Modernism and the Holocaust

The emergence of the Holocaust and the Nazi party views can largely be determined as a result of modernity, as a reaction against the times. Yet, at the same time it can be argued that the National Socialist party can be characterized as a modern development. Modris Eksteins, George Mosse, and Zygmundt Bauman offer an in-depth look into both the anti-modern and modern aspects of the Nazi movement and the resulting Holocaust. Ekstein's work proves to be the most thorough of the three works in following the growth and progress of the Nazi party and Hitler's rise to power. Bauman covers more of the political side of the National Socialists, and especially appeals to morality and ethics, or rejection thereof, to portray his very opinionated points. Mosse, on the other hand, analyzes the people who fell victim to the ideology of the Nazi party, "In a sense, this study is a historical analysis of people captured to such an extent by an ideology that they lost sight of civilized law and civilized attitudes toward their fellow men," (Mosse, 9). For all three authors, modernity is the major force for change- the change that results in the rise of the national socialist party. For Ekstein, culture is a social phenomenon in which modernism is the principal urge of the time. He focuses on social change featuring the Great War as a great catalyst for change, "For our preoccupation with speed, newness, transience, and inwardness- with life lived, as the jargon puts it, ‘in the fast lane'- to have taken hold, an entire scale of values and beliefs had to yield pride of place, and the Great Wars was, as we shall see, the single most significant event in that development," (Ekstein, xiv). Ekstein uses the example of Germany within the novel to express his points. Before the Great War there had been a sense of morality and decency between warring nations, a code of ethics the British and French armies continued to follow. Germany, however, through the old-fashioned