Hitlers Master Plan to Annihilate the Jews Prior to 1941 - Essay Example

Name: Topic: Hitler’s master plan to annihilate the Jews prior to 1941 Institution: Date of submission: Instructor Hitler’s master plan to annihilate the Jews prior to 1941 Adolf Hitler was the chief architect who formulated what is known as the Nazi ideology. Born as well as brought up in a small town in Austria, Adolf Hitler failed as an art student and later became a member of the German army as a corporal. Just like many of his fellow compatriots, he was humiliated and embittered the defeat Germany had suffered in the First World War1. He was further exasperated by the terms of the Versailles agreement that was ratified in the year 1918. The treaty required Germany to give up most of its vast territories and pay heavy debts as a result of the war2. When Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, several restrictions against the Jews were legislated between 1933 and 1939. During this time, Adolf Hitler strengthened his position by ending democracy in Germany by invoking the enabling act, which suspended individual freedoms and gave immense power to the executive. His campaign of violence, terror and intimidation quickly escalated as he begun to ostracize the Jews in all sectors of the society including political, economic, social and cultural3. Adolf Hitler was able to utilize government institutions including the police, the courts, the media, and schools, to implement his racist ideology. His ideology was that the Germans were racially superior and that the struggle for survival was between the Aryan Germans and the other inferior races4. This, coupled with the racial ideology of the Nazis that was as a result of Adolf Hitler’s intentional acts, led to the holocaust, which involved the brutal torture, murder and persecution of Jews in concentration camps throughout the Germany Empire. Although the Jews only comprised of less than one percent of the entire Germany population, Adolf Hitler used anti-Semitism as a political weapon to achieve popular support, laying the blame on Jews with regard to the problems faced by Germany, and executing his master plan of annihilating them5. In the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler found a political home in the Nazi party that despised the democratic Germany under the Weimar government that had been established shortly after the defeat of Germany in the First World War. Adolf Hitler solely blamed Jews and Marxist for Germany’s predicament6. Using his charisma, Adolf Hitler quickly rose through the ranks to reach the top of the radical, militant party, and became its leader. By the year 1923, the ranks of the Nazis had grown up to 50000 as a result of the social unrest and economic crisis that had plagued Germany7. In that same year, Adolf Hitler led the Nazi party in an attempted coup, called the beer hall putsch, but was unable to get the control of the government fully. As a result of his role in the attempted coup, Adolf Hitler was tried and sentenced to five year's imprisonment for treason8. While in prison, he wrote an autobiography in which he outlined his plans and vision for a new Germany. In the book, Adolf Hitler notes that he became an active anti-Semite during his past years in Vienna, where he learnt about social Darwinism9. The theory of social Darwinism was intended to apply the theory of natural selection by Charles Darwin to human society, visualizing the entire human history as a struggle for superiority among several social groups identified by race, class, ethnicity, or class10. Adolf Hitler incorporated some elements of the Malthusian economic theory in his writing11. The theory suggests that the earth’s cycles of diseases, natural disasters as well as its limited capacity to produce food, fundamentally restricted the growth of the human population. Adolf Hitler skillfully combined and adopted these theories into his writing about the Germany nationalist movement, whose ideology idealized the land and glorified peasant life12. From the combination of historical, social, economic, and mystical elements, Adolf Hitler propagated the ideology that thrust the need for racial struggle at the center of human affairs13. Adolf Hitler fully believed that he had come up with a solution for understanding the complexity of the world. According to him, a person’s characteristics, behavior, abilities, or attitudes were determined by the racial makeup of that individual14. In his view, all races, groups, or people had the traits that were immutably inherited from one generation to another. Therefore, Adolf Hitler believed that there is no single individual who was capable of conquering the innate qualities of a race15. Although the notion of an individual human impulse to survive, Adolf Hitler, just like other people who believed in social Darwinism, he believed that the members of a certain race or ethnicity had an instinct for survival that was collectively shared16. He believed that the continuation of a race was hugely dependent on ability of its members to transmit the innate characteristics to the future generations. The interpretation of this notion led to the loathing of interactions and intermingling between people of different races because it could cause pollution of the great elements of a race and lead to its disintegration17. In his thinking, Adolf