The Holocaust has become a contentious issue in recent years with arguments varying from whether it was the first genocide, how it came about and even as to whether it occurred at all. There had been other events that historians have viewed as genocides, such as the Armenian Massacres by the Turks or the Germans, under Von Trotha`s instruction, against the Herero and Nama tribes of Namibia in the early twentieth century. Annika Mombauer looking at the Herero case viewed the event as genocide, claiming that if the intentions were present “the treatment of the Herero did indeed amount to genocide” (1). The Holocaust, or as it sometimes referred to Shoah (even the name is up for debate), is set apart from other genocides, in as much as it relates specifically to the massacre of the Jewish race in an industrialized manner, whilst also excluding other contemporaneous sufferers such as gypsies, who were also persecuted by the Nazi movement. The individual naming of the Jewish genocide suggests it was set apart from other events in its barbarous nature, whilst at the same time obtaining a mythical status within the pantheon of man’s inhumanity to man. Ian Kershaw made a similar point observing that the term Holocaust “has been taken to imply an almost sacred uniqueness of terrible events exemplifying absolute evil, a specifically Jewish fate standing in effect outside the normal historical process” (2).
The question of how the Holocaust came in to being, or how it achieved such levels of persecution, has long been debated by historians. They have generally been split into two camps, the intentional and functional outlooks. The intentional outlook views the Holocaust as the natural culmination of Hitler’s plans to be rid of the Jews that he had held since his earliest days either before entering into politics, his unshakeable world view. Christopher Browning states that: “”Hitler decided on the mass murder of the Jews in the 1920s and thereafter worked with consciousness and calculation toward that goal” (3). The functional outlook sees Hitler’s role as the provider of an ideology that was put into practise by others in a state system that saw competing departments interpret his ideologies in such a way that when developed they could potentially spiral out of control into an almost never-ending kaleidoscope of possibilities. Browning also observed that in the functional argument no specific Führer order was required because: “The system’s automatic mechanisms for cumulative radicalization more than Hitler’s ideology and leadership explained the origins of the Final Solution” (4). Personally I fall into the functionalist camp.
INTENTIONALIST ARGUMENT
For the intentionalist argument to work it would have to be shown that from an early part of his political career Hitler was not only promulgating anti-Semitic language and activities but was also displaying a murderous intent towards the Jews. Ian Kershaw makes the point that “In truth, we do not know for certain why, nor even when, Hitler turned into a manic and obsessive anti-Semite” (5) this would be essential knowledge for the intentionalists rather than being left to decipher his anti-Semitic origins through the Führer myth. Hitler began to turn against the Jews roughly about the time he started equating European Jewry with Bolshevism, believing that both needed destroying if Europe was to be freed, ultimately: “The path to the Holocaust, intertwined with the showdown with Bolshevism, was prefigured in such notions” (6). This outlook is consistent with the view intentionalists hold that, whilst the Hitler Myth of Hitler always being solidly and virulently anti-Semitic, it was most likely a conversion he made after entering into politics. For example Mein Kampf was the ramblings of a person infused with anti-Semitic sentiments along the lines of popular Social Darwinist theorizing of the time. AJP Taylor famously compared Hitler’s musings to that of a coffee-house dreamer. Hitler was most likely influenced during his time in Vienna by a particularly virulent strain of anti-semitism combined with Aryan eugenics theories espoused by the likes of Arthur De Gobineau. It is also true that his unshakeable world view was changeable, in Mein Kampf Hitler made it clear that due to racial links Germany`s natural international partner was Great Britain. Despite this he was content to distance himself from Great Britain when he deemed it necessary, too much should not be read into the veracity of Hitler’s early statements, especially those regarding the Jews and whether those views represented the burgeoning aspirations of an intentional genocide. Ultimately Hitler’s anti-Semitism was a convenience rather than an unbending principle, he “turned the ideology of a minority into a movement of racial persecution” (7)
PROBLEMS WITH INTENTIONLISM
Anti-Semitism was used by the early Nazi party as a matter of expediency as opposed to some deeply held belief, by the mid-1920s anti-Semitic speeches had reduced in quantity and violence to be replaced with the threat of Bolshevism as Hitler tried to maintain a broad appeal for as wide an audience as possible. Clive Emsley observed that: “An analysis of Hitler’s writings and speeches from the origins of the Nazi Party through to the outbreak of World War 2 suggests that he shifted his language to suit changing audiences and changing priorities” (8). It should also be noted that Hitler was always wary of the effect his speeches had and was likely to curtail a lot of the rhetoric, whilst seeking electable respectability amongst the general public. He showed his ability to act for expediency and for the benefit of public image with purge of the more brutal anti-Semitic elements of the Nazi Party in the SA (Sturmabteilung) during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 and the toning down of anti-Semitism during the 1936 Olympics. The shackles didn’t come off until the outbreak of the Second World War as observed by B.J.Wendt: “Room for man-oeuvre for the regime was much more limited in 1933 than after the beginning of the war in 1939, when there was no longer any need to make concessions to the outside world” (9).
