain how past historians explained how holocaust occurs and what motivated Hitler’s men into currying out the act. The first broad question that has been looked into is about Adolf Hitler as a person and what is Nazism. Many historians for a very long time have been debating the nature of Hitler’s leadership. Analyses have shown that there are two schools of thoughts on how Adolf Hitler ruled NSDAP and Germany. Intentionalist historians such as Dietrich Bracher, Lucy Dawidowicz and Eberhard Jackal supports that Hitler’s form of leadership was ‘strong fuhrer’. The three historians believe that Hitler wielded huge power of Nazis party and national government1. His leadership was so strong and dominant that his personal ideas and opinions became the official position of the government and party. Several intentionalists’ historians who have written about the holocaust believe that Hitler and His inner circle had a long-standing master plan to get rid of the Jewish population in the whole of Europe continent. Intentionalist historian like Dawidowicz believes that Hitler’s plans to exterminate Jews from Europe dates back to 1920s. Other intentionalist historians belong to a school of thought referred to as ‘sonderweg’. These historians argue that Germany attraction to authoritarianism, military conquest, and racial cleansing dates back to 1800 Prussia. The ideas survived for many years and they shaped the new Germany and contributed immensely to the outbreak of world war, the development of Nazi, and after war radical nationalism1. Sonderweg historians argue that Nazism and holocaust were not huge deviations from the way of Germany history; instead they were its predictable endings. A group of historians known as functionalist supports ‘weak fuhrer theory’, they state that Hitler power over the government and Nazi has been overstated by other historians. They believe that Hitler made decisions spontaneously and haphazardly and he did not have any long term strategies. In many occasion, he acted to maintain his position as party leader because it was not secure as many believe. This theory shows that holocaust was a product of anti-Semites in the forces in the Nazis party, as much as it was the will of Hitler1. Ian Kershaw who is a functionalist historian claim that Hitler myth existed2. He argues that perception showing that Hitler dominate his party, most powerful figure, and he manages to overrule the party and country was just a propaganda myth and not the reality that was being spread by Nazis to make Hitler feared by other leaders and nations. The way in which Hitler runs the country and his party is the central question of who actually ordered for the execution to be carried out. From what we have read from the historians, it likely points towards that the final solution was either ordered by Hitler in his own capacity or ordered by his commanders Goering and Himmler at Hitler’s endorsement2. Facts show that holocaust could not have taken place without Hitler’s knowledge or giving it a go ahead. What makes the matter more complicated is that nobody has ever located documented evidence showing that Hitler ordered direct execution of the Jewish community. This missing evidence has brought about a lot of speculation about Hitler’s role in holocaust. Also, there have been several denials from the Germany community claiming that there was no policy from the Hitler’s government on mass killings but it was spontaneous mass killings. Some historians who wrote about holocaust have focused on individuals who facilitated the killings but did not participate in the killings. Among the historians is Hannah Arendt’s who was among the first historians to look into the bureaucratic nature and how the final solution was carried out2. According to him, the people who organized and carried out the killing of 6 million Jews considered themselves as normal human beings who were carrying out a difficult but necessary task. The men were obsessed with things like paper work, transportation, efficiency, and outcomes. Leaders such as Eichmann were totally divorced from the dark reality of the work they were carrying out. Arendt concluded that the final solution to exterminate all the Jews was not put in place until 1941 when Nazis administration realized that it was not possible to deport all the 9 million Jews who were living in Germany. Apart from Nazis there are some other factors that might have contributed to the holocaust. According to the U.S historian David Wyman in his book ‘abandonment of the Jews’, he claimed that the U.S was aware of the ongoing genocide but they did little to prevent or disrupt it2. According to Christopher Browning, propaganda, poor ideology, and peer pressure encourage many young men into participating in mass killings of Jews. In his book Hitler’s willing executioners, Daniel Goldhagen’s wrote that German population brainwashed with anti-Semitism over a long period of time either supported the killing of Jewish community or were apathetic to it. According to him, "eliminationist antisemitism" was a German identity and it was a unique to German, because of this it made them rise against the Jews and kill them. Goldhagen further argued that the ideology grew out in medieval attitudes from a religious point of view and later on the ideology was secularized in the society. Goldhagen writings were mainly a response to Christopher Browning on the book ‘Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland’. Goldhagen wrote mainly about the actions of reserve battalion 101 of the Nazi3. His explanations challenges several aspects of Christopher book, nevertheless, Goldhagen had already opposed the Browning