Hitler believed that the interaction of the Jews with the Germans would overtime, threaten and possibly extinguish his race. According to his theory of survival, Adolf Hitler largely believed in the need for acquiring living space. He asserted that each race was compelled to struggle with other races for space and resources on which to grow and develop18. Indeed, in his speech at Erlangen, Germany, Adolf Hitler stressed that every being strives for expansion and every nation strives for world domination19. Those who thrived in the territorial competition would go on and increase their numbers, hence overwhelming other smaller populations on near them. The smaller or lesser races that would be weakened due to lack of space to live in would in due course stagnate and become extinct. Ultimately, Adolf Hitler judged the success or failure of a race according to the size of its population and the territory it controlled20. According to him, a great nation controlled large area of land and the weak ones had little or no land at all. The ultimate goal of the survival of a race was dependent on the peaceful coexistence of the race with its neighbors, but only after defeating them and acquiring their limited resources21. Adolf Hitler believed that the struggle for survival was not an impartial competition in which all races would be equally entitled to the supremacy. He believed in a hierarchy of groups in which some innately gifted races that possessed certain traits such as intelligent, integrity and beauty where other races is were essentially defective by nature, exhibiting traits such as stupidity or ugliness22. Adolf Hitler held that all races were competing against each other for the limited resources and that racial interactions or mixing would weaken the good traits and transit bad ones23. As result, he believed that the races at the top of the hierarchy were threatened by infiltration and destruction by the races at the bottom. In order to survive, the superior race must not only isolate from the lesser races but also overpower and control the ones that threaten to overwhelm them. Adolf Hitler argued that the Germans were in danger because of the misguided leadership under Weimar’s government after the First World War24. According to him, the accommodation of races that Nazis viewed as innately inferior and by granting them equally rights just like the German citizens, the nation had encouraged the mixing of inferior foreigners and the Aryan Germans. Such interracial mixing would lead to offspring with undesirable characteristics that would contaminate the Aryan purity25. He believed the offspring would not loyal to Germany because of their race. To make the matters worse, the German republic under Weimar’s government allowed the unlimited reproductions of what Adolf Hitler considered degenerate, biologically flawed races that would have a negative influence on the good health of the entire race26. Adolf Hitler viewed this as recklessness and lack of respect to the law of nature by posing a huge risk to the purity of the Aryan race. As a result of these circumstances, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party outlined in unequivocal terms, their racial enemies. Key among the races enlisted was the Jews. Similarly, people who had physical or mental disabilities were viewed as unfit Germans who were considered a biological threat to the nation’s health27. According to Adolf Hitler, each of the enemies posed a particular collective threat that was a bit different but the essence was similar28. By basing their rhetoric on suspicions and prejudices, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis made a case for the exclusion and segregation of Jews, whom they considered the biggest threat to their racial purity29. Indeed, in Adolf Hitler’s mind, there is no race that was a dangerous and threatening than the Jews. He viewed them as a race that was motivated by instinct to multiply in numbers and dominate others. At the same time, he argued that their means of expansion were primarily doubtful. Since Adolf Hitler connected racial continuation to the acquisition of territories, he insisted that the Jews had no land that they could call their own, and thus they should not exist at all. As a matter of fact, he theorized that when the Jewish people were expelled from Israel by the romans over 2000 years ago, and ended up scattered across the empire; they should start a gradual decline that would ultimately lead to their extinction30. The fact that the Jews continued to exist and even thrive seemed contrary to want was expected. Adolf Hitler established that they must have adapted to their landlessness coupled with cultivated characteristics such as deviousness, deceitfulness, and cunning to ensure their survival31. As a result, he viewed their very existence as defying the intended course of human history. Adolf Hitler believed that the Jews avoided extinction by migrating and attaching themselves to other existing communities or states and advocating their interest at the expense of the native people in the territories they entered. According to him, the Jews were the complete opposite of the Aryans in nature. This is because in his view, the Jews pursued race mixing, equality and assimilation, the Nazis highly regarded purity of bloodlines and hierarchies; where’s the Jews weakened states by growing