Another argument against the intentionalist outlook was the actions of the Nazi Party when they came to power; the Jews had been little more than a convenient scapegoat in most forms of Nazi propaganda and yet there was no plan in place on how to deal with the Jewish problem once power was obtained and “there were few detailed proposals as to how this could be achieved” (10). Persecution was not a wholly and solely Jewish preserve and the attacks came in a variety of different forms, ad-hoc violence and state policy, but also in peaks and troughs with calm and dangerous periods. The first law created to protect the German race from those deemed unfit was a general law in 1933 for sterilization of the mentally ill and the physically handicapped, not the Jews. This policy continued alongside the persecution of the Jews up to the outbreak of war and the t-4 euthanasia programme. Also an early attempt at a boycott of Jewish shops met with very little popular support and was dropped earlier than expected as “not everyone in Germany was willing to accept the new regime`s anti-Semitic measures” (11) though this may have been as much to do with general lack of interest on the part of the German people rather than any revulsion they felt at the boycott. Ian Kershaw also stressed the point that whilst there may have been a latent anti-Semitism inherent within parts of the populace many turned their backs rather than supported the boycotts, he noted that “most people did not vote for the Nazi Party because of its anti-Semitic message, but the underlying hostility towards Jews meant that voters were not deterred by the Nazis` anti-Semitic rhetoric” (12).
LEGALIZATION AND INCREASED PERSECUTION
During the 1930s the slant towards anti-Semitism became more and more prominent in everyday life, for example, early on the Jehovah Witnesses came under more direct pressure from the Nazis than the Jews did. Browning made the point that the Jewish Question early on was just one part of a greater whole to the Nazis claiming the “Nazi Jewish policy was part of a wider demographic project that aimed at a racial restructuring of Eastern Europe” (13). Gradually both Jews and Jehovah Witnesses became eased out of normal society via statutory law as they were excluded from a variety of employment sectors. Jews were banned from civil service, inter marriage with Aryans and Jewish doctors were only allowed to treat Jewish patients, segregation was gradual, specific and most frighteningly it was legal. One Jewish eyewitness to the early stages of harassment, Victor Klemperer, described it in his diaries, “I have truly always felt German. I have always imagined: the twentieth century and Mitteleuropa was different from the Fourteenth century and Romania. Mistake”(14). These actions weren’t those of a predetermined master plan to culminate in genocide, they were steps that were taken further each time as the Führer became more emboldened as his position strengthened. Just because a form of segregation occurs it does not necessarily follow that there will be a violent conclusion, state sponsored or otherwise, the segregation of Catholics in Britain was reduced gradually through parliamentary means. This quasi legal policy changed with the Kristallnacht pogrom, S.Friedlander observed: “the pogrom of November 9 and 10 marked a major turning point in the pre war persecution of Jews in Germany” (15).