thesis in his thesis review of ordinary men. Daniel book brought about a lot of controversies in U.S and Europe, many historians characterized his work as the extension of historikerstreit. Christopher Browning wrote about reserve police battalion 101which was used by Hitler in First World War to kill and round up Jews for deportation to death camps in German territory inside Poland. In his book, he explained that the men in battalion 101 was not demons or Nazis extremists but was just ordinary young men who was working and have been drafted and found unfit to work for the military. Because many Germans has been brainwashed and many watch the killing of Jews they see the killing of Jews as something not bad and they accepted when they were ordered to round up the Jews and put them in the trains to be transported and if the train rooms was not enough, they kill them by shooting. In some other worst cases, these young men were given orders to kill a certain number of Jews in certain location such as town. In a certain situation, the commander gave them an option of opting out of the work if they found it unpleasant; many choose to opt out and in a battalion of 500 men only 15 remained4. So according to browning, the young men just choose to participate in the barbaric act of killing out of basic obedience to the leadership and peer pressure, not out of hatred or thirst for blood. In 1992, Goldhagen reviewed Christopher book and he agreed with several things Browning found such as the people killed was not as many believe, the men in battalion 101 had an option of not killing, and no German was punished in any way for refusing to participate in the holocaust3. But he disagreed with Goldhagen interpretation that massacre was carried out in the context of ordinary sociological phenomenon of obedience to the leadership. Instead Goldman believes that the men who took part in the killing were not ordinary members of the society instead they were members of extraordinary political culture, the culture of Nazism which was possessed of hallucinatory, dangerous view about the Jewish community. The view against the Jews was just a voluntary barbarism3. Goldhagen argued that every history written about holocaust was flawed because historians treated Germans in the Third Reich as ‘more or less like us,’ they wrongly believe that their sensibilities are approximated to our own. He argued that historians should look at ordinary Germans during the period of Nazis the same way historians examine the Aztecs who believe that human sacrifice should be offered to god so that the sun will always rise every morning. His writings were based on assumption that ordinary Germans during that time were not normal Europeans who are influenced by values of civilizations. He wrote that the ferocity of elimination of the Jews had been pregnant in Germany since mid 19 century and the only thing that Hitler did was to unleash the deeply rooted evil culture that has been brooding in the German ordinary people over a long period of time. The book marked a revisionist challenge to the prevailing question on Germany ordinary people on the final solution. According to British historian named Sir Ian Kershaw who carried out research about the Third Reich, he wrote that the progress that leads to Auschwitz was motivated by nasty form of anti-Semitism that was propagated by the leaders of the Nazi party and the opinion of the ordinary Germans was not different from what was being propagated by Nazi. In his book entitled ‘Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich,’ Ian explained that most ordinary Germans was aware that holocaust was going on but they did not care about what the government was doing to the Jewish community. Other historians like Otto Kulka and David Bankier both from Israel and Aron Rodrique from U.S did not agree with Kershaw explanations about Germany public view on holocaust, while differing, the three historians explains that the term ‘passive complicity’ describes the Germans opinion better than ‘indifference,’ but they agree with Kershaw that there was a rift of opinion about the Jewish community between the Nazi diehards and the ordinary Germans because the ordinary have expressed a view of not liking the Jews rather than hating them. In a different opinion, Goldhagen argued that the term indifference is not acceptable because the vast majority of Germans were active anti-Semitic who were interested in killing the Jews in the cruelest way. According to the historian Frank Bajohr economic gain was not what drove Hitler’s men into committing the horrific act. The Jews population in Europe did not pose any threat to the economy of the Germans people. Their willingness to murder the Jewish population was voluntarily. German scholar Dieter Pohl while agreeing with Bajohr further argued that it is impossible to understand what happened to the Jewish community that was living in Poland, the largest one group of Jews was killed in Poland and those died was around 3 million people, the broader context of the German occupation of Poland and the policies that was implemented could not be understood. Martin Dean an historian from Poland tried to explain the extend of collaboration between the people during the holocaust, he wrote that without Germans occupation of Poland holocaust could not have occurred, and if there was no local assistance in the massacre, the number of the death could not have been that much. On the other hand, though the reality of atrocities took place, there was some local population who tried to save the Jews from being killed. The reality of collaboration between different groups and saving of the Jews