international businesses and institutions that encouraged interdependence among nations, the Germans valued loyalty and national strength. Adolf Hitler portrayed the Jews as parasites who utilized devious methods such as race mixing, financial profiteering, and media control to dull the race consciousness of the host nation and weaken its capacity to defend itself. In a speech that he gave at Nuremberg in January 1923, Adolf Hitler voiced his concern that unless the Jewish people were expelled soon, they would Judaize the German people within a short time. He believed that the Soviet Union was the first victim of the Jews and that they used the communist state to subjugate and enslave the Slavic populations32. Just like other Nazi leaders and nationalist politicians who were right wing, Adolf Hitler visualized the Jews cultivating suitable environments for a soviet revolutionary takeover in Germany that would cause enormous hunger, homelessness, and unemployment33. He viewed communism as a tool designed by the Jews to cover up their control and dominance over the Asiatic people of Eastern Europe, and not as a legitimate economic and political structure34. The fact that two in every three European Jews lived in Eastern Europe further supported his claim that the Jews had infiltrated the region. Additionally, a false publication known as the protocols of the elders of Zion alleged to document the clandestine plans of Jewish leaders who were contriving to take over the world through means such as controlling the international economy and the media35. This leaked document further fuelled anti-Jewish paranoia, thus paving way for worldwide anti-Semitic political movements. For Adolf Hitler, this gave a false impression of the Jews as aggressors who were silently planning to weaken the nation and covertly influence the forces that provide guidance to the government36. This justified and allowed preemptive action against the Jews. He noted that Germany was threatened by a very low birth rate due to the lack of living space that physically constrained the growth of the nation. Adolf Hitler and many other Germans blamed this predicament on the Versailles treaty, which forced Germany to give up valuable land to its neighbors. He and the fellow Nazis believed that Germany was losing the struggle for land and population to inferior Slavs who had large parts of the continent37. In order to survive, Adolf Hitler argued that Germany must go to war and break the grip that the enemies had on the country, recover the territorial land lost during world war one and establish a large empire in the east38. He warned that the opportunity would be lost if the Aryan did not act decisively, they would soon be subjugated by the communist Jews and swept away by the uncivilized and the barbaric masses. For this reason, Adolf Hitler envisioned a Germany conquest that would annihilate the Jews, who he considered the enemy of all people. He preached the tautology of how the obliteration of the Jews would weaken the soviet state and allow the acquisition of lands for Germans to live in; and on the other hand the international Jewry would be dealt a decisive blow as a result of Germany’s natural claim to territorial lands39. Based on this ideological war against the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler led the Nazis in the planning and execution of the holocaust40. His theories led to the persecution of the races that he considered inferior, and following the commencement of the war, and various groups throughout Germany were subjugated41. The successful fulfillment of his ideas was however, hugely dependent on the total unity and cooperation of the nation that had to be made up of race conscious Aryan Germans who strictly obeyed and conformed to the Nazi ideology42. Adolf Hitler demanded the unconditional tolerance, obedience and nor criticism from the public. Moreover, Adolf Hitler urged the Germans to suppress and eliminate the racial threats they encounter, capture territory from the Slavs, and refill it with Aryan Germans, a process that would require the elimination of all threats especially from the Jews43. Bibliography Primary sources United States holocaust memorial museum, 2007. Nazi ideology and the holocaust. The holocaust: pp. 11-20. Zuccotti, S. (1999). The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press. Altman, L. J. (2005). Adolf Hitler: evil mastermind of the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, N.J., Enslow Publishers. Berenbaum, M., & Peck, A. J. (2002). The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined. Bloomington [u.a.], Indiana Univ. Press. Top of Form Bergen, D. L. (2009). The Holocaust: a concise history. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Secondary sources Berenbaum, M., & Peck, A. J. (2002). The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined. Bloomington [u.a.], Indiana Univ. Press. Simo Muir, & Hana Worthen. (2013). Finland's Holocaust: Silences of History. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, GB. Spicer, K. P. (2007). Anti-Semitism, Christian ambivalence, and the Holocaust. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=216519. Teodorescu, J., & Glajar, V. (2011). Local History, Transnational Memory in the Romanian Holocaust. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=678849. Bottom of Form Read More