Genocide

Genocide is generally defined as “the intentional destruction of a particular race, ethnicity, religious group, or nationality” 1 and it is probably as old as human beings. We can be sure that somewhere way back in the beginning of humans, some primitive people picked up their stone axes and spears and set off to wipe out another tribe. In fact, many anthropologists think this is probably what happened to Neanderthals. Was it the differences between our species and the Neanderthals that caused us to wipe them out? Was it because of a competition for land and resources? Maybe we will never learn. However, in more recent ages of history these have been normal excuses for genocide, along with, religious, political, and racial reasons like the Holocaust that I shall write about in this essay. Sometimes it can be just one of these things and sometimes it can be a mixture of them. At any rate, in my opinion there is never a good excuse for causing genocide and international organizations need to do whatever they can to stop them from happening again.
When people hear the word genocide, most of us think of The Holocaust. But the Holocaust might be unique in history because it is one of the only genocides that we know of that was caused by the hatred of one man for a single race of humans, that is, Hitler and his hatred of the Jews. Of course, there were historical and economic factors that Hitler took advantage of and blamed on the Jews, like the state of Germany’s economy after WW I, the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the expensive war reparations and of course the Great Depression. And we can’t excuse the actions of so many of the German people who supported Hitler. However, for one man to be able to bend the will of so big and civilized a country like Germany and cause the death of six million people by convincing his fellow countryman that they belonged to a master race and that the Jews were sub-human is really amazing and horrible.