KRISTALLNACHT AND AD HOC POLICY
The Kristallnacht pogrom changed the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany, the Nazi leadership’s perception of public opinion towards the Jews and also highlights perfectly the rather ad hoc nature of Nazi anti-Semitism rather than any pre-planned nature. The pogrom came about as a consequence of the assassination of a German attache in Paris by a Polish Jew called Herschel Grynszpan. Ever the opportunists the Nazi Party seized upon this to increase anti-Jewish sentiments, Mombauer and Waites made the point that “like the Reichstag Fire in 1933, when the new leaders were quick to react against communists, this presented the regime with an excellent pretext for extending and intensifying its anti-Jewish programme” (16). It was an episode that was wantonly adhered to by its perpetrators and transformed Nazi policy from one of legality to one of barbarity. The reaction to the pogrom was a mixture of disgust, whilst recognizing the futility and inherent risks of speaking out. “The Broad mass of the people have not condoned the destruction” (17) was the view of the Social Democrats who also observed that there was a tacit support “there are people among the working class who do not defend the Jews” (18). The lack of uniformity was captured in Bavaria, where it was noted that the pogrom had been somewhat counterproductive “the incidents enabled unnecessary sympathy for the Jews to come to the surface, in both town and countryside” (19). It was an act that returned Germany to Medieval times and there were fears it would reawaken the worst excesses of the SA, Kershaw described it as “a quasi-medieval orgy of destruction” (20). The general indifference of the public towards the pogrom led the Nazi leadership to think the German people had little real interest in the fate of the Jews: “Following the November pogrom, the Nazi leadership may have concluded that, if the methods to solve the Jewish question did not visibly offend the sensibilities of the German people, they would be indifferent to its solution” (21). This outlook highlights how reactionary and opportunistic Nazi anti-Semitic policy was and how it wasn’t until the period after the pogrom that something akin to the germ of an idea to the solution arose.
THE WANSSEE CONFERENCE
Another reason for the change in attitude towards the Jewish Question was the demonization of the Jews in a state propaganda exercise. From school textbooks to films like Jud Suss (1940) by Veit Harlan, education and culture was exploited to condition the populace with regards to the perceived Jewish threat. Subsequently the Jew became a mythical figure for the regime as something or someone to attribute all the ills of society to “After the installation of the Nazis in power, anti-Semitism appeared more clearly than ever as a substitute for class war” (22). The Wanssee Conference of the 20th January 1942 was arranged to coordinate a Final Solution to the Jewish question and is pointed to by intentionalists as proof of a pre-determination; Michael Burleigh contradicted this view, “The Wannsee Conference did not inaugurate the Final Solution” (23). If anything it was a rare moment of organizational skill by the Nazi Party, the conference tied some loose ends and brought a variety of competing agencies together united in a common goal. The evacuation of Jews, couched in bland bureaucratic language and the eventual codified method of use, the gassing of undesirables, was already taking place before the conference, therefore it couldn’t be claimed to be part of the intentional view. Burleigh observed how it was a mere rubber stamping episode “It had become a formal sit-down between mass murderers and civil servants” (24). Kershaw noted that between the cancellation of the original meeting and the time of the conference “Hitler had given his basic decision to kill all the Jews of Europe” (25).
ANTI-SEMITISM IN CLIENT STATES
Another problem with the idea of the Holocaust being solely a product of ideology is the lack of anti-Semitic activity amongst the Nazi puppet states in Central and Western Europe where most satellite states had to have the policy enforced. In Eastern Europe where there was already a degree of anti Jewish feeling the pogroms were large-scale and at their worst in the Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Latvian Auxiliary Security Police performed the killing for the local authorities, who let nature take its course in a Malthusian natural population check style of policy. The Hungarian Jews were rounded up by Germans, the French employed bureaucratic resistance to the question, which is odd given their history of anti-Semitism especially during the Dreyfus affair. For the Ustashe in Croatia it was a Balkan, in particular anti-Serbian, not anti-Semitic ideology. The Italians “embarked on a rose-water style policy towards the Jews” (26) flitting between bouts of Zionism and anti-Semitic legislation as the mood suited Mussolini. Similarly to Hitler his anti-Semitism was opportunistic, using Zionism as an anti-British tool or berating the Italians lack of anti-Semitic zeal claiming “In Italy there are 20,000 people with weak backs who are moved by the fate of the Jews” (27).
