Why did the Holocaust Happen?

Anti-Semitism policy had been through the Third Reich.

Pre-1933 the Nazis always had anti-Semitic views.

Hitler's style of governing

Role of leading Nazis

Public agreed or did nothing?

War: Nazis occupied countries, Final solution

Culture-helped by people

enemy-seen as alright to kill them

Most of them (public) had enough knowledge of the Holocaust to force them to fight tot eh bitter end for they had reason to fear the revenge that would follower defeat.

Recent research has shown that the Germany army was deeply implicated in the policy of treating the peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia as sub-human and expendable.

Would it have happened without the war? Not to the same extent.

Intentionalists

Fleming and Dawidoviz

They believed that Hitler was key to the Holocaust and had committed himself to the exterminiation of the JEws in the early stages of his politica career.

David Goldhagen: 'Hitler's Willing Executioners'. Said that the Holocaust was intended ecause so many ordinary Germans were prepared to participate in the Third REich. German culture had developed the idea of anti-Semitism.

However he was condemned for selecting his evidence to prove his thesis, failing to look at anti-semitism in other Europen countries and ignoring the role of non-Germans in the murder fo the Jews.

Structuralists

No direct path because there was no clear objective and the existence of rival policies.

'The Final Solution' as it emerged in 1941 and 1942 was not the produce of grand design'.

The Final Solution was due to the chaotic nature of the government.

The moral responsibility for the Final Solution extends beyond Hitler's intentions to the apparatus of the regime. However, there is no way to reduce the responsibility of Hitler.

'It cannot be proven, for instance that Hitler himself gave the order for the Final Solution, though this does not mean that he did not approve the policy'-Mommsen.

• The initial arrangements for the Final Solution were haphazard and makeshift

• No written order for the killing of Jews, although in January 1944 Himmler stated that Hitler had given him a Fuhrer order. Hitler's authority was such that it encouraged initiative form below.

• Autumn 1941-top Nazi leadership agreed to an extermination policy at Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

German people and the Holocaust

Unable to prevent it-Germany was a terror state

Many accepted it-influenced by propoganda

Anti-semitic

Influenced by social Darwinism views

Nazis tried to keep it secret

Exterminiation camps far away in the east

'Special handling' Euphemisums used.

Brutalised by war.