by certain population is complex and it cannot be explained in a simple way. While giving their argument Christopher Kobrak and Andrea Schneider differed with Frank Bajohr when it comes to the role of businesses. The two historians argue that big businesses had a role in holocaust. There is evidence showing that big businesses supported Adolf Hitler rise to power but businesses cooperation with Hitler government varied from cooperation to corporation. The economic facts of Third Reich show that there was a more role of businesses community than the use of slave labor or other forms of involvement in the massacre. After all, the bigger part of Hitler’s government economic policy was antithetical to the interest of large corporations. The reason why and how large businesses supported Third Reich regime is a complex matter that can only be dealt through ‘fascism’ a type of capitalist crisis-management. When Nazis regime company archives become available, the writing about the companies in official and non official way has increased tremendously. Many historians who have written have shown that hyper-inflation in Germany between 1922-1923 resulted in money losing its value and devaluation of human life due to hard economic times. The country was humiliated after they were defeated and forced by superpowers to pay reparations, insecurity and unemployment grew making the country and sentiments of civil war started and this undermined the civil foundations of the country and Christian values that has characterized Germany society for a long time. The atmosphere of civil war and violence according to historians Dirk Walter and Richard Bessel started producing expressions of anti-Semitism. The fighting in the streets of Munich and Berlin between the two warring factions that is right-wing organizations and the radical left was a common thing from 1920. The Jewish population who fled to Germany during civil wars in the neighboring countries became a soft target for the paramilitary group of the radical right. This could be a partial explanation of massive killings as written by Goldhagen. In 1924, aggressive anti-Semitism statements decreased and from that time many ordinary Germans were easily manipulated and they accept attraction of false magicians. Business community and professionals like teachers and doctors played a big role in radicalization. Historian Geoffrey Giles who studied Nazi students’ movements in Hamburg explains that the main occupations of students during that time were anti-Semitism. The students spent most of their time and energy fighting Judaism and Jewish financial capital. Ulrich Herbert who is an historian in his studies on young population from the right wing argued that radicalization was common among the academic youths, most of the youth joined Nazi party. Some of the reasons that made young intellectuals to join such movements were the humiliation during Versailles Treaty and communism. Students anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism were shown in their activities. The radicalization provided soil that grew Nazi terror and genocide that followed later. In his writings, Michael Kater explains that when the competition between Jewish doctors and Germany doctors became intense, Nazi organization of doctors started anti-Semitism radicalization so as to defeat the Jewish doctors. In conclusion, several things happened during holocaust and the historians are still trying to explain how it was planned, who planned and what drove the Nazis men into committing the atrocities. The event was extra ordinary and complex event with several individuals, group of people, and certain factors contributing to it. The massacre did not occur in a city or a country, it occurs in the entire continent making it complex to understand it. Several historians such as Dietrich Bracher, Lucy Dawidowicz, Eberhard Jackal, Christopher Browning, Ian Kershaw, Hannah Arendt’s, and many others argued their positions according to their understanding on how holocaust took place. There were agreement in some of their explanation and they disagree at some point. Their explanation and arguments has provided a lot of understanding to the readers. It provides a lot of knowledge on what could have made normal human beings into committing terrible acts that are unbelievable to the future generations. Bibliography Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. 1975. The war against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 5 Höss, Rudolf, and Steven Paskuly. 1992. Death dealer: the memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess. 1991. "The Good old days": the Holocaust as seen by its perpetrators and bystanders. New York: Free Press. Bracher, Karl Dietrich. 1970. The German dictatorship; the origins, structure, and effects of national socialism. New York: Praeger Publishers. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. 1996. Hitler's willing executioners: ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf. Rhodes, Richard. 2002. Masters of death: the SS-Einsatzgruppen and the invention of the Holocaust. New York: A.A. Knopf. Bar-On, Dan. 1995. Fear and hope: three generations of the Holocaust. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Kershaw, Ian. 1999. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris. New York: W.W. Norton. Kershaw, Ian. 1999. Hitler. New York: W.W. Norton. Glover, Jonathan. 2000. Humanity: a moral history of the twentieth century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bazyler, Michael J., and Frank M. Tuerkheimer. 2014. Forgotten trials of the Holocaust. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1820927. Read More