THE FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH
Unsurprisingly given the subject matter there is relatively little documentation regarding true intentions towards the Jews from the earliest stages of the regime to the Holocaust itself. It is for this reason and the adaptability and inconsistency of the early Nazi writings and propagandizing it is difficult to accept the argument that the Holocaust was intentional from the beginning. Browning makes a similar point seeing “the development of Nazi Jewish policy as evolutionary rather than programmatic but at the same time credits Hitler with making the key decisions” (28). A more convincing argument, especially given the randomly ad hoc nature of the competing agencies of the Nazi state, is that it was an off the cuff style of policy, adapting and reacting wherever required. This approach is known as the functionalist approach seeing the Nazis as picking and choosing its moments to espouse and act upon anti-Semitic doctrine. In the mid-1920s it was dropped for anti-Marxism, around the time of the Berlin Olympics it was dropped as matter of expediency. Genocide was not really considered an option until after the outbreak of war, up until that point ostracizing, forced emigration, repatriation, ghettoization and a degree of natural wastage through public works schemes were the favoured options. There was a distinct lack of direction or true intellectual ideology at times that caused a random application of the racial doctrine, Joachim Fest observed: “The lack of any clear scientific authority made racism all the easier to use as an instrument of power, and no attempt was ever made to define it more precisely, since its very vagueness lent it more readily to terrorism” (29).
GHETTOIZATION
Very few policies created by the Nazi regime in relation to the Jewish Question better exemplify the ad hoc nature of Jewish policy than that of Ghettoization and repatriation that was to become a precursor to the Final Solution. Christopher Browning observed that “ghettoization played a vital role in the process of an unplanned cumulative radicalization that lead to the Final Solution” (30). The Jews after being moved east into the General Government were collected in Ghettos as a temporary move, whilst they awaited transport to anywhere that would take them. The ghettoization policy proved to be a relatively piecemeal one in both planning and application, Browning noticed that “Ghettoization was in fact carried out at different times in different ways for different reasons on the initiative of local authorities” (31) these weren’t the actions of a regime with a plan set in stone from the beginning. The fall of France led to discussions right up to the Wannsee Conference about a colony off Madagascar for the Jews but the failure to defeat Britain derailed this plan as the British Navy maintained control of the seas. All the while the numbers heading east increased and it was this that probably led to extermination being considered as a viable option, this was probably more to prevent the spread of disease to the German population than down to ideological concerns.
GERMAN PUBLIC OPINION
Another area that points towards a functionalist viewpoint was the attitude of the German people, in particular the lukewarm outlook towards policies that were imposed by fear. Historian Daniel Goldenhagen was very vocal in pointing out the acquiescence of the average German; blaming an inherent anti-Semitism derived from “an eliminationist form of anti-Semitism already present in nineteenth century Germany” (32). Also the Holocaust became a career for most Germans, moving trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau became just like moving food parcels around the country. People in such jobs became desensitized to anti-Semitism rather than becoming infused by it or coerced into it, Hildberg observed that the consensus for genocide “was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization” (33). Browning makes a similar point that some people who worked for the Nazis “were neither hard-core party activists nor fanatic anti-Semites. But they had joined the party, and they had taken positions and made careers dealing with the ghettoized Jews” (34). The role of the civil servant bureaucracy conforms almost exactly to Hannah Arendt’s idea of “The Banality of Evil” (http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/). That said however not all Germans followed orders as strictly or as blindly without question, the episode at Jozefow, where a Jewish massacre was perpetrated by ordinary recruits from Hamburg, highlighted how some commanders ignored orders offering their men “the opportunity both before and during the shooting to withdraw” (35) which compared to other units was an extraordinary offer in itself regardless of acceptance, as with much of the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany there was little consistency, no average person or action.
CONCLUSION
Overall it would be accurate to say that the Holocaust did not occur because of a fanatical desire on the part of Hitler to fulfill long-established ambitions to rid himself of all the Jews in Europe. Hitler provided the germ of the idea that took hold but it was the state he created that turned the ideology into a reality rather than the ideology itself. The bureaucracy and state machinery of various competing groups allowed for the Fuhrer’s whims to be acted upon without check or question “A Fuhrer order was not needed…Hitler took part in building the consensus, made demands, and let the implementers know that they did not need to conform to any traditional norms” (36). There was also the acquiescence of the Wehrmacht and the German population turning away from confronting such state sponsored activities, whether through indifference, expediency or fear. The role of the state police in coercing through fear via the arbitrary interpretation and enforcement of ad hoc laws helped create the situation required on the home front for the Holocaust to occur. Such a concoction of occurrences coupled to a racial ideology and a lack of intervention on the part of the Allied powers brought about the Holocaust in the form it took rather than the ideology alone. The Holocaust came about as a consequence of several ideologically influenced laws and events that evolved into actions of increasing ferocity and intensity; these continually evolved through the 1930s to the end of the war due to a state system with little in the way of checks and balances, combined with an emboldened demagogic leader who became increasingly imbued with his own sense of inviolability.
QUOTES/SOURCES
1) (Open University, a200, Block 6, page 148)
2) (2004, The Nazi Dictatorship, page 93)
3) (1997, The Path to Genocide, page 87)
4) (1997, page 87)
5) (1998, Hubris, page 60)
6) (Kershaw, 2000, Nemesis, page 389)
7) (Roberts, 2001, Europe 1880-1945, page 380)
8) (Open University, aa312, Unit 20, page 38)
9) (Wendt, quoted in unit 17, page 121)
10) (Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 124)
11) (Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 123)
12) (Kershaw, 1998, page 410)
13) (Browning, 1997, page 7)
14) (Klemperer, quoted in Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 124)
15) (Friedlander, quoted in Unit 17, page 128)
16) (Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 128)
17) (Open University, Primary Sources 2, Document 11.8, page 97)
18) (ibid)
19) (Open University, Primary Sources 2, Document 11.10, page 98)
20) (Kershaw, quoted in Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 128)
21) (Open University, aa312, Unit 17, page 130)
22) (Roberts, 2001, page 380)
23) (Burleigh, 2001, The Third Reich, page 648)
24) (ibid)
25) (Kershaw, 2000, page 123)
26) (Moseley, 1999, Mussolini’s Shadow, page 46)
27) (2002, Ciano’s diary 1937-1943, page 161)
28) (Browning, 1997, page 5)
29) (Fest, 1979, The Face of the Third Reich, page 153)
30) (Browning, 1997, page 29)
31) (Browning, 1997, page 30)
32) (Open University, aa312, Unit 20, page 47)
33) (Hildberg, quoted in Browning 1997, page 125)
34) (Browning, 1997, page 56)
35) (Browning, 2001, Total War and Historical change, page 173)
36) (Gotz Aly, quoted in Open University, aa312, Unit 20, page 43)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
Marwick, A., Simpson.W (2000) ‘Primary Sources 2: Inter War and World War 2’ AA312, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
SECONDARY SOURCES
BOOKS
Browning, C.R. (1997) The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Burleigh, M. (2001) The Third Reich: A New History, London, Pan/Macmillan
Ciano, G. (2002) Ciano`s Diary 1937-1943, Phoenix Press
Emsley, C. (2000) ‘Unit 20: The Nature of World War 2’ in AA312 Book 4, The Impact of World War 2, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Evans.D, Jenkins,J. (1999) Years of Weimar and The Third Reich, Hodder and Stoughton
Fest, J.C (1979)The Face of the Third Reich, London, Penguin
Kershaw, I. (2000) Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis, London, Penguin
Kershaw, I. (1998) Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, London, Penguin
Kershaw, I. (2000) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, fourth edition, London, Hodder Arnold
Marwick, A., Emsley, C. and Simpson.W (eds.) (2001) Total War and Historical Change: Europe 1914-1955, Open University Press.
Marwick, A., Simpson.W (2000) ‘Secondary Sources’ AA312, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Mombauer, A. (2007) ‘Unit 24: German Imperialism’ in A200 Block 6, Nations and Imperialism, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Mombauer, A., Waites.B (2000) ‘State, Economy and society in Nazi Germany 1933-1939’ in AA312 Book 3, Between Two Wars, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Moseley,R. (1999) Mussolini’s Shadow: The Double life of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Yale University Press
Roberts, J.M. (2001) Europe 1880–1945, third
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